Our Biggest Lessons From 2020 | Modern Wisdom Podcast 261

Chris Williamson 0:00 Well, it's an annual tradition for us, isn't it? To wear either ours or if you're Yusuf, your girlfriend's Christmas jumper.

Yusef 0:06 So pre-role, we had to adjust the neckline because I looked like a, a Christmas Steve Jobs.

Jonny 0:13 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:13 You did. (laughs) You looked like a festive Steve, didn't you?

Yusef 0:15 (laughs)

Jonny 0:15 So I suppose this, the second lesson is, like, test something's worth by taking it away for a while and see if you notice anything or see what changes. Try not doing something that you think is helping and see if you're right or not. If you're right, great. Like, try not sleeping for a month. I guarantee you conclude that sleeping is helpful.

Yusef 0:29 We've seen a massive impact on people's mental health this year, and a lot of it, I think, stems from people not being comfortable in their own company. It's actually really dangerous having to poo in a hospital toilet because the emergency buzzer is next to the toilet roll, and it's a long cable, and it's really sensitive.

Jonny 0:47 Oh, I've pulled stuff like that before in the past. I've, I've yanked a red cord like that before in a steam room, thinking that it was the, like the thing for more steam.

Chris Williamson 0:55 More steam. (laughs)

Yusef 0:55 (laughs)

Jonny 0:56 And then-

Chris Williamson 0:56 This is a more steam cord. (laughs)

Yusef 1:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04 Ladies and gentlemen, merry crimbo. Look at us. Look at how lovely we are. Look at this. Get your, get your Christmas jumpers out for the lads. So nice. You always have the classiest Christmas jumpers, Johnny. Look at that.

Jonny 1:21 So, so my remember went-

Chris Williamson 1:21 It's so Abercrombie, isn't it?

Yusef 1:23 Johnny duped us last year with the, um, the light up one.

Jonny 1:29 It's broken.

Yusef 1:31 You said it was voice activated, I think.

Chris Williamson 1:32 (laughs)

Yusef 1:33 Yeah, that was a bit...

Jonny 1:33 Yeah, I remember that.

Chris Williamson 1:34 So what, where's that from? Is it Hollister?

Jonny 1:36 So, so this... So the reason I'm wearing this is that Becca has bought all three of us, all three of us, including Dexter, matching Christmas jumpers. So Dexter has the same jumper, slightly smaller obviously. And then-

Chris Williamson 1:52 (laughs)

Jonny 1:52 ... Becca also has one. And they're the same but kind of slightly different color themes. But yeah, I agree, like, it's very... Like, you could wear it, you could wear it out and just have your, your hand over sort of the reindeer, the arm over the reindeer, and no one would say anything.

Chris Williamson 2:02 Pretty trendy.

Jonny 2:03 And just be like, "Oh, Johnny, Johnny's just wearing a, one of them jumpers he always wears."

Chris Williamson 2:06 Well, it's an annual tradition for us, isn't it? To wear either ours or if you're Yusuf, your girlfriend's Christmas jumper.

Yusef 2:14 (laughs) So pre-roll, we had to adjust the neckline because I looked like a, a Christmas Steve Jobs.

Jonny 2:22 (laughs)

Yusef 2:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:22 You did. (laughs) You looked like a festive Steve, didn't you?

Yusef 2:25 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:25 Little festive Steve's come to join us. Uh, so it is Christmas, end of the year, we usually do a little bit of a wrap-up. Couple of things that we've experienced, couple of lessons, couple of fails. Uh, and we might have time for a quick game of bear or bull at the end as well.

Yusef 2:39 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:39 What are you doing there?

Yusef 2:40 Do you know what this is?

Chris Williamson 2:41 No.

Yusef 2:41 This is-

Jonny 2:41 He's warming a potato. That's what he's doing.

Yusef 2:42 That's Chris warming a potato.

Chris Williamson 2:44 Yeah. (laughs)

Yusef 2:48 (laughs)

Jonny 2:48 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:48 Can you throw it to me, Yusuf? Can you throw it to me?

Jonny 2:52 Chris will have a potato in the palm, scalding, scalding hot.

Yusef 2:55 Ow.

Chris Williamson 2:55 Right. It is warm. It is really warm. Johnny, I know you've got a drink in your hand, but catch! Thank you. There you go.

Jonny 3:01 Yes.

Chris Williamson 3:01 Right. First lesson from this year, Blobson.

Jonny 3:04 For me?

Chris Williamson 3:04 Yeah.

Jonny 3:04 Okay. Um, so the, I think in, obviously I feel like we need to comment on the fact that it's been a strange year, as in like a lot of people have had a very different life this year to normal. And I think the, what that's encouraged me to do is I think I, I entered the year, and you two probably remember this, like I was constantly adding things to my life. Like, I, I bought, um, I was doing like cold showers, breathing, reading, jumping on a trampoline, doing skipping, going for walks, doing ROMWOD. And I basically just stopped almost all of that. Um, so just trying to... Yusuf and I have spoken a lot this year about 80, the 80/20 principle, and I feel like that's the sort of thing that I re- like think about a lot, but never actually practice. So what I've just tried this year, and I've been trying every y- every area of my life to, um, try and do the, get the same by doing fewer things, or even try and do more, improve by doing fewer things across everything. So like, clothes in the wardrobe, apps on your phone. Like, ev- everything that you, like, regularly do, think, "What, what could I do to just make this, like, simpler and easier for myself?" And I think all that's... Basically, like, from th- from January 2020 Johnny to December 2020 Johnny, I just do fewer things and just have more, like, bandwidth is how it feels. But I've not noticed much change.

Chris Williamson 4:32 What's, what's a morning look like now, then? Because you were doing all this stuff, jumping on a trampoline, in a cold shower, on a walk, in a ROMWOD and reading and meditation as well probably. What's morning now?

Jonny 4:40 Yeah. So I just meditate, nothing else, but for longer.

Yusef 4:48 I think this is a great lesson 'cause-

Jonny 4:51 Thanks, man.

Yusef 4:52 ... we're, we're so wired to look for more stuff, more books to read, more ideas to take on, more methods, more programs, whatever it is that someone's going after. And really, that's never the limiting factor in 2020.

Jonny 5:08 (laughs)

Yusef 5:08 Squeezing the lemon of what we already have has so much mileage, but people are like, "Oh, no, that's boring. I'm just gonna look for the next thing."

Jonny 5:16 I think it's just the, the, like, self-improvement is very additive by nature. Like, a lot of people look as, like, what's the... You know, I'm, I'm (clears throat) , I'm trying to improve myself, but I still feel anxiety or I still feel like I'm not improving. I need to add something else. Am- like, maybe, I suppose if you're doing absolutely nothing to improve yourself, that probably is the answer, but I think a lot of people listening to this podcast are probably doing lots of different things. And I'm not saying you should do fewer things, but I think the, the 80/20 thing. So we've done a l- a lot of that in, in business this year, and you do find that 80% of the progress comes from 20% of the things. 80 per- like, 20% of the-

Yusef 5:54 Or, like-

Jonny 5:55 80, 80% of the problems come from, come from 20% of the things as well. So it's like, if you just consistently streamline, streamline-... yeah, I think it's just a, a happier way of, of living your life. If you ma- obviously, you can cut out too many things-

Chris Williamson 6:06 Mm-hmm.

Jonny 6:07 ... and slow down.

Chris Williamson 6:08 Do you think there's a potential that you might have gone too far with that? Like, just meditation means you're not reading consistently. It means that you're not doing any breath work because we know that if you miss... The beauty of a morning routine is that it kind of locks in a ton of habits early in the day and ensures-

Jonny 6:26 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:26 ... that you get them done. That's the best, for me, the, the best hack about having a morning routine is it certifies that you do things that you need to get done-

Jonny 6:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:35 ... every day.

Jonny 6:37 I suppose the question is, why are you doing the things? I think that's what I've spent a lot of time thinking about, like, "Why am I doing Wim Hof? Why am I doing... Why am I having a cold shower? Why am I doing..." Like, what... There's a, there's like, you're trying to do something, you're trying to like, achieve something or change something with all of it, and I think the, um, the thing that I've noticed from... So I suppose this, the second lesson is like, test, test something's worth by taking it away for a while and see if you notice anything or see what changes because again, it's very differe- very difficult if you have a morning routine where you have lots of habits, lots of things you do. You're just adding things in, and you don't know really whether it's the thing that you started a year ago that you've been doing every day or whether it's the thing you added last month that's having the change. So if you stop doing something, it's like, "Ah, I took that away," like I took ROMWOD away, for example, and my injury rate was the same. (laughs)

Yusef 7:27 I hate that. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 7:29 (laughs)

Yusef 7:29 The delayed reaction to stopping something and not noticing-

Jonny 7:33 Mm-hmm.

Yusef 7:33 ... the decline or the improvement for three months. And then you're like-

Chris Williamson 7:38 Yeah.

Yusef 7:38 ... "What was it?" Oh, no.

Jonny 7:39 Yeah. And it's not, I don't think it's the case that, like, these things do nothing. It's just that there's always a trade-off between, like, I could do fewer things and achieve largely the same result and surely that's better? Just from a, like, the number of things you have to manage perspective. Um, but i- it's probably just... It, it'll be like a... You know, in a year's time, I'll probably have added 10 things in again, right? It's just a phase that, that I'm going through, but I think it's been very helpful this year because it's just allow- it's allowed for a simple structure versus like, this time last year, I felt like there was so many (laughs) things that I was trying to do-

Chris Williamson 8:18 Mm-hmm.

Jonny 8:19 ... um, to, to basically just like, feel better. Uh-

Chris Williamson 8:23 We know that at the start of this year, all of us were super, super impressed with how much you'd added in and you were crushing it with this really great routine.

Jonny 8:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:31 So that took quite a bit of agency and some, you know, there's a lot of inertia to get over when adding in even one thing, let alone a whole ton of things. And then-

Jonny 8:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:40 ... to be able to let go of the tether to that balloon of, "I've built up this pattern finally. I've actually managed to achieve it," and to then be able to have sufficient agency to, to drop that is like, maybe even harder. So I think that, that kind of identifies why you're a bit of a motherfucker, man. Like, it's just so...

Jonny 8:59 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:00 It is. It's the same as, it's the same as whenever you hear George Mack talk about something. You're just like, "Fucking hell. Like, this guy just doesn't really seem to deal with obstacles in a negative way. He's just happy to see like, input, process, output. Here's a, here's a way around it." And that's like, I think definitely something you can be proud of this year, man, like to let go of those tethers in a year where we're all being neurotic as fuck. Um-

Jonny 9:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 9:25 ... I think, yeah, that, that, that's awesome. I would, I will be interested to see where it goes, and I think you're right as well. We keep on bringing it up that... Is it... I, I always get this wrong, Seth. Is it Goethe that talks about the vacillation between extremes of societies?

Yusef 9:39 Hi- uh, is it Hayek or Hegel?

Chris Williamson 9:42 Hegel.

Yusef 9:42 I think you've confused me now with this. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:43 Oh, so I've got it wrong. I, I shit you not, about 20 times. But yeah, we, we do vacillate between these things, right? We go from like, minimalist to abundance. We go from excess cerebral to excess mindful to excess physical, whatever it might be. Um, and then eventually y- at the age of 65, you'll have finally sorted your morning routine. (laughs) Uh, yeah, for sure.

Jonny 10:03 I think at the age of, the age of 65, you just wake up and read the paper, don't you?

Chris Williamson 10:09 (laughs)

Jonny 10:09 Like, it's always-

Yusef 10:09 'Cause you've completed it all.

Jonny 10:10 You're just like, "Oh, what's the point in early- any of that?"

Chris Williamson 10:12 "Oh, I'm fucking sick of this."

Jonny 10:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:15 "I'm fucking stupid." Um, man, that's, that's really awesome. I'm really happy for you this year with regards to that.

Jonny 10:21 Thanks. I think the, the lesson for people is like, try not doing something that you think is helping and see if you're right or not. If you're right, great. Like, try not sleeping for a month. I guarantee you conclude that sleeping is helpful.

Chris Williamson 10:37 Don't read any-

Yusef 10:37 It's a great way to test the hypothesis, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 10:39 (laughs)

Yusef 10:39 Like, "Oh, I, I don't think sleep really matters, you know." Fine. Test it.

Jonny 10:42 All right. Fine.

Chris Williamson 10:43 What's that, what's that diet where you r- take out tons of stuff with inflammation in, and then add them back in one by one?

Jonny 10:50 The elimination...

Yusef 10:51 It's the elimination diet.

Chris Williamson 10:52 Yes. Basically, a personal development routine equivalent of that, right?

Yusef 10:58 See, that would be really useful because then it sifts all of the marketing claims and people selling their six-digit journal and their eight-

Jonny 11:09 (laughs)

Yusef 11:10 ... eight-minute booklet and their-

Jonny 11:12 (laughs)

Yusef 11:12 ... five-minute Filofax and all this stuff.

Jonny 11:20 (laughs)

Yusef 11:20 (laughs)

Jonny 11:20 His five-minute Filofax. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:21 That's a good one. I'd buy that.

Yusef 11:23 I need more of that.

Jonny 11:24 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:24 We'd all... The problem is that we would all buy it.

Yusef 11:26 Of course, you would.

Chris Williamson 11:26 If the five-minute Filofax came out, we'd all buy it because we'd think it would be the answer.

Jonny 11:30 (laughs)

Yusef 11:30 You'd buy it for me, and I'd, I'd leave it under my table.

Chris Williamson 11:33 Not use it. Yeah. Um-

Jonny 11:34 And you'd eventually like, read through it, like ...

Chris Williamson 11:39 (laughs)

Jonny 11:40 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 11:40 Uh, right. Scob, what about you? Lessons?

Yusef 11:44 Lesson number one from 2020. This is more of a vicarious lesson. I've seen it in other people because I've got to admit, this year for me has been barely any change to my lifestyle.

Jonny 11:58 (laughs)

Yusef 11:58 Um, and I think for all three of us, just because we're all antisocial bastards, um, and the work we do either involves being at home anyway, or in my case, being in a hospital, which-... hasn't changed. But we've seen a massive impact on people's mental health this year, and a lot of it, I think, stems from, and, and in fact, hang on. I, I don't wanna downplay the massive impact of people losing their jobs and, um, being alienated from their families and stuff, and that, that's huge, and that's circumstantial, unavoidable. But the other side of it is people not being comfortable in their own company. And if you're... This has kind of highlighted it, where you put someone... As Johnny said, if you, you put someone on their own for some time, and they very quickly learn how much they like themself, how much they can sit in their own company.

Jonny 12:53 This is my lesson number two (laughs) .

Yusef 12:55 Oh, no.

Chris Williamson 12:56 That's all right. That's okay.

Jonny 12:58 That's unbelievable that that's-

Yusef 13:00 I-

Jonny 13:00 ... th- that would land on that, but I suppose ...

Yusef 13:02 Oh, there we go. I, I can give you that one. I've got...

Chris Williamson 13:04 We can just combine... You can just combine it together, right? You can... If you've both converged on the same thing, I think it's probably a pretty big lesson.

Yusef 13:13 Fair enough. Yeah.

Jonny 13:14 There's no s- no stooges used. There's no trickery. This isn't like-

Chris Williamson 13:17 (laughs)

Jonny 13:17 ... wee... It's coincidental.

Chris Williamson 13:18 Darren Brown.

Jonny 13:19 (laughs)

Yusef 13:20 This is... You're seeing this real unfold live. So, one of the things that Gary Weber points out is that... Oh, no.

Chris Williamson 13:30 (laughs)

Jonny 13:31 (laughs)

Yusef 13:31 You can see Johnny's reaction if you're listening. (laughs) Is that the, the worst, the highest grade punishment you can give someone, at least in a civilized world, is solitary confinement. And Johnny's really upset... No. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 13:47 (laughs)

Yusef 13:48 The second-highest punishment is taking the hot potato-

Chris Williamson 13:51 Taking somebody else's lesson of 2020 and stealing it without them knowing. Uh, yeah. So Gary Weber says being on your own...

Yusef 13:59 Solitary confinement is one of the worst things you can do, because suddenly someone has no distractions available to them. They have to face the crap that they've kind of tucked away all their life and it's just sat there, and so the lesson is to, to learn to make peace with that. It's, it's not a, not a quick process. There's no hack. It's just a very longterm habit of taking the tissues out of the tissue box and until the tissue box is empty.

Jonny 14:28 Just to be fully clear on that. There's no... That, that's a, that's an analogy, right? You're not actually emptying the tissue box and then putting them back in again, and then emptying the tissue box?

Yusef 14:37 We're going to have loads of listeners that, that just go out and buy bulk Kleenex. They're like, "Right, I'm not gonna be happy."

Chris Williamson 14:42 So what's the lesson from that?

Yusef 14:46 That we need to learn to cultivate the ability to be comfortable in our, with ourselves, in our own company. And a lot of people have, have learned to do this this year anyway. It's just accelerated, it's catalyzed that process. Um, but it's so, it's been so interesting to see that unfold.

Chris Williamson 15:08 You got anything to add there, Blud?

Jonny 15:10 So the, the... There's a study that Gary Weber references, um, about... Yeah, I think we might, we might even have talked about this. So before we came on this podcast, I checked the life hacks list, and I don't think any of us have actually ever said meditation. I think we've mentioned-

Chris Williamson 15:27 Used apps, we've said...

Jonny 15:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:29 ... different particular ways for-

Jonny 15:30 There's like four, four or five apps or web, like, things to try, but the, the hack that we've not actually suggested people do regularly is meditation. But the, the, the study that Gary references is they took, I think initially university students, and put them in a room, and they had to sit by themselves for 15 minutes, and it was... Like, they found that... And there still weren't like any devices. There were not to check anything. And they... It was incredibly painful for people. So they gave people a bracelet that was attached to a, like a strap around their ankle with the option to shock themselves with electric, electricity, and over half of the men, I think, opted to shock themselves. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 16:10 (laughs)

Jonny 16:10 It's just like when you think about that, it is insane that someone would rather shock themselves with electricity than sit by themselves for 15 minutes. And that-

Yusef 16:22 It's really amazing. It's-

Jonny 16:23 Yeah.

Yusef 16:23 ... such a, like, 14-year-old or, like, year nine activity as well. Like, you're sat there, you've got, like, a bit of deodorant, you just spray it until you, like-

Jonny 16:30 Spray it in your armpit. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 16:31 Yeah. Yeah. Or doing that thing with a compass where you go like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

Yusef 16:36 Oh, yeah. (laughs)

Jonny 16:37 Like through your arm.

Yusef 16:38 Well, you can have the two-man version where you flick pennies at each other across the, across the desk.

Chris Williamson 16:42 Oh, yeah, and then when you do it, you got to hit your knuckles. So I, I think, um... Who's the person who said all of man's problems stem from the fact you can't sit in a room, uh, quietly by himself? I think that's a philosophy-

Yusef 16:56 It was either Goethe, Hegel, or-

Chris Williamson 16:58 Hegel. (laughs) Probably, probably Hegel. Uh, but I'm pretty certain that's thousands and thousands of years old. And part of me wants to blame hyper-stimulus and the modern era of devices for ramping our dopamine up that we can't sit in a room on our own. But it seems like that's the sort of thing that's been around for quite a while.

Yusef 17:21 I reckon it's worse in this decade than it was.

Jonny 17:24 Yeah.

Yusef 17:25 Um, do you remember f- f- 15 years ago, you could... Like, you'd turn up for an appointment for something, and you'd sit in the waiting room, and you would just be like...

Chris Williamson 17:38 So-

Yusef 17:38 Now if someone does that, they're a psychopath.

Jonny 17:40 So I really hope that Ben Harrison is listening to this. But if you-

Yusef 17:44 'Cause he does that.

Jonny 17:44 Whenever you meet Ben, and he's there before you, and you see him, like, through the window, he's just sat like this... (laughs)

Yusef 17:52 (laughs) Just on a standby.

Chris Williamson 17:54 (laughs) Yeah. In a hol- in a holding pattern.

Jonny 17:57 And you look at him, and you're like, "Ben, that's weird, mate. You can't... Like, I know it's all mindful-"

Chris Williamson 18:01 Get your phone out. Yeah.

Jonny 18:01 "... and all that stuff, but it's weird."

Chris Williamson 18:03 Yeah.

Jonny 18:03 "You've got to stop doing it." Well, the-

Yusef 18:05 (laughs)

Jonny 18:05 ... the, the number one thing that phones have achieved is they've eliminated boredom. Like, nobody is-

Yusef 18:10 Completely.

Jonny 18:10 ... bored anymore. Nobody ever. As long as you've got battery, nobody's bored anymore. Um, and-

Yusef 18:16 Yeah.

Jonny 18:17 ... it's a combination of-

Chris Williamson 18:20 ... habitual checking in terms of i- i- it's actually drilled into your synapses, that you go into the pocket, you get the phone out, which is why a great life hack for anyone that wants to reduce their phone time, the simplest one you can do, just keep your phone in a different pocket. So swap the pockets that you have your phone and your wallet in. And the number of times that you'll take your wallet out and look at your wallet and you're like, (laughs) "What an idiot."

Yusef 18:42 My brother went to Egypt and he was driving this, this banger, and it was obviously left-hand drive. He kept banging his hand off the, um, off the wall, uh, off the door-

Chris Williamson 18:53 Oh, because he was reaching-

Yusef 18:54 ... when he tried to change gear.

Chris Williamson 18:54 ... to get his phone? Oh, right. Okay. Yeah.

Yusef 18:57 Um, and also every time he went over a speed bump, the airbag would deploy.

Jonny 19:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:02 Every time?

Yusef 19:02 So it was really good.

Chris Williamson 19:03 Shouldn't it only happens once?

Jonny 19:06 (laughs) Yeah. You don't like just-

Yusef 19:07 Hopefully not every time.

Jonny 19:09 ... pull it back in, right.

Yusef 19:09 But yeah, he said it was quite sore.

Chris Williamson 19:12 Wow.

Jonny 19:12 I can imagine. Did he shout, "Into me?"

Chris Williamson 19:15 (laughs)

Yusef 19:15 "Into me."

Jonny 19:16 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 19:16 Uh, any-

Yusef 19:17 Awesome time to drive alone.

Chris Williamson 19:17 ... any other sort of insights around that, Sef, about the s- solitude?

Yusef 19:23 I think... Not from the solitude one. I've got another one coming up, which, uh, which may be related, but...

Jonny 19:31 So just to wrap that one up then, Youcef. So someone's heard all of that and they think, "Yeah, I agree. Like, I- I've had a lot of this year, like, sat in a room, like, bored by the TV, sat with my thoughts." What, what's a like, "Right, in 2021, I'm going to try and do something about it. I'm going to..."

Yusef 19:50 Uh, yeah. So usually if someone hasn't got a handle on this, it's because they're just holding it just at bay, like, just at arm's length the whole time. And the counterintuitive thing is just to let it in, just to do something that does involve total solitude with, you know, as Chris said, put your phone in your other pocket or leave it at home, go for a walk. Like, do something that really forces you to, to do that. And if you can do something that's full solitude for extended amount of time, many bouts of solitude become much easier to handle and eventually become actively pleasurable, until, as cheesy as it sounds, if you can become your own best friend, then you're just having a great time, aren't you?

Chris Williamson 20:37 I think this year's definitely highlighted how much people's lives were held up by the scaffolding of not being on their own. Like, fortunately, I put this in a newsletter a couple of weeks ago, introverts have had a competitive advantage in 2020 for the first time in history. Like, almost every extrovert outperforms an introvert because they can network harder, they can spend more time around others. It's kind of what is seen as a more, uh, admirable, more desirable trait in other people, because it makes them more personable. Uh, and you can just spend more time around other people, so your networking effect multiplies. But this year, that's been stopped. So it's very much been, are you able to recharge your batteries on your own? The problem that I see that links in with phone use is that people have got a confused definition of solitude. Cal Newport's got the most useful definition of solitude that I've ever seen, which is time away from the input of other minds. Now, that's not driving in the car with the radio on calling a friend every so often on a long journey.

Jonny 21:40 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 21:40 That's not being in your living room watching Netflix whilst double screening on your phone. Like, that, that's, that's the opposite. That's more input from other minds. Like, genuine solitude is something that you can learn from, but hiding from that fact, pushing it away, repudiating it by giving yourself this false sense of socialization means that you're not getting the social contact that you desperately desire, but you're also not learning the lesson about solitude and being comfortable with yourself. So certainly progressive overload in terms of that. Even if you can just do it 30 minutes at a time, one hour at a time, 90 minutes at a time, you know, like extending that.

Yusef 22:20 There, there's a really good, uh, that, I think that, that's a really good heuristic for what is actual solitude, 'cause yeah, if you're just sat calling mates and watching stuff or whatever, then yeah, it's not, not really solitude. It's just, um, diluted contact with other people. And I did a video on NoFap recently, which is an internet movement of people that refrain from jerking the gherkin, um, so that they can improve their dopamine sensitivity and, and they're claiming all these kind of huge benefits that, um, that they get psychologically and physiologically. And I was saying in the video that a lot of the big benefits people get are because they're going from a pathological state to a normal state, and that's what's causing this, this big change, in that most people probably wouldn't get such a big improvement from it. Something I do think people all get a big improvement from, and that's because we're all pathological with it, is this idea you said of, like, double screening. And, like, even, when even Netflix alone, something that's designed for, like, compulsive retention is not enough to trigger all those dopamine receptors, so you have to then get a second screen out. Like, we are mental.

Jonny 23:32 (laughs)

Yusef 23:32 And so I think doing that repeatedly makes us so desensitized to dopamine, uh, simplifying, but to, to the reward circuitry, that when we're just with another person, that's not enough. It, it doesn't, doesn't scratch that itch. And so we end up then having to, like, be with another person, but also on our phones. And I think people of our age, like, we recognize it's rude and so we don't do it. But when you see, like, teenagers together, like, you know when you... You know every city, especially like cities like Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds-

Jonny 24:05 (laughs)

Yusef 24:05 ... that have like a Casper's Ice Cream shop that's like a-

Chris Williamson 24:10 Next to, next to-

Yusef 24:11 ... big like-

Chris Williamson 24:11 It's, it's always outside of a place called The Green, isn't it? (laughs)

Jonny 24:15 (laughs)

Yusef 24:15 Yeah, exactly. (laughs) And there's like pink neons, black leather sofas and like 30 flavors of ice cream.... you all, you see, like, groups of 18-year-old kids all sat, like, in silence, on their phones.

Chris Williamson 24:30 Yeah.

Yusef 24:31 You're like, "Wow." You know.

Chris Williamson 24:33 Well, the, the ma- the mad thing at the beginning of this year, which, uh, I said in the first COVID episode that we did, was I took a, like, undue amount of pleasure from other people struggling with the challenge of working from home. Like, I was like, "Oh-"

Yusef 24:51 You were like, "Ah, motherfuckers, I've done this already."

Chris Williamson 24:51 "... welcome to the fucking party. Welcome to this." And then I realized after a little bit of time that that was my own projection. Like, I, I shouldn't take pleasure in other people entering my nightmare.

Yusef 25:04 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:04 Like, that's not a thing. (laughs) Um, but that's what I was doing. Um, and, and after a little bit of time, I realized, right, okay, no, be, be a bit more fucking noble and virtuous than that. But very much so, like, this is, this is a pill that we all had to swallow a long time ago. And ma- there might be some other entrepreneurs or sort of working-from-homers who have felt this for a long time, and then this year, it was like, like, "Put me in, coach. Like, this is my time." And yeah, it, it's been an interesting year of reflection. Definitely people becoming more comfortable in solitude. Uh, it should've expedited it, because you haven't had any choice. Like, you've had to do it. And for a lot of people, that's probably something that they can take away. Yeah, there's been a lot of negatives that have come about this year, but you've learned to be on your own. Like, that's definitely one positive I think you can take.

Yusef 25:54 100%.

Chris Williamson 25:54 The... (clears throat)

Yusef 25:54 What's your lesson from this year, Chris?

Chris Williamson 25:57 Oh, yeah. Uh, first one is the power of rest. So, classic type A personality, do more, get more done. Um, even though I took the essentialism red pill this year and decided to do less in terms of breadth, that gave me more capacity to do (laughs) more in terms of depth. So, the total amount of time that I spent working wasn't reduced, it was just the number of projects that I worked on. That was constrained heavily by the fact that my main business events had stopped, um, but that just gave me even more time to work on doing whatever it was that I fucking did. Um, and I put this again in a newsletter a couple of weeks ago, the trip to Dubai gave me such an unbelievable sense of perspective. Uh, it was nothing as lovely as Dubai is, it was nothing special about Dubai, but it was about the fact that I had this change in working routine in a year where everybody has felt like it's Groundhog Day over and over again. You're looking at the same four walls, you get up, there's, you haven't got five weddings to go to, you haven't got a barbecue, you haven't got somebody's birthday. There's nothing. There's, there's no... I, I, I haven't even been ill this year because I haven't seen anyone. I haven't got s-

Jonny 27:09 Nice.

Chris Williamson 27:09 I haven't got sick because, like, who the fuck's going to infect me like we're hiding from a pandemic? So, uh, upon going away, it reminded me of something I learned from Ollie Ollerton who was in the SAS, uh, and he had this idea called a break point. So you can imagine, before the, uh, operatives enter a room or breach a building, they'll stack up outside of the door, outside of the entrance. So they'll have already landed at the, near the objective and then either, like, fought or snuck their way through, and then they'll get outside and they'll take a moment to just reset, breathe, slow down a little bit, consider what the objectives are, and then they'll go. And that period of calm between two periods of intense chaos was what I termed a personal break point. It's called a break point in the special forces and I termed it a personal break point for me while I was in Dubai, and it just forced me to come back. And I think this links in with what you were saying, Johnny, about kind of really giving a first principal's look at your routines and thinking, like, "Right, okay, is this serving me? Does this actually make my life any better or am I just doing it because I've always done it?" Even if it was once good. Like, we can talk about kind of the first level, like, basic bitch, make you drink three times a week because your mates do.

Jonny 28:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:20 But then even taking that into something which has been the, uh, Horse of Troy snuck in by, uh, it being something that was good once. Breath work did serve me at one time. Cold showers did serve me at one time. Getting up at 5:30 AM every day and going for a walk did serve me at one time. But does it now? My requirements are different, my routine is different, my life is different. And then, you know, that consistent checking of whether the things that you are doing serve you can only be facilitated when you've had a break from it, because it permits you to have that perspective and clarity around things. And very much, I came back and it was the happiest I'd been at home in maybe even years. Um-

Yusef 29:01 That's amazing.

Chris Williamson 29:02 Yeah, it was, it was, it was unbelievable, man. I obviously was super inquisitive about, like, "What the fuck's going on? That I've come back from a place that was 32 degrees every day of glorious sunshine to somewhere where I can't leave the house and it's got about eight hours of daylight, most of which is gray. Like, why, why am I so happy (laughs) being back home?"

Jonny 29:23 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 29:23 And I, I honestly think it was because I'd got to see a life that I've crafted for myself with new eyes and think very much... It was well timed as well going into a new year, to think about, "Okay, what do I want to try and achieve next year, but from first principles? Not just what do I want to carry over that I'm already doing or do something that I already do a little bit better. Like, genuinely, what do I want to do?" And it gave me this kind of, yeah, a very, um, liberated sense of, uh, bottomless potential for next year.

Yusef 29:52 So, have a break. Mi- micro and macro.

Chris Williamson 29:56 Yeah.

Yusef 29:56 It comes into what you said about, said last year on this, uh, 2019 podcast, of Chris Spark's idea of "Nothing gets grandfathered in. Everything is up for sale."

Chris Williamson 30:08 Yep.

Yusef 30:09 Just because you've been doing something, whether you think it's good or think it's bad, it has to get reexamined and say, "Right, should I continue this habit or this project or whatever?"

Chris Williamson 30:18 Yeah.

Jonny 30:19 Did you find that you got the same amount of work done in Dubai?... like, did you still get the, like, the key work done in spite of, like, f- I presume working fewer hours?

Chris Williamson 30:31 Um, the key work? Yes. I, I can't pretend that I was working on the, probably the long-term important, on the cusp of important but not urgents. Because-

Jonny 30:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:44 ... inevitably there are some things that will take you away from that. There's a boat party on tonight. There's a, MK is playing at a pool. There's whatever's happening. We're going out for dinner. I'm going for a walk. I'm cycling in the desert. Um, but the stuff that keeps everything ticking over, I kept on top of perfectly fine. And had I have been there for longer, and it not had a defined end point, that we pushed back by a week, but, uh, had a defined-

Jonny 31:09 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 31:09 ... end point to it, um, perhaps I would've forced myself to do that stuff. But for instance, the, the next lead magnet that I want to do for the newsletter is 151 Books to Read Before You Die. Like, I was not going to start that project while I was out there. It's got no defined deadline to it. It's slightly confusing and messy to begin. There's a lot of inertia to get over. There was no way I was gonna begin that while I was out there. But I kept recording. I kept on a recording schedule. Uh, I kept meditating while I was out there. I kept on doing my rehab for my Achilles, all that stuff.

Jonny 31:41 I think the, (clears throat) something that I, I've found, like, not necessarily this year, but, like, on, in years where you're, you're traveling, going to, like, three weddings in a week, um, are sometimes (laughs) the most... For us, like, we'll have, like, the most profitable week ever in, in propane, and I've worked some of the fewest hours. And you look at it, and you're like, "Fuck's sake." You know, I, I... All these weeks where I sit and, like, hammer away at the, at the, trying to push the boulder up the hill when there's just a rate that it's going to move e- no matter how hard you push. J- is, is a, a nice reminder to say that actually I can just take... I can just stop working, have the, have the rest of the day off, or I can take the weekend and not check my emails or whatever. Um, but I think that's harder and harder to do when there's fewer... so s- the average person at home this year hasn't had the-

Chris Williamson 32:30 What the fuck else is there to do? (laughs)

Jonny 32:32 ... the, the desert to go and cycle-

Chris Williamson 32:33 Yeah.

Jonny 32:33 ... or the, the beach party to go to. (laughs) Um, but yeah, I think it's a... I think a lot of people I know have, have just let work, like, fill everything-

Chris Williamson 32:42 Mm-hmm.

Jonny 32:42 ... 'cause it's either work or Netflix, sleep, work, Netflix, sleep. Um-

Yusef 32:46 I think it's, it's about matching the personality type of the person to the recommendation, which you, you kind of hat-tipped to before, which is that if you're a type A, hard-driving, overachieving personality, then you need to engineer in work into your day, whereas if you naturally gravitate to sloth, then you need to create structure to do the work. Um, interestingly, someone called Niamh, who listens to the Modern Wisdom podcast and got in touch with me as a result, asked me to do a talk at my hospital, um-

Chris Williamson 33:18 Wow.

Yusef 33:19 ... for junior pharmacists and junior doctors on, like, life hacks for... It was sort of clinical life hacks. And one of them was, "Go for a poo."

Chris Williamson 33:30 (laughs)

Yusef 33:30 So bear with me. (laughs) It's... But when, when you're on a, an, an on-call shift, which is where you are covering the entire hospital out of hours for 13 hours, um, it's a long shift. And it's basically... Your, your adrenal glands are just slowly getting nipple crippled for the whole 13 hours so you're getting a phone call every, like, 30 to, 30 to 60 seconds, and you're being asked to do loads of stuff, and you're just getting, like, slammed kind of relentlessly. And if you just go from one job to the next without that personal break point, you're just... Your, your cortisol is just gonna go, "Mm."

Chris Williamson 34:09 (laughs)

Yusef 34:09 And so you, you do just have to stop and have a poo and be like, "You know what? I'm allowed a poo." Like-

Chris Williamson 34:15 (laughs)

Yusef 34:15 ... this job contract says-

Chris Williamson 34:16 What if you don't need one?

Jonny 34:17 (laughs)

Yusef 34:19 E- even if you don't need one, you can just, just sit and have a, have a shampoo. You know how you have the, the sham surgery with Stu McGill?

Chris Williamson 34:25 Yeah.

Yusef 34:26 Do the same things. You prep as if you're going for a poo.

Chris Williamson 34:28 Pants down.

Yusef 34:29 You go into the cubicle.

Chris Williamson 34:30 Do you have to wipe afterward?

Yusef 34:31 Everything but. That's a good question. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 34:35 If you want me to believe it, if you want me to believe your shampoo was a real poo. Shampoo?

Yusef 34:39 (laughs) It should be a, a shampoo.

Chris Williamson 34:42 Shampoo, Johnny. Shampoo.

Yusef 34:44 Mm-hmm. The, it's actually really dangerous-

Jonny 34:46 (laughs)

Yusef 34:46 ... having a poo in a hospital toilet because the emergency buzzer is next to the toilet roll, and it's a, it's a long cable, and it's really sensitive.

Chris Williamson 34:57 Ugh.

Jonny 34:57 I've pulled stuff like that before in the past, loads of times.

Yusef 34:59 And then, like, the security come bursting in.

Chris Williamson 35:00 When you're in anaphylaxis?

Jonny 35:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yusef 35:02 (laughs)

Jonny 35:03 I've, I've yanked a red cord like that before in a steam room thinking that it was the, like, the thing for more steam.

Chris Williamson 35:09 More steam. (laughs) This is a-

Jonny 35:11 And, um-

Chris Williamson 35:11 ... more steam cord. (laughs)

Jonny 35:13 ... a, a woman with, like, a, like, a box ran into the steam room.

Chris Williamson 35:16 (laughs) A defibrillator.

Jonny 35:18 It was just, like, I think, a box of like miscellaneous, like, Elastoplasts.

Chris Williamson 35:22 Plasters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jonny 35:23 Yeah. What are you gonna do with that?

Chris Williamson 35:24 (laughs) I'm gonna bandage you up.

Jonny 35:26 If I've passed out, you're gonna put a plaster on my shoulder?

Chris Williamson 35:29 (laughs)

Jonny 35:31 So, yeah. Go, go for a poo.

Chris Williamson 35:31 Uh, so yeah, tha- tha- that, that was, um... Basically working more can deliver less output as well is kind of a subset of that, that it, it's the sort of thing that you hear everybody say, but you're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's for people who don't, don't actually know what they're talking about." Like, no, no, no, no, no. It's not just diminishing returns that you get from work. You genuinely can do work which is so bad or move so slowly that across a week you will deliver less output by working more.

Jonny 35:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:59 If you decide to under sleep yourself, over caffeinate yourself, create work which is motivationally so subpar that it makes you feel bad the next day, you don't want to do work. Honestly, just having some sort of rule. I know that, like, a hard stop can often be difficult because the stop can come at a time which is awkward within the workflow, especially if you finally found focus after fighting to, to get ahold of it for the last few hours. Um, but finding a point and saying, "Right, okay. Like, that's enough for today. Like, congratulations. Well done."... and then giving yourself genuine rest time away from that. That David Allen quote, "Your ability to deploy power is directly proportional to your ability to relax." And that's a, that's not a powerlifter, that's a man who does productivity for a living. Um-

Yusef 36:49 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:49 ... so yeah, that, that I guess, you're totally right, that's the micro and the macro. Um, I definitely think that a personal breakpoint, as a prescription, needs to be longer than a week. I don't think that you can get the benefits from a personal breakpoint by doing a holiday which has no resemblance to your normal life or a trip away which is just work in a new place that's exactly the same. The whole, the whole point is that everything changes except for the core elements of your life. And that actually goes back to what you said, Johnny, where you were like, "All right, did you get work done across the board?" And I didn't, but I got the skeleton done which is what, is the, the minimum viable product. It's like that, what I have to do each week, which meant that everything else was up for sale in the, uh, Chris Sparks example. Like nothing gets grandfathered in except for obviously the stuff that needs to be grandfathered in. Like obviously I need to eat, obviously I'm gonna train, obviously I'm going to do, you know, the projects that actually matter to me.

Yusef 37:47 Well, you have to do those things but the way that you eat or the way that you train-

Chris Williamson 37:51 Is up for-

Yusef 37:51 ... is up for sale.

Chris Williamson 37:52 Right.

Yusef 37:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:53 Johnny, next, next, oh no, your second lesson-

Jonny 37:55 What about-

Chris Williamson 37:55 ... has been popped, hasn't it? Yeah.

Jonny 37:57 Well my sec- my second lesson was just, um, meditation which is a really simple one. As Joe was saying, it isn't in Lifehacks list. Um, I think it was Yousef who put me onto it originally and then you put me in touch, Chris, with a-

Chris Williamson 38:09 Brian.

Jonny 38:09 ... meditation teacher. Yeah. Um, and like even the, um, so like I suppose all of what we're saying like the sitting alone thing and the even like knowing when to take a rest and all these sorts of things are just, it's, it just comes back to like awareness of, of yourself, awareness of how you feel. Everyone gets to sort of towards the end of the day and thinks, "I'm not getting anything done now but I'm still gonna like sit here and just like hit my head off a laptop and hope that-"

Chris Williamson 38:33 Yeah.

Jonny 38:33 "... hope that something comes of it."

Chris Williamson 38:34 Yeah.

Jonny 38:35 Um, but having like a formal practice like that I think is, is just the best way to get better at that, like when do I need to stop, when am I feeling anxious, what is feeling anxious? Like I don't have to identify with being anxious just because I have this sensation, and just having a practice like that that becomes like a really... I think take, I've, I've taken that a lot more seriously this year where I've previously done like 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there whereas now it's like the first thing I do just because I do, I think it's like having a good night's sleep, you know when you f- you wake up having, having had a really good night's sleep and you just, you compared to any other day it's not even close in terms of like the decisions you make, the way that you feel? I think after doing a long meditation session I feel the same way which I, is a recent thing, didn't used to happen like that so I think it's just a compounding hundreds of hours situation but-

Chris Williamson 39:25 What's your current practice? I'm gonna guess that you're following Brian's fi- well, it's Shinzen Young's five ways to know yourself through Brian.

Jonny 39:34 (laughs) Sounds like such a (laughs) ... It just sounds like a-

Chris Williamson 39:39 Five ways to know yourself through Brian.

Jonny 39:41 Yeah like a, the meditation accelerator like get to know yourself in five ways by Brian.

Chris Williamson 39:46 Yeah.

Jonny 39:46 Um, so it's a bit of that, it's a bit, it's, I've been following, um... So this is, this is taken from Ben again who's Mr. Meditation who I know has recommended this to me and Yousef but there's a film called Chasing the Present where this guy interviews like, um, so I mean Gary Weber's the, the big name in the-

Yusef 40:05 OG.

Jonny 40:06 ... uh, in the, in the film. But a lot of his stuff like the self-inquiry stuff I've been doing so he's got some guided sessions online, some of the Shinzen Young stuff like the noting practice of like is it visual or somatic or, or audible. Um, just that really. Um, but I think the thing, I, I spend too m- too long getting caught up in like the method or like program hopping and not enough time in just-

Chris Williamson 40:29 Doing.

Jonny 40:29 ... I need to just do 30 minutes a day. Like I just need to do enough time for this to actually make a difference. Um, I think hearing Gary say it needs to be like a minimum of 35 minutes is a real like, (sighs) (laughs) like it's not very 10, 10 minutes for 10 days headspace is it? It's a-

Yusef 40:48 He basically says like you're wasting your time if you're doing less than 35 minutes. You're just like, "Oh, Gary." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 40:53 For fuck's sake, Gary, we've all got real lives.

Jonny 40:55 Leave me alone, mate. Yeah. Stop making me anxious.

Yusef 40:58 (clears throat)

Jonny 40:58 Um, but yeah, I think he's done like 20,000 hours or something-

Chris Williamson 41:02 Motherfucker.

Jonny 41:03 ... of mindfulness practice but now he just has no th- has no thoughts.

Chris Williamson 41:07 Yeah, he's the guy that switched off his default mode network, isn't he?

Yusef 41:10 This is what I love about Gary Weber because he fully puts his money where his mouth is.

Chris Williamson 41:14 Skin in the game.

Yusef 41:14 Like he's been a researcher and participant in a lot of the Harvard functional neuroimaging studies where he's just like, "Yeah, put me through an fMRI," and his brain just does not work like other people's brains.

Jonny 41:28 The thing I, the thing I like-

Yusef 41:29 Just can't do any activity. Sorry.

Jonny 41:30 ... when he talked about this about having no thoughts he's like, "I say most of the time because it m- it sounds more believable and like when I'm tired and, and stuff like they do occasionally come back but most of the time like you can use thoughts for problem solving and things like that but there's no like blah blah blah blah blah-"

Chris Williamson 41:48 Blah blah.

Jonny 41:48 "... going on constantly." I just love how he admits that like if he's feeling a bit groggy he occasionally has a thought.

Chris Williamson 41:56 Has a thought. (laughs)

Yusef 41:57 (laughs)

Jonny 41:57 (laughs) Whereas most people when they're feeling a bit tired they're just drowning in like-

Chris Williamson 42:01 (blabbering)

Jonny 42:03 ... stream of bollocks and he has the occasional like, "That's not gonna work. Oh, well that's shit. Oh, this is gonna go badly." It's like, oh.

Yusef 42:12 Yeah, he's like, "When, when my blood sugar's a bit low uh-"

Jonny 42:15 (laughs)

Yusef 42:15 "... they can, they can occasionally reemerge."

Jonny 42:19 But he, so I think like the Chasing the Present film is a guy who had or has like material success, he just outwardly is a, is your average like millennial I suppose who has all these things go well for him and then realizes like, "Hold on, I still feel terrible, like I still worry all the time, I still..."... don't feel at ease with myself. So he just goes on this huge journey and interviews loads of, like, big names in, in, uh, the meditation world. Really good film. So if anyone wants, like, a-

Chris Williamson 42:48 Where is it? Amazon Prime?

Jonny 42:49 ... an intro. Y- Ben sent it to me on YouTube Pro or YouTube paid for, whatever that's called, but I'm sure it must be on Amazon. It must be elsewhere as well. Um, but yeah, so that, that's not really a life hack, but I just noticed that meditation is not in the life hacks guide. There's just loads of ways to track meditation.

Chris Williamson 43:08 To meditate. Well, that says it all, that it's such a, a taken-

Jonny 43:11 It's a consumed thing, yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:12 ... way to... We just presume, like, what, you're not meditating every day? What's wrong with you? Um-

Jonny 43:17 Well, Yusef, it was Yusef who said to me in Liverpool af- after we'd got out of the Lift, and said, like, "Stop being a dick about it and just do 30 minutes a day for 10 days, and you tell me that you don't feel any different." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 43:32 Yeah.

Yusef 43:32 It, uh, it's, it's 'cause Johnny was, was following like the Atomic Habits method of, like, starting at two minutes, building up to four minutes a day, and-

Jonny 43:40 Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yusef 43:41 ... and I think...

Jonny 43:41 Three minutes.

Yusef 43:42 Three, three, then four. Sorry.

Jonny 43:44 (laughs)

Yusef 43:44 Um, and I think for a lot of habits it, that can work. Um, but I think when a habit has a minimum effective dose, like meditation, it could be countering, it could be counterproductive because you're then doing all of the, the boring bit without the, the benefit.

Chris Williamson 43:58 Yeah.

Jonny 43:58 Do you, do you believe, Yusef, and I, and we'll move on after this because I'm aware we've spoken about meditation a lot, but do you believe that 30 minutes, like the Gary Webber thing of if you're doing 15, it's literally pointless?

Yusef 44:09 I don't think it's literally pointless, but it... So Gary's purpose of meditation is to quiet the mind enough to do the self-inquiry and fully uproot the, the illusion of self. Like that's the... So, so the meditation is almost a means to an end for him.

Jonny 44:24 Oh, I see.

Yusef 44:24 Um, whereas you will still get the benefit of time under tension with meditation from doing small amounts of it. But I also think it's... Uh, so I, uh, I don't think it's as much of like a, as a switch, but it's like, um, training. If someone's, if someone's doing six minutes of training a day, they'll get maybe a bit of benefit if that training is like super dialed in and absolutely perfect and really consistent, but it's kind of making it difficult for themself compared to the guy who trains an hour three times a week and goes deep with it.

Jonny 44:59 What if the six minutes is just burpees for time?

Yusef 45:02 Well, that's what I mean, yeah, if it's like-

Jonny 45:03 But-

Yusef 45:04 Do, do you mean... Are, are you saying because it's like-

Jonny 45:06 No, no, I was just, I was just-

Yusef 45:07 ... un- (laughs)

Jonny 45:08 Whenever I think of, like, how would I make training as hard as possible for... I think there was a CrossFit Open workout or there was a CrossFit workout which was just-

Chris Williamson 45:14 Seven minutes.

Yusef 45:15 ... seven minutes of burpees.

Jonny 45:16 Seven minutes of burpees, yeah.

Yusef 45:17 (sighs)

Jonny 45:17 I can think of, I can honestly think of nothing worse.

Chris Williamson 45:19 Mm-hmm.

Jonny 45:19 Training-wise. That's as bad as it gets.

Yusef 45:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:22 Les- Lesson two, Scobe.

Yusef 45:25 Lesson two is that 2020 has been the year of the confidently wrong.

Chris Williamson 45:32 (laughs)

Yusef 45:34 So, this is basically from all of the kind of online health experts and so on just coming out of the woodwork and preying on people's health anxiety or, or fears, um, not helped by media and so on that's, that's basically been like scaremongering the whole time and selectively using, um, claims or stats to like really send the shits up people to keep them in the house. Whi- which, which, like, you know, it has a, it has a policy purpose, but there are, um, there's definitely people that have tried to capitalize on that. And they're either knowingly wrong or they're unknowingly wrong. And so this is like people selling immune-boosting supplements online or, um, like we, we once saw someone selling an anti-cancer diet, and, you know, all this kind of thing. And you're seeing people repeatedly make predictions about what's gonna happen in the next month and then there might even be high-profile people that are then shown to be like dramatically wrong. And the lesson really is to hold your opinions lightly. I think this is a lesson that I've internalized quite a lot, um, and I think it's been caused by having my anus handed to me a few years ago from big trading losses. And that's because trading is the abstracted version of this. Like, yes, you're just looking at a line on a screen, but that, that's like the perfect way to distill that down to the pure emotional rawness of being wrong, because you can invest all your ego into like, "Oh, no, it's definitely gonna go up now, like after..." And then you, you like, you go sunk cost fallacy and you invest your, like, your, your energy into it and you're like, "Oh, no, but it's definitely..." Because obviously you're seeing patterns that aren't really there, and then the market just keeps hitting you with pain until you learn the lesson. And so by doing that, you end up realizing, "Actually, I have to hold my opinions lightly," not, you know, just for the sake of keeping my ego in check, but because, "I'm gonna be hit with pain if I don't." So, I think there was obviously... It was a great teacher and it applies to everything else that if you're able to quickly change your, um, opinion on something based on new evidence, then you're never gonna be stuck in a losing position.

Chris Williamson 48:09 I think the problem is, especially with social media, certainty is conflated with truthfulness or expertise.

Yusef 48:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:19 So someone that's absolutely hard in the paint about one particular point... I, I keep using this example, but it was just so fucking flagrant, I couldn't believe it. Joe Biden said at the beginning of this year that stopping Chinese people coming into the country was xenophobic, and then two and a half months later said that the travel restrictions were entered too late.It's like, dude, you do not get to fucking do that. You don't get to do that. Like, you're supposed to be the vanguard of statement-like truthfulness and honesty, and the problem is that... I, I, I don't know why, perhaps the media team say, "Actually, mate, if you were to track back on that and identify that you were wrong, it shows in the polls that people are going to lose faith in you or something like that." But, like-

Jonny 49:05 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 49:06 ... that's only if you're so basic that you can only hold one thought in your ti- in your m- mind at a time.

Jonny 49:12 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 49:12 Like, if your mental RAM is so constricted that, like a goldfish, you can only remember the last thing that this person said and not frame it against the things that they said before. But, perhaps this is me being a, a dickhead. Perhaps, uh, reputation on the int- the internet is additive with a time limit rather than multiplicative across time. I don't know.

Yusef 49:35 Additive with a time limit, rather than mul- multiplicative-

Chris Williamson 49:38 A- so, imagine if you multiplied by zero, you'd end up with a big fat zero. If you say something which is just totally, totally wrong and then decide to multiply it by something else which is totally wrong, you're just at zero. Whereas what it might be is it's just zero plus zero plus zero plus one. And you're like, "Oh, look at me, I'm up to one." And everyone's forgotten all of the fucking zeros in any case.

Yusef 49:57 Oh, I see. Yeah, so, so I think the, the, th- the memory span of the feed and all of that stuff is very short. Yes, you'll get the occasional person who'll be like, "Oh, but you said back in March this." And, but also the, the whole system, as you said, the polls and the algorithms and everything are all... They don't reward nuance and restraint, which is what every true expert has, because they're, they realize how little they know, and they're like, "Well, you know, could be okay, but..." Um, and they reward people who are certain and promote, um, outrage in the comments. And yeah, the, the media thing's a big one. Like, I was, um, in the hospital the other day. One of the staff was like, "Here you are, Doctor. Are you having the COVID vaccine?" And I was like, "Well, maybe, but, um, th- well, mo- most likely yes, but, you know, I, I don't wanna be one of the first guinea pigs." But she was like, "I saw on Facebook they gave it to a bunch of African kids and they all died."

Chris Williamson 50:55 (laughs) .

Yusef 50:56 I'm like, "Okay. Where did you see that?" "It was on Facebook. They all did." And you're like, (sighs) "Okay."

Jonny 51:03 Janice.

Yusef 51:03 "I mean, there's, there's some degree of nuance between those two opinions." (laughs)

Jonny 51:07 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:10 I don't even know what to say about it, man. It, it, like, makes me viscerally uncomfortable, like, the level of... Like, especially Facebook this year. The, the nail in the coffin of Facebook has been COVID 2020. Like, it's just a cesspool of people who haven't got... Do you remember when everyone was adamant that the army was being deployed to London to lock people in their houses? Do you remember that?

Jonny 51:33 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:33 When people were sharing, "Ah, well, uh, my, my cousin is a, a, a- actually is part of the reserve armed guard for the 14th Northumberland division. Uh, a- and he's sent..." And it was, like, forwarded through, like, a million WhatsApp groups. And you're like, "What is this?" It's, like, a guy wearing his kit, walking down a street. It's not the, the impetus for-

Yusef 51:53 No context in the picture.

Chris Williamson 51:54 Yeah, it's... Martial law's not been fucking deployed.

Yusef 51:58 So, th- this, this is funny, because people believe that more than they believe the immediate stuff, because a friend of a friend is like, "Oh." Like, my brother is still convinced that, um, doctors are shills putting, um, putting COVID on death certificates of people that didn't have it and to bump up the numbers. And I, I said to him, I, "You realize I, I work in a COVID hospital, and I've not put that on a death certificate for, like, seven or eight months." And he was like, "Oh yeah, but that's 'cause you're too junior. Like, it's the seniors that are getting paid off to do..." You're like, "No, 'cause it, it's us that do it. And also, I wish I was being paid off by Big Pharma, 'cause I'm currently-"

Chris Williamson 52:38 How fucking well co- orchestrated would this, uh, conspiracy have to be? Like, how many people would they need to keep quiet about this?

Yusef 52:46 The thing is, like, I, I'm not being paid anywhere near enough. I would love to, to have a little side-

Chris Williamson 52:52 Backhander.

Yusef 52:53 ... side pat from... Not really, but-

Jonny 52:55 It's the, it's the same thing as, like, when Derren Brown's like, "I don't use stooges." And people are like, "Oh, he de- he definitely uses stooges." Like, the, the tightness of his network for him to use stooges and not one of them just go to The Daily Mail and go, "I'm a Derren Brown stooge." And that's Derren Brown.

Chris Williamson 53:09 (laughs)

Jonny 53:10 So then, think, like, imagine all of the healthcare system in the world is in on this huge thing, the number of people that have to be sufficiently paid off to not one of them just go to the media and go, "Here's all the evidence." Or, y-

Yusef 53:23 Or tell their wife, or do a whatever.

Jonny 53:24 "Here's me being told to do this."

Yusef 53:26 They'd get a big old payout, wouldn't they?

Jonny 53:28 Yeah. It's, it's, it's absolutely-

Yusef 53:28 Unless Derren Brown has threatened their family.

Jonny 53:32 But, but this is what I mean.

Yusef 53:33 Individually.

Jonny 53:34 Like, this... Yeah, so there's, like, the lengths you'd have to (laughs) go to to get, to get everybody on board. And that's just Derren Brown. I mean, he'll just use mind magic.

Chris Williamson 53:43 Is there a, is, is there a heuristic that you use for people online? Scope, obviously, like, you've identified this problem which is people being confidently wrong. Um, certainly, Jordan Peterson, in one of the interviews, it's where he... It wasn't with Cathy Newman. It was when they sent Cathy Newman away, put her on, like, a, a really big course of steroids and got her to do 5-3-1 and she came back with, like, research and a new haircut, and then she worked for GQ.

Yusef 54:09 Oh, yeah, I remember that.

Chris Williamson 54:11 Um, it was like, "Ha, you idiot. You haven't seen my final form."

Yusef 54:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 54:15 And then he's, he basically said, um, "If I can take one of your opinions and, from that one opinion, predict everything else that you believe, there's something very, very wrong here, because you shouldn't take your opinions wholesale. They should be piecemeal." So that's an identifier-

Yusef 54:31 Yes.

Chris Williamson 54:31 ... that I would use. Look, is this person just basic bitch 101 conspiracy left/right with absolutely no nuance? But that's difficult to tell online. Like, what, what do you use?

Yusef 54:41 That's a really good, um, way of looking at it. That, that the world is not, doesn't fit into one ideology or category. So, if someone only has opinions that have that flavor, there's a big red flag there, isn't there?... um, and so, 'cause it shows that they just haven't thought for themselves, they've just taken it. So, yeah, my, uh, the way I filter that is, um, for example, I, I was like, "I'm supposed to be a representative for healthcare and I don't really know much about the vaccine, so I need to look at some of the data." So I'll, I'll never, I'll just never go to anything that sniffs of social media. I just have to look at the original sources. Um, I just don't think that any of the filtered down stuff that's getting to social media is ever going to be accurate. Or, well, obviously, there's the, there's, a stopped clock is right twice a day, but to try and find that in social media is so hard. Um, there was a good podcast for the layman, if anyone's interested in kind of understanding this stuff, with Peter Attia and a guy who is on the board for the FDA approval of vaccines, um, with like, and this is his, his special area, and he worked in drug approval and everything, and he talks through in a very systematic way, um, some of the, the mechanisms and processes there. So, I would go to things like that.

Chris Williamson 56:05 It's a lot of work, that's the problem. It's significantly easier to read a tweet, take it as true, and then start broadcasting it to everybody else, or retweet it, or tell, tell your parents. Going and doing research-

Yusef 56:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:15 ... and actually having to think for yourself is hard, which is why most people choose-

Yusef 56:19 There's (laughs) a-

Chris Williamson 56:19 ... to fucking refrain.

Yusef 56:20 ... really good video of, um, people going, this guy going around, like, a Trump rally, and he's asking people, they've all got their hats on and stuff, and he's like, "So, um, what do you think of the allegations about Trump's thingy and the transcript?" And they're like, "Think for yourself. Read the transcript. That's all I got to say." And they're like, "Oh, have you read the transcript?" "No, I, I haven't got time for that kind of thing." He said, "Oh, okay. How long did you wait in the queue to get to this protest?" And they're like, "Seven hours." He's like, "Ah, seven hours. Okay. Lot of free time."

Chris Williamson 56:48 (laughs)

Yusef 56:49 "Okay." But think for yourself.

Chris Williamson 56:50 Yeah.

Yusef 56:50 And read the transcript.

Chris Williamson 56:51 That's funny.

Yusef 56:52 Yeah. But you've not read the transcripts? No.

Chris Williamson 56:54 No.

Yusef 56:55 Cool.

Jonny 56:57 We are running up against my time, I think, guys, sadly.

Chris Williamson 57:00 Well, I'm gonna have to do my second lesson and, uh, we'll finish it there. Uh, we were going to play a little game of Bear or Bull, but we'll save that for next year. If you do have any bears or bulls, basically topics that you want to hear whether or not we're bearish or bullish, i.e. negative or positive about and why, uh, just s- send them to me or put them in the comments and, uh, we will be doing an episode next year. Uh, so my final one was a lesson that I learned, I guess, from my injury, uh, which is you're more resilient than you know. And I think this probably actually extrapolates out across a lot of people this year. Um, you know, sadly, there's gonna be some people w- who were with us at the beginning of 2020 who aren't going to be with us in 2021, uh, because of the pandemic. And the same goes for businesses, the same goes for relationships and financial investments and bank accounts and all the rest of it. But for the people who are still here and are listening to this, you're still here. Like, all of the things that you thought this year that were going to absolutely annihilate your life, all of the worries you had that didn't come to fruition or did come to fruition but didn't end up finishing your world, like, you are still here. And that was kind of brought front and center for me when I ruptured my Achilles. I presumed that my constitution as someone who's had depression in the past and sometimes just has catastrophic thoughts, I just thought, "I'm gonna deal so badly with this. This is gonna be... I- it's just going to set in motion a downstream fucking, like, uh, nightmare." And what ended up happening was, yeah, it was uncomfortable and there was a couple of periods of, like, just sheer suffering when I was dealing with stomach cramps from opiate constipation for three days solid, unable to sleep, eat, go to the bathroom, and doing all of that with one leg was, like, a p- a particular lowlight.

Jonny 58:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 58:45 But all of those things that I went through very quickly just reset my expectations, and with sufficient stoicism and a little bit of mindfulness, I actually found, like, so much more fortitude in myself that I didn't even know existed. And that's kind of put a lot of faith in me for what I might be like moving forward. Because I, I genuinely opened a door inside of myself in a house I've lived in my entire life to a room that I didn't know existed, and I was like, "Holy fucking shit. Like, where's this fortitude and resilience come from?" And it was just, like, when it was cau- when it was required, it, it came, type thing. Um, and that ties in nicely with realizing just how little of our own internal motivations and the fact that our consciousness gets to see this tiny, tiny, tiny, little blinkered sliver of what our true motivations are and what we're actually able to be aware of is so much less than the elephant that we're sat on the back of, from a mental perspective. And yet, realizing that all tied together for me to think, like, stop being so cerebral about things. You can't be a reductionist utilitarian about absolutely every different, uh, potential permutation that's going to occur in life. You are far more resilient than you know. And if you need it, it will be there. And because of that, the person that you are now when you're worrying and the person that you are if the incident that you're worrying about occurs are essentially totally different. Have faith that the future you is going to be able to deal with whatever's going to come. Have faith that the future you will pay the bill, make the business work, regain the client, fix the relationship, get over the relationship, fix the Achilles, deal with the opiate constipation, whatever it might be. Like, all of those things came together to make me sort of really reassured that everybody's constitution is far stronger than, than they know. And specifically mine. And I'm, like, a really, really good example of somebody who I think, who I thought would be terrible in that sort of a situation and I managed to get through it. So yeah, that was, um, you are more resilient than you know.

Yusef 1:00:50 Nice. Yeah, that is...

Jonny 1:00:54 (laughs)

Yusef 1:00:55 ... very good. I, I like the idea of discovering a room in your house that-

Chris Williamson 1:00:59 Yeah.

Yusef 1:00:59 ... you didn't know was there.I just hope I don't do my Achilles.

Chris Williamson 1:01:05 I wouldn't advise it. Uh, well, I mean, as a personal development strategy, it was effective, but not necessary. Like, I wish-

Yusef 1:01:13 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:13 ... that I hadn't had (laughs) to do it to realize it, but you know, in terms of-

Yusef 1:01:16 If you'd done a Sharm Achilles, that would've been better.

Chris Williamson 1:01:19 Oh, no.

Yusef 1:01:19 Like, you're still white, but-

Chris Williamson 1:01:20 Yeah, but you've still got to wipe.

Yusef 1:01:21 Still wipe. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:22 Uh, gentlemen, I, I really appreciate it. It's been a, a year where we've probably not seen each other... probably the least we've seen each other in, in forever. And even, maybe even spoken as well, which is a shame. But hopefully, hopefully next year that'll change. And, uh, uh, I value both of your friendships. I value the fact that you're both in my life, uh, as I always do. Uh, propanefitness.com/modernwisdom to find out the seven things you won't believe about how to build an online business. And propanefitness.com/calculator if you want to get your macros sorted. Did I, did I get it right?

Yusef 1:01:54 You did.

Chris Williamson 1:01:55 I did?

Yusef 1:01:55 Yeah, you can even just go to propanefitness.com.

Chris Williamson 1:01:58 Oh, okay. That would've been easier.

Yusef 1:02:00 But don't do that. But don't, don't, don't do that one. The calculator. Chris, it's been a pleasure. It has, yeah. Thanks for having us back on, man.

Chris Williamson 1:02:05 We're gonna do it more. We just need... I need to get ahold of you guys. It's significantly easier when we can sit us down in a living room, so we can get multiple episodes out.

Yusef 1:02:13 Yeah. I can't wait til we can do that again.

Chris Williamson 1:02:14 I know, man. I got my, I got my, um, couch, like, re-upholstered as well.

Yusef 1:02:20 Re-fluffed.

Chris Williamson 1:02:20 Yeah, yeah. It's so much more comfortable. It was all flaccid before-

Yusef 1:02:23 It's just...

Chris Williamson 1:02:23 ... and now it's very turgid. Um-

Yusef 1:02:25 It's ready, like, beckoning us to-

Chris Williamson 1:02:28 Enter.

Yusef 1:02:28 ... sit on it.

Chris Williamson 1:02:29 Enter.

Yusef 1:02:29 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:02:30 Uh, look, gents, thank you. Uh, have a good Christmas. And to everybody that is listening, merry Christmas as well. Uh, I will see you in a couple a days actually. Chris Sparks coming on to talk about how to do the ultimate end of year review. Uh, so it's a very timely episode.

Yusef 1:02:44 Lovely.

Chris Williamson 1:02:44 So stay tuned for that one. As we've already said, all this stuff from Propane Fitness. If you're an online coach, go and check them out, and, uh, they will teach you how to transition online or to improve your online business as it is. For now, gents, merry chrimbo.

Yusef 1:02:56 See you. Goodbye.

Jonny 1:02:58 Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.