Ali Abdaal

Ali's top picks

What Ali uses or recommends most, ranked by how often and how strongly. Paid ads are left out.

What Ali warns against

Things Ali says to avoid or be careful with. Other experts don't always agree.

ChatGPT

"The temptation is there to just put stuff into ChatGPT and get ChatGPT to generate your content. You haven't yet developed the skill of actually doing the content or the taste for what makes good content."

How I'd Create Content in 2026 (If I Had To Start Over) ▶ Watch at 10:11

John Coogan, Riley Brown and 153 others recommend it

DaVinci Resolve

"So at this point, I would rate HyperFrames as being like probably a 7 out of 10. DaVinci Resolve, I would rate it being probably a 3 out of 10."

I Tried Learning AI Video Editing in One Day ▶ Watch at 22:33

L

Luigi Vendittelli recommends it

Ultimate Brain

"I bought that and I gave up in not even a week, like three days, I gave up. I'm like, there's no way I need 60 properties for a task. that that doesn't make any sense."

If You Want to Make Money From YouTube, Do This (Case Study) ▶ Watch at 1:14:32

All 78 of Ali's picks

• Claude Uses and recommends it 8 episodes "I asked Claude to teach me the skill. I watched like two YouTube videos about it. I got up to speed and then I started tinkering around with Meta Ads Manager and we managed to run some Instagram ads profitably." +245 others
• ChatGPT Uses and recommends it 5 episodes "All right, ChatGPT, I want you to help me out, mate. Basically, I want to create some sort of home security system... So, super basic prompt. I haven't used any prompt engineering. I'm literally just speaking to it as if it's a tutor or a friend who's like insanely intelligent." +155 others
• Claude Code Uses and recommends it 3 episodes "Wow, we're about half an hour in. So far, we've managed to buy and download DaVinci Resolve Studio and Claude Code is cooking away on trying to do the HyperFrames method." +107 others
• The Splurge Uses and recommends it 2 episodes "There is a technique that I came across from a writing coach which is called the splurge. You basically set a timer for 10 minutes. Pretty much with eyes closed and not being allowed to press the backspace or the delete button, you just like word vomit anything that comes to mind. The idea is that you do this for a whole 10 minutes with your eyes closed. This is a good way of silencing the inner critic and finding out where you want to go and what you want to say about a particular thing." Only Ali
• Kindle Uses and recommends it 3 episodes "I personally like having a Kindle on my bedside table because then if I'm struggling to go to sleep, I can just read like a spirituality book or something on Kindle." +10 others
• Loom Uses and recommends it 2 episodes "Then we've done some courses where I'm just on my standing desk with this microphone recording literally Loom videos, not even using the fancy camera that I've got right there and just speaking to a webcam on a Loom instead of going through slides or like doing elaborate things, just like drawing stuff out on a Figma file and sort of constructing it. And the feedback we get on those is like worlds apart from like the super polish, super production value masterclass level." +12 others
• HyperFrames Uses and recommends it "Nice. That is really good. Its background music is a little bit egregious. A few of the sound effects are a little bit like... there's a couple of flash frames where I got things a little bit wrong, but like holy moly, this is like 97% there. Okay, now this was HyperFrames." +3 others
• Apple Notes Uses it 2 episodes "I like to do it on an airplane because I don't get the Wi-Fi. I just open up a blank Apple Notes document and I'll just write out the different life areas and write out what do I want and what do I not want." +10 others
• Odyssey Plan Recommends it 2 episodes "One of my favorite exercises for this is called the Odyssey Plan. My wife literally did it like two days ago when she was grappling with this question of figuring out what to do with her life and it's insanely helpful. I've been recommending it on the internet for years." Only Ali
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Recommends it 2 episodes "Immediately I was hooked and I was just so totally — man, words cannot describe just how much this book completely gripped me all the way through. I would totally recommend Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It really spans all age groups." Only Ali
• The Debt of Time Recommends it 2 episodes "I literally cried when it ended. It was like the same tears I shed at the end of the Deathly Hallows. I had those tears at the end of the Debt of Time. Man, I wish it was 1.5 million words. I could not get enough of this book." Only Ali
• Figma Uses it 2 episodes "If it's on a Zoom call, we get out a Figma board and put Post-it notes on the thing and we just do this as a messy, divergent, creative process." +30 others
• AirPods Uses it 2 episodes "So, I now go for a run, I put my AirPods in, and I listen to amazing books on Audible." +2 others
• Audible Uses it 2 episodes "the book that I'm currently listening to on Audible, in this case, Dark Age by Pierce Brown." +5 others
• Whoop Uses it 2 episodes "I wear a Whoop. I've got like a I've been using this for the last like 380 days or something. I've got a 380-day streak on it and so this gives me a sleep score." +12 others
• N8N Uses it 2 episodes "I've used Zapier. I've used Make. I've used n8n before. I kind of get the theory around how to automate stuff." +4 others
• Money-back guarantee Uses and recommends it "Yeah, I'm really bullish on the full and complete refund method. We even framed it on our sales pages and stuff as the help Ali sleep at night money-back guarantee... especially when we're launching new products, just drastically increases my own confidence that I'm not, in fact, scamming anyone." Only Ali
• Remotion Uses and recommends it "Your campaigns run end to end. That is remarkably good. Well done, Remotion. That's solid. Look at that. Wow. Okay. I mean, we can definitely make a nicer graph, but this is really solid. Okay, I now like Remotion again." +4 others
• Frigate Uses and recommends it "I was able to ultimately install Linux on this little box... Install Ubuntu server and then this thing called Docker and then this thing called Frigate and then connect the cameras to it to create this home security system. And now this is super cool. Like we have the system that works." Only Ali
• The World: A Brief Introduction Uses and recommends it "I'm currently reading a book called The World: A Brief Introduction by a chap called Richard Haass... I said all this to AI and it basically recommended me this one book... there was a moment that really stuck out to me which involves NATO." Only Ali
• Indistractible Recommends it 2 episodes "Near has previously written the wonderful book called Indistractable, which I personally found super helpful in overcoming my own tendencies to procrastinate." Only Ali
• The Work Uses and recommends it "I really like this turnaround method. I came across this when I read Byron Katie's The Work a few years ago and have experimented with it on and off throughout my own life and I do find it genuinely very helpful." Only Ali
• Vision Board Uses and recommends it "This is where it can be helpful to create a kind of vision board. I have a vision board that I have as my desktop wallpaper. These sorts of images when I see them on my vision board give me much more clarity around what I want to do with my life." Only Ali
• Geeky Medics Uses and recommends it "There's a YouTube channel called Geeky Medics where some guy has put together these videos where you can just watch it repeatedly and they can download a PDF with like mark scheme. It was those that we printed out, me and all my friends at Cambridge, to learn the skill, and it was those videos that we had on the background." Only Ali
• Nomad Capitalist Uses and recommends it "I came across this guy called Andrew Henderson who makes videos on a YouTube channel called Nomad Capitalist. His videos are good — they tell you all about high net worth tax strategies and like that. And we paid $25,000 to work with his team. That is an online personal brand." Only Ali
• The Simple Path to Wealth Uses and recommends it "This is a wonderful book by a chap called JL Collins. This was like how I got started with investing like 10 plus years ago." +1 other
• Breath Uses and recommends it "and also breath by James Neestor which is all about kind of the power of like nasal breathing rather than mouth breathing which also helps when I'm on my runs." Only Ali
• Dark Age Uses and recommends it "Right now, I'm listening to Dark Age by Pierce Brown, which is book five in the Red Rising series, which is absolutely sick." Only Ali
• The Psychology of Money Uses and recommends it "I recently also relisted to The Psychology of Money by Morgan Hel, which is fantastic." +5 others
• Backwards with Purpose Uses and recommends it "The one I'm reading right now is called Backwards with Purpose. Really, really good. I'm like 80% of the way through it. It's absolutely sick." Only Ali
• Stock market index funds Recommends it 2 episodes "At that point, you can plow that money into things like stock market index funds." Only Ali
• Montessori Uses it "We're now looking into like play groups and schools and I went to the Montessori school open days at a couple of different schools and those seemed great." +1 other
• Epidemic Sound Uses it "Conveniently, Epidemic Sound has a bunch of that stuff in it. They've got swooshes, ambience, water, vehicles, whoosh. Can I just give the AI access to Epidemic Sound?" +1 other
• Storyboard / contact sheet before rendering Recommends it "Learning number three, get the AI to show you the plan before it builds anything. If you have a storyboard or a contact sheet, that takes seconds to go through and fix stuff. But if you get it to one-shot the render all the way at the end, then like you have to spend a lot more time fixing stuff." Only Ali
• Seasonal Priorities Recommends it "This is where the idea of seasonal priorities comes in... we bring things down to what I recommend is about a 90-day chunk that we will call a season... you pick a tiny number of goals that you explicitly want to move forward over the next 90 days." Only Ali
• Active Recall Recommends it "The single best way to learn anything is a technique that I've been talking about for years called active recall. All of the studies that have ever been done on how to learn stuff put this right at the top. What this basically means is you test yourself... And the great thing about AI is that you can ask AI to help facilitate these for you." +1 other
• Grok Uses it "Sometimes I'll just ask Grok, and Grok is famously a little bit more unhinged. And so if I really care about like what is Twitter saying about the thing, cuz Twitter has strong opinions on both sides of the political divide, I'll just ask Grok." +35 others
• Spaced Repetition Recommends it "Active recall is often combined with something called spaced repetition, which sort of counteracts the forgetting curve... you test yourself on the day and then a day later and then a week later and then a month later... these two techniques, active recall and spaced repetition, are just by far the best ways to learn anything fast." Only Ali
• DJI Uses it "Time for a little trip to the DJI store and then team lunch. We have done a nice haul of equipment from the DJI store which we are now putting on charge — a four-way microphone setup with a single transmitter which means we can do four-way podcasts, four-way roundtables, we can capture conversations that are happening over lunch." +2 others
• Magic Question technique Recommends it "This in our Lifestyle Business Academy is what we call the magic question: 'Do you know anyone who happens to need X? I'm offering a free audit, a free consultation, a free coaching session' — like whatever in return. That tends to be how you get your very first client. For your first client and probably your first $10,000 in revenue, you actually do not need to try and reach out to strangers." Only Ali
• Kickstarter method Recommends it "For mission number two, we are applying the Kickstarter method and we are selling a product for $9. Crucially, we are not yet building the product. We are just trying to get one person to pay us $9 as a pre-order for a product that we have not yet created. Once we get the money, at that point we'll spend a week or however long it takes creating the product and we send it to them." +1 other
• One-on-one coaching Recommends it "The way that we encouraged people to make this $1,000 was basically to do one-on-one coaching where you basically sell your time on a Zoom call and you become a sort of mini online coach for anything that you are an expert in or that you think you're good at. You don't need to be an expert in the thing. You just need to be a couple of steps ahead of where they are." Only Ali
• Date with Destiny Uses it "I first did this exercise when I was at a Tony Robbins 5-day seminar thing, which was literally six days, called Date with Destiny, and it was literally all about how to figure out what to do with your life. And this was one of the most powerful exercises for me." +1 other
• JustGuitar Uses it "I learned the guitar by watching some YouTube tutorials and then signing up to an online course from JustGuitar.com back in like 2013. And that was how I learned the guitar." Only Ali
• Meta Ads Manager Uses it "You try it out. You're like, 'Oh, actually Facebook makes it really easy. There's this thing called Meta Ads Manager. You just go on it. You upload creative.' I started tinkering around with Meta Ads Manager and we managed to run some Instagram ads profitably." Only Ali
• The Riel Black Chronicles Recommends it "I cried when this one was over. I regret how fast I read it because I was like, I should have savored this for like twice as long as I did. I would say this is actually, of the five that I'm recommending, probably my favorite one." Only Ali
• Personal Branding Recommends it "Personal branding. It's all well and good being someone who is really good at AI and who generates revenue. But you also want to be known for being the person who's really good at AI and really good at generating revenue. For someone with a personal brand, someone who is known for being competent in a particular area, it is a lot easier to thrive in a post AI world." +1 other
• MacBook Uses it "This is now a voice memo I'm recording on my MacBook with this microphone plugged in." +4 others
• Mantis Pod Uses it "This here is the Mantis Pod. I quite like it. I've had it for a few years. The Mantis Pod also has this sort of like iPhone tripod attachment." Only Ali
• Peak Design Uses it "There is one tripod that I always have attached to my phone at all times. It is this Peak Design phone tripod type situation." Only Ali
• Vanguard Uses it "Vanguard is one of the big global ones that's available in lots of different countries. They're also available in the UK. So I have a lot of my holdings in Vanguard." +6 others
• Dell UltraSharp U5226KW Uses it "I literally just bought a 52 inch Dell UltraSharp monitor for the sake of being able to have multiple terminal windows open" +1 other
• Amazon Uses it "I will immediately open up my phone, go to amazon.co.uk and just buy it on Kindle" +11 others
• Day One Uses it "I've got Day One, which is a journaling app." Only Ali
• Goodreads Uses it "I have an account on Goodreads. It synchronizes with my Amazon Kindle account." Only Ali
• Voice Pal Uses it "I've got Voice Pal, which is like a ghostwriter type app." Only Ali
• Waking Up Uses it "I've got the Waking Up app, which is a meditation app." +3 others
• Wheel of Time Uses it "I realized this when I was listening to the Wheel of Time series on Audible." Only Ali
• Brandon Sanderson books Uses it "I'd be listening to audio books, usually at double speed, often fantasy fiction audio books by Brandon Sanderson" Only Ali
• World of Warcraft Uses it "I used to be addicted to a video game called World of Warcraft, which I've been playing on and off for the last like 15 years." +3 others
• Make.com Uses it "I've used Zapier. I've used Make. I've used n8n before. I kind of get the theory around how to automate stuff." +2 others
• Fire Cut Uses it "We use a plug-in called Fire Cut, which is an AI plugin to speed up editing" Only Ali
• Grain Uses it "The one we've been using for the last 5 years is called Grain" Only Ali
• 2-Minute Rule Recommends it "This is where I find the 2-minute rule to be insanely helpful, which is where you set the timer for 2 minutes and you just make a start on the thing for just 2 minutes. And then, usually, once you've gotten started, it's a lot easier to keep going." Only Ali
• Begin Again Recommends it "There's this idea in the world of meditation that they call begin again. That whatever happened in the past, you can always simply choose to begin again. Sure, you've not maintained your productivity system... Who cares? Start again from today." Only Ali
• How to 10X Your Business Without Working 10 Times Harder Recommends it "If you're an entrepreneur watching this video and you would like to apply these principles to your own business, Eric has very kindly created a completely free resource for us called How to 10X Your Business Without Working 10 Times Harder. That will be linked down in the video description if you want to grab it." Only Ali
• Beyond Belief Recommends it "A few months ago, I read his latest book, Beyond Belief, and I really enjoyed it." +1 other
• Stan Store Recommends it "Stan Store is generally the one that I recommend for complete beginners getting started with making money online. We have like an affiliate deal, free trial type 30-day thing with them. It's sort of like Shopify, but for selling online products primarily." +1 other
• Stripe Recommends it "You will either need a Stripe account or a PayPal account. Stripe is accepted in a bunch of different countries. That would be my recommendation." +12 others
• Manacled Recommends it "Really, really, really good and really hard to put down. It's been turned into this phenomenally bestselling book that people seem to love. Super, super dark. All sorts of trigger warnings as you can imagine with this sort of premise." Only Ali
• The Comfort Crisis Recommends it "This is a book I'm currently reading and very much enjoying. It is called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. So, you should totally check it out if you like." +1 other
• S&P 500 Recommends it "People like Warren Buffett recommend in terms of how to get started with investing. I think it's the same thing that makes most sense practically all of the time and that is to consistently buy an S&P 500 low-cost index fund." +14 others
• Vanguard FTSE All-World Index Fund Recommends it "There's the Vanguard FTSE All-World Index Fund, which is sort of like the S&P 500 in that it is an index fund, but instead of investing in just the top 500 companies in the US. Instead, this fund splits your money across the top 3,700 companies across 49 different countries." Only Ali
• The Four Fs Framework Recommends it "If you're struggling to figure out what to do with your career, this is a framework that really helped me. It's based on the four Fs, which is broadly what people look for when it comes to a career." Only Ali
• SMART Goals framework Recommends it "This is where something like the SMART goals framework is actually quite helpful. You know, it's got its issues, but like you know set a goal that's specific, measurable, attainable or achievable, relevant, and timebound." Only Ali
• Fathom Recommends it "if you want something free, then Fathom is usually one that I recommend" +3 others
• 5-minute rule Recommends it "If you are struggling with staying focused on anything at all, just tell yourself you're going to do it for 5 minutes." Only Ali
• The Anxious Generation Recommends it "This is something I learned from Jonathan Haidt's amazing book The Anxious Generation." +1 other
• ChatGPT Warns against "The temptation is there to just put stuff into ChatGPT and get ChatGPT to generate your content. You haven't yet developed the skill of actually doing the content or the taste for what makes good content." 155 recommend it
• DaVinci Resolve Warns against "So at this point, I would rate HyperFrames as being like probably a 7 out of 10. DaVinci Resolve, I would rate it being probably a 3 out of 10." 1 recommend it
• Ultimate Brain Warns against "I bought that and I gave up in not even a week, like three days, I gave up. I'm like, there's no way I need 60 properties for a task. that that doesn't make any sense." No one recommends it
• Nothing matches.