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Ali Abdaal
How to Change Your Life
How to Change Your Life
Ali Abdaal
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28:56 · Sep 12, 2025
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So
this
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a
video
about
how
to
change
your
life.
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0:00
So this is a video about how to change your life.
0:02
And in the video I want to talk you through the think day method
0:04
where in about 4 hours you can drastically change the trajectory of your life.
0:16
You guys know Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft.
0:18
He had this practice
0:19
and he would call it a think week where once
0:21
or twice a year he would go off to a cabin in the woods
0:23
for a whole week.
0:24
He would clear his calendar.
0:25
He would get a private chef.
0:26
They would private chat would bring him food
0:27
and stuff and he would just use
0:29
that week to read
0:30
and to think.
0:31
And Bill Gates actually credits quite a lot of Microsoft's most like best innovations
0:36
and stuff to this think week practice where he's just sort of sitting in
0:39
this cabin and doing a lot of thinking
0:41
and making decisions.
0:42
Now, most of us probably don't have a whole week to take off to
0:44
go to a cabin in the woods to to make these sorts of decisions.
0:47
And so, there's a technique
0:48
that I came across in my friend Sahil's Bloom's book,
0:51
Five Types of Wealth, which is called a think day.
0:53
And the reason I want to do a think today for me today is
0:55
because there are a bunch of decisions
0:56
that I need to make about my business
0:58
and about my life.
0:58
And if I make the right kind of decision in this kind of moment,
1:01
then honestly, it could be worth millions to tens of millions of dollars
1:05
if we just think in terms of like monetary ROI.
1:08
That's what we're doing in this video.
1:09
I want to talk you through my personal approach to the Think a Day
1:12
method.
1:13
And instead of just sitting at my desk and telling you about it,
1:15
we thought we'd go to a place in Hong Kong
1:17
that I've never been before.
1:18
And I want to show you the actual journaling prompts
1:20
that I have gotten incredible value out out of over the years.
1:22
I would say that these journaling prompts
1:24
that I'm going to share with you are things
1:25
that I have used repeatedly to change my life in increasingly positive directions.
1:30
Because of certain decisions that I made earlier in life,
1:32
I was able to start my business
1:34
and get really rich
1:35
and become financially free
1:36
and like quit the job
1:37
and you know,
1:37
all of that kind of stuff.
1:38
Um, because of certain decisions I made,
1:40
I ended up meeting a woman who
1:42
then became my wife
1:43
and we now have a kid.
1:44
So, I basically swear by having the right kind of journaling
1:46
or reflection prompts and using those
1:48
as ideally in a in a fashion that's outside of your normal context to
1:52
help inform what decisions you want to make.
1:54
What does it mean for your life to actually change?
1:57
The way I would personally define it,
1:59
it's that like currently your life is going on a trajectory
2:01
that looks something like this.
2:02
Like if you change nothing else, time is still marching on.
2:05
You're still moving towards your inevitable demise
2:08
and we're all just like going with life.
2:09
Now, what it would mean to change your life is
2:11
if you make a decision
2:13
that causes you to take some actions,
2:14
which then changes the trajectory of your life.
2:17
It's sort of like you're going down the highway
2:18
and then instead of continuing to go straight,
2:20
which is the path that you're currently on, you decide to take a turn.
2:23
Now, if you decide to take that turn,
2:24
that means you end up in a different destination than you would have been
2:27
before.
2:28
And so, your life has changed.
2:29
Now, the way I think about this is
2:30
that it really comes down to the decision
2:32
that you make.
2:32
So, for example, you could decide right now
2:35
that tomorrow you're going to rob the local bank,
2:37
right?
2:37
You could just make
2:38
that decision and if you followed through on it
2:40
then uh your life would change
2:42
but the trajectory of your life would probably go in a negative direction i.e.
2:46
you'd probably regret having robbed
2:48
that bank and you probably wouldn't advise other people to try
2:50
and rob a bank cuz your life will change for the worst.
2:52
Similarly, you could decide to quit your job
2:54
or to drop out of university
2:56
or to break up your engagement
2:58
or your marriage or whatever.
2:59
Like you could make these drastic life-changing decisions
3:01
and now your life has changed
3:03
because of a decision
3:04
that you've made.
3:05
So what that really means is
3:06
that the quality of our decisions dictates the quality of our lives.
3:10
If you make a decision
3:11
that causes you to take actions
3:12
that move you in a positive direction,
3:14
then your life has changed for the better.
3:15
If you make a decision
3:16
that causes you to take actions
3:17
that end up in a negative situation,
3:19
your life has changed for the worst.
3:20
So all of that is context
3:22
as to why this video is titled how to change your life,
3:24
right?
3:24
Because otherwise it sounds like a clickbait title,
3:27
but really what changing your life comes down to is a decision
3:29
that you've made.
3:30
So, instead of doing a think week,
3:31
you just do a think day
3:32
or a think 4 hours where you basically take half a day
3:35
or a day,
3:35
uh maybe like 4 hours out of your normal day-to-day routine,
3:38
you go to a place where you haven't really been before to get you
3:41
outside of your normal context,
3:43
and you just use that time to think.
3:45
You use that time to do some journaling, to do some reading,
3:49
to do some thinking.
3:50
And as a result of that,
3:51
you hopefully make a decision
3:52
or two that changes the trajectory of your life in a positive way.
3:55
Now, the reason that I like to generally go outside of my comfort zone
3:59
when doing stuff like this is
4:01
because when you're in your home environment
4:03
or your office environment
4:04
or like your usual day-to-day situation,
4:06
there's all sorts of like subconscious patterns that we just find ourselves following.
4:10
Our brain is kind of like a prediction machine
4:12
that likes to conserve a lot of energy by just sort of defaulting to
4:15
decisions that we've made in the past.
4:16
So, when you're at work or at school or your office or at home,
4:19
you just naturally find yourself in the sorts of thinking patterns
4:21
that you've always been in in the past.
4:23
Whereas if you want to actually get context is it's sort of like zooming
4:27
out or like going like 30,000 feet
4:28
or whatever.
4:29
You just you can get more of a bird's eye view of your life
4:31
to approach decisions from a more sort of dispassionate more like zoomed out perspective.
4:36
Whereas when you're in it, when you're in the thick of it,
4:38
it's really hard to actually make life-changing decisions.
4:40
And so what we're going to do in this video is you're going to
4:42
come along with me
4:43
as we go to a new area in Hong Kong
4:44
and I'm going to talk you through the exact journaling problems
4:47
that I'm thinking about
4:48
and I'll be sharing all of those with you.
4:49
And so hopefully as a result of watching this video
4:52
and doing some of these journaling prompts
4:53
and maybe doing your own thing today,
4:54
that will result in the trajectory of your life being changed
4:56
as a result of watching this video
4:58
and putting it into practice.
4:59
In other exciting news,
5:00
my team and I are constantly experimenting with loads of different AI tools to
5:03
run our business more effectively.
5:04
But here's the thing, the tech is evolving at a ridiculous pace,
5:08
as you know, and one thing
5:10
that I found really helpful is to understand the fundamentals to be able to
5:13
then separate the genuinely useful stuff from all of the hype.
5:16
And one way that I found
5:17
that really works for developing this deeper kind of learning is through Brilliant,
5:20
who are the very kind paid partners of this video.
5:22
Brilliant is an amazing online interactive learning platform
5:25
that I've actually been using since 2019.
5:27
So, it's been like 6 years now.
5:28
And every month, Brilliant just keeps getting better and better.
5:30
And the thing is like we are surrounded by all of these like quick
5:32
and easy learning promises
5:34
that oh,
5:34
learn this thing super quickly and super easily.
5:36
But if you actually want to build valuable skills like coding
5:38
or to actually understand how AI tools work,
5:41
you need something more substantial,
5:42
something that helps you think through problems rather than just memorizing syntax.
5:45
Me and my team have found it really helpful to go through Brilliant's new
5:48
course on how AI works
5:49
and that just helps you unlock a deeper way of understanding large language models
5:53
and then being able to actually use AI in your day-to-day workflow.
5:56
What I love most about Brilliant is
5:57
that it lets you play around with real concepts like dragging
5:59
and tweaking and experimenting until things click.
6:02
It's not at all about just memorizing stuff.
6:04
It's about actually thinking like a problem solver.
6:06
And I've genuinely found
6:07
that this approach of wrestling with interactive problems rather than just sort of passively
6:11
consuming a tutorial that's actually made me a better thinker across everything I do.
6:14
So, if you'd like to give your brain a proper workout
6:16
and finally get how AI actually works,
6:18
then head over to brilliant.org/aliabdal
6:20
or scan the QR code on screen
6:21
or click the link in the description.
6:23
And if you decide to go for the annual premium subscription,
6:25
you'll get 20% off that as well.
6:26
So, thank you Brilliant for sponsoring this video.
6:28
And let's get back into it.
6:31
Okay, so this is a little pocket notebook, by the way,
6:33
that I like to bring along
6:34
when I'm when I'm doing these sort of journaling sessions.
6:35
It's like quite viby.
6:36
The whole idea is
6:37
that you draw a circle
6:38
and then you split your circle up into three sections
6:41
and then you split those three sections up into three more sections.
6:44
So you end up with nine bits of your circle.
6:47
Now the three big sections are we've got health
6:49
and then we have a big section for work,
6:51
relationships.
6:52
Within health we've got three further categories.
6:54
We've got physical health, mental health,
6:56
and spiritual health which you can define however you like.
6:59
Within work we've got mission, money, and growth.
7:02
And within relationships we've got family, friends, and romantic.
7:04
And so those are like our nine different categories.
7:07
And I like to add a 10th category off on the side labeled joy.
7:10
Now you've got these 10 different categories in your little wheel of life.
7:13
And the whole idea is
7:14
that you just ask yourself
7:15
if 10 out of 10 in a category was like,
7:18
man, like I cannot imagine my life being any better in this particular domain.
7:22
That's a 10.
7:23
And one out of 10 is like, man,
7:24
I cannot imagine my life being any worse in this domain.
7:27
What number would you rate your like satisfaction with your life in in each
7:32
of these 10 different domains?
7:33
You sort of fill out your little wheel of life
7:34
and you get like a little sort of pi radar chart type thing
7:38
which is kind of nice.
7:38
It's kind of nice
7:39
as a visual although
7:40
if you want you can just write it down in a notes file
7:42
and you you get the numbers.
7:43
But basically what this does is
7:44
that it gives you a feel for
7:46
if you were to do almost like a CT scan of like your life.
7:50
What are the areas
7:50
that are going well
7:51
and what are the areas where you know concerted effort would help improve things.
7:55
So in my case for example let's start with health.
7:57
So physical health I would say is at a six.
7:59
Uh mental health I would say is at a nine.
8:02
Spiritual health I would say is at a seven.
8:05
Um in the work domain mission is on a nine.
8:08
Money is on a 9.5 and growth is currently on eight.
8:12
And then in relationships,
8:14
romantic relationship I relationship with my wife I would say is on a nine.
8:18
Family um we now have we now have a kid um I would say
8:21
is on eight.
8:22
And friends I would say is on six.
8:26
And then joy, how much joy do I have in my life
8:28
or how satisfied am I with the joy in my life?
8:30
I would probably say about six.
8:32
So now based on those numbers,
8:34
I have a somewhat like intuitive sense of what are the areas
8:38
that need some work.
8:39
So based on that, we've identified that physical health needs some work.
8:42
When I'm doing the rest of my journaling,
8:44
I'll I now have that that in mind that like, okay, cool.
8:46
I should probably make some decisions
8:47
that can change my life in the domain of physical health.
8:50
We've identified that on the work front, h to be honest,
8:52
on the work front, I'm pretty good.
8:53
Um, on the relationships front,
8:55
friends could do with some work
8:56
because I haven't seen friends in a
8:57
while since having a baby
8:59
and stuff like we just have been quite antisocial.
9:01
We spent a month in London which was amazing,
9:02
but now we're back in Hong Kong.
9:03
We haven't just we haven't put in the effort to organize stuff with with
9:06
friends.
9:06
So friends could do with some work.
9:08
And then the joy category for me is also only a six out of
9:10
10.
9:11
Um, and so I could do with a bit more fun in my life
9:13
basically.
9:14
And so having identified that as like the three core categories that are,
9:19
you know, helpful to helpful to look at,
9:21
I now have more of a feel for, okay,
9:22
now when I'm doing the other journaling prompts,
9:24
let me just make sure I've at least got some stuff to ideally touch
9:27
on all these.
9:28
And I've written them down in my notebook cuz by the end of this
9:30
think day,
9:31
I want to have at least one
9:33
or two action points for each of these three kind of areas of weakness,
9:37
as it were.
9:37
So if you are following along with the video,
9:39
please feel free to pause the video now
9:40
and do your own wheel of life.
9:42
These are the 10 different categories on screen
9:44
and I would love for you to just have a think about what would
9:47
your score be out of 10 for each of these categories
9:49
and then feel free to write it down somewhere.
9:50
It's generally useful to write it down.
9:52
Feel free to share in a comment
9:53
if you would like
9:54
and feel free to share already
9:55
if any action points come to mind.
9:56
And so one thing we're also doing in our think day is
9:58
that and I generally like to do this on a separate piece of paper
10:01
is that we're keeping a sort of rolling tally of our action points
10:04
because as we do these exercises we're going to come up with action points
10:07
and at the end of it we're going to look at all of our
10:08
action points and we're going to be like okay
10:09
which of these do I actually want to take forward um to take really
10:12
seriously.
10:12
Oh and by the way
10:13
if you happen to be watching this before Saturday the 20th of September 2025
10:16
I'm actually hosting a totally free online workshop uh to help you get go
10:21
through these sort of questions.
10:22
There are 100 days left in 2025
10:25
and so this is our like final workshop of the year.
10:27
We've been hosting these every 3 months for about 2 years.
10:30
We've got tens of thousands of people attend them from all around the world.
10:32
It's completely free.
10:33
There's no catch.
10:33
And it basically is like a 2-hour workshop where I will be guiding you
10:37
through a bunch of these sort of reflective journaling type prompts.
10:40
And we've had loads of testimonials
10:41
and stuff from people who have like this is the best 2 hours
10:43
that they ever spend every quarter cuz it gives you clarity on kind of
10:47
where you want to go in your life for the next 3 months.
10:48
So if you're interested in joining us, it's completely free.
10:50
There's no catch and there'll be a link in the video description for you
10:52
to check out.
10:56
Okay, so we are here in the cupping room
10:59
which is a cute little coffee shop here in West Cowoon.
11:01
Has good vibes.
11:02
So this is the single most powerful journaling prompt that I know of.
11:07
If you ask yourself this question
11:08
and sincerely engage with the answer in terms of like not just engaging intellectually
11:12
with it,
11:13
but also like how you feel like intuitively.
11:16
If you had to answer intuitively, the prompt would be as follows.
11:19
What would I do if I knew I couldn't fail?
11:22
This is a powerful, powerful prompt.
11:25
It's powerful because one of the biggest things,
11:27
possibly the single biggest thing
11:30
that holds us back from living the life
11:32
that we actually want is fear
11:35
and in particular the fear of failure.
11:38
We are wired to avoid failure at all costs.
11:42
The amygdala, the fear center of the brain,
11:44
the habenula is like all of this stuff.
11:46
There's all these there's like hundreds of thousands of years of evolution
11:50
that has trained us to avoid failure
11:53
because back in the day failure meant death.
11:56
Failure meant you weren't going to survive to reproduce
11:58
and like continue your genes
11:59
and all that crap.
12:00
And so we feel very very very fearful about making changes to our life.
12:05
It's just one of the massive biases that you see with literally everyone.
12:08
And so the point of this prompt is to cut past that and just,
12:11
you know, let's just pretend, you know,
12:12
let's just pretend that you knew you couldn't fail.
12:15
What would you actually do if you knew you couldn't fail?
12:17
Then you think about it and then you also answer intuitively.
12:20
Like intuitively, what's the first answer that comes to mind?
12:22
What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?
12:23
For me, when I think about this question,
12:25
I immediately come up with things that I would do differently in my business.
12:28
And it makes me realize
12:29
that actually there's quite a lot
12:31
as it relates to the business.
12:32
A lot of fear that's holding me back from doing the stuff
12:35
that I actually know I want to do.
12:36
And then, you know,
12:37
back when I still used to be a doctor
12:39
and people would ask me like,
12:40
why don't you just quit medicine?
12:41
Like, you seem to enjoy this business stuff more.
12:43
Ultimately, fear of failure was the thing that stopped me.
12:45
It was this fear that like, oh,
12:47
but what if I try going full-time on the business thing
12:50
and what if I fail?
12:51
What if it doesn't work?
12:53
And what I find find really helpful is Tim Ferrris has a fear setting
12:57
exercise where whenever I have identified something
13:00
that I'm doing because I'm afraid,
13:03
I just go on Google
13:04
and I type in Tim Ferris fear setting
13:07
and then I open up Tim Ferrris's blog post from May 2017,
13:10
the most valuable exercise I do every month.
13:12
and it's basically got a bunch of questions.
13:16
Also, it's a very good blog post.
13:17
I actually would recommend reading it.
13:18
Um, here we go.
13:19
Define your nightmare.
13:20
The absolute worst that could happen if you did what you're considering.
13:23
What doubts, fears, and whatifs pop up
13:25
as you consider the big changes you can
13:26
or need to make.
13:27
Envision them in painstaking detail.
13:29
Would it be the end of your life?
13:30
What would be the permanent impact, if any,
13:32
on a scale of 1 to 10?
13:34
Are these things really permanent?
13:36
How likely do you think it is that they would actually happen?
13:38
Number two, what steps could you take to repair the damage
13:40
or get things back on the upswing even
13:42
if temporarily?
13:43
Chances are it's easier than you imagine.
13:45
How could you get things back under control?
13:46
And I'll put the other questions in here
13:49
and al we'll also link to the blog post in the video description.
13:52
So if you are interested in reading the questions,
13:54
please feel free to pause the video right now.
13:55
So what the fear setting exercise does is like first you ask yourself the
13:58
question of like what would I do
13:59
if I knew I couldn't fail?
14:00
And then the follow-up question is like okay,
14:01
why am I not doing it?
14:02
And then the answer to that question is always fear.
14:04
Like I'm afraid to quit my job because I'm afraid.
14:07
I'm afraid to break up my relationship because I'm afraid.
14:10
I'm afraid to start that business because I'm afraid.
14:12
You know, I'm not starting posting on social media because I'm afraid.
14:15
I have fear around showing my face.
14:16
What if people laugh at me?
14:18
What if HR recognizes me one day like on my Instagram profile
14:21
and like h uh it's all fear.
14:25
And the thing with fear is
14:26
that fear looms really really really large in our minds
14:30
and in our hearts.
14:31
And so what the fear setting exercise does is it basically forces us to
14:35
write it down on paper.
14:36
Like let's say you do start that business.
14:39
What's the absolute worst case scenario?
14:41
Okay.
14:42
Well, the worst case scenario is I invest all my life savings into it
14:45
and I lose all my life savings.
14:46
Cool.
14:48
Would that be the end of your life?
14:49
Well, probably not, but like it would be really bad.
14:52
What would be the permanent impact
14:53
if any on a scale of 1 to 10?
14:55
Is it really permanent?
14:56
How likely do you think that it would actually happen?
14:57
How likely am I actually to invest all of my life savings into my
15:01
business?
15:02
Is it possible to start a business without requiring any invest any investments?
15:05
Well, yes, 100%.
15:06
There's loads of businesses that start without any investment.
15:08
They're called bootstrap businesses.
15:09
It's a whole category of business.
15:10
So, it's like by like taking the fear and writing it down,
15:14
you often realize that, oh, wait a minute.
15:16
Because when it's in your brain,
15:17
it's just like it's like a dark monster that's in your brain,
15:20
but when it's on paper, it becomes a problem to solve it.
15:24
Like, let's say you were designing a bridge.
15:26
Designing a bridge is a pretty complex thing.
15:28
Would you do it in your head?
15:29
No, you absolutely wouldn't do it in your head.
15:31
It would just be dumb to do it in your head.
15:32
You would write it down.
15:33
You would get out a whiteboard.
15:34
You would get out some software. get your GA on paper,
15:35
you'd write it down.
15:36
You work with a team to write down the design of the bridge before
15:39
you try to build the bridge.
15:40
And so similarly with complex issues in our life,
15:42
especially the things that we know we want to do intuitively,
15:45
but we are afraid, fear is holding us back.
15:48
This is actually a fairly complex thing.
15:49
It's not simple.
15:50
And so trying to solve
15:51
that in your head is just a recipe for staying stuck in
15:54
that pattern.
15:54
At least that's what I found
15:55
and that's what a lot of people I know in the situation have found.
15:57
So when you put it down on paper by asking yourself these kinds of
16:00
questions,
16:00
what would I do if I knew it couldn't fail?
16:02
And then, okay, well, if it's fear that's holding me back, uh,
16:05
what actually is the worst case scenario?
16:06
How might I go about it?
16:07
Like, if I had a gun to my head,
16:08
what might I do to mitigate against the worst case scenario?
16:10
You start writing the stuff down, and you realize, wait a minute, actually,
16:14
it's not too bad.
16:16
The worst case scenario usually isn't as bad as you think it is.
16:19
In your brain, you're like, I'm going to die.
16:20
And usually, you're not going to die.
16:22
In your brain, you're like, oh my god, I'm going to die forever.
16:24
And usually, it's not going to be forever.
16:25
Usually, it's not that permanent.
16:26
And in your brain, you're like, there's nothing I can do about it.
16:28
You realize that like the road to ruin is not like it's not binary.
16:33
Usually there's a series of things that you start doing that that you do.
16:36
Like yes, it would be dumb to just straight up invest all of your
16:38
business,
16:39
all of your life savings in starting your first business.
16:41
But could you invest $100 and see what happens, then another 300,
16:44
then another 500 just to see what happens
16:46
and get data along the path
16:47
and then iterate based on the data
16:48
and treat it as experiments?
16:49
Yeah, 100% you could do that.
16:51
But the brain doesn't come up with that solution.
16:52
The brain thinks, "Oh my god, we could lose everything.
16:55
We've been told starting a business is risky.
16:57
Oh my god, we're going to end up homeless
16:58
and broke and alone
16:59
and we're going to die.
17:00
And that's what the brain likes to say.
17:01
When you put it on paper, you realize that that's actually not true.
17:04
So that's why this is the key question.
17:05
What would I do if I knew I couldn't fail?
17:07
So if you'd like to follow along with the video,
17:09
please feel free to pause it right now and ask yourself,
17:11
what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail?
17:13
Yeah, I guarantee you've come up with something.
17:15
Come up with something.
17:16
It's probably something that your heart initially came up with.
17:19
You know what the thing is, but then the mind is like, "No, no,
17:22
no.
17:22
We couldn't do that because ABCD EFG."
17:23
And so feel free.
17:25
We'll put the fear setting exercise questions on screen again.
17:27
So feel free to pause the video.
17:29
And for that thing that you're afraid of doing,
17:31
feel free to ask yourself these questions.
17:34
Oh, and by the way,
17:35
in case you don't want to do this following along the video,
17:36
we will put a link to my think day guide
17:39
that has all of these prompts
17:40
and templates and like
17:42
that in like a Google doc
17:43
so that you can just like access it on your phone
17:45
if you're going if you're doing your own think day
17:47
or you can print it out
17:47
or whatever you want.
17:48
That'll be linked in the video description if you want to check it out.
17:50
Okay, so having said all that spiel,
17:51
I'm not going to do this exercise myself.
17:52
What would I do if I knew I could fail?
17:59
All right.
18:00
So, come up with my list of stuff.
18:03
A lot of it is like business things.
18:05
Like I feel like I'm on the verge of making a bunch of decisions
18:09
in the business and basically just fear that's holding me back from just like
18:12
not doing them.
18:13
But if I knew I couldn't fail,
18:14
I would just like make all the decisions in one go.
18:16
And so that is interesting.
18:19
That is interesting.
18:20
Feel free to skip to the next time stamp if you don't care.
18:22
But I'm just going to tell you about one of the one of the
18:24
key realizations I've just had is
18:26
that I I've been toying with the idea for the last like couple of
18:28
months of building this um thing lifestyle business academy where I really like the
18:34
idea of building like an online school for entrepreneurs with some offline elements
18:40
as well like in person stuff.
18:41
And I've what I've got in my head is
18:42
as like a tagline is like the world's best school for lifestyle entrepreneurs where
18:46
you know a traditional MBA teaches you how to run someone else's business like
18:49
some big corporate.
18:50
If you do like a startup accelerator it teaches you how to get like
18:53
a venture capitalist funded startup
18:55
and become a zillionaire
18:56
or whatever.
18:57
But there's not actually that many there's not that much stuff out there.
19:02
And certainly I don't know of any good online schools for people who want
19:06
to build lifestyle businesses where you know you're building a business
19:09
that does you know six figures in revenue maybe like low seven figures in
19:12
revenue like it's not
19:13
that sexy.
19:14
No one's going to write about you in a magazine.
19:15
You're never going to appear on the front cover of Time magazine
19:17
and stuff but you have a business
19:19
that gives you fun fulfillment
19:21
and freedom and you're making good money
19:24
and you have a small team.
19:25
Maybe it's just you.
19:26
Maybe it's a small team.
19:28
It would be really, really,
19:29
really cool to build like an online business school like that.
19:32
And if I knew I couldn't fail,
19:35
I would just totally go for it because that feels really exciting.
19:37
And what's holding me back from like going all in on it is sort
19:39
of this worry that like what
19:40
if it doesn't work?
19:42
What if people think I'm some sort of get-richqu scamming whatever?
19:47
Uh what if we try
19:48
and then we end up hiring like faculty
19:49
and like,
19:50
you know, the whole shebang.
19:51
And uh what if we don't get enough students to actually make money from
19:55
it?
19:55
What if it's unprofitable?
19:57
I also really want to have an in-person office um where we can like
20:01
hold workshops and stuff um for entrepreneurs
20:05
and we can get the team working in person.
20:07
The other thing you know the fear around
20:08
that is like ah
20:09
but offices are expensive especially in Hong Kong real estate is expensive what
20:12
if we don't make enough money to make it like ROI positive
20:14
and all that kind of stuff.
20:16
And so this is just my sort of specific situation with the business right
20:20
now which is basically like what
20:22
if we don't make enough money from these things
20:24
that I want to do
20:25
because these things will be expensive.
20:26
So what if we just don't make enough money for it to be profitable
20:29
but then if I think worst case scenario worst case scenario we just like
20:32
shut it down easy.
20:37
Yeah.
20:38
Um yeah in the mind it's very easy to think
20:39
that like it's a binary thing.
20:41
It's it either works or it doesn't work.
20:42
But actually there are all sorts of shades of gray in between.
20:45
What does it mean for something to work?
20:46
Well, we're getting enough students
20:48
and they're paying us enough money
20:49
and they're getting enough results.
20:50
Basically, those are the three variables.
20:52
If we know we're not getting enough students,
20:53
there's lots of stuff we could do to get more students.
20:55
If the unit economics are not profitable,
20:57
we just raise the prices so that they are profitable.
21:00
If they don't have a good enough experience, well,
21:01
we refund the people
21:03
that have a bad experience
21:03
and really work on nailing the student experience.
21:05
Like, there's all sorts of things we could do to make this really good.
21:09
But when the fear gets in the way, it's just like,
21:10
what if it doesn't work?
21:11
What if it loses money?
21:12
What if we end up broke?
21:13
And actually, if you double click on that and really write down like, okay,
21:16
what would have to happen for that to be the case?
21:19
And where are all of the points of intervention where I could I could
21:21
do something about it?
21:22
There's like a zillion different points of intervention
21:24
and a and like 100 different things
21:25
that have to happen in order for it to be broken,
21:28
unprofitable, and stuff.
21:29
And it's just very easy.
21:30
Like what I was I've realized from doing this exercise
21:32
that I was thinking in the past,
21:34
I was just sort of without really thinking too hard about it,
21:37
just allowing the general fear of like, oh,
21:38
what if it doesn't work to sort of hold me back from wanting to
21:41
do this thing that I really want to do.
21:42
So, that's good to know.
21:44
Cool.
21:45
All right, I think we're done for uh this little segment.
21:48
Let's move locations and
21:49
then we will do our next little our next little prompt.
21:54
All right, so so far we've done part one,
21:56
which was the wheel of life exercise to do a little bit of a
21:58
life audit and we wrote down our action points
22:00
that resulted from that.
22:01
Part two is that we really seriously took the question,
22:04
what would I do if I knew I wouldn't fail?
22:06
In part three, what I normally like to do is
22:08
that I just have these collections of journaling prompts
22:10
and I generally just like to scroll through them on my phone
22:13
and I decide like
22:14
which one feels like it's calling out to me
22:16
and then I'll just sort of like really think about the question
22:18
and generally try and write my answers down in a physical notebook
22:21
or like dictate my answers into voice pel
22:24
which is our like AI writing app thing.
22:26
So here are some of the journaling prompts.
22:28
What would you do if money were no object?
22:31
Was kind of interesting.
22:32
If you didn't care about making money,
22:34
how would you use your talents and skills to serve other people?
22:38
What would I like people to say at my funeral?
22:41
And to what extent am I currently living aligned with that future?
22:45
If I repeat this week's actions for the next 10 years,
22:48
where does it lead?
22:49
And is that where I want to be?
22:52
What activities in the last month have energized me?
22:55
And what activities in the last month have drained me?
22:58
How can I do more of what energizes me
23:00
and less of what has drained me?
23:02
When it comes to my work or my life,
23:04
what is the goal and what is the primary bottleneck?
23:08
This is a fun one for entrepreneurs.
23:10
Do I work for my business or does my business work for me?
23:14
If I knew I was going to die 2 years from now,
23:17
how would I spend my time?
23:19
I always like asking that one.
23:20
I I ask myself this question almost all the time.
23:22
The answer I almost always arrive on is
23:23
that I probably play more video games.
23:25
And then I have like a burst of playing video games for like a
23:27
week and then I sort of sort of get out of the habit
23:29
and then I'm like,
23:29
"Huh, you know, actually probably would play more video games."
23:32
Oh, this is another nice bottleneck one
23:33
that I got from my friend Dicky Bush.
23:35
What's the biggest bottleneck to achieving my next goal
23:38
and why aren't I working on it?
23:40
It's always always an interesting one.
23:42
How much do my current goals reflect my own desires versus someone else's?
23:48
What are some areas in
23:49
which I could invest more money to make life smoother
23:52
and easier for myself?
23:55
What could I do to make my life more meaningful?
23:58
What do I wish I could do more quickly
24:00
and what do I wish I could do more slowly?
24:03
And finally, what backpack am I carrying that no longer serves me?
24:07
This is a question from Keith Cunningham's book, The Road Less Stupid.
24:11
And by backpack, it's sort of like uh we all walk around um imagine
24:14
like walking around with like a heavy backpack on your back.
24:16
And it's sort of like we all have these things
24:18
that we're carrying around
24:20
that at one point served us like an identity
24:22
or a fear or a concern
24:24
or like a grudge
24:25
or whatever.
24:26
And by asking the question of like what backpack am I lugging around
24:29
that no longer serves me,
24:30
it's worth yeah just taking a little bit of a pause to really think
24:33
about the answer to
24:34
that question.
24:34
I always get some good insights whenever I do whenever I do it myself.
24:37
Um all of these questions are in our little think day guide.
24:40
And so what I'd recommend is you download the guide.
24:41
It's very open up on your phone next time you're doing a think day
24:44
and you just go through
24:45
and you don't have to do all of them.
24:46
It will take absolutely ages to do all of them.
24:48
Usually I just like, you know, I see how much time I've got left,
24:51
how much time I want to deote to the think day,
24:53
and then I pick like, I don't know,
24:54
three or four or five that really vibe with me.
24:55
And then I'll usually do some writing about them on the thing
24:58
or uh I'll,
24:59
you know, go on Voice Pal
25:00
and just sort of walk around
25:02
and speak out my answers to the thing.
25:04
And actually, all of these journaling prompts are also built into Voice Pal,
25:07
but you can't access them by default.
25:09
So, if you open up VoicePal
25:10
and you go on your profile settings
25:12
and then you hit offer codes,
25:14
if you enter the code think day,
25:16
then all of these journaling prompts will be added to the brainstorming frameworks part
25:20
of your app.
25:21
Um, so you can find all of those there
25:23
if you want to actually do this kind of just like voice journaling rather
25:26
than like actively sort of writing stuff out.
25:28
So then you can do
25:29
as many of these different journaling prompts
25:30
as you like.
25:31
And then we move on to the final part of think day where we
25:35
are going to weave everything together into some specific tangible action items.
25:41
Okay.
25:42
So final order of business for the day is basically to document decisions
25:45
and actions.
25:47
So my favorite way of documenting decisions is as follows.
25:50
So for each decision
25:51
that I want to make I basically write in my notebook before today I
25:54
was dot dot dot.
25:56
So I might say before today I was unsure about whether to get an
26:00
in-person office for my team
26:02
or something like that for example.
26:03
And then we say
26:04
but as of today I have decided
26:06
that dot dot dot
26:07
as of today I've decided
26:08
that I will in fact get an office for my team
26:10
or whatever your thing might be
26:12
and therefore my action items are 1 2
26:16
and or three.
26:16
And so we're documenting decisions and we are documenting action points.
26:19
So in my case with the office therefore my action items are delegate the
26:22
finding of the office to someone on the team. um look through all of
26:25
the offices that I've seen before,
26:26
blah blah blah, get some, you know,
26:27
all of that kind of stuff depending on what the thing is.
26:29
And then finally, I will review this in whatever time frame to check in
26:34
on myself.
26:34
And so this is usually when if I'm taking this seriously,
26:36
I will create a calendar event like a week from now to sort of
26:40
review action points from think day just to make sure
26:43
that I've got like a check-in point
26:45
because otherwise it's very easy to do this stuff,
26:47
document action points, and then not actually do the thing.
26:49
But if you have a documented meeting with yourself in your calendar a week
26:53
from now,
26:53
that generally gives enough time for the thing to like percolate
26:56
and for the action points to,
26:58
you know, at least make a start on them.
27:00
And then generally I'll get a feel for like, okay,
27:02
now that I've slept on this,
27:03
now that I've had a week to think about it,
27:04
do I still want to stand by the decision
27:06
and therefore continue on
27:07
that route with my particular action points?
27:09
So, if you are following along
27:10
and you've gotten to this point in the video,
27:11
I would love to see a comment down below.
27:13
What is one decision
27:14
and or action that you've maybe maybe considering taking
27:17
as a result of doing these different journaling promps
27:19
or these different like reflection exercises?
27:21
In my case, I have a handful.
27:22
Uh in terms of the business, we've got the office thing.
27:24
We've got this like lifestyle business academy thing that I want to build.
27:27
There is a one
27:28
or two hires that I want to make in the team
27:30
that I was a bit unsure about previously
27:32
that now having done this journaling
27:34
and stuff,
27:34
I've realized that I just should make those hires.
27:36
I've also decided that I'm going to experiment with going to the gym first
27:39
thing in the morning before starting work um
27:42
as a way of sort of just jacking up the physical health things.
27:45
One of the general hacks in life is
27:46
that if there's anything you want to do,
27:48
make sure it's the first thing of the day
27:49
and then it's going to get done.
27:51
Like if you're starting a side hustle or something,
27:52
it's generally a lot easier to work on it before you go to work
27:55
compared to after you go to work.
27:56
Cuz after you come home from work,
27:58
you're like dealing with low energy levels
28:00
and other things come up
28:01
and social stuff happens.
28:02
But like very rarely does social stuff happen early in the mornings.
28:06
It tends to happen more in the evenings.
28:08
Anyway, I haven't actually quite figured out what my action point is going to
28:10
be to get more joy in my life.
28:12
But to be honest,
28:13
I feel like I have enough joy in my personal life
28:15
and I will get more joy in my work life by having,
28:18
you know, more kind of inerson team vibes, which which always vibes with me.
28:22
And then finally on the social front,
28:23
because I realized that I haven't seen friends in a while,
28:25
I'm going to have a chat to my wife tonight
28:26
and we're going to sort of get a standing order social event like a
28:29
weekly brunch or a weekly dinner,
28:30
you know, that kind of thing in the calendar
28:32
because generally when action points get converted into calendar events,
28:35
that is when, at least for me and my wife,
28:37
that's when they actually happen.
28:38
And finally, if you enjoyed this video
28:40
and you haven't yet got a good system for time management in your life,
28:43
I have a video over here
28:44
that breaks down the triage method
28:46
that I learned in my time working
28:47
as a doctor that has really,
28:48
really helped with time management to help actually make these action points become a
28:51
reality.
28:52
So, thank you so much for watching.
28:53
Have a lovely day and we'll see you hopefully in the next video.
28:55
Oh.
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