- All right, so, I've been on YouTube
for around four years now,
and in that time I've made over 350 videos,
spent thousands and thousands of hours
doing this filming, editing thing,
and in that time I've even had
118 marriage proposals via email.
It's been really fun, and rewarding,
and meaningful journey so far,
so thank you guys for supporting the channel
and for being subscribers and stuff.
If you're not a subscriber, please hit the subscribe button.
But in this video,
I wanna share nine life lessons that I've learned
over the past four years of being a YouTuber.
And these aren't lessons that are specific
to if you want to be a YouTuber,
although I think you should,
these are just generally some good,
like personal developmentally life advicey things
that I've taken from the journey so far,
so let's get into it.
All right, lesson number 1,
is that haters are surprisingly uncommon.
When most people think about the idea
of starting a YouTube channel,
they think, oh my God, what about all the hate comments?
And the thing that I realized pretty quickly
is that there are very, very few hate comments overall.
In general, most people are nice,
most people are friendly,
most people have good intentions most of the time.
And yes, occasionally you'll get the odd hate comment
and it's kind of funny when you do,
but for the most part 99.99% of comments
are like really, really nice.
And I think this is actually a good way
to live life generally.
A lot of us have this thing whereby
we see other humans with a little bit of suspicion
and we think that,
oh this person doesn't get me.
That person is bad.
This person is mean.
But actually, if we really think about it,
most people have good intentions, most of the time,
most people are nice.
It's all good.
The world is a happy and nice place
and yes, some bad things happen.
You shouldn't let that from stopping you
from trusting people generally, and sort of being open
and vulnerable and all that kind of stuff.
And certainly for me, if I hadn't made a YouTube channel
because I was worried about the hate comments
my life would be looking very differently right now.
And this is the same for every single other
YouTuber friend that I have.
We're all worried about hate comments initially
and we realized this is actually not a huge deal.
General life advice across the board.
Second piece of important life advice that I've learned
from being on YouTube is for the most part
no one actually cares.
Before starting YouTube I was really worried,
like, what are my friends and family
and stuff going to think?
And very quickly as I started making YouTube videos
I realized no one actually cares.
Like all these people who I thought
were going to criticize me for having a YouTube channel
and for having the audacity to put myself
out there in public, none of these people cared.
They're all worried about their own lives.
They're all doing their own thing.
And so I spent so much time thinking,
oh, what are these people going to think?
And I realized that they're just not thinking
about me at all.
Everyone's worried about their own life.
Everyone is worried about their own stuff.
And again, to abstract this away from YouTube
into general life, so life advice,
there are so many domains in life in which you and I,
we stop ourselves from doing something
because we're worried about what people will think.
But if we just did the thing
we'd realized that for the most part, no one actually cares.
You're probably not going around judging people around you.
And if you are, you need to stop it.
But for the most part, no one cares.
It's all good.
You can take risks, you can do things.
'Cause you're the only one that really cares about yourself.
Life lesson number 3 from being a YouTuber
is that when you give people value for free
then really good things will happen.
And this is sort of what the whole model of YouTube
is based around.
It's based around people sitting down
in front of the cameras and making videos,
sometimes for years on end without getting any money
or anything like that.
These days you have to hit a thousand subscribers,
4,000 hours of watch time.
That's quite hard.
It takes ages to get to 1,000 subscribers.
It took me six months and 52 videos
to get to 1,000 subscribers.
Before that point every single thing I was doing
was providing value for free to people on the internet.
And if you're struggling to put yourself out there,
if you're struggling to make your business succeed,
if you're struggling to, you know, to be an entrepreneur,
you're probably thinking about it as like, you know
you have to be paid for the value that you provide
and yes, you probably should.
And in a dream world, all of us would be paid
for the value that we provide.
But to be honest, the people who are desperate to make money
from providing value are probably also the people
who are thinking, I would never pay for an iPhone app.
Why would I do that?
Everything on the internet should be free.
And so the life lesson here is that when you give value
to people for free really, really good things happen
and that's the entire model of YouTube and Twitter
and Instagram, you've got to give value for free.
And afterwards you can worry
about the monetization side of things.
Life lesson number 4, from being a YouTuber
is that what is obvious to you can be amazing to others.
And I first learned this from my now friend
Derek Sivers who wrote this amazing book, Hell Yeah Or No,
what's worth doing.
And the main insight here is that like, you know,
often when I make YouTube videos
I feel like the stuff that I'm talking
about is just really, really obvious.
And this is just a, you know, it's the curse of knowledge
as CS Lewis calls it,
the stuff that we take for granted, the stuff that we know,
we kind of don't realize that there are some people
out there who don't know the thing.
And so often what holds people back
in starting a YouTube channel
or a blog, a website, Twitter, Instagram, put business
putting yourself out there in any capacity,
often what holds people back is this idea
that my thing is not valuable enough
because it's really obvious other people already know this
but you don't realize that actually
most people don't know the thing that you know.
And so if you find a way to teach it to them
or to provide them value, preferably for free,
then people will latch onto that
because it's a new and novel and interesting thing.
So overall what's obvious to you
can be absolutely amazing to others.
Life lesson number 5, from being a YouTuber,
is that everything, absolutely everything,
is figure-out-able.
When I started on YouTube four years ago
I had no idea what a camera was.
I didn't know what shutter speed or ISO or aperture meant.
I did not know how to edit videos.
I did not know anything about sound design
about microphones, about background music.
I just learned all of that stuff
by following free YouTube tutorials
and just sort of figuring it out
based on Google and YouTube and other YouTubers
and classes on Skillshare and that kind of thing.
And again, there are so many people I know
who stop themselves from starting a YouTube channel
or a website or a business because they're thinking,
oh, I don't know how to do this thing,
but it's like, it's not I don't know how to do this thing.
It's I don't know how to do this thing yet
but I can figure it out
because I can go on the internet and just learn the thing.
'Cause you can learn absolutely anything on the internet.
And this is something that really being a YouTuber
over the last four years has helped me realize
and fully, fully internalize.
Like I cannot imagine ever being in a situation
now where I feel, oh my God,
I don't know how to do this thing.
Therefore, I won't do it.
I'm always going to think to myself,
I don't know how to do this thing yet.
I will figure it out.
And if I'm good enough having figured it out,
then I will do the thing.
So that's another life lesson for you.
Life lesson number 6, is that you don't need
to be an expert.
Often, again, we hold ourselves back
by thinking we have to be experts, we have to be qualified.
We have to be a guru in the thing that we're talking
about in order for other people to listen to us.
But what I've learned from being on YouTube
for the last four years
and actually being a medical educator as well
and teaching medical students and stuff,
is that often the people who are the best at teaching us
are the people who are just one step ahead of us
in the journey.
Like if I'm having a medical tutorial from someone
I actually learn much better,
if they're just one year ahead of me
because they will really appreciate my beginner position.
They'll really appreciate where I'm coming from.
Whereas if I have a lecture from a professor
who's been doing it for 50 years,
chances are they're a little bit out of touch.
They don't really know what's going through my head
what my struggles are.
And so I will learn from someone who is a guide
rather than a guru.
And so whatever you're trying to do,
don't feel like you need to achieve
a qualification to do it.
Obviously, you know, don't be a brain surgeon
unless you've got the qualification and the training,
but for the most part, for things that aren't life and death
you can figure it out.
Everything is figure-out-able
and you don't need to be an expert to teach
or to talk about the thing that you want to talk about.
All right, life advicey tip number 7,
from being a YouTuber.
For this one, I'm actually going to cut to an excerpt
of my very first vlog on this channel.
They say that when, whenever you were starting on YouTube
your first 50 videos are going to be terrible.
So I'm kind of hoping that over the next year
I'll make my 50 terrible videos,
and then when we hit August 1st, 2018,
when life as a junior doctor starts,
and then I'd be able to kind of hit the ground running
and then be able to actually film decent vlogs.
So, that was me from 2017 saying
that my first 50 videos were going to be terrible.
And I think, again, this doesn't just apply to YouTube.
This applies to basically everything
that we're ever going to do, where, you know,
there is that very sort of painful process at the start
where we're on the steep bit of the learning curve,
where the thing that we're doing
is not going to be very good.
I've started to try and learn art recently
and become a concept artist.
And my artwork is absolutely terrible.
It's really, really, really bad.
And I know that my first 50, 100, 500, 1000 things
are going to be terrible
but I know that the process of doing them
and producing this quantity is ultimately
going to make me improve
and ultimately going to lead to quality.
Life lesson number 8, from being a YouTuber,
is the power of bringing others along with you
for the journey.
The power of asking for help.
Now, you know, at the moment I've got a team
of eight people who help run this YouTube business
and the channel and the courses and everything else.
And that's like one level of working with other people
but actually a lot sooner than you can hire people
you can actually ask your friends for help.
So especially with my videos early on
often I asked my friends who were around me at university
to be my camera man or camera women,
or to, you know, give me some ideas for content
or for titles or for thumbnails.
And these guys and girls were very happy to get involved.
And there was, it was kind of cool that,
oh, Ali's making YouTube videos,
it's probably going to fail.
Oh, isn't it kind of cute that he's like, you know,
screwing his medical exams while making YouTube videos.
But they were still keen to help
with the idea generation and things.
And I think again, generally, outside of YouTube,
and for life overall, if we can ask the people
around us for help, for doing a thing,
then often they're just very happy to oblige.
We don't need to try and do everything ourselves.
And life lesson number 9, that I've learned
from being a YouTuber, is to really remember to have fun
and to enjoy the journey.
If there's one thing I've learned about productivity
and like success and stuff,
generally over the last five years it's that productivity
and success isn't really about doing more things.
It's about doing more of what matters to us
and choosing or rather learning to have fun along the way.
As Miley Cyrus says, ain't about how fast I get there,
ain't about what's waiting on the other side,
it's the climb.
Brandon Sanderson says, journey before destination.
And I think that really embodies everything
that I've learned from YouTube over the last four years.
It really is a journey before destination.
Again, taking this outside the realm of YouTube
or whatever you're focusing on, whatever you're working on,
if you're fixated on the destination
you're actually probably unlikely to get there
because really it's the journey where the progress happens.
And if you're not enjoying the journey, then A,
either A, you won't actually do it
because it's not enjoyable or B, you'll hate the journey.
You'll get to the destination,
and you'll realize that that destination
was not actually the thing that you were seeking
and really it's all about the journey overall.
So it sounds a bit hippy overall, but really
remember to have fun with whatever it is you're doing.
Remember to have fun and remember to enjoy the journey.
Now, this video was actually meant to be 14 life
lessons rather than 9
because I've got plenty more to talk about.
But I realized this video is getting a little bit too long
and that's not very good for the YouTube algorithm.
And so instead the other five life lessons you can find
in the extended version of this video
which is available over at Nebula.
If you haven't heard,
Nebula is an independent streaming platform,
that's built by me and a bunch of other creators
that you might be familiar with, Thomas Frank and Tom Scott,
and Wendover Productions and Legal Eagle and Lindsay Ellis.
And the idea behind Nebula
is that it gives us a place to put material
that wouldn't necessarily work on YouTube.
For example, half an hour long video
about 14 life lessons from being here on YouTube
over the last four years.
On Nebula, you'll also get early access
to all of my videos completely ad free.
And so this ad gets taken out of this video
and replaced with the other five life lessons.
And you'll also find a bunch of Nebula exclusives,
like my workflow series,
where I take you through my workflow
for using productivity apps like Notion and Roam.
The best way to get access to Nebula is to sign up
to Curiosity Stream who are very kindly
sponsoring this video.
Now, Curiosity Stream is the world's leading
documentary streaming subscription platform.
They've got thousands of really high budget,
high quality documentaries that you can choose from.
And there's one series in particular that I really enjoyed
which is all about human performance
and how we can maximize our kind of potential
by doing interesting things with our brain.
But the really cool thing about Curiosity Stream
is that they support independent creators.
And so they've got a bundle deal with Nebula,
which means that if you sign up for Curiosity Stream,
which is like less than $15 for the whole year,
you get free access to Nebula bundled with that.
So for less than $15 a year
you get thousands of high quality,
high budget, documentaries on Curiosity Stream,
and also a ton of really good exclusive stuff,
along with the extended edition of this video
over at Nebula.
If that sounds good and you want to check it out,
then head over to curiositystream.com/ali
and sign up for your account
and then you'll get your Nebula details emailed to you.
So thank you, Curiosity Stream for sponsoring this video
and thank you for watching.
If you'd like to check out more life lessons from me
then click the video over here.
This is my top 10 tips for aspiring YouTubers,
that lots of people have found helpful.
Thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you in the next video.
Goodbye.