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End Of Year Review: 2021's Lessons, Hacks & Fails

Jonny & Yusef join me to recap our favourite lessons, hacks and stories from 2021. Expect to learn why Yusef spent Christmas praying to Hasbullah, Jonny's strategy for becoming more productive by taking things out of your life, the ultimate reason to do simple tasks as soon as they appear, why moral tastes explain the explosive reactions we've seen this year, how extracting yourself from your business might make it more effective and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get perfect teeth 70% cheaper than other invisible aligners from DW Aligners at http://dwaligners.co.uk/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Access Propane's Free Training - https://propanefitness.com/modernwisdom Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #productivity #mindset #improvement - 00:00 Intro 00:28 Jonny & Yusef’s Christmas 06:11 What Jonny Learned in 2021 15:06 Choose What You Want to Suck At 19:12 Prioritising Quality over Efficiency 25:07 Focus on Mini Victories in 2022 39:23 Explaining ‘Anxiety Cost’ Mitigation 44:24 Why We See Through a Moral Lens 56:13 Protect Your Sacred Headspace 1:00:36 Achieve Outcomes by Focusing on Enjoyment 1:09:38 Favourite Life Hacks of 2021 1:22:57 Reacting to ‘Don’t Look Up’ 1:27:55 Conclusion for 2021 - Join the Modern Wisdom Community on Locals - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Listen to all episodes on audio: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Chris WilliamsonhostYusef (Propane Fitness)guestJonny (Propane Fitness)guest
Dec 30, 20211h 29mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:28

    Intro

    1. CW

      If you could go back 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, and give yourself two pieces of advice, it would be, "Buy Bitcoin and do 531 with progressive overload-"

    2. YF

      (laughs)

    3. CW

      ... "as your training program for the next 12 years." You'd be massive and rich.

    4. YF

      The challenge is, what's the 45-year-old version of you, what's that piece of advice for now?

    5. CW

      Do 531, probably.

    6. YF

      Probably the same thing, yeah. Probably just do the, uh-

    7. CW

      Buy Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin and (laughs) do 531.

    8. YF

      (laughs)

    9. CW

      Fuck. Fuck. (laughs)

    10. YF

      (laughs)

  2. 0:28 – 6:11

    Jonny & Yusef’s Christmas

    1. CW

      How was Christmas? Did you do anything interesting?

    2. YF

      So, I just did... This was my first Christmas not in a hospital, which was nice. So, just spent some family time. I did all the, the Christmas man things.

    3. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    4. YF

      Cranberry sauce, turkey, wrapping p- paper, all of it. Carved the turkey, did the special, say grace to Santa at the beginning.

    5. CW

      (laughs)

    6. YF

      That's right, isn't it?

    7. CW

      Is this what, is this what someone who's Muslim thinks that White people do?

    8. YF

      Muslim impression, though. (laughs)

    9. CW

      This is what White people do at Christmas. They pray to the turkey, and then you have the star which is Hasbulla, and he sits on the top of the tree.

    10. YF

      (laughs)

    11. CW

      (laughs)

    12. YF

      And you have to say grace to Hasbulla- Tinder's box.

    13. CW

      ... and then everybody does bad dance moves, uh, and invades a country, and then you're allowed to eat, yeah, and then you... No, that's you, that's your people.

    14. YF

      (laughs)

    15. CW

      The ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding. That's, that's what you, you guys do.

    16. YF

      Is this your first experience of a Christmas celebration? Or have you had more than this?

    17. CW

      I think one of, yeah. First-

    18. YF

      But it's one, it's one of everybody's though, isn't it? True. I think it was the highest Santa rating of all the Christmases that I've had. Like it was- The best Santa. ... really full, full beans, yeah. Sprouts. Full trap Santa.

    19. CW

      None of the food... The food items do not have anything to do with Santa. I need you to get... You need to separate-

    20. YF

      Separate the two in their mind.

    21. CW

      ... these two things out. Hasbulla, santa and the food items are-

    22. YF

      I'd love to know where Hasbulla's come from.

    23. CW

      (laughs) Three...

    24. YF

      I like it.

    25. CW

      They're three separate...

    26. YF

      The food is a bit rubbish as well. Like, Christmas cake, no... If it was nice, it would be available for sale the rest of the year.

    27. CW

      No, that's ridic... You can't say that. You could... Like, like for example-

    28. YF

      Well-

    29. CW

      ... Easter eggs. Easter eggs are nice, but they're not for sale for the rest of the year. Creme eggs are nice.

    30. YF

      So, Easter eggs are nice-

  3. 6:11 – 15:06

    What Jonny Learned in 2021

    1. CW

      couple of lessons that we've taken away each. I did a big 400th episodes, 19 Lessons from 400 Episodes. The reason that it was 19, nothing special about that, but we can go through some of the things that we've taken away from this year. Also, if anybody wants to do an end of year review and hasn't done yet, they can go and get my template, which is free. Chriswillex.com/review. It's the exact process that I follow, and I think you do as well, Seth?

    2. YF

      Yeah.

    3. CW

      I think it's the same one that you use every year to kind of round out the lessons from the previous year and then set some plans and goals and stuff like that for what's coming up. So, I guess some of the things that we talk about today may have been brought out by that, but I haven't done mine yet, so I s- I still need to do my end of year review. So, Johnny-

    4. YF

      So, I've, I've actually done it every year since last year.

    5. CW

      Wow.

    6. JF

      (laughs)

    7. CW

      Wow. Wow, indeed. If that's not the testimonial that I've always wanted-

    8. JF

      (laughs)

    9. CW

      ... (laughs) then we go. Uh, Johnny, what have you got? What's your first lesson from 2021?

    10. JF

      There's the hot potato.

    11. CW

      (laughs) .

    12. JF

      There it is, fresh out the oven. Um, so, the... I have actually done my end of year review, like a, like a good boy because I thought that would be, that was the whole point of this episode. But, yeah, no problem. Um, I think, uh, I, I'm, I mean, I might have said this on a life hack before, but the, just the idea of, like, taking something away. So if you, I think a lot of people who listen to these episodes, I imagine probably do or try and do a lot of things, whether it's like personal development or hobbies, or if you run a business you're probably trying lots of different stuff. If you're trying to like build a, build your own podcast or, or do similar to what, what we do in

    13. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    14. JF

      ... Probend, you've got like a lot of, a lot of things that you're trying to juggle. Um, and I think it's very hard when you're doing a r- a review process like this and planning the next year to think, "Oh well..." because you naturally just think, "I want to do more of all, all of it and get all of it, all of it better and hit PBs in all of it." Um, but it's very hard to know whether any of it's working. So stuff that I've done throughout this year, some of it's forced, some of it's not forced, was stopping doing a few things. And I think you either realize just how much of an impact it has and you're even more convinced on it, like more convinced than you'll ever be, or you're like, "Actually, you know what? I stopped that, but I didn't really notice anything." So two examples for me from that were, um, when I, um... So I didn't train when I had COVID or I had a cold, like a really bad cold in December, didn't train again. Both times, like 'cause sometimes I think like, "Oh, it'd be nice to have a month off training. It'd be nice to have a bit of time where I don't have to go to the gym." Eh, when I'm forced to not train you realize just how many things, and you said this before, Chris, just how many things it impacts you. Um, stopping meditating for a while, realizing how much of an effect that has when you don't do it. Um, but for example, things like a gratitude journal or journaling in general, when I stopped doing that I don't notice that much. Um, so taking things away, and then there's loads of examples on the business side as well, of stuff we've stopped this year. Like we stopped the podcast, and o- only when we started getting people saying like, "Where's the podcast?" have we decided to, to bring it back in again. Um, so yeah, just t- testing something whether something's actually helping or not by s- practicing not doing it for a while, banning yourself from doing something for a-

    15. CW

      It's like an elimination diet, but for your daily productivity system.

    16. JF

      Yeah, or, or anything. Um, like even as, as down to like certain exercises or like try not squatting for a while and see what happens. See if you notice anything, for example. Um, yeah. I think it's a great-

    17. CW

      Well, we never know, right? This is, this is the fucking thing. You never know what is contributing to your success or failure in life until you start to take things away. Because if you add stuff in, and this is always the problem, whenever someone says, "Oh man, you've, you, you really look like you've made great progress in the gym during the first quarter of this year. What is it that you've done that's caused that progress?" And you're like, "Bro, I have no idea. I did 10 things."

    18. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    19. CW

      "I did, I did a bunch of different things. My diet's changed, my sleep's changed, my programming's changed, this has changed."

    20. JF

      Or it's what you did in Q4 the year prior and-

    21. CW

      Or j- just-

    22. JF

      ... actually what, what you've done.

    23. CW

      ... latent gains.

    24. JF

      Yeah. It's the worst nightmare, stopping doing things that are working forever. Terrible. But yeah, so, um, first lesson is, um, I think when you're planning next year, pick one thing to deliberately stop doing for a while. So, es- especially if it's something you're not quite sure. I think we've all got that thing in our like morning routine or life where we're not quite sold on it, but maybe do it 'cause we think we have to. Just try not doing it. Like, like for example, I tried n- not tracking my calories while I was dieting for a period of time this year to see if I could get away with it. And I can't.

    25. CW

      (laughs)

    26. JF

      Categorically not. Some people can. Some people can. And I listened, I listened to this podcast and I was like... It was so convincing. It was with Eric Collins and a dietician and they were like, "Not tracking's way better than tracking." I was like, "That sounds so much better."

    27. CW

      Just eat by feel, basically.

    28. JF

      Yeah. That sounds so much better. Tried it for a month, gained weight. I was like, "Right."

    29. CW

      (laughs)

    30. JF

      "Lesson learned."

  4. 15:06 – 19:12

    Choose What You Want to Suck At

    1. CW

      so, uh, yeah, my, my realization for this year is that the ultimate productivity system is to get really clear about what you want and then to ruthlessly cull everything else. Like, if you really, really want to make progress in a particular area, just forget about the other things. Forget about the FOMO, forget about the failure, and that Oliver Burkeman thing plays a part of this, right? Like, choose what you want to suck at. So for me this year, I really, really wanted to rehabilitate my Achilles and to get my lower back into a place where it's super, super stable, and I can start to build a, a good training program in 2022. So, I knew that my condition was going to drop this year. I'm like, "Okay, I'm probably gonna look a bit shittier than I usually will do, and maybe my lifts and my strength, and maybe training's gonna be a bit boring, but okay." Like, when I notice that, when that arises, and I think, "Oh, I don't look as big, or I'm, uh, my, my lifts aren't as strong, or training sucks a bit," that's the price, that's the entry price that I was prepared to pay in order to make the progress that I wanted to make. And it helps to mitigate th- that short and long-term thing as well. It helps to keep you in a long-termist mindset. It's like, look, you wouldn't, you wouldn't have a problem with dieting for one week before you go away on holiday, but talking about doing a rehabilitation plan for an entire year so that your training for the next five years can be really, really strong. There's, there's like a, a time discounting problem that we have with that, right? You just think, "Oh, it's so long. It shouldn't take this long." But you got to look, the body takes a fair bit of time to recover. So, yeah, you cannot over- overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. The ultimate productivity system is to get really clear about what you want and then to ruthlessly cull everything else. And the only way that you can get really clear is to do something like an end-of-year review to look at, "What, what are the lessons I've learned from this year? What are the single goals that I want? Health, relationships, career, a- and personal growth." Like, the four areas, just single North Star for each of those. And if you've got those by the end of the year, you would be so buzzing with your achievements, 'cause there's gonna be tons of downstream things that you can't predict in any case. You don't need to say, "Oh, I want to learn a new skill or try a new sport." 'Cause you're just going to do that as a byproduct of existing. You don't... That doesn't need to be on the list. It's like, what's the real, real big change that I want to make, the forcing function change? And, uh, yeah, that's... It's so funny how, um, both of our lessons for this year have been to do with taking more away rather than adding more in.

    2. JF

      Yeah, I think, um, that feels just like the phase we're at the, like, you know, and then y- you, you go through it, when you go through any sort of personal development journey, I think the first phase of it is just doing absolutely everything and adding, adding, adding, and you end up with a five-hour morning. You end up with m- most of your day being your morning routine.

    3. CW

      Correct.

    4. JF

      And then you're like, "Hang on a second. This is ridiculous."

    5. CW

      Yeah, "I've got-"

    6. JF

      And then you end up-

    7. CW

      ... "I, I spent half an hour sorting my spreadsheet to track my sleep data that's been output by my Whoop and my Oura Ring to make sure that I..." Yeah. "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da."

    8. JF

      "It's definitely right, but actually, I could have just slept another 30 minutes."

    9. CW

      Yes. Yeah, precisely.

    10. JF

      Yeah. (laughs)

    11. CW

      Precisely. Yeah, it's, um... Do you think... You know how girls that spend lots of time together, their period cycles, their menstrual cycles tend to align? Do you think that we have productivity cycles that have aligned because of the same reason?

    12. JF

      I would say so.

    13. CW

      That's real science as well, right? That's not bro science, Yousef.

    14. YF

      R- real science, doctor approved.

    15. CW

      Thank you.

    16. YF

      That, that your productivity mesocycles align.

    17. CW

      (laughs)

    18. JF

      Align up.

    19. CW

      Yeah. (laughs) And you also, you're more productive when it's the full moon because the-

    20. YF

      Oh, I certainly am.

    21. CW

      ... gravitational pull on the, the, the lunar energy.

    22. JF

      Because those chakras.

    23. CW

      Yes. Uh, so that's mine. Yousef, what you got?

    24. YF

      So this actually leads onto, very nicely, um, this one. But you have to do the negative pilot stuff first. You have to know what you're exploiting before you do this tip. So if you're not doing that, do your negative pilot, pause the podcast. And now (people speaking at once)

    25. CW

      For four, for four weeks. (laughs)

    26. YF

      Yeah, (laughs) for four weeks. Do... Eliminate everything. So, once, once you know-

    27. JF

      At least four weeks.

    28. YF

      ... what it is that...

  5. 19:12 – 25:07

    Prioritising Quality over Efficiency

    1. YF

      Yeah, what it is that you should be doing, usually the first thing that comes up is, "Oh, well, I, I don't have time to be doing that thing." And we know from the, the last few chats we've had, we've always kind of circled back to screen time, is that usually if you say you haven't got time to do something, and you look at your screen time, and you see how many hours you're binging away on stupid apps, you, you probably do have the time. So then the next question is, rather than try... Or the next thing to do is, rather than s- trying to increase your reading speed or how efficient your training is or how high quality your meditation is by using your binaural beats and your infrared helmet and all this stuff, sometimes you don't need the life hack. You just need to do more of the thing that you know that you should be doing. And I think sometimes the mindset of maximizing the speed in things means that we end up actually cutting corners on just the total volume of time that we spend doing something.

    2. CW

      Give us an example.

    3. YF

      So, so trying to listen to the... I'm g- I'm so guilty of it, listening to things on two or three times speed, and therefore spending less time actually listening to something. Rather than saying, "No, I'm going to dedicate an hour and a half, two hours to actually get through a book." Or, um, you know, rather than trying to use the muse headset and the biofeedback and all that, should be like, "No, no, I'm, it's... I'm better off meditating for 40 minutes a day than trying to get, like, 10 minutes of pristine quality meditation." Or, you know, um, people do it with training quite a lot as well. Like, you know, you see the guy come in with his compression, um...

    4. CW

      Occlusion.

    5. YF

      Yeah, occlusion training and, like, all these kind of advanced techniques, but he's not... He's missing 20% of his sessions. So the, the overarching theme there is really stop trying to perfect your form if you aren't actually doing the reps in the first place. Obviously both are important, but quantity and quality are both needed. And if you let one slip, then you're losing a big side of the equation.

    6. JF

      So, like, reading about meditation versus just using that time to meditate? Is that what you're saying?

    7. YF

      So, yeah, I, I read so many books about meditation. When I look back on them, like, a lot of them were saying kind of the same thing. And it, it's difficult because, you know, there are... There's the occasional book that you're like, "Whoa, that was a game changer. That's really leveled it up." And, you know, it's-

    8. CW

      What was one of those books for you?

    9. YF

      So for the standard vipassana mindfulness meditation, I think Mindfulness in Plain English is very good. For concentration meditation, Ajahn Brahm's book called Mindfulness Bliss and Beyond, I think, even though it's not about mindfulness, (laughs) it's about the other side of meditation, is fantastic.

    10. CW

      Cool. Um-

    11. YF

      So, um, one of the... Just the, the kind of top quote from that was that enlightenment comes from the soaring summits of silence within.

    12. CW

      Nice. I don't know what it means, but it's nice.

    13. YF

      It's nice.

    14. JF

      Sounds quite great that, doesn't it?

    15. CW

      It sounds great. (laughs) Yeah, I, um, I think that it is a blending between those two, right? And Chris Sparks, a couple of years ago, said to us, "In order to pick something up, you have to put something down." So when you're thinking about adding stuff into your productivity system or your daily routine or your habits or your life for next year, you have to presume that the amount of time that you spend being productive is the amount of time that you have. If you just think, "Oh, I'll add this in, and I'll down-regulate my sleep or up-regulate my efficiency to be able to fit in..." Playing rugby, you know, joining a rugby team and training two nights a week and, uh, a Saturday afternoon-

    16. YF

      Well, sleep's a, a massive one. You know, people will have, like, all the sleep kit and then, like, the Ben Greenfield magnetizer for your mattress and the, the sleep mask and all this stuff, but they're doing six hours.

    17. CW

      No, be in bed for six hours, yeah, precisely. Go to fucking bed for a little bit longer.

    18. YF

      (laughs)

    19. CW

      Yeah, Jesus. Yeah, that's good.

    20. JF

      I, I had an experience, this was, like, years ago, with Eric Helms, my coach, saying to me... He banned me from asking him any questions about carb back-loading and carb timing.

    21. CW

      (laughs)

    22. JF

      Because it was like, "If you... You cannot send me a mess- an email asking me about carb timing while you are hungover." Like, "You are completely missing the point."

    23. CW

      (laughs)

    24. JF

      "Like, when, when, like, you've missed today's training session, you're, because you're hungover, and you're asking me about timing your carbs. Like, there's a-"

    25. YF

      Exactly, yeah.

    26. JF

      "... there's a layer there."

    27. CW

      It's kind of like-

    28. JF

      "Like, you're, you're-"

    29. CW

      This is like a keep it simple stupid approach, right? Stop-

    30. YF

      This, this is why it's a-

  6. 25:07 – 39:23

    Focus on Mini Victories in 2022

    1. JF

      the whole thing of, like, make every year when you make progress or you hit a new milestone or... It's all, all numbers really, isn't it, generally? Or, like, achievements, things that happen. Um, and they generally feel the same. Like I think especially money feels the same. It's like this year in, in propane, we've hit, like, new arbitrary milestones that we've always wanted to hit or, you know, you hit, hit a new low weigh-in or a new PB in the gym. Um, and I was saying this to Becca. Like it's getting to the end of the year. We've hit the targets we wanted to hit financially, but I feel just the same way as I did last year and the year before and the year before when I do this review process of like, "But what's the next thing?" Um, and I think un- unless you're, like, 10 to 100X your personal income, your life's going to be pretty much the same next year. Um, and there's a quote. There's a... something that I heard Paul Mort say, which is... I've never heard it. I've heard, like, this idea before, but never heard it phrased like this, that the outcomes you hit are the, the rewards you get for running your system or for pressing play on your system. So like, if you're just running this process all the time, you'll naturally just hit these arbitrary numbers and milestones. Um, and so I think the, the, the lesson or the thing that I always come back to when I look at this stuff is trying to just accept that, like, uh, certainly the way I'm wired, I think a lot of people are wired, is just by, like, little mini wins. Like, little bits of progress are really all that matter. So setting something that you quite like doing on a day or a week and then just care, just care about the mini wins and almost forget about the, like... It's so hard at this time of year, isn't it? 'Cause everyone's like, "I really want to hit... I want to get that promotion or I want the next milestone," whatever that is. Um, and you forget about the, like, when you step on the scales and hit a new low weigh-in for the week. That doesn't matter, 'cause it's not the big number, but actually it's really all that matters if you just stay motivated with just that.

    2. YF

      You know what's really annoying about, about that thing is that you never, never want to believe people that say that, that have actually been there. So... 'Cause you always go, "Oh, no, wh- when I hit a million, I'm, like, I'm definitely-"

    3. JF

      That bit, yeah.

    4. YF

      "... gonna be happy. Oh, yeah, it didn't make him happy, but that's 'cause..." Whatever.

    5. JF

      Yeah, but I, I agree.

    6. YF

      Like, I remember watching... Yeah, it... I remember watching Ali Abdaal talk about when he first hit his million subscribers and million, million dollars revenue for the year and, and he was... You would always hear him talk very flatly about, you know, just hedonic adaptation. Like, "Actually, I was probably most happy when I first hit my 500th subscriber, because that meant so much to me at the time. And when I hit a million, it was kind of like, 'Oh, yeah, well, here we go,' or, 'When I hit a million pounds...' " And yet, for some reason, you look at that and you go, "No, no, no, no, like, I'll, I'll be different." It's-

    7. CW

      Steven Baler has a story about that, that he brought up on the podcast, he was saying the day social chain got sold for some terrifying amount of money, he was less excited than when he found 19 pounds down the back of a chicken shop, uh-

    8. YF

      (laughs) .

    9. CW

      ... seat. Because-

    10. JF

      (laughs) .

    11. CW

      ... his hedonic adaptation had kicked in. And yeah, i- i- it doesn't really matter how many times you hear this story, you don't want to believe that it's true. But man, it's so fucking true. It, it touches on a bunch of different things that I... that, again, didn't quite make my list, but are, like, unbelievably important. Celebrating little wins, giving yourself the, um... allowing yourself to actually have a celebration. So me and Dean got... when we hit 100K, we got balloons and we took photos. It's a dumb thing, but... that we wanted to do it and it made us feel really fucking good. And you're like, "Yeah, that's a thing, that's a memory now. We did it, we worked really, really hard. I hit this goal. And before I decide to set myself the next one and start obsessing about what's coming next." Morgan Housel has a quote in The Psychology of Money where he says, "The number one thing that you need to do to win the game is to stop moving the goal posts further away from you." Every single time that you hit a new s- financial goal, you then move the goal posts further away. Ben Hardy-

    12. YF

      Oh, that's nice, and then quickly move it straight away.

    13. CW

      Yeah. Benjamin Hardy in The Gap And The Gain, which is... The Gap And The Gain by Ben Hardy is brand new. It's only come out about a month and a half ago. It's 160 pages. You can read it in a weekend or you can listen to it, and it, it, it exclusively talks about this problem. And he says that setting goals in this sort of a way is like running toward the horizon, that every single step that you take, your goal moves the same distance away from you. And the problem is that we all love the byproduct that we get out of this, that, that... not fear of insufficiency, but that constant desire for more motivates us and continues to get us to move forward. But, like, one of the lessons or the lesson that I had that didn't make the list, which is now making the list is-

    14. YF

      (laughs) .

    15. JF

      (laughs)

    16. CW

      ... (laughs) is that the outcomes that you're going to get in life are going to come along for the ride in any case. Fearing about whether or not you're going to get them is a fucking pointless exercise that just annihilates your enjoyment in the moment. Like, you are going to get to the place that you're going to get to based on the skills that you have and the work that you put in and the people that are around you and support you. And really, that's probably not going to change. If you decide to fret and be anxious and be really, really concerned about what's coming next and constantly think about what you're going to feel like when you hit this next goal, or if you just do the thing. There is no difference between the man that obsesses-

    17. YF

      It-

    18. CW

      ... over the thing and does the thing.

    19. YF

      It probably doesn't help.

    20. CW

      It-

    21. NA

      Probably.

    22. CW

      ... it probably n- negatively impacts your performance, yeah.

    23. JF

      Well, that... So, that's the thing that was kind of attached to this, which is just that ironically the... I have found, like... This is a bit woo-woo, this. This is something I've spoken to Yousef about before.

    24. CW

      Lunar energy.

    25. JF

      But... Lunar energy, exactly. No. Um, the um-

    26. YF

      Hezbollah.

    27. CW

      Hezbollah.

    28. JF

      Yeah.

    29. CW

      (laughs)

    30. JF

      But (laughs) with the, the... As soon as you kind of... I find, as soon as you, like, accept that, like, "Oh, yeah. The number's arbitrary, it doesn't matter," you just hit it anyway. And actually, it's easier to hit that way. And, and this has happened so consistently to me that I- I almost don't even want to acknowledge it, for fear of-

  7. 39:23 – 44:24

    Explaining ‘Anxiety Cost’ Mitigation

    1. CW

      different problems. All right, my one. Um, so this was, uh, a bit less, uh, productivity focused, but just... Opportunity cost is a mental model that most people will be familiar with. It's by going to the theme park, it means that you can't go to the gym. The cost of going to the theme park is the fact that you can't go to the gym. There is a choice between the two. That's the opportunity cost of you going to do a thing. So, I felt like there was a- an equivalent to do with uncompleted tasks, uh, so I called it the anxiety cost, and I learned this by realizing that at the start of every morning when you wake up, your daily tasks reset. Let's say that every day you need to walk the dog and meditate and answer emails and do whatever, right? That resets every morning as soon as you wake up. The time that you spend throughout the day up until you do that task is filled with ruminative thoughts about the fact that you still need to go and do the task. What that means is, the sooner that you can get that task done, the sooner you can feel relieved about the fact that you no longer have to think about it. So, the anxiety cost is the amount of time that you take up thinking about the fact that you haven't done a thing. Let's say that it's somebody's birthday coming up and you know that you need to buy them a present. You could buy them a present right now and never have to think about the fact that you still need to buy them a present, or you can wait for the next month. And how many times are you going to think about the fact that you still need to buy them a present? You can mitigate, uh, you can negate and reduce the anxiety cost by just doing the thing that you need to do sooner rather than later.

    2. YF

      We all know someone who, at uni, would always leave the essays or the dissertation until, like, the absolute, yeah, the absolute-

    3. CW

      That's me.

    4. YF

      ... last minute.

    5. JF

      (laughs)

    6. YF

      I, so not, not to blow my own trumpet or anything, but I-

    7. JF

      (laughs)

    8. YF

      ... I got my dissertation in, like, probably a month early. And I remember people were saying to me, "Oh, you're so organized or motivated," or whatever, and it was like, "No, not really." I'm just avoiding the pain. Like, I've got two types of pain I could experience here, either the anxiety cost or the all-nighters. It... Well, anxiety cost and the all-nighters and stuff, or the trying to get it done a bit early. And, you know, you have long summers at uni where you're doing actually nothing.

    9. CW

      Mm-killogh.

    10. YF

      Well, that's just time that you could be doing that. Like, there's nothing special about that time where you can't be. So, yeah, it's... I- I don't think it's any more virtuous to do one over the other. It's just what kind of pain do you want to experience?

    11. JF

      I think this all the time about, like, I should just go to the gym in the mornings. I have this, honestly, all the time. Like, it'll get to 4:00 PM, I'm like, "Oh, God."

    12. YF

      Why didn't I train earlier? Yeah.

    13. JF

      Yeah. Like, I've got to do this big session, and I could have just done it this morning, and now I could just continue doing the task that I'm doing, and I'd quite like to finish, but I'm gonna have to stop 'cause I've got to do my gym session. But the trouble is, like, you can apply that thing, that idea, to everything.

    14. CW

      You have to do everything immediately.

    15. JF

      Well, yeah, like, I've got to write that email, I've got to make that phone call-

    16. CW

      (laughs)

    17. JF

      ...

    18. YF

      That's where the negative pilot comes in.

    19. CW

      Yes. Yeah.

    20. JF

      Try doing nothing.

    21. YF

      Yeah.

    22. JF

      I've never taken ne- negative pilot, like level ten, like, the frozen turkey version where I just do nothing-

    23. CW

      Nothing ever and see what happens.

    24. JF

      ... and see what happens.

    25. CW

      Yeah. Yeah. Fucking hell. Yeah, I do get that, man. I- I think-

    26. YF

      Well, there was this guy I know...Mm-hmm. Uh, so, uh, we, we know a family friend who just canceled all of his direct debits and just waited for people to get back in touch with him-

    27. CW

      (laughs)

    28. YF

      ...'cause he looked under his bank and he was like, "Oh, ugh, there's too many and I don't know what goes where." Just blank cancel. Just blanket everything. And he said barely anyone got back in touch with him, so...

    29. CW

      Wow.

    30. YF

      Probably got bailiffs coming to his door now though, but...

  8. 44:24 – 56:13

    Why We See Through a Moral Lens

    1. YF

      this is in relation to the last couple of years, but I think it applies to, to most stuff. And I've been really getting into a guy called ZDoggMD, who might be fun to get on the podcast, actually. Zubin...

    2. CW

      De Mayya.

    3. YF

      ... Dobro- De Mayya. I was gonna say Dobrovsky or something. Um, but he went through the, the pandemic and then kind of polarized views on it and all of the sequelae that we're seeing from how people respond to it, and we were saying the other day, Chris, that there seems to be this weird tie-in now of, like, different ends of the political spectrum having, like, mixed in their views on virology-

    4. CW

      Yeah, I mean, what... How, how the fuck, how the fuck it is that far left and far right have managed to agree on the same thing, which is that, uh, big... the, the, the large pharma at the top of the tree is trying to kill everybody. Like, what the fuck do yoga moms and populist right-wingers have in common? Oh, they all hate big pharma now, apparently.

    5. YF

      Yeah, it's, it's become kind of baked into the actual identity. And, uh, and I remember seeing this, because I'm politically completely apathetic, and-

    6. CW

      (laughs)

    7. YF

      ... I, I like to think that I'm, uh, quite evidence-based, or at least empirical with the way that I look at things, and obviously working as a doctor as well, you, you see much more of the clinical side of it. And I have been like, "Why have people gone so mental?" Like, what, what is, what switch has flipped in people? And actually, this guy, ZDogg, explains it really clearly, which is that people see everything through their moral lenses, and it blocks their ability to see reality clearly. And you'll be much more attuned with, with this. Uh, I've not read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, but he talks about the different moral taste buds and how each of those taste buds touches a different part of our palate and causes us to swing to one side of the, the spectrum or the other. And when we've got, when we, we're faced with two choices, basically, over the last couple of years, it, it makes for a very harsh swing. And then obviously, that's reinforced by algorithms and echo chambers and all of that stuff too. So, I think having that maxim of just realizing that people only see things through their own moral lens gives you a bit more compassion for how people can get to such wacky conclusions.

    8. CW

      And this is wacky on both sides of the fence, right?

    9. YF

      Oh, yeah.

    10. CW

      There are people that are, that are so militantly pro-vaccine and so militantly anti-vaccine. Like, both of those stances seem to lose a lot of the nuance because, like, anything that you're 100% or 0% on is, i- i- is inevitably probably not... 'cause w- the world doesn't operate in that. Nobody should be able to say. It, it... At the very, very best, it's like 99.9% versus 0.01%. Like, that's, that's where it is at the most extremes. There's two, two quotes that come up that, that make me think about that, that, um, Gurwinder Bhogal taught me that a lot of ridiculous ideological views... Again, moving away from, like, vaccine stuff, but just any ridiculous ideological view or extreme ideological view, is a signal of loyalty to your own side and a signal of threat display to the opposing side. So, it's not about the fact that you believe or don't believe. It's that this is a badge of honor that you need to wear in order to be a part of our group, and if you don't, then we know that there's something up with you.

    11. YF

      This, this is exactly it. And so now, even if you, the, the, the inner scientist in you says, "Oh, okay. Well, based on the evidence, I think this is my conclusion," if that betrays the group that you're identifying with, suddenly it's a problem. You have to, you, you now have a choi- you have a moral choice of loyalty versus betrayal, rather than truth versus false, which (laughs) which is ridiculous. And, and the-

    12. CW

      Well, it also impacts your ability to do sense-making yourself, right? That you don't know-

    13. YF

      Yeah, absolutely.

    14. CW

      Your, your, um, emotions start to feed into your own ability to be rational. And you go, "Well, I don't actually know what I think about this anymore. I, I, I'm genuinely unable to separate out what I think factually from what I feel emotionally."

    15. YF

      Well, what's interesting is that, just to run through, I've got the, the six moral taste buds here...... and as you hear them, you'll be like, "Oh, actually, I can see how COVID will have completely touched on e- everyone's trigger buttons with each, with each of these." There's care versus harm, fairness versus cheating, loyalty versus betrayal, authority versus subversion, sanctity versus degradation, and liberty versus oppression.

    16. CW

      It's all of them. (laughs)

    17. YF

      Each one of those, big trigger buttons for-

    18. CW

      (laughs)

    19. JF

      Yeah.

    20. YF

      ... for people, especially in America.

    21. JF

      COVID, COVID 101.

    22. CW

      Fuck, I've never read that. I need to, The Righteous Mind sounds like a good, um, a good one to add on to the endless list of books that I'm never gonna read.

    23. YF

      I, I, I just assumed you had 'cause you're, you're Mr.-

    24. CW

      No. Uh, so, uh, the Jonathan Haidt book that I love is The Happiness Hypothesis. That's the one that I got through this year, which was fucking outstanding. Yeah, man, that's, um, that's a serious one. That's a really-

    25. JF

      There's a guy that, uh, posts on my... that I've met a couple of times. You know who he is, Yusef, we've met him. I'm not gonna say his name. In my, in my mind, not the person you're thinking of. In my mind, like, a very intelligent guy.

    26. YF

      Oh, the very Derren Brown.

    27. JF

      Quite a, yeah. Quite a-

    28. YF

      (laughs) That's your pal. (laughs)

    29. JF

      (laughs) Quite like, m- middle of the road views and that, all that sort of stuff. But, like, everything he posts at the moment is basically comparing, um, the vaccine rollout to Auschwitz.

    30. CW

      (laughs)

  9. 56:13 – 1:00:36

    Protect Your Sacred Headspace

    1. JF

      Um, my, so, one of the things I realized this year was that, and this is, uh, a business re- I guess this only really applies to business owners, I suppose. Um, some of our, like, best weeks and months were either when (laughs) I wasn't online at all, so I was away, or I worked less for whatever reason, which makes me feel like I make things worse, firstly. Like, when I'm trying hard, it, it is worse. Um, but also just, I think, a reminder that, um, I guess, like, as a ... I think I heard a, he- heard Jeff Bezos say, like, he considers himself to be paid to make, like, one to three decisions a day, like, one to three high-quality decisions a day. And I think as some- i- if you're in charge of something, if you're in charge of a team or you run your own business or, or whatever you're trying to do, like, really, the thing that you, that moves you forward is just having a few hours of, like, clear energy-filled headspace to make some decisions and m- do a few key things, and actually, like, constantly trying to push the boulder up the hill all the time often just makes it worse. And I'm always ... We had a, a quote that Youcef will know what I'm referring to, that was a, a business mentor of ours, said something like, you know, your, as a, as a business owner, you're like a, you're like s- someone in the SAS, you're like, in through, in through the window, kill the target, and get out again. Like, don't, like, sit on the sofa for five hours. And I think it's so easy to do, fill your, fill your days with things that don't necessarily matter when it's just, they're few things you could've done.

    2. CW

      Do you think that this is a byproduct of people that are small business owners and entrepreneurs that have started things from the ground floor up? Because they have that sort of, um, fire, firefighter putting out the small problems, operations first, I'm going to do the logistics, I'm going to fix the problem. Like, that's what all three of us have grown up running businesses as the guy that the buck stops with. And I, I, I wonder-

    3. JF

      Oh, yeah.

    4. CW

      ... how much of that is, is kind of programming from, from how we came up.

    5. JF

      Yeah, probably.

    6. YF

      Especially for the, for the, for the first couple of years of us running Propane. Like, we were doing the marketing, the accounts, the s- the delivery, the-

    7. JF

      Everything.

    8. YF

      ... making the logo, like, posting on Facebook. All, just literally, like, you are the entire HR (laughs) -

    9. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. YF

      ... you know, you, you're the entire suite of departments, aren't you? As ...

    11. JF

      When I have a problem, I email HR, which is Youcef-

    12. CW

      (laughs)

    13. JF

      ... and then he forwards it to me (laughs) -

    14. CW

      To deal with.

    15. JF

      ... to deal with.

    16. YF

      And we, if we've got like a tox- toxic culture problem in the-

    17. JF

      Toxic work culture, it's horrendous, yeah. Um, it's awful, awful place to work. But yeah, like, so this idea that, like, Monday, having a busy Mon- an overly busy Monday working too long, on, too many hours on a Monday impacts your Tuesday which impacts your Wednesday. And I think just as woo as it sounds, protecting the, the energy and the, the, the, the headspace you have, above other things, 'cause actually doing, like, two hours of, of focused work on something, or even just two hours of thinking in a day, is more important than spending all day in your inbox. Um-

    18. CW

      I can't remember who it was that I was-

    19. JF

      ... and I think, like-

    20. CW

      Sorry, go ahead.

    21. JF

      No, that was, that was it.

    22. CW

      I, I can't remember who it was that said that if you look at the role of a, a business owner or a CEO, like, specifically what they actually do, they're a hard-to-replicate complex decision engine. So that's what the, the value is, that's why the person at the very, very top of the tree gets paid so much, because they can aggregate all of this data, both objective, subjective, qualitative, quantitative, the felt sense, all of that stuff, right? They just aggregate all of the shit that's going on, and they, like, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, pbbt, and they just spurt out a single answer at the end of it. And the presumption is that that answer is the right one. Like, that, they're a complex, a hard-to-replicate, complex decision engine. And that is why, you know, as you go further and further down the chain of command, people are ... I- i- it's easier to find a cleaner that knows how to clean than it is to find a CEO that knows how to CEO, because that cleaner's skills are more replaceable than the CEO's are, because they're very, very specialized into this particular business at this particular point in time, within that market, within this nation, within these market conditions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

    23. JF

      Yeah. Yeah. Um-

    24. CW

      All right. Uh, my one. My one. So this was

  10. 1:00:36 – 1:09:38

    Achieve Outcomes by Focusing on Enjoyment

    1. CW

      from a fail, actually, from this year. It's a lesson from a fail. So my personal goal for this year was to reduce my screen time on my phone. And by any metric that you want to choose, like, I just haven't done it. I just haven't been able to-

    2. JF

      (laughs)

    3. CW

      ... to (laughs) reduce screen time, uh, by a, a substantive amount. I, I did it for the first quarter and then maybe for the first half of the year. I was making okay progress, and then that just turned into not okay progress. And then while I was out in Texas, that screen time-... ticked up more because I was spending more time, uh, like, away from other people, which meant that in order to get in contact with them, blah, blah, blah. Uh, and it came back to realizing while I was away in Texas, although screen time had ticked up while I was in the house, overall it had actually gone down. And that reminded me that focus on building a life that creates the habits you want. So, you can turn notifications off on your phone and sleep with your phone outside of your bedroom, and go grayscale, and do all of the things, right? You can do all of the things. Or, you can live a life that makes you not want to look at your phone. Like-

    4. JF

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      ... you can try and use James Clear's motivation framework in order to build up a habit of going to the gym, and you'll do one pushup today and two pushups tomorrow and blah, blah, blah. Or, you can just find a training regime that you really, really enjoy and a group of people that you want to do it with, and you're going to go to the gym as a byproduct of the life that you've created. I think a lot of the time, we take a very, uh, like, hermetically sealed, semi-autistic view of the solution to do this, which is to kind of brute force it through the correct process or whatever it might be. But people have fluked the same outcome, the same sort of process-builts life outcome that you're looking for simply by the life that they go through. You know, there'll be tons and tons of people out there who are very, very fit simply because they play a team sport that they love and they can't imagine not playing that team sport. Like, they have created a life that builds the habits that they want. And a lot of the time, it isn't even about habits. Like, we don't know the habits that we really, really want. It's that we have an outcome goal that we want and we presume that those habits are going to get us toward it. It's like, "I want to be fit. I want to be stronger. I want to look good. I want to do whatever." Okay. There are a million fucking ways that you could get through that. "I want to earn more money. I want to do..." Whatever it is that your goal is, just trying to create a life that helps foster that. You know, who are the people that you're spending your time around? What's the sort of daily routine that you've got? What are the sort of things that you consume, in terms of news sources and content and stuff like that? Those things will direct your life far more, I think, than trying to... Or at least equally as much as trying to brute force your way through some habit process.

    6. YF

      Quite hard to compete with the guy who's having fun.

    7. CW

      Correct. Correct.

    8. JF

      It's what, it's what, like, CrossFit does for most people, right? Like, you know, you see crossfitters who are just shredded and really strong, and they don't even really train. They don't... Like, they don't really do anything with their diet or, like, train for strength necessarily. They just love CrossFit. And, like, five years later, they're in great condition-

    9. CW

      Jacked out of their minds and fit and mobile.

    10. JF

      ... 'cause they just enjoy... Yeah, they just enjoy CrossFit. And it's very... I think, yeah, it's, it's finding the... The, the, the difficulty is because of phone, I think for a lot of people, me included, is this, like, it's a filler thing. It's not... You know, when people say, "Oh..." Like, well, it was Yusuf's point of, you know, look how many hours you have on your screen time and that's time you could be spent doing something else. It feels... Because you don't have the four hours or whatever of screen time in a chunk at the start of the day, it feels very hard to say, "I'm gonna stop that." So it's a-

    11. YF

      So, CrossFit's the perfect example of that because you've got someone who, like... CrossFit programming is chaotic by, by definition, but if you just nail it and just train really hard and do a lot of stuff, spend more time doing the actual thing, then you're gonna outperform someone who's, like, meticulously trying to, like-

    12. JF

      Mm-hmm.

    13. YF

      ... over-optimize his programming, but-

    14. JF

      Practice their-

    15. YF

      (laughs)

    16. JF

      ... wi- ring, ringing something. Yeah. When actually, they just do CrossFit.

    17. CW

      You had the best, uh, life hack around this, Yusuf, which is to have a different holding pattern activity. We all have those moments where we're waiting for 90 seconds-

    18. YF

      Ah.

    19. CW

      ... for something.

    20. YF

      Yeah.

    21. CW

      What is it that we default to? And almost always it's, "I'll get my phone out of my pocket, I'll pick my phone up."

    22. JF

      Oh, it's, it's frightening 'cause that has gotta be such a large chunk of our screen time.

    23. CW

      Yeah. You're waiting for... You're waiting in the line at the supermarket. What is it that you default to? You're waiting-

    24. YF

      It's jumping jacks.

    25. CW

      Yeah. Well-

    26. YF

      So fit.

    27. CW

      ... just, just thinking of something else that you could have. So for me, it's been, the solution for that has been to put a Kindle on my desk. So for instance-

    28. YF

      Yes.

    29. CW

      ... exporting... The, the amount of time, it takes me probably about an hour a week to export files of, of different manners. Maybe even more actually, maybe sort of upwards of two hours. And it just means that when I export files now, I just get, I get the Kindle out, and I'll just read wha- whatever's on there. So that's a new holding pattern activity. Problem is that I don't have the Kindle with me when I'm in a supermarket or when I'm waiting to get my tires changed at fucking QuickFit or whatever it might be. Um-

    30. JF

      I had a client who used to, once a week, he would move the Kindle app on his phone to where his Instagram was. So he would, like-

  11. 1:09:38 – 1:22:57

    Favourite Life Hacks of 2021

    1. JF

    2. YF

      And-

    3. CW

      Great.

    4. YF

      ... the, the lesson from that is actually, this is really valuable, that if you observe how you buy things, that teaches you how to sell. Because quite often we... We work with personal trainers to move online and help them with their online marketing. And quite often you'll see people, like, make their first attempt at marketing and you're like, "Whoa. Weird." Like, "Why have they suddenly gone from being a normal person to just suddenly really weird?" And it's 'cause they think it's this, like, different special skill and special voice that you have to put on and all this stuff. And actually, if you just notice how you buy things and what it is that causes you to buy or what causes you to opt into someone's funnel. And then at some point to be like, "Oh, right. That's it. I'm buying it." Like, and noticing those moments, then you're like, "Oh, well, it's very clear now." Because you see the internal problems forming and then looking for a solution and finding who is able to solve that problem for you and then you buy. So yeah, the opting into marketing funnels and email lists and things can be valuable in itself.

    5. CW

      That's, that's slightly different though, right? Because what Johnny's doing there is seeing how other people do things. That's not necessarily based on why he buys. But I think that that's, like, an amazing solution for somebody that wants to sell something. You are the business. The business is going to need to reflect your personality at least in part, because that's what's going to make it unique. So, why not, if you're the person that you're selling to or you're the person that's writing it, it... Why not try and think about what triggers you to buy?

    6. YF

      Yeah. And you're, you're right. It's a slightly different habit, I suppose. (overlapping speech)

    7. CW

      Other people out there might not want to sign up to 10 email sequences a week, just so that you can see if there's any good fun- funnel hacking secrets in there.

    8. JF

      I kinda... I just kind of believe that you should, like, p- t- participate in the, in the system that you want to benefit from.

    9. CW

      (laughs)

    10. JF

      So like, I, I allow every app to track me.

    11. YF

      And you don't have any ad blockers on.

    12. JF

      No ad blockers. I allow every app to track, opt into everything, buy, buy, buy from other coaches. I just think the more I give the system, the more it'll give back to me. That's- You've gone full fucking lunar-

    13. CW

      That's well proven. ... proven science.

    14. JF

      ... energy.

    15. YF

      (laughs)

    16. JF

      Proven science.

    17. YF

      The, the other thing there is that you do see people who are like, they hit, hit a certain level with their advancement of training and they go, "Oh, I'm not hiring a coach me 'cause I'm dead advanced and that." And it's like, "What? What's your job again?" "Coach." "Okay." So, Eric Helms pointed this out to us. He was like, "Put your hand up if you, if you have a coach." And like some people did and he was like, "Okay, so the people that don't, what you're saying there is that what you do as a job has no value." It's like, "Oh."

    18. JF

      Yeah.

    19. YF

      (laughs)

    20. CW

      Fuck. Yeah.

    21. JF

      Shh.

    22. CW

      Right. Right.

    23. YF

      Right.

    24. CW

      Right then. Let's... Fucking, let's go on... Let's go on, uh, life hacks. Let's go life hacks. Johnny.

    25. JF

      I've had a problem.

    26. CW

      What's the problem?

    27. YF

      (Sighs)

    28. JF

      So I keep all my life hacks in an OmniFocus list. And normally, you can see the things that have been ticked. However, recently, because I have so many things in my OmniFocus, they had to be archived.

    29. CW

      And you can't access the archive.

    30. JF

      And so, I can't work out how to access the archive. I do however have... I'm not sure whether I've mentioned this, but I have one that's top of mind that I can say.

Episode duration: 1:29:10

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