#881 - Christmas Special - Life Hacks, Biggest Lessons & Best Resolutions

Summary

Podcast Summary: Modern Wisdom Episode #881 - Christmas Special - Life Hacks, Biggest Fails & Best Lessons

Introduction

In this festive Christmas special of Modern Wisdom, host Chris Williamson reunites with longtime collaborators Johnny Youssef from Propane Fitness and George Mack. Filmed on Chris’s old couch in Newcastle upon Tyne, the trio delves into their most effective life hacks, reflects on their biggest failures from the past year, and shares invaluable lessons learned. They also discuss their top New Year's resolutions for 2025, providing listeners with actionable insights to enhance their own lives.

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Life Hacks Shared

1. Ninja Creamy for Protein-Rich Ice Cream (02:30)

• Johnny Youssef introduces the Ninja Creamy, highlighting its utility in creating customized, high-protein ice cream. He explains how it transforms protein shakes into delicious treats by blending ingredients like skimmed milk and protein powder.

  Johnny: “It’s basic what I use it for is making ice cream from a protein shake. It’s brilliant.”

• Chris Williamson shares his version of low-sugar, high-protein ice cream, noting the challenge of maintaining texture when adding toppings like chocolate chips.

  Chris: “The issue is the viscosity of the liquid when you put it in the freezer versus the viscosity when it becomes ice cream is different.”

• George Mack suggests adding toppings after the mixture is creamy to ensure even distribution.

  George: “So this is to distribute the chocolate chips throughout the height of the ice cream rather than all at the bottom.”

2. Air Fryers for Enhanced Cooking (06:25)

• Chris praises the Ninja air fryer’s visibility feature, allowing users to monitor the crisping process in real-time, making it easier to cook dishes like lasagnas.

  Chris: “They’ve got this air fryer crispy thing now, which is a glass tray at the bottom so you can see how it sort of crisps.”

• Johnny expresses interest in getting an air fryer, leading to a discussion on the varying standards of vehicle quality in different regions.

  Johnny: “Should I? Do you have one, George?”

3. Optimizing YouTube Consumption with the KL Algorithm (15:00)

• George shares his approach to curating YouTube content by filtering out videos under 30 minutes to reduce time wasted on low-quality content.

  George: “So the physical life hack is to use things that annoy you... as gratitude triggers.”

• Johnny and Chris discuss the effectiveness and potential drawbacks of this method, emphasizing discipline and opportunity costs.

  Johnny: “Doesn't it mean though that you waste more time? Because the regret is about the video, but there’s no regret about how long you spent watching the video?”

4. Audible and Audio Immersion (21:00)

• Johnny recommends using Audible’s immersive audio versions, like the “Red Rising” series in Dolby Atmos, to enhance the listening experience and aid in falling asleep.

  Johnny: “The most immersive thing I’ve ever heard on audio.”

• Chris agrees, noting how these audiobooks help distract from racing thoughts and improve sleep quality.

  Chris: “They just put out this movie in your mind and helps you get to sleep.”

5. Laptop Stands for Improved Posture and Productivity (33:00)

• George introduces the Boyata portable laptop stand combined with the Apple Magic Keyboard and Mouse, emphasizing its role in maintaining good posture while working from hotels and coffee shops.

  George: “The Boyata stand means that the laptop’s raised like perfectly in front of you like that.”

• Yousef discusses how proper posture can influence mental states and reduce anxiety, referencing studies presented at the International Posture Summit.

  Yousef: “There is a study that shows that your posture impacts how much you believe your own thoughts.”

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Lessons Learned

1. Reframing Problems for Growth (49:00)

• Johnny shares the concept of reframing challenges as opportunities for personal and business growth. He emphasizes that achieving one goal often leads to new, more complex challenges, fostering continuous development.

  Johnny: “For every level is a devil. And it’s just the current devil you’re facing.”

• Chris echoes this sentiment, highlighting the importance of viewing problems as formative experiences rather than obstacles.

  Chris: “Accepting that things are going to be tough, but not necessarily white-knuckling our way through it.”

2. Single-Tasking and Effective Productivity (75:00)

• George and Johnny discuss the importance of single-tasking over multitasking, emphasizing that focusing on one task at a time leads to higher quality work and more effective outcomes.

  George: “Positioning is arranging information in the customer’s head.”

• They highlight tools like Ticktick for task management, advocating for organizing and prioritizing tasks to enhance productivity.

3. Alignment of Actions and Values (103:00)

• George underscores the importance of ensuring that one's actions align with their stated values, referencing psychological theories by Adler versus Freud.

  George: “What people tell themselves the goal is, isn't always the goal. So look at actions versus behavior.”

• The group reflects on the discrepancy between stating values and acting in accordance with them, agreeing that true value alignment requires consistent actions.

  Chris: “Actions versus words in that way.”

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Failures and Reflections

1. 75 Hard Adaptations and Its Pitfalls (72:30)

• Johnny discusses his experience with adapting the “75 Hard” challenge, noting that while the original program may be too rigid, modifying aspects to better fit personal lifestyles can yield benefits without the destructive rigidity.

  Johnny: “Trying to do that… you realize how hard that is and how many little bullshit reasons come up.”

• Lessons include the difficulty of maintaining extremely strict routines, especially when faced with real-life scenarios where adaptability is required.

2. Dealing with Ineffective New Year Resolutions (98:00)

• Yousef critiques traditional New Year's resolutions, pointing out that with a 91% failure rate, many goals often slip away. He emphasizes the need for setting higher ROI resolutions that are sustainable and genuinely aligned with one’s values and long-term goals.

  Yousef: “If something has a 91% failure rate, you have to look at it before I think you do it.”

• The conversation touches on the psychological aspects of goal-setting and the importance of actionable, realistic resolutions.

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Resolutions and Sustainable Habits

1. High ROI Resolutions (75:00)

• Chris shares his two highest ROI resolutions that have remained consistent: keeping the phone outside the bedroom to improve sleep quality and going for morning walks to reduce anxiety.

  Chris: “Sleep with your phone outside of your bedroom.”

  Chris: “Go for a walk first thing in the morning.”

• Emphasizes the effectiveness of environmental design and incremental habit formation as key strategies for sustainable improvement.

2. Journaling for Self-Reflection (70:00)

• The importance of journaling is highlighted as a tool for aligning actions with values and tracking personal growth, despite potential data loss from digital corruption.

  George: “A need to write out all of your to-dos. Pick the top three that make you most scared, then pick one of them and just do it for three hours.”

• Johnny and George discuss the value of back-up methods and the significance of maintaining journals for long-term reflection and personal insight.

3. Positioning in Business and Personal Life (103:00)

• Yousef shares insights on how positioning—arranging information in the customer’s mind—is crucial for business success, using the example of Loom’s strategic positioning to eliminate competition.

  Yousef: “Positioning is arranging information in the customer’s head.”

• They explore the impact of effective positioning on business growth and customer perception, reinforcing its importance beyond mere product functionality.

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Final Thoughts

The episode concludes with heartfelt reflections on personal growth, the significance of sustainable habits, and maintaining alignment between one's actions and values. Chris expresses deep gratitude towards Johnny and George for their contributions, emphasizing the importance of their friendship and collaboration despite physical distances.

Chris: “I’m so happy and so proud of what all of you have done. It’s fucking fire. It’s great.”

As the trio wraps up, they extend warm Christmas wishes to their listeners, encouraging everyone to reflect on the past year and plan thoughtfully for the year ahead.

Chris: “Merry Christmas. See you next time. Get away. Get.”

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Notable Quotes

• Chris Williamson (03:10): “I’ve encountered a problem with that, which is when you have to make up the mixture and then put it in the freezer for it to freeze.”

• George Mack (15:02): “I'm trying to think of something that you couldn't do that with, but I'm struggling.”

• Johnny Youssef (49:31): “But the real soft core, nice thing I would recommend is journaling.”

• Yousef (75:25): “If something has a 91% failure rate, you have to look at it before I think you do it.”

• Chris Williamson (51:07): “Accepting that things are going to be tough, but not necessarily white-knuckling our way through it.”

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Conclusion

This Christmas special episode of Modern Wisdom provides a treasure trove of practical life hacks, profound lessons on personal and business growth, and reflective discussions on failures and resolutions. For listeners seeking to enhance their productivity, cultivate sustainable habits, and align their actions with their core values, this episode offers rich, actionable insights wrapped in engaging conversation. Whether you’re looking to implement new strategies or seeking inspiration for your own life journey, Chris, Johnny, and George deliver wisdom that resonates deeply and inspires meaningful change.

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Enjoyed this summary? Be sure to tune into Modern Wisdom for more episodes packed with insights from the world's greatest thinkers.

Transcript

[Chris Williamson]

What's happening, people? Welcome back to the show. It is a Christmas special. I'm back on my old couch in Newcastle upon Tyne with Johnny and Yousef and George to catch up on what they've learned and their best hacks and New year's resolutions for 2025. I kind of wanted to actually collect some of the highest value New Year's resolutions that we've all ever done. I kind of figured when you do New Year's resolutions, you're sort of coming up with them on your own and so trying to deconstruct what you think that you want. There's not really any reason that you can't just steal other people's, especially if they say, I still do this 10 years later. This resolution that I did in 2015 has stuck with me the whole time. And yeah, there's, there's some good stuff in here and it's so nice to be back with the boys. Obviously, Christmas time is a bit of a reflective period, so I hope this really spurs you on to come up with some good ideas for your own annual review and the planning process as you enter the new year. Try and take a little bit of time, if you can this week to downregulate unplug, obviously, after having listened to this episode. But there's no episode on Thursday, so you can take that day off anyway. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Jonny Youssef and Geor. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. It is a Christmas special. For those of you who have only joined the show over the last year or the last few years might not recognize this room. And it is my old living room in Newcastle Upon Tyne where we first started the show. Joined by Johnny Youssef from Propane Fitness and George Mack, stopping off en route from Glasgow to Manchester. Of course, this is a Life hacks lessons from 2024 and best new Year's Resolutions episode. So if you haven't seen these, we'll go around in a circle coming up with whatever we've discovered over the last year and then the rest of us will rip it apart or say that it's good and maybe there'll be some ideas for you for what you can implement going into the new year. Also, if you haven't done a New Year's review, the exact template that I use and have crafted very delicately over the last decade or so is available right now for free at chriswillex.com Review that's tradition. Something else which is tradition is you getting hot potato and going first. So hot potato a Festive potato for you.

[Johnny]

Festive potato.

[Chris Williamson]

Jonathan Watson, what have you got for us?

[Johnny]

Is it life hacks first?

[Chris Williamson]

It is.

[Johnny]

So my life hack is a Ninja Creamy.

[Chris Williamson]

So happy you said that.

[Johnny]

Really?

[Chris Williamson]

I've got one.

[Johnny]

I thought you. Have you.

[Chris Williamson]

I've got one.

[Johnny]

Yusef's been thinking about getting one, I think. Hasn't got one yet.

[Yousef]

What's a Ninja Creamy?

[Johnny]

Do you know what one is? No.

[Yousef]

Educate me.

[Johnny]

It's it. Basically what I use it for is making ice cream from a protein shake. It's brilliant. So like skimmed milk, what do you use it for? The same thing or berries. I imagine you have berries in your.

[Chris Williamson]

Actually, no, mine has been low sugar, high protein ice cream made with the exact protein powder that I want.

[Johnny]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

So pretty much the same thing that you're doing.

[Johnny]

Yeah. Do you put topping in it?

[Chris Williamson]

So I've encountered a problem with that, which is when you. You have to make up the mixture and then put it in the freezer for it to freeze. The issue is the viscosity of the liquid when you put it in the freezer versus the viscosity of the liquid when it becomes ice cream is different. So if you put chocolate chips in, they. They all just sink to the bottom and create a layer. What's your solution?

[Johnny]

Well, you put them on after you've. So you creamy it and then you what?

[Yousef]

Sorry, I'm just writing instructions. You do what?

[Johnny]

I don't see a pen, George. Doesn't look like you're making notes. It looks like you're trying to make fun of me. George. Go on.

[Yousef]

You creamy it.

[Johnny]

Creamies. And then once it's creamy, there's a mix in button.

[Yousef]

Oh, have you not encountered that?

[Chris Williamson]

If I.

[Johnny]

You've seen it.

[Chris Williamson]

If I'm being.

[Johnny]

That's not for me.

[Chris Williamson]

If I'm being completely honest, it's not me that uses it.

[Johnny]

Oh God, what a bougie.

[George Mack]

So this is to distribute the chocolate chips throughout the height of the ice cream rather than all at the bottom like a screwball or all at the.

[Chris Williamson]

Top like a, like a topping? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Johnny]

But it is a topping.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. So.

[Johnny]

So you make it first and then you, once it's turned into ice cream.

[Chris Williamson]

You add the shit that you want.

[Johnny]

A little bit of topping and then press mix in or I think it's called mix in or mix again.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. What is the best recipes that you've come up with?

[Johnny]

I think white chocolate and raspberry whey from perform. It's like p. Just focus, carry on. It's Like P and then the number 4 RM or something like that.

[Chris Williamson]

How many scoops?

[Johnny]

Two. Always two with skimmed milk.

[Chris Williamson]

How much?

[Johnny]

350 mil. 400 mil is what you want to use because that takes you up to the limit. The limit line. It's just not quite. The ratio's not quite right. Sometimes a banana improves the texture.

[Chris Williamson]

Interesting. Have you been able to get the sort of gelatinous stickiness that you want? That's something that I've struggled with.

[Johnny]

Do you like it to be more sticky or less sticky?

[Chris Williamson]

Little sticky. Little more sticky.

[Johnny]

I think that's about how long it's frozen for.

[George Mack]

Xanthan gum.

[Johnny]

I don't want to get involved with that stuff. I feel like that's a whole other variable to manage. Yeah, it's how much xanthan gum.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, you just experiment, wouldn't you?

[Johnny]

But think how long it's going to take to get that right.

[Chris Williamson]

That's true. Because you've got something that works sort of 80% now.

[Johnny]

Exactly.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, so white chocolate.

[Johnny]

Perform white chocolate and raspberry whey with raspberries and white chocolate chips as the topping mixed in. So good. That's like 40 grams of protein or a little bit more if you include the milk and like 400 calories. It's brilliant.

[Chris Williamson]

And you eat one of those off in one go.

[Johnny]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Dessert lunch until you're not running anymore.

[Johnny]

Usually. Usually like last meal of the day.

[Chris Williamson]

That's pretty dialed.

[Johnny]

So good.

[Chris Williamson]

That's very good. I'm a big ninja. I mean, ninja are just between the air fryers, all of the different air fryers. They've got this air fryer crispy thing now, which is a glass tray at the bottom so you can see how it sort of crisps. And you can make lasagnas, you know, where you have that sort of the filtering on the top.

[Johnny]

I've not got an air fryer. You have an air fryer.

[Chris Williamson]

I imagine that seems like, yeah, I.

[Johnny]

Should get one, should I? Do you have one, George?

[Yousef]

Yes, but I never used it.

[George Mack]

You really value culinary appliances that allow you to eat low calorie foods and make them nice. So I think an air fryer would be high value.

[Johnny]

Do you know what I think I.

[Chris Williamson]

Value more than speed slow cooker?

[Johnny]

Something that allows me to see whatever it produces as one serving, ideally in a container. So I think what I like about Ninja Premium is I can't have more or less than it. I just eat the whole thing and I don't have to worry about like, oh, how many scoops. Of this, Should I have. Do you not eat the whole thing?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Johnny]

Okay.

[George Mack]

That's Chris's way of life. Eat the whole thing.

[Chris Williamson]

Eat the whole thing.

[George Mack]

So it's a sorry kilo of yogurt.

[Chris Williamson]

I think an air fryer for you. I mean, this isn't even one of mine, but I think an air fryer for you would be nothing short of life changing.

[Johnny]

What would I use it for?

[Chris Williamson]

Do you ever eat steak at home?

[Johnny]

Yeah, but not like regularly though.

[Chris Williamson]

But would you?

[Johnny]

I have a Ninja Creamy every day.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. Would you eat steak at home if you could have from frozen amazing steak in 20 minutes.

[Johnny]

Is that your best suggestion? A steak?

[Chris Williamson]

It's fucking unbelievable for steak. Yeah. Okay, I'll get another one. This is a Peterson hack.

[Johnny]

I'll get another one.

[Chris Williamson]

As a woman who eats a lot of steak, she knows how to cook a steak.

[Johnny]

If that's all you're eating.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, which I am. So it's important. All right. I like that Ninja Creamy.

[Johnny]

So you're not having creamies? That's a pass. That's a previous Chris thing.

[Chris Williamson]

Correct.

[Johnny]

Got it.

[Chris Williamson]

Bert, what have you got?

[George Mack]

This is Ernie, actually.

[Chris Williamson]

Is it? Fuck, I misgendered him.

[George Mack]

Thank you, George. So I've chosen this suit to introduce the most kind of serious point of the podcast. But I've been doing a lot of walking and journaling and reflecting and I've actually been tuning an AI model using a few kind of different database structures to identify the optimal categorization method for life hacks.

[Chris Williamson]

And you're doing it again.

[George Mack]

What I've come down to is physical and digital.

[Yousef]

So you said this the exact same.

[George Mack]

Thing, actually last year it was a team of operations analysts. But I think we're getting closer to the same conclusion. Yeah, same.

[Johnny]

What a relief.

[George Mack]

I think we're onto something.

[Yousef]

Increase the compute and still hit the same wall.

[George Mack]

So the physical life hack is to use things that annoy you, like mild irritations throughout the day as gratitude triggers. So you wake up in the morning, 7am, you hear a siren going past you, like, oh, bloody hell. Like, I have five minutes more sleep. And that's a gratitude trigger for that. Could have been me in the ambulance. Or like you could be even the driver of the ambulance. Still pretty rubbish having to drive an ambulance at 7 in the morning. Or you could be in the back of the ambulance. So it's like, okay, there's a little switch. You encounter someone who's a bit of a dick to you at the checkout in a shop or whatever, and you Go. They're being a dick because they're miserable at their job, they're having a bad time. I can go home and eat my sushi and pot of mango or whatever. They have to be on shift until. So just having that little flip has been really valuable.

[Johnny]

I've been trying to think of something that you couldn't do that with, but I'm struggling.

[George Mack]

I'm sure there's loads. Yeah, but it's. I guess it's a responsible. Do you want to be.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, are you trying to have empathy for the other person or are you trying to sort of do inversion on yourself? What are you prioritizing?

[George Mack]

Both are good effects of that, aren't they? I think it's like a nice side.

[Johnny]

Effect to have just be more happy.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, it's pretty pro social. I like that. Okay, this is one from George's birthday this year in Miami, which Dicky Bush decided to do. And it's Uber Black xl. So Uber Black xl. I don't know whether I don't know how available it is in the uk, but especially in America and probably in the biggest cities in the uk, you can order, you know, a seven person Escalade with a driver that's always dressed quite nice and formally and it's basically you having a private driver, but you just order it on Uber. And it's about maybe two to three times the cost of a normal Uber. So it's, you know, special occasions only for the most part. But the way that you feel when you get into it, when you get out of it is lovely. And the experience is easily three times nicer than being in the back of someone's Kia Forte, especially in America. This is a big America problem. Because it's less expensive. It's less, more expensive in America. And the depths that your normal Uber X can descend to in America, as you learned firsthand this year, it's like the back of some Nissan Altima. The 30 year old, you're sticking to the seat, it can go really low. So if you've had a tough day and you want to treat yourself, a journey home in a Uber Black XL is nice. If you're out on a date and you sort of want to make something feel a little bit nicer. Big fan.

[George Mack]

Why do you think the standard of cars in America is generally higher? Is it more of statistical.

[Chris Williamson]

It's lower.

[George Mack]

Is it that the. Is it bimodal? Because I've like. You're saying that the. Some Ubers go really low.

[Chris Williamson]

Very low. Correct. In America, the UK doesn't seem. I think Americans generally have lower standards for what they keep their cars to. If anybody's got a small dink in the uk, it's almost immediately taken.

[Johnny]

Always complaining about it as well.

[George Mack]

I know it's terrible, but you take.

[Chris Williamson]

It to the like shop or whatever and you get it fixed. Most people would, I need to get.

[George Mack]

My dink fixed actually. Yeah.

[Yousef]

I'll come back with xl, make it.

[Chris Williamson]

Bigger black xl, I think, I think it's a. I mean you, you've, you've been a big proponent of that as well. Like using Uber black xl.

[Yousef]

Yeah, yeah. I think this is a high prop. In Dubai, for example, the Ubers are essentially Lexuses. They're all beautiful. It's only when I was in the UK or the US experiencing Uber, do you realize sometimes you could be going 70 miles an hour and it's more dangerous to be out the car than in the car.

[Johnny]

Right? Yeah. Because in Dubai I feel like I was always like a Mercedes veto person in a suit. So. But is that, that's just a Dubai thing? Yeah. Right.

[Yousef]

Yeah. I've had some shockers whenever. In one I had in Munich where he just went rogue. Went. Was trying to go to the petrol station, was going like different stop offs, was like, was texting and then when I had, I said, hey, can you not text on your phone? He just threw his phone against the window and then just started speeding faster and faster.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow.

[Yousef]

And I thought you had a.

[Chris Williamson]

Should have paid the 20. Was it you where someone was trading? What was he trying to show you a video?

[Yousef]

Yeah. So we were in one Uber, I'm on a huge highway and I'm at the back and I just go, what's he doing on his phone? Cause sometimes he may be doing a WhatsApp or anything like that. And I look and there was like trading charts on and he was shorting the Japanese yen. Nice like mid drive. And I said, what are you doing? So, yeah, you may face them shorting the Japanese yen.

[Johnny]

I had an Uber driver in Croatia who had like mini seizures while driving. And I couldn't work out whether it was just something that happened to him all the time or whether it was serious. But he was like having a seizure and pressing the accelerator as he was in the seizure. So we were coming up towards traffic and the car would lunge and then break, but he just didn't acknowledge it at all.

[Chris Williamson]

He's the opposite of the guy that we had in Iceland. So driving back the final coach out of the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, because the alternative was to stay there for £9,500 for the night. And some hurricane level winds were coming in and we managed to make it onto this bus. And we're at the back of the bus and it's tilting up onto what feels like just its side wheels because of the strength of the breeze coming along. Johnny's solution, which was fucking genius actually at the time, was I'm gonna go up to the front and look at the bus driver and if he's not concerned, we shouldn't be concerned.

[George Mack]

You went hands at the bottom of.

[Johnny]

The wheel because for him it's just chin retracted him.

[Chris Williamson]

It's just Wednesday afternoon, another day graph.

[George Mack]

Isn't it the worst storm that Iceland had seen in several years as well. I think just that that guy is a source of inspiration to.

[Chris Williamson]

He's jocko as jocko as a bus driver. All right, you're up.

[Yousef]

I'm coming in hard.

[Chris Williamson]

Like Lily Phillips.

[Yousef]

Jesus Christ. The Kale algorithm. So this is a custom built life hack, which I can put in the comments section. But me and Chris have had these debates for years that whether the platforms will ever change. So you have control over your own algorithm. And I've been convinced it's going to happen, but I kind of sat there waiting for years for it to happen. And particularly my. I don't know where your weaknesses, where your Achilles heel is in terms of digital platforms. Mine is YouTube by far. And the most frustrating thing is YouTube is the library of Alexandra. You have all the world's knowledge. And if, like Marcus Aurelius, Julius Caesar would trade everything to have access not only to the best library, but then it turned into this magical video format where you can watch anything, learn, teach yourself anything. And every day I would turn up to that library and I'd get distracted by fights and fentanyl in the car park. Right? That was my YouTube experience. Oh, Logan, Paul's done. What coffee deal is going to expose him for what? Shitcoin. Click, click. And I remember once I went on the. And this is a. If you want to stare into the abyss and have the abyss stare back into you, go YouTube.com and press history and just scroll through some of the things that you've watched. And I went through quickly, like the last maybe 100 videos I've watched, and about 80% of them were regrettable in hindsight. So I had the best library of all time and I was watching absolute shite. So what was interesting, though, I looked at the videos I did enjoy and the videos that I didn't enjoy in hindsight. And you could have built this whole complex algorithm. But there was one simple thing that the videos I did enjoy and didn't enjoy had between them. And it was over 30 minutes long. Any video that seemed to be over 30 minutes long for the most part, I enjoyed in hindsight. And any video under 30 minutes long, I, for the most part didn't enjoy. And I think there's something about the monkey brain that if you see a 15 minute expose on Logan Paul's new NFT debacle, it's like, I can do that. But if it's a two and a half hour one, it's a bit harder.

[Chris Williamson]

A bit more discerning, it's a bit harder to justify.

[George Mack]

So is the conclusion to watch like 45 minute fentanyl in the car park.

[Johnny]

I waste more time.

[Yousef]

So the compilations, I tried that. But the problem is you go on YouTube.com thumbnail title, you just don't have the willpower. Like imagine if you had a social media feed, right, and they just showed you porn like constantly. You would end up watching a lot more porn as a result. So it's not necessarily about discipline, it's about preventing that coming on in the first place. So what I built was I built a script that removes any videos under 30 minutes and it's now the full KL algorithm. And I've gone from about 80% of my YouTube time, I regret to 80% of my YouTube time is now running.

[Johnny]

On what's the script running on?

[Yousef]

So you want to download a chrome extension called Tapper Monkey and then I've been there before.

[George Mack]

Okay, sorry, go ahead. I've got a couple of things I want to challenge you on about this, but beanie.

[Yousef]

So you. Then I built the code using Claude or ChatGPT and I can share the code with people. You put it in and it's permanently there now. So I no longer see any video under 30 minutes long. And you go on my, my feed now and it's just like Gletcher, stand up comedian, cool documentary.

[Johnny]

Does that not mean though that you waste more time? Because the regret is about the video, but there's no regret about how long you spent watching the video?

[Yousef]

No, because, well, there's a. I'm sure if you looked at your YouTube time, right, there's a difference in quality of things that you watch.

[Johnny]

Yeah, but usually I'm doing it instead of doing something else. So it's rare that I like find myself on my phone and then 30 minutes later I'm like Oh, I'm so glad I watched that.

[Yousef]

But that might be because of this exact thing.

[Johnny]

But that assumes that the thing that I wasn't doing because of YouTube wasn't more important.

[Yousef]

That's fair. There's always some kind of opportunity cost trade off. But for me. So this is particularly on desktop and I would use YouTube end of the day as an alternative to TV and that's where versus yeah, I agree. That kind of two minute quick scroll is, is different. That's the cocaine algorithm.

[Johnny]

Yeah, yeah.

[George Mack]

There's a couple of ways you can get one step upstream of that. So there's a native thing on YouTube where you, you disable the. It might be watch history or one of these features where it means that when you log on to YouTube it's just a blank screen. You just have the search bar. You've done that on the propane one. And now I never procrastinate with YouTube. Like it just doesn't because you have to then actively like oh what am I going to search for? Rather than having stuff like pushed ont.

[Yousef]

The problem with that though is there's still value I find in the algorithm, certainly randomness.

[George Mack]

Okay, so you want, you want the upside of the.

[Yousef]

Yes, I want the upside of the randomness and the optionality without Logan Paul.

[George Mack]

In that case you're trying to like fine tune it. The other thing that you can do is, and I think we talked about this last year using Readwise or Reader to establish that past George is the only one who can determine what current George is going to watch. So you're not allowed to consume any media unless it's on your to read list or to watch list. And you've made that decision ahead of time. So that you've made the decision when you're in a position of strength, not when you're like oh, I'm not giving this 9:00pm and I just want to.

[Chris Williamson]

Just to find a potential problem with that. A lot of the time, you know how in three months I'm going to have all of this white space on my calendar. I'll agree to that. I really want to watch this thing. I'm sure that me tomorrow will want to watch it. I'm not convinced that me yesterday is the best.

[George Mack]

Yeah, so you'll end up adjudicator of.

[Chris Williamson]

Actually what I want to watch today.

[George Mack]

So the problem there is you end up with like a huge queue of stuff and then you either none of.

[Chris Williamson]

Which you think is interesting, but because you now don't have to pay the price, you Tomorrow has to consume it. You kick the can down or watch.

[George Mack]

The relevant thing looking in the fridge and you're like I've got. We've got no food in the house at all. And actually like there's loads of food but it's like lettuce and a bit.

[Chris Williamson]

Of not stuff you want.

[Yousef]

Yeah, you basically want an algorithm that's working nearer towards what your goals are and your long term intents are. But it's not just purely like boring educational shit. Like if there's like long form comedy on there, like long form comedy podcasts, I enjoy those way more. But there's something about the. The shortness of it and I think having that pre built in to remove it. My sister little life hack to. This is also on email. If anybody has just set up a filter that if it has unsubscribe in the email, it goes to a separate inbox and then you scroll through that and you've reduced about 80% of your email clutter. So just putting those systems in place.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm doing that is useful.

[Johnny]

Gmail has that automatically, doesn't it? Gmail has that automatically with the promotions.

[Yousef]

It does. Loads of them. Loads of them still slip through. Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

All right Johnny, you're up.

[Johnny]

This is linked to what you were just saying, Chris, about waking up at night. So there's two hacks in one. One is audible on a so eye mask. One AirPod 30 minute timer on audible audiobook. It's life hack. One lifehack two is audible have. Similar to a Netflix original. Like an Audible original. Some of them are in Dolby Atmos. So it's like a film being read out. Which is the most immersive thing I've ever heard on audio.

[Chris Williamson]

How immersive can it be with one AirPod in? Well.

[Johnny]

Cause the other one's pressed.

[Yousef]

Do you find that you turn. You can just go full like monk mode and stay there. Cause I'm a.

[Johnny]

Even if you roll over though.

[Chris Williamson]

Even.

[Johnny]

If you roll over, it's just one AirPod. It's fine. You're asleep. Doesn't matter. The third life hack is Red Rising, the Red Rising series.

[Chris Williamson]

But the immersive audio version, Phenomenal.

[Johnny]

So good.

[Chris Williamson]

So fucking fantastic.

[Johnny]

Fall asleep. It's a series by Pierce Brown.

[Chris Williamson]

Pierce Brown, really Sci fi series. The most addictive set of novels. But they'd redone it as a movie in your mind and helps you get to sleep. Dolby Atmos, full audio cast. You know they're not just saying what's going on back and forth to each other. They're fully acting it out. The sound effects.

[Johnny]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Beautifully soundscaped. It's awesome.

[Johnny]

It's brilliant.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm glad. I'm glad you like it.

[Johnny]

So that to fall asleep and if you wake up at night, like stick an AirPod in, I'm just. Because you just immediately. Especially with racing thoughts, you're just immediately in another world.

[Chris Williamson]

Manta eye masks. Make a Bluetooth eye mask.

[Johnny]

Do they?

[Chris Williamson]

That is built for you to sleep on.

[Johnny]

I have a pair of headphones called Philips something.

[Chris Williamson]

They're called sleep Snoozies or some shit.

[Johnny]

They're just not very good.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, they're just not AirPods, are they?

[Johnny]

Yeah, just one AirPod in. Cause you can have your head against the pillow with the side with the AirPod in. Still doesn't wake you up. I worry a little bit about what it's doing to me. It's the sort of thing I think Yusuf would worry me about if I spoke to him about it too much.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, about its non ionizing radiation.

[Johnny]

Like, is that AirPod talking to the AirPod that's over there and cooking my brain in the process?

[Yousef]

And it was a Chernobyl. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, I mean, it's already going through. I mean, but I've only got one.

[Johnny]

In, so is that okay?

[Chris Williamson]

Who knows?

[Johnny]

Is it okay? Am I? What?

[George Mack]

I mean, I'm less concerned about Bluetooth earphones as far as like EMF exposure. I think there are other things.

[Johnny]

Somebody shared an AirPod thing where it was like the communication between one AirPod.

[George Mack]

And another through your head. Yeah, but I think like.

[Johnny]

But as medical advice, you're saying that's fine.

[George Mack]

The problem is you've got to pick your battles, haven't you? It's like air quality, water quality, plastic exposures, you know, receipts, receipt. So for me it's like, don't microwave plastic and don't be an idiot.

[Chris Williamson]

Drive with your seatbelt on.

[George Mack]

Drive with your seatbelt on. And get any dinks in your car.

[Chris Williamson]

Sort of straight away. I like that. Just to add another one on there from lifhex four years ago. You can bulk buy your audible every year, can you? So you don't need to pay monthly. You can pay yearly, annual, and you'll get all of your credits up front and it's cheaper.

[Johnny]

That's brilliant. Was that a life hack? I should really pay more attention.

[Chris Williamson]

We've just done a lot. I mean, I reckon we've done a thousand life hacks.

[Johnny]

That's like top tier, though. That'd be so few know about that.

[Chris Williamson]

You'll save probably 30 or 40% and you get all of your credits immediately, so you don't have to wait until next month. If you've got a bunch of books or you're on holiday and you want to download 4, you've got all of your credits for the next 12 months ready to go.

[Johnny]

Does Red Rising stop being good? Cause there's, like, there's several books, right.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm on book six or seven now. I can't remember which one it is. And I'm still going. Everyone that I know, same storyline. Yep. Same protagonist.

[Johnny]

Wow.

[Chris Williamson]

And everyone that I know that's got onto it is.

[Johnny]

I think it crossed a point of, like, when they're in the mine at the beginning, I'm like, this is a.

[Chris Williamson]

Little bit dull as soon as you get out.

[Johnny]

And then he's out, and he's like, oh, my God, this is. You can see how it's just this world.

[Chris Williamson]

It's huge. Book two and book three are just obsessive. So Red Rising, you should go download it even if you don't.

[Johnny]

Graphic, audio, whatever it's called.

[Yousef]

Like, the. Is a good rule of thumb. Fiction before bed is amazing for kind.

[Chris Williamson]

Of like, my mind thing. Right out of your own head. You're not thinking about your problems. Good. Very good. All right, Seth, there's the heuristic of.

[George Mack]

What can I remove? You know, so delete Automate, then delegate. But there's also, what am I already doing or using that I could be using better? So a few examples would be like, I'm already spending the time meditating in the mornings. Like, how can I make that time more effective? Or I'm already sleeping seven hours a night. How can I improve the quality of that? I'm already. You know, everyone's seen someone exercising in the gym, like, every time you go to the gym, and they're there, and they're just kind of like. And they're like, texting and just swinging their arms around, not really doing anything. You're like, they're taking all of the steps to get the result, but wasting the actual critical time in there. But this also applies to the decision of, do I add something or do I just make what I'm already doing better? Get more use out of that. Squeeze the lemon. So rather than adding in a red light box and additional supplements and all this kind of stuff, it's like, well, what am I doing already? We often get clients that ask us, like, oh, what's a good bit of software for this or what's a good software for this? And you're like, well, what are you already using? And 80% of the time the software stack that they're already using does the thing that they're looking for, but they're just looking for the next thing. And so I'm always on about Ticktick, but the deeper I go with it, the more I'm like, oh, actually there's no point looking for any other app to solve any of these other problems because if you just really like dive into Ticktick. And now my referrals are so much that I've got an account until like 2067 or something. So now I'm just like lifetime believer of Ticktick. So yeah. And as I've applied this in the last few weeks, whenever I've like found myself trying to solve a problem, I always take a pause and go, hang on, what in what we already have? What software already paying for, what tools we already have can do the thing?

[Chris Williamson]

Have you got another example?

[George Mack]

So this is a niche one, but we were looking for a way to convert Twitter threads or X threads into carousels and I was looking at new bits of software and actually like we already use hypefury for scheduling tweets and they have a built in thing for this. But I think it's just the natural habit of like, wow, what's the shiny new thing?

[Chris Williamson]

Shiny new things, something new to solve this problem as opposed to looking where you already are.

[Yousef]

What's your. One of you don't need new lessons.

[Chris Williamson]

You need to relearn your old ones. Yeah, I mean most of the stuff that you already, most of the answers to problems you have now, you already know and you probably learned five years ago.

[George Mack]

So ironically, we were talking about this just before the episode and last year on this episode, that life is a spiral curriculum and that you look back on your. Yeah, you look on your journals from when you were like 19 and even who you think was your 19, like idiot self was still telling you the same thing that you.

[Johnny]

Same problems, isn't it?

[Chris Williamson]

Same problems over the day.

[Johnny]

One feature of like today, a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, and you write them up. Same fucking.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, you're the same person. That's why, like the common thread between all of that is you. And lots of stuff changes on the surface, but fundamentally the same challenges that you have, the same emotions that come up, the same worries and concerns you do go, oh my God, so much has changed in life. You know, I'm a dad now in a different country now, a different career now, whatever it might be. And you go, you're still the same person.

[Yousef]

So experiencing this hardware.

[Chris Williamson]

All right, my next one. One that we've done a long, long time ago, but continues to pay huge dividends. Clip the curtains together in hotel rooms using the trouser hanger. I challenge anybody to take me on with that. You get into a hotel room and these curtains for no reason, I've got, you know, a 3 inch or a 2 inch gap between them and you've tried to sort of do that weird thing where you push them and see and then they sort of settle and they settle a bit better sometimes and you're like, oh, is that good? Should I leave it? And you go, I'm gonna go again. You do it and it's further apart and you're like, fuck. Set of trouser hangers from the wardrobe. Pin it at the top. If you've got two trouser hangers, one, two and then three, four at the bottom. Pitch black. Beautiful.

[Johnny]

Why not just wear an eye mask?

[Chris Williamson]

You could, but sometimes even with an eye mask, you're rolling around, it comes off a little. It's just. I think you should always optimize for environment first and then other stuff second.

[George Mack]

Yeah, technically, the light receptors on the.

[Chris Williamson]

Skin will also expose you.

[George Mack]

I think about that all the time.

[Chris Williamson]

The back of your knee can actually wake you up. So that's that. And then I guess the other one, which is related to sleep. I spent a lot of time on the road again this year, a lot of time in hotels. Good pillow, bad bed, good night's sleep. Bad pillow, good bed, bad night's sleep. Basically, the pillow is the most important thing. Pillow's the most important thing because it's the. The most sort of obvious experience of you interacting with the bed is whether or not it's this sort of, you know, one of those ones that fucking. Yeah.

[Johnny]

And then you semi, don't you my.

[Chris Williamson]

Fucking sleeping or drowning here and. Yeah, that's it. Pin the curtains together in a hotel bedroom and optimize for better pillows. And the way you can do that, what you want to do is find what pillow do you like? And then how available is it on Amazon prime worldwide. And then if you can find one that you like that's available like that, and it isn't an insane price, you can add, you know, 25 pounds or whatever onto a stay, but improve your sleep quality by maybe 30 minutes or an hour a night by just ordering a pillow to the hotel. You get in, you're like, ah, fuck. It's one of the ones. Get the order done, next day, get a good night's sleep.

[Johnny]

There's a Kelly Starrett thing, like, piece of advice from years ago where if you lie on the mattress and you bend one leg, the mattress is the wrong level of turgidity. So like if you. Let's say you're going into extension, so you bend one leg to get out of extension. And I think that's if the mattress is too hard. That's the thing. So with the pillow versus mattress thing, I could sleep with no pillow, but if the mattress is bad, I wake up and I'm like, tight.

[George Mack]

Your Kelly Starrett hack with pillows has changed my life as well.

[Johnny]

Wow.

[Chris Williamson]

It won't even be a life using the towel roll.

[George Mack]

I think it's from a. It'll be from like a 2017 life hacks or something.

[Johnny]

It's back when it was like phone video Kelly Starrett on YouTube.

[Chris Williamson]

Is it the towel roller thing?

[Johnny]

And it's lying so it's like tucking your shoulder back and then the towel sits here and then everything's in a circle.

[Chris Williamson]

I followed that. But I just put another pillow in between the two top arms.

[Johnny]

So the pillows are crossed?

[Chris Williamson]

No. So one's behind my head and then I turn over to like spoon.

[George Mack]

It's a makeshift pregnancy pillow, but it's.

[Chris Williamson]

Not for the legs because I found that if I had one too hot, it just dis. If you've got. You've got to do this Brazilian jiu jitsu, you know, like sweep the legs and then pull it up and over. If anyone that uses a pregnancy pillow consistently, very impressive. But you can't move side to side. So normal pillow G all you got.

[Yousef]

My one relates to you mentioned then being on the road. Big thing for myself this year. Again, don't have an office. I'm often working from hotels, coffee shops and things like that. And the combination of the Boyata portable laptop stand with the Apple Magic keyboard and the Apple Magic mouse. So a few points on this. Number one, this is a bit Tony Robbins, but my kind of contrarian take on the world right now. If I sit in that Peter Thiel interview, one of my contrarian takes that I give is is that.

[George Mack]

It'S very on brand. Chris.

[Yousef]

Very good. The contrarian take right now is if you had to picture a depressed person's body language in your head, what do they look like?

[Chris Williamson]

Slouched over Real contrarian.

[Yousef]

Yeah, slouched over hunch. Where's their eyes? Down and people are spending eight to 10 hours a day like that, whether it's on their laptop or on their phone. So the Boyata stand means that the laptop's raised like perfectly in front of you like that. Your shoulders are back on the mouse and you go. Once you go to that, you can't go back. You look at everybody else and you go, how are you spending two hours in this depressed posture? It's like we've spoken about this previously that I think a non or a significant amount of people being miserable is just being in resting serious face versus resting smile face.

[Chris Williamson]

I thought about that and resting serious body.

[George Mack]

So I presented at the International Posture Summit, believe it or not.

[Chris Williamson]

Here we go.

[Yousef]

Come right up next to me in the Orinal there.

[George Mack]

Come on.

[Yousef]

Have you seen this?

[George Mack]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

Been in Lily Phillips.

[George Mack]

Well, so this is. There is a study that shows that your posture impacts how much you believe your own thoughts, which is interesting. So, like not so much mood and, you know, power pose and testosterone cortisol ratio has kind of been difficult to. To re reproduce in the results. But believing your own thoughts. So if you sat up, burrata stand.

[Chris Williamson]

What does he call it?

[Yousef]

Boyata.

[Johnny]

Boyata cheese in it. Burrata.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Johnny]

I've got a couple of delicious.

[George Mack]

So, yeah.

[Yousef]

But my take with that is you've seen the. Is it Jonathan Haidt who did the whole anxious mind? He says, Since 2008, anxiety's gone through the roof and it lines up with social media. Obviously that's, I think, had a factor, but that's well discussed. However, it also lines up with everyone's head being down, their eyes being down and shoulders hunched over.

[Chris Williamson]

Posture pilled.

[Yousef]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

No, I'm a big fan of it. I will say the height that you have it at and the closeness that you have your laptop to yourself. I would come down the stairs when we were both living in the Colton house in Austin and you don't see a person. What you see. What you see is this massive MacBook like this. And because it's spread out as well, it's covering his entire body. And then this just a set of AirPod Pro Maxes poking out the top. You're like, oh, George is behind there somewhere.

[Yousef]

It's terrible for Day Game. If you want to. If you want to pick up girls at the coffee shop, you can't do any keynote escalation. It's good for network. The amount of people go, he must be hardcore. What does he do?

[Chris Williamson]

Meanwhile, he's reading David Deutsch's the Beginning of Infinity with chatgpt opening.

[Yousef]

Second time.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Fuck. All right, should we do a lesson?

[Yousef]

Bring it on.

[Chris Williamson]

The lesson.

[Johnny]

Oh, my God, yes. Fine.

[George Mack]

Are we out of hacks now?

[Chris Williamson]

No, we can go back.

[George Mack]

Okay, so I've got two micro hacks, but we can.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you want to do one more round of trying to throw them in? Do you want one more round of hacks?

[Johnny]

I can do another hack.

[Chris Williamson]

Let's do another round of hacks.

[Johnny]

I know that I had another hack chambered, ready to go fire it, but now it's made me question the hack that I've picked.

[Chris Williamson]

Don't worry.

[Johnny]

I am worrying, though. I'm gonna say walking pad. Have we done that before?

[Chris Williamson]

Walking pad.

[Johnny]

Walking pad.

[Chris Williamson]

It's like a treadmill.

[George Mack]

Both just like.

[Johnny]

Yeah, exactly. So you need a sanding desk, and then it's a treadmill that's like, you can't run on. I mean, I've never tried, but it says don't run on it, so I figure, like, probably best to listen.

[Chris Williamson]

Is that why you stopped running?

[Johnny]

Exactly. Yeah. But just that as a way of. You just do like two hours of work while on that, you forget that you're on it and you. I think it's like 2,000 steps every, like, maybe 4,000 steps an hour.

[Chris Williamson]

Can't be 4,000 an hour.

[Johnny]

Why?

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, no, no, it could be. Yeah. You know, at that pace. Yeah. Probably about 4,000 an hour.

[Johnny]

Because you thought that was too many.

[Chris Williamson]

I originally, but now I've repurposed.

[Johnny]

Realize you're wrong.

[Chris Williamson]

Yep, I am walking part.

[Yousef]

And what kind of pace? Because do you ever get to a pace where you're going too fast and you can't go screen quickly?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. The classic Taipei problem.

[Johnny]

Then you're like, all I'm doing now is walking.

[Chris Williamson]

Looking at my screen.

[George Mack]

Yeah.

[Johnny]

Trying not to just slightly miss the walking pad and walk into the computer.

[Yousef]

What. What types of work.

[George Mack]

A.

[Yousef]

Sorry? What speed have you found useful? And then what types of work have you found?

[Johnny]

3.5.

[Yousef]

3.5.

[Chris Williamson]

Is that miles? Kilometers?

[Johnny]

It's just what it says on the screen.

[Chris Williamson]

You've both got the same one, right?

[Johnny]

I think we might have this similar one. We have the same one, right, but.

[Chris Williamson]

Your legs are longer.

[Johnny]

Doesn't matter.

[Chris Williamson]

I would imagine you walk quicker than these two.

[Johnny]

Does that matter? We're talking about preferences here, but it.

[Chris Williamson]

Actually means they're walking a little bit more quickly.

[Johnny]

The question was, what speed have you found?

[Chris Williamson]

You all like, the same speed.

[George Mack]

Don't ask me my preference and then tell me that I'm wrong.

[Chris Williamson]

You can litigate me out of it. Yeah.

[Yousef]

Tie me up.

[Johnny]

So yeah. 3.5. Next question.

[Yousef]

What type of work?

[Johnny]

So you would think it needs to be like email or. But it can be anything. I think it just helps you just drop into whatever you're doing.

[Chris Williamson]

Well there's that thing about when you're on coffee shop, when you're on a phone call that's getting intense. You stand up and start walking around because we're meant to locomote while we.

[Yousef]

Think I'm I'm picturing you Alan Partridge style with like a Bluetooth headset on, short shorts going 100k or it's going to SK. I once heard a story of you know, so Ari Emanuel can't sue. Okay. It's not that bad. Ari Emanuel, who Ari Gold was based off on Entourage so they own the ufc, wwe. He's like the apex lawyer in America for entertainment and he's heavily dyslexic so he just spends all day on the phone rather than doing anything that would use dyslexia I guess. And I knew somebody who was in the office walking past his room and he's on a full incline treadmill with like speaker on just saying him for another million. For another million. We're not moving till we fuck him for another million.

[George Mack]

That's the gateway drug, isn't it? He's gradually stepping up.

[Chris Williamson]

That's where you're going to be 12 months time.

[Johnny]

Oh the ride One of those a.

[Chris Williamson]

Strainer fucking people for a million.

[Yousef]

A sister to your one is I found when I was in America because of the time zones reversed I'd wake up at 6am and you've already got so many bits of work that you have to do so you have such a high cortisol state. Going on my phone incline treadmill and then just working for the first 30 minutes. Replying to messages and emails meant that the cortisol in the morning is then getting counterbalanced by the incline treadmill.

[George Mack]

Yeah I knew a guy who you've met him actually who would do cardio and just have TikTok on like autoplay because he said it made 45 minutes just what is probably terrible brain but.

[Yousef]

You'Re only allowing social only allowing social media usage when you're doing incline cardio.

[Chris Williamson]

Is actually that's not bad but but like purposefully doing social media usage because you're an inclined cardio feels like you.

[George Mack]

End up fitter but also a bit.

[Chris Williamson]

Like tweaked do you find?

[Yousef]

Because Steve Jobs famously used to only do Walking meetings or a lot of walking meetings. Have you found doing it for meeting useful or do you not want to be that guy?

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, Johnny used to try and record podcasts whilst going on.

[Johnny]

So I was going to say that it's not really the audience to say, like, well, I think I did better podcasting because Chris is quite good at podcasting, but I think it's. You produce a better podcast while walking.

[Chris Williamson]

Apart from the sound.

[Johnny]

Apart from the sound, but who cares about the sound? Yeah, meetings are the only thing I would struggle with for some reason, I think, because you just feel like, you know, I'm that guy walking on the meeting.

[Chris Williamson]

It very much depends what sort of a meeting it is as well. Like, if it's you just. Okay, like, recap me on this way. It's, you know, it's kind of sort of standard and stuff. Okay, like, here we go, I'll have a little plod.

[Johnny]

And if it's a really serious meeting and you're the only one walking and you're the one being really serious, the.

[George Mack]

Art of, like, perfectly level walking, so only your legs are moving, but you're.

[Chris Williamson]

Just squat jog, I think you'd have.

[Johnny]

A little bit of shift.

[Chris Williamson]

What brand did you go for?

[Johnny]

Don't know. But I do know it's out of stock.

[Chris Williamson]

But if you go on Amazon, that's two great things.

[Johnny]

If you go on Amazon, well, they cancel each other out, don't they? It doesn't matter. If you go on Amazon and search walking pad, walking pad, pretty much any of them. They range from. I think you tried to find like a bean one, didn't you, for like.

[George Mack]

50, 60 quid, up to whatever you want.

[Johnny]

Like 300 quid. 200. 300 quid. Get you a good one.

[Chris Williamson]

All right, Saf, you're up.

[George Mack]

Create a product promo there. Well, I don't know.

[Chris Williamson]

Don't know what it is. And they can raise certain.

[Johnny]

Well, yeah, 50 quid, maybe.

[George Mack]

So this is also to springboard off your and your hack, which is just to only do voice notes while I'm walking. So it's just to get me out the house because I know that if I got a desk pad, it would enable my screen time and I'd be doing it more. And so Dickie Bush, who twice now.

[Johnny]

Chris mentioned it before.

[George Mack]

There we go. Double dicky. So he just said, don't do any work that at your desk that could be done walking. And that includes, like emails, voice notes and to. To be honest, like, most writing now with GPT, you can Just dump a bunch of words into an audio file. And I mean, if you get a.

[Johnny]

Walking pad, it's all work, isn't it?

[George Mack]

It's all work. But then you're just at your desk.

[Johnny]

But you're still walking, still in that time.

[Chris Williamson]

What is it that you're looking for? To get outside. To get outside or have environment change.

[Yousef]

And you can now walk with AirPods in talking to yourself. And people no longer think you're a nutter. It's great because they think you might be on a call.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, that's not bad. Good. All right. Which one am I gonna choose next? Last year I said sleep token. This year I'm gonna say Beartooth. And it's gonna make you very happy that I've finally come around to listening to Bearthoot. Really phenomenal most recent album. They just put out the London vlog. The song at the end that we had and the sort of the tune that was threaded throughout. Shout out to Caleb, the frontman who sent me the stems from the track. So he sent me the track broken up into its individual component parts so he could really, really dial that in. That was very kind of him to do. And I just. They were my top played track at this year. I felt like important, alive.

[Johnny]

You hit attention.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, of course.

[Johnny]

So good.

[Chris Williamson]

Good. Bit mincy compared, but it's all right. No good. That whole album's. That whole album's fantastic. It only came out in October and I think they still managed to get into my Spotify wrapped. So place of I'll do. I'll do another one. Given that that one was just music. Mitchum deodorant. So Luke got me onto this last year and there is no deodorant that's anywhere near as good. This isn't just like the smell of it is fantastic. The price of it's great. The quality. It doesn't leave any white marks. And everyone's sort of looking for what's the best sort of deodorant. I'm not a fucking medieval peasant. I don't use roll on deodorant. But spray Mitchum. And they also have in every boots of UK airports they'll have the travel size. So you can actually take a 50 mil travel throw that in your bag. Pretty sick. Midshimmen Beartooth.

[Johnny]

So what's good about it?

[Chris Williamson]

Smells good. Doesn't leave any white marks and you don't sweat. It just seems all the boxes. Yeah. And as of yet most of them have a lingering smell like Dove Dove deodorant. You can smell somebody wearing it from like fucking a few miles away. And I don't like that. It's like it basically odorless but does the job. So unbeatable.

[Yousef]

Naughty, naughty. Speaking of naughty, my one is not naughty. It's a prompt for AI. So either ChatGPT, Claude, whatever your that's actually a life hack within itself is to be an absolute LLM whore. Yeah, if you can, is the following prompt. So do you know the Elon Musk quote? It's around how to learn. It's essentially this idea that you want to view knowledge as a semantic tree. So you start at the roots, then you go up to the trunk, then you have the branches, then you have the secondary branches, then you have the leaves. Whereas often the way we'll approach things is, oh, I want to learn about the heart. I'll just put on this random Andrew Huberman podcast with the specialist about the heart and just kind of hop in. But you don't have any of the roots or anything there, so you never actually retain any information. Whereas when you treat knowledge as a semantic tree, you work all the way up from the base and then all the way there. And a big realization this year was it's kind of a bit of a Deutsch concept, but essentially this idea that the only bottleneck that really exists is knowledge. And then you look at, okay, you have all these great people who are self taught, so you can just teach yourself from Nikola Tesla to Leonardo da Vinci. You have access to the Alphabet so you can understand any concept with words. You have access to numeracy, which is only 10 digits, but you can access, you can understand any mathematical equation with numbers. Therefore the only bottleneck to literally every single thing in your life skill issue, knowledge. So placing that into cord or chatgpt and you realize I can learn anything starting from there. So you start with the. You say this specific Elon quote and you say, teach me about X, but start with the roots and then work all the way up and don't move to the next layer until I say I understand. And you're constantly just moving up and you realize, oh, I can literally teach myself anything.

[George Mack]

This is a nice development from your last year's one, which was treat me like a total idiot and start at zero until I say I understand and then go to step one and then step two.

[Yousef]

The step here is to really. Then you can then just move it into like a mind mapping software and literally just build the tree yourself. So then you have that semantic tree in your head of all the Interweaving parts.

[George Mack]

Big mistake that I made when studying medicine was not doing that earlier. You have to have like a framework or a skeleton to be able to hang concepts on. Otherwise you are just learning raw data and it's so difficult.

[Yousef]

There's nothing connect and you're just memorizing like you did at school. You're never actually understanding the tipping point.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes.

[George Mack]

Like if you just brute force raw dog enough data, eventually you'll start to see the coalescing parts kind of join the dots. But it's not a fun way to do it.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Johnny]

Is there something you've used that for recently?

[Yousef]

I started yesterday with longevity. So I'm going because that's a topic that I've always wanted to learn about. But I just kick the can down the road because I'm like, where do I even begin? So I started with that with any kind of topic that will come up now I will just whack it for.

[Chris Williamson]

The LLM non monogamous out there. What do you use each platform for? Have you found certain things about run certain platforms?

[Yousef]

Yeah, I mean there's a huge asterisk here that this will be outdated by tomorrow because it's constantly. Literally yesterday they released the new O version and then you have X now getting. It's like three times the number of super computer clusters with the Grok AI that's going to go live. So me right now, I vary between Claude and ChatGPT, but I would be shocked if next year I'm saying the exact same thing.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. It seems like Google is.

[Yousef]

Google's great.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Yousef]

The new Grok one now where you can be on Twitter and ask Grok to explain things to you. Grok has way fewer bottlenecks. It's way less politically correct as well. It has access to Twitter's live.

[Chris Williamson]

It's being updated much more quickly, but it's also being updated by people who are on Twitter. Highly dangerous data set there to use. Lesson. Jonny Lesson. You got a lesson?

[Johnny]

I do. So it's a reframe on hard things or a hard thing. So something that I think I've been guilty of is not necessarily thinking, when I achieve this, I'll be happy, but rather when I achieve this problem's gone, solve that thing now. And actually it's mainly a propane thing. So propane's grown a lot over the last two, three years. And you always think we'll hit this revenue, we'll hire this person, we'll achieve this thing, no more problems. But actually all that happens is the new, more thorny, harder problem and reframing that as that is the thing where the development, that's the development opportunity. Because the next revenue level, the next achievement just always just feels exactly the same as the last one. Doesn't matter the size of it, it's exactly the same. But the who you become as a result of solving the problem at the level that you're at, that's the gain. So the phrase that I remind myself of is for every level is a devil. And it's just the current. It's just the current devil you're facing. That's because we've had a very weird year in business. Lots of problems that I think we'd have never expected. And your immediate response to that is like, oh, but actually if you reframe that as like, that's where the growth is, that's where the personal growth is. See it differently. And it becomes almost not exciting, but it's like, wow, there's something on the other side of this. So that's been my lesson for this year, probably the biggest one.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, that's really good. It's not too dissimilar to what we spoke about last year. And I think what all of us are kind of zeroing in on, which is accepting that things are going to be tough, but not necessarily white knuckling our way through it and not assuming that there's any additional nobility in white knuckling it and trying to increase the difficulty or sort of the hustle, pawning your way through things. It's like, look, if there's a way that I can make this simpler or find the gummy. Yeah, exactly. How can you have a creatine gummy for every different thing? And yeah, I think assuming that one day you're going to wake up and there'll be no problems, is I remember the.

[Johnny]

I think it was Mark Zuckerberg on maybe on Rogan where he was describing his morning. Has anyone heard this? So Mark Zuckerberg's morning was like, he wakes up and he goes and surfs because when he looks at his phone, it's really all really shit bad news. And I was like, well, felt like, because that's my morning. And it's like his bad news will be far worse.

[George Mack]

How many unreads have you got currently on Telegram?

[Johnny]

I don't know.

[George Mack]

The other day it was 46,000. I think you're on more.

[Johnny]

No, I think the other day it was like 1, 2, 3, 4 for me.

[Chris Williamson]

And I screenshot it particularly satisfying on.

[Yousef]

This Lesson there's a beautiful. Have you ever heard of the book called the Gap and the Gain?

[Chris Williamson]

Benjamin Hardy?

[Yousef]

Yeah. So there's one line in that that stuck with me and I still think about. And it's kind of a semi life hack related to this, which is, forget your current problem, whatever it is. Just go back to a. Maybe even a more severe problem in the past, whether it's girlfriend cheated on you, fired from job, insert problem, whatever it is, right? And you go back and go with the benefit of hindsight. Now, what would have been the worst interpretation of that problem? Okay, girlfriend cheated on me. I'm a loser. I'm gonna binge a load of food. I'm gonna write a load of angry Facebook statuses about her. Didn't work. That's the kind of worst interpretation of that problem. And you go, okay, well, what was the damn detachment? What would have been the best interpretation of that? It's like, okay, I'm gonna book this personal trainer for three months. I'm gonna book this trip with my friends that I was putting off because I was supposed to go on holiday with her, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you look at that now in the cold light of day, and which one do you wish that you chose? It's so obvious. So you do that for the past problem, and then you just go, okay, now I'm at current problem. What's the current worst interpretation of this? Da, da, da, da. What's the current best interpretation of this? Da, da da da. Which one do you want to choose?

[Chris Williamson]

What would you tomorrow want you today?

[Yousef]

Yes.

[Johnny]

The Choco. Good.

[Yousef]

And then literally do that exercise and just refuse to get up until you've hypnotized yourself that it's the best thing to ever happen to you.

[Chris Williamson]

Marc Andreessen was on the show the other week, and he gave me this quote from Sean Parker that said, running a startup is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood. And I think that's the acceptance that after a long enough amount of time, problems are always gonna be there. You're not gonna get to a point where there aren't any problems. As the CEO or founder of a business, your only job is to work on the hardest problems, the problems that nobody else can fix. And they always stop with you. And there will always be pressure.

[Johnny]

The more advanced you are in any field, in any pursuit, the problems are worse, aren't they? Or more complicated, more painful, and it's just easier to be at the basic level of Everything.

[George Mack]

Yeah.

[Johnny]

So if you're going to pursue the journey of, like, well, I want to achieve the highest level in anything, it's like, well, the final level, going from level 9 to level 10 is going to have the worst problem attached to it.

[Chris Williamson]

So that's the price. Is that the price that you're prepared to pay?

[Yousef]

I think there's some truth to that, but I think that's also the benefit of hindsight. You now look back at level one problems is so obvious because you're now a level nine person.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Yousef]

But then as soon as you get to level 29, you look back at level 9 in the same.

[Johnny]

But that's because of the person you become by solving each problem. So that's a much more succinct way of saying what I was saying is that, like, it's only. It's the. It's the person you are on the other side of the problem of, like, wow, that was so basic, like, two years ago, I was worrying about this thing. That's really easy now.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Because if that challenge came back up to you again now.

[Johnny]

So easy.

[Chris Williamson]

Fine, no worries. Yeah, that's very interesting. That's cool. I like that.

[Johnny]

Beautiful.

[Chris Williamson]

Good one.

[George Mack]

We didn't coordinate this, but you've described the irony of the human condition, that we will always hit this spiral curriculum and still run into the same problems. And with our clients, we have the same thing. So we help coaches to move online, and they often think that if I can just fix my lead generation, then my life will be sorted and it'll be absolutely, you know, I've completed it. And then all that happens is, like, very quickly, from working with us, you know, we fix that problem. It's not actually that hard a problem to solve. But then they end up with a sales bottleneck, and then they fix that, and they end up with a fulfillment bottleneck, and then they fix that, and they end up with an operational bottleneck, and they're like, oh, actually, life isn't just sunshine and rainbows after this one thing that I can solve. So for me, very similar lesson, which was, we are the ones that define success in our lives, and yet, for some reason, we have a desire. We close the gap somehow by fulfilling the desire, and then we move the goalposts, and then we keep doing that, and we're like, oh, why am I perpetually dissatisfied? And hearing your podcast with Andrew Wilkinson, the billionaire who's just like, his main conclusion from becoming a billionaire is, oh, I'm still the same, like, miserable, dissatisfied person. I've ever been, but with more money. And it's like it takes somebody who's actually like smashed that particular stream to be like, ah, maybe the answers aren't hiding behind more money or whatever. And so ultimately we defer gratification or we feel like we're suffering the most in the thing that we're most deficient in. So whether it's money or time or friendships or whatever, that's like the thing which is like the alligator at the boat. And whoever has something like that, it's like the drowning man wanting air. They feel like that is the thing which if they solve it, life would be complete. So like incel forums, they're obsessed with like, if I could just get a girlfriend, then I'd be totally fine. And the weird thing about all of this, I think when I kind of reflect on this, is that the domains of life that we have sorted and most of us like watching this. If you're watching this, hopefully you're healthy, you have access to being outside, you're not in prison, you have central heating. All this stuff, like physical health and time and family and sun and all that stuff is just fully available in abundance. But we just go, I know, but I need another two grand or I need another whatever. And so I guess the lesson is to stop moving the goalposts. Or if you do recognize that it's just a game that we're playing, but you can still recognize that you are happy right now. And all that suffering of the gap is just caused by the mind. So Felix Dennis has a book called how to Get Rich, which is. He's made it really distasteful in the way that it's branded and stuff. And he sat there like a maniacal monocle and the kind of. Because he's trying to paint this picture that you set that as the goal. And he says, I'm writing this at the age of 83 and if you're reading this book, I would swap places with you in a heartbeat because you have the one thing that I don't, which is time. And I've made my $300 million or whatever to then go and sit in a wood cabin and write poetry. And I could have done that at 30.

[Yousef]

Yeah, I had that realization. It's kind of like a nice meme. But you're already a billionaire just in an illiquid asset, which is your health. Because any billionaire, and there'll be a lot out there right now, or center millionaires that are on their deathbed would give everything for your health. Therefore, yes, you can't liquidize it yet. Maybe you will be in the future. But illiquid wealth, you're already a billionaire, which is a wild thought.

[Chris Williamson]

The insight around the thing that you desire most is the thing that you assume will fix all of your problems. I came up with this idea the other day of unteachable lessons, and I think one of the unteachable lessons is money and fame won't fix all of the problems that you have in life, because the total addressable market for more fame and more money is basically everybody. And, yeah, and Andrew Wilkinson is a billionaire. Coming on. It's so done. It's so done that when he even comes on, there's a bit of me that thinks we can't go down that road, because I know of the antibody response system on the Internet. I also know that it just doesn't. It seems to not land and maybe it wouldn't have landed with me. And it probably still doesn't land.

[George Mack]

It never does. It's. It's. As Frankl says, it's one of the three insatiable desires. Money, sex and power. And you can keep chasing them. So, I mean, Wilkinson was talking about his mate who was like a multi billionaire and was like, oh, but Jeff, he's like, really rich though, isn't he? And he was like, but what can Jeff afford that you can't? And you're like, oh, super yacht. Okay, so was it you?

[Chris Williamson]

Was it. Who was it that taught us that lesson about how when you ask people what they want their annual income to be, it's always the hill. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to tell that story? Can you remember it?

[Yousef]

Yeah. Essentially, whenever you ask somebody what would be your kind of goal income where you would stop and relax a bit more? It's basically always 2.5 to 3x where you are right now. And then as soon as you hit that, it just rebates.

[Chris Williamson]

2.5 comes rebase, like 3x 2.5x. Yeah. It's so funny, that thing going around.

[Johnny]

Social media where they ask someone, I'll give you 10 million, but you can't wake up tomorrow. Would you accept? Or like, would you want 10 million? Everyone goes, yes, yes. But then you can have 10 million, but you don't wake up in the morning, do you still want the 10 million? And everyone goes, oh, no. As you're saying, well, waking up tomorrow is worth More than 10 million. And people go, but if you really think about that, it is like, oh, right. So the most valuable thing is the Thing that I take for granted every single day, which is, I suppose it's the youth. It's like the future that you have ahead of you, but you ignore that.

[Chris Williamson]

But a lot of that as well is framing. Because you can't cash the future in right now. Like the fact that nothing is promised beyond just this moment right now. And sure, your felt sense of it as you're older, maybe you can do less. There's less you can do with this moment right now. But tomorrow at 80 and tomorrow, right now are the exact same amount of time. So beyond the health impact of it, there is no difference. The only thing is. Remember when you used to go back to school or a Monday for me, it's a good example. On a Monday for me, I go to bed on a Sunday night, I reliably have good sleep and I'm fired up for a Monday because it feels like the whole week is ahead of me. But I get to sort of a Friday or a Saturday and I have this sort of retrospective energy to me where I'm thinking about the week and then it gets to Monday morning again and I'm sort of excited and it almost feels like that. But with age, it's like there's no real reason if you can do the full non dual fucking attachment thing. There's no reason why a day now and a day in 20 years time is worth any more or any less. In fact, you should.

[George Mack]

We do it at all timeframes, don't we? Because I'm sure in our 20s we were like, oh, but the 30s and then the 40s, it's the same.

[Chris Williamson]

At some point it's gonna flip, right? At some point it's gonna be like, oh, if you're not careful about it, that you're gonna get older and start thinking wistfully about what was behind, not hopefully about what's to come.

[Johnny]

Is it multiplied by like physical ability.

[Chris Williamson]

By a big margin?

[Johnny]

Like enjoying anything is magnified when you can walk. There's no pain, there's no. You're fully mobile.

[Chris Williamson]

All right. My first one, that was fucking awesome. That was a good one too. This again from your birthday. Outcomes matter more than inputs. You've been on this flex for quite a while. It's not too dissimilar to. I look for efficiency over. I look for effectiveness over efficiency. But outcomes matter more than inputs. A lot of the time, especially as you get sort of further into black belt territory on the productivity bro optimization world, you do this sort of weird rain dance, this sort of productivity rain dance. Of lots of things that maybe you needed them previously or maybe they never served you, or maybe they did serve you, but they don't serve you now, but you keep doing them. You have these sort of odd attachments to ways of working and things that you do or members of staff or systems or processes or whatever it. And what's that quote about people working so hard and achieving so little? Who's that?

[Yousef]

Andy Grove.

[Chris Williamson]

Andy Grove. There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little. Holy fuck.

[George Mack]

Is this like, don't conflate suffering with productivity or is it more like don't get attached to old systems that got you to where you are?

[Chris Williamson]

The suffering thing is probably a part of it, but this is probably even more zoomed out than that, which is a lot of the time people focus on how hard I've worked during the day, regardless of whether it was suffering or not. It's what I did. All of this stuff, look at all of the effort that I put in. He goes, what did you do? On the back end of that? Because we've all had jobs, projects, things that we needed to finish, and the very thing that you're putting off is the most important thing that you're supposed to do. And you go, dude, I worked all day. And you go, track what you did today. You cleaned the kitchen, you had this huge email to write and you spent 45 minutes cleaning the fucking kitchen. Why'd you do that? Well, I worked really hard today and it's like, yes, yes, yes, but what were you trying to achieve? And it's also, I think, just a reminder that effectiveness is really the only thing that matters. You can continue to put your foot harder and harder and harder on the accelerator, but if you've also got your foot on the brake or if you're driving in the wrong direction, it kind of doesn't matter. So outcomes matter more than inputs, as in a lot of the time, because you're the feedback loop on when am I going to get the output is usually a little bit down the line. Maybe it's going to be tomorrow, maybe it's going to be next year, maybe it's going to be in five years time or whatever. The only thing that you can bounce off is inputs, how much work did I do today? And then, for instance, you wake up on a morning and you've slept in by three hours and immediately you feel like a piece of shit. You think I'm a piece of shit because I slept in. You go, right, okay, you're looking at such a Brief window, like the entirety of your life.

[George Mack]

But I'm in the lower quartile of.

[Chris Williamson]

The sleep regularity window. The entirety of your life. And you've taken this one moment and be like because of that one thing that I did, it's like, what if that allows you to get way more out of this week? What if this allows you to get closer to your goals much more quickly? Or what if this is just something that your body needs so that you can be happier?

[George Mack]

And then one way to guarantee that you won't get the best out of this week is if you just beat yourself up for it for the rest of the day.

[Yousef]

There's a fun idea here which is just only setting on your like to do list the biggest thing that you have to do. And sometimes it might be like 10 minutes long. I might be send an email or fire this person or put this job ad live and then just give yourself the rest of the day off. I did that for a few weeks and it was.

[Johnny]

You feel brilliant, but you also still.

[Yousef]

Have it to your point. That kind of Protestant guilt that I need to be working. Why are you not working? Even though I've achieved more than I would do by doing the most important thing, there's then just this sense of anxious. I need to be busy. I need to be busy. So that's the first one. And then the second one is.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Yousef]

If you don't know what the most important thing is, you've identified what the most important thing is. It's figuring out what the most important thing. So it's a beautiful loop.

[Johnny]

There's a really old Tim Ferriss article about this, about how he stays productive. It's called Productivity Tips for Depressive People Like Me or something like that. But there's loads of quotes in it. Like doing something well doesn't make it important. Which I think about all the time.

[Chris Williamson]

Doing something well does not make sense.

[Johnny]

Does not make an impulse.

[Yousef]

That's it.

[Johnny]

In a mean and like being busy is a form of like indiscriminate action and procrastination. Like busy people just don't know what to focus on.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, your calendar is a better indication of your wealth than your bank account.

[Johnny]

Yeah. And then write out. The practical thing is write out all of your to dos. Pick like the top three that make you most scared, then pick one of them and just do it for three hours.

[Yousef]

Beautiful.

[Johnny]

And that's how we say it's productive.

[George Mack]

What effective wrestling affairs would it be?

[Yousef]

A need to do this Fighting an.

[Chris Williamson]

Axe, legally represented presenting Lily Phillips. Jesus.

[Johnny]

It's always the thing that makes you.

[Yousef]

I wanted to be guy 100.

[Johnny]

If you look on your to do list and pick the thing you're like.

[Yousef]

Oh, so the asterisks I'd give to that you know, you mentioned then the one that will. And then do three hours on that. The key thing there is even, you know, Elon Musk's algorithm of like question every assumption and then simplify, simplify, simplify, even that I would drop off, do three hours. Because it might. The biggest thing might just be I need to break up with this person or I need to just do that thing. This flight.

[Chris Williamson]

All I need to do is Parkinson's law, the breakup out in three hours long.

[George Mack]

Right. So we've got.

[Yousef]

Or I need to book this flight to this location or I need to set up this banking.

[Johnny]

But if you've got three hours blocked out, you're definitely going to get it done, aren't you?

[Yousef]

True.

[Johnny]

I think that's the point is fence off. Don't try to be this like I'll just do 10 minutes later. I'll do like the most important thing to do today is that thing. That's all you're doing until lunch, until it's finished. But it's. No one ever does it. And people write too many things in their to do list. Don't get them done and push them over to tomorrow.

[Chris Williamson]

Sure. Do you want me to.

[Yousef]

Kind of related to this one.

[Chris Williamson]

It's.

[Yousef]

It's a good. It's a very cool one.

[Chris Williamson]

So funny how all of the hacks and all of the lessons end up. We haven't coordinated this before. No, we don't talk about doing it before.

[Yousef]

This is like a life hack slash lesson. They're both, both related. And I call it turning bullshit into reality. And I'll do the exercise with you guys. Now if I only did this every day. Whenever I've done it, I've gone. That's a great day. So we start with bullshit. What are your values? Do you have any that come to mind? And, and if you don't have like I've thought through like my values, blah, blah, that bullshit. Any values that you just immediately come to mind of things that you'd like to do more of. Johnny. There's no wrong answer.

[Johnny]

Physical challenge.

[Yousef]

Physical challenge. Yusuf.

[George Mack]

Pass.

[Yousef]

Just come on.

[Johnny]

You come on.

[Yousef]

Come on. Just give me something that you value. Like that you.

[Johnny]

Personal gratitude.

[Yousef]

I don't know.

[George Mack]

Yeah, gratitude.

[Yousef]

Gratitude. Okay, cool.

[Chris Williamson]

Adventure.

[Yousef]

Adventure. Okay. So you create an apple note and you put that Value at the top. Now you have to creatively brainstorm 10 ways you can do that. So, for example, physical challenge. It could be run. But like, run 5k. Right?

[Johnny]

Run 5k.

[Yousef]

It could. What was yours again?

[George Mack]

The gratitude trigger.

[Yousef]

Gratitude. It could be write a thank you letter to abc.

[Chris Williamson]

And yours was adventure.

[Yousef]

Adventure. It could be message, the group chat to arrange this holiday that we've been putting off. Okay, so just write down 10 and then just go through do, go through do, go through do. And you've taken this kind of esoteric bullshit value that you've always wanted to have.

[George Mack]

Next action.

[Yousef]

From neurons to atoms.

[George Mack]

That's very cool. The reason I struggle with the values thing is that I think you've got to be very cautious about what you say are your core values.

[Yousef]

You can mix those up.

[George Mack]

Yeah, but so reading Patrick Lancioni recently, and he said a lot of companies will go like, oh, yeah, we'll do our values statement. And they say, our country values honesty and integrity. And you're like, okay, but unless you value honesty above the market baseline, you don't actually value honesty. That's not one of your core values, because everyone should value honesty by baseline. So he's like, the only time you should say you have a company value is if you are actually above the market trend.

[Yousef]

Ultimately, the only thing that matters with values is, did you do the thing? Because even if you didn't think of the values, but you did the thing, then you actually valued it more than saying, I have values.

[Chris Williamson]

So even there, that's unless you whip yourself into doing a thing that you didn't want to do, and then after the fact, you didn't want to put it on this.

[Yousef]

The reason why this exercise, I think, is actually useful is because what ends up happening when you do it is it's a load of things that have been rattling around your subconscious in the shower or before you go to bed that begin to percolate someday. And as you guys know, as you mentioned earlier, as you move up levels, levels, levels, the thing that seems to happen is you get way more urgent but not still important, but not super important stuff. Whereas this is time to moving from, like, just being reactive each day to being proactive. Like, for example, the Gratitude 1. When would you really go, I'm gonna write this thank you letter? You might have been putting off this thank you letter for four years. That would take you 10 minutes to do, but with this. And then when you actually reflect on the year, it's one of the few things that you actually remember.

[George Mack]

You've also brought yourself in alignment with the person that you want to be as well. Which is quite a nice side effect too.

[Yousef]

Exactly. And then if you can just move that to another note, you just keep storing. Storing that I am that person.

[Chris Williamson]

I should we do some resolutions. I basically had this idea that coming up with resolutions for yourself a lot of the time, whatever it is, by March, some ungodly percentage of people have already stopped doing the thing they said was the most important thing at the start of the year. A good part of that is maybe habit change or behavior change is difficult to do, but maybe a bigger part of it is, well, they chose the wrong things. The stuff that I've chosen that stuck with me for the rest of my life. And I figured, I don't think I've ever seen anyone do this before. But what are the highest ROI resolutions or new habits or behavior change? Things that you've done. Simple things. Given that, you know, this is going out on Christmas Eve Eve and people are going to be thinking about it, this might actually be a nice little finger food buffet that people could go, actually, the boys said that this one really stuck. So I'm going to go with that. So have you got any?

[Johnny]

I do.

[Chris Williamson]

Cool.

[Johnny]

I. For the last. I didn't do it last year. I did like three years in a row of a version of 75 hard. Anyone ever done that before?

[Chris Williamson]

Adapted 75 hard?

[Johnny]

Just because when you look at actually 75 hard out the box, there are things in it that I think are too hard. Too hard? Far too hard? No, just there for. I think maybe slightly destructive in some ways. And also I just don't want to do.

[Yousef]

Which ones did you find?

[Johnny]

So, like training twice a day every day. I just don't think there's any. I don't think that. I think there's ways to pursue that sort of goal without those things. It's like drinking a gallon of water.

[George Mack]

Stone the adulterers.

[Chris Williamson]

It seems like an arbitrary thing.

[Johnny]

I realize it's there because it's hard, but I think the thing.

[George Mack]

Declare holy war.

[Johnny]

Not for me. The thing that's hard about it is you have to do the things that. Like the habits you set to do for 75 days in a row. And if you miss a day, you go back to the beginning. And I think just trying to do that, you realize how hard that is and how many little bullshit reasons come up and how you have to kind of go out of your way a lot of the time to tick off the box. I think it's a good lesson.

[George Mack]

Can you regale us of our friend who set himself a target of having a banana every day?

[Johnny]

Yeah. I mean, yeah. So our friend Ben, one of his things was have a banana. I think. Cause he'd read it was something to do like. Like good for bowel health. And it got to like 11 o'clock at night. He was staying in Cambridge, didn't have a banana, so was driving around Cambridge trying to find a banana. He's also like meditated. So one of his things when we were doing it was meditate an hour a day. He's meditated at a wedding before. Like gone out, left the wedding.

[Yousef]

I'm sorry. Was he the groom?

[Johnny]

Sorry. He went out and sat in the car. And sat in the car meditating in the car. Just to tick the box. I don't. It's not something to like sustain for the rest of your life, but I think you learn something about yourself when you're doing it.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, one of the problems of it is that it doesn't agree with a varied lifestyle.

[Johnny]

Exactly.

[Chris Williamson]

75 hard is brilliant for the first sort of autistic two and a half months of the year. But as soon as you get into it's wedding season. Yeah, it's like, good luck, mate. Yeah, we have to go see what our. You know, me and the boys flew to Australia. You're on a plane for 17 and a bit hours. Where's the banana? Where you couldn't plan the banana in advance. You're like, fuck it.

[Johnny]

It's more that you don't view any personal habit change or behavior change as difficult. If you've been able to stick to something for 75 days without interruption, any other change you want to make is easy.

[Chris Williamson]

So it's the meta lesson, not the individual.

[Johnny]

It's got nothing to do with the. As long as you don't pick ridiculously easy things.

[Chris Williamson]

So you would basically say that a good resolution is to do some version of 75 hard, but adapt it into stuff that you really, really value.

[Johnny]

Yeah. And it can be anything. Like anything you're trying to do but keep putting off or something you're inconsistent with.

[Chris Williamson]

Just.

[Johnny]

Just commit to it. Also doesn't have to be 75 days, but like committing to a period of time of I'm not going to miss a day. I'm going to move heaven and earth to not miss a day. And you get to. Then you're like, oh, what an achievement. Anything else would be easy.

[Chris Williamson]

Seth.

[George Mack]

Yeah, there's so many adulterers and sodomites that need stoning. And if you just commit. Where's that from? You know what it is? It's like a wispy memory from the guy who I think you spoke to, Chris, who lived the Old Testament for a year. Like, what?

[Yousef]

Jesus Christ? I thought I would have heard about that.

[George Mack]

I don't think I spoke to him.

[Johnny]

I think it's just something you've read out on Newton.

[Yousef]

Those are two very.

[George Mack]

Yeah. So he set himself different challenges each.

[Chris Williamson]

Year, Lived inside of a whale, built a big Build an ark.

[George Mack]

So he had to physically, he had to grow out his hair and like throw pebbles at sodomites and adulterers. And yet like, he basically, he tried to live like, to live the life of that, like verbatim for a year. And then his other challenge was read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and he said it really pissed off his wife because. Is this ringing a bell? No. He'd be like, did you know that the Byzantine period. She's like, ah, stop it with your trivia. But yeah, anyway, he did anything.

[Johnny]

He's somebody who did. Like early on. It was early on, they did maybe something each month for a year, a different thing each month for a year.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. But it wasn't nothing to do with that. No. He didn't build an ark and try and get two by two. Hi.

[Johnny]

It's good.

[Yousef]

Welcome back to the show. This episode today we have a man.

[Chris Williamson]

Flicking pebbles and Ms. Bummers.

[George Mack]

What a derailment. So old wisdom, the process that we use for goal setting each year is stolen from Garrett J. White, who probably stole it from someone else and. And so on.

[Chris Williamson]

It's got a lawsuit at the moment.

[George Mack]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Big style.

[George Mack]

Wow, interesting. So it's splitting your year into quarters and then splitting that into four domains of your life, body being balance and business or health, wealth, love and happiness. But I quite like the alliteration. And you then basically look at, okay, what's my three year vision directionally? Where do I want to go? What's my one year target for that? Divide that into quarters. What does each 12 week sprint look like in each of those domains? And then how can I do a weekly action or a daily action to hit a weekly checkpoint to hit that quarterly target in each domain. And it's designed so that you're not blasting it, grinding your face off with stuff, you're just turning up and just hitting a single each day so that you move towards your goal and you're fully aligned. You don't end up out of balance with overweighting. One domain of your life. So the idea is to kind of counteract people who just, like, double down on their business and they end up, like, overweight and spiritually disconnected and divorced and all this stuff. But they got the million. And so that framework's been really helpful for me. It also gives me one thing to focus on in each domain. The other big thing that's had the most impact, I think, is single tasking. For years, I drunk the Kool Aid that I can multitask and that because I've got Alfred installed and keyboard shortcuts, whatever, I can just flip between windows and tabs. And it feels more productive because your brain's like, oh, great, there's loads of things happening, but the quality of that work, the attention, residue, all that stuff isn't worth it. And so like you said about deciding what's the key thing this morning, and just blast three hours on it, blinkers on, noise canceling, headphones, whatever, and just do that one thing. And then to create a loop, a feedback loop. With that, you have something that is a visual or a tactile reminder of. This is what I'm working on right now. And it sounds like overkill, but I think our brains are so, like, scatty that we need to just be fully hemmed in and forced to focus on that one thing. So whether it's a post it note stuck on your monitor or like a floating bar that you have pinned on the top of your desktop, whatever it is saying, you are doing this right now. And then you feel like an absolute dingus if you go off task because everything's screaming like, no, no, no.

[Chris Williamson]

The only reason that you're here, the only reason you're here is to do that. That's cool. I like that. Side two. I guess you brought up sobriety, which is one of those ones that's so sort of taken for granted now that I've forgotten about it.

[Yousef]

No, that used to be quite contrarian when you first started it.

[Johnny]

I remember.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was fucking crazy.

[Yousef]

Give it five years, Old Testament will be writing.

[Johnny]

Yeah, you're getting stoned.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow. Okay, so my two highest ROI resolutions that I've done, they've stuck with me. Number one, sleep with your phone outside of your bedroom. And number two, go for a walk first thing in the morning.

[Johnny]

I've always wondered about the phone thing. Is it something specifically to do with the phone being in the bedroom or is it just next to your bed? Is it, like, the fact that it's near you and it's emitting radio waves.

[Chris Williamson]

No, no, no, no. It's just being cheeky so far away that you can't use it on a nighttime and that it's not the first thing that you do in the morning. It's basically intermittent fasting for your phone with environment design. But you just take the charger for your phone and you put it outside of your fucking bedroom. And it's like, I can't believe how many people still have. It is sapping days of sleep out of you every year. Days and days and days. Even if you've got the best relationship with your phone in the world. Because if you can't sleep, there is always the most compelling device in human history only within arm's reach. And even if it's over the other side of the room, the problem that I would encounter is I'm like, well, you know, like it's just there go, oh, I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna go downstairs into the kitchen. I'm gonna unplug it from the place that it lives where it sleeps overnight. And then also when you wake up on the morning, it's not there for. What were you saying about Mark Zuckerberg or whoever it is? You know, all of us, we open our phone and there's just bad things. What terrible thing issues?

[George Mack]

Well, that or it's Alexander's library. You say, oh, well there is Alexander's library on the other side of this room with infinite.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Whether it's framed well or badly. What's your one task now? Go to fucking sleep. So go to sleep. And then the morning walk thing, just, you know, this was something that I'd started doing, probably from some shit I'd learned from us researching things forever ago. And I just noticed that, that if I woke up and I was feeling a little nervous or sort of anxious energy or whatever, whatever I was feeling in the morning, by the time that I'd done a 15 minute walk, by the time I came back, it just felt less strong and less important. And there's all manner of huberman explanations about whatever it is, the ventral dorsal stream and you're locomoting through while you're doing lateral eye movement which downregulates the way, blah, blah, blah, it's like the midway, the guy on the left says morning walk makes me feel nice. And those two things, I think the two that but I've done in every different hotel, every different place that I've stayed, every different country that I've gone to, those are two things that I really, really Try and rely on the phone outside of the room when you're on the road is difficult. It's like plug it in in the bathroom and then go into the bedroom. But morning walk phone outside of the bedroom has been two of the highest roi.

[Johnny]

Do you still do no caffeine first thing?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah. So I'm avoiding that.

[George Mack]

Your point about Huberman is great that he's been able to pacify the midwits.

[Chris Williamson]

By providing legitimating scientifically.

[George Mack]

Yeah. For people to just follow the guy on the left stuff.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes.

[Yousef]

We have this joke that. So Huberman did a. And I do love Huedman, but he did a five part podcast with Matthew Walker on sleep and I think it was like 20 hours long. And I joke that I'd be willing to bet nobody who listens to that sleep's as good as my mate Quinny who's just like, just shut your eyes lad. You know what I mean? Like, who just doesn't overthink it.

[George Mack]

He deliberately doesn't optimize it because he's like, if I mess with it then I'm going to sleep worse if it's not.

[Yousef]

Sleep is one of those perfect examples of one of the reasons a lot of people have insomnia is trying to overthink sleep. There was a famous study where they took two groups, one that were paid to go to sleep as fast as they can and the other group that wasn't paid anything and the group that wasn't paid anything fell to sleep three times as faster as the other group. So outside of all the sleep science, the number one part of the semantic tree is don't put too much stress.

[Chris Williamson]

On yourself because then you don't take money for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's an interesting realization that you need especially now, this super rational hyper evidence based world where experts are only the people that are allowed to comment on stuff that you need someone to justify something that you already did that already made you feel good. It shouldn't be the case that I need Andrew Heumann to explain to me why the thing I do and like and is good and effective for me is something that I should do and like and is good and effective for me.

[Johnny]

So that's why I brought up caffeine. Because I'm not sure on like my personal experience of that. I'm not sure I feel much of.

[Chris Williamson]

A difference by not having the caffeine.

[Johnny]

First or having caffeine first. Yeah. And I'm sure the science will tell me differently, but I think that's a good example.

[George Mack]

You're like a heavyweight boxer that can just take slugs with caffeine.

[Johnny]

You're just like, no, I think I just. I have, like, the appropriate amount and then I stop.

[Chris Williamson]

Lots, lots.

[George Mack]

Just don't get silly with it.

[Johnny]

And not before, not after midday.

[Chris Williamson]

Good rule. Gee.

[Yousef]

So I do have one. But to go, like, meta New Year's resolutions to begin with, the first thing is to kind of question the question. So I found this stat when I was researching New Year's resolutions last year. And it's said, or it said, that 91% of New Year's resolutions fail. So, quick little thought experiment for you, Christopher. Right? Let's say you come to me and you go off, I need to get this flight to Paris. Wizz Air's gone. I go, I don't request. I've got this airline. It's got a 91 failure rate. Are you going to get on it? No. Or let's say Yousef. I know what you're like. You've been out on the town, you've been out with Mr. Old Testament, you're having fun. You've met a lovely lady. You go back to the room, you go, fuck, I've got no condoms. And you knock on my door and I go, oh, yeah, yeah, take this one. And it just says on the seal, 91% failure rate. Would you do it?

[George Mack]

No.

[Yousef]

So if something has a 91% failure rate, you have to look at it before I think you do it. So then you look at things like Alcoholics Anonymous.

[Johnny]

That seems to work. Can I just question something?

[Yousef]

Go on.

[Johnny]

I think the failure in those examples is it's like saying 91% of people fail to make the flight on time.

[George Mack]

Yeah.

[Johnny]

Or 91% of people can't get the condom on.

[Yousef]

So you've gone meta about My meta. So I've gone meta about.

[Chris Williamson]

No, no, no.

[Yousef]

We end up in infinite labs, like Sam Harris and Jor Peterson. What do you mean by truth, Johnny?

[Chris Williamson]

What do you mean by condom? Exactly.

[Yousef]

So basically, I would first look at things that actually work. So I'd look at Alcoholics Anonymous, where you have a group. So you have kind of social shame. You have a recurring theme. You have. Basically, New Year's resolutions operate like a. The psychological version of North Korea versus you kind of want to move towards Singapore. A system that actually works versus a horrific failure rate. So even small things of. Okay, whatever. The thing is, I'll sometimes do this whenever I have a deadline that I'm being a bitch about is I'll just message my mate Harry and say, hey, I'm going to bet this uncomfortable amount of money that I will do the thing. And as a result, I will do the thing. There's the scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden goes into this random shop and he finds this Asian guy behind the counter, takes him outside, gun to his head, and says, tell me what you want it to be. Raymond, Raymond, Raymond. And he's like shaking, unsure. And he goes, I want it to be a veterinarian. And he goes, if I'm. I'll come back here in 30 days. And if you're not a veterinarian, you'll be dead. You can bet that he, he didn't have a 91% failure rate. So I think, first off, questioning the question, which is pretty hardcore, but then the real soft core, nice thing that I would recommend is journaling.

[Chris Williamson]

All of that is journaling, is don't bother with.

[Yousef]

So this one is less about. It is essentially, you don't appreciate writing a journal now. It's kind of like investing in the S and P. You go, I could be doing all these activities, but a journal five years hence, the value of that is so significant. It's like, even now, if I go on a flight and I can go through exactly how I thought 10 years ago, or what I was doing, because you forget so much. And going back to your point earlier, it's just the same problems over and over again. I had a friend of mine who I think had his journal stolen. And because he left it in his suitcase that got stolen, I go, how much was that worth to you? He's like, probably like 15 or 15 or 20 of everything I have. It's so valuable. Jim O'Shaughnessy, who's one of the smartest guys I know, older gentleman, he's about 60. And he was telling me about journals he has from when he was like 21 and the value that that has to him.

[George Mack]

Have I told you about this, George? I took a journal every day from the age of 13 to 19.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow.

[George Mack]

On a Microsoft Word document. And then one day I opened it, file corrupted, just like, oh, well.

[Yousef]

Did you never back it up?

[George Mack]

No, I was like, well, that's the end of that.

[Johnny]

And just stopped not backing up that up is the least you thing ever, or is that where it started?

[George Mack]

This was when I was transitioning Windows to Mac, so it was in that. However, I've still got the file, so I could maybe uncorrupt it now with modern, modern technology.

[Yousef]

I'd Be able to like whether it's. You do this very well. You take a lot of photos, videos. I don't do that. That I'm trying to do it more, but more photos, more videos, more journals. Because the value of it is so significant.

[Johnny]

10, 20, day one. Day one. Yeah. You can use, you can leave audio messages, you can photos, videos.

[Chris Williamson]

Geez. Big Apple notes for everything.

[Yousef]

Apple one size, guy on the left, Apple Notes. It's frictionless.

[Chris Williamson]

One size fits all. Should we do. What have you got left? Should we do one more round of life Hacks. What have we got?

[George Mack]

I've got a lesson and a fail.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Johnny]

I have a lesson.

[Yousef]

Are we doing fails?

[Chris Williamson]

Uh, we can do. Let's do, let's do another lesson and then we'll see where we come in at.

[Johnny]

Okay.

[Chris Williamson]

You got another lesson?

[George Mack]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Beautiful.

[George Mack]

So I'll take the potato.

[Chris Williamson]

You're up. Potato.

[Johnny]

Oh, you're potato. And me. Yeah, you looked at him, but you.

[Chris Williamson]

It's all on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Johnny]

Trying to find the microplate equivalent in happiness.

[Chris Williamson]

What's a microplate?

[Johnny]

Microplate, it's a plate that's less than 2.5 kilos usually. So it's like half a kilo, 0.25 of a kilo. So when I was doing powerlifting, you realize really quickly that 200 kilos, when that's your one rep max, that feels the same as 210, feels the same as 220. It's just always your one rep max. But what makes it engaging is the fact that it's slightly more than you did last week, last month, last year. And I think whenever you go the steroids equivalent in anything, there's just always the debt to pay in hindsight. So in business again, like most of our lessons are business wise, we grew really fast and you're like, fantastic. This really steady growth rate and then like 300% and you think, phenomenal, like, next thing, next thing. But actually, like going back, I'd have taken a way slower growth rate year in, year out because the experience is way better. And finding the like, just take the pb, just take the extra rep, just take the extra kilo week in, week out. Because for me, I think the only thing that matters is the feeling that you're making some kind of progress, something's moving in the right direction. It doesn't actually matter what the absolute number is because now we're further on. It's harder to find the half a kilo than if we just thought, hang on a minute, this is growing way Too quickly. Let's slow down.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm gonna have to leapfrog ahead of you because it's my lesson and your podcast. True. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trajectory is more important than position, which is a Jimmy Carr ism. But that being number 300 in the world but last year being 350 feels better than being number two in the world. But last year being number one because you're so tightly attuned to what is the direction that I'm on, not what is my absolute position. Happiness is relative. It's not absolute. And yeah, I spoke to, weirdly enough, got this theory co signed by Dan Bilzerian before he went all anti Semitic Old Testament Dan. Old Testament Dan, that's what he calls himself, Old T Dan. I basically said like he sort of gone to the top of the hedonic mountain, so to speak. In some ways, do you wish that you'd dragged out that progress a little bit more because it would have allowed you to have had more places to go to that basically every new record you set, especially big step changes in terms of success, is just a new higher bar for you to now. So what you would say success isn't more success isn't a better vantage point to have a view from. It's a higher point to fall from. And it becomes increasingly difficult to get those, you know, to improve your lifts when you're first going to the gym by 5% is maybe 5 kilos. But after a couple of years in the gym, it's a significantly larger amount. It is significantly higher level of pressure. So yeah, trajectory more important than position.

[George Mack]

So Chris Sparks ism as well, direction over speed.

[Johnny]

Oh, is it?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. I don't know whether that's quite the same.

[George Mack]

Trajectory over position.

[Chris Williamson]

Trajectory is more important than position in that your growth is more important than your absolute location.

[George Mack]

Obviously that's housed within direction over speed.

[Johnny]

So going from a 220 deadlift to a 225 deadlift versus a 395 to a 400 kilo deadlift, it feels the.

[George Mack]

Same as opposed to.

[Johnny]

But it's way harder to operate at.

[George Mack]

The higher level as opposed to like.

[Chris Williamson]

Like I want to get stronger and also the 400. So James Smith says all wins feel the same, but there's no uber surcharge for going 395 to 400 versus going 210 to 250.

[Johnny]

Any revenue level, any bank account number, it's all dopamine's dopamine, isn't it?

[Yousef]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

So the problem is, are you suggesting that you purposefully Throttle, Yes.

[Johnny]

How it's difficult but like anytime you notice yourself progressing in something, just accept a slower rate. Cause everyone's always trying to make things faster. They're always trying to get leaner quicker, get bigger quicker, make more money faster. Like that's the world, right? But just look, accept the smaller rate of growth or the smaller rate of progress.

[Yousef]

How do you, to Chris's point, how do you do that now? Are you intentional of go, okay, I want 15% this year and then I'm capping just 15.

[Johnny]

Just aim for a steady improvement in something rather than going for big targets. Obviously I don't have all of the answers.

[Chris Williamson]

Jorge.

[Johnny]

I'm sorry.

[Chris Williamson]

Existentially very difficult as a concept because you would take.

[Johnny]

If I offered you 200% growth in something, you would probably your immediate response would be like, yeah.

[George Mack]

That's why in business Gino Wickman talks about having growth phases and then consolidation phases where rather than just like, because if you spam the growth in scale, you're going to end up with un rickety foundations. Whereas if you take some time, you go, actually I'm just going to focus on internal growth for a while and solidify the foundations before the next sprint. You're going to create a more sustainable.

[Johnny]

You just always have to pay the debt off, don't you? Yeah, always.

[Chris Williamson]

Good insight. Nice.

[George Mack]

Seth, have you ever had a chat with someone who says that they want a goal and then you start giving them solutions and they'll keep coming up with rotating reasons and excuses for not doing it. So this is I think a novelism. Correct me if I'm wrong, if information was all that was needed, we would all be billionaires with perfect apps. So something I've really learned over the last couple of years is there is somebody's actual goal and then there is the story that they tell themselves about what they think their goal is. And often it's not the same. Someone's actions versus their words. So George got me a book a few years ago called the Courage to Be Disliked and it's basically a summary written by parable about Adler versus Freud. So Adler was one of Freud's contemporaries and he's kind of the lesser known, you know, Freud, Jung, Adler, like those kind of original psychologists, his view is the teleological view rather than the etiological view. So Freud's view is something happened to me when I was a child and it's caused me to behave like this. So past event produces current behavior. Adler is the teleological view which is future goal impacts Current behaviour. So the example given is somebody is always getting rejected by people and they've made themselves repulsive to other people so that they can tell themselves the story that, oh, no one likes me and everyone finds me whatever. But the goal baked into that, the hidden payoff of that belief is that it keeps them safe because they can reject themselves before other people can reject them. So they construct a certain identity that allows them to fulfill that goal and meet the payoff. So we run a program to help people grow their business in a specific niche. But quite often you'll see that the more barriers and the more guardrails you put up to make failure absolutely impossible, what's happening is you're kind of backing someone into a corner where it's like you're removing the technological friction, you're removing the blueprint friction, you're removing the what to do and how to do it, and the process until suddenly there's nothing left but you as the bottleneck. And so you mentioned this with GPT. I'm glad you did. Which is that now we have infinite access to the best computational models working at super PhD level and all information at our fingertips, and people haven't suddenly become infinitely more productive. All it's done is take away another excuse and another objection to the point where you're like, now it really is just me. And so someone's willingness to actually show up and do the thing is still always going to be the final frontier.

[Chris Williamson]

How would you summarize that lesson overall?

[George Mack]

What people tell themselves the goal is, isn't always the goal. So look at actions versus behavior and don't think that you just have an information bottleneck and that'll. That'll solve everything.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, I guess it's weird to think how can you say that you value a thing if your actions show no indication?

[George Mack]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Actions versus words in that way. Yeah.

[Johnny]

Look at your calendar to find your priorities.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. It's all shit that we learned fucking 10 years ago.

[Johnny]

10 years ago?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Johnny]

Then now you're like, oh yeah, G.

[Chris Williamson]

Lessons or life hack or lesson please.

[Yousef]

Okay. Have we got more after this or is this the final one?

[Chris Williamson]

Last one.

[Yousef]

Okay, cool. I'll try and get through as much as I can. So first one is going back to Old Testament for a second. Is this the Socratic method? So one thing I would do.

[George Mack]

What do you mean by that, George?

[Chris Williamson]

There we go.

[Yousef]

Matter about met. What do you mean? What do you mean by truth?

[Chris Williamson]

What do you mean by Socratic?

[Yousef]

What do you mean exactly? So one thing that I would typically do being an idiot is whenever somebody would say something I disagree with, I would just stop listening to what they're saying and then just start processing the dunk I'm about to do in my head. And then as soon as they stop talking, I'm dunking, but I'm noticing they're just doing the same thing. So now just rather than disagreeing with people, just asking questions, and not only do you actually not necessarily ruin relationships or have emotional issues with other people, you actually also sometimes change their mind quite a lot as well. So, like one example, I was in the car and I was with a friend of mine and he was telling me about how he has his current job and he would like to work remote, but there's not that many remote jobs out there. So my immediate like dunk on brain goes, hold on. I hire people in these roles all the time. I can pull up these numbers. What are you on about? I said, okay. I was like. So I say, here's a question. How many kind of in person jobs do you think there are in your town?

[Johnny]

He's like, I don't know.

[Yousef]

If you just had to guess. It's like, I don't know, 10,000.

[Johnny]

Okay, okay.

[Yousef]

And then how many remote jobs do you think there are in the world? And he just paused for a bit and he goes, yeah, you might be right. Versus if I would have tried letting them come write the code in their own head. And being a. Seeing behind the scenes, Socrates calls it being a midwife. That you're helping them give birth to the new idea rather than trying to push it into them is a. Is a big thing. And then the other one. So I've been quite fascinated by doom loops this year. So a doom loop would be, I'm feeling anxiety. Why am I being anxious? Why are you criticizing yourself for being anxious? And it's just anxiety. You get anxious about your anxiety, which leads to more anxiety and it's boom, boom, boom, or why am I so depressed? And so you have the initial stimuli that's kind of. You don't really control. And then it's your reaction to that and getting a little bit deeper into meditation. This year, there were two things that I found useful. One is to I caught the Pilkington fork. So Carl Pilkington, who the philosopher K. Pilkington once said he's telling a story to Gervais about when he got mugged in the center of town. Some guys came over to him and like, give me your phone. And usually there's two ways you react to that. It's like punching them or it's like running away.

[George Mack]

Yeah, sure, sure.

[Yousef]

And he goes, but I love this phone. He goes, it's my favorite thing. And he starts, like, being very strange. He goes, how are you, by the way? He goes, we've met before. And just, like, completely freaks them out that he doesn't know how to react, the mugger. And he just walks away. So using that on my own brain. So if I get super. If I get. Well, there's a few things. One, asking my brain, what's the next thought you're gonna have? And it just stops. And then sometimes a random thing will appear. And then you go, well, was that me? Cause I didn't try and bring that up. So you have this natural detachment as well as when I hear anxiety. So let's say I'm anxious about an event I've got going up. And then I'll start go, fuck, am I being anxious? And I go, ah, I get it. I get why you're anxious. And it all of a sudden, because you've not had the cortisol reaction to the cortisol. It kind of the Pilkington fork occurs and you break out. So those are. Those are my two ones.

[Chris Williamson]

Awesome. Yeah. I think I called them second order emotions.

[Yousef]

Oh, I like that.

[Chris Williamson]

That, like, infinite regress of resentment at your frustration about your bitterness about your anxiety. Yeah.

[Yousef]

Final one, because we did it. You guys might like this. From a business perspective, my friend Harry, dry, phenomenal human being, he gave me this nugget, which is positioning is arranging information in the customer's head. So I'll do it again. Positioning is arrange. I'm arranging. You see, I'm arranging meta again.

[Johnny]

Right.

[Yousef]

Positioning is arranging information in the customer's head. So example would be loom used to be record your screen. Record your screen record. Whereas then they didn't change the product, they just changed the positioning. How it was structured in the customer's head to removing meetings, and it explodes and separated from the rest of the competition. And then I thought, okay, frame is how you arrange information in your own head. And frame itself is. Positioning is completely underlooked. And frame is completely underlooked as well.

[Johnny]

That was brilliant. Cheers, mate.

[Chris Williamson]

You're on fire, man.

[Johnny]

I feel like the information's been arranged differently in my head.

[Yousef]

I feel we've got so much energy, we need to go to the local mns and just throw stones at people.

[Chris Williamson]

I actually, that was exactly what was next. It's that and then chicken, boys. I love you. All. I appreciate you too.

[Yousef]

Merry Christmas.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm sad that we don't get to spend as much time together as we used to. No fails. Why don't we save. Why don't we save them for next year?

[George Mack]

Let's save a fail for next year.

[Chris Williamson]

We can keep everyone coming back, but. No, I really do. I'm so happy and so proud of what all of you have done. It's fucking fire. It's great.

[George Mack]

Likewise.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm glad that you're in my life. Even though we're apart from each other Other hundred percent.

[George Mack]

What a year it's been as well.

[Johnny]

What a year.

[Chris Williamson]

Fire. Ladies and gentlemen, Merry Christmas. See you next time. Get away. Get.