Life Hacks 203 | Modern Wisdom Podcast 281

Chris Williamson 0:00 Windows computers just don't work.

Jonny 0:04 I have what I think is the best list of life hacks I've ever had. It is a waterproof notepad for the shower.

Chris Williamson 0:13 (laughs)

Yusef 0:15 (laughs)

Jonny 0:15 (laughs)

Yusef 0:16 Someone we know was doing lateral raises with, um, the metal dumbbells, and between reps he just dinked his between the dumbbells.

Chris Williamson 0:24 (laughs)

Yusef 0:24 And that was game over. He just, like, stopped the workout, went home.

Chris Williamson 0:27 (laughs) (whoosh) It is another life hacks episode: tools, tactics, and techniques for a productive and efficient life. We'll be going through some of the life hacks that we've found over the last few months, telling you what we think of them, and then the other two people are going to tear them to pieces. If you like the sound of them, they will be linked in the show notes below, either on Amazon or a website or even just a sentence. So Johnny, I've got a present for you here. I'm not sure if you can see that.

Yusef 0:56 A potato.

Chris Williamson 0:56 Oh, nice.

Yusef 0:57 Oh, yes.

Chris Williamson 0:57 It's, this is a very-

Yusef 0:59 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:59 I mean, it's, it's burning my fingers. I'm having to sort of... So if, Johnny, if you can just, uh.

Jonny 1:04 What I, what we all need is a potato prop.

Chris Williamson 1:07 Yeah. Well, you've got one.

Jonny 1:08 And then Dean can make it happen.

Chris Williamson 1:10 Look like a real potato, yeah. But this is a real potato.

Jonny 1:13 So-

Chris Williamson 1:13 You're up first, Johnny. What have you got for us on this episode?

Jonny 1:14 It looks room temperature, but I'm happy to catch it. So I have what I think is the best list of life hacks I've ever had in the history of life hacks.

Chris Williamson 1:25 Big shout.

Jonny 1:25 Are we ready-

Chris Williamson 1:26 Big shout.

Jonny 1:26 ... for life hack number one? I think I've already told Yousaf this, but it is a waterproof notepad for the shower.

Chris Williamson 1:40 (laughs)

Jonny 1:43 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:43 Oh.

Jonny 1:44 So I (laughs) , I have the most ideas and thoughts that ever occur to me all day happen in the shower. And what I do is, like, try and leave my phone within sort of, kind of touching distance, so that-

Yusef 2:01 Hey, Siri.

Jonny 2:01 (laughs) Exactly.

Yusef 2:02 Hey, Siri.

Jonny 2:02 But that, that doesn't work, because the wa- the sound of the water is louder, or, like, gets in the way, and then you try and make a note on your phone with shower hands, and it's just not gonna happen, 'cause it's like you end up typing the wrong word. So I bought this off Amazon. It's waterproof paper with a waterproof pencil. It's a su- suction onto, like, a tile or glass, and I just write it down, and then when I get out of the shower, I pull the thing off, put it in my OmniFocus, captured. Turn showers, I reckon, I reckon we've generated revenue now from my showers.

Chris Williamson 2:35 (laughs)

Jonny 2:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:37 How does a waterproof pencil and waterproof paper work?

Jonny 2:41 It's like, um... It's hard to describe, to be honest. It's, it is like no other pencil and paper I've ever used in my life. (laughs) So it's, it looks like a pencil, it functions like a pencil, but somehow you're able to write on wet paper, and it works, and it doesn't w- wash off. It's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. But of course, this, I suppose this requires... So I suppose it's part of a general kind of way that I'm trying to improve my life, which is I'm so confident now in OmniFocus, because it's so much better than TickTick, that I no- (laughs) I know that the only thing I need to do-

Yusef 3:17 Pretty good.

Jonny 3:17 ... is make sure I'm capturing everything. So I have, like, a, a pad of paper for when I'm meditating, 'cause that's som- s- another time that it happens, and I have this in the shower, and then I use, like, Siri in the car and my AirPods when I'm training and things like that. So it's ju- it's just a game of how, how do I ensure that nothing slips through the cracks? And the shower, the waterproof pad and paper is, uh, is the one I'm most proud of. Any questions? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:44 Yousef?

Yusef 3:44 You've got quite a lot of use out of it so far.

Jonny 3:47 Loads. Loads.

Yusef 3:47 You said you've, you've, like... I think you must have a really high density of shower thoughts.

Jonny 3:52 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:52 Good fact.

Jonny 3:52 So it's, it's a- it's an average of, like, three to four things a shower.

Chris Williamson 3:56 How long's a shower for you?

Jonny 3:58 Five minutes. Sometimes longer.

Yusef 4:02 So-

Jonny 4:02 You know, like a shower.

Yusef 4:02 ... what's interesting is I find shower thoughts correlate with viral tweets for me. So there's been times when I've poured my heart into crafting a tweet that I think, "Yeah, this ticks all the boxes to gain traction, gain followers, go viral." Tumbleweeds. And then a stupid shower thought that you just think, "Ah, I'll just..." Next day you wake up and it's got thousands of likes, and you're like, "Oh, I didn't, I didn't really want that one to go viral."

Jonny 4:28 You need to get your waterproof, waterproof paper, man.

Yusef 4:30 Think so.

Chris Williamson 4:31 What, tweet, tweet from the paper?

Jonny 4:33 Shower tweets, yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:34 That would be good. Like, and a waterproof iPad built into the wall. I do-

Jonny 4:38 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 4:38 I think anything that increases or reduces friction for capture is gonna be a winner. I don't think I have very many ideas in the shower, but I tend to shower on a night, and you tend to shower in the morning, don't you?

Jonny 4:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:53 Yeah, so-

Jonny 4:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:54 ... like by 9 PM, 10 PM at night when I'm having my shower, like, I'm, I'm all idead out.

Jonny 5:00 So a few of these life hacks came from shower, shower capture.

Chris Williamson 5:06 Wow, okay.

Yusef 5:07 I thought on the last episode, Johnny, you-

Jonny 5:09 Fun?

Yusef 5:09 ... were showering in the nighttime because of sleep quality.

Jonny 5:12 So I do after training. (laughs) I shower in the nighttime after training, but not every night.

Chris Williamson 5:19 Interesting.

Jonny 5:20 There, there we go.

Chris Williamson 5:21 Yousef, what you got for us?

Yusef 5:23 So I've got an anti-hack to start with, and the reason I'm saying this is because it might impact this episode. I've ordered a new dash cam, because last time I had a car crash, my dash cam didn't pick up the footage, because it was so old. So (laughs) I got the worst of both worlds. And because it's over 100 pounds value, Amazon have now started doing a one-time password that you ha- that they send you within five minutes of the delivery man coming, and you have to quickly tell him the passcode. And then you take your leave and go. So...... the, the problem is, this might happen now. So yesterday, I was on a, a podcast with Johnny and Menno Henselmans, and the Amazon man was like absolutely going mental on the door. And my flatmate answered the door, and he couldn't accept the parcel because he didn't have the password. You're thinking, "Would someone really, like, break into my house to take a parcel-"

Chris Williamson 6:22 (laughs)

Yusef 6:22 ... (laughs) to, to get a dash cam. Like, it, it's, it's health and safety gone mad. Um-

Chris Williamson 6:27 So what's the hack?

Yusef 6:29 So th- the, the hack is, like, yes, it's, it's a nice piece of security, just like online banking, but it's possible to lock yourself out of your own accounts in many ways, where it... So, I actually, um, anti... I, I know everyone's all like, "Oh, you need two-factor authentication and one-time passwords and stuff," but I think it's a pain. The hack off the back of it is, if you want to avoid that and there's certain accounts that you have to use for, you know, when it texts you a verification code and you have to type it in, is use Safari. Because Safari will auto pull it in from your phone, and then you just put your finger on the touch ID and it'll fill it in.

Jonny 7:07 Does that work with everything? So does that work with PayPal, for example?

Yusef 7:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:11 Really?

Yusef 7:11 As long as it's sent to your number. If it's sent to mine, then -

Jonny 7:15 No, no, of course. But, so, so the point is, like, instead of having... 'cause a lot of, a lot of companies have two-factor authentication now, but I guess because cybercrime's increased, I assume, because of the last year. So, you can just get rid of that and do it with your face if you use Safari on your computer.

Yusef 7:33 You can do it with your finger. I think they're going to launch face ID in the next-

Jonny 7:37 Ah, sweet.

Yusef 7:37 ... generation of Macs.

Jonny 7:38 Oh, okay.

Chris Williamson 7:39 Face ID on Mac with a slightly more robust, um, set of payment presets, and address, and details, and all that sort of stuff is gonna be so good. Matthew Kobak, that I had on the show a while ago, owns Fast, and the goal of Fast is that you never need to put your payment details in again. Um, so that's like a cross-platform solution for this. So you'd have your Fast membership, and that would be across any website ever that you go into, it'll just auto-populate, um...

Jonny 8:14 Oh, that's cool.

Chris Williamson 8:15 It's just a -

Yusef 8:15 A real slippery slope, but it's so convenient.

Chris Williamson 8:17 ... y- y- lots of people are buying stuff through e-comm and other online stores, and they can't be arsed to put their, put their details in. Right, my first one. This is taken from Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is one of the guys behind lesswrong.com, part of the rationalist movement. Um, and he was talking about how he encourages himself to get out of bed. Given that I've had a pretty unstable sleep and wake pattern for quite a long time, getting out of bed, even during COVID, just sinking into a regular sleep and wake pattern's been challenging. And for me, if I get out of bed on time when I said I would, most of the rest of the day goes right. Whereas if I don't get out of bed at the time that I said I would, I would, the rest of the day often tends to be a catastrophe. Um, so getting out of bed, not staying in bed, not hitting the snooze button, those are all important things for me to make sure happen. Um, I'm using two different sunrise alarm clocks, because it's quite dark at the moment. So that's the first thing, but I've already spoken about that. Eliezer's, uh, advice is to count down from ten and breathe quickly with each count. So, if you think about anyone that's ever done a CrossFit workout or any sort of high intensity class, the coach will look at you if you're not doing something and go, "Three, two, one, back on the bar." And there's something about a countdown that forces you into action and gets you, yeah, exactly, while you're counting down from three, like, "I've got to do it." Um, and honestly, if you struggle to wake up on a morning, I was, I am one of those people, count down from ten and (inhales) big breath with each one. Honestly, it's, it's such a, it's such an easy hack, 'cause you're like, "Um, there's no way I'm going back to sleep after ten breaths, plus I counted down," and then you just throw the covers off you and you're up. Yeah, exactly. You're full, you're full of, full of O₂ and the covers are off.

Yusef 10:11 So what, what I ha- I have a similar contraption, which is, um, when, when my alarm goes off, I've got a spring load at the head of my bed which flips me up and drops me into some trousers, and then-

Chris Williamson 10:23 Do you not need the dog to press that, though?

Yusef 10:25 The, the dog presses it, then the toaster comes up in the air and the toast flies up-

Chris Williamson 10:29 And the jam, jam, jam hits it.

Yusef 10:29 ... jam hits the thing.

Chris Williamson 10:30 And then the, the potato gets baked.

Yusef 10:33 Exactly. (laughs) The only problem is if you're out of toast, 'cause then it'll ping up. The jam-

Chris Williamson 10:38 Flies over and hits you in the face.

Yusef 10:38 ... goes where the toast should be, hits you in the face, then it's the wrong trousers.

Jonny 10:41 I, I don't believe that for a moment, because you have cereal for breakfast rather than toast. The rest of... It was fine-

Chris Williamson 10:47 Until that point.

Jonny 10:48 ... until that point. It was... The toast ruined it.

Yusef 10:49 So, you, you know what? The... (laughs) There's a few little moments like that where you get rumbled for a little detail. Like, someone went into my flatmate's bedroom and wrote him a semi-illegible note. And he, and he came in and was like, "Yousaf, did you write me that? Hang on, you don't have a pen." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:07 (laughs) Yeah. How do you guys make sure that you wake up on time on a morning? I know you're alarm free now, Johnny.

Jonny 11:13 I know, it's great. So that's, like, the, the biggest win of, of 2020 for me, was just-

Yusef 11:18 That's massive.

Jonny 11:18 ... because every day was so similar and there was no, like, no social stuff in the evening, nothing to throw me off. Um, some, some of it is, is Becka, my girlfriend, to be honest. Like, she, she loves sleep, whereas I find sleeping inconvenient. So, like, she wants to go to bed same time every day. So that's kind of my bedtime alarm. Like, TV's off, so I'm not just gonna sit in the dark on my own. So I go to bed at the same time, roughly. And then just having the same wake time every day for a year. And now, like... I've even tried... So, recently, kind of tried to get a bit more sleep, tried to, like, push my, my sleep time, my wake time back a little bit and I can't. (laughs)

Yusef 11:58 We need to get Becka on the podcast. She's just got the wisdom of her forefathers, hasn't she? Like-... drilled into a daily routine.

Jonny 12:04 I don't think, uh, she, I don't think she'd want to come on the podcast. I'll ask her, though, if Chris wants her on. But I don't think she'd come on.

Yusef 12:09 She'll be at a wedding. Too wise to come on.

Jonny 12:11 Too wise.

Chris Williamson 12:11 She'll be busy, she'll be busy at a wedding. Right. Johnny, what you got?

Jonny 12:15 So this one's a l- I suppose right now not necessarily that relevant, but when gyms are back open again, I ordered, um... So, I don't often use dumbbells in training because a lot of the things I would use dumbbells for, I'm limited 'cause I'm so muscly and strong. I'm limited by being able to get the dumbbell in position. So like dumbbell press, incline press, overhead press, I just can't, like I can't, I'm not strong enough to get it in position then use the, um, the range of motion. So I ordered from, uh, like a f- it was like, there's, th- they used to be on Amazon, they're not any more, they're now on like Fitness Superstore or something. Power hooks, which they're only like 20, 30 quid, so you could take them to a gym with you. It's a metal handle that wraps around the dumbbell and then attaches to the handle itself, and you hold onto it, and you're able to basically unrack the dumbbells as you would a, a barbell. So in a, in a standing overhead press you just hook them onto like a rig or a, or a barbell that's shoulder hei- uh, shoulder height, or unrack it like a bench press, and suddenly dumbbell variations become how much weight can you use on the dumbbell variation? No shoulder injuries. Brilliant. Brilliant. So they are like, they're like 20, 30 quid, put them in your gym bag and then sorted.

Chris Williamson 13:27 What is your number one dumbbell movement that you've missed? Or the, or what is the movement that dumbbells give you that you think a barbell can't? Like the most, what's the first place that you go to with regards to a dumbbell movement?

Jonny 13:40 So, f- for me, I've always found when I do dumbbell bench press, it helps my bench press. Which I know like-

Yusef 13:47 Mm-hmm.

Jonny 13:47 ... obviously. But like, I'm always limited by just being able to get the... You have to like get the dumbbells on your knees and then lie back, and like flap around, and then getting them off again is a, a pain. So a dumbbell bench press for me is the biggest thing. And I don't like overhead press with a barbell particularly, it just doesn't, my shoulders don't like it, whereas dumbbells, 'cause you can kind of angle the dumbbell and it's a, it's an easier range of motion. So tho- those two. Like the most obvious. That's why I bought them.

Chris Williamson 14:13 That's pretty good.

Jonny 14:13 Um, yeah, it's awesome.

Chris Williamson 14:16 I like it, man. I, um, I really fell in love with seated strict press, seated strict overhead press, this year. Um, such a good exercise because you-

Yusef 14:26 Very nice.

Chris Williamson 14:27 Yeah, you can just get yourself locked in, especially if you have a little bit of spinal instability like me and Seth do. Like you can just brace yourself against, so you'd have the bench at that one, like the first, the first notch that allows you to sit back a tiny bit, and then you can give your upper back a little bit of room and I think... It'll be interesting to see if you find that overhead position uncomfortable from a seated strict press, Johnny, 'cause it's, um, it's a lot more comfortable for me.

Jonny 14:53 So I don't have a, an incline bench. I train in my, like I have a gym in my garage and I don't have an incline bench, so I'm limited it with that. But do you mean-

Chris Williamson 15:00 Got dining, got dining chairs though.

Jonny 15:01 (laughs) I do have dining chairs.

Chris Williamson 15:03 (laughs)

Jonny 15:03 I've never thought about that, you know? But that, that literally would fix the problem. Um-

Chris Williamson 15:07 Well, did you not see this over summer when the first lockdown happened, there was t- tons and tons of videos of like lads in the garden, I, with like some unfortunate garden trestle chair. It's just a, you know, like a c- classic plastic barbecue chair-

Jonny 15:22 Mm.

Chris Williamson 15:22 ... and they've got themselves plus like quite a bit of weight, and you can see the legs are just going like this.

Yusef 15:28 Oh, horrible.

Jonny 15:29 I, I think like falling with a barbell in your hands while you're falling, it just, it's awful, isn't it? The thought of it is, uh-

Chris Williamson 15:35 So much can go wrong.

Jonny 15:37 Yeah. I've seen people put barbells on wheelie bins, like two wheelie bins and then the wheelie bin lids cave in, and stuff like that. Um-

Yusef 15:44 I think we've, we've probably had every possible, um, variation of barbell injury from like dropping it on your toe to like clipping your chin when you're doing an overhead press. That is awful. Have you ever done that?

Chris Williamson 15:57 Yeah.

Yusef 15:57 Or you bite your tongue off.

Chris Williamson 15:58 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's bad.

Jonny 15:59 But I thought of, I thought of you, Chris, with th- with these 'cause didn't you, wasn't the source of your back injury a dumbbell clean?

Chris Williamson 16:06 It was, yeah. Correct. Fuck me.

Jonny 16:08 So I think, yeah, I, I don't know-

Chris Williamson 16:08 That's three years, three years ago that, well remembered.

Jonny 16:10 I don't know why I remember that but I, I, it's something that I always, whenever I'm like moving something into place I always think like, "Be careful."

Chris Williamson 16:16 'Cause Chris, Chris hurt himself before.

Jonny 16:17 So, yeah. So like whenever you're doing a dumbbell overhead press, if you're doing like four sets, that's four, maybe more... So I'm, I'm actually doing like density style circuits with these, with dumbbells at the moment, so it's multiple sets of low reps. That's like 10 or 15 cleans-

Chris Williamson 16:33 Yeah.

Jonny 16:33 ... that I would have to do, and I'm terrible at them.

Chris Williamson 16:36 (laughs)

Yusef 16:36 So it, there's a recurring theme there. Like I remember a few years ago, I've got a really crisp memory of me lying on the floor like in tears, and Chris came with a care package of malt loaf and a smoothie and it, it was, and like Voltarol, it was really, really heartwarming.

Chris Williamson 16:49 Voltarol.

Yusef 16:50 Uh, Voltarol. And, uh, that was because at I think at like 6:00 in the morning I had the 50 kilo dumbbells, trying to get them into place for a, uh, seated ben-

Chris Williamson 17:00 Mm.

Yusef 17:00 ... a lying bench press and like it's when you try and get it onto your thighs as the first step before you roll back onto your, your back, and I missed my leg. And so I'm like-

Chris Williamson 17:09 Wow.

Yusef 17:09 ... swinging around with one dumbbell and I, and I felt something ping and I was like, "Whoa, I'll just deal with that in a second." Did my set. While you're doing the set, you feel your back just going like-

Chris Williamson 17:18 Mm-hmm.

Yusef 17:18 You're like, "Oh, no." And then when I put them down I was like, "I'm just going to have to go home." There's one other moment like that where, um, someone we know, Robbie, was doing lateral raises with, um, the metal dumbbells and between reps he just dinked his bell end between the dumbbells.

Chris Williamson 17:37 (laughs)

Yusef 17:37 And that was game over. He just like stopped the workout-

Chris Williamson 17:39 (laughs)

Yusef 17:39 ... went home.

Chris Williamson 17:41 (laughs) Glandzomegaly naggery, isn't it?

Yusef 17:44 Instant.

Jonny 17:45 That would really hurt. Really, really hurt.

Chris Williamson 17:48 Power hooks. I like it. Seth, what you got?

Yusef 17:52 This from AliExpress. I mean, A- AliExpress should be the life hack actually because it's a great way to just buy a bunch of tat and I think I'm going to do a series on YouTube of...

Chris Williamson 18:06 ... Ali hack.

Yusef 18:07 ... tat I bought on AliExpress, yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:09 Tat hacks.

Yusef 18:09 So this is a lighter. You know how, so, Chris, one of your recommendations a while ago was have a long lighter so you can light candles and stuff. This is basically... How dodgy is this?

Jonny 18:20 (laughs) Oh, my God.

Yusef 18:21 Can you hear that? (lighter clicks)

Chris Williamson 18:23 Yeah. So can you describe-

Yusef 18:24 It-

Chris Williamson 18:24 ... for people that are listening, can you describe what it is?

Jonny 18:27 It looks dangerous.

Yusef 18:28 It's a le- just basically, I think it's a taser. Taser, taser. But-

Jonny 18:32 It's a taser?

Yusef 18:34 But you just put it into the candle and it lights it up. You charge it with your USB-C.

Chris Williamson 18:41 Wow. That, that, uh, I mean, only on AliExpress are you going to get that, 'cause there's no way that it's legal. I mean, what am I even gonna-

Yusef 18:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 18:47 ... call that? Like, buy a miniature taser to light a candle?

Jonny 18:50 Illegal taser. Yeah.

Yusef 18:52 Like, I'm so tempted to just be like, but I, I feel like I might-

Chris Williamson 18:55 I was gonna say, have you done it? Put, have you stuck something in it?

Yusef 18:59 Too, too scared.

Jonny 19:00 If you've done it, just do it to yourself. Just go like that really quickly.

Yusef 19:03 Ah.

Jonny 19:04 It's not gonna be-

Yusef 19:04 I mean-

Jonny 19:04 ... high voltage, is it?

Yusef 19:06 No, but like, the, so what, what do I stand to gain? Like, I know it's gonna, it's gonna hurt in some way.

Chris Williamson 19:13 Content.

Yusef 19:14 Like, just, you know, content.

Jonny 19:14 You know where the parameters are and, and also content, yeah.

Yusef 19:17 So knowing how much it hurts is a... but I'll, glad about that (overlapping dialogue)

Jonny 19:19 I think it's good, it's good to know, like, the, the lay of the land, isn't it? Or something like that. Like, "Okay, I did that once."

Yusef 19:26 Yeah.

Jonny 19:26 "I'll not do that again."

Chris Williamson 19:27 Yeah.

Jonny 19:28 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:28 Uh, okay. Uh, what am I gonna do? Right, so one of the things that I and probably almost everyone else have been struggling with over the last year has been finding that sort of gas and that motivation and that energy throughout the day. Not in a "I need a coffee" way or "I need to have some food." More like, I've been on my own in my house, working or doing whatever, and I just need to feel a little bit more energized, the same way that you would whenever you have a conversation with someone or have to get out of the car. Um, and especially before a podcast, 'cause I tend to record on an evening, I'm trying to find... You know, it's 6:00 PM, I've maybe been up since 6:45. So it's 12 hours after I got up and I've got to do the thing where I peak perform. Um, so what I've taken to doing is turning some music on, like making a miniature playlist of maybe sort of two or three songs on Spotify and just doing a little mobility circuit of a couple of press-ups, a couple of squats, um, th- you know, maybe some stretches or s- for me, for my Achilles, some calf raises and stuff like that, whilst listening to some music at a fairly good volume. And the difference with a little bit of blood flow, you'd think, "I'm gonna move more, that would make me more tired." But that time where you've got brain fog and you, k- your thoughts aren't really too clear, it's quite difficult to describe, but you know what I mean. You just feel foggy and, and not really s- sharp and not on it. And, um, yeah, like five minutes, even just five minutes of that and a big glass of cold water. I think a lot of this, the unifying thread that we discovered was when you told me about your acupuncture mat, Sef, and you said, "It's just a state change." You're just looking for something to change the state that your body's in. Could it be cold shower? Could it be sauna? Could it be a walk? Could it be some exercise with some music that gets you emotionally invested into it? All of these different structures. But this is one that you can pretty much always do no matter where you are. You can always go and do a little, couple of press-ups, couple of squats, some music on. And I feel, I feel better. It's not a panacea for low energy, but it, it works more often than it doesn't.

Yusef 21:36 I really like that. Just a little kick up the bum and it's always accessible.

Chris Williamson 21:40 Yeah. Miniature little playlist on Spotify, like some, some good tunes from when you were a little bit younger that you absolutely love that are energetic and then, yeah, you're away.

Jonny 21:51 So my... I have a life hack that's very, very related to that. A little bit different, but very related. So, um, specifically for like... So I think j- generally, I underestimate, I think a lot of people underestimate how a song can completely, like, night and day change your mood. Either for the, for the better or for the worse. And, um, something I've heard a lot of people talk about, but I've never really done is protecting your, like, training playlists. So have songs in your... Yeah, have a, have a playlist in Spotify that you only listen to when you're training. And I-

Chris Williamson 22:25 You have a, don't you have a PR song?

Jonny 22:28 I do, yeah. I have a few. Yeah.

Yusef 22:30 The problem is, if that comes on, on shuffle and you're like...

Jonny 22:32 (laughs)

Yusef 22:34 (laughs)

Jonny 22:34 You've got to always have your belt on underneath whatever clothes you're wearing and you just leave it on.

Chris Williamson 22:40 (laughs)

Yusef 22:40 Oh, I'm gonna have to go for PR now.

Chris Williamson 22:41 Just picking, picking up Janice in the, in the office. "Sorry, Janice, how much do you weigh? 102? Right, brilliant." (laughs)

Jonny 22:48 (laughs)

Yusef 22:48 (laughs)

Jonny 22:48 Set a tone.

Chris Williamson 22:49 Yeah, yeah.

Jonny 22:50 Um, but so, uh, the thing that I've noticed especially is like songs that you... So I have a... You know every, every year you get a, a favorites thing on Spotify? Like a 2020-

Chris Williamson 23:02 Rewind.

Jonny 23:02 ... favorites or whatever? So I have a, um, I have a playlist which is all of the h- all of those in one called just Past Favorites. So it's all of my, my favorites from every year since like whenever I got Spotify, like 2015.

Chris Williamson 23:16 Wow.

Jonny 23:16 So it's a lot.

Chris Williamson 23:17 Yeah. Because it's-

Yusef 23:17 You guys are so advanced with your Spotify use.

Chris Williamson 23:20 (laughs)

Yusef 23:20 I feel like such a little basic Spotify member.

Chris Williamson 23:21 Well, it happens when you, it's what happens when you pay two pounds a month for a membership.

Jonny 23:24 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:26 As opposed to-

Yusef 23:26 You properly use it.

Chris Williamson 23:27 ... as opposed to sconing it for free, yeah. Okay, so you've got all of these and then what have you done? Have you made a, a top-

Jonny 23:32 So it's-

Chris Williamson 23:32 ... filtering off the top of all of them?

Jonny 23:34 It's just that, uh, uh, well, so it's when, when some- when something comes on generally, like I'll occasionally listen to that playlist if I've got nothing to, um, nothing to listen to. And there'll be s- something coming on and you're like, "Oh, this is the... I haven't heard this song in three years." Put it in the training playlist and only listen to it. And it, it... Songs like that just create this effect that... And we've all had it, right? Like, a song that, like, comes on when you're somewhere and you're like, "Oh my God, I've not heard that in ages." So have a training playlist that you're always curating and always adding things to, but protect it, 'cause those, uh, that effect is... it diminishes the more you listen to them.

Chris Williamson 24:09 ... have a sacred training playlist. Yeah, I like that.

Jonny 24:12 And you can, you can do that with everything, right? So you can have a, a sleep playlist, a morning playlist, a work playlist.

Chris Williamson 24:18 This is one of the things that, um, I've been reading Jonathan Haidt's, uh, The Happiness Hypothesis, and he talks a lot about the sacred and the profane. And there's not really much now that people treat in normal day-to-day life as sacred. Like, if you actually think about what it is, it's weird stuff, like... Well, well, it's, it's obvious stuff like not being molested on the street. Like, your personal body is sacred, right? Like, obviously. But think about, like, other things around rituals. Like, even people wear their shoes in their bedroom. People wear the shoes they've been outside in in their bedroom. That would never be accepted in, like, a subcontinental culture. Like, in-

Yusef 24:54 Oh, God. If you did that in a, in a Muslim household-

Chris Williamson 24:57 Yeah.

Yusef 24:57 ... you, you'd get the slipper. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 24:58 (laughs) Yeah, you would. Yeah, but the slipper wouldn't touch the floor. The slipper would be off, and it would be there to beat you with.

Yusef 25:03 Yeah, well, they, you'd have to go outside to the porch, take the slipper and run inside.

Chris Williamson 25:07 (laughs) Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, so I like, I like having more sacred things, like having routines. And I think that's part of the reason why we all love having morning routines, right? Like, it's sacred. A sacred bit of time. Thank you.

Yusef 25:18 Very good.

Chris Williamson 25:19 Seth, what you got?

Yusef 25:20 So, um, you guys might not be aware of this, but I, I actually split my life hacks into physical (laughs) and digital.

Jonny 25:27 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:27 Unbelievable.

Yusef 25:27 And so I'm attempting to, (laughs) to alternate here. Um, my digital one is Evernote Legacy. So, I'm currently a Evernote refugee. Evernote, for anyone that doesn't know, they rolled out an update that was basically a global downgrade to every part of the function of Evernote, and it, it's lost its fitness for purpose. And so while I'm waiting for another app to bridge the gap and allow, um, import functionality, which for me, I've got my eyes set on Craft. I'm just waiting for the developers to allow Evernote import. Is you can use the Legacy version of Evernote, um, in the meantime. So, the hack is, don't upgrade to the new Evernote. Even though it looks nicer, it just won't work. Um, stick with the Legacy version. But the problem is, that's unsupported, so as operating systems grow, there's going to hit a point where it's no longer compatible, so-

Chris Williamson 26:23 (laughs) So by, by wanting to continue to use Evernote Legacy, you also can't update any other parts of your operating system in case it gets-

Yusef 26:30 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:30 ... it gets (laughs) annoying.

Yusef 26:31 Yeah, ex- exactly. So th- so this is, this is not a permanent hack. This is an interim measure until Craft-

Chris Williamson 26:37 Can you downgrade? Let's say that I accidentally upgrade to new Evernote. Is there a way that I can downgrade?

Yusef 26:42 You can, but you might lose all your notes.

Jonny 26:43 (laughs)

Yusef 26:45 Because... Yeah, this is why, how bad it is, 'cause they've, they've removed the offline storage functionality, so, um, y- it's, it's just risky business. I wouldn't do it.

Jonny 26:57 Hopefully no big Evernote fans are sat there with the new version of Evernote.

Chris Williamson 27:01 I don't think anyone's a big fan of Evernote now, man. Like, Notion, Roam, uh, have, have just come in and captured the attention on the internet for all the items -

Yusef 27:10 This is exactly it. Like, E- Evernote have stayed so far in the past, and it, it's such a shame, 'cause they were such a big company that had so much capital and, you know, put, poised to-

Chris Williamson 27:20 Massive first-mover advantage in the note-taking space as well, right? Like, think about-

Yusef 27:25 Completely.

Chris Williamson 27:25 ... do, do you know what it is? It's, it's Blockbuster to Netflix. It's like-

Yusef 27:28 It is.

Chris Williamson 27:28 ... you had it all. You had the brand equity, you had the user base, you had the, the faith in the brand, and you just-

Yusef 27:35 They go, "Oh, I don't, I don't trust this new internet business. No, no."

Jonny 27:39 (laughs)

Yusef 27:39 ... on VHS tapes, and then you go, "All right, fine." But that's the reason-

Chris Williamson 27:42 If you can't get it on 8-bit, it's not worth a l-... Unbelievable.

Yusef 27:47 True. Chris?

Chris Williamson 27:48 Uh, okay. I listened to Jonny Wilkinson on the High Performance podcast with Jake Humphrey, uh, and his scientific friend, and it's one of the best podcasts that I've listened to in a very long time. If you want to hear someone that you think should just be a hard guy talking about being in the present moment, about detachment from the ego, about embracing your true self, all this stuff, and you just think, like, "Hang on, I thought he was a, like a, a posh meathead." Um, and Jonny Wilkinson just sounds like he's done about 50,000 ayahuasca ceremonies. It's wonderful. And one of the things that-

Jonny 28:25 This is the, the rugby player, Jonny Wilkinson?

Chris Williamson 28:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jonny 28:28 Right.

Chris Williamson 28:28 Yeah, man. He's t- he's fucking fully awakened now, like, absolutely fully awakened. And the episode's amazing. It's one of the best podcasts I've ever heard, um-

Jonny 28:37 Wow.

Chris Williamson 28:38 ... which is a-

Yusef 28:38 What should we search for?

Chris Williamson 28:39 It's Jonny Wilkinson High Performance podcast. Um-

Jonny 28:43 High Performance.

Chris Williamson 28:44 Also on that show is Eddie Hearn, and Eddie Hearn, you just think as the same thing-

Jonny 28:50 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 28:50 ... kind of a Essex wide-boy idiot with some cash behind him who understands fighters. Nah. Like, he's quoting Warren Buffett. He talks about how he understands his inner motivations from the way that his father treated him as a kid. Like, the guy is switched on. Um, he's just so many more layers deep than I knew. Um, (clears throat) yeah, both of those guys really changed my opinion of them in great ways whilst listening to them. But what I took from the Jonny Wilkinson episode is find joy today. And what he talks about is that a lot of people presume that happiness is something that they will get to, uh, uh, en- enjoy in the future when they've got past the things that they need to do today. But the future never comes. That joy has to be found in the moment, and one of the most consistent mantras that I've written as part of mornal j- morning journaling, mornal journaling has been-

Jonny 29:44 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 29:45 ... (laughs) uh, has been, "Just find joy today." Like, find joy in the thing that you do. So this morning, I went for a walk, and it's frost, like sharp frost on the floor. But it's really nice, it's really still, the sun's sort of shooting through the clouds, I haven't got my phone on me, and I'm just able to be like, "This is really, really nice. Like, this makes me quite happy." The, the sky's clear, I can see birds, there was a dog on the other side of the street, I enjoyed the dog. Like, just finding joy today and not presuming that it's a thing that you get to do in the future once you've got today out of the way.

Yusef 30:20 It's a really important point, especially for people that listen to this podcast. I think we're gonna, we're all gonna be more on the spectrum of deferring enjoyment and investing in ourselves long term. And it's quite easy to lose sight of the fact that you're still living your life right now-

Jonny 30:36 Mm-hmm.

Yusef 30:36 ... and so finding some kind of inherent enjoyment from things that you do day to day is really important.

Chris Williamson 30:43 I think you're quite good with that, Johnny. Obviously, that was one of the big reasons that you bought a dog, right? Was to kind of take you out of that neurotic sort of self-involved, business-involved mind and, "I'm gonna kind of focus on an- another being and kind of just be present with it."

Jonny 30:59 Yeah. Well, it's, it's like, there's just certain aspects of having a dog that you just cannot avoid. Like, it needs to be taken for a walk. There's no, like, it's not negotiable really. So, yeah, and it is like the automating laughing and happiness, definitely. Daily thing. It's brilliant. Um-

Chris Williamson 31:16 Johnny, what you got?

Jonny 31:17 It's me. Right. So, my, uh, this hack is related to reading speed, but I should preface this with I am now, big moment, drum roll, reading again. (laughs) And the reason that I'm reading again, which is kind of a life hack within the life hack, is something that Yousef really kind of flipped the switch in my brain and explained to me, which is the power of, um, things like Evernote, Craft, all these bits of software. I've never really had a use for them. I've never really understood, like, I just take notes and then don't refer to the notes and it's just pointless. But hearing Yousef explain this like second brain idea and how if, if you, as you read a book or as you listen to a podcast or you're learning something that you think like, "Yeah, I'll need this in the future," then using that app as your searchable database for information. So I've now, when I'm writing notes about books and when I'm writing notes about like Q&A calls I'm listening to or calls we're on, I'm writing it as though like, "When I need this in the future, what will I, what do I think I'll search for? What do I think I'll type in to find it?" So like, this morning, Yousef asked me a question. I, I was like, I'm sure I've typed literally the- a- a keyword in and suddenly three or four notes that I've made on that thing get brought up and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I remember." That's already in my brain. I just can't recall it. So I have to use something else. So, that means that I've kind of, all right, it makes sense to read now. I kind of understand why I'm reading again. Um, and a tip related to that, that I got from Mark Manson, which you two may have already come across, when you're reading you tend to have like the, the inner voice that's reading aloud. So you're like reading in your head and that limits your reading speed quite a lot. And if you just stop that, so if you just- so like when you're watching a film with subtitles, you don't read the words in your head as the film's happening. You just look at it and you've read it. And you can do that with a book if you just decide to do that with a book. So you just look at the words and you're like, "I've read the page," and lo and behold, it's, it's there. So just, I suppose two, two in one. I've, I've kind of jumped the queue a little bit, but one of them is using something like Evernote if you have it as whenever I learn something, I'm gonna put it in here so that I can search for this topic in the future and what would that look like, that note. And then secondly, if you are then gonna read from that or read as a result of that, just stop reading the words in your head and you read way quicker.

Yusef 33:41 Nice. So use something like Evernote, but not Evernote.

Jonny 33:44 But not Evernote.

Chris Williamson 33:45 (laughs) That's fucking shit.

Jonny 33:46 Well, so I- Yousef recommended Craft to me, so that's what I've started using.

Chris Williamson 33:49 It seems at the moment like Roam is, is really sort of picking up speed, but I've never touched Roam. I've seen Notion and a couple of other things. What advice have you got for stopping the inner voice in your head whilst reading, other than just saying "Stop"?

Jonny 34:04 (sighs) I don't know. I think like what I, what I think of is if this, uh, exactly the example I gave, like if this were a film and I was reading subtitles, I would just look at the words. Like when you, when you read things in normal life when you're not trying to read them, you still read the words. Like you've still, you can still understand the sentence written down. Like when you look at a sign, you don't go, "Turn left at the next exit." It's just, you look at it and you understand it, and you scan it quickly.

Yusef 34:34 There's a tip from Tony Buzan about stopping this, which is you give your audiophonic loop in your head something to do. So you either think of a, a tune that doesn't have words or you repeat something to yourself. This is an exercise. This isn't something you do for all of your reading for the rest of your life.

Jonny 34:52 (laughs)

Yusef 34:52 But it's just to be able to learn that you can, as Johnny said, you can detach the audiophonic loop from reading and you don't have to be like, "The cat sat on the mat."

Jonny 35:02 (laughs) That's awesome. That's a good tip.

Chris Williamson 35:05 Yeah, I like that.

Jonny 35:05 It feels weird because it, it feels like you're not reading initially. But if you kind of test yourself on the recall of, "What have I just read?" it's amazing how like it took you seconds to read the page when it previously would have taken a minute. But you've still taken it all in.

Chris Williamson 35:20 The problem I have with note taking whilst reading is that I don't sink into the content anywhere near as deeply.

Jonny 35:29 Mm-mm.

Chris Williamson 35:29 Um, and this is why for me reading on Kindle and then using progressive summarization highlighting makes a lot more sense because-

Jonny 35:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:39 ... you can just go through, highlight as you go and then single batch process the entire book once you're done, uh, go back through and make the, the, the key takeaways. Plus if you're using Readwise, which is actually, I'll, I'll just explain that one as my next one after this, um, but if you're using Readwise then they'll deliver them to you on a daily basis.

Jonny 36:01 So I s- I suppose the, the tip is more like if you... So I see, like I was explaining this to Yousef and Yousef's like way further down the rabbit hole with me than this stuff. (laughs) This is, I'm just learning. But I see OmniFocus as like my RAM on a computer. So like if something is said to me, all I need to do...... is make sure it goes from there and into... And I know, I know that that system will take care of it. And then the other thing, so Evernote, or Craft, or Roam, or whatever, is like your hard drive. So I don't need it now, I may never need it, but if I have a findable version of it in the future, when I want to learn, when I'm like, "I want to get more into meditation. What are some best, what are the best resources about meditation?" I'll just type meditation into my hard drive. And I'm, "Oh, yeah, I read a book six months ago about, that re- referenced something tiny that now I can make use of." So that... It doesn't really matter how you make the notes, I suppose, as long as it's findable whenever you want that thing in the future.

Yusef 36:58 That is a great analogy. As long as you have a, that... As you start to build more and more notes, 'cause I think I've got 5,000 or so at this point, that's where you start to need a, a decent tagging structure more and more. (clears throat) And the benefit of tags as well as notebooks, is notebooks are the hierarchical structure that's, you know, organized and you've, you've created it deliberately. But tags allow things to straddle across multiple notebooks, because they are themes that are shared but don't necessarily fit into a single notebook. And over time, you start to build this emergent structure, and eventually cross-links between notes that previously didn't happen. And that's why the benefit of, that's why Roam has become so popular, because it allows ideas to have sex with each other.

Chris Williamson 37:44 Or, you can downgrade back from new Evernote to Evernote Legacy and just get rid of all of your notes and you don't have this problem at all.

Yusef 37:52 Exactly, yeah. You just flash fade.

Jonny 37:53 It's like the Men in Black flash pen, isn't it? But, but (whale call)

Yusef 37:56 So, so actually, Tiago Forte, um, threw shade at the new Evernote in a tweet recently, saying like, "I love how the new Evernote is, like, replicating the human brain by, like, randomly forgetting certain notes." Like...

Narrator 38:12 (laughs)

Jonny 38:13 It's like a true se- external brain, like it acts, like sometimes you go and find it's not there anymore.

Chris Williamson 38:19 Yeah.

Jonny 38:19 Weird, how do you just... can't remember.

Chris Williamson 38:22 What you got, Seth?

Jonny 38:23 See you.

Yusef 38:25 So, this one is a physical life hack. And this is the, what does it say, Arsepearl or something.

Chris Williamson 38:31 Arsepord.

Jonny 38:32 Arseaper. Arse, yeah.

Yusef 38:34 Arseapord.

Chris Williamson 38:34 Is this from-

Yusef 38:34 Arseapord.

Jonny 38:34 ... AliExpress again?

Yusef 38:36 This is actually from Amazon, but I, I, you can definitely get them from A-, AliExpress as well. Um, and it is a retractable triple charger. So it has all three... 'Cause everyone's got like a hundred little USB cables that are different end things, and it, it's really... And you've got like a drawer with them somewhere. This just has three in one. It's a little Medusa. And it's got the big three, so it has that one, that one...

Chris Williamson 39:05 (laughs)

Yusef 39:05 And that one.

Jonny 39:05 So is that a US- USB-C, Lightning, and Micro USB?

Chris Williamson 39:10 Yeah.

Yusef 39:11 Yeah.

Jonny 39:11 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 39:12 And it's on a little sort of retractable reel with ratchets on so you can make it longer and shorter.

Yusef 39:18 It's fantastic, 'cause then it just tidies up your, your room as well. 'Cause we've got those little devices, you know, like your little taser.

Jonny 39:25 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 39:26 (laughs) Have you ever accidentally retracted it whilst a device has been attached to it and flung it across the desk?

Jonny 39:34 (laughs) It either breaks the device or stops charging it, depending on how heavy the device is.

Chris Williamson 39:39 I have to say, like... Everyone's gone through a million chargers across their lifetime, and I treat my chargers now with so much care. I'm just like, "Right, I'm not gonna wind them up, like, hard, I'm just gonna keep them as straight as possible." That device programs in the opposite to that. It's just stretching them and bending them and twisting them around.

Yusef 40:00 Yeah, but, it's, it's in a controlled way. But, yeah, you're right, like we all know someone who's got-

Chris Williamson 40:03 I just wonder how long it's gonna last.

Yusef 40:05 It's, they've lasted like a year so far, but, yeah, we, we all know someone who's got, like, a charger that's, like, held together with, like, bits of, like, hair bobbles and rope and, like-

Chris Williamson 40:13 Yeah.

Yusef 40:13 ... live wires, like, sticking out of it, going like (imitates live wire buzzing) . You know?

Jonny 40:16 Well, haven't you, isn't one of your previous life hacks the, like, the putty that you put at the end of the-

Yusef 40:21 Sugru.

Jonny 40:22 Sugru, at the end of the, just to stop it from fraying? Because if your, if your Mac charger frays, it's like 50, 60, 20, 30 quid.

Yusef 40:30 80 quid.

Jonny 40:30 80 quid.

Chris Williamson 40:31 Fuck, wow.

Yusef 40:31 That, that was with student discount, I think it was 86 quid, with, without.

Chris Williamson 40:34 Fucking fucking fuck.

Yusef 40:35 They've just, they've just got you by the curlies, haven't they?

Jonny 40:37 They really do. They really do.

Chris Williamson 40:38 With the short and curlies. Uh, right, this is the biggest change I've made to my productivity in 2021, and probably been the single best thing that I've done. And Johnny's gonna hate me, because he's been doing it for ages.

Jonny 40:52 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 40:52 Uh, it's called, it's called First Things First. So, basically, what is the one thing, that if I did it today, it would make the entire rest of my day feel like a success? And you just do that when you sit down at your desk. Um, I'm actually gonna do, I'm gonna do a doubler here. Um, so, first things first is just choose what the highest leverage task, the most important task for the day is that requires the most energy and the most input, and do that as you sit down. One of the things that I'm big into-

Yusef 41:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:22 ... is trying to remove the anxiety you have of undone tasks-

Yusef 41:26 Mm.

Chris Williamson 41:26 ... because of an open loop. Like, at, at the end of every day, you kind of shake the Etch A Sketch and you get to restart the next day. But each day, you have to meditate and exercise and go for a walk and do the rest of it. And the longer that you get through your day without having done that, the more that your mental RAM is taken up thinking about the fact that you still need to do it. Whereas if you can do those things first in the morning, I've, I've already meditated, I've read, I've done my journaling, I've got the main task for the day out of the way, the rest of the day just feels so much more liberated. And you can genuinely enjoy it, as opposed to constantly having this, like, future task that, that you're concerned about. So, first things first is important, and this is related to Chris Sparks' number one productivity tip, which is plan what you're going to do today the night before, um, and he says that every one minute you spend planning on the night before is worth 10 minutes the following day. Um, so what I've been using is this Six Minute Diaries new product, which is the 6 Minute Success Journal, very similar to most other, um, productivity journals, but I just prefer the process that they've got. Uh, that'll be linked in, on Amazon. And, um, just my evening routine now involves choosing-

Jonny 42:39 ... the, the task, that thing. They call it big piece of cake, but it should-

Chris Williamson 42:43 (laughs)

Jonny 42:44 ... it should be, um, what frog do you want to eat? Like, what is the most high leverage, uncomfortable, but best return task that you need to do? And I'm just waking up on a morning and I know what I need to do, and if I do that thing, even if the rest of the day is completely awful, it doesn't matter. So I've got this TED Talk coming up and, like, planning for a TED Talk to, to go and do some time writing at, like, 3:00 in the afternoon is just bollocks. But if you've got up, you've done your morning routine, you sit down at your desk and you nail two and a half hours planning a talk, you're like, "Right, I've done it. That's it. I've completed my day." Now I don't care about these annoying little emails because I'm like... I- it's like dancing through a, dancing through a daisy field because you just feel like everything's already been sorted. So yeah, first things first, and then plan what you're going to do the night before. And the process I'm using for that is the Six Minute Success Journal, which I think is absolutely awesome.

Chris Williamson 43:37 Fantastic.

Jonny 43:38 That's a cool tip. So I've got, I've got one... So on the same theme as that, um, (clears throat) a lot of these things for me, like tip, like productivity tips are things that I learned, like, the first time I read Getting Things Done, whenever that was, and I, like, read it at the time, I was like, "No, that's stupid." Sure. And then, like, six years later you're like, "Ah." (laughs) "Now I understand." So with the, the big piece of cake, um, style of, of things to do, so like planning a TED Talk, I think we all have on our to-do list something like that, or maybe, maybe your to-do list is full of things like that, that seem so large and painful and difficult that you just kind of never do anything with them. Um, so actually what those are in, in GTD land are projects, not single actions, and all we can ever do is a single action. So we can never do, it's the thing that is the, the one, like, I'm going to do this and it's completed. So breaking something like that down into single actions and then only looking at the one... only considering the first step of that project is such an easy way to kind of always be nudging things forward all the time in your life. So, like, I want to, I don't know, get some artwork for a room in my house. Like, all right, oh, God. And then you sit down to try and do it and there's 10 steps to it, and you try and do all of those at once, you're probably not going to do it. But if step one is ask a friend to recommend two websites that I can look at, you can fire that text off and suddenly 10 projects are moving forward every day in little ways, and there's not really any resistance to it. And before you know it, they've all been done. So basically the, the, the hack is if you've got anything on your to-do list that you are considering doing today that is a huge thing, instead of that, break it down into 10 things, into 10 steps.

Chris Williamson 45:24 Mm.

Jonny 45:24 So if you were explaining to somebody else how you're going to do this action, what do those 10 steps look like? And the, only the first one should be on your to-do list, if that makes sense. Mm. And that's, that's... For anyone who's read Getting Things Done, that is just how David Allen explained it 30 years ago, whenever the book was read. (laughs) It's only just- (laughs) We've just come across it now, yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:43 Yeah. It's, um... I think one of the main reasons people procrastinate is that they don't know what to do next.

Jonny 45:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:51 So a lot of the time I'll speak to the boys that are in the office about a- an assignment that they're struggling to do and they're like, "Oh, mate, like, I was in the library all day yesterday and I'm, I'm here, I was in the office today and, you know, there's... I've got this big assignment coming in." You go, "Okay, have you made the document on which you're going to write the assignment?"

Jonny 46:10 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:11 "Oh, well, no, I haven't. I, I, I've been..." Right, okay. And it's like... So a, a big part of that, and I, I think me and Yusuf probably suffer with this a little bit more than you, Johnny, is to know that time dedicated to planning and reviewing is more important than time dedicated to the task. Like, if you spend time before you do a thing constructing how you're going to do the thing, it makes everything so much easier. And if you don't do it-

Jonny 46:42 Mm.

Chris Williamson 46:42 ... the- it's basically a different challenge. It's a totally different challenge to try and, um, manifest, what do I need to do and then how am I going to do it? As opposed to batching, okay, first I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do that, then I'm gonna ring the person, then I'm gonna get the paperwork, then I'm gonna go blah, blah. And just doing that. And after that, it's literally just a case of some, some past version of you, yeah, step after step after step.

Jonny 47:05 The next step from that is... Sorry, sir.

Yusef 47:09 Oh, no, just similar to the Chris Sparks thing (clears throat) that... Is it an ounce of planning is worth a pound of execution? Something like that. Um, I definitely, yeah, I definitely do struggle with, if I haven't done that, roll into the morning like a PS1 RPG character-

Jonny 47:23 (laughs)

Yusef 47:23 ... that walks into the wall and then carries on walking-

Chris Williamson 47:26 (laughs)

Yusef 47:26 ... and slowly rotates on that axis and keeps, keeps walking.

Chris Williamson 47:31 (laughs) Yeah, it's, um-

Jonny 47:32 So link, link... Sorry.

Chris Williamson 47:34 It, it's just that we presume if I can get started on this task now, I'll make progress on this task now. Planning's taking time away from me doing the thing. You're like, "Yeah, but it's, it's deciding to drive to a place without knowing where the place is or the route you're going to take." It's just getting in the car and putting your foot down. Like, o- o- okay, I mean, before that I should probably get the map out, have a look at the route, realize where I need to go, and then I can do it.

Jonny 48:01 The, the hidden benefit of all of this, that you don't necessarily realize until you've broken things down in that way, is that when you have, like... when you're on a walk and you think, "Oh, I'll call someone," right, or like, "I'll, I've got a bit of spare time, I'll, I'll call someone," and you've got 20 projects in your life broken down into next steps and five of them have things in them with the tag phone call. You can make five phone calls in the 15 minutes that previous you were like, "At some point, you need to make this phone call." Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and, like, fi- all those things will be moved forward. So it's kind of facilitating the... when you have, you know, you're, you're sat waiting or you're on your phone or you're browsing Amazon and you think, "Oh, yeah, I wonder if there's anything that I've kind of forgotten," and you can s- you can filter through all of the little tiny subsections in your life that when I'm...... putting the art on the wall that I'm going to buy, I'm gonna need picture hooks, and I'm gonna need... so, done. So, it's just a way of, like, reducing resistance, I suppose. Planning and then making things easier on yourself in the future. And who doesn't want that?

Chris Williamson 49:02 Everyone.

Jonny 49:02 Easy, easy things are nice, aren't they?

Chris Williamson 49:04 They're lovely. Seth?

Yusef 49:06 So, on the, the journal theme, there's an app called Day One which, I can't remember if I've mentioned it on a previous Life Hacks, but it is beautiful. And it's very much designed for journaling and diaries and stuff, so i- it bridges that gap which Johnny was talking about the RAM, which is working memory of your brain, stuff that needs doing and needs to be in the system, but isn't gonna be stored long-term. It's not gonna be archived. And actually if it was in your external brain, it would clog things up. Um, and then you've got the archive, which is the stuff that you want to refer to in the future. But you might have the stuff in the kind of in-between bay, which is reflective stuff that doesn't have an immediate next action but is a way to kind of take all these thoughts and neuroses and patterns and things and just put them into boxes and clarify your own thoughts and, um, manage your, your emotions. And that's the whole purpose of a diary or a journal. And I think I, I definitely see the value in, in Chris' approach of, like, having a handwritten journal that gives you prompts and questions. But if you're the kind of person that hates handwriting, and you want a free-form thing, then Day One is very good. The other benefit of it is that it's... because it's designed like a diary, it allows you to... it, it tracks a lot of data but it's all held on your device, um, in terms of location, photos that you took that day. It's designed to really create like a tapestry of your life, so you can look back on it and it's, it's just quite a cool, um, way to be like, "Ah, yeah, this is like a, a memoir."

Chris Williamson 50:42 I use Day One for more sort of significant emotional life events. Um, it's also, like, password protected, which is kinda good, so people can't just stumble upon... well, I mean, to be fair, like, my journal's not where the worst stuff on my phone is.

Jonny 50:57 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:57 But (laughs) my, my camera roll's got some fairly awful stuff on it as well.

Yusef 51:01 (laughs)

Jonny 51:02 (laughs)

Yusef 51:02 So, that, that's a, that's another one. When you, like, when you're trying to show someone like, "Oh, here's the, um, the new wall that I've had painted," and you have to, like, scroll through the... and people are like, "Uh, uh, uh, that's, like-"

Chris Williamson 51:12 "What? Look at my fucking camera roll, mate." Yeah.

Yusef 51:15 (laughs)

Jonny 51:16 So ju-... not to kind of bowl in and do the, like, "Well, I was doing it before, it was cool." I've been using Day One since February 2012.

Yusef 51:25 Wow.

Chris Williamson 51:26 Good shit.

Jonny 51:26 So, the, the additional, (laughs) the additional thing that it does, which you, you two may have had is like, occasionally it'll say, "Read this post on this day from five years ago." And I, like-

Yusef 51:36 It's very well designed, isn't it?

Jonny 51:38 ... the, the thing, the benefit I get from it is like, you know you, you go down this, like, personal development rabbit hole, and you think, like, "Is it really doing anything? I'm not really sure." And then you read something. You read, like, the, the thoughts that you were having four years ago, and you're like, "Yeah."

Yusef 51:52 It's my favorite thing. You look back on something old and you're like, "What a twat. I can't believe he was..." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:56 (laughs)

Jonny 51:56 Yeah (laughs) .

Yusef 51:56 I think there's an equivalent to hedonic adaptation. It's like productivity adaptation, because you're always wanting to further refine the edges, and it's difficult to remember how bad you were. And also, you presume that as you get older you should be compounding your effectiveness. So, you don't want to be comparing your s- your productivity now to your productivity five years ago. But your mindset, or r-... mindset around... yes, around how you feel and the thoughts that consume your consciousness, that is really stark. Like when I think... Man, I once wrote, in my Day One, I once wrote a m- a major concern that the MC that spoke on the mic over the R&B DJ in Room 2 at Riverside had left, and I was concerned that that was going to ruin the room and that would be the end of the business. And that was worthy of putting into, into my, like, personal thought/emotion journal. And now, like, I, I don't even know the name of the person that does that. Like, it just doesn't- That's cool.

Jonny 53:01 ... it doesn't matter. It's like-

Yusef 53:02 It's not even a speck on your consciousness.

Chris Williamson 53:03 No, doesn't even arise in consciousness. No.

Jonny 53:05 It... there was something I read, a guy we've had on our podcast a couple of times called John, John Romaniello, talks about the value of having a, like, a long-standing journal being... you just, y- you realize, like, firstly, brilliant things and terrible things come and go, they pass, and you have got through all of the things that have been the worst things that have ever happened to you, and now it's all fine.

Chris Williamson 53:26 Mm-hmm.

Jonny 53:26 So, like, you can read back to how you were dealing with what you perceived to be the worst thing ever, at the time. And, like, journaling at the time helps a bit, 'cause you get to write it down, I guess, and like externalize the, the mental talk. But being able to look back on that three years later and go, "You know what? Like, if anything like that happens again, it'll probably be okay." It's just a nice, like, tapestry of, "This is how my thoughts have evolved. Now when something similar happens, I deal with it better." And so, yeah, I think it's a... and Day One, I think, is probably the best app for it, isn't it? Isn't that what it is?

Yusef 53:59 It's free as well.

Jonny 54:00 Oh, yeah.

Yusef 54:00 I think there's a paid version for extra features too.

Jonny 54:03 Or a... yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:03 But, uh, it's got a partner app on MacBook as well, doesn't it, that all links in?

Jonny 54:08 Does, yeah. A little tab at the top, like a little bookmark thing that drops down.

Yusef 54:11 Yeah. I've only recently got the phone app, to be honest. I've had the Mac app for some time but, or the-

Jonny 54:16 That's more, like, the, the... it's, like, music you listen to or... 'cause it d- does it do that on the Mac app as well?

Yusef 54:23 Not as much. The, the phone app, as you said, yeah, is more designed for the tapestry.

Chris Williamson 54:27 Mm.

Yusef 54:28 I think it gives you prompts as well. It's not totally free-form, like, I think you can... it can say, like, "What's the..."

Jonny 54:34 So, it's the, it's the phone app where I get, like, the, "See what you were doing in January."

Chris Williamson 54:39 Have you got notifications for Day One turned on?

Jonny 54:42 I have.

Chris Williamson 54:42 Wow.

Jonny 54:43 For that reason.

Yusef 54:44 That's huge, them.

Chris Williamson 54:44 And to, to get, to, to be allowed through the gate that is your notification barrier-... special.

Jonny 54:52 I've got a, got a life hack related to that as well.

Chris Williamson 54:54 Interesting. Deliveroo, I think, is the only... Deliveroo and phone calls are the only two things-

Yusef 54:58 Like, your food is coming. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 55:00 Yeah, that's it. That's all I'm bothered about.

Jonny 55:02 So, the only things that Day One notifies me about is either, "Read this journal entry," which is always interesting, and, like, you can set the notification to fill the journal in, to be randomized. And I think that's the best way of-

Chris Williamson 55:14 Oh, what you do, what have you done this week or whatever.

Jonny 55:16 Yeah. And so, like, that, I just use that as the prompt. And if there's nothing interesting, I just don't bother. So...

Chris Williamson 55:23 That's really cool. Yeah, I've got, uh, to be fair, all of these, um, all these different functions I haven't bothered digging into. Right, um, so this is one that I realized last year and it's a bit of an uncomfortable truth, but I think I'm really enjoying telling people things that they don't want to hear at the moment. So, I got shouted out on the internet for talking about Trump, and then I got shouted out on the internet for talking about existential risk, and I got shouted out on the internet for talking about the single biggest predictor of extramarital sex being premarital sex. Um, but facts don't care about your feelings, and this is another one of them. The thing that you need to remember, whoever you are that's listening, is that you are the common denominator in every experience within your life. So, imagine that you always seem to be looked over for promotions at work, or people just, uh, uh, your partners always seem to kind of get sick of you after around about six months, or your friends always do invite you out to things, or you always are the first person that gets picked for the sports team, or whatever it is, both good and bad. If there is a recurring theme in your life, you are the common denominator, not them. So, a lot of the time I'll have a conversation with someone, I had a conversation with someone yesterday, who I regularly sort of spe- semi-regularly speak to, maybe once every couple of months, and the conversation always has the same tone to it, always has the same sort of feeling. It's a- a little bit antagonistic to- it's quite sort of debate-y. It's a little bit self-righteous. And, um, I remember saying, like, "Man, like, is- is this how you are with everyone?" He's like, "No, no." And I was like, "Well, I don't have this conversation with anyone else but you, so it, like... In the nicest way possible, it's not me." Like, I only do this when you arrive, so you're the common denominator within this situation. And it just reminds us that so much of what happens in life is within our control, at least with regards to our responses and the way, the tenor that we have when we do things. So, yeah, remember that you're the common denominator.

Jonny 57:30 So, if ever there's a theme, if ever there's like, something happens more than it doesn't, you think, "Well, if it's normally happening to me, then I probably have some involvement in it."

Chris Williamson 57:41 Yeah. I mean, imagine if-

Jonny 57:42 You know?

Chris Williamson 57:42 ... imagine if you always, i- if whenever there's a problem, you always deal with it. Like, you're the common denominator, like-

Jonny 57:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 57:49 ... you are, you are dealing with the problems. And the reason it's an uncomfortable truth is that it forces us to realize that our failures are ours to bear, but also our successes are ours to bear. Especially if they're consistent.

Yusef 58:03 It's not a truth that a lot of people would accept or want to hear because they get more benefit from being the victim or the martyr or the, what- whatever the- the role that they're playing, than they do from taking personal responsibility and ta- taking agency.

Jonny 58:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 58:18 Mm-hmm.

Yusef 58:19 Um, and I think, yeah, I can see how if you say that to certain people, they're, "Oh, I mean, that thing always happens to you, but it doesn't happen to anyone else, so maybe it, it's-"

Chris Williamson 58:29 (laughs)

Jonny 58:29 (laughs)

Yusef 58:29 ... like, it can be a bit like, "Oh, well, no, 'cause they're just all a dick." Like, "Every boss I've ever had has been a dick," or every-

Chris Williamson 58:34 Precisely, every ex-girlfriend-

Yusef 58:36 ... girlfriend-

Chris Williamson 58:36 ... has always found me to be possessive. Okay...?

Jonny 58:40 Mm-hmm.

Yusef 58:40 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 58:40 Like, what's more likely, that all of them happen to have the same weird quirk, or that you are the person that is causing it? I mean, the problem is, obviously there are things that aren't our fault and there are things that go wrong which are out of our control, and that are unfortunate and unlucky. So, the kernel of truth that this could have occurred once... You could have been with a girl who was an absolute, or a guy who was an absolute dick to you and said that you were a bunch of ways that you're not. That can be true, but if that continues to happen...

Yusef 59:10 Then with a higher and higher confidence interval, the probability of it being them becomes lower.

Jonny 59:17 (laughs) It's you.

Yusef 59:17 Um, yeah.

Jonny 59:18 There's also just no downside to doing, like, the- the Jocko Willink, like, just taking complete responsibility for everything 'cause it, there's never rea-... Like, yeah, it's- it's, m- it might make- make you feel a bit sad, but, like, at least you're trying to solve the problem and working towards a- a s- solution or an improvement.

Chris Williamson 59:35 Mm-hmm.

Yusef 59:35 That's a good point, like, even when it's not you-

Jonny 59:38 No downside.

Yusef 59:38 ... it still probably benefits you to-

Jonny 59:40 Yeah.

Yusef 59:40 ... just be like, "Well, I'll just take care of it anyways."

Jonny 59:42 Or just try and fix it.

Chris Williamson 59:42 Mm-hmm. Johnny?

Jonny 59:44 Should... Are we still on long form or are we doing quickfire?

Chris Williamson 59:48 Uh, yeah, let's do a quick, let's do a quickfire. Also, if you've watched anything on Netflix or read anything recently, probably be a good place to throw some, just some stuff in here.

Jonny 59:58 Okay. So I have some, I have some fitness-y ones, some quick ones. Um, quite a lot of people I know, myself included, are very consistent with, like, a multivitamin and vitamin D, but quite inconsistent with creatine. I don't know whether you, either of you two have this problem?

Chris Williamson 1:00:13 You have just described me, my friend.

Jonny 1:00:15 (laughs)

Yusef 1:00:17 (laughs)

Jonny 1:00:17 So, I have had this problem in my life for ages, for, like, as long as I can remember, and it's actually credit to MyProtein who fixed this, so they sent us a- a box of stuff, uh, to review, like, pre-Christmas. And in that box was a tub of creatine tablets, creatine monohydrate tablets, that, like, I'd always looked over 'cause I thought, "Well, you know, what benefit's that?" But now I just take five creatine tablets when I take my multivitamin and I always take my creatine. So, there you go.

Yusef 1:00:47 That's great.

Chris Williamson 1:00:47 That's- that's a good way to put it in, because the only time that you have creatine if you're not having it in tablet form is if you also have a shake, and-

Jonny 1:00:55 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:00:55 ... you don't always have a shake every day.

Jonny 1:00:57 Exactly.... so I like, I very rarely miss vitamin D 'cause it's, like, in the morning with breakfast, like multivitamin, vitamin D. And then creatine's like, "Oh, later I'll mix some kind of, like, squash and water and I'll have it then," and I always forget. Or, like, mostly forget.

Yusef 1:01:11 Yeah, there's, there's more steps involved in creatine.

Jonny 1:01:13 Mm-hmm.

Yusef 1:01:13 I think off the back of that, I have been more consistent with creatine recently. But that's because, one, I use CreaPure rather than creatine monohydrate, which is the same, but it's just more purified. It doesn't give me the same nausea that normal creatine does. Um, which is, again, it j- like, the whole James Clear thing, like, if it's unpleasant to do, if it makes you feel nauseous-

Jonny 1:01:34 You don't want to do it.

Yusef 1:01:35 ... then you're like, yeah, you're like, "Oh, well, I'll have it after my meal, not before." And, um, (clears throat) and also mixing it in hot water. So if I have a morning cup of tea, I'll have it before or after the tea.

Jonny 1:01:45 I just can't, I just c- the, uh, the thought of putting, like, creatine in my morning coffee just feels...

Yusef 1:01:49 I wouldn't put it in your morning coffee.

Jonny 1:01:51 'Cause it does have a taste... Oh, what-

Yusef 1:01:51 Um, just have it before or after with a little bit of hot water. Not boiling.

Jonny 1:01:55 So all those-

Yusef 1:01:56 But it's easy to faff though.

Jonny 1:01:57 Yeah. Th- the only downside with the tablets are they are quite big. So if you, like, if you're not great with taking tablets in general. Um, but I've actually found it's a nice, quite a nice thing to, to train yourself. So at initially I had to do one tablet at a time, now I'm just all five in at once. So I've trained myself-

Yusef 1:02:13 That's why when I, wh- when, when Johnny was at mine and I ordered a, a big bag of carrots and he helped me put them away in the fridge... so that I could train that as well. Um, anyway, my next life hack (laughs) is Blob Opera. So this is a digital one, and it's, I mean, it's very, very highbrow. Um, Google have made a series of AI projects, and Blob Opera is an AI, um, opera thing. There's five blobs and they've all got faces, and each one is, like, tenor and soprano and bass and whatever. And depending on how you move the mouse or your finger or if you're d- doing it on your phone, they do different harmonies and different, um... And you can actually produce some really beautiful blob operas. So if you're listening, search for Blob Opera on Google, have a play around, and say goodbye to your evening 'cause you'll be on it for a while.

Jonny 1:03:16 So it's to make music? You specif- you produce the music?

Yusef 1:03:19 Yeah, and you can record them, send them to friends.

Chris Williamson 1:03:22 Can you see popular ones that other people have done?

Yusef 1:03:25 I think you can. I don't know how d- there must be a library of them somewhere.

Jonny 1:03:30 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:30 I've seen the videos. It's, they're quite sort of cute characters and they all go like...

Yusef 1:03:34 Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Jonny 1:03:35 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:35 Like that, don't they? Yeah. Stand up straight and open their mouth. Uh, right. So I have been... I, I've sent this to a bunch of different people and I also put it in my newsletter, but it's gonna go in here. Red Rising, uh, is a series by Pierce Brown, who is going to come on the podcast once he finishes writing his sixth book.

Yusef 1:03:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:52 But it's just every single person that I've given this fiction series to has become addicted, and it's consumed quite a lot of their life. So please take care with this life hack.

Yusef 1:04:04 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:04:04 I am warning you now. Um, but Red Rising's... It's a really easy to read, very fast-paced, engaging... It's, I guess it would technically probably fall under sci-fi, but there's a lot of sort of history references in there. And it's just to do with politics and backstabbing, and there's this guy rising up through the ranks and he's infiltrating different societies. But the whole world, very similar to the Harry Potter thing, the whole world feels quite encompassing. Uh, Red Rising. Go and, go and read it. And the first one is, is sick, and then there's five in the series that you can get stuck into if you enjoy it. So, highly recommended.

Jonny 1:04:41 Nice. Um, is it me?

Chris Williamson 1:04:45 Go away.

Jonny 1:04:46 When... So you probably heard one of the tips is turn no- all notifications off, which you mentioned before. Like, I think you should have most, if not all, notifications off. The problem I found with that, I don't know whether you two... I, I think Yusuf changed to what I'm about to say. I don't know what you do with this, Chris. But when I did that, I was, like, "Right, it's full blackout. Like, I don't want anything. I don't want the badge notifications, I don't want the noises, I don't want anything." And what that actually started to create was a, a worse version of the, like, app spiral of you'll go on your phone and you're like, look at your email. Like, "All right, there's no new emails, so thank God for that. I, I wonder if there's any WhatsApps. I'll have a look in WhatsApp." And then before you know, you're back at email again. And basically turning notifications off, all that does is creates, "Well, I need to go and check when there's something new," 'cause there's no way of, no other way of knowing. So basically, turning all notifications off, but leaving the red badge on allows you to relax a bit. 'Cause you can s- I, I know it's like you can see it accumulating, but there's no need to go in and check. And with things like iMessage, sometimes if you open iMessage and it opens on someone's message, that's then un- that's then marked as unread and you f- you can easily forget about it. So for me, leaving the notification badge on, but it doesn't bombard me. When I want to look at my phone, I'm like, "Okay, I've got some emails, got some WhatsApp, got, got some iMessages. I can't respond now, but I'll look at them later," for example. So I'm terrible with replying to things. Pretty much everyone who knows me knows that I'm terrible at replying to things. And I think this has contributed to that over time. I think not, not having the badge on, not having any way of knowing there's unprocessed stuff in that app means that, like, it's easy to forget. So that's really helped me recently.

Chris Williamson 1:06:26 Yeah. I had notifications turned off fully for WhatsApp for a while, and I've sent, sent and received millions of WhatsApp messages over the last few years. Um, from my... Like, for me, I still keep badges off. I've been through the, the valley of despair that you went through.

Jonny 1:06:44 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:44 And now because I like to use the web app for WhatsApp, I like to use iMessage on my desktop, and I don't ever have emails that are urgent.

Jonny 1:06:55 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:06:55 Not anymore. You guys may. But nothing that I ever receive, if it's urgent, they'll ring me. And if it's not, I'll check in when I check in, and I'll check in on my laptop. So...... I think this is, it's a really good point, and it's one that I still, I do agree with. But I think I've found a, a technique that works slightly better for me for where I'm at, at the moment.

Jonny 1:07:18 I think you're even further through the evolution, by the sounds of things.

Yusef 1:07:21 I mean, Chris' global WhatsApp analytics for total number of messages sent and received makes me want to throw up.

Chris Williamson 1:07:28 It's actually-

Jonny 1:07:28 You'd get invited to, like, the WhatsApp con- annual conference of, like, heaviest users.

Chris Williamson 1:07:33 Yeah.

Yusef 1:07:33 It's been, like, the, the teraflops of... (laughs)

Jonny 1:07:35 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:07:35 (laughs) Oh, here's a thing that I learned. The, um, entire internet, in terms of the electrons that make up the data, not the storage devices that they're on, but the electrons that make up the data, is smaller than an orange.

Yusef 1:07:56 Is that if you push them all together-

Chris Williamson 1:07:58 Yeah.

Yusef 1:07:58 ... and there's no space between?

Chris Williamson 1:07:59 Yeah.

Jonny 1:08:00 I don't know what to make of that piece of information, Chris.

Chris Williamson 1:08:03 Also, if you were to write out on double-sided A4 paper all of the information that is generated by the internet every day and then stack them up in a single stack, they'd go from here to the sun and back four times.

Jonny 1:08:17 Daily?

Chris Williamson 1:08:18 Daily.

Jonny 1:08:20 Yeah. I suppose it depends on how big your handwriting is, doesn't it? But it, either way, you're getting to the sun.

Chris Williamson 1:08:25 Yeah.

Jonny 1:08:25 So.

Chris Williamson 1:08:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an effort. Seth, what you got?

Yusef 1:08:30 I may have mentioned this before, but upgrade to the maximum internet that your location allows. Just, like, for the sake of an extra 20 quid or something, to have the fastest internet. Like, just think of the amount of time that that saves overall, like all these little, (clears throat) all these little bits of time waiting for something to buffer or waiting for a page to load. And if that's just eliminated, like, you... So this was actually from George McGill when he was just saying, "You should always pay for more speed, because if you can eliminate friction for stuff, then amazing." And now, we're, we're going to hit a point soon where this is no longer applicable for most humans, because then we'll be limited by the person. I think me and Johnny have talked about this, um, in terms of using Alfred or using software that makes you really fast at something when actually now it's your brain that's the slow thing. Which is great. Like, we, we want things to move in that direction. But that's why, like, the M1 MacBook Pro, it's fast, it's good, and if you're a, like, a power user of Mac, then you will get the full use out of it. But for a lot of people, like if you ever use the trackpad to, like, go to the address bar and then type google.com and then scroll with it, like, just don't bother with any of this stuff. Like, get a Chromebook until you can max that out.

Jonny 1:09:51 (laughs)

Yusef 1:09:51 So I think the, the whole, um, moral of that story is like, whatever technology you use, squeeze the lemon of it and then say, "Right, I've earned the right to upgrade to the next level of speed." Um, just making sure that you're never bottlenecked by the technology.

Jonny 1:10:06 So the, the bottlenecking is the big thing, 'cause it's like the... So I have this conversation with people who think that Macs are worse than PCs, and they'll say like, "Oh, well, I've built my own PC and it's got-

Chris Williamson 1:10:17 (laughs) A classic.

Jonny 1:10:18 I've got more RAM. I've got more RAM than you have, and I spent half the money." It's like, that's, that's a valid argument until you have to restart your computer once, because the app-

Yusef 1:10:27 Bluescreen of death.

Jonny 1:10:28 Like, yeah, the, the Microsoft Office crashed or it doesn't work. And it's the same with internet, like, yeah, you save 20 quid a month and that might be, you know, great across a year. But if you have to deal with, like, a day, on the, every day, a video that buffers for a minute, think how long that accumulates. It's like the, whenever you're bottlenecked by something regularly, it is usually worth just paying to remove the problem, and then you just never realize.

Yusef 1:10:52 For a PC and Mac, it, it's just a, it's an emotional thing. Like I tweeted the other day saying like, "Does anyone have a legitimate reason for, um, having a PC over a Mac?" And all the answers were like, "Oh, well, if I want to change the, the graphics card on this thing," you know? Well, okay, but, like-

Chris Williamson 1:11:10 They're all special, special use cases.

Yusef 1:11:13 Yeah.

Jonny 1:11:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:14 If anyone does have a legitimate reason-

Jonny 1:11:17 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:11:17 ... for using a Windows operating system computer over a MacBook, please leave it in the comments below.

Jonny 1:11:25 I think-

Chris Williamson 1:11:25 I'm more, I'm more than happy to, to have my mind changed about this, but every use case is specific.

Yusef 1:11:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:33 Like, it just, Windows computers just don't work the same way as Macs do.

Yusef 1:11:41 I, I, I have to use both. Like, day-to-day, I probably use a Windows computer more in total hours than-

Chris Williamson 1:11:46 The NHS.

Yusef 1:11:46 ... than Mac. And there's just no comparison. I mean, in fairness, I'm using like Windows 98 or something, so-

Chris Williamson 1:11:53 98, yeah.

Yusef 1:11:53 (laughs)

Jonny 1:11:54 It's a... Yeah, the reasons are always like, "Oh, I use this bit of, like, stock trading software and it only works..." Okay, specific case.

Chris Williamson 1:12:00 MT4 what's on your phone now? Christ.

Jonny 1:12:00 Like, we're talking about general, general day-to-day use of just using a computer without-

Yusef 1:12:06 Well, the, the solution is y- you, you give two people eight hours and a different device and you say, "Right, you've got this lay- you've got this section of work to do. Off you go, see who-"

Chris Williamson 1:12:16 See who gets it done quick. Fucking hell. Yeah, it's not evening. Uh, so this actually relates to the people who are on a MacBook. Yousef told me about this when I first got my Mac, I think, or when you first maybe Alfreded me. By pressing control, command and space, you bring up an emoji keyboard and you can select them from there. Now, Seth has gone one step further and put an Alfred emoji shortcut in, which means that he can do it directly from his Alfred dashboard. But presuming that you don't want to go that, that deep, and I, even though I'm an avid Alfred user, I still use control, command, space. A lot of the time I think because I don't actually know quite the emoji that I need. I'm like, "Oh, this is an emoji that space-"

Yusef 1:13:00 It looks like a bolt, but it's, is it electric or is it... So-

Chris Williamson 1:13:02 Not even that, I'm just, I want inspo. I want emoji inspo.

Yusef 1:13:06 Ah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:06 So I'll have a little look, I'm like, "Ooh, should it be an apple? Should it be an ora- oh, is that a croissant?" Like, do you know what I mean?

Yusef 1:13:12 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:13:12 I just want to have a... Is that, is, is that a potato? Like...

Yusef 1:13:16 (laughs)

Jonny 1:13:16 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:13:16 My, my potato.

Yusef 1:13:16 There is a potato. I think there's a sweet potato now as well. There is, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:19 There is, yeah, exactly. This is technically a sweet potato, by the way, as well, so sorry about that.

Yusef 1:13:26 Yeah, fair enough. I think if you want to browse the emojis... There's another app actually that does that, but slightly, slightly quicker called Rocket for, for