Modern WisdomLife Hacks 208
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,002 words- 0:00 – 1:18
Intro
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
It sounds like the workload of making that app must be huge.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
So they, they modeled MobilityWOD on Pornhub, I think originally, because who better, who else has got lots of videos that need, like, tagging and filtering and categorizing. So the original mWOD website, when it first got launched was based on that. And it just got so-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
You can choose, like, when, when you go stretching, you can say like Brazilian, BBW.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. (wind blowing)
- CWChris Williamson
Jonny and Yusuf, welcome to the show.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
This is a really exciting one.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
'Cause it's the first time we've got proper setups. We're not just using a potato.
- CWChris Williamson
You're not beaning it as much as you used to. Yeah, this is HD hacks.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
HD potato.
- CWChris Williamson
That's it, man. Uh, so-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It's a slightly better potato.
- CWChris Williamson
... if you're not used to life hacks, we go through tools, techniques and tactics for a productive and efficient life. And then the other two people tear it down or say that it's amazing, and immediately acclaim that person as the new victor. Uh, we'll get through whatever it is that we have a chance to do today, and then maybe time for some things that we've been watching, Netflix's stuff, at the end. And as is tradition, uh, Johann Sebastian, there's a hot potato for you.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Caught it.
- CWChris Williamson
What have you got?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
I have caught it. So
- 1:18 – 13:17
Supplement Sweeties, Optimize.me & Add to Home Screen
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
my life hacks today are as a result of having done a version of 75 Hard at the start of this year. So if people aren't familiar with that, it is a largely stupid idea where you do lots of training and drink lots of water and do lots of very difficult things for 75 days in a row. And if you skip a day, you have to go back to day one again. So as you can imagine, skipping a day is fairly bad news. Um, so one of our friends was gonna do it. He did the proper version. I did like a scaled back version, but I ended up having to do loads of habits very consistently that I've not, you know, without skipping a day. So lots of kind of efficiencies and hacks as it were.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Have you got the full list of the official 75 Hard?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
I don't, but I, I, I'm worried that'll derail things.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Okay.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
You know, I wanna get to the, to the meat.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
To the meat. Right.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
So one of the things that I did every day was, uh, just to take my supplements every day, which is something that we probably all do with like decent consistency. Something I found that made it really easy to do, and I'm not really sure how you two are gonna react to this. I ordered some apple cider vinegar and some collagen from MyProtein in the form of a ch- like a chewy gummy. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Okay.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
(laughs) Have you come across this before?
- CWChris Williamson
I'm not, I'm not offended so far.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
So they... Okay. So all going well so far. So the, the hack is-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
I am. (laughs)
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yusuf's offended. (laughs) The hack is have one supplement that you take per day that's a sweetie, that's a gummy. So like let's say you're gonna take a multivitamin or vitamin D or something else, just MyProtein basically make everything at this point in the form of a gummy, and it's just like having sweets.
- CWChris Williamson
So what, how does that help you stay compliant with the rest of your supplements?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It's just the standard habit formation.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Oh, there we go. There we go.
- CWChris Williamson
Multivitamin gummies in Vimto flavor. That's what Yusuf's got.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It always sounds like I'm plugging MyProtein. Like this is, this is legitimate. Like I, I tried them, they taste really nice, the apple cider vinegar and the collagen ones. I have very specific reasons for the collagen ones. The apple cider vinegar ones just sounded nice.
- CWChris Williamson
How much-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
But yeah, it's a-
- CWChris Williamson
So collagen gummies?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
H- how much gummy do you need to eat in order to get an even close to like-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
How much gummy... Are you imagining like a big gummy that comes in a tube and you take it and nibble off each-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I've got a tub of, I've got a tub of collagen protein over the far side.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Got it. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's pretty big.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Big. Big. Yeah. So, so this, I think it's like a couple of hundred micrograms or milligrams. It's not very much, but you take one, one gummy each day.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Um, to be honest, like I'm not real... The reason why I'm not taking like vitamin D or multivitamin in a gummy format is I'm not really doing it for that reason, but it's the cue habit reward loop, right? Like if I, if I get to have something that tastes nice at the end, that might help. I'm, I've been really consistent with my habits.
- 13:17 – 26:05
Readwise, Otter & Paying Invoices Early
- CWChris Williamson
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
I'm concerned that we've said this one before, and it's very similar to what we've literally just been speaking about. But it's something that I didn't use properly until this experience, this sep- watered down 75 hard. So one of the things was reading daily. You both know how I feel about reading. I'm still on the fence about it, to be honest, about whether I've, I've read enough at this point, and it's all, I'm still in the, the action phase. But I used, um... (laughs) I'm just w- waiting for Yousuf's reaction. Readwise, (laughs) the... Oh. I use the Readwise app synced with my Kindle, and then say it automatically syncs and saves all the highlights to Readwise and then gives you, like, the, the scrolling. You, you bo- both might've seen, seen me share this stuff to Instagram occasionally, like ones that I find are useful. I think you do this already, Chris. You might already both do this. I probably even got it from a previous life hack, but that's the ultimate test, right, when a life hack comes back around.
- CWChris Williamson
Comes back around, yeah.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Mm-hmm.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Mm-hmm.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
So is that, is that something you've both done?
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
I pay for Readwise, yeah. It's, it's great. Like, it fully sync- They, they are such an impressive company. I'm part of their, uh, developer Discord, and they, they're just, they integrate with all of the external brain type apps. So you can send things to your Notion, your Obsidian, Evernote, whatever, um, and they're developing something which I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about. I'm part of the beta group. But they, they're developing a reader app, and I think that's all I can say.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Okay. So do you-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
But it's good.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
... use, do you use the, like, the, the publicly available Readwise for just note taking, reviewing notes you've re- made previously from books?
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
To be honest, I, the reason I pay is for the reader app rather than Readwise main function.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, so I-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... I use it just because when I highlight stuff on Kindle, big Kindle reader, I now have, whatever, a few thousand highlights of quotes from books, and then every morning at 7:00 AM, I receive four of them in my email inbox, and then if I want to go back and get them. Uh, also, if you've done it with books which aren't on the Amazon cloud, i.e. ones that you haven't purchased but documents that you've sent to yourself, which I do a lot with Send to Kindle, you then need to plug it in. But once you plug it in, it will check which ones are already in the archive. It won't re-add them twice. It'll check those across. It'll add them in. Um, yeah, it's, it's an unbelievably simple and impressive way to do things, and it's really good, easy free content as well. So every day-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... you've got a bunch of quotes that you can just throw up on your Instagram or create into a story or that just you can post on Twitter.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
'Cause it, it does-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Same for Apple Books as well.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
... Apple Books?
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Yeah, and soon podcast-
- CWChris Williamson
It seems to load the stuff.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
... articles, like Twitter bookmarks-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
... email lists. Like, just everything. So if you're fully in the-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
'Cause you see people, like, sending stuff to Readwise, don't they, on, on Twitter, like, in the-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
... in the, the comments of a thread? The-
- CWChris Williamson
Saved threads from Readwise or whatever.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah. 'Cause they, th- a feature that I didn't know they did, 'cause I, I started doing it, and I was like, "Oh, I'm building up this, like, library of, like, interesting points from books that I, realistically, I would never, never go back to that book and, like, find that quote again." And then I realized you can just go through books you've read previously. This might be what you meant, Chris. You can go through books you've read previously that you weren't using Readwise at the time but you've already read, and it takes all the popular highlights from that book and sends them to your Readwise.
- 26:05 – 36:45
One is the New Zero, iPhone App Switching & Trip Fragrances
- CWChris Williamson
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Um, so this is in relation to, like, anything that you buy, m- like, regularly. So, um, supplements is the eas- easiest example. So, like, whenever something, whenever you go down from having two of something to one of something, that's when you then order stuff. Like order the new, new round of it. So, like-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
One is the new zero.
- CWChris Williamson
... I have multiple examples.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah, exactly. That's a much better way of explaining it, Yusuf, thank you. Um, (laughs) so I've had examples where, like, I'll be on my last version of something, my last thing of something, and then you're like, oh, I'll, I'll, I'll order it later, I'll order it later, and you inevitably end up three, four days a week without that thing. So a really simple rule. You can apply it to, like, whatever you buy on a recurring basis, or you fall for what Jeff Bezos wants everybody to do, which is the sub, like, subscribe and save option on Amazon, where it just comes monthly anyway.
- CWChris Williamson
I've not... Have you got any subscribe and saves? I don't have a single one.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
No.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
'Cause what level of accuracy do you need?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
It has to be something like contact lenses where you ne-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
... you know, you will put it... You, you need... You wake up and you're like, "I know that I will need eyesight today. So I will definitely-"
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
"... use my contact lenses." But if it's even toothpaste, the variance can end up with like a massive backlog after a year of toothpaste.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. You have a, you have a month where your grip strength increased a little bit.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And you've just been pumping through it. Yeah, I, um... So having a buffer level of products that you use is a really smart idea. Uh, or here would be another one, would be to have a, uh, always in one cupboard, um, like, buffer level that you touch. So you go into that one whenever you, you're running out of the other stuff, and then you work on top of it. So rather than swapping between-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Oh, nice.
- CWChris Williamson
... the two, you've just got one that's always the buffer level. That lives-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
You must do that with the toilet roll.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Like a floating...
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
That's the essential-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, yes, that's true, you need to have a toilet roll. But then there's a bunch of downstream... Kitchen roll is a valid alternative. Tissues are a valid alternative. And then if that doesn't work, socks. So you know, there are, there is a hierarchy-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Socks?
- CWChris Williamson
... here of-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
That's a real emergency, like, running on fumes, isn't it?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, that second year, second year university living in the first house that you've ever lived in shit.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"Mate, mate, have you used all the toilet roll, mate?"
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
"Have you used all the socks, mate?" (laughs) Right. Yusuf, what have you got? Yep. That's it. Have a, have a buffer level and order in adv... Well, one is the new zero.
- 36:45 – 51:51
Morning Pages, Potatoes or Rice & 12ft.io
- CWChris Williamson
what you got?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
(inhales deeply) Uh, mine is a Mac app that is connected to a concept that is also linked to Tim Ferriss called Morning Pages. Have you heard of that before?
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, is that the Artist's Way thing from Julia Cameron?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's a form of journaling. The idea being, like, you, well, the mo- th- The Artist's Way concept is you write for three pages a day of just unfiltered, like, whatever you're thinking, and it's supposed to be like a form of therapy, basically. You know, you like get all of your thoughts out and it just is a way of sort of processing, um, things that you're, that you're like dealing with or trying to think about that you wouldn't necessarily have that conversation out loud, as it were. But writing it out can help process that. Morning Pages is a... Because my handwriting looks like a, an eight-year-old's-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
... Morning Pages is a way of doing it digitally, and it's an app that is designed that gives you, um, a daily word, uh, target. And it analyzes the tone of the writing to ha- wh- whether it has a negative or a, or a positive, um, like frame to it. And then it also pulls out themes that keep occurring in the, um, in the m-
- CWChris Williamson
Jesus Christ.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
I don't know, it's-
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
I'm psyched about that part.
- CWChris Williamson
This is so sophisticated.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah. So it, it, you can see like January had like a negative, like it's a red bar below a line. February had a positive tone, and like these were the things you were talking about on days you were... Uh, it had a negative tone, these were the things you were talking about on days you had a, a positive tone.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
There's so much that can be done with that. 'Cause if, if when you log in it says like, "What's your mood out of 10?" Or, "How did you sleep?" Or something like that, and it starts drawing cross-correlations and associating it with different themes, then it starts to get really exciting.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It's more just, it's weird how like, um... The, the strangest thing is how, uh, you look back on an entry and you're like, "God, like, I have no emotional reaction to that whatsoever any- anymore." But at the time, it was like really, a really heightened-
- CWChris Williamson
Completely consuming.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
... emotional thing. And also, how consistent, like certain things that annoy you crop up. That you, that, that I, I certainly wasn't aware of, like you think it, "Oh, this thing's happened today and that's a frustrating thing." But actually it happened in January as well.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
(laughs) so-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
And you think it's like this one-off event.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Have you ever looked back on notes from say two years ago, and you see something that annoyed you at the time and you think, "Oh, like it just doesn't bother me anymore."
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
That's always a nice, a nice win.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It's a sign of progress, isn't it? I think. When you get to that point.
- CWChris Williamson
I've always said it would be great if you could take a screenshot of your memory, so if you could go back... You know how Time Machine on your MacBook works, and you can go back and restore your machine to an older version? If you could just visit an older version of your, the, the texture of your mind, right? And if you were to go back to it three years ago and think about the neuroses and the anxieties and the concerns and the worries and the things that consumed you, almost all of them would probably not even feature in your mind now. Your problems are more sophisticated, bigger.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
That's true.
- CWChris Williamson
More resilient.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
God, it'd be so frustrating though, wouldn't it? 'Cause you'd, you'd be shouting at it being like, "Stop doing that."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
"Stop worrying about this." And you couldn't communicate with them.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep. Yep, yep, yep.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
I think that's the... So this, uh, one of the other things is journaling, right? So like I've tried, that was one of the other things I had to do daily. And I've tried like The Six Minute Diary, The Five Minute Journal, like lots of other ways of, of journaling. And I don't, I, I think the only way that I've tried that I felt like a, even like an immediate benefit from, so like as soon as I finished I was like, "Oh, like that feels better," to like get that out of my head, was, was this, this way of doing it. And there's no like structure to it, so it feel, it can feel a bit pointless sometimes if you're like, "I just need to get on with my day." But it's, it, the value of looking back at, at previous entries and being like, "Wow, like that problem is, firstly I handled it really well. I was worried about it and I handled it really well. Or it's not really a thing anymore." Um, and you can pick out stuff that makes you happy as well that you don't realize, like things that happen in a day that, and obviously add those back in when you're normal.
- CWChris Williamson
So-
- 51:51 – 1:04:00
Brightmind, Learn to Roll & Explore Airports
- CWChris Williamson
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Uh, this one is another app. Um, might have spoken to you about this before, Chris. But you might ... So Chris years ago referred me on to a meditation coach called Brian who introduced me to Shinzen Young.
- CWChris Williamson
Yup.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
And there's a huge PDF. And like he has a book and his, his method's decently complicated. I think that's fair to say. Like it's not just sit and pay attention to your nose and, um, and focus on your breath. And it's not like Headspace. Um, there's a lot to it and I've, I've often struggled to like piece it all together to understand it. There is actually an app for all of this now. Don't know whether you've come across this before, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
So Shinzen Young's method is basically broken down into a course on an app that is progressive and systematic and takes you through all of the methods with guidance. You can take, it's everything from like a five-minute meditation through to an hour meditation. The app is called Bright Mind and it is, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Bloody hell.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
I be- (laughs) I believe it was originally Shinzen who was doing the, like the, the guided meditations. It's now somebody else.
- CWChris Williamson
Is he still alive?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Um, as far as I know. Yeah, as far as I know.
- CWChris Williamson
He's getting on, isn't he? So does Bright Mind follow the Five Ways framework?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, what with the concentration, clarity, equanimity?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, that is very good.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
The, the thing I like the most about it, which is a weird like ... Obviously I've, so I've completed the course. It was really, really helpful. Um, but you know when someone says like, "I quite want to get into meditation, like what, what, what would you recommend?" And you're like, "Well, probably not Headspace, probably not Calm, like maybe here's a YouTube video." Like to just be able to say that's an entire like A to Z course.
- CWChris Williamson
Service.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It explains the entire thing from the very basics through to like the really advanced, take from it what you want. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
How long did it take you to complete the full course?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It's chunky.
- CWChris Williamson
That's not an answer.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It's ... I, I don't even know the answer. That's the trouble.
- CWChris Williamson
Months?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It'll be-
- CWChris Williamson
Six months?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Uh, they'll probably be like ... It's probably one to two months of like one meditation a day.
- CWChris Williamson
Daily?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah. And then they're, they're always adding stuff. But like to learn the method, the Five Ways method, um, it's at least daily for-
- CWChris Williamson
Are there lectures to teach you the theory outside of the-
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yeah.
- 1:04:00 – 1:15:24
The Ready State’s App, Water Sorter & Blocking a Sneeze
- CWChris Williamson
Johnny, what you got?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Uh, so for any, any long-term, any long-time listeners of Modern Wisdom, they'll know, of Life Hacks specifically, they'll know that I've been on a, a mobility journey. (laughs) So loved ROM WOD, was told not to do ROM WOD, got very upset, tried doing ROM WOD again, didn't really work, injured my hamstring. Have tried Calistaret stuff on and off, didn't really like the app, didn't really like the interface. Have tried doing NO mobility. But I think-
- CWChris Williamson
GOWOD as well you tried?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
GOWOD. Yeah, tried GOWOD. That, that, in fact, yeah. God, I tried that for ages. Um, I think I've found the app. And I've kind of men- I have mentioned it before, but this is the upgraded version. And it is... Is there, do you wanna guess?
- CWChris Williamson
ROM WOD.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
No.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Yousaf?
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Is it something we'll have heard of?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Knees over toes guy?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
I, I don't even know who that is.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh. Ben Patrick.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Is it the ABSS, the Kit Laughlin new product?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Also no. No.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
No.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It is, it is Calistaret's new app.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Is this, is this the Ready State? Is this his new one then?
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
It is, yeah. So he, he brought out a version of the Ready State, which felt very much like a web app, like, that someone had saved to their desktop.
- CWChris Williamson
(sighs) .
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Um, the latest one, like, you open the app, and it says to you... Um, so firstly there's a mobility test, which is cool, that Cali's never done before. So you quantify your mobility. It's a fairly hard test to pass. I scored pretty, pretty poorly on it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
Um, (laughs) , um, there's just so much in there and it filters it for you, so, uh, look, there's a, an opening screen that says like, "What would you like to do today?" So like, "Do you wanna work on a specific body part? Do you wanna prep for a movement or a sport? Do you wanna just do the daily maintenance? Um, or do you wanna do the mobility test again?" Filter, you can filter by time, filter by area, filter by pain, filter by thing you're going to do, f- filter by thing you're going to recover from.
- JFJonny (Propane Fitness)
Wow.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
So just open the app and just do like a 10-minute thing. Like, "Oh, I'm doing barbell row later, I'll do, I'll work on my shoulder, press, press, press." And they're all follow along as well. They didn't used to be follow along, it used to be Cali going like-
- CWChris Williamson
Instructions.
- YFYusef (Propane Fitness)
... "Just get this and do this." (babbles) , "Couch stretch." Whereas now he, like, walks through the entire thing. So as a, as a, like, one-stop shop for, "I wanna improve my mobility," I've not found... I'm sure someone will tell me there's a better thing, but I've not found anything better than that.
- CWChris Williamson
Questions.
Episode duration: 1:29:20
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