

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

19 snips
Aug 2, 2020 • 1h 3min
Friendships and Relationships ft. Valentin and Cliff
In this episode we chat to Valentin Perez and Cliff Weitzman about friendships, relationships, and the our ideas of the good life.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jul 26, 2020 • 1h 17min
The Abusive Relationships of Productivity YouTubers
In this episode, we discuss one of Taimur's new fledgling theories about the nefarious parasocial relationships that exist between 'productivity' content creators and their audience. We try and figure out other areas in which this applies, and explore why Ali felt the need to unfollow the various instagram models he'd been previously enamoured with.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jul 19, 2020 • 46min
68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice - Part 3
This is the third and final part of our "68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice" series, where we go through an excellent blog post by Kevin Kelly, offering his life advice after turning 68.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

16 snips
Jul 12, 2020 • 1h 28min
How to Understand Things
In this episode, we discuss Nabeel Qureshi's recent blog post "How to Understand Things". We go through the post's main points, and talk about our own experiences of learning and understanding things, from school to university to today.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jul 5, 2020 • 1h 34min
Envy and The Elephant in the Brain
This episode is mostly a discussion of Robin Hanson's "The Elephant in the Brain", a book about the 'hidden motives in everyday lives'. We also go on a long tangent about envy, and our personal experience of it over the years.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

12 snips
Jun 28, 2020 • 59min
How To Convince Your Friend To Start A Blog
In this episode, we explore we often fail to convince our friends to start having an online presence, and what a better approach might be. Possibly applicable to general "convincing" tasks as well.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jun 22, 2020 • 1h 1min
68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice - Part 2
In this episode, we continue our exploration of Kevin Kelly’s 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jun 14, 2020 • 1h 16min
Responses to our 'racism' episode
In this episode we discuss some of the responses we received to last week's episode ("Racism, Black Lives Matter, and Figuring Stuff Out"), from hate mail to not-hate mail. Ali also unveils his life plan for the next few years, and Taimur goes on a bit of a rant about "legibility".
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jun 7, 2020 • 1h 25min
Racism, Social Justice, and Figuring Stuff Out
This week we talk about the Black Lives Matter movement, social justice, and how our towards these issues have changed over the past few years. Please interpret charitably.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

May 31, 2020 • 51min
Thinking as Children
We talk about Eric Weinstein’s recent podcast episode with his son, which sparks a discussion about how both of our thinking developed as kids and adults and why we should take kids more seriously.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.