Life Hacks 104

Chris Williamson 0:00 (wind blowing) Hi again.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 0:07 (clears throat)

Chris Williamson 0:07 Life hacks 104 this time. Uh, Johnny is not here.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 0:13 1-0-4.

Chris Williamson 0:13 1-0-4. He is, um, in somewhere hot, sweating-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 0:17 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:17 ... and is complaining that we're being 105 kilos is too large.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 0:20 It's your own fault, Johnny. You're 105 kilos, you know-

Chris Williamson 0:23 Uh, it was his choice to move to the 120s, wasn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 0:25 ... to be hotter. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:26 As a powerlifter. Um, so, yeah, that is ... Oh, hang on. Ah, nearly forgot.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 0:32 Oh.

Chris Williamson 0:33 Nearly left, nearly left the phone on non-airplane mode.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 0:39 Oh, my God.

Chris Williamson 0:40 Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Come on, airplane mode. There we go. You know that the one time, (sniffs) the one time that the phone's on airplane mode, someone will ring me.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 0:53 It's standard, yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:54 Um, so life hacks 104. Who's gonna go first? Do you wanna go first?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00 Sure.

Chris Williamson 1:01 Right.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01 So, one that I've realized that I've been using seamlessly, uh, as you said, it's the ones that are the most background that are probably the most useful for you.

Chris Williamson 1:09 Mm. Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:10 But they're the least ones, they're, they're not the ones you'd be like, "Ah, yeah, I do that thing."

Chris Williamson 1:13 They've integrated themselves so seamlessly in your life that it's like talking about breathing or talking about eating or-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:18 Exactly. So, what is water to a fish?

Chris Williamson 1:20 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:20 So, Splitwise-

Chris Williamson 1:22 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:22 ... is one that, uh ... So this is a tool. It's free. There is a paid version, but it, so the paid version's so high-powered that you just don't-

Chris Williamson 1:28 Ugh.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:29 ... need it. (laughs) So-

Chris Williamson 1:31 There's too much optimization.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:32 Yeah, exactly. So if you live in a flatshare and one of you handles the bills, this is phenomenal. So it's, it's got like a, there's like a machine learning element to it and everything. But what it is, each person gets an account. You join a group, which is your flat, and then you input expenses. So you can set recurring expenses that are like-

Chris Williamson 1:52 Council tax and that.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:53 ... broadband, council tax. Yeah. And you can input individual ones. It then creates a running tally of how much each person is owed.

Chris Williamson 2:00 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:01 And so, and it, and it'll, it'll offset based on what other people have bought. So if you pay the council tax and then your flatmate goes and buys some toilet roll-

Chris Williamson 2:10 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:10 ... and puts it into Splitwise it'll-

Chris Williamson 2:12 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:13 ... balance it again.

Chris Williamson 2:14 This is just like your wet dream, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:15 Incredible. And then once a month, it sends you all an email saying who is owed what.

Chris Williamson 2:19 Wow.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:20 Um, and as you type in "electricity" or whatever-

Chris Williamson 2:24 Mm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:25 ... you know, "British Gas" or whatever, it'll then detect, it'll, based on the words-

Chris Williamson 2:28 Auto-fill stuff.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:28 ... that are typed in-

Chris Williamson 2:29 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:29 ... it'll create a little icon like light bulb, categorize it under electricity and utilities. Ah.

Chris Williamson 2:35 Wow. Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:35 That's just stiffy inducing for you, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:37 Incredible.

Chris Williamson 2:38 That's awesome.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:39 So-

Chris Williamson 2:39 That sounds really, really good. I remember when I was at uni, like we left with, I'm pretty certain there's still like three or four CCJs out for like-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:45 ... some of the people in my flat because they'd, they'd left without like paying their, their bit. Yeah. It is an, it is an absolute arson. I, I wish that there was a better app for, um, working out who owes what at the end of a meal, because we go out for food all the time.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 2:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 3:00 And it's an absolute nightmare. And I, like I'm sat there with one person-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 3:03 If you could just Apple Pay stuff as you go along. If like if-

Chris Williamson 3:06 What? (laughs) So I just have it come over-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 3:07 Like if-

Chris Williamson 3:07 ... and the start is here and then it's you and then it's-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 3:09 Or like an iPad menu where you just say, "I want that, that, and that," and it just charges you.

Chris Williamson 3:12 Yeah. That would be quicker, wouldn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 3:13 I'd rather that.

Chris Williamson 3:14 Right. My one. Oh, what am I gonna start with? Right, okay. So WhatsApp Web. Um, not everyone knows that there is a desktop, uh, browser-based partner to WhatsApp. Are you d- removing it? Ah, no? (laughs) Okay. Are you just opening it with Alfred? Um, yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 3:33 Alfred.

Chris Williamson 3:33 So basically if you go to web.WhatsApp.com and then scan the QR code with your phone when your phone's on WhatsApp, you get all of the functions of WhatsApp through-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 3:43 You only have to scan the code once and then it's just-

Chris Williamson 3:45 Yeah, it's logged in. Um, and yeah, you, you get all of your chats, all your broadcast lists, all your groups. You can upload, um, files and photos directly from your desktop. It's web, uh, it's browser based, so if you go to, uh, if you're away from your normal computer and you want to use it, then you can just log in. It is such a game changer. When we're talking about strategies to try and reduce our phone usage and get away from, um, the human in the loop, idiosyncratic use of your phone, this is one of the best ways, because you use your laptop for distinctly different purposes than you use your phone for.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 4:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 4:23 It's very easy to go onto WhatsApp to deal with something which you can, quote unquote, "have as productive," and then tumble into Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, so on and so forth. Whereas on your laptop, personally for me, I find that my, um, time is a lot more, uh, it's a lot more directed. It's definitely a lot more, uh, mindful. So yeah, it means phone can be down, face down. And obviously if you've got a MacBook, as we said, life hacks 101, the first one that we said was Apple products, if you've got iMessage linked up between your MacBook and your iPhone, you've got your two main platforms for messaging.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 4:57 You've got your entire phone on-

Chris Williamson 4:58 You've got your phone on your, on your-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 4:59 Your laptop.

Chris Williamson 5:00 Yeah, exactly. Which is unbelievable.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 5:02 So I'm part of team fat thumbs as well. And I just can't, like I'm using a, I use an iPhone SE, which is the same size as a 5.

Chris Williamson 5:09 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 5:10 And texting is just a nightmare every time. Like I, I really abhor-

Chris Williamson 5:15 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 5:15 ... texting on my phone, but I only do it when I have to.

Chris Williamson 5:18 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 5:18 So WhatsApp Web, at least it means that you can write out a more considered response 'cause you're not dealing with the arson or trying to text and thinking, "Well, I'm just gonna say."

Chris Williamson 5:25 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 5:25 And act- I've got myself in trouble by sending s- short messages or trying to be too concise 'cause I can't be bothered to type it on. I know this is like, some people would be like, "Oh, first world problem." Like, yeah, I know. But I'd rather batch process WhatsApp, type it properly on a computer-

Chris Williamson 5:41 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 5:41 ... not have to deal with a touch screen.

Chris Williamson 5:43 Oh. On the side of that, Control, Command and Space on a MacBook, that brings up the emoji menu. Now, this is going to trigger Yusuf because he has an even more shortcutty way of getting them up.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 5:57 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:58 But for m- mere mortals like myself and most of you who are listening.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 6:02 Oh, God. This is about where I realize how lame I am. So it's a great shortcut. The only reason I've set up a Alfred quicker version...... is because it takes about one to 1.5 seconds to load. And for me-

Chris Williamson 6:13 It does take a little bit of time. That's-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 6:15 ... it was-

Chris Williamson 6:15 ... just too long for you. But yeah, can, if you have your MacBook up and you press control, command, and I'm gonna make sure that this is actually correct or else I'm gonna be giving people ... Yeah, control, command, and space.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 6:25 It's quicker on yours actually.

Chris Williamson 6:26 Uh-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 6:26 Maybe I've just got a slower Mac.

Chris Williamson 6:28 Um, and yeah, it brings up the full emoji keyboard. So, if you're writing statuses or WhatsApp web, iMessage, stuff like that.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 6:36 And again, it's, it's indexed, so as you start typing watermelon, it will come up with-

Chris Williamson 6:40 Yeah, it'll come up, yeah. It's, I used to have all of my commonly used ones in a note, on notes, and then go onto the note-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 6:46 Oh.

Chris Williamson 6:47 ... copy them out, and then I found control, command, and space, and I was like, "Do I even need to be there?" Um, right, lemon. What do you want to do next? What's your next lifehack?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 6:57 So, my next one is... Oh, by the way, just before we go onto this, speaking of, uh, Splitwise-

Chris Williamson 7:06 Yep.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:06 ... and paying your friends-

Chris Williamson 7:07 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:07 ... Apple Pay Cash is coming out soon, which is gonna be a way that you can just iMessage your friends money.

Chris Williamson 7:13 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:14 So, again, with the paying the bill and stuff.

Chris Williamson 7:17 It'll probably be all integrated into something like that, and you just send a text-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:21 Could be lovely.

Chris Williamson 7:21 ... and the text sends the money across.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:23 So we could maybe even with meals and things, it could even be up to the kid

Narrator 7:26 (overlapping dialogue)

Chris Williamson 7:26 One person pays, pays the bill.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:27 And everyone just texts them the money, so-

Chris Williamson 7:29 Yeah, or gives them cash.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:30 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 7:31 (laughs) Right, moving on.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:34 Moving on. We talked about Alfred and the emoji search.

Chris Williamson 7:39 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:39 So, you can either do control, command, space, or if you use Alfred and you've listened to one of the other Lifehacks where we mention it every time, 'cause it's incredible, is, um, a shortcut that s- you, so for me, if I'm just typing an emoji, spa- it, open Alfred, so command, space, E, and then just type the word.

Chris Williamson 7:56 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 7:56 So, E, lemon. That will come up with the emoji. Now, another discovery I made on Alfred yesterday is the Google Search. So you can now do a built-in Google Search function. So let's say I want to type, I want to find my Ramadan article on Propane Fitness.

Chris Williamson 8:11 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:12 It gives you an inline response-

Chris Williamson 8:15 Oh, okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:16 ... within-

Chris Williamson 8:16 I understand, yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:17 ... there, so-

Chris Williamson 8:18 That's lovely. Yeah, that is cool.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:21 So then if I want to copy the link, I just do that and then paste the link to people.

Chris Williamson 8:24 So basically just everyone should download Alfred. I don't think we've actually gone top to bottom on what Alfred is. Can you very, very-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:31 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:31 ... very basically explain what it is-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:33 Yeah, so-

Chris Williamson 8:33 ... at its core level?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:34 ... so if you've used a Mac and you've opened Spotlight, which is the universal search bar, that comes up with, it's a currency converter, calculator, file search, any of those things. Alfred is like that, but it's a bit more superpowered, and it also has-

Chris Williamson 8:48 It's like, it's like that on steroids.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:50 Like it on steroids, yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:50 And, and speed at the same time.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 8:52 Yeah, exactly. And so it's faster, on steroids, and there's workflows as well, so you can, it builds in certain keys or shortcuts or whatever, that'll do a bunch of things. So you can like, select a file and then Alfred will move it to the folder that you want it to.

Chris Williamson 9:05 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 9:06 Or you can open a, a website in about two key presses or whatever.

Chris Williamson 9:09 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 9:09 So, and it's linked up with all of your-

Chris Williamson 9:11 It's just, it's a very powerful shortcut tool, right?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 9:13 It's great, like, you can call people with it, open bookmarks, um-

Chris Williamson 9:16 I found the other day, there's a, a plugin that you can get for it where it'll tweet from Alfred. So I can just be on here now, and in fact I'm gonna do this for a second.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 9:23 It looks the same as Spotlight, so-

Chris Williamson 9:25 Yeah. So I can command and space, I can type in the word tweet, which goes, "Send tweet," and then all I need to do is type, "I am tweeting from Alfred." Press return and space-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 9:39 And you send... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:40 ... and it'll send, it'll send a, a tweet out, and then it'll give me a little, uh, notification.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 9:42 I thought you were gonna say, "We're recording Lifehacks 104, tune in." But no. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:47 No, no, no, it's just-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 9:47 Just really inane. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:48 Yeah. I am tweeting from Alfred. Well, I mean, it's, it's definitely accurate. It's what happened.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 9:51 Exactly. So, so the reason that this Google Search thing is so useful, at least for me, and I'm sure that you guys listening, like, if you ever have to constantly bring up links or whatever for work and paste someone a link, now that, um, you can just type it in there, you know that it's gonna be the first thing on Google 'cause-

Chris Williamson 10:08 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:08 ... you know the specific keywords, and you just paste it to the

Narrator 10:10 (overlapping dialogue)

Chris Williamson 10:10 The main thing for, so this is, this is another one of the, the things to do with lifehacks. You are so far, you're so deep in Alfred.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:20 You are up to the hips in him.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:22 I have an hour-long webinar on Alfred that you can-

Chris Williamson 10:25 The problem is-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:25 ... check out.

Chris Williamson 10:25 ... you've missed off some of the best stuff because it's too basic, so the, the most used things for me on Alfred are the fact that it gives you a clipboard history.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:35 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:36 So, if you can, if you can imagine that when you copy something on a normal MacBook, you, you only can command and V, you can only paste-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:43 You overwrite the thing you've copied.

Chris Williamson 10:43 ... the most recent thing that you've done. Whereas Alfred gives you a clipboard of, I think it's the most recent 100.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:51 You can change the number as well.

Chris Williamson 10:52 Yeah, okay. So it gives you a history of pretty much everything of all time.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:55 And it's in rich text format, so it doesn't strip the formatting.

Chris Williamson 10:57 It copies the formatting through and all the rest of it.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 10:59 So you get images, whatever. And if you want to strip the formatting, you hold down shift and then it does that, so-

Chris Williamson 11:04 Yeah. It's about as slick of a workflow tool as you can get, but it's across everything, so whether you use your web s- uh, your, uh, computer for designing websites, whether you're a writer, even if you just use it for your, your MacBook for, um, doing articles or, um, university work, whatever it might be, there's something in this-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 11:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:23 ... that I think will improve... It is akin to speeding the trackpad, uh-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 11:29 Makes me so happy to hear, b- b- because I recommended Alfred to Chris, and it's 20 quid or something?

Chris Williamson 11:34 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 11:35 And obviously there's a sense of like, "Oh, shit." Like, "He's just got 20 quid."

Chris Williamson 11:38 I've forced someone else to buy this, yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 11:39 If he doesn't get his value for money out of it, it's gonna be on my head.

Chris Williamson 11:43 Which is the single most painful thought that you could have, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 11:49 Oh, God. Well-

Chris Williamson 11:49 That someone else has spent money at your request.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 11:51 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:51 ... and it's not. It's not been of value to them. So yeah, that's, Alfred definitely ... There's another part of Alfred which is a game changer, which is the snippets. So, um, if like me, I do a lot of social media and a lot of the social media posts that I write have elements in them which are the same, Alfred will allow you the same as what's called text replacement on iPhone. Basically you can write a short, uh, selection of characters which will expand out into either a full word, a website, um, a-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 12:22 So can you give us some examples?

Chris Williamson 12:24 So for me, I use ... A lot of the time I use get, uh, get on guest list, text, space, dash, space, and then a phone number. Now, that phone number is different for each event that we use. So for me to go back and have to copy this out of my notes was really arduous previously. Whereas now I've got VV1 for voodoo, AA1 for aloha, MM1 for both the Manchester nights. And what-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 12:45 Nice.

Chris Williamson 12:45 It means that I don't need to go back in. It's just automatically pulled across. Now, what I've also got is much longer replies and responses. So I've got my, um-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 12:56 Like the standard canned responses that you would give people.

Chris Williamson 12:58 Yeah. So if I get ... If, if, if someone asks about, um, they want to send some product out or something like that, then I've got a canned response in there with line breaks, formatting, my address, my phone number, my telephone, all of the bits that the people need. And it's just done. Um, a, the, the expediency is-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 13:19 Incredible. Yeah, so-

Chris Williamson 13:20 Yeah, it's pretty terrifying. So have a look at Alfred. I don't think you can download a trial version.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 13:24 You can get the free version, but it's not fully functional.

Chris Williamson 13:27 Oh, okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 13:27 Um, but to be honest, once you've played with the free version, you'll be like, "Okay."

Chris Williamson 13:30 Yeah. It's 20 pounds. It's 20 pounds as well.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 13:32 The thing is, like so the function, the functions you've described there, even just the text expander and clipboard manager-

Chris Williamson 13:38 Worth 20 quid.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 13:38 Better ... So there are dedicated clipboard manager apps and dedicated text expander apps that I've tried and are either more expensive or-

Chris Williamson 13:45 Can't hold a candle to Alfred.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 13:47 Yeah, and Alfred is still better, even like for each of them individually, even though there's not a dedicated app for it. So just absolutely get it.

Chris Williamson 13:53 Just buy Alfred.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 13:54 For example, yeah. So as Chris said, you can start typing your phone number or your address or whatever, and it'll expand. I have kind regards, Yusuf. The problem is sometimes I forget that I have it on, so I'll type kind regards regards. You know, like (sighs) .

Chris Williamson 14:09 And it'll jump on the back. Yeah. Um, right. So text replacement on iPhone was actually one of mine. So what this is, is, um, the exact same thing as the text expander that we've spoken about on Alfred, but it's on your phone. So if you think ... Especially on your phone, a lot of the time, what are the things that you need to type in? So your phone number, your email address, addresses. Um, if you go ... This is on iPhone, I'm not sure what the equivalent would be for Android. Settings, general, keyboard, text replacement. And then if you go-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 14:45 He's got the entire iPhone settings.

Chris Williamson 14:46 I've got it mapped. It's in my mind palace. Yeah. Um, top right, press the, press the plus button. The phrase that you put in at the top is what you want it to say, and then the shortcut is optional, and that allows you to expand it out. So for me, I've got EML expands out to my email, MY NUM expands out to my phone number. And it means ... One of the main things is you're never ever going to get it wrong. If you've got it right that one time, you're never going to typo your email address or your phone number again because you've outsourced getting it correct to a previous point when you knew it was correct.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 15:15 Exactly. So unless you've got it wrong then-

Chris Williamson 15:17 Yeah. Well, in which case you're really fucked (laughing) and you've been fucked for a long time.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 15:21 So you can also have some fun with it, like we did with Ben, where you change a or the or in to, "I really like it when you put your thumb in my bum."

Chris Williamson 15:30 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 15:31 "Thanks very much." And then, (laughs) and then whenever they'll send a message to a friend or whatever-

Chris Williamson 15:37 It's just complete gibberish.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 15:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:38 Yeah. Right. What have we got next? Okay, so-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 15:42 Shall I just quickly run through the potential features of Alfred, just in case you're listening and you aren't, um, not sold.

Chris Williamson 15:50 I think, I think we've sold Alfred on this one and we'll come back to advanced Alfred.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 15:54 Okay. 'Cause you are right. I didn't, uh, I didn't expound on the-

Chris Williamson 15:57 We'll go advanced Alfred on another one.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 15:59 Fine. I mean, we ... As I say, I've got a one-hour webinar on Alfred that you can listen to, so.

Chris Williamson 16:04 Yeah. Get in touch. Um, so next for me is Tubex.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 16:09 Yes.

Chris Williamson 16:09 Now, this is one that you actually got me onto.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 16:11 You know, I think we are the chosen few at this point because Tubex

Chris Williamson 17:54 So this is, again, we're on financial terms today, aren't we? You can tell it's a new tax year. Um, Quidco is a cashback site online and I couldn't believe that probably the most frugal person who I know, which is you-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 18:10 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 18:10 ... didn't know about it, and then increasingly, the more people that I speak to, they also don't know about it.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 18:15 Mm.

Chris Williamson 18:15 So I may be thinking it's not quite as renowned as-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 18:19 So I, I, I set up an account in, I think, 2009, 2010 from my flatmate's advice and then just never used it.

Chris Williamson 18:26 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 18:26 And I've realized that actually yeah, I missed out on so much potential.

Chris Williamson 18:30 Probably close to £1,000 over the last like five years.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 18:33 (laughs) So exciting.

Chris Williamson 18:33 Yeah, so basically, basically Quidco is a site, a cashback site. Um, you can go through it to get, uh, to purchase pretty much anything online. Myprotein, Muscle Food, BT, uh, Sky, a lot of utilities, First Energy, all that sort of stuff, EDF, they're all on there.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 18:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:51 Um, jet2.com. There's pretty much everything from groceries to utilities, electronics, consumables, all that sort of stuff. And yeah, you get varying degrees of cashback amount. Now the, the big money is to be had when you sign up to, uh, stuff that's monthly direct debit, so things like switching your energy over, switching your, um... what are you looking at there?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 19:13 You get £110 if you switch to First Utilities, for example.

Chris Williamson 19:16 First Utility, yeah. Yeah, like I managed to batch together I think about £150 to go over to Sky, plus with like a new, new member joining thing, and it meant that my first six months with Sky was free and my, my next six months was 50% off. Like-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 19:31 Great.

Chris Williamson 19:31 So yeah, it was, it's pretty, it's pretty impressive. But yeah, it's, it's the easiest thing in the world to use this-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 19:36 I'm just gonna use Alfred to create an, a calendar event so that I can remind myself to do that-

Chris Williamson 19:42 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 19:42 ... for Virgin Broadband.

Chris Williamson 19:43 There you go. I mean, it's just-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 19:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:45 ... the, the optimization is just through the roof at the moment, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 19:48 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:48 So yeah, Quidco, um, Quidco's definitely one that everyone should be using. You, you're spending the money anyway so you may as well try and save it. Um, are you still Alfreding or do you want me to go again?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 19:59 Uh, okay.

Chris Williamson 20:02 I'm gonna go again.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 20:03 Cool.

Chris Williamson 20:03 Um, so I've only recently started using this site, and I can't remember who introduced me to it. I think I might have just found it online, but it's called Medium, and I've got Johnny and Yusuf onto it as well. Medium is essentially a hosting site for articles that kind of the same way that Reddit is a meta blog, this would be a meta, uh, I guess news/article site.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 20:28 Mm-hmm. Kind of like Hub.

Chris Williamson 20:29 So you gotta think, yeah, um, if you type in on Google, if you want to find out about, um, biohacking, let's say, and you type in biohacking for sleep, Google will rank your results based on relevance, but not actually based on quality. Whereas Medium is one platform which has a whole bunch of articles hosted on there. A-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 20:56 Annoyingly, Google ranks it based on relevance to you as well-

Chris Williamson 20:59 Yeah, so it's-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 20:59 ... and your previous search terms, which just means you get stuck in this echo chamber and you don't actually get to-

Chris Williamson 21:04 That's a big thing, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 21:05 Mm.

Chris Williamson 21:05 Like there's a, a whole, um, a bunch of studies that have been done where they'll have one person will type in, like, "War in Iraq," and, or just, "Iraq," and then one person will get loads of war articles and the other person will get, like, "Want to travel to Iraq?"

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 21:18 Oh, really?

Chris Williamson 21:19 Yeah, like, based on what their history's been 'cause you get this curated news feed.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 21:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 21:23 Um, so yeah, Medium, i- instead of it being based on relevance, Medium bases it on, um, other users' ratings, so there's kind of an up vote and a down vote. The same way, similar to the way that Reddit works, I suppose. And yeah, the, the content that's on there, for me personally, is fantastic. I haven't spent as much time on a site in ages. There's a lovely partner app for iPhone. It remembers your, um, reading place. It'll deliver you similar articles to ones that you've up voted previously and that you've, um, that you've been wa- uh, reading. It'll give you an estimated read time at the top as well, which I absolutely love.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 22:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:01 I think that-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 22:02 It's lovely typography as well.

Chris Williamson 22:03 Yeah, it's just really, really clear, very well put together, and some of the articles that are on there are fantastic. A lot about optimization, a lot of stuff to do with news. It's a bit Silicon Valley-ish.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 22:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 22:14 But I suppose any emerging platform like this is going to be. But there's literally everything on there, and I think you, as a-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 22:22 It's more intellectual than something like Reddit as well.

Chris Williamson 22:24 Oh yeah, 100%.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 22:25 And so-

Chris Williamson 22:25 It's, it's quite serious to a degree, but I found out the other day, so I was reading about, um, what the scientific basis is for why Snapchat filters make girls look more attractive.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 22:38 Okay.

Chris Williamson 22:39 Really, really interesting.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 22:41 O- Oh, I guess it clears skin blemishes so it achieves the same objective as makeup does, like to start to hide blemish.

Chris Williamson 22:46 That does, that does. It's, um, larger eyes convey honesty, youthfulness, which is male to female trait. Interestingly, female to male, males need to have smaller eyes because it's, um, uh, maturity-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 23:01 Okay.

Chris Williamson 23:01 ... and masculinity. Um, cheeks blushed, lips blushed, uh, happens also on the Snapchat filters, which is, um, indicator of readiness for sex. And then it started talking about (sighs) what'll happen apparently over time in a society that values particular characteristics is you get, and I'm gonna butcher this, I think it's recursive Fisherian, um, recursive Fisherian, uh, uh, progress or something like that. What happens is characteristics which are attractive become exaggerated over time to the point in which they become caricatured. So you've got to imagine if y- if everyone in the world likes women who have big boobs-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 23:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:52 ... naturally through sexual selection, women with big boobs will procreate more, which ends up...... run it for 500 years. You've just got these pairs of-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:02 Overshooting.

Chris Williamson 24:02 ... legs.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:03 Right. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 24:03 Like, walking around. So you get this almost, like, you, you overshoot on the other side, um, and it's playing off the, um, being a little bit ahead of the curve in regards-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:12 It's the maximize the number of paper clips-

Chris Williamson 24:14 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:14 ... thing, isn't it? So-

Chris Williamson 24:15 And yeah, and this was, this was all on Medium, just some guy who wrote about marketing on, on there. So what's up next for you?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:21 Very interesting. So mine is a Pyrex bowl.

Chris Williamson 24:24 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:26 Large Pyrex bowl. Cost me about 1 pound 50 back in 2008. Had it for 10 years.

Chris Williamson 24:33 This is the only thing you eat out of it, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:34 It's the only thing I ever eat out of, and, um, it ac- like, I... (sighs) I invited my girlfriend round for the first time to have a, share a meal with me, and I realized, like-

Chris Williamson 24:43 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:43 ... actually, we're both gonna have to eat out of this Pyrex bowl.

Chris Williamson 24:46 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:46 Like, this is how dysfunctional as a human I am. So, um, so, we're, we, we've got other plates and things now, but like, that is just, 'cause it's so easily cleanable. It's indestructible.

Chris Williamson 24:57 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 24:58 Microwave it. It's big enough to cook large, like, bulk food in.

Chris Williamson 25:02 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:03 Um, you can do cakes in it, literally anything. It could be a mixing bowl. So really-

Chris Williamson 25:08 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:08 ... if you're gonna... 'Cause so I saw this, I saw an article by a guy who has 21 possessions.

Chris Williamson 25:15 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:15 And that's it. And I imagine it, he'll have like a spork and a Pyrex bowl-

Chris Williamson 25:20 Pyrex bowl.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:20 ... and that'll be his, his kitchenware. And then he'll have like a pair of boots, and-

Chris Williamson 25:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:26 So if you wanna go full minimal.

Chris Williamson 25:29 Pyrex bowls could ... But I mean, two Pyrex bowls would be-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:31 Even better.

Chris Williamson 25:32 ... yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:32 Potentially twice as good.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:33 So I mean, the, just, again, the washing up time, any of these things. There's no intricacy about it. It's just-

Chris Williamson 25:39 Done.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 25:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:40 I like that a lot. That's cool. Right. Okay, so up next for me is something that we've been, I, I've done for absolutely ages, which is bypassing going to the hairdresser's and getting my hair cut either in the office or at home. So pretty much every single hairdresser that you go to will also work privately. So all that you need to do, go into a salon, move to a new city or y- you're in a current, uh, location where you've been going for a little while, speak to the stylist that you usually deal with. Ask them if they do home visits more ti- like privately. More times than not, they will do. And then get them round to your house or get them to your office. You don't have to leave where you are. Yeah, you need to clean up afterwards. That's a negative. But on the plus side, it'll be usually between 50 and 60% of the cost, uh, an awful lot less inconvenience.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 26:35 Cheaper?

Chris Williamson 26:35 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 26:36 I would've thought they would charge you for a call-out.

Chris Williamson 26:38 No, not at all.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 26:39 Bloody hell. Okay, and do, do, do they just do all the guys in the office?

Chris Williamson 26:43 Yeah. So we, we have one person who'll come round, and there's been periods where she's done back-to-back like four guys, four of the guys in the office, and... Did you just grin at back-to-back four guys?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 26:56 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:56 Yeah, you did. (laughs) Um, yeah, she'll come round, and, and that, that's it, and you're there working away on your phone. You don't need to leave work. Um, and on the same as that is home visit car washes. So rather than having to drive to go to the local hand car wash or the Shell garage to get your car machine washed. You shouldn't be getting your car machine washed, by the way, and this is what the guy who does our valeting said, because the brushes break through the resin on the top of the paint cover for your-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 27:25 Ah.

Chris Williamson 27:26 ... for your car. So if you actually look at your car, the side of your car, if you've been getting it done with a machine wash, in the sunshine, you'll see that there's these tiny little lines that bounce off the sunlight. And what that's due to is the fact that these brushes are too harsh, and they actually chop away at the resin.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 27:40 Rips away at it. That's-

Chris Williamson 27:41 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 27:41 ... interesting.

Chris Williamson 27:42 Exactly. So if you can, if you're in the office or, or if you're at home, some people like the idea of washing their car. Like, that's cool. I can see it as a therapeutic, uh, activity, the same way some people actually enjoy Hoovering the house. But for me, it's not, so we've got a guy who comes round-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 27:57 Outsource.

Chris Williamson 27:58 Yeah. We've got a guy who comes round, and I think typically for a hand car wash, you'd be talking about maybe £5, or inside and out, you'd, like for a mini valet, you'd be talking about £10.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:07 So he'll come round and do, I think inside's maybe seven and inside and out's 15, but the quality's significantly higher.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:14 Can you give me this guy's-

Chris Williamson 28:15 Yeah. (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:16 ... details?

Chris Williamson 28:16 I'll give you afterwards.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:17 Bloody hell.

Chris Williamson 28:18 Um-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:18 'Cause there's a place in Wallsend that does the best hand job in town.

Chris Williamson 28:21 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:21 According to, uh-

Chris Williamson 28:22 I've seen the sign.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:23 (laughs) According to their sign, and you can see that they've, they've realized their mistake, and they've had to like-

Chris Williamson 28:27 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:27 ... rub away the word job, and uh-

Chris Williamson 28:30 What's it say now?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:30 You can see like the best hand, and they've written wash like on the side.

Chris Williamson 28:33 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:33 But like-

Chris Williamson 28:34 Hand, wash.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:35 (laughs) Yeah, but like it's faint. You can still see the faint like-

Chris Williamson 28:38 Job.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:38 It, it's like-

Chris Williamson 28:39 Faint job.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 28:40 Faint job. They've really, uh, done good.

Chris Williamson 28:41 So yeah, find, find someone who'll do home visits for you, for your car or your house, uh, for your, uh, car or your hair, because God, I'm ill. I'm not thinking straight today at all. Uh, it's, it's more efficient. It's gonna save you time. On the haircut, it will 100% save you money, and on the car valet, maybe you're gonna be similar, but you're definitely gonna get a better level of service. I mean, what, what do you value your time at? Because driving to town, especially if your hairdresser's is in town, you gotta drive to town, gotta park up, pay for parking.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 29:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:15 Get out the car, go ... Do you know what I mean? Like, it's just ... And the, the other thing as well is that you don't have to take any time out of your day to do this, because most of the times when the-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 29:24 I'm fully sold on this now.

Chris Williamson 29:25 ... the hair, hairdressers are free.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 29:26 The only reason I resisted it is 'cause I thought it would cost more. I thought it'd be like 30 quid just for, to call out and-

Chris Williamson 29:32 No. No, no, no, no.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 29:33 Bloody hell.

Chris Williamson 29:33 Not at all. Oh, it's yeah, because you've got to think, like the guys when they're working in salons-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 29:37 Gotta pay overheads and rent.

Chris Williamson 29:38 Yeah. They, they pay whatever it is, an equivalent of a rental fee or sometimes they have like a, they, they have like a minimum that they pay and then over X number of customers per week or month or whatever, that's when they start to be able to take their commission. So-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 29:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:51 ... if they can, if you can cut out the middleman, which is essentially the unit ... And the other thing is as well, like I, I always thought, "Oh, well, I don't have the, the kit at my house to get my hair cut properly." It's like ...... a bottle of spray water, which they'll bring, clippers which they'll bring. Put, like, do it on a hardwood f-floor or put a mat down or something like that. Bundle it up and you're away.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:10 Just in the garden.

Chris Williamson 30:12 In the garden, you would, uh, over the course of a year, you'd get a very hairy garden though, wouldn't you?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:15 I see.

Chris Williamson 30:15 Especially you.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:16 (laughs) Yeah, true.

Chris Williamson 30:18 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:18 I shaved my entire body from the neck down the other day.

Chris Williamson 30:21 How did that go?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:22 So I thought it, 'cause I'm, I'm going away to a hot country soon, so I thought-

Chris Williamson 30:25 Hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:25 ... I better, better cool down, shave my legs as well.

Chris Williamson 30:27 You can see some hair on your arms, though.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:29 Oh, yeah. I mean, arms, like-

Chris Williamson 30:31 What about legs?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:32 Yeah, I've done legs.

Chris Williamson 30:32 Did legs? Did legs but not arms?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:34 Yeah. So-

Chris Williamson 30:35 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:35 But I've realized it just makes you more sweaty.

Chris Williamson 30:38 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:39 I didn't realize the, uh, the purpose-

Chris Williamson 30:40 It wicks the sweat away, right?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:41 Yeah. So I think I won't be doing that again.

Chris Williamson 30:45 Hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:47 So-

Chris Williamson 30:47 Was it a lengthy task?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:48 No, didn't take long. It took f-five minutes.

Chris Williamson 30:51 I bet you're-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:52 Just-

Chris Williamson 30:52 ... a very rare Arab to be able to say that.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:55 Yeah, I, I mean, I've, luckily I've not got a hairy back.

Chris Williamson 30:57 Hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 30:57 So, my brother has. So I-

Chris Williamson 30:59 He's inherited all of the back hair.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:01 Yeah, he got all the Arab ti-... He, he also got the swole gene, which I find really annoying 'cause, like-

Chris Williamson 31:06 Yeah, he doesn't lift.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:07 Yeah, barely. And then here I am.

Chris Williamson 31:08 Yeah, but looks like he does.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:09 Yeah. Very upsetting. So my life hack-

Chris Williamson 31:15 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:15 ... is BetterTouchTool.

Chris Williamson 31:17 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:18 We didn't discuss this on the first one, did we? No.

Chris Williamson 31:20 No. No.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:20 So on a Windows computer, th- this i- this feature is actually something that I've seen so many Apple users just jeer over just because they thought that it was never gonna come to Mac, which is on a Windows computer, you drag a window to the left or to the right, and it divides the window or it snaps it to that side.

Chris Williamson 31:39 Yeah, th- this, this has been around for quite a while on, uh-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:42 On Windows.

Chris Williamson 31:42 ... on Windows, right? Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:43 Yeah, well, I, I don't know how you'd describe it, but where you drag it to the top and it, it makes the window half the size again.

Chris Williamson 31:48 It's like a window, a window optimizing, um, uh, shaping tool, right?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 31:53 Yeah, so it shapes it to one side or the other side or whatever. BetterTouchTool allows you to do that. It also gives you a lot more customizability over things like hot corners, so which corner you put the trackpad in the, on the Mac. Um, you can create key sequences and things. So I've got one that's like if I've got a tab open, um, I can move it to another space by holding down Command and pressing, double-tapping right or left.

Chris Williamson 32:18 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 32:18 Um, there's also things for, yeah, maximizing windows left and right with keyboard shortcuts, compressing all the pictures in a PowerPoint. So you've got PowerPoint open, you wanna make the file size smaller. So if you're a student and you're downloading loads of PowerPoints and they're all like 10, 15 megabytes each, very soon that's gonna fill up your computer. So BetterTouchTool will give you a, a way to set up a workflow so that you can just, it goes through all the pictures, compresses them, makes them smaller, saves the file down, drops the file size of your PowerPoint presentation. Um, launching certain apps, so I ca- I launch Evernote by, like, Command-Shift-J.

Chris Williamson 32:56 It's a shortcut tool, isn't it? It's the-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 32:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:58 ... it's the other side to Alfred, I suppose, to a degree.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 33:01 Kind of, yeah. And, and you can make this app-specific too. And if you have a new Mac, you can i- integrate with the Touch Bar, so you can completely customize all the shortcuts and Touch Bar and that kind of thing.

Chris Williamson 33:13 Okay. I, um-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 33:14 Just looking at birds on Instagram.

Chris Williamson 33:15 I'm not trying to think.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 33:16 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 33:16 I'm trying... So this is a girl who I know also has the melatonin gummies, which is what I was going to speak about next.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 33:24 Oh, hello.

Chris Williamson 33:25 Uh, but I can't remember the name of the company. The, it'll be in the description below. So melatonin, in fact, I'll put this over to you.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 33:33 I'm just gonna use the Alfred, uh, search GS search function.

Chris Williamson 33:37 Yummy, that's it. Yummy. No, so you can't get, you cannot buy melatonin on Amazon in the UK. You can buy products branded as melatonin, but actually it's 5-HTP-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 33:48 Oh, dicks.

Chris Williamson 33:48 ... or it's something else. Yeah, you can't get it in the UK, and if you try to buy it in the UK, it'll say that you can't. Yeah, see?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 33:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 33:55 You've just got Add to Wish List there, or See All Buying Options. So that's not-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 33:59 This is Amazon America, yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:00 Yeah. Well, there you go. And it won't ship to the UK either. So, um, can you briefly explain what melatonin is?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 34:06 So melatonin is the sleep neurotransmitter. It's just, uh, it's the metabolite of serotonin. So serotonin metabolizes into melatonin, which is just what's released naturally when you go to sleep. Now, you can supplement with it, which will promote your natural production of melatonin and help you to sleep better. And in the studies, it looks like melatonin reduces your sleep requirement by about an hour in some, according to some data. So it's nice to use as a way to reset your sleep cycle if you've either been traveling or you've had a late one and you need to kind of reset things a little bit.

Chris Williamson 34:44 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 34:45 It's not something that I would take every day, but it's useful to have as a backup.

Chris Williamson 34:48 I agree.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 34:49 Like a sort of nuclear warhead.

Chris Williamson 34:50 So Matthew Walker from Why We Sleep, um, he talks about melatonin use, and says that his sole, um, advice for it, or his primary advice for it, should I say, is for resetting sleeping patterns. And that would be particularly useful if you are someone who does shift work, someone who has varied working hours like myself, or someone who travels a lot and is potentially moving through different time zones. So I use these melatonin gummies. I've got no idea. Don't ask me how. It's called Yummy, which is the company that does them. Uh, a link will be in the show notes below. I have no idea how they're retailing them in the UK, because as far as I'm aware, melatonin isn't available. You can't even get melatonin, I don't think, on prescription. It's just not available in the UK.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 35:35 Mm, you can get it on prescription, but you, you have to have a pretty good reason for it.

Chris Williamson 35:37 That's if you've had a severe as- like, severe insomnia, 'cause I went and spoke to my doctor about this about six months ago.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 35:43 Yeah, I'm not sure even doctors would prescribe it to someone who's not autistic or, um, have a child developmental problem.

Chris Williamson 35:50 Really?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 35:50 And I, I think as an adult, I don't know if they would give you melatonin. I think they'd probably give you zopiclone or some kind of sleeping pill.

Chris Williamson 35:57 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 35:57 But yeah, hard to say.

Chris Williamson 35:58 Which is potentially, is that a, a less holis- holistic, less natural approach? Do you think?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 36:03 Less natural and it's been implicated in-... all-cause mortality, which is interesting. So-

Chris Williamson 36:09 All-cause mortality?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 36:10 So like, you will, you will die of any cause. You, you're, you're more likely to die of any cause if you take more than three sleeping pills a year.

Chris Williamson 36:18 Oh my God. (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 36:19 (laughs) Which is ridiculous.

Chris Williamson 36:20 What the fuck? That's terrifying.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 36:23 So like, hit by a bus-

Chris Williamson 36:24 What a statistic-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 36:25 ... whatever, just-

Chris Williamson 36:25 What a stupid statistic. Well, anyway.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 36:27 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:27 So yeah, I've got no idea how this company's retailing them, but I, um, I spoke to them, I dropped them an email and I asked them to explain why it is that the gummies work more effectively. Now, I'll do a, um, I'm gonna be talking about sleeping, uh, in an upcoming podcast, so I'll come, go through that in a little bit more detail then. But yeah, melatonin for resetting sleeping patterns, especially if you're doing shift work, if you're traveling a lot, it's a real game changer for me. Um, I struggle to get to sleep. There's a lot of times I'll get in from work at 6:00 in the morning and I'll look at my clock and I'll think, "Right, I'm finishing work now and in 24 hours I'm gonna want to be getting up."

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 37:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:06 So I need to go to sleep, wake up, go to sleep, and wake up in the space of 24 hours in order to be able to reset my sleeping pattern appropriately. And the only way that I can do that is by using melatonin, because my circadian rhythm is just so off.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 37:22 So off.

Chris Williamson 37:22 Yeah, it's so thrown out. Um, and the dangers of shift work, people who do shift work, they die, I think on average 10 to 15% sooner than-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 37:34 It's pretty bad, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 37:35 High rates of diabetes, high rates of heart disease, um, high rates of cancer, much higher rates of Alzheimer's. Um, so yeah, try and treat sleep as sacredly as you can and assist yourself with melatonin. Um, it's a, it, it's been a real, a real assistance for me, so.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 37:54 Yeah. Melatonin's good. I've, I've got some as well. I, you can, y- yeah, I, I imported some.

Chris Williamson 37:59 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 37:59 It's legal to own and everything, but ?

Chris Williamson 38:01 yeah, it's not a controlled substance. It's strange why in the UK they don't have it.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:04 So I got some brought over from Canada that I've been using, some sublingual ones that you dissolve under the tongue. Um, and then moved on to the, uh, melatonin gummies after that.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:14 Gummies.

Chris Williamson 38:14 Yeah, exactly. The, one of the problems is that because they're kind of like just chewy sweets, they taste really good.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:20 Mm.

Chris Williamson 38:20 So the ten- the, like, temptation to overshoot is massive.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:25 Yeah, it is.

Chris Williamson 38:26 I would just put myself into a coma with 20 grams of melatonin gummies.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:29 Well, well, that's it, and the, the optimum dose of melatonin is one milligram.

Chris Williamson 38:33 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:33 So there is like a if you have too little or too much, it has less of an effect than one milligram.

Chris Williamson 38:40 Which is strange.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:40 It is odd. Some, some drugs work like that. And luckily I've got a, um, I've got the lo- lozenges as well.

Chris Williamson 38:46 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:46 And you can split them into quarters.

Chris Williamson 38:47 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:48 And they're five milligram lozenges, so splitting them into 1.25 milligrams, that's fine.

Chris Williamson 38:53 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:53 Like, does the job for me.

Chris Williamson 38:55 Next.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 38:55 Next is my current electricity supplier-

Chris Williamson 38:59 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:00 ... called Bulb.

Chris Williamson 39:00 Oh, God.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:01 Now, I was with Npower, who, Npower, if you're listening, you are terrible. Like, I looked them up on Trustpilot, 0.4 out of 10 rating.

Chris Williamson 39:11 Oh my God.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:12 So (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 39:13 What?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:14 They're just, they've just been inconsistent.

Chris Williamson 39:15 Surely they could just get some of their mates to go on-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:18 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 39:18 ... and give them a ten star, like, and get better.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:20 I think there's just such an overwhelming majority of people that are just like, "Zero, zero."

Chris Williamson 39:23 Ah, awesome.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:24 Um, so they're, they're really awful. And I switched to Bulb. I went on the thing and I was like, "Okay, um, switch to Bulb." It's like, "Hey, put in your address. Here's what your quote will be." And it, it's consistently the cheapest tariff possible, and they only have one tariff. Npower have about 150 tariffs based on, like-

Chris Williamson 39:41 It's so weird.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:42 It's designed to obfuscate it and confuse you because they've had a hard life.

Chris Williamson 39:45 Is that why it's ... ? It's like, "January 5th to 11th."

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:48 Fit, fixed, yeah. Whereas Bulb is, is the cheapest and they only have one. It's just like flat, low, cheap.

Chris Williamson 39:55 Yep.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:55 And it's because they, they, everything that they do is from renewable sources.

Chris Williamson 39:59 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 39:59 And as a result, they get a huge amount of angel investors and government funding.

Chris Williamson 40:03 Yeah, and the kickback is massive.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:04 They're just piling, piling into it. Yeah. So basically, that happened. I filled in the form, which was like a page. It, it was like four fields to fill in and I pressed OK. And it was like, "There you go, you've switched to Bulb." It was like (censored) . So I called them up and I was like, "Hi, um ..."

Chris Williamson 40:19 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:19 So in fact, the, right, I, I gave them a call on the number on the website and it just went, "Hello, this is George speaking. Thanks for calling Bulb. How can I help you?" And you're like, "Wha- wha-"

Chris Williamson 40:29 Hang on, where's the 45 multiple option things for me to-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:34 Yeah, like straight through to a human, like, "Oh, oh, I'm a bit taken aback here."

Chris Williamson 40:37 It wasn't ready. I was, I was prepared for 10 minutes-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:39 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 40:39 ... of or- of selecting-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:40 Of selecting circular options.

Chris Williamson 40:42 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:42 And I was like, "I've just filled in the form. Um, is that it?"

Chris Williamson 40:47 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:47 And he's like, "Yeah." Like, "What? So now you're my energy supplier?" And he's like, "Yeah, we like to make things easy." And I'm like, "Okay, great."

Chris Williamson 40:54 Fucking hell, man. Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:55 So from doing that, I got 50 quid.

Chris Williamson 40:58 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 40:59 And-

Chris Williamson 40:59 Did you QUIDCO it? No, you didn't QUIDCO it.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:01 Didn't QUIDCO it. I should have.

Chris Williamson 41:02 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:02 But you can also, if you refer any friend-

Chris Williamson 41:05 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:06 ... they get 50 quid as well.

Chris Williamson 41:07 Awesome.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:08 So if you don't mind, Chris. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:10 I'll, I'll switch, I'll switch at some point soon. I'm not due here.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:12 Oh, well, I was gonna say, if you don't mind me mentioning my, my referral code as well.

Chris Williamson 41:15 I'll put it in the show links below.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:16 Fine. Bulb.co.uk/refer/yousef, Y-U-S-E-F.

Chris Williamson 41:21 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:21 And you get 50... We both get 50 quid.

Chris Williamson 41:24 That's awesome.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:24 It is great. So I've made 250 quid from Bulbing.

Chris Williamson 41:28 No way. Fuck.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:28 Which is amazing.

Chris Williamson 41:29 That's, that's like a... Is it in Bulb credit or is it in real money?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:32 It's in Bulb credit.

Chris Williamson 41:33 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:33 But-

Chris Williamson 41:33 That's re- it is real money, isn't it? You're gonna spend it in any case.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:36 But you're gonna spend... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:36 Yeah. That's cool.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:37 And the app is excellent. It's all really simple. Like, look at, look how simple the interface is on the website.

Chris Williamson 41:42 Oh yeah, that's f-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:42 Um, and you can select... Those are the addresses that I've got on Bulb. So you can just-

Chris Williamson 41:47 Uh, yeah, that's cool.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:47 ... just switch between-

Chris Williamson 41:48 Oh, hang on. Did you, have you referred like your mum and...

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:52 Oh, okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:52 You, you, you can refer-

Chris Williamson 41:53 Anyone?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:53 Yeah, it doesn't have to be-

Chris Williamson 41:54 I'm just trying to think about how, how far you've dug yourself a hole.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 41:57 Oh, I've referred my sister, my mom, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:58 Yeah, yeah. Cool. Um, on a similar vein to that, booking.com.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 42:04 Ah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:05 Unbelievable. I don't know...I don't know who else. Like hotels.com I suppose or ElateRooms are all right, but booking.com for me is by far and away the best place to book hotels.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 42:17 Have you used Trivago?

Chris Williamson 42:19 Trivago? I haven't, actually.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 42:20 I've not either.

Chris Williamson 42:20 Have you not heard-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 42:21 I've seen the adverts for it.

Chris Williamson 42:22 Yeah. I've seen the adverts for it as well. But booking.com is the best interface, large selection of hotels, always, um, got good ratings from users. So the same reason that I like to use Amazon is because there's a high amou- a high degree of user feedback on all of the products and the same thing goes for booking.com.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 42:43 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:44 So there's an awful lot of previous customers that leave feedback about where you're going to go and stay. And this mediates the, um, search priority that you get. So you get ones that might be a three star, but's like nine out of 10 or one that's a four star, but five out of 10. And the four star will be ranked further down. And it does, it does stuff based on, um, the number of options and all the rest of it.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 43:09 Is the star determined by objective measures?

Chris Williamson 43:12 Yeah. Yeah. So the actual star is the, um-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 43:15 Like the amenities and number of bathrooms or whatever?

Chris Williamson 43:18 Yeah. Whatever criteria it is that hotels are gauged on, but then there's a user rating which isn't, and you can sort by user rating.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 43:24 So it's not like it's a nine out of 10 for a three star?

Chris Williamson 43:28 No. Although customers will have used that in their review because the three star presumably will be cheaper than

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 43:34 You're not a bad dancer for an Englishman. You know, it's not-

Chris Williamson 43:37 Yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing. No, I understand. Um, so yeah, booking.com. And then if you pound it enough, I think it's if you've spent about 500 pounds on it, you get something called genius level discount, which is 10% off all valid, um, stays-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 43:53 Forever?

Chris Williamson 43:54 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 43:55 What? So once you've spent 500 quid on booking.com-

Chris Williamson 43:57 I think... I don't know what the, I don't know what the, uh, criteria is, but basically when I was in Thailand, I was using booking.com for everything. And partway through my, partway through my stay, they said, "Congratulations, you've now, um, uh, you're now eligible for genius discount." And basically there's some hotels that do sign up to it and some hotels which don't. But recently I've just booked my hotels for LA where I'm going in a couple of weeks, and Best Western... LA is so expensive. Best Western for nine nights should have been 18 or like 17.60 and I got it for like 15.30 or something like that.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:30 Wow. Okay.

Chris Williamson 44:31 So-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:31 Great.

Chris Williamson 44:32 Yeah. It's, it's awesome. Um...

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:35 I've used booking.com as well. It's-

Chris Williamson 44:36 And you can get...

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:37 ... it's good.

Chris Williamson 44:37 That... What reminded me of it was the fact that you can get, um, 15%, uh, sorry, 15 pounds refer a friend.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:43 Oh, okay.

Chris Williamson 44:44 Refer a friend and you both get 15 pounds (hands drumming) .

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:45 Nice. It's just the sheer number of places that are on there, as you said, and the amount of data and-

Chris Williamson 44:51 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:52 ... choice and rooms and things. Yeah. Very good.

Chris Williamson 44:55 Yeah. What's next?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:56 So I'm trying to alternate between online and offline ones.

Chris Williamson 44:59 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 44:59 'Cause I feel like so many of mine are s- silly little apps.

Chris Williamson 45:02 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 45:02 So this is called Iina, I-I-N-A.

Chris Williamson 45:06 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 45:07 It is a wrapper, a user interface wrapper for a, um, something called MPlayer, I think, which is a, a Mac aud- uh, Mac multimedia video audio player.

Chris Williamson 45:18 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 45:19 The reason I like it is, again, keyboard shortcuts, very simple, very lightweight. It's like really small file size, opens instantly. Um, it saves the place where you were at. So you open... If you're watching a long lecture or something-

Chris Williamson 45:31 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 45:31 ... and you close the window, if you open it again in a month's time, it'll just restore back to where you were at before.

Chris Williamson 45:37 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 45:37 Um, I know a lot of people use VLC.

Chris Williamson 45:39 Yeah, that's what I've got.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 45:40 I've switched over from VLC to this just because it's, it's just so much better. You can change the speed and the, the volume and everything and skip forward and back five seconds or 30 seconds with the arrow keys.

Chris Williamson 45:48 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 45:49 It's all just so instant and it just feels like you're just plugged into the, the media rather than having to (techno music plays)

Chris Williamson 45:55 It's weird, isn't it? On a Mac, especially on a MacBook that QuickTime is just so fucking clunky and shit.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 46:00 Oh. It's... And it has, it... And they seem to have this deal with QuickTime that they've had for like however many years.

Chris Williamson 46:05 Well, it's owned by Apple, I think.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 46:06 Is it?

Chris Williamson 46:07 Yeah, I think so.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 46:07 Ah, okay. Do you remember when Windows used to do RealPlayer?

Chris Williamson 46:10 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 46:10 That was a prick.

Chris Williamson 46:12 Yeah. That was shit. But yeah, Media Player Classic if you're on Windows is what you need. That's the... Or you can get VLC also. Um, but Media Player Classic is about as lightweight as you can get. And you can do stuff like you're, you're talking about there.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 46:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:25 Which is where you, uh, you can actually overshoot the audio volume. So you can do like a pre-amp, so you can actually have volume, audio volume at 150%. Obviously it'll degrade the quality, but it'll make it louder or quieter.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 46:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 46:37 Yeah, it just sounds like, sounds like noise. Uh, right. Let's get two more each and we will finish up. Um, so I'm gonna do a bit of a plug here, not for anyone who's affiliated with me, but just something that I love called Anjuna Deep. Um, so Anjuna Beats is Above & Beyond's record label. They also have a podcast, which is called Group Therapy and Anjuna Deep-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 47:04 Group Therapy with Above & Beyond.

Chris Williamson 47:06 (laughs) That's it. Exactly it. Really good.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 47:10 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 47:10 Um, Anjuna Deep is the deep label portion of that. So if you can imagine what... for anyone I'm trying to explain what like deep progressive house music is to people who don't understand, it's slow, melodic, non droppy trance for want of a better term. It's very, very ethereal, gentle flowing mu- music.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 47:31 It's, it's simultaneously non-intrusive, but also it's not just muzak.

Chris Williamson 47:36 No. Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 47:37 It's like you can have it on while you're working and it's not gonna like disrupt your focus.

Chris Williamson 47:40 Well, that's exactly, that's exactly what it's here for. So Anjuna Deep for Working is what I use. So Anjuna Deep podcast is 210 episodes, something like that now, and most of them are g-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 47:51 There's more than enough to get on with. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:53 Oh, yeah. There's loads. And they release one every single week and they're all awesome. And from start, uh, from the start intro, which is also very gent- gentle, after a minute there is pretty much usually no vocals until the end, except for a few songs that tend to have that in them, vocal samples. And for working it just provides this lovely soundscape that doesn't intrude on what you're doing, very...... serene, very gentle, nice and melodic. Some of the guys in the office like to work to sort of more popular music or, and more sort of clubby stuff, hip-hop and stuff like that. But for me personally, I find it's really distracting. My, my mind gets carried away by the words that come in from the music and, for me, Anjunadeep is just the perfect soundscape to work to. So, uh, search on whatever your podcast app is, have a look at Anjunadeep and give it a crack when you're working. It's also another thing, if you, like me, work in an office that can be loud, and you need to not have distractions, um, audible distractions in order to focus, one of the advantages of this kind of music is that because it moves across a number of frequencies and there's a lot of synths going on, it doesn't actually have that much dead space in. You can imagine if you were listening to hip-hop or drum and bass, uh, not drum and bass, sorry. Hip-hop or, or, uh, other music like trap music, I suppose, where you'd have these breaks-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:16 Mm.

Chris Williamson 49:16 ... and silences in the music that you actually end up-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:19 So-

Chris Williamson 49:19 ... hearing the sound (clears throat) coming from other people.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:21 So it glazes over any of the-

Chris Williamson 49:22 Exactly.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:23 ... the noise that

Narrator 49:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:23 ... you've got, if you've got earphones in, it's almost like white noise, but really, really lovely white noise.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:27 So apparently people find, uh, random ... so it's silence, but with random noise, unpredictable noise, stressful.

Chris Williamson 49:35 It's t- oh yeah-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:35 Compared to-

Chris Williamson 49:36 ... it's horrible.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:36 Yeah. I say like, apparently humans find a- a ... as in, what I'm saying is like-

Chris Williamson 49:40 Yeah, as if I'm not a human. Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:41 (laughs) Yeah. Like there i- I've seen, yeah, there are studies saying that compared to-

Chris Williamson 49:44 Right.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:45 So-

Chris Williamson 49:46 Up next.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:46 Offline, rice cooker.

Chris Williamson 49:49 Yeah (laughs) .

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:49 Have I, have, this isn't the previous one.

Chris Williamson 49:51 We haven't done rice cooker, no.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:52 I need to order the life hacks to c- to do the ones that we've discussed already.

Chris Williamson 49:56 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:56 As we start to do more and more of these.

Chris Williamson 49:57 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 49:58 Rice cooker, you can pick one up for 30 quid new, 10 pounds on Facebook Marketplace.

Chris Williamson 50:04 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:04 Um, (laughs) which is another life hack. I don't know if it is a hack, but-

Chris Williamson 50:08 It's not. It's a life curse, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:10 ... it causes me more hassle than ... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:12 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:12 It's definitely a failed life hack for the, uh-

Chris Williamson 50:14 Yeah, definitely.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:14 But yeah, so rice cooker just makes perfect rice every time. Like, how easy is it to mess up? It, it ... w- um, this is not a rhetorical question. It is very easy to mess up rice in a pan.

Chris Williamson 50:27 I've never found this.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:28 I don't.

Chris Williamson 50:28 Darren's, Darren's wife's sister, Hannah, cannot cook rice. Like, can't do it.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:34 Really? See, I was either-

Chris Williamson 50:35 Can't cook rice.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:35 ... overshoot or forget it or whatever.

Chris Williamson 50:37 But she can bake cakes. And you as well. Like, you, you're Arab?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:41 Do you know what I mean?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:41 It's true.

Chris Williamson 50:41 Like, rice is, rice is literally in your blood.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:43 Well, so, so, I mean, I've got, I've got the, the hang of it now, of making rice in a pan, but then it's like, it's just unnecessarily difficult-

Chris Williamson 50:49 Mm-hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:49 ... compared to rice cooker. Put the rice in the thing, cover it with a bit of water, and press on, and then you just leave. And then if you, let's say you go to the gym-

Chris Williamson 50:57 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 50:58 ... like, if you were cooking rice in the pan, you wouldn't be able to go to the gym.

Chris Williamson 51:01 It's fucked, yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:01 Whereas this, you, you press on, it detects how much water is in the thing by weight.

Chris Williamson 51:06 Mm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:06 And then it stops cooking when it's the perfect, when it's at the optimal moisture.

Chris Williamson 51:10 Optimal fluffiness. I like my-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:11 And it just keeps it warm.

Chris Williamson 51:12 I like my rice slightly well done. Can you, can I edit how-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:15 Yeah, you can. So, um, depend ... there's differences. There's eight settings on it and you can-

Chris Williamson 51:20 Oh my God.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:20 Oh, man. Like-

Chris Williamson 51:21 Eight different types of rice.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:22 Right, this is what ... like, if this is what the Chinese use-

Chris Williamson 51:25 I think-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:25 ... and they are conserving rice.

Chris Williamson 51:26 ... if it's good enough for them, then it's, it's definitely good enough for us. Right, on the, um, topic of food, Muscle Food.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:35 Mm.

Chris Williamson 51:35 We haven't done Muscle Food yet.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 51:36 They're good.

Chris Williamson 51:37 Yeah, they are. So, Muscle Food are a bulk meat supplier. Um, they ... a UK-based company. Um, I'm, I'd be very surprised ... they are, for me, as ubiquitous as MyProtein now. But they basically allow you to buy large volumes of meat.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 52:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:00 And other things as well now, like pre-packed vegetables, um, like potatoes and stuff like that. A lot of supplements.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 52:07 I think they do all sorts now, yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:07 Nut butters and all sorts of stuff. But for me, the main thing that I use it for is for ordering chicken breasts.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 52:13 It's the, the bodybuilder's grocery, isn't it? Basically.

Chris Williamson 52:16 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 52:16 Um, their meat is also really nice quality. It's not just like the shit ... supermarket chicken breasts will often, you fry it and then it'll shrink by half the size or something.

Chris Williamson 52:28 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 52:29 Um, all of the meat there is what you see is what you get. They do an excellent pastrami. Thick, thick slice, really tender, like, as if it's just been cured off the ... well, I suppose all cured meat has been cured off the cow, but it just is so fresh and lovely.

Chris Williamson 52:49 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 52:49 Quite expensive though, so.

Chris Williamson 52:51 Yeah, a little bit. But there's, there's enough variety on there that you can have different, uh, different options. So, for me, getting five kilos of chicken breasts, I think it's, it's so cheap. Like, it's, it's far, far cheaper than going to Tesco. It arrives at your house. The only issue that you've got is the fact that you're going to get meat delivered in a package and if you're not in at the time, it'll get left somewhere because they won't take it away. If they take it away, it'll perish. So it's like it'll get left at the front door, it'll get left at the office door, and then-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 53:25 So you gotta leave a special place.

Chris Williamson 53:27 Yeah. And the problem is if you're not there, like if your availability isn't tied in with the delivery schedule, you're either left not being able to order because you don't want it to waste or potentially risking wasting it-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 53:39 Mm.

Chris Williamson 53:39 ... which isn't ideal.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 53:40 They put it in a cool bag, don't they, though?

Chris Williamson 53:43 They do, yeah. So it'll last for, I think, it'll last for about 48 hours in that ... or they claim that it'll last for 48 hours.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 53:52 That's pretty good.

Chris Williamson 53:53 So it's got a lot of cool like, uh, ice packs and stuff that go with the meat.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 53:56 So if you're not gonna be home over a 48-hour period, then you shouldn't be ordering large amounts of meat.

Chris Williamson 54:00 Yeah. Uh, so yeah, there is a, uh, there's a code that Muscle Food have very kindly given me that anyone who's listening can use. Um, for transparency, I'm not making any money off this, it's just the same. I use the same deal that they gave me when I need to order (laughs) when I need to order chicken. But, um, I'll pop that in the show notes there as well. It's, uh, MWISDOM10 at checkout and you'll get some, uh, you'll get some free chicken.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 54:25 MWISDOM10.

Chris Williamson 54:26 MWISDOM10, yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 54:27 I'm gonna do that now.

Chris Williamson 54:28 Um, so yeah, one more.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 54:31 Okay.One more. I bought a ro- not a roll-on, like a balm deodorant-

Chris Williamson 54:40 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 54:40 ... the other day-

Chris Williamson 54:41 Tell me about this.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 54:42 ... on Amazon. So previously, I used spray deodorants.

Chris Williamson 54:45 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 54:45 Uh, I'm not a big fan of aerosols or, um ... and I wouldn't use an aerosol antiperspirant either 'cause there's a lot of other disruptive stuff in them.

Chris Williamson 54:54 This is a, this is a big thing in America, right? Like ...

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 54:57 Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm not, like, super paranoid about them, but I'd rather-

Chris Williamson 55:00 How wooyoo is this? It's, like, magnesium content and stuff, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 55:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:04 Or is it, like, iron-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 55:05 Yeah, the aluminum.

Chris Williamson 55:06 Aluminum content.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 55:06 Yeah, there's a few other things that I, I just think, like, given the choice, even if it's not that bad, like, I realize ... 'cause I think going full tinfoil hat on this stuff, like, you're pissing in the wind because there's so much environmental exposure to xenoestrogens and that kind of thing that you're not gonna be able to shut it all out.

Chris Williamson 55:24 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 55:25 But I feel like if I'm gonna be spraying something in, like, lymphatic drainage points daily, then probably makes sense to go for something that's not gonna be adding to it.

Chris Williamson 55:36 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 55:37 So it's ... I'll, I'll find it. It's called Man Cave Eucalyptus Deodorant Balm thing.

Chris Williamson 55:45 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 55:45 It's a stick. I've only used it for a month so far, but I've ... it's barely touched the sides in terms of how much I've used.

Chris Williamson 55:52 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 55:52 Seven pounds, but I feel like it's gonna last five or six months at least.

Chris Williamson 55:57 Really?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 55:57 And it smells lovely.

Chris Williamson 55:59 So is it ...

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:00 It's quite effective.

Chris Williamson 56:00 I was gonna say, is it, um-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:02 It's like an all-natural thing.

Chris Williamson 56:03 Yeah. What's, what's the difference between that and what you spray on yourself?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:08 So this is ... it's alcohol-free and it's made from a bunch of, like, plant, um, plant balms and that kind of thing.

Chris Williamson 56:17 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:18 Um, and it also, it also just smells really nice.

Chris Williamson 56:20 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:20 That's, that's primarily the reason why I got it 'cause I thought ... it was after you mentioned in the previous life hacks about burning eucalyptus oil, and I was like, "Oh, it'd be lovely to have some kind of toiletry thing-"

Chris Williamson 56:33 That smells like that, yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:34 "... that's eucalyptus." So I had a look online, I was like, "Okay, that looks fine." Like, if it wasn't for the smell, honestly I wouldn't have bought a natural alternative thingy 'cause I don't care enough about it to ... but it, it just kind of sp- it tilted the balance 'cause I thought, "Well, it smells great, and it's good alternative."

Chris Williamson 56:50 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:51 Go for it.

Chris Williamson 56:51 That's pretty cool. I guess if you're not, um ...

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:55 As, as far as deodorizing.

Chris Williamson 56:57 What's the effectiveness rating?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:58 Very good.

Chris Williamson 56:58 Is it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 56:59 Like, I'd say better than sprays.

Chris Williamson 57:01 Really?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 57:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:02 That's crazy.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 57:03 I'm no expert on this stuff, but ...

Chris Williamson 57:05 No (laughs) . Uh, right, okay. Let me see. I got time for one more. Right. So final one that I'm gonna use is a tactic called working from zero. Uh, now I think I'm right in saying that this is David Allen's Getting Things Done, right? I think that's where it comes from. Um, if not, it's a productivity tool which allows you to try and clear as much mental clutter as you can. So you'll have all seen someone's phone where you, you go to type something, "Oh, mate, just put your phone number in there," or whatever, and you look, and it's got, like, 45,000 unread emails.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 57:46 Oh, man. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:49 And you need to-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 57:49 My girlfriend has 13,000 unread and it's on her home screen all the time.

Chris Williamson 57:53 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 57:53 And it's like-

Chris Williamson 57:54 Just this red number and it's like, okay, so how do you know when you've got a new email? Do you reset your baseline of zero to that 13,152? And you're like, "Okay, it's 13,153. I must've got an email-"

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 58:06 Oh, god.

Chris Williamson 58:06 "... that I need to check." Yeah. So, um, working from zero is an approach to productivity which is that all notifications and all unreads are taken out at all times. And I think for me, it's a really, really nice way to keep my, uh, phone screen clear. Obviously, I could clear my phone screen by not having notifications on, but that defeats the purpose of the usefulness of notifications.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 58:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:32 So for me, if I've got an email that comes through, I deal with it as quickly as possible. And if I can't deal with it as quickly as possible, I'll read the email ... sorry, I won't read the email, clear off the read, and then set a reminder to go back to the email. Because what you don't want to do ...

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 58:50 So we discussed Mailbutler in the last one, where you can, you can do, like, snooze it, for example.

Chris Williamson 58:54 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 58:54 So your inbox only has things that are, need to be actioned or-

Chris Williamson 58:58 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 58:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:59 Immediate. Um, it's just a nice way to work. Marking things as unread is a useful tool, but up to a point. If you have got-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 59:10 It's a slippery slope, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 59:11 Yeah, if you've got stuff that's been unread for, like, three, four days, you're like, "I just need to deal with it."

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 59:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:16 Like, and it's there in the back of your mind causing anxiety and making you feel-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 59:20 So the only emails that I have in my inbox that remain ... so, so the, so open my inbox, it's either things that I haven't looked at yet and I need to go and process, which, which is done in batch every week, or the things that remain there would be like a flight itinerary for an upcoming, or, like, a train ticket or something that needs to be in there.

Chris Williamson 59:40 Even with that, you would-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 59:41 Even then you could put it in Evernote or something.

Chris Williamson 59:42 ... take it out of that, put it into Evernote, clear off the notifications.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 59:44 So really there's no excuse to have emails in your inbox.

Chris Williamson 59:47 No.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 59:47 Especially not 13,000.

Chris Williamson 59:49 No. But yeah, that just terrifies me. Like, the, the level of, uh, of anxiety that that would cause would be, would be frightening.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 59:57 'Cause people say, "Oh, I'm numb to it," but it's designed, as we discussed in the technology ... What Is Technology Doing To Us? podcast, with a hacker in your pocket, the little read notification circle is designed to ... it's, it's read for a reason.

Chris Williamson 1:00:13 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00:13 It's the alarm color.

Chris Williamson 1:00:15 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00:15 And it's designed, and it's on your home screen to make you, like, always go, "Oh."

Chris Williamson 1:00:18 At all times.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00:18 So there's gonna be this background hum of stress from having 13,000 emails.

Chris Williamson 1:00:23 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00:24 It also makes you feel like a wasteman when you've just got-

Chris Williamson 1:00:27 Yeah. It's just an ugly looking home screen, isn't it?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:29 I saw the guys have got, like, 53 unread iMessages. I'm like, "Why have you got unread iMessages?" That's just-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00:35 That's not the most priority-

Chris Williamson 1:00:36 That's just people that you've ignored.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00:38 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:00:38 Like, 'cause the thing is you can't even mark them as unread. You haven't even opened them.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:00:41 So, with iMessage, I guess rather than, like the, the ball ache of opening a message, "Oh, I'll deal with it later, I'll set a reminder," easier to just open it and deal with it, isn't it? So in that case-

Chris Williamson 1:00:52 Deal with it. Well, that's, that ties in with the two-minute rule, which is from David Allen's Getting Things Done. If any task takes less than two minutes. I think you can extend that to probably like three.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:00 Um, if any task takes less than three minutes, just do it.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:04 Do it now. Don't-

Chris Williamson 1:01:04 Do it immediately.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:05 Don't schedule it in 'cause it'll take longer to schedule it in.

Chris Williamson 1:01:08 Schedule it, then go back, "Oh, well, hang on, right, what's the..." Especially, so this is the thing I was saying about don't read the email, just put the reminder in. Because if you read the email, contextualize it, then put the reminder in, you've already done half of the work.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:19 And you've got the background noise in your head.

Chris Williamson 1:01:21 I understand what it is, yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:23 "Oh, I've gotta do that thing."

Chris Williamson 1:01:24 So just, just get it done.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:25 Get the, get the work out the way. It's gonna take three minutes.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:28 So I think something important to add to that is you said managing your notifications and making sure that it's working from zero is also to only have the permission for apps to give you notifications that have some materiality in your life.

Chris Williamson 1:01:42 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:42 So, don't allow notifications from an app that you're never gonna be able to do anything with. Don't allow notifications from like Asda or-

Chris Williamson 1:01:51 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:51 ... whatever it is. Because unless it's something you need to do-

Chris Williamson 1:01:55 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:01:55 ... it shouldn't be interrupting your flow.

Chris Williamson 1:01:58 Like for instance, I've got notifications off for Headspace, but I've got banners on and they send like two or three mindful moments throughout the day.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:02:07 I saw that today.

Chris Williamson 1:02:08 Which is nice. It's like, what was-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:02:10 You can't control the sea, but you can-

Chris Williamson 1:02:11 Learn to surf the wave.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:02:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:13 Like, great, that's nice. That's a nice little thing for me to see partway through the day. But it doesn't leave anything as red on my home screen, even though Headspace is on my home screen.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:02:21 I suppose in a way as well, that's, it's kind of value adding. It's not, "10% off blah blah blah, click here."

Chris Williamson 1:02:26 Yeah. And the same thing goes, the same thing goes for group chats here, or any notifications that aren't generated by people directly aimed at you. This is going back over old ground on, um, Hacker In Your Pocket podcast, which everyone should listen to.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:02:38 Oh, group chats can be pissed off, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:38 But yeah, like group chats, you can afford to knock the notifications off because you will check your phone in any case.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:02:44 To be honest, I'm pretty militant about just leaving group chats. As soon as anyone adds me to a group chat, I, I leave it.

Chris Williamson 1:02:50 No (laughs) .

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:02:50 It's like if someone wants to talk to me, they can send me a message.

Chris Williamson 1:02:53 Directly. Right. Are we done? Do you want another one?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:02:56 Um, yeah, final one.

Chris Williamson 1:02:58 Final one.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:00 Youpak.

Chris Williamson 1:03:01 Okay, then.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:01 This is great.

Chris Williamson 1:03:02 What's that?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:03 So, how often have someone sent you a YouTube link or whatever and you click on it and it's like, "Not available in your country," or like-

Chris Williamson 1:03:10 Yeah, quite a bit actually.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:11 So replace the word Tube with pak, p-a-k.

Chris Williamson 1:03:15 Okay.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:16 In the URL.

Chris Williamson 1:03:17 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:17 Leave everything else the same and it'll mirror, it'll find the mirror that works and-

Chris Williamson 1:03:20 No way.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:21 ... you can make a video. Yeah, it's amazing.

Chris Williamson 1:03:24 That's all you need to do? That's crazy. So is it like a, a VPN service or something?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:30 Yeah, someone's just made a cop- a direct copy of YouTube and it must feed in live.

Chris Williamson 1:03:34 Hmm.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:35 Just Youpak. And there's al-, I think there's also buttons added to the bottom of like download video and all the stuff as well.

Chris Williamson 1:03:41 Oh right, so it's just the most like spurious-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:46 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:46 ... counterfeit YouTube.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:47 Yeah, I, I don't know how it's allowed, but it's great for us.

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 Awesome. Because if that's allowed and Tubex is gone-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:53 Oh.

Chris Williamson 1:03:53 ... I feel bad for the people that can't have Tubex in their life.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:56 I know, I'm sorry guys, but-

Chris Williamson 1:03:57 It's a real game changer.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:03:58 I, I mean, we, we could bring Tubex back one person at a time.

Chris Williamson 1:04:02 We could, but-

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:04:03 But it would be, your, your inbox is gonna get flooded this afternoon (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:04:06 Is that, is that really the best use of my time? Yeah, I'm not sure. Anyway, um, we will be back very soon. Life Fails 101 will be coming. Uh, we started it, but we still need to finish it. Um, I think you've got more life fails than you do life hacks, don't you?

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:04:19 Oh, so many of both.

Chris Williamson 1:04:21 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:04:22 We're, we're gonna need to just sit and bash through them all, I think.

Chris Williamson 1:04:24 Um, who else have we got coming up? So I've got Dr. Ewan, uh, Professor Ewan Lawrence, who is the writer of, um, the author of The Healthy Writer, which is a book on workstation optimization. I've also got Leon Scott, who is the main model for Chained & Able and Harrow London.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:04:43 Nice.

Chris Williamson 1:04:44 Big Instagram following. You would think from the outside looking in, a professional footballer as well, you'd think pretty much nothing between the ears, but this guy is mad into his mindfulness. Crazy, crazy deep into his mindfulness training, does a lot of compassion stuff. Really, really interested to speak to him so I'm gonna sit down with him. Obviously on video he's gonna look lovely as well, so.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:05:03 Of course. I'm excited about these, especially Healthy Writer, so.

Chris Williamson 1:05:06 Yeah, I think, I think, uh, Ewan Lawrence is gonna be really interesting, guys. Just come off, uh, Ben Greenfield's podcast actually.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:05:11 I had a binge of your other episodes recently.

Chris Williamson 1:05:14 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:05:14 The, the, Quinn Hennick was excellent.

Chris Williamson 1:05:16 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:05:16 If anyone's listening and hasn't heard that-

Chris Williamson 1:05:18 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:05:18 ... it clears up any misconceptions about mobility, flexibility, um, self-myofascial release, any of the kind of self-maintenance stuff.

Chris Williamson 1:05:26 Yeah.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:05:27 Um, also I would be keen, 'cause I know people message you a lot more than they message us. "Really, Absent, why?" Ooh, oh (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:05:34 (laughs)

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:05:34 But, um, if you can let us know about the life hacks, what problems you're trying to solve in your life or what field, 'cause there's so many of these that, um, it would be good to know generally what the kind of...

Chris Williamson 1:05:49 Well, the likelihood is if someone else has encountered the problem, then we've probably got a solution for it as well. It's just that, again, can't see the wood for the trees due to this manic obsession with optimizing.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:06:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:01 And we, we'll have, we'll have bypassed it the same as Alfred.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:06:05 It's exactly that, like because of our ma- manic obsessionality with this stuff, we've probably come across it and done something for it.

Chris Williamson 1:06:13 Yeah, it's already been fixed.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:06:14 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:06:15 But yeah, so drop me a message or give me a DM and we'll go for that. Until next time, it's Johnny Absent here.

Yusef (PropaneFitness) 1:06:25 Here in spirit.

Chris Williamson 1:06:25 Here in spirit and in blob, but not here in real life. Okay, bye then.