Emotional Rollercoasters

Ali Abdaal
 
Taimur Abdaal
 
15.Feb.2021

Ali
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 you doing today?
Taimur
I'm doing great. I'm doing. I think it's I think it's been a solid week. It's been fairly intense. But yeah, intense but good. I'd say. I think the past couple of weeks have been fairly intense on the work front. But yeah, this weekend has been a bit more restful. How about you?
Ali
It's good to hear. I've had an emotional roller coaster this week.
Taimur
Really?
Ali
It's been one of the most roller coaster weeks of my life, I think.
Taimur
Wow. What happened?
Ali
So mostly, it's a lot of a lot of issues with this book that I'm supposed to be writing.
Taimur
Okay.
Ali
In that, A, there's a lot of cross wires and a lot of like relationships to disentangle. So things like, you know, when you write a book, it's not just you doing the writing, there's also like, usually an agent involved, usually an editor, there's usually the publishing house. In my case, that's my YouTube agency as well. And so essentially, like, really early on, when we first started the deal, I didn't get a literary agent, because I didn't really know anything about this industry. And now I've haven't gotten advice from loads of people who've been in the business. They basically all said, you should get a literary agent. But the issue is that because I've kind of been working with the editor and the publisher, with a no agent basis, we were sort of working on a kind of handshake agreement. And now that an agent is going to come into the mix, they've looked at the contract, and have said that this isn't really legit, or this isn't ideal, or this requires some negotiation.
Taimur
Wait, wait. So you and the editor and the publisher had a handshake agreement. Where all charms and they're like, Ali, mate will give you this much or whatever.
Ali
Yep.
Taimur
And you're like, Yeah, sounds good.
Ali
Yep.
Taimur
And then you've and then you turned around and said, Hey, agent, like, does this look legit? And they're like, No, dude, you're getting screwed.
Ali
Not you're getting screwed. But like, there are definitely changes that we can make to this thing. And you probably should have had an agent from day one. Because aren't the conversations that you should be having with your publisher. These are the conversations your agent should be having with your publisher, because they know what all of these 1000 different [...] terms mean, and you have absolutely no idea what's going on. And I was like, yep. And so there's been so that was like one one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is that we've been working on this book proposal. So a couple weeks ago, I read out to you kind of what the main aim of the book was. And it was this idea of meaningful productivity, productivity equation, meaning output divided by time, all this all this sort of stuff. And me and my editor have basically been putting in work over the last six months to shape this proposal up, three months rather than six. And kind of grappling with the ideas and turning it into a fricking 80 page long proposal. That's like 35,000 words. And this week, I had a few calls with some American editors. And basically, they all said it was all [...], and it needs to be thrown out and started again.
Taimur
Really? why? they didn't like the farmer stuff?
Ali
They didn't like the farmer stuff, no. Their main thing was that this book is trying to be too many things to too many people. And what you need is a one clear big idea that has like a very like really frickin obvious what the book is about. And so for example, if you look at something like "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, which was the thing that skyrocketed him to fame, it's pretty obvious with "Deep Work" is about is basically like, you know, sit in a room for four hours and do some work for God's sake. If you look at "Atomic Habits" by James Fair. So it's a wide ranging book about habits. But like all of it essentially rests on this idea that 1% improvements over a long period of time lead to really good results.
And then I spoke to someone else who was who knows this guy. She was And so you can like when it comes to the elevator pitch of these books, you can like, well, I probably wouldn't put it quite like that because this person can say in a sentence, you can say in a paragraph, you can say, and what these be quite blunt, but I broadly agree with the sentiment, like, Oh my God. And so American guys were saying that look, when it comes to a book being sold in the US, in terms of a publisher wanting to buy it, it's basically sold on the basis it's been a real sort of roller coaster of like ah shit like what is this book of a two paragraph email. And if that two paragraph email is legit enough to get actually about? But I mean, right, like, this is I this is something that like people's attention, then they will look at the first three pages of the basically every author goes through like on for every book often multiple times proposal. And almost no one is going to read all 80 pages of the proposal. So you really need to nail down what is this book actually about. There was this on the writing process. There's a quote from Steven Pressfield. Which is that one dude that I spoke to who is a very big name in the field, where he was like, the one thing and something like, "The one thing an author always thinks is, wha look man, I gotta be honest with you. If I were you, I would, I would throw it is this damn thing actually about all out and start again.
Taimur
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Ali
Whether it's nonfiction, it's just always like, what the hell is this bloody book about?
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
So that's been a question that I am now going to take to a literal drawing board, because I'm going to order a whiteboard for the kitchen and just sort of the whole wall. And now it's the case of, Okay, get an agent, say to the editor, look, sorry, man, this proposal isn't working, we need to take some steps back, then the release date gets pushed and pushed and the editor, whoever already knows relationship, it feels sad, because we've been, you know, he'd been working on the basis that this would be coming out and coming out a certain time, but now it's not ready for that. And it's just all these different sort of relationship aspects of the writing a book thing that I just didn't really appreciate six months ago when I got approached.
Taimur
So when, let's talk about your feelings, when that chap said, look, man, I'm going to be blunt. [...] I think you should start over. Like, how did you feel after he said that?
Ali
I felt, I felt very relieved.
Taimur
What? Really?
Ali
Yeah. And I felt relieved, because we're still like, super early on in the process. And having that level of feedback at this point, is like, ridiculously helpful. And because I want this book to be the best it can be, I am not wedded to any one particular structure that I once sort of came up with. And so it was, in a way quite exciting to get that level of, alright, you need to scrap it and start again, because now it's like, oh, okay. It's like, I wonder if it's a feeling when. So it's like, for the last few months, I've sort of had the next two years of my life essentially planned out based on this book, where it's like, okay, we're gonna do the writing in the next six months editing six months afterwards. And then there's a whole year long publication process, and then marketing, blah, blah, blah, and then release date, December 2022. Whereas now, and whereas now it feels like, Oh, actually, let's throw all that out. And it's like, let's literally spend six months honing down what is this bloody book actually about, really making the proposal as good as it can be, and then doing the whole publishing thing, which feels like a relief, because now they're like that there isn't this deadline over my head anymore of we need to have a first draft finished by August or December of this year. And the more I was like, initially, when I got into this process, I was thinking, Oh, first draft of a book, How hard can it be? If I do 2000 words a day? I'll bang it out in a month. I spoke to James Clear, who said it took him three to five years to write his first draft for "Atomic Habits" Right? Okay, interesting. So, my expectations, it was very much a case of the Dunning–Kruger effect.
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
At the start, I was like, oh, easy, easy mode. And I'm like, damn.
Taimur
[...] My second brain already. I've made my granular notes, what is it?
Ali
evergreen, whatever it was, I have so many YouTube videos, I can just repurpose all the content. And I was like.. There's another book I want to write, I want to write something that I'm actually proud of, because this is gonna stay with me forever, basically. And so it's not a case of you know, what, let's get something out there. Just because we know it's gonna sell because of the audience. It's a case of let's actually write a really frickin good book. And that feels exciting, because it's a different sort of project now. Yeah. Where it's all like all, all roads lead to lead towards let's write the best book we can, rather than a some road thing let's read let's write a good book. And other roads being Oh, we want to get it out by a certain deadline. So the publisher can be happy so that my YouTube agent can be happy. So we can make money bla bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, now it's all about just make the book really, really, really good. That's fun, exciting.
Taimur
That's great. I think this thing around having an agent is really interesting. Because I think there's a lot of, I think, there are a lot of fields where you need to make a deal that the two parties need to make a deal. And one party makes these deals for a living. And the other party makes these deals a few times over the course of their life, you know, so for like, yeah, like publishers, they make deals with authors for a living, day in day out, they know exactly how to play the game. They know exactly like, you know, they are masters of this game. As a first time author, this is the first time you're playing this game. If you write some more books, maybe you'll have played it a few times in your life. I think it's kind of similar when it comes to like, startup fundraising, where investors and VCs, you know, they do this stuff for a living, they know exactly how to play the game, they know exactly like, you know, what the process would look like for them. And like, if you're a first time founder raising money for the first time, you know, you're sort of flying blind. And, you know, these people are, in a sense on your side, like, you know, you're it's a partnership with them, you know, and the same thing like you're thing with a publisher, it's a partnership, but like the incentives aren't, I'm not 100% aligned, they they're optimizing for certain things, you're optimizing certain things. Same thing with like startups and investors. And I think we've been super lucky that we essentially have a couple of folks who I think agent is basically the best way to describe, where they're basically our agent when it comes to this stuff. And they help us figure out what the process should be. And you know how we should be thinking about these things. Yeah, I think like flying blind into one of these kinds of deals, when the other party does these deals for a living, and you doing this this for the first time. I think that's a really tough position to be in.
Ali
Yeah. So that's been my issues over the last over the last week or so. And then like, taking a look at this idea for the book and thinking, is this really the book I want to write? And if there was only one key message that I could give across? Like, what would that be? And how do we craft something around that? with that? Like It's, it's a bit like, it's a bit like, if you have an idea for a YouTube video, you can't just make the YouTube video you have to think about What's the title? It's basically that like, title, thumbnail hook, even more important in the book world, apparently, than it is in the YouTube world. And I think with our original title, "The Productivity Equation" yes, we were like always used to working title, we can always change it. But the fact that that was the working title really shifted the direction of the book. And it became a book based around the equation, and you know, part one of the equation part two of the equation, and it just that, yeah, as much as you try and think that ph, the title doesn't matter, we can always change it like it really, really does.
Taimur
Yeah, yeah, I think I can definitely empathize with this thing where you have like an idea. You have like an intuitive sense of what you're trying to create. But then you need to find the right packaging, the right narrative, the right framing, to make it sort of engaging and compelling for other people.
Ali
And I guess that's a lot of the stuff that you had to do with with Causal. Like, you have this intuitive idea of what things should be and how people should think about numbers. But framing it in a way where people can get on board with it immediately is harder.
Taimur
Yeah. It's all about, it's all about narrative. And I think like, I think the two things sort of feed into each other. It's it's not that on the one hand, you have the core idea, your vision. And then on the other hand, you have like the narrative, and you need to convert the core idea into the narrative. It's a bit of a cycle where you have this like core idea, this vision thing. And the process of trying to build a narrative around it actually changes how you think about it, and sort of like feeds into each other. I think like, yeah, we've definitely gone through a lot of this with Causal, particularly when fundraising narrative is super important. Being able to package your thing up in a way that's like structured and in a way that seems inevitable, like, of course, this thing should exist kind of thing. And so, yeah, I think it's a helpful exercise just to do that. Like, occasionally, just like, actually, there was a blog post recently by a chap called Kevin Kwok. He kind of whines about.
Ali
Is it the guy who wrote Crazy Rich Asians? Or I was getting that
Taimur
I don't think that is the same Kevin Kwan. This Kevin Kwan a wrong? pines about like, tech companies and what makes the successful one successful and stuff like that. And he wrote a blog post recently, where, let me try and find it. Just give me a sec. There was a good phrase. Just a moment. Okay. Yeah. It is often true that VCs and outsiders simplify their view of companies in ways Yeah, this is I think there's a this is an interesting analogy, to maybe be drawn between startups and your books situation. I'll just read out a couple of segments of the post. Kevin says: "Often the smell test of a company is how easily it can be dimensionally reduced, how few core elements can maximally explain it, people fairly pushback that companies are intrinsically messy and cannot be compressed in this way. that are easier to remember, but useless in practice. The flaws in this dimensionality reduction aren't reasons to ignore it. The other reason it is important. As a founder, nobody's going to understand the full nuance of your company like you will, everyone else does see a simplified, compressed and sadly imperfect shadow of your company. Founders repeatedly underestimate the degree to which their products are complex and opaque to outsiders." Because they have it fully loaded in cash, or even like in their brain. "They have seen every iteration revision and imagined in painful detail all the alternate lives their product could have lived. Most users never talk to someone at a company, even if they do the vast majority of their interactions with the company or with the product. Your users know nothing about how your company operates. They don't see all the late night whiteboarding sessions and careful deliberations that led to the specifics of each feature they use, or the many iterations that were tested and rolled back and refined. They often only understand half of how your product can be used, much less your vision for how it should be used as it matures. And your future potential users don't even know you exist. As product becomes the driver of most interactions with a company external gatekeepers and proselytizers like journalists and bankers become less important. Instead of the clarity of a company's product, and product and founder driven distribution that becomes most key. We're still early on in companies internalizing this. This clarity is not just for users, it's even more important for employees." Blah, blah, blah. I don't know I actually scrolled. Some stuff about employees. "Founders get advice to repeat what matters more regularly than they think they need to, repetition may help employees remember what's important, but it pales in comparison to the clarity that comes from having strong atomic concepts to begin with, like memes. Simplicity is what makes them so transmissible." One exercise I've often found useful for CEOs to do with their co founders and team is to ask an important question about the company and see how much everyone's answers differ. People are always shocked as at how much they differ from even their co founder. It's natural to have differences doesn't mean either person is wrong. But these unexpected differences in how to think about the company are the underlying fault lines that make it difficult to synchronize as a company are what matters, and to have a common framework by which to discuss and debate important decisions. All of this shouldn't be misinterpreted. Very few companies come out of the womb with crisp atomic concepts. The nature of building a company is messy and complicated. Critics are writes to say that many analyses oversimplify and give post hoc explanations of how to think about companies. But the process of examining that complexity and finding the most lossless ways to dimensionality reduce is not the province of armchair analysts, it is essential for founders and companies themselves to regularly do this refactoring. Just as companies build up technical debt. So too, they build up narrative debt. Typically, fundraising is a natural fitness function for doing this refactoring. For top companies, this is increasingly no longer true. But the importance of this cleanup has not shrunk, whether for the sake of their users and employees, or so they can expand into becoming more complex platforms, companies must grapple with who they truly are before they can go after who they want to be." I think this idea of like, narrative debt and narrative refactoring is super interesting.
Ali
Yes, definitely.
Taimur
And like, yeah, basically, it's not just, you know, that the, the purpose of being able to express a complex, messy thing, in a very simple way, it's not, it's not just so that, you know, the [...] think boys, you know, they have blogs, and journalists, it's not just an [...] think boys can understand what you're trying to do. It's actually to kind of get clarity on the thing yourself, and understand like, I think it's like a loop, where you're sort of initial vision feeds into the narrative and sort of feeds back into the vision.
Ali
Yeah, I've been thinking about this, also on the, on the business front. And I had a call yesterday with someone who ran growth for this other startup. And we were talking about, like, the importance of sort of company vision and company values and these sorts of things. And it's one of those things that I have never quite appreciated. Because in the past, when I used to think of vision and values, there would be like, Oh, God, corporate Bs, like, what, what is this, who even needs this, and increasingly, as our team is now growing, and now there's like eight of us, I think it's becoming more and more and more important. And what what this person was saying is that, you know, when it came to generating their their three core values, they got, like, all 30 people, like an off site, team retreat, and they spent like, literally a whole day like brainstorming be like, Okay, what are our values and what do we want our values to be? And they brought it down to just these three things. And if you just look at those three things, you think, okay, that's kind of obvious. But actually, it took a large amount of man hours to get to that point. And it's similar. I had a session with my business coach last week. And we were trying to figure out this question of what's the narrative for the business, ie, my YouTube, and media and associated things? And we spent an hour kind of going back and forth in a Google Doc, and just sort of brainstorming ideas of like, what are we actually trying to do here? Like, what is the aim? And I think we landed on was the phrase, we help high achievers be more productive, so they can spend time on what truly matters. So they can spend more time on what truly matters. And it took an hour of thrashing around to get to that that point. And that felt like okay, yeah, that seems reasonable. It doesn't quite have the other aspect of it, which is that enjoying the journey along the way. And so it needs a bit of refining. But just having that in my mind for the last week. For example, you know, we were, we were gonna create a sort of paid membership community around my stuff, like a circle community, and you know, weekly sessions and things like that similar to what we have for the podcast, but just more, more like a fan paid membership thing. I kind of thought about it and realize that it doesn't really help that mission of help people be more productive. So they can spend time on what really matters. It wasn't going to be something that actually contributed interesting amounts to our top line revenue. It was something that was going to distract away from more important things like the book. And so I just kind of thought, hey, why bother with this? Let's just scrap it. And any content we were going to make for that would be better just being put out for free online. And now, I think that's, that's part of the vision. I do want to refine it a little bit. But I think it needs to be done in collaboration with the rest of the team to figure out like, what are we actually doing here? And what's the vision, like, where do we want to go? Because right now, my view on this is very much that, hey, things are going well, we're having fun, let's just kind of do more of the same and just do it a bit better over time. But that's not really the way you approach building a company. It's maybe the way you you approach like if you're a one or two man band, but as you start to get more team members, even just for the sake of the employees, for the team members who want something to work towards, it's useful to have, but it also really helps, theoretically, will help us focus on what actually matters and say no to the sort of the unnecessary stuff.
Taimur
Yeah, I think there's nothing wrong with just kind of, you know, if you're having fun, and something's working, there's nothing wrong with just keeping to do it. But you could actually be having more fun. If you take a step back, think about the vision. And it'll probably change how you spend your time and the things you prioritize and probably actually have more fun doing that.
Ali
Yeah. But also, I think there is, there's an extent to which, like I like obviously, if we were to just focus on the, hey, we're having fun in the short term, let's let's do that and not think about the long term, we run the risk of that fun running out, because the business itself particularly strong, so there's that it's that balance of I'm doing this because it's fun. And I'm making, you know, having having some level of long term planning as well.
Taimur
Yeah, yeah, one thing I've really come to appreciate is that is actually just how hard it is to distill something into a really crisp narrative and a really crisp vision. And like, you know, I think this is basically the job of leaders in everything. And I think previously, you know, when you listen to someone talk about something like, I know, someone talk about their company, or like politicians or whatever, I never really appreciated how much work it takes to get to the simple sort of explanation. And, and I think now, now, I really do like there's a thing that came to mind recently, I mean, not too recently, maybe like a year ago, a year and a half ago or something. There's a program called Entrepreneur First in the UK. And actually, it's more of a global thing now. And Matt Clifford is the sort of founder and CEO. And I don't know at what point they arrived at this narrative. But he essentially talks about how, in every, in every like era of human civilization, there is a technology that enables the most ambitious people to have a massive impact. And, you know, maybe like the very first instance of this was like writing, you know, when, like, when writing came about, and the printing press and stuff like that, the highest leverage thing for ambitious people to do would have been to, you know, distribute their ideas via writing, and so on. And I think he has a few more examples of like, different sort of eras of civilization, where there is a different sort of technology of leverage, that like the most impactful people, the most ambitious people use. And of course, like in the current generation, that technology, technology is the technology of leverage. And so the most impactful people, the most ambitious people, he thinks should be starting technology companies to have like, the maximum impact on the world. And I think like, I mean, I've probably done a shoddy job of explaining it. It's just like a great narrative. And like, I think, like, four or five years ago, maybe like three years ago, I would listen to that, that sounds right, yeah, sure. I get on board, but I really appreciate. It's not easy to come up with that. Like, it's so it seems so obvious once you've arrived at the narrative of like, Oh, yeah, like, of course, of course. That's it. But like getting there is
Ali
So what's your narrative for Causal these days? And how's the how's so hard. that changed over time?
Taimur
Yeah, that's changed a lot, the initial narrative. And the initial kind of the initial vision was to bring probabilities to the masses. We wanted to change the way people think about numbers and get people to think more about uncertainty and probability and things like that. But still, it's still something we'd like to do. But I think after interrogating that a little bit, I think what it really came down to was that we're trying to build, we're trying to give people a more human way to work with numbers, more human way to think about numbers. And this probability stuff is certainly part of that. But there's a lot of other things that are part of that. And so the narrative nowadays, maybe this will change. I think this is like, at a high enough level of abstraction that it probably won't change is that we want to be the de facto way to work with numbers on a computer. In the same way spreadsheets have kind of been the de facto way to work with numbers. For the past 40 years or so, that's, that's sort of that's the highest level of abstraction of the [...]
Ali
Or what if we go down a level of abstraction?
Taimur
I think the act one of this vision is to democratize business planning and forecasting within companies. Right now, [...] Yeah, right now, you know, in a company, you'll have a finance team that will have some kind of financial model and scenario plans and things like that, which the company will use to make decisions. And because these, it's really about business thinking, like a lot of the business thinking is encoded inside a financial model. And if you are in the finance team, or if your senior management and you interact with them a lot, then you'll understand, we understand how this stuff works.Most of the people in the rest of the company don't really understand how the business is thinking about its future. Because they can't understand these esoteric spreadsheets, the outputs that are shared from these spreadsheets are very static, you can't really engage with them. And so a big part of what we're trying to do is build a tool that lets more people be part of this process, and more people sort of understand forecasting and planning within companies. That's kind of what I mean by Democratiz like, understanding the company's future is something that every team in a company should be involved in, and sort of actively engaged with. But that's very hard to do right now. And so that's sort of the Act One of of what we're trying to do. And I think the act two is to bridge the disconnects between, look, this is going to sound super niche to anyone who hasn't worked in a sort of in a company that uses these tools and things like that. Right now, there's a big disconnect between backwards looking numbers, and forwards looking numbers, backwards looking numbers are consumed, typically within a business intelligence tools, like Looker, or Tableau or whatever. But anytime you need to go from backwards looking numbers to planning for the future. You then need an entirely different tool, you need a spreadsheet where you can write formulas, and do calculations and things like that. And it's crazy that these two things are disconnected. And so yeah, our vision is that numbers work really requires an all in one tool that can do all of these things, in a way that sort of everyone in a company can kind of contribute to that.
Ali
Okay, but there's even I feel like that's even more a concretize version of Act One, because that was still quite abstract. Like, isn't there, we help x companies do y by z type?
Taimur
Yeah, let me just plug my laptop. Yeah, I mean, zooming in a bit more, we want to be the way that mid market companies manage their financial models. So companies that are 50 to 500 people in size. We're starting off focusing more on sort of 100 to 200. people companies, we want to replace their Excel or Google Sheets, financial models with Causal. That's, that's the more zoomed in, sort of plan for the for the next 12 to 24 months, I'd say.
Ali
Does that get you excited?
Taimur
Sorry?
Ali
Does that get you excited?
Taimur
I love it, man. It's sick.
Ali
Really?
Taimur
Yeah, dude, it's great.
Ali
Because if, for example, a few years ago, when you had the idea for causal, someone told you that look you're going to spend two years of your life helping 100 to 200 people size companies replaced their Google Sheets financial model with causal would that have been? Or is it something that has become more exciting as you've gotten into it? I think it's, it seems like boring AF.
Taimur
Yeah, for sure.
Ali
Like you're prime years of your life, 100-200 man companies replaced their Google Sheets financial model with Causal like, like, what the hell?
Taimur
We're doing God's work here. No, I think I think there's a couple of reasons why it's exciting. The first is that it's like a stepping stone as part of the larger vision to be the way to work with numbers on a computer. I mean, that probably sounds boring to at least half of people. Who cares how people work with numbers on a computer who gives a shit? Right? Like, do you think that sounds boring?
Ali
No, I think that sounds cool. But I can see why a lot of people find that boring.
Taimur
Yeah. I mean, it's not that I could see it. It's not like I could see what they'd like. I imagine most people would find that not that interesting. So yeah, I think it's exciting because it's a stepping stone as part of the broader vision to like, be the way people work with numbers, which I find very, very compelling. It's also exciting. This is gonna, this is gonna sound weird, but it's very, it's very cool to watch people use a system that you've built, okay. I think certain products or systems of some sort, and certain products are not systems, right? Like, if a product is some like very vertical thing, where it does like one very well defined task. You know, this has nothing about like how valuable the thing is you can have a very vertical, simple, maybe simple, maybe complex tool that does like a very well defined task, it solves like one very specific problem. It's not really a system. I think what the thing that I find really cool about what we're doing is that we're providing a set of building blocks, and a system that other people can then use to do whatever they want. And, like the financial, you know, I think financial model is interesting. It probably sounds super boring on the outside. But the thing, the sort of the day to day stuff that's amazing. Is kind of watching people take these building blocks that you've just conjured up in your head, like, we've just, like, come up with this stuff in our heads of like, alright, these are the building blocks. These are how we're going to let people like combine them together, like Legos or whatever. And like, yeah, it's like creating a bucket of Lego and watching people like create stuff with it. Like, it's unbelievable. It's so cool to see that. And like when you see, yeah, I think the cool thing about a system is like, yeah, just like watching people interact with it and build stuff with it is very nice. And then also the stuff people come up with is often quite surprising. And so you're kind of, you're almost like creating this organism and watching it, like, evolve and develop. And, yeah, I think that that's why even if you might find financial modeling boring, watching you watching people take these set of building blocks that you've created, and use them to build a financial model or whatever other kind of model. It's very cool. Do you get what I mean?
Ali
Yeah, I guess so. I would imagine it's a feeling similar to what the folks that notion have or if someone creates a kind of building block website builder, they always tweet about oh, my God, it's so cool to see all the different things that these people are coming up with off the back of my own building blocks.
Taimur
Yeah, yeah, I think like these, you know, horizontal productivity tools, I think they're really hard because it's hard to position them to come up with the right set of building blocks that have enough flexibility. Sorry?
Ali
Hard to come up with the narrative.
Taimur
narrative, exactly. [...] Yeah. If you try and describe notion, I mean, I think they describe it already is until very recently, they were describing it as like, your docks and your tasks and your wiki all in one place or something that is not at all how they think about notion internally, internally, they, they want notion to be like, the new wave of people to do computing, you know, but like, right now, they're doing this, like, internal docs for companies stuff. And so you have to sort of present it in that way. Some of them would like Air Table, like how the hell would you describe it? I mean, how would you even describe Notion to someone where it's a bit like Google Docs? Yeah, you could do all of it in Google Docs, I suppose. But it's, it's just a little bit different. It's a little bit nicer. You know, like, how do you describe the depth?
Ali
I think the phrase I've used is like, it's sort of like having your own website with its own, like, content management system, but not really.
Taimur
Yeah. Yeah, I think like, I think working on abstract things, is something I'm into. And we're building quite an abstract thing that other people then concretize into whatever they want. It's just cool, man. That's cool. And like a lot of this stuff just seem obvious. In hindsight. For example, if you go back to the late 1970s, early 1980s, there was thisspreadsheet program called VisiCalc. That was sort of like the first step of spreadsheet software for computer. It's called VisiCalc. It didn't look too different from how Excel looks today, tables into the numbers, tables and formulas on this kind of grid, they will do some calculations for you, it was pretty, pretty revolutionary. It was very quickly overtaken by another product called Lotus 1-2-3. And Lotus 1-2-3 is core insights was that, once you have the spreadsheet program, you know, once you can generate these numbers and do these calculations, you probably want to display them on charts somewhere. And so Lotus 1-2-3 is groundbreaking insight was combining his spreadsheets with charting software, where inside your spreadsheets, you can create a bar chart or a line chart or a pie chart or whatever. And that seems, it seems blindingly obvious like to us now, like what the hell is the point of a spreadsheet if you can't create some damn charts out of the thing? Of course, these two things need to be one tool, right? But that was definitely not obvious at the time. And that's sort of why Lotus 1-2-3 sort of immediately overtook them. And the way I feel about a lot of the stuff we're doing is that it seems I mean, it seems very obvious to us. And I think from our sort of, from people who use Causal to it to a decent degree. I think it's very obvious to them as well. Why this is meaningful. And yeah, I look forward to the day when people will look back in hindsight and think, Matt Yeah, of course. Of course. Like, why would people write these ridiculous formulas with cell references that no one can understand. Like, why would people doing this of course you need human readable formulas, things like that.
Ali
That's why we have names references.
Taimur
Yeah. Okay. But I think a lot of narrative stuff is just obvious in hindsight. But it's takes a while to arrive there.
Ali
Do you guys have a process for the narrative thing or you just sort of flesh it out amongst yourselves? And think about it in the shower type situation?
Taimur
I think it's like Kevin Kwan said of the thing where fundraising is usually like the forcing function for refactoring your narrative. Yeah, we're actually in the process of fundraising at the moment. And so I've had to do a lot of this stuff over the past couple of weeks.
Ali
Why are you in the process of fundraising?
Taimur
Sorry?
Ali
Why are you trying to fundraise? I thought you had better money's in the bank.
Taimur
I think it's a good time. I think we're at an inflection point where the road ahead for the next 12 to 24 months is a lot clearer than it was even like two or three months ago.
Ali
Like, specifically this 100 to 200 person company's financial model thing?
Taimur
Yeah, specifically, we've we found a fairly narrow target markets, where, from what we've seen, there is certainly appetite from the product that's willingness to pay interesting amounts of money. And our current version of the product is actually pretty suitable for what these what these kinds of companies need. And so we're ready to go off to the races, basically.
Ali
Okay, so my understanding is that, for the last two years now, how long has Causal been going on?
Taimur
About a year and a half.
Ali
So the last year and a half, you've been sort of building the product, but also trying to sort of figure out what is a narrow vertical that we can target where we can, if Causal works for one company in this vertical, it will work for 5000 companies in this vertical, and let's make it so that companies in this vertical, just get enormous value out of it, so that we can start charging them interesting amounts of money and start being actually profitable. And then once we have nailed it for the, the sort of this type of company, then we can start to think about how to, okay, let's now think about, okay, how might we relate Causal to other not to this type of companies. But probably still sort of like finding a niche and slowly expanding over time to the point where eventually, you're the de facto tool for dealing with numbers on a computer. But at the start, you have to start fairly narrowly. And my understanding is for the last 18 months, you've been sort of trying to figure this out. But recently, you've landed on this 100 to 200 person financial model type thing. And now you're like, Oh, great. We've got a model that works now we pour fuel on the fire by hiring like salespeople and building the team and stuff, because we found something that works. And we need money to do that. Is that broadly, right?
Taimur
Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's broadly right. I think the tricky thing is that we, you know, the classic advice given to startups, as you know, start with a niche and then expand from there. I think it's dangerous advice, if you're trying to build a horizontal productivity tool, I think you can't lose sight of, you know, you really do have to keep the vision inside of this is a very general horizontal thing, this is not just a financial modeling tool, it's not just a x tool for white people, you really have to keep a lot of, you have to stop yourself from going too narrow. And I think one of the things that changed recently for us is that we now actually have a set of building blocks in Causal, that let you express pretty much anything that you can express in a spreadsheet. When it comes to numbers, obviously, our way of doing it is better. And so we're now sort of this actual sort of generalized system where you can actually do everything you need. I think a lot of the journey over the past 12 months has been arriving at the right set of building blocks. And that's like, I think that's a really hard thing to nail is like what are those building blocks. You know, for example, in Notion, I think this is this is absolute genius, the concepts that every okay, so notion has like pages, and then it also has databases, or databases, like you can have like a table at Notion or something, right? And I think the truly genius concept, that Notion came up with, I think, made probably like a couple years ago now. Is that every item in a database is also a page. Do you know what I mean? Like in notion, if you have a table, that's if you're looking at it as a table where it has columns, and these columns have some text in them, or the drop down, whatever. But every row of any database in Notion is also a page and you can open up this row. And it's just just another Notion page. And so like, everything in Notion has like this page. And they're sort of linked together, sort of via these databases. And it seems to obvious like when you open up Notion, and you sort of have like a table, and you can like hover over a row, and you can click on like, open page, it seems obvious like, yeah, of course I can do that. But that is that is groundbreaking. That is so good.
Ali
That's not how it works on the spreadsheet.
Taimur
Yeah, I think like arriving at that kind of arriving at those kinds of insights of like, yeah, yeah, that's They have some building blocks, and they just work together in this beautiful way. I think arriving at those is really hard. And yeah, so far the journey has kind of been about arriving at those. And I think from September to December of 2020. Yeah, I'd say from from the start until like, August of last year, we had one set of things in mind, one set of building blocks. And then we realized that those sort of building blocks are good for like really simple stuff. But for more complicated stuff, that not enough. And then from September to December, we created a new building block. And it's similar to notions sort of thing around every database row is a page, I think, I think we have we had a similar revelation. This was actually when we were in the Dominican Republic in November, a similar Revelation where, yeah, around like, we call them dimensions or categories, but it's simply a revelation where this sort of grand unifying moment where it's like, oh, this thing is the same as this thing, you know? What was that for Causal? That for causal is that anything involving a list is actually the same kind of thing. It is a dimension. (laughs)
Ali
Wow. Groundbreaking insight.
Taimur
To sort of dummy down a bit more, and basicallyall lists are like the same kind of thing. That's the insight.
Ali
Again, I'm gonna need that there's a dumbed down a bit more.
Taimur
Alright, so they're often, often you need to make lists of things. okay?
Ali
The list of ingredients for this blueberry pancake? Or is that not the list you're talking about?
Taimur
Yeah, we can talk about that kind of list. I mean, you probably wouldn't do that on Causal. But, again, this is a very general concept.
Ali
Okay, let's say I have a list. So I'm actually have this as a Google Sheets model. That's a it's a list of
Taimur
Employees or something.
Ali
So most like lines of revenue, for each month, for example.
Taimur
Yeah, that's a dimension as well. No, that's a different kind of thing. Okay, let's talk about like list of employees, right? So if if you're building a financial model for your company, probably a big, probably the biggest cost center is going to be headcount is going to be like paying salaries, right? And so you will have somewhere a list of like, okay, these are the 10 people in the company. This is how much each person's salary is, this was their start dates. You know, this is like their bonus, you know, this is what department they're in, and so on. Okay? All right. So this is a, this is what I mean by list of things, you have this list. And in your financial model, you want to be able to do things to this list, basically, you want to be able to sum up all the salaries to work out the total, the total expenses on salaries and things like that, okay? And so, the first thing was that we need to be able to handle these kinds of lists. And until, until, like, September, or something, we could handle lists of things in a nice way. You know, you could, you could duplicate stuff, you could have like 10 copies of something, and you can manually say, hey, I want to like do person one salary plus person two salary, you could manually do all of this stuff. But, you know, that's as bad as a spreadsheet, basically. So Causal has this concept of lists. Now, the interesting thing, is that, okay, so you have this, you have this list of people, and you have some attributes about them, you have some attributes, which are like salary, you have some attributes, which are like..
Ali
Favorite dog, favorite color, you know, some..
Taimur
Yeah, sure, stuff like that. And, you know, like, which department they're in, and in the company, and so on. Now, what are these attributes actually mean? So, the department attributes, that's a pretty interesting one. Because departments are kind of a list in themselves, you'll have a list of departments, maybe you'll have some attribute about each one, maybe different departments, you know, when it comes to doing the accounting, different departments, their expenses go into different expense categories. You know, this is kind of getting into details, but basically, they'll be listed departments, they'll have some attributes, maybe different departments get taxed differently, or something, whatever, you'll have a list of attributes about each department. And look, this is gonna sound really obvious in hindsight, but one of the groundbreaking insights is that the list of employees and the list of departments are both exactly the same kind of list. And you can, and basically, the, I mean, do you get what I mean by that, like that, they're both just lists of things. They're both lists of things.
Ali
They're both what things?
Taimur
They're both just lists of things.
Ali
Okay. Yeah, I agree. They're both just lists of things. Sure.
Taimur
Yep. The reason that insight is powerful is because then it allows you to sort of link these two things together. So for example, if we didn't think of departments as a list of things, and maybe it's..
Ali
A static text attribute on a..
Taimur
Yeah, a static text drop down of like our select the department or something. You know, if that's how it was, you know, it's a bit like how in Notion, you can have some fields, which are text fields, you can have some fields, which are dropdowns, you know? And so if we're thinking, Okay, how do we build this idea of list into Causal? You know, initially, the thinking is kind of like, okay, we need to let people create a table where they can create new rows in the table for this list. And you can have different column types, some column types of numbers, some are dropdowns, and things like that. Okay? Now, with that sort of very naive approach, it's really bad, because we're now introducing lots of new concepts. Now there's this idea of like, you can have tables in Causal, tables can have columns called their column types, you know, you're introducing like a lot of new concepts, a lot of complexity. The insight that the departments are actually just another kind of list, that sort of leads to the conclusion that a drop down a drop down column type, yeah, if we have a drop down column type, that is actually a way to link different lists. And so it's not that you're just having [...] tracks and a drop down, it's that when you have a drop down column, it is actually linking one set of lists to another set of lists. And so your employee list, you have, when you select from a drop down, you're not just saying this employee is in the sales department. You're actually linking this employee to the sales item in the department's list, which has a bunch of its own attributes. And so these things are now connected. Okay? The next thing is, what is the number field, you know, what is the number column type in these tables, while in Causal, like, most things are numbers anyway, you can create these variables, they can have names, they can have values. And so the number column type is actually just a variable. So you have a variable called salary, which has this list applied to it, and it has different salaries for each person. And so essentially...
Ali
The variable salary has a list applied to it, rather than the list of employees has the variable of salary applied to it.
Taimur
Yes, I mean, you can think of it either way, really. But essentially, the columns in these tables correspond to the same concepts that we've had floating around, plus this one new concept of lists. And so now we have basically, two concepts in Causal, we have variables and we have lists. And the simplicity of having just these two concepts that can interact in certain ways, provides like the ultimate flexibility to actually pretty much express anything that you might need to express at the spreadsheet. And I think I'm really glad we arrived at that, because there is a chance we wouldn't have arrived at that. And there is a chance we would have thought, okay, we need lists of things in Causal. So we need some kind of concept of databases, where you can like create this arbitrary table, and you can enter text in some columns, you can have drop downs and some columns. And there is a chance we might have actually just thought, okay, that's the best way to do it. We now need we have now like two sides to cause we have this like database side, we have these tables and a list of things. And then you have like the modeling side where you write your formulas and stuff like that. And that would have been really bad. That would have been absolutely disastrous. And, yeah, arriving at this thing of like, okay, there's literally two concepts. There's variables, and there's lists, and everything else follows directly from those. I think that that was like really groundbreaking. Okay. like it sounds like it sounds so obvious when I say when I say yeah, of course he's dropping. Of course, a drop down field is like a link between two lists. It sounds so obvious. Well, it was not obvious to arrive at that. I guarantee it.
Ali
Oh, what did that feel like? What was it like the, the the finale of Silicon Valley season one? Where the phrase is middle out and then suddenly Oh, my God, middle out compression?
Taimur
Yeah, honestly. It was like a moment from a movie. It was like, it was like, here's the gravity guy. It was like, it was like a eureka moment from the guy in the bathtub where I was like, Oh, my God, everything is a list like, it was nuts. It was. It was divine inspiration.
Ali
Where were you when that divine inspiration struck?
Taimur
I think I was sitting on the porch in our little house in the Dominican Republic, sketching on my iPad, and like try to figure out what the hell is going on.
Ali
You were actually thinking about this?
Taimur
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And there's this thing of like, everything. Everything is a list was like, mind blowing.
Ali
And then did you like jump up like, Lukas I've got it.
Taimur
Yeah, yeah. Basically, I was like, a scene out of a movie. Yeah.
Ali
And then Okay. And then you go to Lukas and be like, Lukas, I've got it. Everything is a list. And then does he immediately get it?
Taimur
No. He tries to poke holes in it. Then he tries to poke holes. And he said, Okay, if everything is a list, how would you do this? And I'm like, yep, you do like this, or how we do this? And then off of humor. Those he was like, okay, that's pretty good. It was sick.
Ali
Nice. That sounds quite fun. It's great man
Taimur
And yeah, this this kind of what I mean, like coming up with these general building blocks and having people use them having they want is really cool. Like, even if you think financial models are boring, I think a lot of people would find just this abstract side of things. Pretty cool. Nice.
Ali
So you came up with the concept of everything's a list. And then your next three months was sorted out in implementing the fact that everything is a list.
Taimur
That and building a spreadsheet view at Causal. [...] seen the product recently.
Ali
I haven't seen it recently, but like this conversation is making me want to dabble with it more. It's just some my issue with dabbling with Causal is that I feel like it would be, it would be nice to have a proper model with all our stuff. But it just feels like too much of a sankat. Too much of a fixed cost associated with learning the setup.
Taimur
With the setup. Yeah, yeah, I think that's gonna be the big challenge going forward, like actually getting companies on boarded, especially when they have an existing sort of fairly complex financial model. It's very, it's non trivial to like, learn a new tool to do this stuff. But that's, that's part of the challenge that we're taking on.
Ali
Like a concierge service where you can just sort of build it for them.
Taimur
Yeah, exactly. All right. Yeah, we have, you know, we work with a bunch of, we don't do the building ourselves. We pay other folks to do it. But yeah, we do the heavy lifting.
Ali
So if I wanted heavy lifting done, can you hook me up with someone? Or is it not really worth it for my use cases?
Taimur
I think your use case is pretty simple. You could probably just build it yourself in Causal in like, half an hour or something.
Ali
Okay. I'll try it today. On Valentine's Day. Special activity. And is there a way of Zapiering like data points into it?
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
Okay. Cool. Sounds pretty solid. [...] spreadsheet view. And you can presumably, you can toggle nicely between spreadsheet view and non spreadsheet view?
Taimur
Exactly. Yeah, they're just different views on top of the same concepts. But again, I think like narrative, and how you package things up is so important, because the way people perceive the products for most of last year, pre spreadsheets, we just had what we now called the cards view, it was very different, I think. I think when you look, when you look at the cards view, it looks like super simple, it doesn't look like this thing is powerful enough to handle like a serious financial model. And, like the kinds of folks who are really super early adopters who like figuring stuff out, I think they were okay with that. They sort of figured out the interface, they figured out actually you can do pretty much anything in this. But I think there are also plenty of people who looked at that and kind of thought, Oh, it looks cool, maybe for like really simple stuff. But, you know, there's no way I can do my financial modeling in this thing. And so just like packaging it up in a more familiar way. It kind of engendered a lot of trust that, okay, I probably, I won't run into any issues with this thing. It looks like a spreadsheet, you can probably do everything especially can do. Which is maybe too trusting of us. But yeah, like the way you package up the same concepts.
Ali
So how did how did you go about building a spreadsheet?
Taimur
Sorry?
Ali
How did you go about building the spreadsheets?
Taimur
So actually, Andrew, our engineer sort of took the lead on that he did most of it.
Ali
What does that involve? Like? Is there some sort of library you can just plug into this, like a spreadsheet library? Or was it like a lot of custom?
Taimur
Yeah, at the moment, we're using a library called ag-Grid, it's basically a JavaScript grid library. This, this is a, this is a phenomenal business, by the way, they just make this JavaScript grid library. I think they're, I think the team is not terribly big. I think the team is like 10, I think it's like less than 10 engineers or something like that. And they're definitely making in the dozens of millions of dollars a year by licensing this thing out to any company that needs a complex grid in their software. And basically, if you're like a bank, or a big finance company, you'll have like a bunch of software engineers building internal stuff. And obviously, all this financing type stuff needs some kind of grid need some kind of tables and things like that. And so basically, every bank pays ag-Grid, a ton of cash to like, be able to use a JavaScript library for their internal applications. So I think, these like, like library type companies, like why don't you build this thing? And like you just licensed to ton of people, and you just print cash? It's pretty cool.
Ali
The best JavaScript grid in the world.
Taimur
Yeah from what we saw that it is actually the best JavaScript grid in the world. Yeah, it's like $1,000 a year for a developer. I think we have like three licenses or something. A bank would have like, hundreds or 1000s of licenses of this thing.
Ali
Oh, okay. Wow, that's a great business.
Taimur
Phenomenal.
Ali
They just build this library that lets you turn stuff into a grid.
Taimur
Yeah. I mean, it's complex library. I don't [...] it. But yeah, it's pretty cool.
Ali
Okay, so you guys had licensing for $3,000 a year, this snippet of code effectively? And you may re-built something on top of it. That seems to work.
Taimur
Yeah. We're really pushing it to its limits, though. Yeah, you're not supposed to use ag-Grid to build like, actual sort of natural spreadsheets type stuff that we're doing. So I think this is temporary. Pretty soon we'll have..
Ali
Google Sheets is not using ag grid. They probably got their own.
Taimur
Yeah, no. Yeah.
Ali
Okay. So you want to ultimately build your own like Google Sheets view?
Taimur
Yeah, look, it's a view. It's not actually a spreadsheet. It's a grid like interface, it just looks a bit like a spreadsheet.
Ali
And you can interact with it like you could have like you kind of spreadsheet.
Taimur
In very similar ways, but not exactly the same. For example, you can't just click on a cell and start typing in text. Because..
Ali
That would break.
Taimur
There's no real concept of text in Causal apart from it lists.
Ali
Okay, interesting. I will have a little play around with it.
Taimur
How did we get onto all this?
Ali
Vision, narrative, fundraising, that sort of stuff, in other exciting news. Have you come across a website called Tattle, Tattle Life.
Taimur
No. What is it?
Ali
It's like this forum, where people post like meme comments about celebrities and stuff. And I recently I discovered a few days ago that there was a thread about me on this forum.
Taimur
Really?
Ali
In the like, influences section.
Taimur
Can we bring it up?
Ali
I've actually I actually did like that day, when I discovered it. I filmed a reaction video with Sheen, where she was reading out some of these things, and we were sort of reacting and reacting to them. So this thread was created on October 4 2020. Could someone start a thread on Ali Abdaal in influencers? I can't make one and I'd be interested in seeing what others make of him. And then it's like seven pages worth of stuff. A lot of it which is around. Yeah, just..
Taimur
Is it only mean comment, are you not allowed to say nice things on the site?
Ali
If there is a nice thing, then it's often like backhanded be like, Oh, I don't mind his ex content, which is actually not bad. But actually, you know, the fact that he does, why is like horrendous and you know, I'm, I, I don't mind his beard, but the way that he talks on camera is just like really ridiculous. You know that level of..
Taimur
Okay. How did you feel when reading these? Because, I mean, you're used to sort of some hate comments on YouTube and stuff, but seeing an entire communication community dedicated to hating on you. That's different, right?
Ali
Yeah, it's a bit different. There were a lot that were just like, that was just funny the ones where I felt a modicum of something was, there were a few that were like, you know, I wouldn't trust him as a doctor because he, you know, just comes across as a snake oil salesman. And there were even a few people that were like, Yeah, he was actually my doctor when I was in the hospital. And one guy was like, I you know, he came into my room, and I was like, Oh, God, [...] from Instagram. There was one or two about how I was quiet and awkward in real life, and not at all like I am on camera. Which isn't, I think. There were a lot about how, you know, how dare you leave medicine in the midst of a pandemic?
Taimur
It's weird.
Ali
There were a few about, there was one oh my god, I can't believe he made a video about how to get started with investing on there some isn't there a law against you know, non financial advisors giving financial advice? And then someone comment on that saying, Oh, I disagree with that. I mean, like here's his video was quite reasonable. Ali's suggestion was to do Warren Buffett's approach of index funds. In my honest opinion, initially, he wants to go to the USA primarily for the better compensation. But in the meantime, his YouTube and other streams of income exploded to the USA 80 Hour Workweek Enthusiasm has evaporated a bit low which is fair enough but again shows that money is number one priority before opportunities for better medical education or medicine at all. Something to keep in mind when he tries to sell something to you wouldn't be surprised if he openly next to going to the USA very soon watch him tried to justify it with the US system changes that are going on.
Taimur
Mate, what's going on here?
Ali
But I mean I can see why, what else? I don't religiously watch his videos But did he do what I spend in the week video where he openly admitted to ordering takeaway slash convenience foods such food to the hospital because he doesn't enjoy cooking feels like a bit of a cash grab in my opinion. I don't get it. Oh, this is related to I think my my course about how to cook productively where I was like, I'm trying to learn how to cook because I've been living off takeaway, and people hanging on to his every word to find a glimmer of the success he has had. He's clearly very business minded with good branding, slash marketing and knowledge around SEO, etc. But I'm not sure that there is a formula that you can teach people on how to be successful YouTubers. So much of it is right place, right time, connections, the lack of a viral video, etc. I'd really do wonder what he teaches on the course slash the YouTuber Academy. Okay, fair enough.
Taimur
So how do you feel when you said that some of them like the ones like calling you the [...] from Instagram when you're at the hospital? That was a bit hurtful.
Ali
I would say hurtful, I realized I was I was just like, damn, this is, this feels like it's it's having like, real life repercussions in a way that I don't like and I don't expect there were a few that were like, Oh, you know, if he were my doctor, I would request a different doctor because I see that he reveals too much of his life. And I've seen him walking around in a towel and stuff on his blogs. This there was a similar similar controversy around the medical influencer community of like last year sometime where it emerged that there were some doctors who have bikini photos on their Instagram. And the Daily Mail did like a whole thing about like...
Taimur
Oh, I remember this.
Ali
Doctor wearing like a in bikinis on Instagram and then loads of people be like, who cares what someone does in their spare time? Like, you know, what the hell you guys talking about? A few people. It was a guy who reported me to the ASA apparently for not disclosing sponsored videos. Oh, here we go. [...] Finally a thread on him. I'm a current medical student. And it's really hard to levy any criticism his way because a lot of students see him almost like the second comic. Genuinely loved his content a few years ago, it was a bit clickbaity, but his tips on studying were really clear and evidence based. Now it really just seems to be about making as much money as possible without really putting out much original content. It always irked me that he put the hashtag #savinglives in all his Instagram posts. Even when the video was just him studying as a medical student clearly missed out on the fact that was irony. But clinical medical students bla bla bla bla, by all means he can do what he likes to make money. But it seems like the focus is just on number one, recycling old ideas into costly video tutorials. Two, releasing a YouTube video on how much these tutorials are random. Three, and then advertising the video tutorials by suggesting users can earn as much as he can. And [...] to do this. I know of another youtuber based in Europe, who was making videos as a medical student about how she was going to be saving lives soon. After her first year as a doctor, she left to focus and other business ventures, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And don't even get me started on him putting cheeky and every bloody thing. 17 likes on that that thread?
Taimur
How do you feel about that one?
Ali
Oh, I mean, pretty indifferent. But like it just kind of funny.
Taimur
Do you feel indifferent? I feel like you always say this. And you always say, Oh, you know, like, come on, mate. It must be not nice to read something like that. I don't know how much I buy your whole thing of like stoicism and like I'm always indifferent. I'm immune to this stuff.
Ali
I think how do you actually feel about this?
Taimur
Do you want to project that you're immune to this stuff? But I find that very hard to believe.
Ali
I mean, I've often felt that comments like, I used to like his videos, because ABC, but now All he cares about is money. And it's really obvious. I've always like, I wouldn't say feel, I wouldn't say I feel bad about those because it's probably true to a large degree. Like, when you start off doing anything for the fun, and then you switch to doing it for the money, it does change. It does change the equation. And I'm not going to pretend that this is not a business, and that I'm doing this out of altruism, and oh, just because it's fun, and this and that. And so having that pointed out, doesn't make me feel bad because it's true. But it does make me feel like okay, maybe I don't do a good enough job of, of being transparent about it. I think I do, I think I do a good enough job of being transparent about it. I think it just is, it just is the case that when you have a certain number of followers, some for some small percentage of that of those are not going to like your vibe, and that's fine. And so, like I read this, and I think it was kind of interesting. And okay, this is kind of interesting, interesting. interesting. He that he advertises tutorials, suggesting users can make as much money as he can. Like, that's, like, objectively not true. And I have like half an hour worth of virtue signaling and caveating at the start of each of my money themed videos to say that this is not how it works. And so it's like, well, I see a comment wells where someone has read the headline, but hasn't watched the video and they're like, Oh my god, you know, or they skipped ahead to see Oh my God, he's making this much money on youtube, but haven't watched the 25 minutes of caveating that I put at the start. Oh, here's and here's another one. Sorry for the sorry for the essay. This guy just grate my fucking cheese [...] lad turned hardcore [...] and influence a moron. I've said it before and I'll say it again. He's got caught up in the fame and money and people are starting to realize it. Again. Like that's like, Okay, fair enough. It's kind of funny. But this person's main point is that I am trying to convince people that everyone can achieve this level of success, which is absolutely not my spiel.
Taimur
So again, you're describing things as like funny. I think you're it's it seems to me like you're trying very hard to not say that it feels bad to read these things. Come on, mate. Just admit it.
Ali
I don't know what it means by like, feel bad.
Taimur
what do you mean to feel bad. Yeah, you bloody do mate, when you say like, Oh, I felt a modicum of something when I read that, people normally call that feeling bad. That's what that is. Right? You get sugar coated with modicums as many modicums as you like. Why you find it so hard to just say you know, it's not nice to read these mean comments about me. Oh, yeah, sure.
Ali
Oh, yeah, sure. I'll get on board with that. It's not nice. But I wouldn't go so far as to say feels bad. Because feels bad in my head feels like a different level of feeling.
Taimur
Tell me what feels bad. Like what what kinds of feeling bad? What's the lowest thing that would count as feeling bad?
Ali
Feeling bad is if I've upset someone in real Life, inadvertently,
Taimur
Okay, that's like the lowest bar for feeling bad. Anything less than that, and you wouldn't be it's not feeling bad, or getting rejected by girl for example, does that cross into feeling bad territory is or is that just not nice? It's not nice and you might feel a modicum or something
Ali
Getting rejected by a girl doesn't fall into feeling bad territory.
Taimur
Okay, all right,
Ali
It probably would have done like 10, eight to 10 years ago.
Taimur
Okay, so the best thing that falls into feeling bad territory is when you upset your friend.
Ali
Best thing. Probably. I don't have many. Yeah, I think okay. I think feeling bad. Obviously. If we take the stoicism pro straight, there's the gut initial feeling that you can't control of like, Oh, okay. A lot of people who research around emotions would say that that's a feeling of unpleasantness. And then the rest of the feeling bad is the narrative that you tell yourself about it. And so if I've upset a friend, then I have that feeling of unpleasantness, and the narrative I'm going to tell myself is I'm a dick, that's gonna make me feel bad. If I read a comment like this, like, like on this forum, then the initial reaction is a feeling of unpleasantness. Oh, this is not nice, but I feel bad about it. Because the story, the narrative that leads to the feeling bad gets cut off at the appropriate point. And I'm not sure there is a comment someone could make, or I can't imagine a comment that someone would make where I would actually, quote "feel bad" unless it was something like if I if I was like bullying someone on camera, and people called me out on it, then that Oh, I'm a dick. Yeah, you're right. I feel bad.
Taimur
Okay, so, right. Naval and Tim Ferriss have both admitted on a podcast, that if they are called fake gurus, they might feel a bit bad about that. But what you're saying is A, you're more enlightened than Naval. And B, your more, your more enlightened to your own guru, Tim Ferriss, and you actually don't feel bad, even when people accuse you of being a fake guru. Like, this is just ridiculous. I don't buy it.
Ali
I mean, that's fine. I think it is a large part of this is the semantics around what does the phrase feel bad mean?
Taimur
Yes. Why do you Why do you try so hard to avoid saying the phrase feel bad when you're happy to say things like, oh, it feels not nice. Like most people, most people would say the same things. Like, why do you have to go through all this gymnastics to avoid saying feel bad?
Ali
Because I don't think it's a case of going through gymnastics, I think the or rather, insofar as we do go through mental gymnastics, that actually does change the way that we feel about stuff. And given that I'm in the business of not wanting things to affect my tranquility, obviously, the thought patterns and stuff that I've reinforced over the last eight to 10 years are around this idea of I can choose how I respond to something in a given moment. For example, if I'm, if I get slightly annoyed about something, it's gonna last two seconds, and then I'm and then I'll forget about it. You might say most people will call that that you're angry, or that you're pissed off, like, why are you so why are you so scared of saying the word the phrase angry. But like, I genuinely cannot remember the last time I was I was actually angry. She might see me speaking to Mimi sometimes it'd be like, Oh, you were angry that I was like, No, I really wasn't like, that's not anger. That's just banter. And, equally, when it comes to feeling bad, the actual feeling in my mind, the feeling of feeling bad is so rare for me. And it's reserved for instances where I think the person is right. And I have been a dick, that this does not come into that level of feeling bad. I'm happy to say it's feeling not nice, because it's like, you know, it's nice, tasty cup of tea, and it's not nice to read me in comments about yourself on the internet. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that, that makes me feel bad. Something that would move that would make me feel bad would be for example, if there were like, if someone was like I was a patient of his in the hospital, and he was really rude to me, and he came across as an arrogant prick. I'd be like, okay, that feels bad. Because if that's the if that's the, if that's the experience that person has had, then that is something that I should feel bad about, because I don't want to give them that experience.
Taimur
You sure, you don't want to you don't want to give these online commenters the experience of thinking you're selling snake oil.
Ali
No, I don't. But I think in that context, it there's so many layers of other things going on there. Rather than a one to one interaction with a patient at work. If hypothetically, they were to say that he wasn't very good, he made me feel small, etc, etc. Do you get what I mean? I think part of it is the scale as well. It's like if if I had like a Zoom call with someone and they and they thought I came across as an arrogant prick, I would I probably wouldn't like that. I probably think about that because it's different than a sort of put out a video that's viewed by a million people by some people who haven't watched the whole video think that I'm selling snake oil, even though that's not what I'm doing. As I said 18 times in the video, but they didn't watch the video. Like, you know, the story around the feeling bad is just so different that I wouldn't call it feeling bad. [...]
Taimur
I see.
Ali
Am I bullshitting myself or does that sound reasonable?
Taimur
I don't think it sounds that reasonable. I think this you know this thing about like the stoicism thing about choosing what choosing the story you tell yourself about things. That's all well and good. But I think your gut reaction to something is how you actually feel about the thing. Like if your gut reaction, dude, what's wrong with your camera? Like, if, for example, my gut reaction to something was that I was absolutely devastated. And then, after a few minutes, I, you know, I sort of calmed down a bit. And I was like, Okay, this is actually Alright, that still counts as me being absolutely devastated. It's stupid for me to say no, man, I've chosen not to tell myself that story. And so I'm just gonna..
Ali
I think, different, different meanings of the phrase gut reaction, what I'm using by actually is literally that milliseconds to one second response when you see something. And then the rest of it is narrative. And that would be this thing of pleasant, unpleasant, or attention versus inattention, which is how a book that we're gonna discuss in this podcast, at some point calls it like those are the only for gut reactions that we have to stuff. And all of the rest of it is narrative and story and cultural associations and all this sort of stuff. So you've been absolutely devastated for minutes. I would, I'm not referring to that as gut reaction. I'm not saying that I'm feeling something for a period of time, and then I'm rationalizing it away. I'm saying that when it comes to this sort of stuff, it's a feeling of like unpleasantness initially. And then very, like, almost immediately, it's a sense of fair play mate, or lol that's just quite funny.
Taimur
I see.
Ali
Having said that, I also, I think, I think there is a level there is an element for me where I don't feel emotions particularly strongly. And probably a large part of that is where I choose not to try not to feel emotions, particularly strongly. So this is some, this is an area where that I actually do want to explore with a therapist or something at some point, just because it would be interesting. And I'm doing this course on public speaking at the moment, which is like three, three times a week on zoom calls. And I mean, I'm pretty solid to public speaking. But one area that I have one, like huge area for improvement is being more like emotive and emotional and feelingzy. When like thinking about how to actually feel about this thing, rather than being completely cognitive, and was like, hey, you know, the topic is the worst mistake I ever made. And so one approach to that is to think about it, and talk approaches to really feel it and talk. And it's the really feeling it and talk and talking that I'm actively working on improving. And yeah, I think a huge part of that is the fact that I don't acknowledge my actual emotions, and don't like let myself feel them. Because when it comes to negative emotions, I don't I don't like the sensation of letting myself feeling negative emotion. And so if I can choose not to do that, then I will choose not to do that.
Taimur
Yeah, look, it kind of makes sense. It's hard for me to know whether you're bullshitting yourself or not. I'm still a little bit skeptical of this. And, the reason is just that, I think it's the reason is that it comes across as if you're really making an effort to avoid saying things like, it doesn't come across as like, particularly naturally. You know, I think if someone if someone genuinely did not feel bad about these things, and was genuinely like, stoic about these things, I think their responses to these things would be different to yours. Where's your responses come across as if you're making some kind of efforts.
Ali
I wonder if that's because we're talking about it on this podcast where we overthink everything. And it would be it wouldn't be acceptable for me to be like, Oh, yeah, I saw this thread of like seven pages long about me and comments about me, but it's fine what it's about. A truly stoic person might just be like, what? Yeah, it's interesting to explore that.
Taimur
No, no, no, no,I don't think it's the fact like the sort of the red flags are not that you decided to bring this up, and we decided to read the comments. It's much more like a much more sort of tiny little things that you say or ways you say things and micro expressions in the way that you respond to these things. That doesn't seem entirely natural to me. Okay, fair enough. And so that's why I'm a little skeptical.
Ali
Yeah, I can see that. It's, it's kind of weird right now because, like, my voice is sort of breaking a little bit more than it was before we got into this conversation. And I'm not sure that if that's just because my mouth is dry, or because I'm actually like, my body wants to feel something and I'm not letting it
Taimur
Yeah, I get your voice it sounds different. It sounds it seems like it seems like your immediate you know, crying but your eyes is sort of moister than before.
Ali
My eyes also do feel moister than that it is earlier. Like what's going on there?
Taimur
These are generally signs of feeling bad.
Ali
[...] World, away from this forum post.
Taimur
Yeah, dude, I don't buy this to be honest.
Ali
[...] later today.
Taimur
Yeah, I think you should.
Ali
Anything else we need to talk about? Moving swiftly on.
Taimur
Go Yeah, let's start to wrap things up. I think there has been no, this has gone on long enough. I'll read a review.
Ali
Very good. I'm also trying to learn how to freestyle rap, which has been quite fun. Oh, yeah.
Taimur
Oh, yeah? Do you want to give us a little? I think you don't care what people think of you and you're happy to look like a fool. Look at that.
Ali
It feels more relatable that way.
Taimur
Because what?
Ali
It feels more relatable that way.
Taimur
I see. All right. All right. Here's a review. It's a four star review. It's entitled Enjoyable Podcast When It's Not a Book Review. This is from curated study in Great Britain. I've listened to the podcast since it began and generally really enjoy hearing you both have a conversation. I like the format of there being a specific topic, followed by an almost unstructured conversation, rather than you having your thoughts already solidified about a specific topic. Because as a listener, it's interesting to hear out your thought processes. However, I feel that podcasts about book reviews are somewhat rushed. And the discussions are not as detailed and interesting to listen to, as opposed to when you have one standalone topic, Eg children. That's a fair point, I think. I mean, we had some people who liked the last episode about the book review, I thought it was kind of rubbish.
Ali
I mean, Book Review episodes tend to be the most downloaded ones as well.
Taimur
Dude, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. What's the most downloaded one? A BuzzFeed article will get more like, clicks or whatever, that's not the point.
Ali
I'm not saying at that point. I'm saying it's a point.
Taimur
What point is it?
Ali
It's a point if you know if you're gonna read out one comment from someone who says they don't like a book review. And there are also comments from people who say they do like book reviews. And there is also the data point that book reviews tend to be some of the most downloaded episodes. You know, these are all factors to take into account when thinking about how we approach book reviews.
Taimur
Yeah, I think we should have any damn way that like, the downloads, thing, downloads, things are basic, just like surely just based on what the title is, right?
Ali
Sure, which shows that book discussion x is potentially a more intriguing title, than why do we hate children? For example.
Taimur
I think there is a recurring theme where longtime listeners of the podcast who liked the podcast for its differentiated factor, which is that it's not like every other podcast, which is interview. It's not like every other podcast, which is like, you know, reading book reviews, long term listeners who like it for its differentiation, regularly dislike these things. No, do I wait? I mean, I mean, that's definitely a theme with the people who don't like some of the some of the more interview episodes, some of the more book review episodes.
Ali
Oh, right. Have we had multiple comments on people saying they don't like the book review episodes?
Taimur
I mean, I think a general trend in the, in the in the sort of, I mean, these aren't four star review is not like a bad comment. But the general trend in these sort of bad comments is like, look, I've been a longtime listener for the podcast. I liked it because of the original things about it. And now you guys are doing like all this. All this, like standard stuff that like that's definitely a trend. And for example, I would wait that a lot more highly than ohl the book review ones get more downloads, oh, well, we have some like, personal as an interviewee, it gets more downloads. Who cares?
Ali
On the interview front, fine. On the book review front, I'm I haven't seen the data. But I'm skeptical that the data is as clear cut, as you say it is given that we have been doing book reviews since the beginning. And certainly the courage to be disliked, the aspiration, you know, the ones where there is more of a two way discussion, whereas compared to something like the righteous mind, which is, which is kind of oh, this guy's presenting some scientific evidence. I don't know. That's kind of interesting. I don't think you should write off the format of book discussion.
Taimur
Yeah, look, yeah, I think I think it has to be a book discussion in the right kind of way. I think. Yeah, just, you know, we shouldn't do a book discussion about fricking atomic habits. For example.
Ali
Hey, leave atomic habits out of that. (laughs)
Taimur
All right, cool. Well, thank you everyone, for listening. And we will see you next week.
Ali
See you later. 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@notoverthinking.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.