Outlining With AI: How To “Whip Up” A Course, Video, or Article Using Ali Abdaal’s Rule of 3

This is how you unlock your creativity.

Ahoy, Digital Writers!

Today we are taking a peak inside the mind of legendary creator Ali Abdaal.

Ali is a 29-year old ex-doctor who went from saving lives in the UK’s National Health Service to transforming lives on YouTube, on his podcast, and in his soon-to-be book.

• In 2022, he made $4,600,593 on the internet.

• He’s racked up 333M+ views creating videos on YouTube.

• 300,000 people subscribe to his weekly newsletter: Sunday Snippets.

The man is a beast!

Last year, Ali sat down with Lawrence Yeo of More To That to talk about using personal experience in stories. During the hour-long conversation, Ali shared a simple framework for how he “whips up” courses, videos, articles, and podcasts with nothing more than a whiteboard.

In 5 minutes, he shattered the myth that creating meaningful content takes 6 months.

We’re going to ditch the whiteboard—because this is Write With AI. And we are going to transform Ali's framework into a reusable ChatGPT prompt so you can consistently create simple, strong, and organized content fast.

Let’s dive in!

Ali Abdaal’s “Rule of 3”

Distill any topic into 3 things and you’ve got a framework.

5 is reasonable. 4 is reasonable. But 3 is the best place to start.

People can easily remember groups of 3.

• “The 3 little pigs.”

• “Bacon, lettuce, and tomato”

• “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

3 makes anything memorable.

Take it from Ali. He was a doctor. And doctors are master memorizers. They have to be to understand anatomy, biochemistry, medial ethics, etc. He used a technique called “spider diagramming” in med school to memorize entire essays while preparing for exams.

His genius “study hack” to condense a complex topic into a 1 page diagram shines through in his content creation process.

Here’s how it works:

Answer 1 single question for 1 specific audience using no more than 3 points.

It’s mind mapping with constraints.

By creating a self-imposed “3-item” constraint, Ali is able to distill his answer to any question in a clear and concise way—quickly. As long as he can find 3 points for every “box” on his spider diagram, he can transform it into any type of content he wants.

Constraints eliminate decision fatigue.

The same is true when you work with your Digital Intern!

And we are going to do this in 3 simple steps.

Let’s break it down.