The Optimization Dial
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Ali's model for why a creative project stops being fun: optimisation is a dial, not a switch, and every notch you turn it up — batch filming, upload cadence, title and thumbnail engineering, algorithm and retention hacking, outsourced writing — buys growth at the cost of enjoyment. The diagnostic is the ordering of motives: when a thing is a hobby, the fun is the reason and the audience is a side effect; when the enjoyment becomes the side effect and external gain becomes the reason, it has become a job. The fix is not to kill the project but to turn the specific mechanics that drained it back down, keep the parts you love, and run the new setting as a time-boxed experiment.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
State why the project exists
Deep Dive started as a place to have conversations Ali genuinely wanted to have, which happened to get published. Write down the original reason before you evaluate anything, because that's the benchmark you'll test against.
- 2
Run the motive-ordering test
Ask whether the enjoyment is the main reason for doing the thing or a happy side effect of doing it for growth, money, or an audience promise. A job, in Ali's definition, is a thing you do for external gain where the happiness is a by-product.
Pro tip The feeling of 'this has started to feel like a job' is the signal to run the test, not a reason to push harder.
- 3
List the specific optimisations that drained it
For Deep Dive these were batch filming 15 episodes in a week, no time to read guests' books, working off a research doc, and a weekly cadence to appease the algorithm and an implied promise to the audience. On YouTube they were titles, thumbnails, retention, engagement hacking and outsourced writing.
Watch out Blame the mechanics, not the project — the conversations themselves were never the problem.
- 4
Check where it actually sits on your priority list
Ali asked what one or two things he'd do if he could only do them well: main channel, books, then the courses that fund the business. The podcast was fourth. Growth pressure at scale means indigestion kills you faster than starvation, so a number-four priority has to be either resourced or dialled down.
Watch out 'It's growing and it's an asset' is not sufficient reason to keep something at full intensity.
- 5
Turn the dial down on those mechanics only
Drop the cadence, the batch filming and the production overhead; keep the long-form conversations, the opportunistic recordings, and the formats you actually enjoy — like publishing Zoom calls and coaching sessions with permission.
Pro tip Ali also clawed the YouTube dial back by writing most videos himself again and speaking from the heart.
- 6
Run it as an experiment and review
Frame the new setting as a season-long experiment rather than a permanent decision, and explicitly allow yourself to reverse it — Ali says six months from now he may miss the regularity and go back to it.
Pro tip Keep taking audience feedback, but reserve the right not to act on it when it doesn't match your own reasons.
In the wild
After two and a half years, Ali concluded the systemisation that grew Deep Dive had turned it into a conveyor belt of episodes. He kept the podcast but removed the weekly upload schedule, the batch filming weeks and the production overhead, replacing them with opportunistic recordings and open-sourced Zoom calls and business coaching sessions published with the other party's permission.
→ The podcast continues on a looser, infrequent format for season 8, explicitly framed as an experiment to be reviewed.
During periods of heavy optimisation on the main channel, Ali was tuning titles and thumbnails, thinking about the algorithm, retention and how to hack engagement, and using writers to script videos for him. He found that level of optimisation took the fun out of the work, so he clawed it back and now does most of the writing himself, trying to connect to the spirit of service and speak from the heart.
→ Less optimisation machinery on the main channel, with Ali back as the primary writer.
Common mistakes
Optimising a hobby until it becomes a job
Systemising and scaling a thing you love works right up until the enjoyment demotes itself to a side effect. Growth mechanics are additive and rarely get removed unless you deliberately remove them.
Letting the audience set the whole agenda
Moulding the show entirely to audience feedback moved Deep Dive from a fun thing published for others to a job done for others. Feedback is useful input, not a mandate — you can choose not to act on it.
Keeping a number-four priority at full intensity
As a business grows you have to deprioritise things that aren't your top one or two, and something that looks like a good idea because it's an asset and it's growing can still eat the time and head space your real priorities need.
From the transcript
“a job is a thing you do for the sake of some kind of external gain”
“there is a level of optimization that takes the fun out of the thing”
“in the past I used to have a few writers who would write videos for me and now these days I do most of the…”
From the episode
A New Direction for Deep Dive - Let's Chat
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