Best Wearables, Travel Hacks & Training Tips - Life Hacks 206 | Modern Wisdom Podcast 398

1. 0:00 – 0:44

   Intro

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      ... a lot of the time, you arrive somewhere, realize that they don't have the same plug that you do, and that you don't have enough converter plugs. You just need one converter plug and a multi-socket to take with you. So, I now have a eight-gang, five-meter multi-socket that lives in my suitcase, and then you just need a single converter, and that's eight plugs that you can use.

   2. JOJonny0:21

      I bet someone listening to this will message in and say that that is not a safe thing to do.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:27

      I've done it for ages.

   4. JOJonny0:28

      That doesn't mean it's safe. (laughs)

   5. YUYusef0:29

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson0:29

      I've not had any problems. I don't know what you're talking about.

   7. JOJonny0:32

      It might as well.

   8. YUYusef0:32

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson0:32

      I've not encountered... N- N of one here has bro-scienced his way through all of these issues. (wind blowing) I am going to Texas for a while.

2. 0:44 – 10:35

   Chris is Going to Texas

   1. CWChris Williamson0:45

   2. JOJonny0:45

      (sighs)

   3. CWChris Williamson0:46

      This Friday. (laughs)

   4. YUYusef0:49

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson0:49

      Uh, I'm gonna fly to Austin and spend a few weeks out there, which is going to be fun because the last 18 months have basically been the same day lived over and over again. I- I elected to essentially extend my quarantine because I created a routine that I haven't been able to get myself back out of. Even though the rest of the world opened back up, I just stuck to the same, (laughs) same thing.

   6. YUYusef1:11

      Yeah. I think the three of us, like, we, we have just lived the same day. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson1:15

      (laughs) Yeah, 18 months.

   8. JOJonny1:16

      Over and over again.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:18

      I just need to break it, man. So, yeah, I'm, uh, I'm gonna go to Austin.

   10. YUYusef1:22

       I, for some reason, when I imagine you in Austin, you just always have the, the cowboy hat in my head. I don't know-

   11. CWChris Williamson1:28

       You think I'm going to appropriate Austin, uh, Texan culture very quickly?

   12. YUYusef1:31

       Yeah, like holsters.

   13. JOJonny1:33

       Immediately.

   14. YUYusef1:33

       Leather holsters and big, like, snakeskin boots and those kind of suede trunks.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:37

       Massive belt buckle.

   16. YUYusef1:39

       Yep.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:40

       Asking, "Why?"

   18. JOJonny1:42

       (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson1:42

       And, "What?"

   20. YUYusef1:44

       "What, where, who, and why."

   21. JOJonny1:46

       Where, who... Just become Frank Underwood from House of Cards.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:51

       Was he from Texas?

   23. JOJonny1:52

       I think he's supposed to be. There's like a, an undertone of Texas accent.

   24. YUYusef1:57

       Something about him, he... When that scandal went on and he just doubled down.

   25. CWChris Williamson2:03

       What, and then he got... He privately, like, created his own DVD extra.

   26. JOJonny2:10

       Oh, yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson2:10

       For anyone that doesn't know what we're talking about, the guy that plays Frank Underwood, who is called...

   28. JOJonny2:14

       Kevin Spacey.

   29. CWChris Williamson2:15

       Kevin Spacey. He, after 18 months, after a huge scandal got released that was the reason-

   30. JOJonny2:21

       (clears throat)
3. 10:35 – 20:36

   Bar Velocity Trackers, Photo Digitisation & Free ASOS Delivery

   1. JOJonny10:35

      I, I think I have one of the, it's the leas- the list I'm least excited to share. How's that for luring everyone's interest?

   2. YUYusef10:41

      What are those, Jonny?

   3. CWChris Williamson10:41

      Really, really just wind us up. Let us go. Come on.

   4. JOJonny10:47

      So a few of mine are a bit niche. I don't know whether that's okay.

   5. CWChris Williamson10:52

      Hit us.

   6. JOJonny10:53

      So the one I've wanted to be, one I've wanted to be ... one I've wanted to share for a while, which is very niche, and I think Chris might laugh at, is a bar velocity tracker. Have I shared this before?

   7. CWChris Williamson11:07

      No. But I know that you talk about it, so-

   8. JOJonny11:09

      So it's, I, I guess for anybody who ... I mean any Olympic lifting and certainly any power lifters, anyone who tracks their tra- their trading in the gym, this is a, a little black device, a little black piece of plastic, I think they're 3D printed, they're really weird looking things, made by a company called Rep1. You attach this wire to a, to a barbell. It ma- magnetically attaches to a plate or to the power rack or whatever, and it basically just measures what the bar is doing in space. It tells you how fast the bar is moving. Um, the nice thing about it is, firstly, you can predict what you can do, which is really cool. So you can, you know what weight you'd be able to lift on a certain day. But also it's just another way of tracking progress, because anybody who's been training for any length of time knows that it does, it does get harder and harder over time to just keep adding weight to the bar. But you can just get a 0.05 speed improvement over time. So they are quite expensive. It's probably something that-

   9. CWChris Williamson12:07

      How much is it?

   10. JOJonny12:08

       ... unless you're ... I think they're about 300, it's $350. So it depends on the exchange rate at the time.

   11. CWChris Williamson12:13

       And what's the app like?

   12. JOJonny12:14

       Um-... really good.

   13. CWChris Williamson12:16

       Interface is pretty slick.

   14. JOJonny12:18

       Yeah, I mean, it's a really small company so there, there's normally a, like a backlog, you have to wait for them. Um, but if you can get your hands on one and you care about anything like this, I think I've probably... I was thinking about this the other day, it'll be into the thousands of reps that I've tracked with it now.

   15. CWChris Williamson12:32

       Wow.

   16. JOJonny12:33

       So it, it's, it's pretty like, if I... I'll do a warm-up set and it, with pretty good accuracy can predict what I can do on that day.

   17. CWChris Williamson12:42

       Wow.

   18. JOJonny12:42

       So I just don't have to think about it anymore.

   19. CWChris Williamson12:43

       That's crazy.

   20. JOJonny12:44

       So it's cool.

   21. CWChris Williamson12:45

       So is that a-

   22. YUYusef12:45

       It's worth paying for these things.

   23. CWChris Williamson12:46

       Do you use it-

   24. YUYusef12:47

       Like-

   25. CWChris Williamson12:47

       ... as kind of a gauge for RPE?

   26. JOJonny12:50

       Yeah, so I do what you're not really supposed to do, which is I kind of now ignore RPE and I just look at the bar speed. 'Cause I know like over time if I do something and it's... If I do a bench and it's naught 0.21 meters per second, that's an, that's an RPE 8. So I just look at the bar speed.

   27. CWChris Williamson13:06

       Fuck, man.

   28. JOJonny13:07

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson13:07

       This is so cool. Like this is post-RPE, RPE.

   30. JOJonny13:12

       But you're not sup- so, so my coach tells me off for it. You're not supposed to do that, you're supposed to still have like a feel element but like everyone's been under a, a barbell where subjectively it looks really hard and you might like, maybe someone... you stand up and someone goes, "Oh, that looked really easy." And you're like, "It wasn't really easy." So I think you lose some of the, the ability to actually measure it when you... it's happening to you. But if, if you just rely on the, the speed of it then it can be, it can be very humbling 'cause like you go into a g- into the gym, you don't wanna train and your warm-up set was faster than last week and you're like, "Oh, for God's sake, like here w- here we go."
4. 20:36 – 33:10

   Buy Monthly, Toilet Tablets & Eat Sandwiches While Shopping

   1. JOJonny20:36

      so mine, this next one is I think the opposite of what Yusuf does for everything in this category, which is-

   2. CWChris Williamson20:43

      I already love it.

   3. JOJonny20:44

      ... to sign up... When you're signing up for a service or an app or anything like that-

   4. CWChris Williamson20:49

      Ugh.

   5. JOJonny20:50

      (laughs) to do it monthly and never get the bulk, um, option. Reason being, when you get billed every month, it's a prompt and a reminder of like, "Am I still using this?" So you're always using the fewest things because it's happened to me once before where you just get hit with an Apple bill of like 39.99. You're like, "What? What on earth is that?" And then you realize it's a, like an annual subscription you signed up to a year ago and you kind of don't really use the app anymore. Well, that's... And that sort of thing. So anything that you, anything that you use-

   6. CWChris Williamson21:24

      What are some examples of these things that you've got on monthly?

   7. JOJonny21:27

      So anything... So like, so ROMWOD is probably the, the, the best example of this. Like, I signed up for that initially yearly because I was like... I was using it all the time. Yusuf told me that I was gonna snap my back if I continue using... Not, not really. But like all the stuff k-... You guys were chatting to S- Stu McGill and it was a bad idea and all that sort of stuff. Stopped using it, and I still had like eight months of the year left. Right? So that's an ex- that's an example. So anything, um... Just any, any app. The oth- I suppose the only exceptions are stuff that you are absolutely sold that you are not going to stop using.

   8. CWChris Williamson22:01

      Yeah.

   9. JOJonny22:01

      So something like Netflix, for example, or Amazon.

   10. CWChris Williamson22:03

       Can you pay that yearly? I f- I feel like you can only pay that monthly.

   11. JOJonny22:06

       Probably not. That might... (laughs) Yeah, prob- probably not. Amazon Prime you can pay yearly, for example. So-

   12. YUYusef22:11

       I think I agree with that. Like-

   13. JOJonny22:13

       Oh, do you?

   14. YUYusef22:13

       ... the, the only thing that I, that I do is put in a... So as soon as I sign up for anything, if I'm not sure I'm going to keep it, I'll just put in a reminder in my TickTick, command, shift, O.

   15. JOJonny22:24

       Yeah.

   16. YUYusef22:25

       Like five days before, g- give myself a bit of grace period. Not like the day of-

   17. CWChris Williamson22:29

       Oh, the day.

   18. YUYusef22:29

       ... that it's got to renew, because otherwise like if you don't catch it-

   19. CWChris Williamson22:31

       Yeah.

   20. YUYusef22:32

       ... immediately-

   21. CWChris Williamson22:33

       You're fucked.

   22. YUYusef22:33

       ... you're going down.

   23. JOJonny22:34

       Because with a lot of apps, there's the, the clause of like if you log into it after the subscription's come out, they don't... Like, Apple have a really strict refund policy and stuff like that.

   24. YUYusef22:43

       That's like, well, you, you knew about it for a year, so why is it suddenly an emergency?

   25. JOJonny22:46

       Yeah. And I... And it g- I agree as well. Like that's what I would say. Like you don't wait till the day after you get billed to go, "Oh, I want to cancel."

   26. YUYusef22:53

       A year later.

   27. CWChris Williamson22:54

       The vast majority of apps as well that you use, they do have a, a shelf life. You get bored after a while or you feel like you pick up all the low hanging fruit from this breathwork membership or whatever.

   28. JOJonny23:05

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson23:05

       Optimize.me, Brian's thing. We've all been through that. Or a Blinkist membership or-

   30. JOJonny23:10

       Mm-hmm.
5. 33:10 – 44:14

   Percy Pig Ice Cream, Apple Notes Update & Setting Your Price

   1. JOJonny33:10

      so I wasn't going to say this one, but this is... It's not really a life hack, it's more just a nice thing that you can also get from M&S that's Percy Pig themed, which is Percy Pig ice cream, which has better macros. Well, it's lower calorie than or s- same ballpark as Halo Top. So it could come in huge vats and it's got like marshmallows and raspberry sauce and vanilla and strawberry ice cream.

   2. CWChris Williamson33:38

      It's pink, isn't it?

   3. JOJonny33:38

      Like pink and white swirls. But it's really like-

   4. YUYusef33:41

      What, what's the overall flavor?

   5. JOJonny33:44

      Vanilla and strawberry, I would say.

   6. CWChris Williamson33:47

      So I had... When I snapped my Achilles last year, my friend Adam came around and delivered me something from M&S that was ice cream in a pink tub and it was bright pink. It wasn't swirly, but I, I swear it was...

   7. YUYusef34:02

      (laughs)

   8. JOJonny34:02

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson34:02

      I swear it was Percy Pig.

   10. YUYusef34:04

       It wasn't swirly?

   11. CWChris Williamson34:04

       It wasn't as swirly.

   12. JOJonny34:05

       So they... They... It's evolved over time. So-

   13. CWChris Williamson34:07

       Oh, have I maybe got the wrong type?

   14. JOJonny34:09

       You'd have got like the beta Percy Pig, the shit one.

   15. CWChris Williamson34:14

       (sighs) Because that was awful.

   16. JOJonny34:15

       Did you like it?

   17. CWChris Williamson34:15

       I couldn't even... I, no, it was fucking terrible. I was about to fight you.

   18. JOJonny34:20

       Did it, did it taste like Percy Pigs?

   19. CWChris Williamson34:22

       Mm. No, it just tasted, it just tasted like frozen sugar. Frozen sugar mixed with, mixed with strawberry milk. It was awful.

   20. JOJonny34:30

       But is that not like broadly... I mean, I'm not-

   21. CWChris Williamson34:33

       No, I've got a sweet tooth. I've got a sweet tooth, man. I'll, I'll tell you if something's nice when it's sweet and that was fucking shit.

   22. JOJonny34:39

       (laughs) But you don't like Halo Top, do you?

   23. CWChris Williamson34:41

       Yeah, I'm fine with Halo Top. I prefer Moophoria.

   24. JOJonny34:44

       Oh, well, yeah. Who... I mean, who doesn't?

   25. CWChris Williamson34:47

       Ben & Jerry's Moophoria.

   26. JOJonny34:48

       That, I mean, that... Yeah, I mean, we could, we could, could do a life hacks on just sweet foods, I think. Moophoria is brilliant.

   27. CWChris Williamson34:54

       Uh, so you're saying Percy Pigs ice cream?

   28. JOJonny35:00

       It's Percy... So it's like a... It's a hidden low calorie ice cream is, is the, the hack. So you would never assume, "I'm going to go to M&S and get some Percy Pig ice cream." Like, you immediately think that is going to be this like decadent, super high calorie thing. It's actually on par with Halo. It doesn't have the protein content, but like, I don't think that's why you're eating the ice cream in the first place. So, you can have... I mean, I have eaten an entire tub of this stuff before and it is... You're very mechanically full by the end of this.

   29. CWChris Williamson35:28

       (laughs)

   30. JOJonny35:29

       It's, uh, about like 600 calories.
6. 44:14 – 59:09

   Prioritise Clearing Your Inbox, Cordless Vacuum Cleaners & Video Introductions

   1. JOJonny44:14

      like we've probably said this, but I've had this on my life hacks list for ages. It's may, might be something you both do, but I'd be interested to hear your answer to it. I feel like the cornerstone of a day, if I, like, feel like I'm on top of stuff or I'm not on top of stuff, the difference, the thing that I do that helps me feel on top of stuff is empty my OmniFocus inbox to zero. So, I like throw stuff in it all the time, and it, it just builds and builds and builds and builds. And there'll be like little things that I assume are tomorrow I'll empty my inbox and I'll, I'll do that thing and it'll take me a couple of minutes, I'll send that message or whatever. As long as I zero that, everything's fine. (laughs) If I don't zero it, firstly, I lose trust in the whole process. And secondly, I just miss things, things get pushed back. So that, the hack is just, if you follow any kind of like GTD, getting things done, capture process, I think the even more important habit is, don't let things fester in your in- in your inbox for more than, more than a day.

   2. YUYusef45:25

      When you say you're doing that, is that you go through and just do the items, or you put them into the relevant-

   3. JOJonny45:31

      Well, that's the ex-

   4. YUYusef45:31

      ... list or schedule?

   5. JOJonny45:32

      So the process of like, if it's a less than two-minute thing, just do it. So it's like, send this message or reply to this or send this to someone. Uh, or in OmniFocus, which is obviously the, the best app available, you would put it in the correct project. So you're like, get it out of the inbox. So you, oh, okay, this needs to be done this week. I'll allocate it to a day. This needs to be done on a date. This, I need to be reminded about this in a month. It needs to be just put in a project, I'll review it later. But it needs to be like put in the appropriate place. But, like by, by just going through the inbox, the number of ... you end, you end up having done like eight things, that are like little bitty things that you probably wouldn't set time aside to do. But if you have the task of, "Well, every day I zero it," then you end up doing it anyway.

   6. CWChris Williamson46:13

      So is the inverse of this most bad days occur because of an overflowing inbox of small tasks that haven't been moved into their right places?

   7. JOJonny46:22

      Yeah, I think just like a, I mean, obviously, nothing's different. Like I just haven't done some things. But I think I f- you know when you f- you just feel like you have this mounting list of like little bitty stuff that you, that you forget or you're more likely to forget stuff when someone tell, gives you something else to do and you already feel behind. Um, if that list's like 30 things, which it, I mean, I don't even know how I do it. Like, I, I will easily get 20 or 30 things in that list a day, just from little bits that like, someone will say something or get an email and forward it to that or whatever. Um, so, do you both do that or not? And if not, why not?

   8. CWChris Williamson46:59

      (laughs) So my, my OmniFocus use is less sophisticated than yours. Mine tends to not be, I don't tend to have things that are more than a couple of days out. And if I do, they're just in. So I'll tend to just get, get tasks and do them as they come, 'cause most of them are less than two minutes. And the only big things that I need to do are general weekly big routine tasks. So, I, I don't usually have big chunks in my inbox that fester. But I certainly notice that when I have a, I haven't done a weekly review, it's, it's an ugly, it's an ugly situation down there.

   9. JOJonny47:37

      Mm-hmm. Just don't want to look at it.

   10. CWChris Williamson47:39

       No.

   11. JOJonny47:40

       But if I said to you, like, for example, um, "Chris, you should watch Invasion on Apple TV, 'cause you'd really like it."

   12. CWChris Williamson47:48

       Should I?

   13. JOJonny47:48

       Well, y- yeah. We'll talk about that. I imag- are we gonna do a quick round at the end with TV? You should watch Invasion on Apple TV. It's brilliant. Would you not put that in OmniFocus? Or would you put it somewhere else? Would you not have a place to put it?

   14. CWChris Williamson48:00

       Probably wou- yeah, I probably wouldn't have a, a, a place to put it. Stuff that's that recreational doesn't tend to go in OmniFocus.

   15. JOJonny48:08

       Oh, I just have a list of stuff, like stuff that people recomme- it was, this was Yusuf's idea, I think.

   16. CWChris Williamson48:12

       Yeah. I needed to-

   17. JOJonny48:13

       And then you put in brackets who, who-

   18. YUYusef48:15

       The, the Jeff Bezos South Park episode.

   19. JOJonny48:19

       Still on my list. (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson48:22

       Like Kabuki Movement Systems?

   21. YUYusef48:24

       Yeah.

   22. JOJonny48:25

       Kabuki ... (laughs) Yeah, it's, it's my-

   23. YUYusef48:25

       Like that.

   24. JOJonny48:26

       That is my Kabuki Movement Systems, that-

   25. YUYusef48:28

       Well, that's what started the whole thing, 'cause I was like, "Jonny, you need to watch the South Park episode." This was about 18 months ago. (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson48:34

       Yeah.

   27. JOJonny48:34

       ... see what else is on there from Yousef. S- Stu McGill's Mental Models for Success, Millennials, Simon Sinek-

   28. CWChris Williamson48:42

       Oh.

   29. JOJonny48:42

       ... Stephen Fry on the US versus UK humor.

   30. YUYusef48:45

       It's weird hearing these because it's like, "Oh, yeah, ............................"
7. 59:09 – 1:13:41

   Wearable Tech, Summary Emails & Multi-sockets

   1. CWChris Williamson59:09

   2. JOJonny59:09

      Great success. This is another niche one, but it's a, for anyone in the niche, it's a banger of a, of a hack. And it's also time-sensitive. So when is this getting released?

   3. CWChris Williamson59:18

      Uh, probably in a week's time.

   4. JOJonny59:20

      Okay. So if anybody owns Ping golf clubs of anything that is, that qualifies, they, I mean, I got tremendously excited about this and you'll see why. They are giving away for free, this company called Arccos, uh, sell, sell these things that you screw into the end of your club and it collects loads of data on, like, all your shots and how far they go and all this sort of stuff. They sell for, like, 250 quid or maybe more than that, like closer to 300 quid. And if you have Ping golf clubs, you can get some for free, completely for free. And all you do is put the serial number in from your golf club on the website, and they send you them for free. Mine just arrived today. Fantastic. So if you're into that sort of thing, if you play golf and you have Ping golf clubs, I think you only need like one club that qualifies. You get a full set. So you get like 250 quid's worth of stuff completely for free.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00:12

      Wow. So this is, you've got bar tracker and club head tracker as well.

   6. JOJonny1:00:16

      Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, so it doesn't quite do the same thing, which is a bit of a shame. But, um, it's like the, um... I think you sort of put it like the, the version one tech of this sort of thing.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:00:28

      So how many trackers do you get 'cause you've put one Ping club in and how many have they sent you?

   8. JOJonny1:00:32

      Uh, so you get 14, so you get a full bag.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:00:35

      Wow.

   10. JOJonny1:00:35

       So you get one for your putter, one for every club. And then you get an app that tracks it all and makes sense of all the data.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:00:40

       And what does it do? What's this for? Like club head speed and stuff like that?

   12. JOJonny1:00:44

       So, so like it'll... Let's say you play a hole in golf. You'll...... like, tee off, and you take your fairway shot, then you, like, chip and putt. It knows that all of that's happened, so it tracks a number of shots.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:00:54

       Well, I mean, that, that's, that's kind of pointless because you know that it's happened.

   14. JOJonny1:00:57

       But, but it tells you how far each club's gone. It tells you, when you hit your driver, you... 50% of the time it goes slightly left, 50% of the time it goes on the fairway.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:01:04

       How does it know where the ball is?

   16. JOJonny1:01:06

       'Cause you have to walk to the ball.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:01:07

       Oh, so it GPSes from position-

   18. JOJonny1:01:10

       So launch-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:01:11

       ... one to position two.

   20. JOJonny1:01:12

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:01:12

       And then-

   22. JOJonny1:01:12

       So it picks up like, "Oh, he's hit that club. Now he's walked here. Now he's hit the next club." So log clu- I mean, I assume-

   23. CWChris Williamson1:01:18

       Yeah.

   24. JOJonny1:01:18

       ... log club one as, "Went this far." It just gives you all... It g- it, it then summarize it as, "Here are three things that you're bad at. Here are three things that you need to double down on after each round."

   25. CWChris Williamson1:01:29

       Wow.

   26. JOJonny1:01:30

       I, I just think it's, it's, it's the way that, like, probably all sports will eventually go. Like smart, smart tech and, like, gives you data on-

   27. CWChris Williamson1:01:38

       I do like... Uh-

   28. JOJonny1:01:39

       ... some of that. But-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:01:39

       ... my, my housemate is a physio for Newcastle Falcons, and some of the information that the guys-

   30. JOJonny1:01:46

       Get, like a thing on their-

Episode duration: 1:39:45