Desk Bikes, Spotify Tricks & Airport Exploits - Life Hacks

1. 0:00 – 1:31

   Intro

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      For the people whose first life hacks this is, this is what we're here for.

   2. JOJonny0:03

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson0:03

      It's the peak artist. If you think these are (censored) , imagine how bad the ones that didn't get on here are.

   4. JOJonny0:10

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson0:13

      In case people at home are wondering why I'm in an unfamiliar setting, many of you may not have seen me here before, this is my house in Newcastle and this is the studio that probably 350 or 400 episodes of the podcast has been done in. And I'm back for Jonny's wedding this week, so I've flown back from America, survived the flight, all went well, uh, and, and I'm here. So the next few episodes that you're going to see will be with me in this kind of surroundings. Also, if you're not familiar with life hacks, it's been a little while since we did one, this was the first ever series that we did on the show and it's continued. Now this will be like the 20th episode. We do a little roundtable. We've come up with how to make a great toasted sandwich or a new exercise desk or whatever else we get into, and then one of them puts it forwards, suggests why they think it's a great idea, and then the other two either tear it to pieces or immediately go on Amazon and buy it. So if there's anything that you like the sound of that we go through today, there'll be links to all of the stuff that we talk about in the show notes below, and that's pretty much it. Anything I missed?

   6. JOJonny1:15

      Just that normally what happens at this point is you hot potato me and I have to say the first one.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:21

      Well, it's interesting because I did actually bring a potato, uh, which you'll find if you open iMessage, there is a potato in there. Uh, Jonny, please give us your first life

2. 1:31 – 5:17

   Lumin Skincare

   1. CWChris Williamson1:31

      hack.

   2. JOJonny1:31

      It's boiling hot. Oh, it's warm.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:32

      Yeah, it is. It's microwaved.

   4. JOJonny1:34

      It's hot. Almost so hot that I'm tempted to throw it back, but I'll, I'll, I'll keep a hold of it.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:38

      Good.

   6. JOJonny1:39

      So my first one is, I think a symptom of the fact that I'm now over 30, getting older, and clearly the various social media platforms know this and they've started targeting me with a lot of skincare products. I don't know whether you two get this. Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:59

      Yeah. Not loads, but maybe.

   8. JOJonny2:00

      Not Chris, because Chris is just ageless, always beautiful.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:04

      (laughs) Benjamin Button.

   10. JOJonny2:04

       Um, so there's a, there's this brand that's been like over and over and over again, and I've just been ground down over time, and it's called Lumine. Have you seen this before?

   11. CWChris Williamson2:15

       No.

   12. JOJonny2:15

       You haven't seen it? Wow. It's so weird, isn't it? Because in my world it's like, "What? He hasn't seen it? He hasn't..."

   13. CWChris Williamson2:20

       (laughs)

   14. JOJonny2:20

       So I see it like every day. So it's a, it's like a... And they try and get you on a subscription, but they have this cool thing where you, you go onto their website, you answer some questions, because I... It's something that you've said to me before, Chris, I use a moisturizer and all that sort of stuff and I don't really put any effort into it, and I kind of want to but I don't really know where to begin and it all looks really expensive and quite intimidating. So you go through and go through their, like, questionnaire. They ask you questions about your skin types and all that sort of stuff, and then they just send you a little kit with loads of little tubs in there, really, like, aesthetic and nice, and they smell nice and they feel nice, and I've been using those for a while. And I think they're pretty good. Do they send the same set of little tubs to everyone? I don't want to think about that. I don't want to think about that.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:58

       In case-

   16. JOJonny2:58

       I like to think it's-

   17. CWChris Williamson2:59

       Are you trying to say that the quiz, the entire quiz is just a show and everyone receives the same bundle of products?

   18. JOJonny3:04

       (laughs) That it's all just a facade to make you feel like you're getting a really nice customized medical service. It's all just Sudocrem, Sudocrem in various forms.

   19. CWChris Williamson3:12

       (laughs)

   20. JOJonny3:12

       Black Sudocrem.

   21. CWChris Williamson3:13

       Okay, so what's-

   22. JOJonny3:14

       Different sized tubs.

   23. CWChris Williamson3:14

       ... what's your current skincare rout- routine then?

   24. JOJonny3:18

       How long have you got? No, I'm just joking, it's not that complicated. So there's a, there's like a, a face wash, like a charcoal face wash. Why charcoal's in it, I don't know, but it, it feels like it's great and like there's some secret mechanism to that. Charcoal face wash, there's a anti-aging moisturizer, and then there's a charcoal scrub. This is starting to sound like the opening scene of American Psycho.

   25. CWChris Williamson3:39

       (laughs)

   26. JOJonny3:39

       There's a charcoal scrub that you use like a couple of times a week which does have this weird way of just taking the first layer of your skin off. So that feels a bit strange. So it's those three things and you rotate them, and there's different packs that you get sent depending on your skin type and the, like, the sort of skin you have, like whether you've had spots or, or things like that in the past. So I found it pretty good. I've enjoyed the experience.

   27. CWChris Williamson4:02

       How much is it?

   28. JOJonny4:03

       I think I'm probably going to get it again. Good question.

   29. CWChris Williamson4:07

       (laughs)

   30. JOJonny4:07

       It varies. So it varies depending on the pack you get, but it's like, it's also in dollars, but like $30 to $50 for a set that they say will last you for a month, but you can stretch that out. Like I miss days.
3. 5:17 – 8:15

   IKEA Custom Wardrobes

   1. CWChris Williamson5:17

      what have you got?

   2. JOJonny5:20

      I would love to show you this one, but I daren't touch any of the equipment around me. It would be perilous-

   3. CWChris Williamson5:26

      Yes.

   4. JOJonny5:26

      ... to do that, because I have a grounding issue and it could cause the camera to turn off. But I have or had an alcove in my room, a little niche you could call it, of, uh, of wall that I would... I had a bar in there and hanging some clothes and a pile of kind of mismatched drawers and that kind of thing, thinking, "There's no way that I'm going to be able to get a wardrobe that fits exactly that." And then I found the IKEA custom wardrobe service. So you can book in like a Zoom call with someone in an IKEA-

   5. CWChris Williamson6:03

      Swedish.

   6. JOJonny6:03

      ... outfit.

   7. YUYusef6:05

      ... Swedish with, like, a blurred background and their ears colored in with, with crayon. And y- they just talk you through measurements and they build you a wardrobe custom to the space, and you can choose what type of storage you want in it. So, now it's, it's added a lot of perceived space to my room because it's got a mirrored door and it's incredible. It just feel- the room just feels so much less stressful.

   8. CWChris Williamson6:28

      For clarity, you were on a Skype call or a Zoom call with a person from IKEA with a tape measure, and they were coaching you through how to measure the wall. This happened?

   9. YUYusef6:40

      Yeah.

   10. JOJonny6:42

       Did they do anything else apart from just, like, "Get the tape measure and hold one end of it," and is there more to it than that?

   11. YUYusef6:48

       Y- yeah. So, so they say, "Hello. My, my name is 􏰉Lambor. I am calling from IKEA. Can you please tell me the width, depth, and height of your thing?" "Okay. Here's the..." And they get a digital mockup and they share a screen and they go like, "Okay, would you like drawers up to here? And how, how many... Have you got lots of trousers or have you got lots of jackets?" And, and they help you to design a custom thing-

   12. CWChris Williamson7:11

       And that's a free service?

   13. YUYusef7:12

       ... that's pretty cheap. Free s- well, obviously you pay for the wardrobe, but-

   14. CWChris Williamson7:15

       Yes. You're paying for the wardrobe anyway.

   15. YUYusef7:17

       ... the measurement is free. Yeah.

   16. JOJonny7:19

       Is the wardrobe more expensive? I presume it is.

   17. YUYusef7:23

       It was about £550 in total.

   18. CWChris Williamson7:27

       Oh, my God. Yes. That's a... I- as, as wardrobes go, that's pretty expensive.

   19. JOJonny7:35

       It's probably cheap for a custom fit wardrobe though.

   20. CWChris Williamson7:37

       Yeah. Also depends.

   21. YUYusef7:38

       Oh, yeah, like the...

   22. JOJonny7:39

       Depends on the lens you look at it through, isn't it? But yeah, maybe more than I-

   23. CWChris Williamson7:43

       Very true.

   24. JOJonny7:43

       ... more than I was expecting. But sounds like you're v- very happy with it, which is a good thing.

   25. YUYusef7:47

       So, I think, I think the mirrored doors are what adds to the price. Like if you got-

   26. CWChris Williamson7:51

       Ah, okay.

   27. YUYusef7:51

       ... just plain doors it would be like 300 quid.

   28. CWChris Williamson7:54

       Got you. And what's that called? IKEA Custom what? How do people get it?

   29. YUYusef7:58

       Uh, I think if you just search IKEA custom wardrobe, Pax is what it's called. P-A-X.

   30. JOJonny8:04

       All right.
4. 8:15 – 16:53

   Bike Desks

   1. CWChris Williamson8:15

      this one has been requested an awful lot because I made the error of bringing up a product on an episode with Balaji, uh, and then I, I didn't describe precisely which one it was, which sent people into a tailspin. So, this is my new cycling desk, which I got (clears throat) after learning a lot about zone two cardio and the benefits of zone two, zone two being pretty gentle for most people, 110 to maybe 135 BPM heart rate stuff, could hold a conversation with a little bit of breathing in between basically. That's where s- that's where zone two is. Andrew Huberman's a huge fan of it. You need to be doing between 120 and 180 minutes per week if you can. It is train slow to run fast, is the strategy behind it, that it helps you to train in an aerobic base, which then gives you more of a ceiling until you need to go anaerobic, all this sort of stuff. Uh, problem is that zone two sucks dick. It is such an unbelievably boring way to train. Unless you're into, like, trail running or kind of aggressive hiking, it's actually quite difficult to find a pace on your feet to, to move at that, because it's not a jog. A jog is gonna, at least for me, is gonna put me into the 140s. But a walk is gonna keep me around about 100. So I'm in this kind of dead zone in between the two. It's also supposed to be very good. I mean, you guys can probably stress test this once I'm done. Really good for fat loss apparently, if you were to continue to do it. Uh, anyway, I was talking to some of the boys in the, uh, Autistic Degenerates group chat I've got from Austin and asking their solutions for it, and a bunch of them had treadmill desks that you can slide underneath. One of the problems that you have there is that you're moving up and down, which actually makes it a little bit more difficult to type. It's good for, uh, calls if you've got a lot of conferencing, apart from the fact that you're obviously walking, which is a bit of a dick move to the other person. Uh, long story short, I spent an entire evening very, very carefully analyzing the difference between every different cycling desk that I could find on Amazon. And I ended up-

   2. YUYusef10:16

      When you find yourself down like a weird rabbit hole of the internet, like, "How did I get here?"

   3. CWChris Williamson10:20

      Oh, dude. I was looking, I was looking at the difference between the Exerpeutic Exerwork 2000i-

   4. JOJonny10:27

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson10:27

      ... and the, uh, the 1000i. So, the one that I ended up going for was the Bluetooth Folding Exercise Desk Bike-

   6. JOJonny10:34

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson10:34

      ... with 24 workout programs-

   8. YUYusef10:36

      'Cause it's got Bluetooth, yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:36

      ... and free app.

   10. JOJonny10:36

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson10:38

       Um, that being said, it's one of my favorite purchases of this year. It is absolutely fantastic. The particular one that I went for is a little bit more, um, chunky. It's a little bit more well built than the one that was below it. Unfortunately, the fact that it's got Bluetooth, that's what it's sold on. But what you actually want to buy it for is it's got a bigger backrest, it's got a bigger seat. They've got this really special, um, airflow seat thing. A lot of the criticisms of the other ones were that after half an hour it was very painful on your bum. So I wanted one that I knew I could do a long session on. Obviously, if you're trying to accumulate 180 minutes on something per week, that's a good bit of time sat on something. If it's uncomfortable, it's gonna suck. Uh, it's a magnetic drive, so it's completely silent when you're turning over. So if you are on calls or if you're doing anything else, no one can hear. Uh, on top of that, the magnetic resistance, which is linked to your phone because everything needs Bluetooth, including your exercise desk. Uh-

   12. JOJonny11:33

       (laughs) .

   13. CWChris Williamson11:34

       ... the magnetic resistance, if you turn it up to level 24, which is the highest it goes, is like a 10% gradient. It is unbelievably hard. There's no way you could work whilst doing that. It's like a max effort. RPE8 cycle. Uh, long story short, it links in with your WHOOP strap. So it'll broadcast your heart rate from your WHOOP strap to the app and track distance, calories, uh, all of that stuff linked in with this. It'll give you totally c- total calories burned and total time spent on the bike per week. It'll give you that in the app as well. So-... I'm actually quite glad that I, I did get the one with Bluetooth. And, I think in a week, last week, I ended up accumulating 3,000 calories burned just while I was sat turning over, answering emails, uh, taking a few calls. I do find it quite hard to do anything more cognitively demanding than scheduling and simple email replies. Even a, a slightly complex phone call where I'm having to do a bit of cognition is, is a bit much. But all in all, really, really happy with it. It was $350. So, the one that I'm talking about is the only one that you could get. Uh, I think you can only get this in America, which is unfortunate. There is an equivalent one in the UK, which has a backrest to it as well, and I bought my dad that for his birthday. It was the closest one that I could get. There's only one in the UK that has a backrest. That's the one to go for. Main reason being that you've got a slightly more sort of ... rather than an upright seated position, you're a little bit more sat back. You know, like those, the ones that you'll get in a, a David Lloyd's gym and the, the, the foot pedals are away from you and you kind of sat down and there's handles either side. It's a little bit more like that. Uh, if you want to get more zone two cardio in, or if you spend a lot of time working from home and you want to get, uh, a bit more calorie expenditure, the Exerpeutic-

   14. YUYusef13:25

       I'm so pleased.

   15. CWChris Williamson13:26

       ... Exerwork 2000i is what to go for.

   16. YUYusef13:29

       Oh, I'm really glad that you've guinea pigged that, 'cause I, I've seen those and I always thought, "Ah, it's one of those things that could end up becoming a, a new, like, drying rack in your house." So, it's great to know that it doesn't interrupt calls and ... 'Cause you're right, like zone two is very hard to achieve on your feet, 'cause it's kind of an uphill walk and you, you can't really design a route where you're only walking uphill unless you live in Edinburgh where it's like an Escher painting and everything's uphill.

   17. CWChris Williamson13:55

       (laughs)

   18. JOJonny13:56

       (laughs)

   19. YUYusef13:56

       So, yeah, it's-

   20. CWChris Williamson13:58

       I, I-

   21. YUYusef13:58

       ... brilliant. I think I'm gonna get one.

   22. JOJonny13:59

       I'm sold. Yeah, I'm sold on one. Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson14:02

       They ... I honestly, I, I ... It's rare because you're, you're totally right. It's the sort of thing that you would end up looking at, researching, getting excited about buying, and then going, "Fuck-"

   24. JOJonny14:12

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson14:12

       "... shouldn't have got that." But it kind of ... A- the only way that this could go wrong is if it's not sufficiently comfortable or if there was some issue with the biomechanics of how it fits your particular frame, because you're-

   26. YUYusef14:24

       Well, but when they add Bluetooth, it's like, "Oh, it's got the wrong Bluetooth version and it can't connect to the thing," or-

   27. CWChris Williamson14:29

       Yeah, maybe.

   28. YUYusef14:29

       Like, why do they do that?

   29. CWChris Williamson14:30

       But I mean, th- even with that, they have foolproofed that as well because there's a L- LCD screen, um, that allows you to do that. Now, it might be worth, uh, everybody emailing Exerpeutic Exerwork and seeing if they'll ship to the UK, because-

   30. YUYusef14:44

       Oh, yes.
5. 16:53 – 21:32

   Surreal Cereal

   1. JOJonny16:53

   2. CWChris Williamson16:53

      Right.

   3. JOJonny16:53

      I've never seen you that, that excited about a life hack, by the way, in-

   4. CWChris Williamson16:55

      It's ... This is my favorite list.

   5. JOJonny16:56

      ... hundreds.

   6. CWChris Williamson16:57

      This is my favorite list that, of ones that I've done.

   7. JOJonny17:00

      Okay. Mine just feels so shit in comparison, but here we go.

   8. CWChris Williamson17:04

      Bring it in.

   9. JOJonny17:04

      Um, so thi- so this is Surreal Cereal. So, it is a cereal brand called Surreal. S-U-R-R-E-A-L.

   10. CWChris Williamson17:15

       Right.

   11. JOJonny17:15

       Now, there's, there's loads of these cropping up now. Like, when I first found these, it's because Tim Ferriss mentions a brand at the start of his podcast, he did for a while, I can't remember the name of it, but it's like a low calorie-

   12. CWChris Williamson17:26

       Magic Spoon.

   13. JOJonny17:26

       Yes. Low calorie, low carb, technically I think keto friendly-

   14. CWChris Williamson17:30

       Correct.

   15. JOJonny17:30

       ... cereal. A lot of big names behind it. Um, and I was like, "That sounds class." You look at it-

   16. CWChris Williamson17:35

       It's very nice. It's very, very good.

   17. JOJonny17:36

       Yeah, I, I bet. You can only get it, or you could only get it in the US.

   18. CWChris Williamson17:39

       They ship internationally now, but it's kind of, it's, well, I mean-

   19. JOJonny17:42

       Quite pricey.

   20. CWChris Williamson17:42

       Yeah.

   21. JOJonny17:43

       So this stuff's not cheap either. Um, but this, at the time, was the only brand in the UK that I could find that was reasonably priced that looked nice, so I ordered like, I think I ordered like eight boxes.

   22. CWChris Williamson17:53

       (laughs)

   23. JOJonny17:54

       (laughs) Um, yeah. Um, it's really ... Like, it's, it's the same sort of thing as like a grenade bar, right? A grenade bar to a Mars bar. You can kind of tell that it's higher in protein and lower in sugar and all that sort of stuff. But if you're mixing it with things like a Quvaug...... like a white chocolate pudding thing, whatever they... What are they?

   24. CWChris Williamson18:16

       Yeah.

   25. JOJonny18:16

       It's not pudding-

   26. CWChris Williamson18:17

       Yeah.

   27. JOJonny18:17

       ... it's not yogurt. So, you know what I mean. Or into something. They're, it's just great 'cause it's the, it's the crunch of cereal without the calories of cereal, and I really enjoy it. So-

   28. CWChris Williamson18:28

       What are the best flavors that you got?

   29. JOJonny18:32

       So there is one which is, I think, peanut butter, which obviously I couldn't get. Otherwise, I would have had to go to hospital. Um, (laughs) so I tried chocolate, which is not that nice. Normally, my rule is always get chocolate flavor 'cause it's always flavored with chocolate. Not in this case. The, like, the sugared, like, the, the frosted, um, one is the nicest one by far and away. So, like, the Frosties equivalent. Um, I don't really know (laughs) what it's... I don't think it's... It's not coated with sugar, but it's coated with something that tastes like sugar, so (laughs) it's great.

   30. CWChris Williamson19:04

       Good enough for me.
6. 21:32 – 23:30

   Appify Websites

   1. CWChris Williamson21:32

   2. YUYusef21:32

      So, I've, I've actually been doing some thinking about the, the way that I broadly categorize life hacks. And I've kind of landed on a categorization system that's basically physical and digital. So, I've given you a physical one. What follows is a digital. (laughs)

   3. JOJonny21:51

      Is it Alfred?

   4. YUYusef21:53

      So, it is to appify a website. So, we've probably done this, the three of us, but most people don't know that if there's a website that you frequently visit and you'd prefer, and it's got, you know, mobile friendly, but you'd prefer to be able to access it from your home screen, press the little share button, which looks like a square with an arrow coming out of it, or it'll look like a, like a phallic symbol if you're using Android. Um, and you can then say add to home screen, and it'll generate what's functionally an app on your home screen. So, it avoids you having to go, like, into Safari and find the thing or press on your favorites. So, we do that with our program that we, uh, that we teach coaches to, to package their services online with. And you can do it with any website.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:43

      I'm right in thinking it, at least on iPhone, it displays in a different way as well. It goes into kind of a full screen, a more full screen mode, I think.

   6. YUYusef22:52

      Yeah. It doesn't show the address bar, so it just gives you-

   7. CWChris Williamson22:55

      Mm-hmm.

   8. YUYusef22:55

      ... a full screen experience.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:56

      Yeah. So I mean, if you use a website for coaching, what your coach sends you for programming and stuff like that, I mean, everybody needs to be using... I'm pretty sure that that was exactly what I used to use it for. Before ROM one had an app, I remember that-

   10. JOJonny23:10

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson23:10

       ... I was using th- that-

   12. JOJonny23:12

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson23:12

       ... for the precise same thing.

   14. JOJonny23:14

       It's just like a... And it's also like bookmarks that you frequently visit. It's so, such a simple way of having them on your home screen.

   15. CWChris Williamson23:20

       Yeah.

   16. JOJonny23:20

       It's cool.

   17. CWChris Williamson23:21

       Even if you-

   18. JOJonny23:21

       I use it quite a bit.

   19. CWChris Williamson23:21

       ... even if it wasn't the increased, uh, screen size, just the ease of access, hitting them from the home screen.

   20. JOJonny23:28

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson23:29

       Yeah, that is nice.

7. 23:30 – 25:57

   Discounted Zoom

   1. CWChris Williamson23:30

      Uh, right, okay, so this was sent in by Eric Jorgenson, the guy that wrote, uh, the Navalmanac. And you guys may be familiar with this. Pro tip, if you cancel your Zoom subscription, they'll offer you 30% off your renewal price immediately.

   2. JOJonny23:46

      I didn't know that.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:48

      Takes 30 seconds.

   4. YUYusef23:50

      I'm not sure how I feel about that as a, as a business model because they're then rewarding the... Well, they're, they're penalizing loyal customers, aren't they?

   5. JOJonny23:59

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson24:00

      Retention's the name of the game, baby. You know this.

   7. YUYusef24:03

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson24:03

      Clicks and coins.

   9. JOJonny24:04

      I wonder how, I wonder how long they'll keep that running for.

   10. CWChris Williamson24:07

       Maybe... Well, I mean, uh, something tells me-

   11. JOJonny24:10

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson24:10

       ... that even the volume of people that are going to go and try and cancel their Zoom subscription after this is gonna be a dent in... Do you remember during the pandemic when a-

   13. JOJonny24:18

       Delivery.

   14. CWChris Williamson24:18

       ... Chinese, a Chinese company called Zoom-... their stock price increased by a 150% due to people buying the wrong Zoom company.

   15. JOJonny24:28

       Oh. (laughs)

   16. YUYusef24:28

       Yeah. (laughs)

   17. JOJonny24:30

       (laughs)

   18. YUYusef24:30

       Incredible. That w- that would have been a scary moment for the, uh, the CEO and the board members.

   19. CWChris Williamson24:36

       Fucking hell. (laughs)

   20. JOJonny24:40

       (laughs) I remember hearing a similar thing with Deliv- when Deliveroo was new, where you could, like... and I never did this, full disclaimer, but you could, when, and I think someone on the pod- on this podcast told me about it.

   21. CWChris Williamson24:53

       Yep.

   22. JOJonny24:53

       When the delivery arrived, you could say-

   23. CWChris Williamson24:56

       They, they claim that one of the items were available in the order, and if it was under £50, they would instantly give you your money back without investigating. So James-

   24. JOJonny25:03

       (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson25:03

       ... James who used to work for us... This still works by the way, James who worked for us-

   26. JOJonny25:07

       Oh my God.

   27. CWChris Williamson25:07

       ... cycled between Deliveroo, uh, uh, and Uber Eats using the exact same thing, ordering lunch off one, dinner off the other. When it arrived, "Something's wrong with my order." "What's wrong?" "Items are missing." "Which items?" "All items." Make sure that his order was under £50 and they would just instantly refund him. He's now banned from Deliveroo for life. He can't... They, they won't give him an account-

   28. YUYusef25:31

       He's been stealing from restaurants-

   29. CWChris Williamson25:32

       ... anymore.

   30. YUYusef25:32

       ... in sequence. (laughs)
8. 25:57 – 30:15

   Rush Shipping

   1. CWChris Williamson25:57

      Johnny.

   2. JOJonny25:58

      It's you.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:59

      That was me.

   4. JOJonny26:00

      Oh, no, that was you.

   5. CWChris Williamson26:01

      Yes.

   6. JOJonny26:01

      Goodness me. Um, so this one I didn't think was a hack, but I've mentioned it to a few people and each person I mentioned it to hadn't heard of it. So I'm hoping I don't get absolutely shot down with this. So if you have Amazon Prime and you order something which is next day delivery, once you've ordered it, you can go into Orders, like My Orders, the order, and then select... just change it from Free Next Day to Free Rush Shipping. And then it just arrives a couple of hours later instead of the following day. So there are certain things that come, that just have the availability to be, for no extra charge, to just arrive before 10:00 PM.

   7. CWChris Williamson26:46

      Is that now available-

   8. YUYusef26:46

      I always feel like when-

   9. CWChris Williamson26:48

      ... before editing the order?

   10. JOJonny26:51

       You can do it after ordering. It... sometimes it's available before editing.

   11. CWChris Williamson26:56

       Yes.

   12. JOJonny26:56

       And there are some things where it'll say before 10:00 PM, but on quite a few things, if there's next day available, there is also rush available. So I've had things arrive-

   13. YUYusef27:06

       I think there's a... there's like a red klaxon, uh, and light-

   14. CWChris Williamson27:10

       (laughs)

   15. YUYusef27:10

       ... like the panic button that goes off in the warehouses when someone does that. And they go, "Oh, quick." And the guy, like, runs over and stuffs it into his pocket and, like, gets on his scooter and flies over to your house.

   16. CWChris Williamson27:20

       (laughs)

   17. JOJonny27:20

       I, I, I've had stuff delivered from Amazon using this process that it, that it arrived in less time than it would have taken me to go out to a shop and buy it and come back to the house. Like-

   18. CWChris Williamson27:28

       What's the quickest that something's arrived, do you think, from order to arrival?

   19. JOJonny27:33

       Uh, within 90 minutes.

   20. YUYusef27:36

       That's crazy.

   21. JOJonny27:36

       For, like, food based things. So I had a bag of coffee beans delivered 90 minutes after I ordered them.

   22. CWChris Williamson27:42

       Wow.

   23. JOJonny27:43

       So you two clearly didn't know about that, so I'm, I'm... that's a big one.

   24. CWChris Williamson27:46

       It is.

   25. JOJonny27:46

       Like, I use that all the time.

   26. CWChris Williamson27:48

       Really?

   27. JOJonny27:49

       It's so good. Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson27:50

       When do you order stuff that you need within hours?

   29. JOJonny27:53

       It's little, it's little things like, um-

   30. CWChris Williamson27:56

       Batteries or whatever.
9. 30:15 – 35:03

   The Boardroom Exercise

   1. CWChris Williamson30:15

      got?

   2. YUYusef30:16

      This is one that I originally was made aware of by Tim Ferriss's mate who loves foiling and goes on to his podcast and talks to him about foiling for three hours.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:25

      Yeah.

   4. YUYusef30:25

      I forgot his name. So it's actually...... based on a modality of psychotherapy known as internal family systems, and the idea is that you are not a single personality, a single unit of consciousness. You are multiple sub-personalities that are frozen in time at different stages of your life, depending on what happened in your life, and they run certain scripts in response to stimuli that you're exposed to. And so they have different roles in your psyche, and they are to protect you or to keep you safe or happy or whatever it is. And so it's a technique for if your mind is rushing and you're, you're lying in bed, for example, and you've got loads of stuff going on, is to do the board member exercise, the boardroom. So you imagine that you are at the head of a table, you're sat at the boardroom, you're wearing the suit, and then there's loads of different versions of you sat round the table. And the, these versions of you represent different domains of your life. So you could have the finance version of you that's got the, the accountant's hat and the cigar, and you've got the fitness version of you that's in the Gymshark, um, sort of cute onesie thing, and you've got the work version of you that's in your work gear, and all these different things. And, and you just go round the table and you say, "Right, everyone else shut up. You, tell me what's on your mind. You've got five minutes. Everyone has to stop and listen." And then you let them speak, and then when they're done you go, "Okay, are you finished? Yeah? Brilliant, move onto the next one." And just work your way round. And it sounds silly, but it is the most relaxing thing that you could do because you squeeze the lemon of all these, like, little voices that are trying to be heard in your mind but aren't being given the full airtime. And afterwards your mind is so quiet. You're just like, (sighs) and it lasts for... Like, the last time I did it, I think I had probably about 48 hours of deep quiet afterwards.

   5. JOJonny32:29

      Wow.

   6. CWChris Williamson32:31

      I sure do.

   7. JOJonny32:31

      It's not like a daily thing? You wouldn't do it every day? Or would you?

   8. YUYusef32:35

      Yeah, you can do.

   9. JOJonny32:36

      Okay.

   10. YUYusef32:36

       It depends how deep you wanna go.

   11. CWChris Williamson32:38

       You mentioned that this is a good technique for when your mind is feeling a bit of overwhelm, specifically.

   12. YUYusef32:44

       Yeah, very good for that. Uh, parti- I, I think the, the ultimate use case is if you're... You know, when you're lying in bed and for some reason, or you, like, you feel like you've had too much caffeine or whatever and your mind's just going, (imitates voice fast forwarding) and you're like, ugh, you can't even make sense of all the, the voices. And I think people are afraid of this kind of technique because they think, "Oh, well I'm, I've not got multiple personality disorder. I'm not psychotic." But I think if you can just accept that, like, just humor the voices inside for a moment and don't worry about that as a, as a thing, um-

   13. CWChris Williamson33:15

       I want, I do want to highlight upfront that, uh, past performance may not be an indicator of future profits with someone like Youcef because of the amount of time that he's spent meditating. I do feel like all of this Sedona method that you've done, releasing, different strategy, I think that this probably enables you to maybe get disproportionate returns.

   14. YUYusef33:41

       Possibly, yeah. Like, you, you know, you have to... It does require concentration, and there is also a, a sense of, like, you've got to just kind of... Even, like, when you start doing it you'll be like, "Oh, this is silly. I'm just making it up here." But that's okay because if you're making it up, like, it's what, what comes to mind, came to mind for a reason, so that's still valid.

   15. CWChris Williamson34:01

       How many sessions did you need to do before it didn't feel silly?

   16. YUYusef34:06

       To be honest, on the first one, because I was just like, "I'm just gonna commit to the method." So just dive in, dick and balls, and you'll be okay.

   17. CWChris Williamson34:15

       Very nice. Okay, so-

   18. JOJonny34:16

       I'm gonna give that a go on my desk exercise bike.

   19. CWChris Williamson34:19

       Oh, one o- one final thing. How do you choose who sits around the table?

   20. YUYusef34:25

       That's a good question. I think it's, it's the, the key domains of your life, or, like, you could just stop and listen as an open, open listening and be like, "Okay, who's, what are the main voices?" And then if someone else wants to join as well you can be like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry, we forgot about you. You come and join the table too." Just a safety announcement as well, like, if you've got history of psychosis or if you feel like there's, there's gonna be some traumatic stuff that's bubbled up then, you know, do this under the guidance of a psychotherapist in a safe environment, of course.

   21. CWChris Williamson34:54

       It's nearly been a year since you were working as a doctor, and yet the medical practitioner still emerges-

   22. YUYusef35:01

       (laughs) Still comes up.

   23. CWChris Williamson35:01

       ... every so often when, when required. Yeah,

10. 35:03 – 39:06

    Careful Flight Picking

    1. CWChris Williamson35:03

       cool. Okay, so I've been flying an awful lot recently, uh, which is good. I, I love adventures and COVID was terrible for that, obviously. Uh, I gave a, uh, life hack I think on the last one which was gate, is it D3 in Amsterdam Airport is the only gate which has seats that don't have bars (laughter) in between the seats so you can go and have a lie down if you're stood for-

    2. YUYusef35:25

       That is a brilliant life hack.

    3. CWChris Williamson35:26

       Yep, that's what we're here for. Peak autism ... uh, now the, there's two here that I'm going to piece together. Reason being I have been completely fucked in the ass a number of times by the slow resurgence of capacity within flights, however the unwillingness of airlines to reduce down the number of flights that they send out, so this is just causing delays across America. Anybody that's flown cross-country within America knows exactly what I'm talking about. Flights are being delayed, then they do have some pretty intense weather which can cause some really huge problems. Apparently the main two issues, first one's pilots, but the second one is the crew of people at the luggage loaders, um, there, there is just nowhere near enough staff to deal with the volume. People (snaps fingers) want to go back on holiday but you can't just create the staff to give the capacity for people to go on holiday. So, my first, uh, piece of advice when looking at flights, especially through a site like Skyscanner which everybody should be using as, as a, at least a beginning to have a look at it, reduce the number of connections that you have in order to stop delays. So-... a lot of the time you can't go direct, but sometimes you can make a choice between one and two connections. Now, the one connection may end up being a little bit longer, a little bit shorter. My flight back to Austin is five minutes longer despite the fact that it has one fewer connection when I return than the version that I did on the way back. The problem being, the more flights that you rely on, the greater likelihood there is of you encountering one of those being delayed, which has a knock-on effect to miss the remainder. Really, really bad idea. So, just by reducing that down, you reduce your exposure to different flights. Pote- like, let's say there's a 10% chance of the flight being delayed, if you go for two instead of three, that's a good idea. This also ties in with another one which is super important for flying internationally, and I'm using for America specifically, pick flights which immigrate at your destination. If you pick a flight which enters the country and then you have a connecting flight from that airport onward, American immigration specifically is an absolute pain in the ass, and you will wait and no one is going to help. You're not gonna get to the front of the line because your flight leaves in two hours, that's not the way that it works. You will wait and there will be a very grumpy looking African American woman who does not care about the fact that you need to leave to get to Miami or whatever it is. Uh, so, those two things, obviously you want to optimize for what the best time of departure and what's the price and, uh, if I have upgrades or if I wanna get upgrades and stuff. But, I think reduce connections to avoid delays and pick flights which immigrate at the city destination that you're going to. Even if you arrive just after a huge flight's got in from Houston or something like that, it doesn't matter. You're at the back of the- the queue, yeah, it's gonna suck, but the degree of anxiety that you have whilst wondering, "Am I going to miss my next flight to get to the next place?" And then the downstream impact of that, especially if you're going on holiday, you're only going on holiday for seven days or something, and you end up staying over another day, uh, yeah, those are both important.

    4. YUYusef38:34

       Th- that's a really good application of the broader principle of, like, don't expect everything to go smoothly according to plan.

    5. CWChris Williamson38:41

       Mm-hmm.

    6. YUYusef38:41

       Because if you line up all of your dominoes assuming that it's gonna go absolutely textbook, like the same as the reason that Jonny and I are always late is because we fall foul to this. We assume that there'll be no traffic on the roads and... Because once we made it from our house into the center of town in seven minutes-

    7. CWChris Williamson38:57

       Yeah.

    8. YUYusef38:57

       ... it's gonna be exactly-

    9. CWChris Williamson38:57

       Therefore, it's a seven minute journey. No, it's not.

    10. YUYusef38:59

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson39:00

        On average it's a 14 minute journey.

    12. YUYusef39:02

        (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson39:03

        Yeah.

    14. YUYusef39:04

        Yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson39:05

        Yeah. Jonny, what have you got?

11. 39:06 – 44:22

    Blue Blocking Glasses

    1. CWChris Williamson39:06

    2. YUYusef39:06

       Good tips. Good tips. Um, so my, so I, uh... Well, because Chris keeps sort of nudging me to get back onto it, keep using a WHOOP band.

    3. CWChris Williamson39:16

       Yeah.

    4. JOJonny39:17

       And I've been back on a WHOOP, I don't know how long I've been using it for, but I- I- I- I'm always looking for things that improve my sleep basically just because that is... I'm sure we've all experienced the, like, the night and day difference when you have a g- when you have a good night's sleep. Um, I- I think when Yusuf tested them couple of years ago, I bought some blue blocking glasses, some of the really extreme ones like the wraparound-

    5. CWChris Williamson39:39

       Yep.

    6. JOJonny39:40

       ... um, red, not- not orange, seemed really extreme, got nothing out of them. Never, didn't notice any difference, no- no change in WHOOP, uh, WHOOP data. Then read a lot of stuff online and Yusuf mentioned about... There we go. About, um... This might be upsetting for you, Chris.

    7. YUYusef39:58

       Chris has got some that actually look nice rather than... (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson40:01

       Yeah.

    9. YUYusef40:01

       I was such a proper space cadet.

    10. JOJonny40:02

        Minor extreme. So, Y- Y- Yusuf chatted to a guy who runs a company that makes these things and knows a lot about them and was talking about how many of these products are just red plastic and don't actually block blue light. So, I then bought some of, some proper ones and looked into, like, how do you validate whether these are legit or not? 'Cause you put them on and they kinda s- they kinda seem different. There's a few tests you can do if you Google it, there's a few tests you can do where you look at images on screens and it'll tell you, like, "This should look like this." If it's blocking the blue light, "This should look gray, this should look dark." The ones that are actually blue blocking glasses make such a difference. It- it's unbelievable. Like, 10 minutes after putting them on I can feel this, like, down regulation and WHOOP's, like, 10% increase in REM when I wear them.

    11. CWChris Williamson40:50

        Wow.

    12. JOJonny40:50

        So getting some proper blue blocking glasses-

    13. YUYusef40:52

        It's so annoying to know that you've been wasting time with the other ones, isn't it?

    14. JOJonny40:55

        It's stuff that's pointless. Walking around the house looking like an idiot. Becca making fun of me. And they just aren't even doing anything anyway. But now-

    15. CWChris Williamson41:02

        She's going to be married to you soon, man. Once w- once that's the case you can just take the cane out, can't you?

    16. JOJonny41:07

        (laughs) Well, then I walk round in the full biohacking equipment.

    17. CWChris Williamson41:11

        Yeah, like Ben Greenfield.

    18. JOJonny41:12

        All the stuff I'm secretly wanted to wear.

    19. YUYusef41:14

        Mask taped. Red glasses on.

    20. CWChris Williamson41:15

        What- what brand did you end up going for, Jonny?

    21. JOJonny41:18

        It's the... Yusuf knows the name of it, I can't remember the...

    22. YUYusef41:21

        So the- the brand is called Blaq Blue Light and I can- I can vouch... So I've got a kettle that has blue LEDs when you turn it on and it's- it's bright. When you have the glasses on, you can't tell if the kettle's on or not. Like, it's that powerful.

    23. CWChris Williamson41:34

        Oh, yeah.

    24. YUYusef41:35

        So... Really good.

    25. CWChris Williamson41:35

        These are... If- if Blaq Blue Light don't look right to you, these are RA Optics, R-A Optics, owned by a guy called Matt Maruca who's also been on the show previously. Uh, they do these which are the yellows and they also do a red pair. I mean, these are $300 so they're-

    26. JOJonny41:50

        Oh, they- they hopefully they block blue light.

    27. CWChris Williamson41:52

        No, he's... Matt's- Matt's at the forefront of- of all of this sort of light and stuff. That being said, Andrew Huberman, ophthalmologist at Stamford and stuff, he is pretty adamant that blue blocking glasses will maybe net you small increases but compared with making sure you get sufficient sunlight throughout the day, including early morning light and ideally some on the evening.

    28. YUYusef42:15

        Mm-hmm.

    29. CWChris Williamson42:15

        Those... That's the... That's your, uh, macros and training and wearing-

    30. YUYusef42:20

        Mm-hmm.
12. 44:22 – 46:00

    Stop the Madness on Chrome

    1. CWChris Williamson44:22

    2. YUYusef44:22

       Yeah.

    3. JOJonny44:24

       But I... Yeah.

    4. YUYusef44:24

       Digital one. So there's a browser extension called Hush. There's another one called Stop the Madness, depending on your preference. Both of them stop the internet from being so annoying to use. You know, when you go on a website and there's like five pop-ups, you have to accept the cookies, but you can't just accept or reject, you have to go into the like sub-settings and say, "No, no reject," or whatever. And then there's like a- a- another thing and, and then you can't click on this because there's a, there's another Google ad pop-up and it just gets rid of all the, the noise and just allows you to see what you want to see on a website. And the guy who's designed it has clearly developed it out of pure fury (laughs) w- with using annoying websites. And he's really... The guy who wrote Stop the Madness is really committed to his mission.

    5. JOJonny45:11

       So it blocks ads basically, or like any additional-

    6. YUYusef45:14

       It's not just ads, it's, it's all the surrounding stuff that... So you know Tom Scott? The g- he's like a nerdy British guy. You will have seen him. He's always like, "This is the most dangerous crossing in the UK and I'm out here in Lancashire and we're, w- this has been 34 collisions here." So he does all these kind of like documentary stuff, but, um, he's got a very good video about why the internet has become so annoying to use and a lot of it's to do with GDPR and additional-

    7. JOJonny45:41

       Oh, I see.

    8. YUYusef45:41

       ... regulation that's not really practical.

    9. CWChris Williamson45:44

       Mm. That's-

    10. JOJonny45:44

        Like pop-ups and interruptions and that sort of thing.

    11. CWChris Williamson45:46

        That's interesting that, uh, in order to protect, uh, users data, they've had to make the user experience significantly worse.

    12. YUYusef45:56

        Yeah, it's a, it's a weird trade-off, isn't it?

    13. CWChris Williamson45:58

        Mm. Yeah. Okay.

13. 46:00 – 54:16

    Spotify for Podcasts

    1. CWChris Williamson46:00

       So Hush or Stop the Madness extension for Chrome. Right. This is one that turned into two that turned into three, uh, and they're all about Spotify. So first up is share Spotify podcasts with the timestamp. Have you seen this yet?

    2. JOJonny46:15

       Ooh. No.

    3. YUYusef46:16

       This is new.

    4. CWChris Williamson46:17

       Not that new. So Christian Horr sent this in about a year ago, and I never got around to using it, and yet now it's the same as copy a video URL at time from-

    5. YUYusef46:30

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CWChris Williamson46:31

       ... um, uh, YouTube. You go onto the use of proper share function on Spotify for a podcast, you press the share thing, and it'll come up. And if you are playing partway into it, it'll say either share or you can toggle a slider to the side and say share from time. It means that if you're listening to a section on a podcast that you absolutely adore, you don't need to screen record it and then try and send someone the screen recording. You can send them that link, it'll open up in Spotify, in app from WhatsApp or iMessage or whatever, and it'll-

    7. YUYusef46:59

       Lovely.

    8. CWChris Williamson46:59

       ... open at the exact timestamp that you're talking about. So I mean, that's-

    9. JOJonny47:02

       Brilliant.

    10. CWChris Williamson47:03

        ... just great.

    11. YUYusef47:04

        This is what podcasts are missing 'cause they're, they're not a social feature. And I think adding in bit... Like n know there's a few apps that like Snippet and things that are starting to try and make podcasts social again. But I'm glad that it's become a native feature as well.

    12. CWChris Williamson47:19

        Frankly, I think that audio just continues, when it comes to the virality, they just continue to get eaten alive by video.

    13. YUYusef47:25

        Mm.

    14. CWChris Williamson47:25

        When you can consume the same content, when people can share a video clip of one of the hacks that we're talking about here that has the video, who, h- how is it going to p... It's literally just gonna be outcompeted by, uh, f- the audio version's always gonna get eaten alive by that. So that's the first one. The second one is Spotify for podcasts generally, which has been an, an ongoing discussion between the three of us for forever.

    15. YUYusef47:48

        Yes. (laughs)

    16. CWChris Williamson47:48

        We all listen to a lot of podcasts. Um, I think me and Jonny were very much team Apple Podcasts for a long time. It was native. It allowed a bunch of different, uh, like subscriptions. It had pop-ups and notifications that were well done. You had an increased number of, um, options through Siri. However, I am of the opinion that Spotify is the, the daddy, the king daddy-

    17. YUYusef48:13

        Here we go. Here we go.

    18. CWChris Williamson48:14

        ... when it c- which I know that you've said. So this is a repeat. This is why I was happy to do three in a row because I know that you've already brought this up probably two years ago.

    19. YUYusef48:21

        But in, in fairness though, like w- whenever I can, I will always do my damnedest to stay within the Apple ecosystem and I'll try and use Apple Notes and Apple Calendar and Apple Reminders. And it's only when Apple make it so difficult to stay within that, like Apple Music and Apple Podcasts, they're just rubbish, like, and you... I tried and Spotify is just like, "Hey."

    20. CWChris Williamson48:41

        Dude, I mean, more, more people-

    21. YUYusef48:42

        "... we're over here."

    22. CWChris Williamson48:42

        Yeah. Don't forget we do this, we do this for a living. Uh-

    23. YUYusef48:45

        (laughs)

    24. CWChris Williamson48:46

        ... more people are gonna be listening to this right now on Apple Podcasts than on Spotify, but every month the, uh-

    25. YUYusef48:52

        Not anymore. (laughs)

    26. CWChris Williamson48:53

        ... portion... Oh yeah. Well, I mean, I'd, I would love to bring people over, but-... the proportion of people listening on Spotify is increasing, uh, month on month. I think that shows like Call Her Daddy and Rogan have obviously been a big part of... And it was s- such a smart move. Behaviorally, let's change people by forcing them onto the app and then we need to... obviously, they had to make sure that the actual app itself was sufficiently good, but it was. Um, I mean, one of the things that I really like... I, I don't like the fact that you don't have a feed of most recently updated episodes that's done in a very easy way. That was a great element that Apple Podcasts have that I hope Spotify brings across-

    27. YUYusef49:27

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CWChris Williamson49:27

        ... where you could just see all of the shows that have most recently uploaded and then you can decide, "Oh, whi- which one would I like to get from here?" It would be great if they limited the notifications. I don't want to be notified every time that Memphis May Fire releases a new song, but I do want to be notified every time that perhaps certain podcasts upload, maybe ones that don't have a regular upload schedule, like Rogan perhaps.

    29. YUYusef49:49

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson49:49

        You know, if it's every Monday, Thursday or Saturday, you know there's a Modern Wisdom episode, but you might... Rogan just s- sort of throws them at the wall. So like, that would be cool if you could select particular artists or, or, or podcasts and shows, but generally, I think the... Not without talking too much inside baseball, they've bought Anchor, they've bought Megaphone, they've got the Spotify Advertisers Network. They've got a bunch of things where they've reverse vertically integrated and forward vertically integrated themselves into publishing, into buying podcasts outright. And I, I, I think that unless Apple do something really, really, really impressive very quickly, I think that's-
14. 54:16 – 56:10

    Ambient Background Music

    1. JOJonny54:17

       I have got... Um, do either of you still use anything like Focus at Will or Brain.FM or any, like, focus music service?

    2. CWChris Williamson54:30

       No, but my next, my next life hack is-

    3. YUYusef54:31

       I really like Brain.FM.

    4. CWChris Williamson54:31

       ... is similar.

    5. JOJonny54:33

       Okay.

    6. CWChris Williamson54:33

       Uh.

    7. JOJonny54:33

       Do you remember those though?

    8. CWChris Williamson54:34

       Yep.

    9. YUYusef54:34

       I've just got... Yeah, I've got a set of, like, uh, l- you know, the ten-hour YouTube videos that are like-

    10. JOJonny54:40

        Okay.

    11. YUYusef54:40

        ... meditation music or whatever.

    12. JOJonny54:42

        So I found recently, and I did this a little bit during the pandemic because I used to work in coffee shops a lot. There's a, there's a selection of playlists on YouTube which is, like, coffee shop ambiance with a little bit of jazz and as though it's raining outside. And I try, I tried it, and honestly, like, an hour later, you're like...Oh, God, we're at, like, we're, and I'm just in this zone.

    13. CWChris Williamson55:05

        My inbox is empty. Where have I been?

    14. JOJonny55:07

        Yeah. (laughs)

    15. YUYusef55:08

        (laughs)

    16. CWChris Williamson55:08

        Yeah.

    17. YUYusef55:08

        That's amazing.

    18. JOJonny55:08

        It's, it is the-

    19. YUYusef55:08

        What, so you, you play coffee shop music while you're in the coffee shop? Like, coffee shop sounds?

    20. JOJonny55:12

        No, no, no. This is while I'm at home. It's while I'm at home.

    21. CWChris Williamson55:14

        Okay.

    22. JOJonny55:14

        So, it's, it's the sound, it's like the ambience, th- the ambiance of a coffee shop and there's, like, someone saying, like, "Hey, can I have a, a veni, venti latte?"

    23. CWChris Williamson55:22

        (laughs)

    24. JOJonny55:22

        It's terrible, actually.

    25. CWChris Williamson55:23

        Oh, fuck, you're including orders?

    26. JOJonny55:24

        Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson55:25

        Oh, my God. (laughs)

    28. JOJonny55:26

        You would think.

    29. CWChris Williamson55:26

        They've really committed.

    30. JOJonny55:27

        You would think.
15. 56:10 – 1:01:40

    Get an Instant Pot

    1. JOJonny56:10

       was it.

    2. CWChris Williamson56:10

       Come on.

    3. YUYusef56:11

       I've, so, I've got an anti-hack to begin with, which is just a failed... So, I bought an HomePod mini recently, just, you reminded me of it before, Johnny.

    4. CWChris Williamson56:19

       What's that?

    5. YUYusef56:21

       So, a HomePod is Apple's version of a home speaker.

    6. CWChris Williamson56:25

       Right.

    7. YUYusef56:25

       It's their version of, like, the Alexa speaker or the Google thing.

    8. CWChris Williamson56:28

       Wasn't that burning-

    9. YUYusef56:30

       Um-

    10. CWChris Williamson56:30

        ... burning holes onto work surfaces when it first came out?

    11. YUYusef56:32

        Yeah, it was (laughs) . It was made of some kind of-

    12. JOJonny56:36

        It's, it's useful.

    13. YUYusef56:36

        ... corrosive material, yeah. Sadly, it's terrible, so I returned it str- same day. So, I'll tell you why. 'Cause currently, I think this was an old life hack from one of the-

    14. CWChris Williamson56:47

        Yep.

    15. YUYusef56:47

        ... one of the OG.

    16. CWChris Williamson56:48

        Yep.

    17. YUYusef56:48

        This is a Bose Mini SoundLink, if it'll come into focus.

    18. CWChris Williamson56:53

        Yep.

    19. YUYusef56:53

        There we are.

    20. CWChris Williamson56:54

        Yes.

    21. YUYusef56:54

        Um, beautiful speaker, incredible bass for what, for the size of it. Like, it's mind-blowing how they managed it. HomePod, too trebly, not enough thickness in the bass and I am a man that loves bassy music. And it uses wifi protocol, not Bluetooth, so it's actually a real faff to get it to connect to anything. And there's about a two-second delay between, let's say, a noise happening on your laptop or iPhone and playing on the speaker, which is fine if you're playing background music. But as soon as you're using it for anything else, it's untenable.

    22. CWChris Williamson57:28

        (laughs)

    23. YUYusef57:28

        And it has to be plugged in. So-

    24. CWChris Williamson57:32

        Wow.

    25. YUYusef57:32

        ... on all fronts, it's, it's not good.

    26. JOJonny57:34

        So, there's a lot of very detailed crit- critique of this. Like, you put, this all happened within a couple of hours of what you said to me?

    27. YUYusef57:42

        Within two hours, yeah, and I was like, "That's done." (laughs)

    28. CWChris Williamson57:43

        But you've used, you've used that Bose sound link, or whatever it's called, for a long time. I've got a, the Anker version, which is £35, I think, and the battery-

    29. YUYusef57:54

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson57:54

        ... on it is wild. I can't believe how loud it is. It goes everywhere. It's a good shape as well. You know, it's enough to fit in a laptop bag. It's enough to fit in a day bag or whatever. Yeah, I'm... So, the anti-hack was, don't buy an Apple HomePod mini or whatever.
16. 1:01:40 – 1:04:49

    iPhone Built-in Background Sounds

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:40

       has just been, uh, reminded by what you were saying, Jonny, there is an option now when you have AirPods on iPhone called background sounds. Are you familiar with this?

    2. JOJonny1:01:55

       No.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:01:55

       Oh. So, what Apple has decided to do is it's realized that a lot of people need not just, uh, sound dampening or like s- the, um, noise cancellation on the outside, they actually have... And let me see if I can put this up to here. So, come on. You'll see that there's this little ear thing here. If you press that-

    4. JOJonny1:02:19

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:02:19

       ... it pops up and says, "Background sounds," and background sounds. So, that's ocean. And there is-

    6. JOJonny1:02:28

       Nice.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:02:29

       ... balanced noise, bright noise, dark noise, ocean, rain, and stream. (background noise) So, basically with this... How the fuck do I turn it off? There we go. Uh, this is inbuilt Apple certified background sound. Now, the great thing that you can do about this is you can have two volumes set for it, how much of the volume that is on at the moment when nothing else is playing do you want the background sounds to be at, and then a second volume, which is when you are playing something else, how much of the total overall volume that's available that is relative to what's playing do you want the background sound to be at. Use case number one, I am by the pool in a lovely resort in Tulum, Mexico, I am listening to some cool podcasts that I was enjoying, I think Tim Dillon on Rogan, uh, but there's a crying child. Uh, it was actually a crying child with special needs, but crying child near the pool. I didn't want to hear the sound of this child anymore. Uh, no matter how much noise cancellation I had on, had I have decided to go so loud on Rogan and Tim, it would've been pretty uncomfortable, so background sounds came on, low level, only 10, 10%, but that fills in the gap of the background. You've still got noise cancellation. And then coming through over the top, you've got the podcast. Pretty pointless for listening to music along with it, reason being that music tends to fill those spaces in any case, but for audibling, uh, when you've got a noisy surrounding and you're trying to focus on listening to it, great. And then also when there's nothing, you're on a plane, you haven't had your w- white noise p- playlist from Spotify downloaded for offline or whatever, pretty robust. The waves or whatever that was, ocean one, is high quality. It's the sound of waves coming over. It goes up and down. It's active, but not too active. They've got the white, the balance, the brown, the pink noise. They've got a rain one. I mean, it's Apple, you know? Like, they- they're gonna get it right.

    8. JOJonny1:04:22

       That is a good one. They're always adding different, like... There's that feature on AirPods where... Have you seen it, where, like, if you look to the right or the left, it still sounds like the audio's coming-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:31

       Stage shield, yeah.

    10. JOJonny1:04:32

        Yeah. That's crazy. That, that caught me once when I was crossing the road, I was listening to like a, a video on my AirPods in my pocket, and I looked left and I was like, "Oh my god, there's a car coming."

    11. CWChris Williamson1:04:44

        (laughs)

    12. JOJonny1:04:44

        (laughs) Luckily, that wasn't.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:04:45

        Wow.

    14. JOJonny1:04:45

        I'm still here.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:04:47

        Okay. Jonny, what you got?

17. 1:04:49 – 1:07:20

    Visualise Value on Chrome

    1. JOJonny1:04:49

       Okay. Uh, which one should I do? I am gonna do the... So, this was recommended to me by a client, so it is a Chrome extension for all of the... Well, I don't know whether it's all of them, but it, there's a load of visualized value, uh, diagrams on every new tab that you open in Chrome. So, it's just something that... Like, Visualized Value, I tend to... Do y- Uh, Yousef's very behind it. Do you, are you familiar with that, Chris?

    2. CWChris Williamson1:05:20

       Jack's been on the show.

    3. JOJonny1:05:20

       No, look... Oh, even better. Then everyone will be familiar with it then. So, it's something that I've been, like, always wanting to learn more about or see more examples of, 'cause every diagram that I see, every drawing that I see is, like, w- it's so cleverly articulating this idea. But I just don't ha- I didn't have a way to get more exposure to them. But I've had so many, like, content ide- ideas, email ideas, um, reminders of concepts that you forget. It's like a, it's like a Readwise in some ways.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:05:51

       Yeah.

    5. JOJonny1:05:51

       Like a, like just-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:05:52

       Resorts.

    7. JOJonny1:05:52

       ... a gentle reminder of like, "Oh, yeah." I am an e- I'm just gonna die.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:05:54

       Was it made by Jack? Was it made by Visualized Value? Must have been.

    9. JOJonny1:05:56

       Don't know. I don't know. But it's just, every new tab is a Visualized Value graphic.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:06:02

        What's your favorite concept that you've been reminded of recently? Can you re- think of any?

    11. JOJonny1:06:08

        Hmm. A lot of them are to do with, like... This sounds morbid, but r- reminders of death.

    12. YUYusef1:06:19

        (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson1:06:20

        It does sound a bit morbid, mate, not gonna lie.

    14. JOJonny1:06:22

        Like-

    15. YUYusef1:06:23

        But you know what I mean, though? They're not... Like, the, the... I feel like the majority are, like, about c- compounding and building leverage with digital products and stuff, but you've gone straight in for the-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:06:32

        I haven't seen many about death, frankly.

    17. JOJonny1:06:34

        The, you know the idea of, like-

    18. CWChris Williamson1:06:35

        (laughs)

    19. JOJonny1:06:35

        ... y- y- um, the, the, not, not just thinking about death in general, but, like, the stoic idea of, of thinking about death and how things are finite and will end soon. Um, there's a, there's a few that have come up lately that have been like that, that I always think I should think more about that and give that more, you know, momentum or

    20. CWChris Williamson1:06:53

        ... I should spend more of my-

    21. JOJonny1:06:55

        ... that sort of stuff.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:06:55

        ... more of my living days thinking about my death. Yeah.

    23. JOJonny1:06:58

        So, I, I s- really, strongly think that, to be honest. I think most people should.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:07:02

        They say, what is it? "A good stoic, uh, a good stoic spends his life preparing to die, so that when he dies, he, he doesn't fear it." Some, something like that. Where do, where do you get this?

    25. JOJonny1:07:10

        Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:07:10

        Is it just Visualized Value?

    27. JOJonny1:07:11

        It's just in, in Chrome. Just go into extensions and search Visualized Value, and it'll be there.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:07:17

        Chrome extension.

    29. JOJonny1:07:19

        (laughs)

    30. CWChris Williamson1:07:19

        Very nice.

18. 1:07:20 – 1:09:29

    Location-Based Reminders

    1. CWChris Williamson1:07:20

       Yousef?

    2. YUYusef1:07:24

       ... Apple Reminders or TickTick, and presumably Things an- a- any task management app will have, any app worth its salt, will have a feature where you can ping a reminder based on your location. So, typically used for when I'm leaving the house it goes, "Oh, remember your wallet," or whatever. I use it as part of a social list for, uh, whenever I enter a 30 mile radius of Edinburgh or London or Leeds, to get in touch with certain people. 'Cause what you don't want to, what you're avoiding here is visiting London and then on your way back someone goes, "Oh, you were in London. How come you didn't get in touch with me?" And then you're like, "Oh shit, yeah, I should have gone for coffee with them." So it's having a location-based reminder whenever you enter a certain zone, and particularly useful for you, Chris, I guess, where you've got bros in several area codes.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:08:17

       Dude, I like that. I think that's cool. Do you remember Facebook used to have a function that was exactly the same? Such and such is near you, is nearby.

    4. YUYusef1:08:26

       Ooh, it's quite a creepy function.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:08:27

       Yeah, but you could select it on and off if you didn't want it. Uh, but yeah.

    6. JOJonny1:08:32

       Apple Reminders does the, like, when you're messaging someone. I've used that quite a few times. It's like when you open iMessage and go to message someone.

    7. YUYusef1:08:39

       Oh, yeah.

    8. JOJonny1:08:39

       The reminder pops up then.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:08:41

       And what, what's it... Oh, like w- what's a use case for that?

    10. JOJonny1:08:45

        So like, so you need to, tomorrow afternoon you, you need to remember to message someone about something, for example. So, if you were on your phone and you, you find... Or you find yourself in a conversation with someone and you remember the thing that you were gonna talk to them about, it pops up then. So it's like person contextual.

    11. YUYusef1:09:02

        Yeah, I suppose Apple's trying to create this like, oh, like you open a link and it says, "Ah, Johnny sent you this," or...

    12. JOJonny1:09:07

        Mm-hmm.

    13. YUYusef1:09:07

        But the... Apple also has Find My Friends feature.

    14. JOJonny1:09:11

        Mm.

    15. YUYusef1:09:11

        The reason I'm not super on board for that is that that requires you both to have a, a live location tracker at all times.

    16. JOJonny1:09:18

        Always on.

    17. YUYusef1:09:18

        And not every... Yeah, not everyone's gonna be happy with just always sharing their, their location with their friends.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:09:25

        No, probably not. (laughs) Uh,

19. 1:09:29 – 1:14:16

    Uber Hacks

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:29

       right, okay. So this is... I haven't got a car in Austin. I have been single-handedly keeping Uber solvent, uh, for the last few months. Uh, first up is Uber ONE, which is their Uber Premium thing. I think I mentioned this last time, but in case you haven't done... Uber ONE's great. It works similar to Amazon Prime, you get multiple types of, of benefits. It works on Uber Eats, it also works on Uber. You get 5% off everything, then some preferential deliveries. Sometimes you get quicker pick-up, sometimes you get free upgrades. Uh, I think that Uber ONE also allows you to get more, uh, options of the car's presets. Have you ever got into a car and it says, "What sort of level of talkativeness do you want the, the, uh, driver to have? What sort of climate do you want? Do you want it cool, hot, cold, whatever?" And so Uber ONE is, is part of that. Um, second one is Uber Instead of Cars. Especially if you're spending a good bit of time in a city and you're going away, a lot of the time you might consider, "Oh, I'm gonna rent a car 'cause I'm gonna be driving around a lot." If you actually look at the cost of Ubering everywhere for a day, it does not come in anywhere close to how much renting a car would be.

    2. YUYusef1:10:44

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:10:44

       Especially if it's lots of small journeys. And if it's over a longer period of time, one thing that I've realized is, obviously, on the days that I'm not Ubering, I'm not paying for anything. On the days that I have a car but don't use it, I still pay for the car. That being said, I've missed driving so much, like way more than I thought. I wouldn't, and I knew I loved driving. Got back here, jumped in my car, took a little while to start up given that it hasn't been driven for six months, but just felt so great to be back driving. I really enjoy it. Uh, here's the one which was very interesting, and I learned this from a driver that was stopping so that I could collect something from the supermarket. Uber doesn't get paid for stopping.

    4. YUYusef1:11:25

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:11:25

       So, the way that your Uber drivers get paid is based on the fee that you are, that they've proposed at the very, very beginning. So, if you get in a car and it's $9 or whatever, it is in their interests to get you there as quickly and in the most efficient route possible. If you're stuck in traffic you don't need to be particularly concerned. But it just-

    6. YUYusef1:11:48

       I've always wanted that.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:11:49

       It changes... For me, at least, it changes the, uh, power dynamic a little bit, and also the fear around whether this guy's taking the piss or whatever else it might be. Um, and also if you're stopping to pick somebody up and you're putting multiple destinations in, you're stopping en route, knowing that they don't get paid for stopping is, from a courtesy perspective for you and the, the driver, a pretty important thing to know. Because after two minutes, they can only stop for two minutes. The reason for that is that they're not getting paid for this, so it's in their interests for you to move quickly. And if you want them to get you there on time and all the rest of it, I think that it's a, a pretty good courtesy thing to keep your Uber drivers happy that you don't dick about when they're stood still.

    8. YUYusef1:12:32

       So there's no way for the Uber driver to take the mick. Like in a, in a London cab, like, the driver, if you don't know the area the driver could take you a really wiggly way round the destination, or-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:12:43

       Precisely.

    10. YUYusef1:12:43

        ... stop for ages. So, with Uber that's transferred entirely onto the, the customer. In that if the customer's like, "Oh, can we just pull up here and pick up my mate?" Or whatever.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:12:55

        Uh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the, the stops and stuff need to be, really should just be put in the app. Uh, and obviously everybody should know this but you can have multiple destinations put into... So if you're gonna go and pick somebody up it's not like you need to get in and then ask him, you can actually place that into the app and have multiple destinations go their way.

Episode duration: 1:29:49