2020 Not Overthinking Highlights

Ali

[SPONSOR] Hey friends if you wish you weren't hearing an ad right now then straight after you listen to this episode, head over to curiositystream.com/notoverthinking, for less than $15 a year, you get access to 1000s of high quality documentaries on Curiosity Stream, and you'll also get a special link to our podcast feed with all of the ads taken out. My name is Ali, I'm a doctor and YouTuber.

Taimur

I'm Taimur, I'm a data scientist and writer.

Ali

And you're listening to Not Overthinking.

Taimur

The weekly podcast where we think about happiness, creativity and the human condition.

Ali

Hello, and welcome back to Not Overthinking. Taimur, how are you doing today?

Taimur

How am I doing today? It's good a good question. I don't know how you come up with these. No, I think I'm doing fairly pretty well. It's been a nice day. Went out for a little bike ride to Tesco to get some groceries. I caught up with a friend on my way back on my afternoon phone call, done a bit of work. I've done a bit of piano. Just had some dinner. The rest is development. Yeah, it's shaping up to be a pretty good day, how about you?

Ali

Yeah, man. Things are pretty good. I started the day off nicely because I discovered this white t-shirt in my drawers which fits really well. Turns out this is actually your Causal merch.

Taimur

Yes, yes.

Ali

That I stole from home. It fits so well. I was gonna tell you, you've got to order more of these t-shirts. Where's it from?

Taimur

It's a brand called Bella and Canva or something? I don't know. Like, yeah. I think it fits me quite well as well.

Ali

Is it like a t-shirt design service, or is it like actual..

Taimur

It's a company that like makes t-shirts but they're also a bit like how you know American Apparel and Fruit of the Loom are also like companies that make plain t-shirts to get stuff printed on. Like I think its own brand, but it's also like one of the popular plain t-shirts to get stuff printed on.

Ali

Oh, interesting. By Bella Canvas t-shirts canvas. Nice. Okay, I need to grab myself a few of these because these are pretty solid. So that started the day off well. The other thing I've been doing recently is related to having phone calls with friends. But before we get into that, who is the sponsor for this week, Taimur?

Taimur

Mate, you're asking me?

Ali

This is your spiel, I'm asking you.

Taimur

[SPONSOR] Ah, this week, we're very pleased to have Brilliant sponsoring the episode. Brilliant.org is a great way to teach yourself maths, physics, computer science, all that kind of stuff online. It really is quite good. I've dabbled in it myself. It's a lot better than the stuff they teach you at school. It really helps you develop actual understanding of the concepts of.. Has this gone on long enough? I think it's gone on long enough. So if you're interested go to brilliant.org/notoverthinking. And the first 200 people get some kind of discount. Is that right?

Ali

Yes, that's right. That's 20% off the annual premium subscription. And yeah, brilliant.org/notoverthinking, or hit the link in the show notes. Anyway, now that the microphone is paid for. The other thing is I've recently started doing your having phone calls with friends situation. Crucially, I have set up a Calendly link for it. So now every day at 9AM, and also at 9PM, and at 9:30PM. I have a slot in my calendar, which is kind of reserved for the 30 minute friend to catch up call. And when I think of someone who I want to do a catch up call with I just send them a quick message be like, "Hey, you want to catch up sometime?" By the way, I know this is weird. But this might make it easier to actually find a time. And so far, I've had like three of these and they've all been very good. And I've got scheduled for this evening.

Taimur

What kind of friends are they? Are they people like who you know quite well and talk to regularly? Are they people like you haven't spoken to in six to twelve months or what?

Ali

A mixture. So far, it's mostly been people who I know quite well. Talk to regularly as not it does not correlate with know quite well. But I want to get the "know quite well" to vibe a bit more with the "talk regularly" with hence the calendly links. Yeah.

Taimur

So there are people who you talk to very regularly but you don't know that well?

Ali

No, I'm saying there are people who I know very well who I don't talk to very regularly.

Taimur

Oh, it's like, okay..

Ali

Who I would like to talk to more regularly hence the links.

Taimur

Yeah.

Ali

I've also, I also realized that a few months ago, I think in the summer, I made a list like just actually wrote down a list of all the people who I wanted to keep in touch with.

Taimur

Oh, yeah? who's on the list?

Ali

How long is it worth? it's about... It's split up into different tiers. I'm not going to say how many people are in each tier, but I just I stumbled across that.

Taimur

How many tiers? No, shut up. I'm asking the question. How many tiers?

Ali

I think like 4 tiers.

Taimur

All right, how many people in each tier? I don't know why you wouldn't answer that just tell me how many people are in each tier.

Ali

Okay, so the first tier has about 20. And the tiers 2, 3, and 4. Have about sort of some about five-ish, five to ten-ish.

Taimur

You're gonna introduce tier 5 in the new year. Right?

Ali

Yeah. But it's also like, tier 4, for example, is mostly business associates or like other creators and stuff who I want to keep in touch with but it's a different level of keeping in touch with than like my school friends, for example.

Taimur

So there's about 20 people in each tier, you said.

Ali

No, there's about 20 people in the first year, maybe sort of 5 to 10 in tiers 2, 3, and 4.

Taimur

Okay, so what does Tier 1 represent? Is it like, "I want to chat to these people, like once a month or something?"

Ali

Tier 1 is sort of like, yeah, I think I feel like once every two months would be reasonable for tier one. There are people within tier 1 who I do talk to more regularly, for example, you're in Tier 1.

Taimur

Oh nice.

Ali

So, congratulations for making the list.

Taimur

Mate, I made it.

Ali

Yeah, but I think like catching up with a school friend or something in the absence of seeing them in real life. Like I feel like once every two or three months is you know, quarterly is a reasonable cadence for this.

Taimur

Actually, I might have, I might push back against that. One thing I've noticed in my phone calls is that I think the magic starts to happen once you're past all the catching up, like the phone calls where there's no catching up to be done, it's just like straight vibing. I mean, that's really that's kind of where you want to be. And I think if you have it, like you know, if your tier 1 friends or like quarterly friends, it's just gonna be like a 30 minute catch up. Yeah, fine. Catch up are okay, but I think it's really fun when there's no catching up to be done. Do you know what I mean?

Ali

That's a good point.

Taimur

And like, I don't mind. It's nice to catch up with people. But it's nicer not to catch up with people. (laughter)

Ali

Yeah, I know what you mean. I haven't fully thought this through. This is still a very fledgling idea.

Taimur

I think that's something you should chew on.

Ali

Okay. I will consider it in my mouth. So yeah, those are the two kind of main things in my life. Number one, your t-shirt. And number two, these catch up calls with friends.

Taimur

Nice. Oh, yeah, that was something oh, yeah. I've been meaning to tell you this for maybe a week or something. But we recently made a new hire at Causal. And he has apparently watched at least one of your videos and he bought some mechanical keyboard because of it. So...

Ali

Excellent.

Taimur

Get a little bit of commission.... things.

Ali

Yeah, I think it might be that. I'm holding off on the camera. My blue and orange keyboard. Thank you to your friend for providing me the takeaway that day.

Taimur

Yeah, no worries. I think that was a cool little coincidence.

Ali

What's the deal with this new hire, how does it work?

Taimur

Well, he does some work for us and we give him some money. He's a full time software engineer. Really, really sharp guy. I think we all enjoy working together. We enjoy hanging out. We play Tetris on our company socials on Wednesdays. I think it's just really good vibes all around. Yeah, we I mean, I think. So, he is just taking a gap here from university because it all basically went online because of Coronavirus. And he decided to allow that which I think is a pretty wise move. And so yeah, he's you know, hasn't got a ton of experience. But seems very fast at picking things up. And yeah, it's just a go d find to

Ali

What's the deal with your company socials? Tell me more about this.

Taimur

We play video games together. So we play Tetris, we play League of Legends. I think Tetris. I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, I think.

Ali

Oh, I think we talked about it last week, you said that Tetris is one of those where there's not much of a skill gap.

Taimur

Oh, I think the skill but it's easier to like get up to speed. So we're all at the same level. I think like there is a hierarchy. But it's not that like the games are still fun, you know? It's not like I'm destroying everyone every single time.

Ali

You're destroying most of the time.

Taimur

Exactly.

Ali

I'm thinking of initiating company socials for our team as well. We're calling them take away plus brainstorm evenings in the absence of a better name.

Taimur

Doesn't sound very social.

Ali

Yeah, it's not really a social, it's more like a working meeting.

Taimur

Extracting more labor out of your workforce.

Ali

Exactly. And you can bet your.. You know there's in Borat 2? Have you seen Borat 2?

Taimur

I have, I don't remember any quotes from.

Ali

You know, when he goes up on stage in front of the gun rally to sing a song,

Taimur

Oh, I might have been asleep. I fell asleep for part of it.

Ali

Oh, dude, that phrase came to mind. And I hope the audience won't vilify me for this, because this is just reported speech. It's not even that bad. But it's like, you know, the guy on stage goes to Borat. He'd be like, "Hey, hey, are you country Steves?" And he was like, "you can bet your a**h*** I am!" (laughter) So I was gonna say you can bet you a**h*** that they're not getting paid for these company socials. (laughter) But then I thought I'd take a step back and decide whether I really want to say this publicly.

Taimur

Yeah, you should.

Ali

And then I decided I should, but in a roundabout way.

Taimur

Nice. That's cool. All right. Well, this week's topic is a 2020 review. If you remember, listeners, about a year ago, we did a 2019 review, where we basically look back on the year in terms of the podcast, what we've been doing on the podcast, how we feel about it, what we want to do going forward. So I think last time, it was bit bad because we basically like I think last time the structure was that we went we just list went through all of the episodes and kind of looked at the title and description and talked about how we felt about them. I think like, I think that's probably not that interesting. I think we should start off doing a bit of that, but only talking about the things that stick out rather than having a one minute commentary about each of the 50 episodes or something.

Ali

So we're gonna talk about kids for the next half an hour?

Taimur

Yeah, I think yeah, I think the the main things will be interesting to focus on are like the, the sort of the new branches, you know, I sort of imagined the podcast as a tree. And, you know, we sort of are the tree is sort of growing in a few directions. And there's a few branches that are like getting pushed upwards, you know, and I think it'll be interesting to see like, what are like the branches at the moment where we're sort of pushing the conversation forwards, and you know, coming back to them and stuff like that. Does that make sense?

Ali

Yes, quite. Have you seen a list of kind of episodes ordered by number of downloads or something like that where we can actually see what's ended up being being the most popular ones. That'd be an easy way of doing that.

Taimur

I think we can do that on...

Ali

Oh, interesting. Okay, top episodes by download. So book discussion, the 4-hour workweek is number one.

Taimur

Wait how did you? Where are you? Where's is this list?

Ali

I'm looking on Art 19, which is a podcast host. Then in second place, we have Dissatisfaction and Aspiration. Then in third place, we have Bouncing Back Finding Fulfillment and Being Productive. That's feels like a.

Taimur

I think there was Noah Kagan something.

Ali

That was a Noah Kagan episode. That was the third most popular episodes this year.

Taimur

Bloody hell.

Ali

Then we have Imposter Syndrome and All The Curiosities, which I feel was, I think that was just a random episode that we did. And then we have Book Discussions of Psychology of Money. And then we have Competitiveness and Mimetic Traps, which is in sixth place. That's kind of interesting.

Taimur

I guess there's probably a bias towards the more recent ones being more popular just because there's more listeners.

Ali

Yes. Our stuff only really start from August when we... Or September rather, when we switched providers. So the earlier part..

Taimur

What you've described is just completely wrong, basically.

Ali

Hang on, let me look into Transistor and see if I can find these. Okay, interesting. So if we look from kind of the first half of the year, How to Understand Things is quite high on the list. All of these do in fairness have fewer downloads than in the last three months. So Envy and the Elephant In the Brain, The Abusive Relationships of Productivity YouTubers, Reimagining our Relationship With Work, Friendships and Relationships with Valentin and Cliff. So, How Can We Treat Children Morally comes sort of seventh or eighth on the secondary list? And yeah, it's kind of like I was, I'm always surprised by how popular our book discussions seem to be, I guess, because they're more like actively useful. And in general, people prefer to consume information that is actively useful, rather than, you know, a curiosity or oh, that's interesting.

Taimur

I don't understand what makes like, okay, for example, on YouTube or something I can understand if like, some videos are more popular based on the topic, but I really don't understand how that works for podcasts. Like, fine, if a bunch of people listen to it and think, man, that was a really good episode, maybe they're slightly more likely to share it with their friends or something. And so maybe like it spreads a little bit extra. But you know, I mean, for example, the fact that the Noah Kagan one was popular, I mean, probably just because Noah Kagan shared on his Twitter or something. Like it's not really a mark of.. Like the episodes that are popular, it just seems like quite a random thing, rather than the good episodes.

Ali

I don't think it's a case of those were the good episodes. I think it's more a case of those are the ones with the most intriguing titles, because most people.. At least last time I looked last time I looked at this, most people don't actually subscribe to podcasts, they search them and download an individual episode at a time. Most people also don't like this is a thing that podcasters say that you should put the "By the way guys, a lot of you are listening to this podcast, but you're not subscribed" Because people will, a lot of people will listen on Spotify, where they don't have an active subscription. They're like typing Not Overthinking.

Taimur

You're telling me there's a bunch of people that once a week they type in Not Overthinking on Spotify?

Ali

I'm telling you there are far more than a bunch of people like people don't understand that you can subscribe to a podcast and it will automatically download to your phone. And even if they do, those are the sorts of people who like you and me have dozens of podcast subscriptions. And therefore usually what a phone will do is that if you're trying to save data, as opposed to if you have unlimited data, and you download it will set over cellular you have to click on an episode and then it will download and play. So there is an extent to which a clickbait title is more likely to get people to download it. And therefore the popularity of these podcast episodes is really an order of how interesting to the topic seem at first glance to viewers, our listeners.

Taimur

Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I had it completely wrong. I thought like, almost everyone who's listening is a subscriber. And like, you know, they probably just listened to all of them or none of them.

Ali

Yes, no sadly not, not quite the case.I think this would be interesting. It would be interesting to pull people on this once we set up our membership thing, or yeah, I think I think at some point, we definitely should do a poll that are you subscribed to the podcast? Do you know what subscribing to a podcast even means? Do you listen to every episode? Do you listen to episodes if they take your fancy? Because I know for example, for my podcasts it's entirely based on the title of whether I listened to it and that's why I think someone like Joe Rogan, this is a trick because he's like, you know. He would he just titles them like the name of the person and if you haven't heard of the person, you're never going to listen to it. Whereas someone like Tim Ferriss I feel has your titles which are more like actively helpful.

Taimur

All right, why don't you tweet a Joe Rogan giving him your..

Ali

It's like all those people that tweeted at him when his new background for his Spotify podcast was really bad.

Taimur

I didn't ask you.

Ali

Okay, yeah, that was all the the videographer community on Twitter we're hating on Joe Rogan for having a terrible background. Everyone else being like, "dude, no one cares."

Taimur

Yeah.

Ali

Yeah. "Oh my God, the depth of field wasn't right."

Taimur

That's funny. Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, I think. Okay, a little peek behind the curtains I guess for for listeners, is that once we recorded that, I think we only really care what happens afterwards. I think like I would say, Angus, you're one of the one of your team he sort of edits the episodes, he generally comes up with a title and a description. And he kinds posts it. Wait, what? Are you coming up with the title?

Ali

Indeed. A little peek behind the scenes.

Taimur

I guess this is a peek for me.

Ali

He's putting more weight on this podcast.

Taimur

Okay, fine. I guess you're coming, I mean, yeah, I guess talking about the title isn't too interesting. Okay, let's quickly just like flick through the episodes and see what they were about. Okay, so Episode One was entitled "Lad Culture". We had a friend Jake, I don't remember much of that. But I think it was particularly good. So two words that changed our lives.

Ali

I think you should be normative about this. Like, I don't think that episode was particularly good is not a nice thing to say. Especially when we have a guest on, I think it's just a bit mean.

Taimur

Mean to whom? It's our podcasts.

Ali

Yeah, no, but like, for example, if there's a guest on it, and you're like "I don't think that episode was particularly good."

Taimur

Look, I don't value people according to these things.

Ali

Okay. I just think it's not, you know, it's like, I don't know, I just don't like it when people rate stuff like this.

Taimur

Okay, fine. Yeah, I agree. I agree that like trying to assign scores to things is yeah, we won't try and quantify anything we can we'll just sort of qualitatively describe things I suppose as you know.

Ali

So the episode with Jake was not very good. Continue. Also, I think they're not very good thing is also unfair. Because as we've established many times, we are terrible gauges of the goodness.

Taimur

Here's the thing. I don't subscribe to that. I subscribe to the episodes that I think are good. All the good ones. And that's what we're talking about here. The episodes that you and I think are good, all right?

Ali

Okay. I'd like to step away from this. And you said this is just the episodes that you think are good/not

Taimur

There's a lot of culture one, I guess that was kind of building on a branch of like social interaction type things. The next one was a bit random words that changed our lives. I don't remember much from it. The next one was a book discussion about the Courage to be Disliked. I think it's phenomenal book. I think we've had a ton of people who emailed and messaged me saying like "Oh, I read that book because of the recommendation". I think people like that. I think I quite like that. Does travel broaden our horizons. I don't remember much about that book discussion. the Wright brothers think that was good. Okay, I actually have changed my mind. I don't think we should go through the list. I think that's pretty boring.

Ali

Yes, I agree. Okay, I have a question for you. So as you're glancing through the list, are there any episodes that particularly stand out as like this episode helped you change your mind about something? It's okay if the answer is no.

Taimur

Changing my mind about stuff? Nothing actually sticks out as making me change my mind about stuff. I feel like most of the episodes are me trying to make you change your mind about stuff. So quite of the episodes stick out to you.

Ali

Okay, let's have a look.. So you introduced me to the Art Of Gathering. I still haven't read the book. But I also completely forgot that it's been on my list. So I'm going to download it on Audible right now. So that was interesting. I guess the flow of average of stuff was kind of interesting. I didn't really know much about that, that sort of stuff. So that was that was good. You introduced me to this idea of like this, the transactional analysis. So, the parent, the adult, and the child, that was interesting.

Taimur

Have you been thinking about that much?

Ali

No, not really. I don't know if you have since I was thinking about it a fair bit during that like two week period, we recorded those episodes, but beyond that, not particularly. What about you?

Taimur

Yeah, I haven't been like very intentionally thinking about anymore. I think I've probably internalized a few things from it. Particularly the concept of games. Particularly this idea of "I'm okay, you're okay."

Ali

Yeah, I think the phrase "I'm okay, you're okay" is one that I wish I reminded myself more I need to like, you know, have a rubber band on my wrist or something and snips, snap it every time I fall into "I'm not okay, you're okay thinking" which I think I'm actually quite prone to do. And even you mentioning that just now makes me think "Oh, I'd actually would have helped in various things over the last few month." But I just kind of figure out that it's a thing.

Taimur

What various things when you have felt that you're not okay?

Ali

I don't know, when was it? I think it's generally whenever I.. So, okay, so partly for example if I'm interested in a girl, and I'll kind of modify my behaviors because I'm interested in set girls and said girl, in a way to maximize my chances of them liking me by type type situation. I think in those contexts, it's just, I mean, partly, partly there is merit in that approach. But also partly there is merit in the skirt. "I'm okay, you're okay, I'm just going to do my thing and not overly be concerned about how it comes across." I think yeah, that that runs into various issues. I think I've mentioned this a couple of times, but I've been having more recent chats with actually two different friends who both said that if I wanted to improve my three different friends rather than if I wanted to improve my, quote, "success" with the ladies as it were, then I should lose the feminine kind of vibe and feminine energy that I came across on my YouTube videos and also to an extent in real life and, you know, dial up the masculine, masculine side a bit more. And so, for example, I was having a chat with a friend yesterday who was saying that I should stop using so many hand gestures because they look feminine.

Taimur

What? Come on, give me a break. Really? Surely inconsequential.

Ali

I mean, I guess these things are inconsequential in isolation. But overall, she said that this contributes to a more like feminine image. Because if you imagine like, if you imagine a kind of confident, masculine guy, you wouldn't expect them to be kind of gesturing all over the place like I do in my videos, and people often comment, I think, I think the top comment on my 5 million view iPad video is all of the different hand emojis in a row. And I've got, like, 1000s of likes. So for example, that thing, another thing that she said, which another friend agreed with, which is that the energy that I give across in my YouTube videos is very "Hey, friends, welcome back to the channel. Today, we're gonna be talking about abcdefg." Whereas in real life, like that comes across as very, very feminine energy.

Taimur

But you don't do that. I don't think you're like that in real

Ali

No, I'm not like that in real life. But so these people were talking life. specifically about the way that I come across on videos. I think, even things like body language, for example, in real life, you know, I'm very prone to like crossing my legs and like holding my hand up in a weird place. And it's like, I wouldn't think I wouldn't notice it until a friend would kind of know me well enough to point it out and be like,this is sort of feminine energy you're giving across. I'm not saying I fully buy all of this stuff. But it is stuff that I've been thinking about and most traditional advice on the dating front is that if you're a dude, you want to have masculine energy rather than feminine energy.

Taimur

Right, I'm glad that we got this out of the way while it's still 2020. Because our resolution for 2021 was to not get any more comments about being misogynists.

Ali

I don't think we're at risk. I don't think we're planning to do this here. This female friends of mine actively, you know, in a good natured way, giving me advice on how to be more attractive to women and saying that ramping up masculine energy and dialing down feminine energies the way forward, which I don't think is particularly controversial statement. So for example, in those particular circumstances, it's like "well, I'm okay, you're okay" You know, my natural dating profiles as well. So recently, my Hinge profile did a how to revamp this is going completely off the rails, but that's fine. Recently, so there is a male friend of mine who has a lot of "success" with the ladies and that his Hinge profile is pretty, like masculine and intriguing and kind of mysterious.

Taimur

So he mostly runs like online dating game, like that?

Ali

No, He does a lot of like in real life game as well. But you know with the whole lockdown thing it's hard to do in real life game and therefore he's now switched to online dating game. And he is actually, he sort of casually coaches friends of his on how to get how to get dates and stuff and has had like measurable success with this apparently. Anyway, yeah, this friend did an audit of my Hinge profile and said that basically all of the energy I was giving on my Hinge profile was very, very, very feminine. Yeah, absolutely. Very, like cute, nice guy rather than, you know, mysterious, intriguing dude, that I want to swipe.

Taimur

Hunky Dory

Ali

Hunky Dory. Exactly. Let me give you some examples. So, on Hinge for example, my profile pic was me in a suit, which is one of my nice photos that's got lots of likes in Instagram. And the caption that I used for it was felt cute might delete later. And he said that "no, no, you've got to change that caption immediately. Because that shows insecurity. It shows that you're looking good in this photo, but you feel bad about the fact that you're looking good in this photo"

Taimur

It's ironic mate. Isn't it ironic? Like no one sincerely uses that. Come on. Okay. All right, fine. What's the next thing?

Ali

The next one was, I think one of the questions and my thing was, I am overly competitive about or I geek out on and my response was Harry Potter trivia.

Taimur

Oh God. Yeah, get rid of that.

Ali

Get rid of that immediately. Another one was, I think the thing was, I'm looking for someone to dot dot dot. And I completed the sentence with I'm looking for someone to duet. I see the light from tangled with me. One that I've kept in which is, I am secretly attracted to dot dot dot. And mine is I'm secretly attracted to Princess Jasmine when she's captured by Jafar. We all have, yeah. So, I've kept that one in there. That has had a couple of comments. And the photos were very kind of I don't take a lot of photo were very sort of me doing like a toothy kind of grin like smiling and showing my teeth. And in general, the advice for guys, not just from this friend, but on the internet as well, because the internet's always right, is that if you're a guy, then showing your teeth and smiling widely is generally a sort of nice guy goofy kind of smile. Whereas smiling without showing your teeth is more like a sexy, mysterious kind of smile.

Taimur

You got this on Reddit?

Ali

I got it on wikiHow actually, so. (laughter) So all of this was my friend telling me that I needed to completely do a makeover of my Hinge profile. Because, you know, he was like look, if you're in a relationship, then at that if you're in a long term relationship, then at that point, maybe they'll think it's cute that you're into Harry Potter. But you know, if you're trying to get girls on Hinge then. His vibe was thatthe sorts of girls you want to attract are not the sorts of girls who think it's cute that you're into Harry Potter for example, right? So, how did we get? Oh yeah, "I'm okay. You're okay." So (laughter) in that context I took a "I'm okay, you're okay approach" to my Hinge profile be like you know what? I'm just gonna be myself. And that did not have as well particularly great results.

Taimur

That's funny. Yeah, it reminds me of a funny sort of internet quote/meme. I think I've maybe I've shared on the podcast before but it's something like it's me like "Dude, when she says she's into nerds. She means hot guys who wear glasses. Don't whip out the YuGiOh cards quite yet." (laughter) Yes, maybe in your case, maybe save the tangled and the Harry Potter for..

Ali

For the wedding night?

Taimur

Right.

Ali

Like, did you know I could recite every line from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire just like pick a page. I'll tell you what's on it.

Taimur

That was a nice little aside. Yeah, I mean, you've been trying to make some changes here generally, like I guess outside of Hinge, Hinge's whatever. It's sort of like a, you know, it's a different kind of thing. But I guess in real life, you start wearing like a black hoodie instead of whatever used to wear before and stuff like that.

Ali

The other black hoodie was partly accidental, in that a friend of mine got it as a present. But also, there was another person who I think I probably mentioned this in the pod a few weeks ago who randomly emailed me out of the blue saying that "Look, I know you joke a lot on your videos about how you're single I want to be I want to give you advice because there's so much stuff you're doing wrong that you could be doing better." And one of one of his things was that you know, lose the kind of teenage boy clothing and switch to slightly more masculine clothing. Teenage boy clothing would be like a pastel colored t-shirt. Or like a colorful hoodie. Whereas manly clothing would be more I mean, if he was like, if you're going for the hoodie, look, it's got to be a black hoodie. It can't be like a pink hoodie. Like those clickbait ones or I was like, "okay, yeah, fairplay" thing was that if you're going for t-shirts, you want to get like neutral colors like white and black. And to an extent gray are reasonable colors for t-shirts. Don't ever wear pink pastel don't ever wear like blue, which is still the sorts of t-shirts I wear, but you know, communicates feminine energy and actually this friend who was having a chat with last night said, like "Ali, mate, you've got to lose the pink t-shirts" They should go into bed and never come out again.

Taimur

Bloody hell to that. (laughter)

Ali

I'm basically getting assaulted from all angles here. (laughter)

Taimur

Do you seek out all of this feedback? About your like, how you come across to romantic prospects? Or do people volunteer this I mean the email with someone like volunteering the feedback with your friends do they? Do they think "man I've just got I've got to tell this guy." Or like you're asking your female friends like, you know, "how can I get better?"

Ali

I don't usually because normally female friends are unreliable in this department. Because obviously they're gonna say "oh, just be yourself."

"Oh, no, honey, you know, you. It's it's really cute how you wear

Taimur

Yeah. pink t-shirts" and like okay, well. (laughter) Whereas with a subset of friends who of female friends who I know I can rely on to tell me the truth. That will actually be like look, man, like, yeah, like, you know, if there are friends of mine and yours who have they came to us and said, you know, how can I get better with a lady/with a man, there are some who would give honest advice to and some who you wouldn't give honest advice to. And so I try and go for the ones who I know would give me honest advice.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Ali

So partly, that's why I'm wearing a white t-shirt today. Rather the pink one.

Taimur

it's working, mate.

Ali

When this video comes out, so yeah. The pink and blue t-shirts are going to become the rags that cleans her bedroom with, apparently.

Taimur

Fantastic, good to know..

Ali

Thank you.

Taimur

Yeah, I'm just thinking what t-shirts do I wear. I have a bunch of gray's, black's, I have some pinks. Mate, I like my pink t-shirts or red. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Okay, so yeah, I guess we did three episodes about transaction analysis, which was I think a big topic of the year for Not Overthinking. What other stuff do you sort of made you just think or change your mind about things?

Ali

The kid stuff was sort of interesting. I hadn't really thought of it in that sense before. But I also haven't really thought about kids since. So, that was an interesting curiosity at that time. And I'm sure your kids manifesto, when it comes out will be good. Aspiration is interesting, you know, this idea that I actually need to read this book, I'm going to add that to my list.

Taimur

You definitely need to read the book, lad.

Ali

But like just this idea that there are things that if I try and paraphrase it, there are things that we think we want, but we can't really know whether we really want them because we're by virtue of getting them for example, having kids our kind of identity will change in a way that we can't predict or that sort of stuff. I don't know if that's like our main point in the book, but that is sort of what I took away from it.

Taimur

Yeah, I mean, you've definitely got to read it. It's literally the line of work you're in what books you reading at the moment? Like why haven't you read it? What are you reading at the moment?

Ali

I am reading the...

Taimur

Four Hour Chef.

Ali

So actually, right now I'm reading a book about dating advice. But yesterday I was reading a book about like a business see type type book. I've gone audible I've started a new kind of historical fiction series, but also How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.

Taimur

I've heard of that, is it good?

Ali

I've only just started it. But yeah, of Aspirational or Art of Gathering, which is more seminal.

Taimur

I haven't actually finished Art Of Gathering, even though there's not much gathering. I'm about two thirds of the way through.

Ali

Are you audio audibling it?

Taimur

I'm kindling it in bed.

Ali

Okay, cool. I will start to kindle Aspiration in bed as well. What else do we have? How authentic are we on this podcast? Existential..

Taimur

Okay, that was a great episode. I thought that was a fantastic episode. And I think everyone like I think the listeners also liked it

Ali

Or me moaning about how I come across poorly in podcasts.

Taimur

Well, just us talking about that.

Ali

Yeah. Okay. Well, glad the listeners liked it.

Taimur

I think it was a rare episode where I was sort of pushed outside my comfort zone and felt like you were also quite vulnerable.

Ali

Then existential crisis and your various therapists disappointments and seriousness and sincerity. What do we want from life and probing questions to reflect on? Yeah, I thought actually, the exercise we did two weeks ago, where we allegedly hold ourselves accountable to doing something was helpful for that one week where we were actually doing it. Yeah, I think I definitely want to do it as a thing for yeah, for like, learning to draw and stuff like that. But I think the forfeit needs to be bigger for me to actually care about.

Taimur

Mate, that's great news for me. We can go bigger. (laughter) Okay, so yeah, I guess like some of the new branches. I mean, I have to say with Paul Millett, I think was definitely a new branch.

Ali

Oh, yeah. Yeah, why it wasn't on the list on Spotify? Yeah, I think that was actually that was very good. I took a lot from it.

Taimur

Yeah. So I'd say like, in terms of, you know, we've developed some of the existing branches, like, you know, classic social interaction type stuff, like new branches where like, transaction analysis, kids, work stuff with Paul. And then I guess a lot of the other stuff you mentioned around like, authenticity and things like that. It kind of fits into existing sort of branches. But I think like, yeah, I'd like us to develop the work, formatted work stuff a lot more next year.

Ali

If you like, there's more to be said on the like, for example, transactional analysis sort of comes into social interaction.

Taimur

Yeah, I guess it does. Yeah.

Ali

I feel like there's a lot more to be said on the social interaction front.

Taimur

Yeah, for sure.

Ali

One thing that I would be keen on is actually exploring in a sort of, in a dispassionate fashion, the less mainstream/less politically correct texts around social interaction. (laughter)

Taimur

The scriptures.

Ali

The scriptures, yeah.

Taimur

Things like, The Game by Neil Strauss, or are we talking?

Ali

I was thinking more acceptable than that. The Prince by Machiavelli. And but also I was, I was thinking things like The Game by Neil Strauss and permutations of it that have been allegedly updated to 2020. I think that will be very interesting.

Taimur

What do you think would be interesting about it? Okay, so for those who don't know, The Game is a book about pickup artistry from I don't know, the early 2000s where this chap has sort of tried to write a manual for guys on how to pick up girls, think and so like, what would you know, why do you think that would be interesting, for example.

Ali

So, I mean, so not that like The Game in particular, but I think these similar books on quote, "how to pick up girls" or even, for example, the books that are written by women about how to pick up guys, which would wouldn't possibly be even more interesting, would be interesting, just as a just to spark some discussion. And to figure out like, these things are obviously not. They're not completely BS. And so figuring out like, what is what are the principles here? What is reasonable advice to kind of take away versus what is the stuff that you can been. I think, just like a quite a quite interesting thing. There's a book I actually have on my bookshelf, it's called, it's called, like, the rules of the game or something like that, or the rules, and it's written by it was written by I think these two women in the 90s. And it's a book of advice for women about how to get guys

Taimur

I've heard about this.

Ali

Yeah, and it's really, really, really interesting. And you know, just like exploring stuff like that, where it's just absolutely riveting reading. It's like wow, this would to sort of work and also I see why you're oing that. But also this feels a bit weird that you're suggesting this ut also I can see that it would work and yeah, you know, that sort of stuff.

Taimur

I think that would be interesting. I think like you and I could we could probably do an episode about "the rules" I think we need a female guests on for the female perspective for the the other side of it like to the game and stuff like that.

Ali

Yeah, this friend who's giving me advice on how to be more masculine is very keen on appearing on the podcast to give a female perspective on this sort of stuff in a way where she is okay with being politically incorrect, as

Taimur

Yeah, that could be cool. That could be cool for sure. I think she says.

Ali

Yeah, I think that would be interesting. I think you and I should one sort of germinating branch was the episode entitled "How To Understand Things" about like, sort of, yeah, kind of about learning. There's a very good friend of mine who is an educationalist, I suppose, who we've been meaning to have on t e podcast for ages. But we just haven't managed to get together in person, which actually just get together and sort of figure out what is the syllabus for the I'm insisting on. So once all this lockdown business goes away, I hope we can ave my friend Jenae on and develop the branch on l podcast. Just categorize all these things because especially with like the new website and stuff, it would be really helpful to have things categorized by topic rather than chronologically.

Taimur

Yeah, yeah. So I guess on that note, you might have noticed, if you've tried to go on the website that our website has been a bit of a shambles for I know, a few months now, we basically switched away from our old web host because it didn't have enough flexibility. And so we're on this new thing now, we haven't properly set it up yet. But essentially, we just want the website to you know, we've it's been almost two years of doing this podcast, now we have it almost 90 episodes or something. And so there is a bit of a body of work now that it would be helpful to start, like categorizing and summarizing and just kind of like writing things out. Making them more digestible.

Ali

We have a few million downloads overall now, which is pretty solid for a podcast. So, take this more seriously as like a, you know, treating the podcast as something legit, other than just you and I having a chat each week.

Taimur

Yes. And so yeah, currently, the website is basically soon the website will have all the episodes, it will have some written pages, just like summarizing key concepts that we've talked about, you know, random theories and things like measure and low optionality and stuff like that. And then there will also be a members section. So we're planning to launch a paid membership. It'll start off as an experiment, probably for a limited number of people. And we'll try and figure out what that should actually look like and how we can scale that up. At the moment, we're thinking it'll probably, I think, right, here's my theory about membership stuff. The classic thing, you know, nowadays, there's all this talk about like, building a community around like whatever thing you're doing, like building a community is like the next hot thing. It's a bunch of startups that are now trying to help people build communities and stuff like that. And it's all very promising. It's like very hot space. I think like, sort of walled off internet communities, I think it's going to be very big thing going forward. So I'm very bullish on communities. However, I think so far the approach most people take to like building community or like having a community is that the community is on its own sort of thing. And so a lot of people have communities on Discord, or Slack. And there's a new app called Circle, which is specifically for creators to create communities around them to let like their members hang out in chat and stuff like that. I think actually, in the same way that like, in the same way that you know, if you're building something, or if you're doing anything, right? Like you start off by trying the simplest thing, and then only making it more complicated when you understand why it needs to be more complicated. And you know, there are definitely communities I'm interested in being a part of, but they're always on these, like things that I don't use, like I don't use Discord. I have joined like two or three Discord communities, which I'd like to be a part of them like, I really would, but frankly, I don't use Discord regularly. And so I think I'm just it's just not going to happen like there is like, okay, I use Slack regularly. And I still find it hard to like you really do Slack communities. There's one community I'm in, it's actually sick. It's called Ink & Switch. It's a community for people who build tools for thinking, yeah, really, really awesome bunch of people on there. But I think having these non- standard platforms that you're not regularly on is just a weird place to start. So my genius idea is that the starting point will be a WhatsApp group. Everyone uses WhatsApp, everyone uses WhatsApp groups. If one uses group chats, like that is the simplest barebone starting point. And then as we kind of see, oh, you know, how people using the group, you know, what kind of stuff we would like to do more than would be allowed on WhatsApp, then we can think about, okay, like, how do we enable these extra things, but I think like, I think WhatsApp group as like a member's community thing. It does not seem like anyone is doing this. And I really have no clue why because it really seems like the best way to do it. And so yeah, I think that's what we'll start off with.

Ali

Yeah, I think, I think it is a good idea. Why don't we not overcomplicate it, and just, you know, we'll put a link to a signup page to a Google form or something like in the show notes of this chat. Like how legit is the website to accept the membership thing right now?

Taimur

I think the membership stuff is actually all set up on the website, like you can actually go and subscribe. It's just the WhatsApp stuff isn't set up. And like, you know, WhatsApp group is all well and good. But I think there should be actual tangible benefits for members as well. And so I think we need to sort out a few things like I think, you know, written transcripts of each episode and stuff like that.

Ali

I think written transcripts would be nice, but it's not a feature that we need to have before launching this because really, as you said, this is experimental. So I'm sure there are people who are will be keen to sign up to the membership to help us kind of figure this out along the way.

Taimur

Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Ali

So, I'm literally trying to sign up for it now on the website. Let's see if this actually works. Subscribe processing, oh, it works. You now have access to all content now in theory sent login link. Okay, so now there is a subscribe page. Okay, what about like..

Taimur

No one needs to hear this right now. Okay, we'll sort out the website. Yeah, I think it would actually be interesting to get some feedback about what kind of stuff people would want and who would be interested in our little community experiment with some sort of v.zero.

Ali

So guys, if you're listening to this right now, and you're keen to join our community, hit the link in the show notes, or go to notoverthinking.com. And you'll find a link to become a member to join us.

Taimur

I think, yeah, just we'll just have like an AirTable form or something with just a few questions, just to kind of see what kind of stuff people are interested in. And yeah, I think like, I don't know what the actual limit is for number of people in a WhatsApp group. But I think we want to start small, and then figure out the right way to scale it up. Because I think communities always fail when there's like a bunch of people, almost nobody is active, because it's too big. And no one wants to say anything and stuff like that. And so yeah, I think we're probably limited to like, I don't know, 25 or 50 people to start off with and see how that feels. See, you know, see what the vibe is. So look out if you're interested, keep a lookout for the link to a form. in the show notes of this episode. The price point that we're thinking is $10 a month at the moment. Now, this is kind of unfair, because if you live in a country where the currency is significantly weaker than the dollar, or the pound, for example, and $10 a month to join a WhatsApp group is pretty outrageous. However, like we said, this is just like a very initial experiment. We do want to make this sort of more accessible once we figure out how to scale it up. And so please bear with us.

Ali

Great.

Taimur

For 2021. Yeah, I think we should actually take this podcast seriously. I think like, you know, one thing I've always wanted to do is like not really is like, make the podcast less, less like centered on us. And kind of let people let you know, it feels like the kind of people who like listening to Not Overthinking and the kind of people that appeals to are the kind of people that would enjoy hanging out and chatting to one another themselves. And it'll be great to like, to like facilitate the human connection basically. Facilitate connecting with your fellow man. And I think we have like a really interesting opportunity to do that here. And so it would be awesome to like, start building up more of a thing around Not Overthinking to kind of push all these branches forwards and get more people in the conversation

Ali

Yeah man. Community. Good to 2021 vision.

Taimur

Yeah, I think in terms of taking it seriously, I think there are so many other websites starting some community stuff to get people interacting with one another. I think actually one really super thing is that we have waited so long to even start thinking about putting these on YouTube. Like we're 90 episodes, that's a heck of a lot of episodes. I think maybe after year one we should have been like "alright, in year two, we're gonna do YouTube." Because I think like I think it just comes down to sort of distribution and digestibility. I think there are just like a ton of people for whom the podcasts might actually resonate. They just don't listen to podcasts that much. I've specifically had people you know, like friends and stuff for like, "I don't listen to podcasts. Is it on YouTube? I'll watch it if it's on YouTube." Well, (laughter) so I think like basically, I think YouTube will like really broaden the number of people we can reach.

Ali

I've actually had lots of in real life comments from people who are like "Oh, yeah, I love you and your brother's podcast" by which they refer to the clips I posted on Instagram.

Taimur

Oh wow.

Ali

Yeah, like Yeah, wow. Okay.

Taimur

So yeah, I mean, we do have a YouTube channel, which have been half arsing. I mean, I don't even know what happens there. Someone upload clips.

Ali

Yeah, we've actually recently hit 1000 subscribers on that one.

Taimur

Damn, okay.

Ali

Yeah, I think I'm not sure to...

Taimur

Maybe we should. Maybe we should take it online part time YouTuber Academy.

Ali

Maybe you should take the online academy. Let's see. Yeah, we've got 1110 subscribers on our YouTube channel. And we last uploaded three months ago with the Paul millet episode. I think since then we haven't done the video thing but because we're now videoing all these quite religiously it just needs some time to actually just go through the footage, find the clips. It's a lot of manual labor that just needs like a solid process behind it. This is something that Angus is going to kind of focus on a little bit in the new year.

Taimur

We're setting up a podcast studio in my room for which I need to actually just pull the plug and order a sofa. I haven't found sofa I'm like in love with but whatever I'm not gonna find a sofa I'm in love with and then Ali, you're gonna have to make some efforts I mean once lockdown and stuff ends make an effort to come home so we can record stuff in person on our nice sofa studio.

Ali

Dude, pre-lockdown I have been coming home every weekend just to record stuff on a podcast. So I have zero issues with driving to St. Albans.

Taimur

Great. All right.

Ali

I think you'll need to sort of pay for faster internet so you can use wired Ethernet.

Taimur

Mate, this past week, I have tried many times to upgrade. We're currently on Sky super fast. And there's like an ultra fast one, which is like five times faster or something. There's literally no way for me to upgrade on the website. Every time I try and do it. There's some kind of error that there's no way for me to upgrade my damn internet. Like, I want to pay more money.

Ali

You could talk to someone on the phone man. Mate, it's only 2020 you still have to talk to them on the phone to upgrade your broadband. (laughter) You can just click and bring them up and get a wired Ethernet connection. I'll send you the cam link, and then we can actually do the remote recordings properly as well.

Taimur

Yeah, because it's gonna be locked down for another month at least. So yeah. All right.

Ali

So, I'm living in Europe in 2021 for a bit.

Taimur

Is that happening? Like, what's the status on that?

Ali

Yeah, so it's been confirmed for like March in Amsterdam, and then theoretically, Vienna and Copenhagen in April and May. Those two are still theoretical. The Amsterdam one has been confirmed.

Taimur

Nice. We'll see what happens with the older Coronavirus. Alright, so to summarize, I mean, is there anything else you want to add?

Ali

I think another thing to chat about is how we're just generally feeling about the podcast, I feel like I am now much more like optimistic about it than it was in the early days. I think it's that class, where you're like, really excited initially. And then there's the slump, and then sort of just kind of gets better. And then the more consistent you are with it, the more it just becomes like part of your life, and then you stop really thinking about it.

Taimur

Yeah, I think that was definitely a period. I don't know, like a while ago. Yeah, I think there was definitely a point. I mean, maybe like a year ago, just less than a year ago, where you were like "oh, man, like let's just do one episode every two weeks or something like that." And then I was like,"Fine, I can't force you to do this." And then a few days later, you're like, "no, let's do one episode a week." It seemed like...

Ali

I was having a bad week. I'm taking it out on you. I apologize.

Taimur

Like, what do you think? What do you think the podcast is that like there was a period when you thought you weren't optimistic about it? Like I don't even understand what that means. Like, whats optimistic or pessimistic about it?

Ali

I think, at the time, because we were doing them in person, because we were recording them on Sunday nights at like, midnight, I was just kind of sick of this thing of like, you know, I just want to.. I think I was working at the time as well. So it was like, Look, I just want to go home, get an early night. So I can wake up early to get like wake up at a reasonable hour to get to work, whereas the podcast was cutting into my sleep. And that was making me disgruntled. Whereas, It's not anymore. So I'm pretty chill about it. I think kind of taking it more seriously sorting the website up. So what's going to be our plan of attack on that? Are you gonna sort the website up?

Taimur

Mate, I've spent many hours a bunch of weeks ago, sorting the website out, that's why when you went on the members thing and subscribed, it actually works. That didn't just happen. That took a while for me to sort out. So I think the website is mostly in place. To be honest, I don't know what the process is for actually. Yeah, I think the website is mostly in place, we just need a few written pages of like a start here page where we can lay out the main concepts that we've talked about, categorize some episodes, and things like that.

Ali

You know what? If anyone's listening to this, and you're like, very keen on helping us out with this website stuff, drop us an email. And we'll like have a chat, because I think I'm sure there are probably some podcast listeners who have listened to every single episode and would be very keen to be like "Hey, I'll happily go through them and like categorize them and stuff." And just as like a fun thing to do. And if you're if you're one of the very few people in that boat, do drop us an email, and we'll we can like have a chat if you want to like pick up the phone with us or something. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. If you're, if you're a fan of the podcast, when you have some spare time, want to make a bit of money, and you don't mind helping us out with this. That would be very, very appreciated. So yeah, just drop us an email at notoverthinking.com Yeah, so we need to start here page, we need sort of topics page. And we need a members page for now. And that's kind of it in the short term, it'll be nice to have like hero pages for each of the like, the main things like for example, work and relationships. Similar circles sort of Scoot of Life or Book of Life, a lance thing. I think they have a nice structure for it where you know, work relationships.

Taimur

Yeah. etc.

Ali

Maybe using that model.

Taimur

Yes, man, that would be good. But yeah, in terms of like general feelings about the podcast, I think, yeah, I guess I found your framing of like, "I wasn't optimistic about the podcast" but weird because for me, this is just like, sitting down having a chat once a week, and everything else is just gravy, you know, it's just like "oh, it's cool that people listen, it's cool, that numbers are going up." Actually, you know what, like, let me find this quote.

Ali

"Love your work, and you never have to work a day in your life."

Taimur

I have a bit of a problem with a lot of the narratives around the creative movement. I think a lot of it seems to be very extrinsic focused about like "ah, how to grow your YouTube channel, how to, like get more Twitter followers, how to grow your news." You know, stuff like this. And I think that's something I very much do not want to get caught up in the sort of targeting numbers when it comes to the podcast. Look, just give me a second.

Ali

There's a nuance obviously.

Taimur

Yeah, there's obviously nuance here. But basically, I think if we care about, you know, growing numbers or whatever it should be with the right intention. And I think you know, that those that there's a guy who I follow on YouTube, his name is Dan The Composer. He is like, he's like some next level pianist guy who has this like bizarre philosophy about how to learn the piano. It's like nothing else you've ever seen, like, there's piano tutorials, and then there's down the composer's piano. His philosophy is called Water Pianist. You should check it out. It's like unbelievable, like, this guy is so like, so serious next level shit. Anyway, I'm a big fan of his. And on the 11th of March apparently. I'm just going through our Messenger conversation. I messaged him and I was like "Hey, man, like love your YouTube stuff." I think I asked him if he does private lessons. He said he does. He does, But like you basically have to go through his like he called major scales mastery stuff. So you have to like have mastered all the major scales before he's gonna talk to you. And I was like "I'll get back to you." Anyway. Yeah. Anyway, so I asked him, I asked him "what are your plans or ambitions with the blog and YouTube channel? Are they a big priority for you right now?" And he says, "Thanks, smiley face." This is genius. This is just poetry. He says "No plans, I just do it and people benefits. It's not a priority. And it's not n t a priority. I just do and it does winky face." And I think that's the enter the energy with which I am sort of approaching, you know, Twitter, the podcast, any kind of social media, the energy is I just do it and people benefit. It's n t a priority. It's not not a priority. I just do and it does. And so that's kind of, you know, that's the mindset with which I have been approaching the podcast and would like to approach the podc Because I think something is lost. I think something would be lost if that were not the mindset. Now, obviously like, for example, I think, I think the ideas that we talked about the podcasts are important, for example, you know, the kids thing, obviously, you know, we want more people to be exposed to this idea, for example, yeah, like, there are obvious benefits to growth of like spreading the seed far and wide, which I do want to do. But yeah.

Ali

I thought we weren't gonna be misogynistic? (laughter) Yeah, I thin there are different ways of approaching this. Obviously, there is value in tha I just do and it does, or whatever the phrase was. Like, so I know that you k ow all the nuance. And you know that I know the nuance, but it's just, you know, obviously, treating something a little bit more like a business, like, you know, if when it comes to hanging out with your friends, sure, you could just sort f catch up with people whenever you feel like thinking But to an extent, if you had like a standing order, where you were to have a social every Wednesday night, you know, that would become scheduled in the first part of your calendar, technically, it's not quite a sense of, well, I'll just kind of do stuff when I feel like it and people will benefit. It's a little bit more active. But I think the fact that it's a little bit more active adds rather than takes away from it. Obviously, there's a spectrum here, like you don't want to get to the point where I although I think I think there is this false dichotomy here, when you imagine kind of growing the audience, you're thinking it's going to be done in a non-sincere way. It's like, you know, you're trying to grow revenue, but you're not gonna try to do it in like a way that is not true to the rest of the values.

Taimur

Yeah, yeah. So I think one one classic thing, which I've always been very particular about, and I think we should be particular about is li e having guests on the podcast, I think, like, we should only really have gues s when they're extremely aligned with the stuff we talked about, for example, Pa l Millett, for example, having Agnes Khan on the podcast would be pretty cool. ut like, it seems like and actually we get a bunch of messages, I get messag s, emails about this, of people kind of yeah, it's, it seems like in the podc st world, there are lots of people just trying to like, grow the podca And the way you grow your podcast is by getting someone who's slightly more influential than you. Took out, come on as a guest on your podcast. And then you sort of eventually work your way up with bigger and bigger guests. And you grow your podcast or whatever, and find like, if that's the style of podcast, and that's what you got to do. That's okay, that's not our style of podcasts. And so for example, I think it would be against sort of our values to like, oh, let's have so and so on as a guest, because they're kind of influential. And therefore we can get more listeners or something like that was just something I'm not interested in the slightest. And so that's something that's the kind of thing where we should put our foot down like stuff like having a YouTube channel, Instagram clips, I think that's very in line with the values of just it's just like spreading the content, right? Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Ali

Yeah, quite so I mean, it's less about the it's more about the way it's done rather than the thing itself. So you know, your thing about creators being focused on growing the YouTube channel growing, the Twitter following a lot of that stuff is actually about providing value at scale. And being a decent person and being a decent human being there is an extent to which well, if you buy this many Twitter followers, but like, realistically, no one does that sort of stuff anymore. And yeah, I agree collaborations for the sake of growing the audience, maybe not necessarily the way to go. But also, for example, if there is someone who is influential, and whatever and wants to come on as a guest, or has a new book out, where they talk about something relevant to the stuff that we talked about on the podcast, you know, it would be completely reasonable to do a collaboration with them. So I think we're both like, broadly agreed on this on this topic.

Taimur

Yeah, I guess so. And actually, I've had actually, there was a day earlier this week, where two separate people voiced a similar thing about how they don't want to how they're intentionally choosing not to get caught up in this whole, you know, becoming a creator kind of thing. One of them is a mutual friend of ours who has been running a YouTube channel a newsletter for the past year or something about like medicine and machine learning. And in his sort of final newsletter of the year, he basically said, you know, I've been I've been sort of doing this by the book of like, you know, every week putting out content, all of this kind of stuff. And I've just kind of realized that, you know, it's sort of, let me actually bring up the newsletter. Yeah, so he said, he says that "for me, the biggest trap I want to avoid is creating content for the sake of it. When the focus is on building an audience, you will lean towards creating content just because it works, just because to consumers, but may shift away from making what you really want to make or what is truly valuable. I feel this is particularly a risk when the content is created as a business. He says I don't want to lay judgment on anybody who's taking this approach. But on reflection, it's just not for me, I already feel like as society we consume too much and create too little, I don't have a strong drive to be another person creating content for people to consume. I would rather take the approach of focusing on building something that I feel is more tangibly adding value to the world. And using content creation as a side product of that, this will almost certainly mean that my audience will grow more slowly. But personally, I'm happy with that." So I thought that was pretty interesting. And then the sort of internet chap called Not Tell Lies. And he also, let me just find his article. Yeah, he recently wrote an article about entitled "Not A Full Time Creator", I think for the past year, maybe you have more context on this, because you actually like chat to him and stuff. What's not been up to you on this front?

Ali

I actually don't know. He's got some secret project that he's unveiling in the new year. But he used to be, he recently stepped down as CEO of this marketing agency, and has been writing on his blog somewhat regularly for the last like decade.

Taimur

No, I mean, the main thing is that he was focusing on his YouTube channel over the past year or something, right?

Ali

Oh, yeah. For the last few months, he decided he wanted to quit grow on YouTube, and was doing but what was bull was basically following the playbook on growing on YouTube. And in this blog post, he talks about how he initially he had a goal of hitting 20,000 subscribers by the end of the year, which I was always a bit dubious about, because it was like, numerical goal. This is another one. But he said that, yeah, you know, why not? Let's go for it. And in this blog post, he reflects that he's realized that the way to grow on YouTube is by making videos about stuff that is more like mainstream and less nuanced. And you know, more appeals to a lower common denominator is his general vibe. And what he instead wants to do is focus on kind of doing in depth writing, you know, writing about the stuff that he cares about, rather than the stuff that he thinks will resonate with the most people. And I think that comes from focusing too much on the number rather than on the process or the content itself or whatever.

Taimur

Yeah, I just got the blog post open now. So he says, "As I was praying for stepping out of Growth Machine", Growth Machine is a content marketing agency that he started, we actually hired them for causal a bunch of months ago, I think they're pretty legit. He said "For a while I thought my next focus would be on this website, my YouTube channel and other media so that I could become a full time creator. Now I'm realizing I don't want to do that." He says "the most interesting writers and thought leaders to me are the ones who are out doing something and then use what they're working on to influence their writing and other media." I think he also kind of alluded to this where I think this is basically what you what you were getting that when you were saying like, "oh, man, like if I leave medicine, like, you know, what does that leave me as" like a guy who just like talks about his life, whereas previously, it was the guise of like, "oh, I do these things. And then I talk about the things that I do." You know, it's a similar kind of thing right about you leaving medicine, because that would actually make you a full time...

Ali

Yeah, that's a, that's not a good hustle.

Taimur

Yeah. So he says "The problem with being a full time creator is you have to start caring about the business of what you create. When you primarily make money from your following, you are no longer as free to say whatever you want to create whatever you want to create" says "Paul Graham is an incredible writer, partially because he's entirely free to say whatever he wants, he has more fucking money than you can possibly know what to do with. So if he pisses off a million people on Twitter, it doesn't really matter. That says, When I started working on my YouTube, I set a goal of hitting 20,000 subscribers by the end of this year, and 100,000 by the end of 2021. I don't care about that anymore. The subscriber goal was pushing me to do broader appealing topics I'm not that interested in and to edit the videos or thumbnail them in a way that would make them more click baity. I'd rather make videos I'm happy with and grow the following slowly. I don't particularly care if it ever hits 100,000 or a million subscribers, just like I never check the stats for this website, except to use a screenshot of them for something I wrote about this before. But this site is fairly under optimized the site being as blog under optimized

Ali

Yeah. That's a broadly my position on this stuff as well. from a financial and audience building perspective, but it still does pretty well. I prefer it to be that way. Once your arts becomes a business, it stops being as artful. I don't want to just turn into another Twitter account rehashing the same platitudes. So I don't intend to be a full time creator. This isn't meant to disparage or discourage anyone who has I think it's a great career for works for you. It's just not for me." I think that's prett interesting

Taimur

Yeah. I've also seen a lot of like growth hacking on Twitter. And it's just yeah, I guess people people use things in different ways, like classic growth hack people do on Twitter, as they'll like, make a list of like, you know, my top 10 favorite books of the year or my top 10 favorite podcast, they'll then like tag the accounts relevant and like if someone makes, if someone tweets out a list of like my top 10 X, and they've tagged you in it, like, what do you see that the least you can do is give it a like, and so then these 10 people will like it. It'll appear in a bunch more people's feeds. And just like having these lists of tags is like it's a very tired and it seems to be very popular way of kind of growth hacking a Twitter account, which again, I'm just yeah, I guess it's not what I'm trying to do with Twitter. Maybe if this is truly like, I don't know, very business thing for someone then fine. I guess you got to do it. But yeah, basically, the podcast is not that for either of us. And I think a lot would be lost if it became that for either of us. So, yeah.

Ali

I think this is, there's a blog post by Derek Severs where he talks about this idea of your art and kind of making money from your art and his whole spiel is that "don't try and make a living from your art, just try and make a bit of money from your art. Because when you make a bit of money from your art, it actually makes it more fun. But when you try and make a living from your art, that is when you spend 90% of the time doing business admin, rather than doing the art." And I think that's like, that's probably how I approach all of this sort of stuff in my life. And broadly how I think we should approach the podcast as well, in that, yeah, I mean, you know, if a company wants to sponsor it, we're not going to turn it down. And it makes sense to have like a paid membership program for various reasons. Other than this makes a bit of money. But as long as we're not trying to kind of make a living from it, I think we will just automatically avoid all of the other the issues associated with trying to make a living from your art.

Taimur

Yeah, yep. All right. Good stuff. This has gone on long enough. We should actually split this into two episodes. Oh, classic.

Ali

Yeah, anyway, final thing we should say, you know, kind of year review, I guess we're gonna do another episode before. We're not gonna do one. So thank you to everyone who has been a listener of this podcast for the last year, or potentially even longer, potentially even shorter. Everyone always says this, but like, genuinely, this podcast would not be a thing without you listening to it each week and giving us thoughts and feedback. And I've definitely improved as a person, I think, because of the various emails we've got about this podcast. So thank you for me on that front as well.

Taimur

Yeah, no, thank you to all of you for listening. I think we didn't do a good job of replying to all the emails, but I do actually read all the emails and like the kids stuff, which has been like a big focus, at least for me, in terms of stuff I'm thinking about basically came from a random listener who emailed me this, like philosophy newsletter or something which had some actual tangible points about this. And then I was like, "wow, okay, I'm not, I'm not crazy. Like there's something here." And that actually got me to start doing all the digging about this thing. So thank you to that listener. And yeah, it's just like, it's really cool when people sort of engage with you on stuff you're interested in. And like, you know, people sending stuff on Twitter related to stuff we've talked to on the podcast. Yeah, it's cool that the topics resonate. It's cool that people are engaging with us on them. So yeah, thanks a lot for listening.

Ali

See you later. All right. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening.

Taimur

If you liked this episode, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts on the apple podcast website. If you're not using an iPhone, there's a link in the show notes.

Ali

If you've got any thoughts on this episode, or any ideas for new podcast topics. We'd love to get an audio message from you with your conundrum question or just anything that we could discuss.

Taimur

Yeah, if you're up for having your voice played on the podcast and your question being the springboard for our discussion, email us an audio file mp3 or voice notes to hi@not overthinking.com

Ali

If you've got thoughts, but you'd rather not have your voice played publicly, that's fine as well. Tweet or DM us at @noverthinking on Twitter please.