6 Years of Sunday Snippets

This whole idea of treating things as an experiment is something that’s helped me get over a lot of the fear of starting new things. It’s a big part of why the 54 actionable tips that I give in my book, Feel-Good Productivity, are framed as “experiments”. When something’s an experiment, whether it’s starting that business, writing that email, trying that hobby, or anything else, it massively reduces the pressure we put on ourselves, and reduces how “seriously” we take the whole thing. This, of course, makes it much easier to start.

And to kick things off, this is the Instagram story I put out to try and get my first few subscribers.

At the time, I think I had a few thousand followers on Instagram, and a few hundred decided to hit subscribe and join this weekly newsletter – if you were one of them and still reading 6 years later, thank you! But that’s what kicked off this whole email newsletter journey, which has now morphed into a “business asset” with several hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and where a single email makes more money from sponsors than I was earning in a whole month working 48 hours a week as a junior doctor. Absolutely nuts.

Now that I’ve been doing this online business creator type thing for 7 years, it’s nice to look back at the memories captured in screenshots, photos and journal entries. The “On This Day” feature of Day One is awesome, and sometimes I do just type in today’s date into Apple Photos as well, just to see what I was doing on this day in the past 10+ years.

I also find it quite reassuring and a little funny that despite having written this email (almost) every Sunday for 6 years straight, it’s still a mad scramble on a Sunday night to write it and get it out. As I write this, it’s 10:25pm and I’m on a team retreat in Turkey. I’ve had all week to write this, knowing it was coming, but as usual, I’ve left it right until the last minute. The rest of the team is chilling in the living room while I’m sitting outside, on my laptop, typing this stuff out.

It’s also weirdly nice to know that fundamentally, what I do hasn’t really changed over the years.

6 years ago (2018), I was in my dorm room at Cambridge writing this email on a Sunday night. 5 years ago (2019), I was in my apartment, writing this email on a Sunday night, scrambling to get it out so I could get a decent night’s sleep before work the following day. 4 years ago (2020), same thing, although we were in Covid times so things in the hospital were a lot stranger than usual. 3 years ago (2021), I was writing this email on a Sunday night – I’d taken a break from full-time Medicine and even though being an online entrepreneur was my main gig, I was still scrambling to write this email every Sunday evening. 2 years ago (2022), I’d moved to London, I had my own team and a proper office in London, and I was still scrambling to write this email on a Sunday night. Last year (2023), we’d downsized the team, gotten rid of the office in London, and I was still scrambling to write this email on a Sunday night. And today, I’ve got a bigger team again, still no office, been travelling around the world as a digital nomad, released my book, hung out with my awesome team in a retreat in Turkey… and yet I’m still scrambling to write this email at 10:30pm on a Sunday night.

At all the different levels of success, fame, money etc I’ve had, the “work” has fundamentally stayed the same – typing stuff on my laptop, and talking to a camera. That’s about it. It’s been the same thing, the same infinite game, for 7 years now. Sure, the fanciness of my computer monitor has changed. I’ve hopefully gained some more muscle (and regrown some of my hair). And I’ve now got a wonderful team who help me out with stuff. But fundamentally, I still spend most of my working hours typing stuff on a laptop, or talking to a camera.

I guess I take that as a lesson to find work that I love, which I’m incredibly grateful to say that I have, and to focus on enjoying the journey.

Have a great week!

Ali xx

🧠 Brilliant – Daily learning. Lifelong impact.

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🎬 My New Videos

⏳ Stop Wasting Time – 11 Tools to Double Your Focus – How to improve focus is one of the questions I get asked most. Whether you’re a student, creator, professional or entrepreneur, being able to focus easily is extremely helpful.

✍️ Change Your Life by Journalling – 10 Powerful Questions – Journalling has had a greater impact on my life than almost any other habit I have. But having the right prompt or question makes a big difference, so in this video, I’m sharing 10 of my favourite.

🧘 5 Actionable Ways to Become More Self-Disciplined – In this video I’m sharing 5 of my favourite ways to become more disciplined, inspired by my recent conversation with Stoicism expert Ryan Holiday.

✍️ Quote of the Week

From Designing Your Life – Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Resurfaced using Readwise.