I'm starting a podcast!

Ali Abdaal -

Hey friends,

No motivational life advice from me this week I'm afraid (although I've included 2 Kindle Highlights below to make up for it).

Instead, I want to tell you about a podcast that my brother and I have just launched. It's called Not Overthinking, and it'll be a weekly discussion with us ± additional guests about happiness, creativity and the human condition (hopefully that sounds vague and pretentious enough).

The first episode is up now if you'd like to have a listen (Spotify link, hopefully on iTunes etc soon). We talk a little about why we're starting the podcast and the rationale behind the name, and spend the rest of the episode chatting about why we (as in, people in general) enjoy being 'correct' about things.

Honestly, we've got no idea how this is going to go. We're just committing to sitting down once a week to record an episode to talk about whatever comes to mind. The two of us overthink a lot of stuff about everyday life, and we've got plenty of friends who are a similar brand of nerd/geek to get involved.

If you've got any suggestions for topics, or questions that we could tackle, we'd love to hear from you - pretty much anything goes so just hit the <reply> button and let me know :)

Thanks, and have a great week!

Ali

PS: Some of you might remember Intercourse, the (controversially-named) 'podcast' that I talked about a few months ago. Not Overthinking sort-of replaces that, except this time we're taking it seriously and committing to actually putting out content each week. Exciting times ahead.

Stuff I enjoyed this week

1 - Fiction - Yesterday, I read Ocean's Light, the 17th(!) book in the Psy-Changeling series by Nalini Singh. I was in Paris on a family holiday and had gotten bored of art galleries by the end of the week so this was a welcome distraction. The series is my favourite in the Paranormal Romance genre (yep, that's a thing). I first talked about it in my March 2018 Monthly Favourites video so if you think you might be into that genre of fiction, feel free to take a trip down memory lane to watch me wax lyrical about it.

2 - Article - To procrastinate from writing this email, I re-watched my March 2018 favourites video and rediscovered this gem of an article by Eric Barker: How to easily make your relationships awesome. The whole blog is generally great, but this post in particular struck a chord with me this time last year, and I'm glad I  revisited it.

Kindle Highlights of the Week

Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.

From Atomic Habits by James Clear.

YOUTH: Then how do I choose again? You’re telling me, ‘You chose that lifestyle yourself, so go ahead and select a new one instantly,’ but there’s no way I can just change on the spot!
PHILOSOPHER: Yes, you can. People can change at any time, regardless of the environments they are in. You are only unable to change because you are making the decision not to.

From The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.