Hey, I’m Ali. I’m a Doctor turned Entrepreneur, YouTuber, and the author
of the New York Times bestseller,
Feel-Good Productivity

I was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1994. I grew up in Lesotho (in Southern Africa), before moving to the UK with my mother, brother and grandmother in 2003.

At 12, I learned to code and started earning money as a freelance web designer to fund my World of Warcraft addiction – this was my first taste of making money online. From age 13 onwards, I realised I had a passion for teaching, and worked part-time as a teaching assistant for kids after school.

After finishing high school, I joined Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge to study Medicine. That was where I developed an obsession with figuring out the most “time-efficient” ways of studying for exams.

Using these study techniques, I was able to free up enough of my time to build a small business on the side that helped students get into medical school. This helped fund my degree, and taught me way more about how to build and run a business.

I started my YouTube channel in 2017 initially as a content marketing driver for the business, but realised I quite enjoyed documenting my life, sharing my productivity and study tips, and making helpful educational videos. I made 52 videos in 6 months that grew the channel to 1,000 subscribers, while I should’ve been studying for my finals.

After graduating medical school, I started work as a junior doctor at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, doing placements in Cardiology, Geriatric Medicine and General Surgery. I continued making videos on the side, and the channel grew to 100,000 subscribers that year.

I then worked for a year at West Suffolk Hospital, with placements in Psychiatry and Obstetrics & Gynaecology, which coincided with the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a very interesting time to be a doctor…

In August 2020, I took a break from Medicine, intending to go to Australia to do a year’s placement in Emergency Medicine. Unfortunately, thanks to the pandemic, Australia closed their borders, and so I accidentally ended up unemployed…

Given my new unemployed status, I decided to go all-in on building my YouTube channel and business. In 2020, we grew to 1 million subscribers, and the business hit $1m in annual revenue for the first time. So at the age of 26, I guess I officially became a “millionaire”.

In 2021, I started writing my first book, Feel-Good Productivity, while continuing to grow the channel and business. I moved from Cambridge to London, and began to hire my first few team members. This was when I made the decision to officially leave Medicine to go full-time on the creator / entrepreneur / writer lifestyle.

In 2023, Feel-Good Productivity was published and became an instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. I ended up being interviewed on TV, and on various podcasts, and the book ended up being translated into 35+ languages, which still amazes me. A huge thank you to everyone who bought, read and reviewed the book – without your support, none of this would’ve happened 🙂

In 2024, I went digital nomadding around the world for a few months, before getting married and moving to Hong Kong with my wife Izzy.