

Not Overthinking
Ali & Taimur Abdaal
The weekly podcast about happiness, creativity, and the human condition. It's us, Ali and Taimur Abdaal, occasionally joined by guests, talking about things to help us think, do, and be better.
Things like social interaction, lifestyle design, mental models... Things that are hard to examine, but important to explore. And hopefully, things that make for a fun and interesting chat every week.
We'd love for you to join us.
Things like social interaction, lifestyle design, mental models... Things that are hard to examine, but important to explore. And hopefully, things that make for a fun and interesting chat every week.
We'd love for you to join us.
Episodes
Mentioned books

6 snips
Sep 29, 2019 • 49min
Book Discussion: "The Magic of Thinking Big"
In this episode, we try a brand new format! We go through Ali's Kindle highlights, from 4 years ago, from the book "The Magic of Thinking Big". We end up talking about mental restraints, making good conversation, setting goals, and a smattering of other topics.
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Sep 22, 2019 • 55min
Will a new iPhone make us happier?
In this episode, we try to formulate an algorithm for buying new tech. We try to figure out when it's worth upgrading our iPhones, and how to think about new purchases in terms of their contribution to our overall happiness. We come up with several new mental models for thinking about consumerism, and reference the concepts of measure, diminishing returns and hedonic adaptation.
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Sep 15, 2019 • 49min
Invisible Shackles & Life Scripts
As we grow, we're subconsciously exposed to various 'life scripts' that can have a profound effect on the way we lead our lives, without any conscious control on our own part. In this episode, we discuss some of the invisible shackles that bind us, and how to 'break free' from default modes of thinking to carve our own path through life.
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Sep 8, 2019 • 40min
What do we want from this podcast?
In this episode, we reflect on what we've been doing for the past 6 months with this podcast. We talk about why we took a break last week, whether we should have an episode every week vs every 2 weeks, and how we should judge the quality of our episodes.
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Aug 25, 2019 • 50min
What's it like to be internet-famous? Ft. Sara Dietschy
This week we're joined by a very special guest — Sara Dietschy, tech and creativity Youtuber and podcaster (links in the full show notes). In this episode, Taimur interviews Sara and Ali about being "internet famous" and how they feel about it — getting recognised in public, doing meetups, and everything else. Huge thank you to Sara for joining us this week!
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Aug 18, 2019 • 37min
Is being negative ever acceptable?
In this episode, we discuss whether negativity is ever okay. Taimur discusses why he didn't like an Ed Sheeran concert we attended, and we try and figure out whether expressing negative views about stuff / complaining about stuff is ever justified, and if so, to what extent. We invent an acronym NDA (neutral, dispassionate analysis) and Taimur comes up with Vibe Theory as a way of helping us make decisions about this stuff.
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Aug 11, 2019 • 1h 9min
Birds, Supersonic Jets, Internet Businesses and Trophy Hunting
Taimur and Ali feature as guests on the Episode Party podcast. Along with hosts Jack and Freddie, we discuss an episode of (1) The Casual Birder, (2) Indie Hackers, (3) Should This Exist, and (4) Radiolab. We share our thoughts on each of these episodes, and discuss some of the ways in which they changed our thinking.
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Aug 4, 2019 • 47min
How do we make friends?
In this episode, we discuss the various strategies we use to make friends. We start at primary school (aged 4) and examine how our tactics for making friends changed over time to the present day. We lament the difficulty of making friends and of showing vulnerability, and we realise that Taimur was always desperate to be cool while Ali was just always really weird.
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Jul 28, 2019 • 26min
Procrastination, Money-making, Rejection etc - Answering your Questions
This episode is a Life Advice Q&A that Taimur and Ali did as part of Ali's 300,000 YouTube subscriber milestone video. We answer questions about startups, procrastination, motivation, productivity, money-making, rejection, investments, imposter syndrome and hair loss.
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4 snips
Jul 21, 2019 • 40min
Startups, Coding and Making Money Online - An Interview with Taimur
In this episode, Ali interviews Taimur about his life. We discuss how he learned to code, how he made money online by selling psychic readings, and how he uses Twitter to explore fame and fortune.
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