Simple Life Changes That Lead To Big Results - George Mack

Chris Williamson 0:00 What's the busy trap?

George Mack 0:02 The busy trap is the idea that we're busy today because we were busy yesterday, and we'll be busy tomorrow because we're busy today. And it's this never-ending busyness that we get busier because we're busy now. Weirdly, I was looking at Google Trends earlier, and if you look up the word busy from 2004, it's like the Apple stock price. It just... Each year, we get about 10% more busier, and we're constantly hitting the peak every single year of people searching the word busy.

Chris Williamson 0:29 Right. So busyness is getting busier?

George Mack 0:31 Yes.

Chris Williamson 0:31 Right. And what do you mean when you say that you waste years not being able to waste hours?

George Mack 0:36 So this is a quote from Amos Tversky, who was Daniel Kahneman's writing partner on Thinking Fast and Slow. And when you hear it, it's like, as a writer, you're like, "Why didn't I write that? That is so good." You waste years by not being able to waste hours. And it's this idea that because we're so busy, we never get round to actually asking the bigger questions. We're constantly on the C+ tasks rather than the A+ tasks. And one of the memes I posted with this essay, it's two guys working extremely hard, like being super busy. And there's one guy in the corner who's like, "You all right, lads? Um, can I give you a bit of help?" And he goes, "We're too busy," and the guy is carrying a wheel. And these guys are carrying everything, but they're too busy to realize that there's a wheel out there. And I think Tversky's point with that is by having a few extra hours in your schedule, you may change your annual direction here or there, but if you're constantly compressing everything into some kind of maximum efficiency, um, you end up wasting years as a result.

Chris Williamson 1:35 Why is the busy trap a trap? Why do we default to busy as opposed to defaulting to lots of spare time?

George Mack 1:43 I think... Well, there's, to quote the philosopher Molly-Mae-

Chris Williamson 1:47 (laughs)

George Mack 1:47 ... there's, there's only 24 hours in the day, Chris. Which is a lie, by the way. Which is a lie. Not, not having a go at Molly, but there's actually 16 hours in the day. Like I find the fact that we talk about 24 hours when we sleep for eight hours is absurd. It's like confusing your revenue with your profit. It's putting up the Shopify screenshot. It's like, "How much did you spend on other things there?"

Chris Williamson 2:07 (laughs)

George Mack 2:07 So you have, let's say, 16 hours a day, and that's pretty lindy. Like that's been consistent throughout human history, our experience of time. Meanwhile, the amount of activities we can now do, the amount of content that gets uploaded to YouTube every minute, the amount of Slack messages that are coming through, the amount of emails that are coming through. The digital... The beauty of digital systems is it's so high leverage. The, uh... Uh, as you're sat here right now, there's probably 5,000 people watching a clip of Chris as we speak in the next couple minutes. And that, uh, the digital level for yourself is a constant problem because you only have 16 hours in the day, yet there's things that are constantly coming through. Unless you're proactively trying to put systems in place, you will just get destroyed by the busy trap.

Chris Williamson 2:52 We also learn in school to do work without questioning the work.

George Mack 2:57 Yes. So one of my, uh, old essays was this point around... It's a lot of the behaviors from school that you were rewarded for, you ultimately get punished for later in life. And a lot of the behaviors at school that you were punished for, you ultimately get rewarded for later in life. And it's this sad change of affairs. I realized my age from like 20 to 29 was just trying to rewrite what I learned from 10 to 19.

Chris Williamson 3:23 (laughs)

George Mack 3:24 So it's been a clusterfuck. And one of the behaviors that you were punished for in school that you get rewarded for later in life is asking, "Why are we doing this? Does this make sense? Is this the most important thing to be working on?" If you said that in your, like, year 10 algebra class, it didn't go down well.

Chris Williamson 3:44 Shut up, Matt.

George Mack 3:45 Yeah, exactly. But what did go down well is if you just complied and took the schedule as it came through. And I think you basically have these digital systems compounding on top of these weird, or let's say incorrect behaviors that you learned at school.

Chris Williamson 4:03 Yeah. And what, what about the trap element of busyness? Why does it sort of continue to... Why does it cyclically make us more prone to being busy in the future?

George Mack 4:14 Uh, everyone's experienced cleaning out their inbox, and you realize you've not cleaned out your inbox, you've just essentially chopped off Hydra's head and another head has reappeared. So the more you almost try and defeat busyness, ultimately the more busy you become. Actually, my number one test for myself because I've been this guy, still am this guy, recovering busy guy, it... The number one test I have for myself is, I know I'm too busy if I don't know what the most important question is right now.

Chris Williamson 4:44 What do you mean by question?

George Mack 4:45 Well, the priority, the thing I need to be answering. Um, and the irony is, if you don't know what the most important thing to do in your life right now is, or the most important question to answer, or what the number one focus should be, you've actually just found it. So that's quite a beautiful thing within itself. So if you are concerned that you're too busy... Whenever I'm concerned that I'm too busy and I go, "I've not figured out what the most important thing to focus on right now is," I've just figured out.

Chris Williamson 5:08 Focusing on what is the most important thing to focus on right now-

George Mack 5:11 Yeah. I've just figured it out.

Chris Williamson 5:11 ... is what to focus on.

George Mack 5:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:12 Yeah. What are some other, uh, signs that you're too busy? Like what... When you think back to the times when you've been drowning in busy work, what are some of the other things that come along for the ride?

George Mack 5:26 I think it's... It's... So it's a funny, uh, a funny message I got sent the other day when I posted this from my friend Phil. And he was saying how the essay hit him, and he asked himself this question, which was... Let's say he set his five goals for the week, and he said, "If I got them done by Tuesday, how would I feel or what would I do?" And he goes, "I think I'd go in this full-blown anxiety of what do I do for the rest of these few days." And the irony is, he goes, "That problem means that it just stretches out throughout the week," versus if he just said to myself, "How about I sprint and get everything done by Tuesday?" Then I'm relatively free Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.... but this busyness, you con- because you're so busy, you constantly need to stay busy. You're addicted to that feeling, you're like the rat when the cheese comes out.

Chris Williamson 6:09 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 6:09 Um, when I, whenever I've found I'm too busy is I know that, um, Peter Drucker has this great thr- great thing called the activity trap, which is essentially the idea you have your activity and you have your output. And your activity is just inputs going in the system, doing things, replying to messages-

Chris Williamson 6:29 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 6:29 ... clicking buttons and moving around, and feeling like you've done something. But often at the end of the day, nothing's happened. So the activity trap is, if you stress activity, you don't necessarily increase output. Whenever you, whenever you stress output, so the end result, you'll always im- you'll always improve output, but you'll often actually ironically decrease activity. So the biggest thing for me is, if I'm sat there at the end of the day and I feel exhausted, I'm like, "What's actually got done?"

Chris Williamson 6:54 Yeah. Well yeah, not, "What did I do?" "What got done?"

George Mack 6:58 Yes.

Chris Williamson 6:59 Because what I did doesn't actually always result in something being done on the other side. What was that Andy Groves quote that you told us, uh, in Miami?

George Mack 7:08 It's, yeah, it gave me goosebumps, this one. Uh, the quote is, people, "There's so many people working so hard, and achieving so little."

Chris Williamson 7:20 What's that mean to you?

George Mack 7:23 It's, it's the type A personality trap which I easily fall into, where you end up exactly what my friend said earlier, where they would rather get their five goals done for the week on the Friday, so they're constantly feeling busy, than actually done sooner. Um, what it means is, there's so much inputs going into the system without any outputs. And because we're so busy, we never actually get time to question the outputs that we're producing.

Chris Williamson 7:51 There's another element of this, f- especially for people that work in offices, right, the demonstration of effort. You know, you're not cranking widgets, you can't see the bucket of widgets to be cranked to the one you're cranking and the bucket of widgets that you have cranked today. So, how do people demonstrate their work, their effort, their optimizing for signals of busyness-

George Mack 8:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:14 ... which is always being the quickest person to reply? Didn't you tell me that some dude in your Slack channel, well, he was the only guy in the entire company that checked Slack on Christmas Day?

George Mack 8:22 Yes.

Chris Williamson 8:23 (laughs)

George Mack 8:23 Yeah. He's incredible, that guy. Uh, Bradley. Um, so yeah, I mean, Slack's a problem itself. Um, I was thinking, and I'd be surprised if we don't look back five to 10 years from now about how broken Slack is, because sometimes I'll check Slack like a social network. I'm just like refreshing the feed just to see what's-

Chris Williamson 8:41 What's going on?

George Mack 8:42 ... going on, what's going on.

Chris Williamson 8:42 Yeah.

George Mack 8:42 And-

Chris Williamson 8:43 Even in channels that you're not supposed to be supervising, you just happen to be in-

George Mack 8:46 What's going on?

Chris Williamson 8:46 ... 'cause you're an admin, yeah.

George Mack 8:47 So, Sam Karakas, the guy that, could've butchered his last name there, but fuck it, uh, the guy that runs Levels, he said, it was a study recently where the average tech worker checks Slack every seven minutes, which is quite an absurd, absurd idea for people that are trying to increase outputs, to be constantly moving things, just messages and bits back and forth.

Chris Williamson 9:10 Mm-hmm. What about energy? How does sort of energy flows throughout the day play into the busy trap?

George Mack 9:15 Yeah, I, I think the, the lure I've found with my own personal energy levels is that if I don't sche- like proactively schedule things and increase my energy, they'll never happen. And if I don't proactively defend things that decrease my energy, they will eat up-

Chris Williamson 9:32 (laughs)

George Mack 9:32 ... my calendar. It's kinda like running a business. It, all, all, it's almost like the laws of physics that your revenue is trying to go down every day, and your costs are trying-

Chris Williamson 9:42 (laughs)

George Mack 9:42 ... to go up every day. And it's exactly the same with energy. And I weirdly found this when I was traveling or when I'm going through super stressful periods of life, that the natural idiot brain that I have is, when I have, imagine your energy level's like inflows and outflows, like an engineering system. Whenever there's lots of energy outflows on the system, i.e. I'm super stressed, i.e. um, I'm traveling right now, the natural weird thing that we do is to turn off all the energy inflows.

Chris Williamson 10:11 To give ourselves more time to work on the outflows.

George Mack 10:13 The outflows, and then you end up completely burnt out, whereas actually what you need to do is crank up the energy inflows more to deal with the higher costs-

Chris Williamson 10:21 I-

George Mack 10:21 ... on the system.

Chris Williamson 10:21 Last week, I tweeted, "There's no such thing as being overworked, only under-rested."

George Mack 10:26 That's, yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:27 How much truth do you think is in that?

George Mack 10:29 I th- I think it was, it was one of the... I forgot which president it was who said that, "I never stand up when I can sit down, and I never s- I never work," sorry, "I never work stood up when I can be working sit down- sat down, and I never work sat down when I could be lay down." And even Churchill, when you think about grinding, like Churchill, World War II, like that's some like sigma-

Chris Williamson 10:54 (laughs)

George Mack 10:54 ... serious sigma grind set right there, like the apex. And even him, like taking multiple naps throughout the day-

Chris Williamson 11:01 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 11:02 ... um, how, that's one of the reasons how he managed to work throughout the nights. Um, and yeah, that concept of there's no such thing as under-rest, there's just, um, sorry, there's no such thing as being overworked, there's just under-rest, makes so much sense from a u- utility perspective. It might not necessarily be true, but it reframes everything.

Chris Williamson 11:22 Well, I think anybody, it's one of those things that probably doesn't work in theory but does work in practice, where you can pick that apart as a pithy little aphorism. But if you actually think about what your felt experience of being a very busy person in the world is like, have you ever been overworked when you haven't been under-rested? Has there ever been a time when you've gone, "Wow, I'm rested but also overworked"? No.

George Mack 11:47 Yes.

Chris Williamson 11:47 Almost never, because of the busy trap, because of the fact that you continue to loop yourself back, "Oh, well, I'd better reject all of the things that give me more energy by meditating or breath work, or getting up earlier, going for a walk, or going to the gym, or spending time with friends, or w- turning the AirPods off for five minutes today." You don't do any of those things. So-It's, uh, it's kind of a, a sort of a self, um, answering question-

George Mack 12:11 Yes.

Chris Williamson 12:11 ... which is that those two things are the same for most people. They're not the same in theory, but in practice they are. Being overworked and being under-rested are the same thing. They're two sides of the same coin.

George Mack 12:22 And you can have scenarios where you've not worked in weeks, but you've been on TikTok nine hours a day, and you've-

Chris Williamson 12:28 Still not under-rest- still not rested, yeah.

George Mack 12:30 Yeah. Still not rested. And you can have other scenarios where you've worked the hardest you have in your entire life, but because you've got those energy inflow systems dialed, um, you don't reach the same burnout that you would.

Chris Williamson 12:42 And it's another, uh, hidden and observable metrics problem too, right, that what you're trying to optimize for is quality of life, clear thinking, great ideas, opportunity to w- to have leverage on, on what it is that you're coming up with. Where does that appear on my Slack analytics, on my balance sheet? It doesn't even really appear on my fucking Whoop data.

George Mack 13:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:05 But (clears throat) the number of emails that I sent, uh, the, uh, reduction in my total number of unread messages, the, uh, all of that stuff, super easy to quantify. So you're sacrificing the thing you want, clear thinking, for the thing which is supposed to get it, which is clearing out admin tasks.

George Mack 13:23 Mm. Yeah. It's quite horrific how much time we waste. Like, one of the experiments is to go back to your Google Calendar this time last year and look at certain things that you did, and you'll often realize that most of it was a, was a complete waste of time.

Chris Williamson 13:41 Does any of this matter?

George Mack 13:42 W- I mean, there's always that power law that exists. I heard yesterday that even Warren Buffett in one of his shareholder letters said that, I think it was only 12 of his investments that really moved the needle for Berkshire Hathaway, which was about 4%. So even the guy, like the best allocator, in this case of capital rather than time, only 4% of his bets were, were correct. So... And, and that's him spending so much time thinking every single day. And if you're then so busy, we're not even gonna get past the, the 1%, or at least I'm not.

Chris Williamson 14:16 You said, "Bringing a Victorian factory worker mindset to the age of infinite leverage is like bringing boxing gloves to a drone war."

George Mack 14:25 Yes. Um, one of my favorite lines. I think I need to flesh this idea out more, but this was kind of a aphorism to myself I try and paint on the back of my eyelids, which is this idea that... Let's say you have, quote-unquote, "type A, type B personalities." I don't know if it's an actual thing, but just for the u- uh, utility of categorizing them, you have type A personalities that, uh, they have a, what feels like a work ethic problem. They constantly feel lazy, but it's actually a work ethic problem. It's actually a leverage problem disguised as a work ethic problem. And type B personalities have a... They think they constantly have a leverage problem, but they actually have a work ethic problem, and you'll be able to immediately bucket those people, uh, inside your head immediately.

Chris Williamson 15:10 Yeah. I, uh, I think a lot about trying to dial back busyness. You know, w- both of us are kind of permanently fighting this entropy.

George Mack 15:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 15:20 On a morning, well, wha- watch, maybe b- b- time block the morning or protect it. Like, w- go through some of the tactics that, like, from a strategic perspective, that you've used personally to try and defend the busy trap.

George Mack 15:35 So, go back to cocaine kale phone.

Chris Williamson 15:38 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 15:38 Everybody should know that by now, two separate phones. I'd say the, the busy trap for me, probably the easiest thing is having a big three. So I got this from the concept of 4,000 Weeks and having a big three of things I need to do, and then everything else just goes to the everything else section. And the idea of only being able to have three tasks on the big three makes you prioritize things by definition. I think ultimately, the opposite of the busy trap is prioritization, which is such a difficult skill when there's infinite things coming at you.

Chris Williamson 16:14 Mm. Yeah. If there's so much that you could be focused on and permanent notifications, this ambient sense that you're falling behind... Oliver Burkeman has this beautiful sentence where he... (laughs) It's in The Productivity Debt essay that he does, and he says, "I just have this vague sense, this vague fear that I'm falling behind." And I think that that kind of really encapsulates, at least for me, the, if I take too much time off.

George Mack 16:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:41 And here's the brutal thing. You realize that you have become your own task master in many ways. You know, uh, you, you complain about the prison of your busyness, but you realize that you're the g- guard that's holding the keys to it. You've locked yourself in-

George Mack 16:54 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 16:55 ... and thrown them out. Um, you know, (clears throat) perfect example of this, if I spend a ton of time, uh, working and working and working and all I can think about is, "Oh God, it'd be so cool to just have, like, a couple of days, and I'd do... I'd play pickleball, and I'd have fun with my friends, and go and do this thing." And about, n- ten hours into the first day of that, I think, "I really could do with getting a bit of graft done."

George Mack 17:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:20 "What if I just... Uh, you know..." (slaps knees) There, and then you smack up with a little bit of Slack, or you get on an email, or you do... You know, you, you complete a little bit of work. So yeah, we are the prison guards of the-

George Mack 17:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 17:33 ... jail that we're complaining about in many ways, which actually, I think when people fully realize this, which everyone listening will have done because we've spoken about it a lot and they're all reasonable, there's a lot of shame that can come along with that too, which adds another layer of difficulty on top. Because you say, "God, you know, I'm choosing to do this to myself. I don't need to answer my boss's email at 11:00 PM at night. He's not expecting it." I think it's even illegal in France or something.

George Mack 17:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:59 They made that law, right? Where you can't-

George Mack 18:01 I didn't know that.

Chris Williamson 18:01 ... you can't contact... This is, it stinks of a thread of you.

George Mack 18:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:04 Um, that you can't contact workers outside of their hours of work.

George Mack 18:08 Wow.

Chris Williamson 18:08 I think they...It might even be, like, how China, uh, used that streaming service to stop kids from playing computer games. It might be like cold turkey or frozen turkey, but for work email or something. But yeah, they just, they're trying to have this sort of, um, Worker's Health Act where people don't work outside of it. Uh, but it's you. It's always been you. And then you realize, "Oh God, it's me." And then you think, "God, how shameful am I that I'm wasting my life? I'm choosing to do this to myself." And then you start to layer all of these stories on top.

George Mack 18:39 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I came up with this idea of the Midwit Review, the Midwit Week Review, which was... Previously, I'd done, like, end of week reviews, and it'd be like a fucking three-hour session that's, like, 60 different points. And my Midwit version now is for each area, so, like, health, life, work. What are, what were the three wins this week? And then what are the three things that would actually move the needle for each one? And then every-

Chris Williamson 19:05 Do you mean when you say move the needle?

George Mack 19:07 Like, in play, in terms of leverage, in terms of prioritization. 'Cause otherwise, unless you really think about each action, I, I put that thing in the essay, which is, "If you don't have 20 minutes each day to think about what's the most important thing, you probably need an hour." So again, another note to myself.

Chris Williamson 19:23 (laughs)

George Mack 19:24 And what I mean by move the needle is, I think, probably one of the underpinnings of The Busy Trap is that you never really write down your hypothesis like a scientific experiment. You never say, "Okay, of these... So there's option one I can do today. I can reply to this Slack message or the, the, all these Slacks. Option two, I could build out this new marketing funnel that will take me two hours. Option three, I could go see my parents," whatever it is, like, in terms of that. And then actually mapping out, "Okay, according to all my different priority areas, what's that gonna deliver?" It's much heart- willier in life, I guess, but from a business perspective, we very, very rarely ever go, "Okay, here's the five decisions we can make. How much time is each one gonna, do we anticipate each one will make, um, each one will take, and how much revenue or profit will this thing make?" And it's only then when you-

Chris Williamson 20:15 What are the returns of this thing?

George Mack 20:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:16 Yeah, but we're having to play within the observable metric paradigm again.

George Mack 20:19 Yes.

Chris Williamson 20:20 Like, look what we're defaulting to. Say, well, ah, quality of life, ah, time with parents, ah, the sanity of the internal texture of my mind, ah... Profit. I can-

George Mack 20:29 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 20:30 I can see that on a balance sheet. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentous. They make the highest quality supplements on the planet. I've fallen in love with their whey isolate protein powder (laughs) , which you'll see actually doesn't even have the seal on it because this is my one from home. If you've been struggling to hit your protein goals, Momentous's grass-fed whey is a super convenient and tasty way to get extra protein into your diet, which will promote lean muscle mass and help with your recovery. Plus, it's NSF and Informed-Sport certified, meaning that even Olympic athletes can use it, because that is how rigorously it's tested. What you read on the label is what's inside the product and absolutely nothing else. Best of all, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy it completely risk-free, and if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. You can get up to a 32% discount site-wide off everything, including their protein, by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to livemomentous.com/modernwisdom. That's L-I-V-E M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modernwisdom.

Chris Williamson 21:34 Uh, so you've been in the US three weeks now?

George Mack 21:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 21:37 Yeah. No, more. More actually, 'cause you did Miami.

George Mack 21:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:40 Um, we've been talking a lot about differences between the UK and the USA. What have you come to believe about that?

George Mack 21:49 So I, my biggest takeaway from being in America as a Brit is it's like finding out my dad had a kid with another woman that I never met, and we meet for the first time, and I'm like, "You're kind of me, but you're not me." It's like he spent a bit more money on you. He-

Chris Williamson 22:12 (laughs)

George Mack 22:13 He made you believe in yourself. Your mom was clearly much nicer or kinder. And you go, "Oh, Americans, like, we're kind of the same." But-

Chris Williamson 22:24 It's like Brits with self-belief.

George Mack 22:25 Brits with self-belief is what Americans are-

Chris Williamson 22:28 (laughs)

George Mack 22:29 ... is one of the differen- There's lots of pros and there's lots of cons for both, but that was my overwhelming, overwhelming takeaway. The second-biggest takeaway I have is that Brits don't really truly realize how impactful the British accent is-

Chris Williamson 22:48 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 22:48 ... until you leave Britain. And the metaphor I came up with for describing the British accent to Brits is, imagine everywhere else in the world, there's a salmon famine, right? And a British accent is like selling salmon. And the only place in the world where there's an abundance of salmon is in the UK. So if you're there using that, it basically gets you nothing in the UK, but you suddenly leave or go outside-

Chris Williamson 23:14 Go anywhere else and you're exotic.

George Mack 23:15 ... outside the UK, pretty much anywhere else, and they think you're smarter, they think you're more attractive. Um, yeah, it's incredible.

Chris Williamson 23:22 Americans often ask me when they talk about that, and I do think it's true that Brits have an unfair advantage in America of being seen as more learned. Uh, so, like, everyone presumes that we're part of the aristocracy or something. Um, and they often ask me, "Well, what do you think of American accents in the UK?" And that was a really interesting question. It's like, I actually don't know. I think it's, like... Certainly for me on girls, it's, like, kind of sexy. It feel, that, that feels exotic in some way. Uh, definitely energetic, overly enthusiastic and excitable, uh, especially when you've got one American and a bunch of Brits. When you're the Brit and a bunch of Americans are, oh, you know, everyone's just sort of excitable and first-line cocaine energy. But when you drop one American in a, like, Newcastle or something, oh my god, who is this? It's a nuclear warhead surrounded by a bunch of swords. Um-Yeah, I think since being here, you know, it's made me reflect on the UK. I- I hate being disparaging about the UK. Like, it's the country that gave me and you a start. We both went to university there, we both had our first jobs there, we both built businesses there. Uh, I think we're both, in one form or another, still registered. You'll be on Companies House, some vestigial old fucking thing. I hate, I really wish that I didn't sort of talk badly about it, but you sent me a tweet last week, and I've been watching Bald and Bankrupt, it's an awesome YouTube channel.

George Mack 24:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:50 Um, I invited him on the show. He replied, he said he'd love to, but he's actually trying to actively wind down his, uh, public exposure. So, he said he keeps getting asked for too many selfie photos in Tesco.

George Mack 25:02 Ah.

Chris Williamson 25:02 Uh, and he does strike me as the kind of man that probably doesn't want to be overexposed. You know, he was doing... For the people that don't know, this guy who does kind of like dark tourism stuff, he got trafficked across the border into Mexico, he was detained in a Russian jail for a while, and then he decided he was gonna take on the final boss of dangerous places, which was seaside towns of the UK. And, um, he just travels around sort of looking at all of these- these bad places. And, um, you sent me that tweet last week, which I think nails it, which is, "The UK has the sixth-largest economy in the world, but people are confused. The UK doesn't have the sixth-largest economy in the world. London has the sixth-largest economy in the world. It just has a really poor country attached to a very rich city."

George Mack 25:46 Yeah. And then there was another one, which was US universities, um... So, I think in the top 10 universities in the world, the UK has three and the US has three, yet the US outputs five times... Those US universities, five- output five times the number of entrepreneurs that those UK universities do. So, in theory, these people are as intelligent as one another-

Chris Williamson 26:11 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 26:11 ... um, across that. I think it's Oxford, Cambridge, and another university I've forgotten.

Chris Williamson 26:14 King's, maybe, Durham.

George Mack 26:15 Maybe, yeah. And, um, what's interesting when you go across global university rankings and outputs of entrepreneurs in the study that was shared, the UK university, the- which was Oxford, so that's the number one for entrepreneurial output, was 50th across the whole world. Despite the fact we rank so high in education-

Chris Williamson 26:36 Mm.

George Mack 26:36 ... yet actually transforming that into entrepreneurship doesn't seem to happen. And I wonder, again, whether that's the self-belief thing. You also see this weirdly, and I could be mistaken here, I have this bias that I think Brits are fundamentally more funnier than Americans.

Chris Williamson 26:50 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 26:50 However, way more great standup comedians that are American than British. Like we have Ricky Gervais, we have Jimmy Carr. And then in terms of global appeal outside of that, there's not a huge amount more. And my theory behind that is, so why do you have the funniest people, yet not the- the biggest standup comedians out of those names there? And I think the same crub- crabs-in-a-bucket mentality that makes people so funny, 'cause we can shoot people down and shoot ourselves down, is the same thing that makes it absu- an- absurd as a concept to go and get on stage and say, "I want to be a funny person." Like, that in the UK... So, I think the funniest guy in the world right now is probably in a Greggs in Wigan-

Chris Williamson 27:30 (laughs)

George Mack 27:30 ... or he is in a pub in Portsmouth. And because of that crabs-in-a-bucket mentality, Americans are way more likely to get on stage and go, "I want to be a funny person," because that's part of the American DNA. Meanwhile, the Brits, who I think are actually funnier-

Chris Williamson 27:44 Mm.

George Mack 27:44 ... don't end up doing as much standup comedy.

Chris Williamson 27:45 That entrepreneurial spirit.

George Mack 27:47 As well as entrepreneurial, yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:48 But, uh, y- you know, even within that, that sort of self-belief, it's one and the same, I think. It's agency-

George Mack 27:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:53 ... it's the preparedness to go against the grain, uh, and, you know, this, I- I'm... We're gonna talk about, uh, subprime audiences later on. Um, but, you know, this audience is like, I would guess, I would say, like, it's full of like As and double As of people, especially the ones from the UK. And I think the reason that this resonates, I'm not saying it to disparage the UK, I don't think either of us are, but to kind of reassure the people for whom they feel a little bit like a square peg in a round country, sat in the UK, you know, some normal town. You're in fucking Wakefield or Carlisle or Middlesbrough, Rochdale, wherever you are (laughs) , uh, and you think, "God, I, you know, this is the sort of conversations I really love to have. These are the kind of thoughts that I think about, and I really want to have big dreams for myself." And then I- I just really struggle to resonate with the people around me. I really, really fail to do that. And I think I wish that I'd had, when I was younger, more reassurance that I wasn't the problem. I- I... You know, there's no value judgment, people that have big dreams, people that don't have big dreams. But there's nothing inherently wrong with you having those dreams, and there's no reason that you should be castigated or have the piss taken out of you because you want to do something different, because you don't intend being born, living, working and dying within the same 20-mile radius of- of, you know, where your parents grew up.

George Mack 29:19 Yes. But even at a walking around level, you see this. So, if you walk around America, there's flags everywhere.

Chris Williamson 29:27 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 29:28 There's kind of pride in the nation.

Chris Williamson 29:29 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 29:30 If you walk around the UK and you see a flag, you go, "Oh, fuck, they might be-"

Chris Williamson 29:33 EDL member.

George Mack 29:35 (laughs) "... they might be a Nazi."

Chris Williamson 29:36 (laughs)

George Mack 29:36 Which is cra- Unless there's a football tournament, then everybody does it. That's the weird paradox of the UK.

Chris Williamson 29:40 Yeah.

George Mack 29:41 So it's even at that level, you see this kind of pride at the nation level. And at the UK, it's almost like this weird autoimmune condition.

Chris Williamson 29:48 Do you have any idea why the British football team uses three lions rather than the St. George's Cross?

George Mack 29:53 Don't know.

Chris Williamson 29:55 Isn't that interesting?

George Mack 29:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:56 Because I don't think Scotland does, and I don't think Ireland does, and I don't think Wales do.

George Mack 30:01 Mm.

Chris Williamson 30:02 And I can't think of any other team... Actually, the, uh, England cricket guys will do the same thing. There must be a reason. Someone will be correcting me in the comments as we speak. Um, but that's... Yeah, for the Americans that are listening, British national pride-... like, BNP, British national pride? (laughs) I know it's not that, but like, it's just, it doesn't exist. And then you come over here and it, it is nice. It's nice to hear that people have got, have got pride in their country.

George Mack 30:32 So, th- the, probably the critique people have of us right now is that we're critiquing Britain way more than we are critiquing America. But I'd also point out that's part of being British.

Chris Williamson 30:42 (laughs)

George Mack 30:42 You're way more naturally to critique yourself than to critique other people, and I do love that side of being British, 'cause you're way more self-analytical. Um, I think in te- in terms of other differences between the UK and the US that I've noticed, i- in terms of benefits for Brits, is, because Brits like take the piss out of one another, on average, way more, um, it means that you do have maybe that lowering self-belief, but you're almost a bit more anti-fragile.

Chris Williamson 31:12 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 31:12 So if people do say a remark, you've already cracked a joke worse than that in the past, or your friends have. Particularly, and I think the more northern in the country you go, the more that-

Chris Williamson 31:19 It is the further away from London that you get-

George Mack 31:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:21 ... the more piss you have taken out of you.

George Mack 31:23 Exactly. Whereas in America, I think people are a lot more f- could be more fragile to comments like that, whereas the Brits, the same way, I always say, a w- another difference... There's two big differences that I think explain the differences between Americans and Brits. So one is simple A-B test of when you meet an American and they're super enthusiastic and excited, and the Brits aren't. If you actually go historically back, there was a simple A-B test, which is when the boats came and said, "Hey, there's this promised land far, far away. You, we can't show you a video because videos don't exist yet. You may die on the boat. Do you wanna come and visit this crazy land?" The Brits were the ones who were like, "What a ridiculous idea that is. I'm gonna stay here."

Chris Williamson 32:06 I'm staying in Skegness.

George Mack 32:07 And the Americans were the ones who were like, "Yeah, bring it on."

Chris Williamson 32:10 Yeah.

George Mack 32:10 And that A-B test fundamentally explains it. As well as, when you think about it, um, historically, Americans have, apart from Pearl Harbor, and that was quite far away from America, let's be honest, have never had an attack on their homeland in recent history. Whereas-

Chris Williamson 32:28 9/11 not count?

George Mack 32:29 Um, eh, uh, the 9/11, yeah. Yeah, there you go. That's one example. But comparing that to the bombing, like W- World War I and World War II, like the whole cities-

Chris Williamson 32:36 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

George Mack 32:37 ... completely destroyed.

Chris Williamson 32:38 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 32:38 Um, so there's definitely more, like, scar tissue built up that makes Brits, I think, a little bit more grittier in some regards than Americans as well.

Chris Williamson 32:47 Yeah, I don't know, man.

George Mack 32:47 I'm pessimistic.

Chris Williamson 32:48 Yeah, I can tell. It's,

Chris Williamson 32:52 for certain people, th- I had this discussion with Piers Morgan. Piers was like, "I, I, I like, I like people bringing me back down to, to earth. I, I, I like the, the, the mockery and stuff." I'm like, "Piers, that's great for you. It doesn't seem to work too well for me." Like my desperate requirement for validation and reassurance from the world, like, wasn't being very satiated in Stockton-

George Mack 33:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:10 ... right? Or Newcastle. Uh, and then you come over here, one of the best things... And this is something that anybody, anywhere on the planet should do, and this is one of the coolest life hacks I've taken since being in America. And you've seen me do it to you and you've like toe cold at a bunch of parties, which is, when, in America, at least in my group of friends, you are the new person in a group. Your friend that knows you and knows the group will introduce you and tends to do it in the best 30-second showreel of you that anybody could give. "You know, he's g- got this amazing marketing agency, he's a phenomenal writer and he's pivoting, he's kind of ch- champagne homeless at the moment, he does all of these thing." And like, that's a really lovely gesture. It's your friend, it's an opportunity for them to do something nice for you, it gives you the best impression on the group, and it reminds you about what your friend kind of says about you behind your back when you're not there. And it's like, it inflates you a little bit, makes you feel good and warm and stuff. What would the equivalent be if you were a British friend-

George Mack 34:07 Huh.

Chris Williamson 34:07 ... being introduced to British friends by a British friend?

George Mack 34:10 It would be your worst ever story.

Chris Williamson 34:11 Correct.

George Mack 34:12 Certainly in the north- Again this is a northern thing I think.

Chris Williamson 34:14 This, this, this, this, this is George, shit himself last week. Like-

George Mack 34:16 (laughs) Just said that live on the podcast.

Chris Williamson 34:18 You know what I mean? Still has wet dreams.

George Mack 34:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:19 Like, you know? Um-

George Mack 34:21 Yeah. Uh, it is int- like the introduction side, how we introduce one another, I've definitely found Americans are much better at selling themselves immediately, whereas I think Brits often downplay themselves immediately. There's a big difference there in terms of, like, ever so slight cultural differences. One of the reasons why I think America has been so successful so far, and one thing Britain could improve upon, is, if you look at human beings, I think what makes human beings... If you put one human being in a jungle, um, it's that classic phrase that if you put one human being in a jungle, immed- you've just introduced prey into the environment. But if you put a thousand human beings into the jungle, you've just introduced a apex predator of which the world's never seen before. So the only thing that really makes us special, like, if you look at us, we don't hear that well compared to other animals, we're not that fast, we're not that strong, we're pretty shit across the board, but our ability to cooperate is what makes us unique. It's the classic Steve Jobs thing of, if you looked at, um, I think it's energy efficiency in movement, humans are so far down the rankings. Right? There's so many animals ahead of us in terms of, to do a mile, how much energy they need to burn. But if you look at a human being on a bicycle, like human beings have just blow- blown through the charts. And he has this great quote which is, "The computer is the bicycle of the mind." And if you then go back to, well ultimately, the only thing that makes us unique human beings, 'cause we're shit at b- at everything compared to other animals-

Chris Williamson 35:52 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 35:52 ... is our ability to cooperate. If you have a more enthusiastic society, that supports one another more-

Chris Williamson 35:58 Mm.

George Mack 35:58 ... um, you can cooperate more which means that you'll then have way more economic output because in a certain country that's more optimistic that goes, "I've got this idea," a load of naive Americans are like, "Great idea."

Chris Williamson 36:08 Yeah.

George Mack 36:08 "Let's do it tomorrow."

Chris Williamson 36:09 Yeah.

George Mack 36:10 Whereas peop- a, a culture that's more, maybe cynical-

Chris Williamson 36:13 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 36:14 ... um, means that those ideas don't happen. Which I think explains why, across these universities-We have essentially the same IQ levels, the same intelligence levels-

Chris Williamson 36:22 Mm-hmm. Better accents.

George Mack 36:23 ... but better accents, more salmon-

Chris Williamson 36:25 (laughs)

George Mack 36:25 ... but five X the number of entrepreneurs in America.

Chris Williamson 36:28 In other news, this episode is brought to you by Grammarly. With Grammarly, you no longer need to spend hours on emails. Now you simply write an email with all of the grammatical errors, literally all of them, left in, then use Grammarly's app to fix it and make sure that it matches your tone. It's literally like magic, and it will have a massive effect on your productivity. Plus, when you sign up for Grammarly Premium, you get advanced suggestions, so your writing is always personalized, consistent, and matches the right context every time. Honestly, upgrading to Grammarly Premium saves so much time and makes you sound way smarter than you are. It's the writing equivalent of having a British accent. So, sign up to upgrade to Grammarly Premium and level up your productivity by going to the link in the show notes below, or heading to grammarly.com/modernwisdom. That's G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com/modernwisdom. What was that thing? Another person. So two guys that I wanted to have this conversation with. First one, uh, Bald and Bankrupt. Ben, that's fine, like he wants to take a step back. Second one, Tom Blomfield, guy that founded Monzo-

George Mack 37:30 Yeah, which is where I got the thing from.

Chris Williamson 37:32 ... swing and a miss. Another one for me. Like I got, I got rebuffed twice-

George Mack 37:35 I know.

Chris Williamson 37:35 ... in the space, in the space of a day.

George Mack 37:37 Well, it's interesting, both the founder of Monzo and the founder of Revolut, so the two you'd argue the most successful UK companies that have come out recently, both of them are having huge issues with the UK, I believe. So Tom obviously wrote that piece about the UK culture and how he's trying to fix it, and I think the founder of Revolut has either left or wanting to leave because of the regulation that exists there.

Chris Williamson 37:56 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 37:56 So two of our best entrepreneurs, at least in-

Chris Williamson 37:58 Well, Tom lives in SF now, right?

George Mack 38:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:00 He's part of Y Combinator. Um, what else do you... Did you learn anything else from that Tom Blomfield article? He wrote it on fucking Tumblr.

George Mack 38:07 Oh, really?

Chris Williamson 38:08 That, that blog post-

George Mack 38:08 I didn't even notice that.

Chris Williamson 38:09 That blog post is on Tumblr.

George Mack 38:10 Oh, wow.

Chris Williamson 38:11 Yeah.

George Mack 38:11 There we go. Maybe (whistles)

Chris Williamson 38:12 Who knew that CEOs of a internet-savvy, internet startup bank, and 13-year-old girls posting emo photos all s- that's the-

George Mack 38:20 All the-

Chris Williamson 38:20 ... like horseshoe, horseshoed around?

George Mack 38:22 All the... I mean, the o- probably the, the other takeaway, uh, I would say is vision. So I always look at, let's say... And again, a lot of people who listen to this podcast might hate these places, but the one thing you can give them is, when you go there, you kinda get a vision. So whether that's Austin, whether that's Dubai, whether that's Miami, whether that's, um, Singapore, whether that's El Salvador right now, um, even Saudi Arabia. You may not like those places at all, but when you're there or you kinda see what they do and you go... kind of get where you're going.

Chris Williamson 38:51 There's something happening.

George Mack 38:52 Whereas with the UK, I think fundamentally, that's probably one of the problems right now is that you don't fully know where the country's going.

Chris Williamson 38:59 Yeah, that's a really, really great problem, uh, great, great point. Uh, I reached out, I got Dominic Cummings' email. I got his, I got his personal email address.

George Mack 39:07 Oh.

Chris Williamson 39:07 So I've reached out to him.

George Mack 39:08 So last time we were on the show, we spoke about, um, how the, uh, head of cybersecurity for the UK government job role title was at 65 grand a year. Someone's now made the meme of that original screenshot with, I think it's the, like-

Chris Williamson 39:24 TikTok?

George Mack 39:24 Yeah, some, some person who's m- might be high of cybersecurity at TikTok, it's like 360 grand a year. It's like, wow, the, the contrast is, is there.

Chris Williamson 39:33 Yeah. I don't know, man. Uh, uh, eh, part of my live show is me saying that I want to make enthusiasm great again, uh, and reimport the American enthusiasm back over to the UK. Uh, that being said, eh, no matter where you're from, I think that you have the opportunity to be the enthusiastic person. And I, I've been really getting into, um, direct communication instead of shadow sentences recently. And a lot of the time, I, I think to myself, "What would have happened 10 years ago if, in the northeast of the UK, the group of friends that I had, that were around then, you know, Darren, Johnny, Yousef, like those guys, um, what if I'd gone to them and I'd said, 'Look, like I wanna make a real hard left turn in terms of the sort of demeanor and the way that I view the world, and I've heard about the fact that more enthusiastic groups of people seem to do better, they have a five times increase in entrepreneurial success, and, you know, we have the same levels of skill, better accent, more salmon. Why can't we deploy this? I, I really want to try and cultivate the most positive friend group that we can. Why don't we just try this? Why don't we, like, pretend to be British American or, like, British Saudi or whatever the, whatever you wanna be? Why don't we try and do that?"" And I wonder how much direct communication in that sort of a way, in a safe space where there isn't one person in the corner that's always going to default to, "Pfft, gay." Like-

George Mack 40:53 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 40:54 ... if, because that person, everyone... It's like a, a regression to the mean. It's like regression to being mean. You know what I mean? Like, the meanest person in the room is the one that everyone defaults to because that person always seems less naive, they seem a little bit sort of more sardonic and, and, and smart and cool. And again, if you're American, and this is... I don't like being around those people at all. Go to the UK for a couple of weeks, and they are everywhere. But yeah, uh, Tom Blomfield's article on, on Tumblr about the difference between the UK and the US I think is fascinating, and that just as a frame. What a phenomenal frame to say, "The UK isn't a successful economy. London is a successful economy that has a poor country attached to it."

George Mack 41:35 Mm-hmm. What do you... So to flip the script, though, um, so we don't get lots of angry Brits-

Chris Williamson 41:39 Mm-hmm. We already do.

George Mack 41:41 ... what do you, what do you miss about the UK, or you think the UK has its strengths over America? 'Cause I would say America definitely has greater blowup risk. Like I could easily imagine a scenario where the US goes to civil war quicker than the UK does.

Chris Williamson 41:51 I would imagine that there's many more people, many more entrepreneurs that have gone bank- bankrupt-

George Mack 41:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:55 ... in the US, because they're just swinging for the fences-

George Mack 41:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:58 ... a lot more. Uh, it's my belief that most people who do things like entrepreneurialism, from a good standpoint, are more risk-averse than they are, uh, prepared to deal with risk. So most people actually need to crank that up. They need a little bit more encouragement. Um, things that are problems in America is, is certainly that. There are blind spots that many of them have. There's an entitlement that a lot of Americans have, too. You know, think about the fact that-... as you're coming up through school, maybe less so now when America's the most, you know, misogynistic, xenophobic place on the planet, but for the most part, up until maybe about five or 10 years ago, children were promised the what, the American dream is still alive and well, blue sky thinking, helicopter vision, we'll loop back by end of week. And if that's what you've been told as a child, and then you arrive in adulthood and you're not given that, you throw your toys out of the pram. This wasn't the world that I was told, and I think that that's why the entitlement and the victimhood culture is more, um, propagated in America-

George Mack 43:01 Mm.

Chris Williamson 43:02 ... and it isn't in the UK because all hopes and dreams that you had for a life that was remotely good are just stamped out of you. You know, it's, it's, to so many people in the UK, and this isn't a knock, to so many people in the UK, success is getting a solid graduate job at 23 on 35, 40 grand a year, and then slowly climbing the corporate ladder to make six figures by 40, and then to retire with a solid pension toward the end of life.

George Mack 43:34 The British dream.

Chris Williamson 43:35 Yeah, that is the British dream, and it's just, it's much more on a set of train tracks. There's fewer, uh, variations, and again, that is a perfectly acceptable, perfectly successful life. But more people slot themselves into that because they don't think about stuff going in other directions. I think the opposite problem occurs in America, which is kind of the paradox of choice. Well, I can do anything I want, I've basically got 50 countries attached within one big continent, I can go wherever I want, I can work there, I can use the same currency, I can speak the same language, I've got the like, all of the things. What should I do? I don't fucking know. Way more homeless people.

George Mack 44:11 Yes. Way more prescription drugs. I, I wrote about that in the, what is neglected by the media but will be studied by historians, that I think five of the top, sorry, the top five news networks in the US, either the number one biggest advertiser or the number two biggest advertiser is a pharmaceutical company, which as a Brit sounds absurd, and there's only two company, two countries in the world that that's allowed.

Chris Williamson 44:34 New Zealand, Australia.

George Mack 44:35 New Zealand and America, yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:36 Yeah, yeah.

George Mack 44:36 So that's definitely a difference, but I think one of the things that you mentioned there is that ability for each state in America to have a lot more control, and it feels like if you don't like what's going on in this state, you can move to a different state-

Chris Williamson 44:50 Mm.

George Mack 44:51 ... and you can run these AB tests, whereas in the UK, as you mentioned, London has this stranglehold. It's that thing I used to say to Americans when I was explaining the UK is, in the UK- in the US, if you want to get into tech, you go to San Francisco, if you wanna get into finance, you go to New York, if you wanna get into entertainment, you'd typically go to LA, if you wanted to get into politics, you'd typically go to Washington. In UK it's London, London-

Chris Williamson 45:16 (laughs)

George Mack 45:17 ... London, London. And obviously that's changing, Manchester's beginning to boom a little bit, but if we could begin to decentralize things a lot more, that Newcastle could go, "You know what? We're gonna be the AI-"

Chris Williamson 45:28 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

George Mack 45:28 "... capital, and if you come here, we can have all these incentives." That would-

Chris Williamson 45:31 The YI capital.

George Mack 45:32 (laughs) Fascinating. Y- (laughs) YI.

Chris Williamson 45:34 Oh, yes.

George Mack 45:35 There we go.

Chris Williamson 45:35 Fucking got it.

George Mack 45:36 There we go.

Chris Williamson 45:36 All right. (laughs)

George Mack 45:39 (laughs) Fucking

George Mack 45:40 hell.

Chris Williamson 45:40 Why do you say that adults don't exist?

George Mack 45:43 Oh, fucking hell. This is, um, probably my most, when I had this idea, somebody asked the question of if you could have something on the billboard for everybody to see, what would it be? And it would just be, "Adults don't exist." And it's just a big mistake of mine, like having not that much agency growing up and still at times trying to improve it, where you constantly think there's this adult class out there, and again, it kind of comes from the education system of teachers. You have these teachers and they've kind of figured out life and they're giving you all this advice and they, they, they've, these adults, and I say this kind of two red pills that make you realize that adults don't exist. So the first one is when you go to college or university and one of your friends or people that you know who's just so, like all over the place, unintentional, hungover all the time, doesn't know what they wanna do with their life and they go, "Thinking of becoming a teacher," and you go, "Hold on. Well all my teachers-"

Chris Williamson 46:49 (laughs)

George Mack 46:49 "... or a significant amount of my teachers, that person who just didn't know what they wanted to do, and I put them on this pedestal." So it's this kind of low agency mindset of thinking that there's these emperors out there that are wearing these beautiful clothes, and there's these CEOs, there's these politicians, but actually, the more high agency perspective is realizing that they're just grown up children, right? They were a sperm cell that fertilized an egg that came out screaming, that looked at things around them, learnt this language, and puberty kicked in, and then they're a quote unquote "adult." And the other realization you have is when you're 15 and you meet like a 25-year-old, you go, "Wow, they're 25. That's like old. That's an adult." And you, you become 25 and you go, "I still don't-"

Chris Williamson 47:34 When am I gonna become an adult?

George Mack 47:35 "... when am I become an adult?" And you realize, oh, 30 is the same, and I think it'll just be the same all the way throughout. So there's, these adults just don't exist.

Chris Williamson 47:44 Yeah. I have this sort of undue respect, I think, and I place an awful lot, I, I did for a long time, similar to yourself, place an awful lot of credence in authority. Uh, I think this is a big British thing too, like Brits love a queue, love queuing, can't wait to queue. Um, and that sense that the people in charge know what they're doing. Ah, they've got it all sorted. Uh, you know, think about America, think of a perfect example of this, perfect example, not to bring it back to the UK, US thing. Look at the, uh, first dose vaccine uptake in the UK compared with the US. I think first dose in the UK will probably by now be 96%, it was at least 92 a couple of years ago. So 96%.I think the U.S. it wasn't even two thirds.

George Mack 48:35 Hm.

Chris Williamson 48:36 So there are so many more people on this side of the pond that are prepared to say, "I don't think the people in charge know what they're fucking doing."

George Mack 48:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:45 I have distrust in our officials, in the people that say that they are beyond us. I wonder whether this is at least in part downstream from having a monarchy. You know, Your Highness, it's someone that is raised above us. Highness, right? You're literally positioning yourself. This is an Alex O'Connor-ism. Um, you know, argued with Piers Morgan about this. Um, yeah, I put a lot of undue, uh, weight in the words of people who knew no more than me, and it's that same thing about business, uh, degree lecturers at university. Like, these are the people teaching you about business. What is the outcome you want to be successful at business. Okay. If you were successful at business, would you be teaching business in a UK univ- uh, Newcastle University? Probably not. I'd probably be busy running my business.

George Mack 49:32 Mm-Hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:33 Uh, like, not everyone's Scott Galloway, swanning in to give a- a- like, community speech once every quarter and saying that he still teaches at NYU Stern.

George Mack 49:42 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:42 (Laughs) It's like an honorary position for Scott Galloway.

George Mack 49:45 Yeah, that kind of stuff.

Chris Williamson 49:45 Yeah, yeah. M- meanwhile, he paid 14 mil in taxes last year.

George Mack 49:49 Yep.

Chris Williamson 49:49 Like, he's got proof in the pudding. But yeah, I think it's idiots all the way up, and it's the same for any industry that you care to care about, whether it's status, whether it's athletics, whether it's podcasting, whether it... Like, any of the people that you respect probably don't have that much of a clue about what they're doing. They all fumbled through the w- the number of people that I've met that have a really well-constructed thesis, first principle, fundamental view of why they do the things they do, how the world works, why they've got to the place that they are, almost everybody just stumbled into it. There was that thing from my live show that, uh, adulthood is like being pushed down a set of stairs at age 18 and trying to catch your feet until you die. Just permanently building it as you go. Like, "Oh fuck, we're in the air." Like, "All right, we'll put a wing on the plane, and let's get a propeller, and let's do this thing."

George Mack 50:35 Mm-Hmm. Yeah, I come back to one of the problems with adulthood as well, is during childhood, there's these milestones that you have. Not being able to talk (laughs) , like, being able to talk, walk. I guess it's the reverse order. Then first grade, second grade, third grade. Oh, you have these big birthdays every single year that people celebrate. GCSEs, in our case, A-levels, uh, or middle school, high school, whatever the- they have out here. And then adulthood, and it's pretty much mortgage, wedding, uh, like death, funerals of other people and- and-

Chris Williamson 51:08 Kids maybe? Your first-

George Mack 51:08 ... yeah, kids. Sorry, yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:09 ... first kids being born.

George Mack 51:10 Kids, mortgage, wedding, kids, funerals of- funerals of loved ones, then your own funeral. So there's so few milestones. What's really interesting is COVID then acted as a quite an interesting milestone now, whereas when you talk to people about COVID, there's a before COVID moment and then after COVID moment. And I actually think it's quite, it's interesting when you get to experience other cultures for the first time and you go, "Of course, that's such a better way of doing things." So, in the Jewish community, they celebrate, uh, bar mitzvahs, which is a big coming of age when you're 13. And I think there should be some kind of bar mitzvah for turning 25.

Chris Williamson 51:42 Mm.

George Mack 51:42 'Cause your brain kind of fully develops when you're 25.

Chris Williamson 51:44 Mm.

George Mack 51:44 And it's when it's def-

Chris Williamson 51:45 Speak for yourself.

George Mack 51:46 25. Yeah, I know, still struggling. Um, it's when the rail guards of life are like fully released at 25 as well. Y- you have some friends who are in prison, you have others that are like selling NFTs online, you have this person who has three kids, and it feels like 25... What's that Benjamin Franklin quote of, "The average person dies at 25 and isn't buried until 75"? I think we should probably do more milestones in adulthood because if not, you end up to loop back the conversation to the start in the busy trap and then it just, before you know it, it's all gone.

Chris Williamson 52:14 Yeah. You've run, you've run through everything without any milestones. We'll get back to talking to George in one minute, but first, I need to tell you about AG1. 90% of Americans are not getting the nutrients. Didn't think I was gonna catch that, did you? Yes, 90% of Americans are not getting the nutrients that they need every day to be healthy. AG1 provides daily nutrients and gut health support in one comprehensive, convenient, and tasty daily drink. The average supplement is tested for 10 contaminants. AG1 is tested for 950, including pesticides, heavy metals, toxins, and more. Plus, it's NSF certified for sport, meaning even Olympic athletes can use it. So there is guaranteed no banned substances or unsafe contaminants. If you're not sure about trying it, there is a 90-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it, use it every single day for three months, and if you do not like it, they will give you all of your money back. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Right now, you can try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3 and K2, plus five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to drinkag1.com/wisdom. That's drinkag1.com/wisdom. I had this take where I wanted to normalize girls getting, uh, a single round of IVF with egg freezing for their 21st birthday.

George Mack 53:33 Hm.

Chris Williamson 53:34 I think that if you could instantiate-

George Mack 53:35 Wow.

Chris Williamson 53:35 ... that into culture, I think that that would result in an awful lot more freedom for women. And I get a lot of criticism-

George Mack 53:41 Wow.

Chris Williamson 53:41 ... for being like way too pro-male, apart from all of the pro-male people online who think that I'm way too pro-women.

George Mack 53:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:47 But, uh, I think that this is just a win for everybody. I don't know anybody who loses. It's not a fertilized egg, so the abortion community debate doesn't have a problem with it presumably, unless they have a problem with every period that a girl has, which I'm gonna guess maybe someone does. But, um, 21st birthday, don't buy them a watch, don't buy them shoes, don't buy them a holiday to Zante with their friends. I mean, it's more expensive. This is, you know, high, uh, i- it's a significantly bigger investment, but, uh, I think that it just opens up so much. And that would be another milestone in some way, and it would be the- the best insurance policy that you could think of, and it would help to combat, uh, declining population-

George Mack 54:27 Hm.

Chris Williamson 54:28 ... uh, declining birth rates. Like, it's just that, 21, peak fertility, fantastic quality of eggs.... one round of IVF is gonna get you, God, I, I don't know what you get at 21, I've never even seen data on it, like maybe like 15, 20 viable eggs that you'd get. Pop it away, put it in the fridge, and then you're 38 and you've worked on your career for a long time, or you're 29 and your partner and you are having fertility pro- whatever, you, it's just, it's straight up optionality. And, uh, I think that, that, you know, just thinking about where are we missing milestones? I'm gonna freeze my sperm. I've got, uh, legacy sperm, by the way. Uh, I did a ton of research and spoke to a bunch of friends that are like in the IVF world, legacy sperm in America at least is wh- what it seems to be the number one. Do you know how much it is to get 25 years of frozen sp- your, your sperm? Two separate, uh, units of frozen sperm, five grand.

George Mack 55:21 Oh, wow.

Chris Williamson 55:22 Five grand for a quarter of a decade, a quarter of a century to freeze your sperm for. And I was like, "W- why? Why?" A- five grand is not a nominal amount of money, like it's a big amount of money. Why wouldn't I just come in a cup?

George Mack 55:35 Yeah, I'm just picturing someone like you, Seth, trying to do his own home (laughs) keeping it in a freezer to try and-

Chris Williamson 55:41 Don't DIY it.

George Mack 55:41 ... to try and save the five grand.

Chris Williamson 55:43 Don't DIY it.

George Mack 55:44 Yeah. Hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:45 It's in there next to the Ben & Jerry's.

George Mack 55:46 Well, Bill Ackman, I think had this idea, I could be butchering it, but it was along the lines of rather than pensions, uh, the government would, when the child's born, put money in the S&P 500 or some kind of ETF. And by the time they're 65, it will be millions, and you can almost guarantee that across every single citizen-

Chris Williamson 56:03 Hmm.

George Mack 56:03 ... versus them having to slowly but surely realize when they're 36 that they probably should start contributing towards a pension.

Chris Williamson 56:10 Hmm.

George Mack 56:10 But again, trying to get these ideas to be tested, you would need, looping the conversation round again, multiple states, particularly in the UK, to be able to do that. I don't think... It'd be very, very difficult, I think, to get that through, uh, House of Parliament.

Chris Williamson 56:22 What is your contrarian take about whether money buys happiness or not?

George Mack 56:27 So, everybody's probably heard the question, does money buy happiness? And then there'll be a big debate either way, but the correct way to actually answer that question is to say, "That is the stupidest question that I've ever heard," and then explain why. So we can use, uh, an example here. Let's say you've used 95% of your salary to get this crazy penthouse in New York to show off to everybody, and you realize in the first night that your next door neighbor's P Diddy. And he's just-

Chris Williamson 57:03 (laughs)

George Mack 57:04 He's just having these, like, wild, loud orgies all night, and it's just a-

Chris Williamson 57:08 Beating his wife in the corridor outside.

George Mack 57:09 Ye- yeah, yeah. A nightmare to live next to, right? In that case, did money buy happiness? Actually, money might have bought misery. Let's say you then go on Amazon Prime and get those earplugs, silicone ones that mold to your ear, that block out all noise, and it costs you $10. Well, in that case, a little bit of money bought a lot of happiness. So, the problem with this phrase, "Does money buy happiness?" is it implies all money is created equal and all happiness is created equal. And you can see, if you ask the question... So when people ask you that question, the best question to reply with is, "Does money buy good investments?" Well, I know some people that have bought-

Chris Williamson 57:50 Depends what you invested in.

George Mack 57:50 ... incredible stocks really early on, and I know some people that have bought Bitcoin 1, 2, 3, and had a terrible time. So ultimately, it completely depends on what you've invested in. So the actual re- what the question's trying to get to, or what the real answer to the question should be, is that strategic money buys happiness and unstrategic money can buy misery. Or strategic money can buy happiness, and unstrategic money can buy misery. Exactly the same with investments. So, the reason why this question exists is because within itself it's a presupposition. It presupposes that all money is created equal, and it presupposes that all happiness is created equal, when it's not. It's a completely individualistic thing, like an investment.

Chris Williamson 58:32 What is a way to strategically spend money, and what is a way to un-strategically spend money?

George Mack 58:38 The, the honest answer is, and this makes it into a terrible YouTube clip, but the honest answer is, is that it's so personalized to the individual. By definition, um, it's comp- wha- may make one person happy with one purchase may make another person happy with another purchase.

Chris Williamson 58:56 I gave you a pickleball paddle. That's brought an awful lot of happiness.

George Mack 58:59 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 58:59 If I gave that pickleball paddle to Zach, it would become a doorstop.

George Mack 59:02 Yes. So it's looking at the, um, cost of w- thing, service, product, experience, and impact that has on your life.

Chris Williamson 59:12 Utility of the person.

George Mack 59:13 Utility, yeah. I mean, Zach said the other day at yours that you guys have a sauna that you spent a little bit of money on.

Chris Williamson 59:18 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 59:19 And he says that is an example of strategic money can buy happiness.

Chris Williamson 59:22 Mm-hmm. Yeah, uh, it's a very interesting reframe on the question, and we'd spoken about this before. I think both of us are fortunate that we have a low materialism set point, and I've always thought about this as a competitive advantage for people. So, if you grew up in a household that was, uh, gifts and, um, public presence and stuff were kind of displays of affection, if large things were made out of birthdays and of Christmases and that wa- there was a sort of keeping up with the Joneses mentality, maybe mom or dad were always looking to improve the car and stuff like that, that's fine, but it is likely that as you grow into an adult, you will tie an awful lot of your self-worth and your place in the world to the possessions that you have, or your ability to provide possessions to other people. Or maybe the way that they give gifts and possessions to you as a, a show of their love and affection. And again, hidden versus observable metrics. It's very... In a society that is obsessed with more, more, more, it is a radically revolutionary thing to say that I have enough.

George Mack 1:00:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:31 And I have always seen, of all of the different mental pathologies I've got, and it's a fucking laundry list-... the one of the ones I'm most glad that I don't have, after alcoholism and, and sort of substance stuff, is, uh, a need for materialistic possessions to make me feel, uh, satiated and, and, and satisfied and enough. So, if you are the sort of person that doesn't have that, if you don't have a drive to get more possessions in order to make yourself happy, you can basically see that as your happiness burn rate is way lower. You know, it's 10 times less, 100 times less than somebody else. And you could have been brought up or born with the predisposition where you had to have the newest car, you had to have the fanciest bag, you had to always be flying away on holidays. Is it fun? Yeah. But basically, that means that your operating costs as a human are way higher.

George Mack 1:01:24 Mm. Yeah, it's, it's a good point.

Chris Williamson 1:01:28 (laughs)

George Mack 1:01:29 I'm reminded of, uh, I forgot who said it, it might be Coco Chanel, of, "The best things in life are free, and the second-best things are really, really, really expensive."

Chris Williamson 1:01:37 (laughs)

George Mack 1:01:38 Um, but yeah, the- the more str- the more- the more I've realized as I get older is, you know, the money buy happiness question is so absurd, and all it comes down to is how strategic you can be with your money.

Chris Williamson 1:01:51 When it comes to you, you said it was personalized.

George Mack 1:01:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:53 When it comes to you, what are the places that you have found a disproportionate, uh, investment leverage, where when you spend a dollar on it, are you getting 10X return in terms of your money for happiness?

George Mack 1:02:10 Uh, earplugs.

Chris Williamson 1:02:11 Yeah. (laughs)

George Mack 1:02:11 It goes back to literally, not 'cause I'm next to Diddy, but earplugs.

Chris Williamson 1:02:15 (laughs)

George Mack 1:02:15 Um, especially when I'm traveling around. Because if I have one bad night's sleep, and I get these silicone moldable ones-

Chris Williamson 1:02:21 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 1:02:21 ... that I exchange each time, it's like $5 to $10 a week.

Chris Williamson 1:02:24 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 1:02:24 Which sounds like quite a hefty earplug budget, but it's definitely way more than any, like, materialistic purchase that I've made. Essentially, anything that makes me feel better throughout the day or speeds up time.

Chris Williamson 1:02:36 What s- what sorts of things?

George Mack 1:02:38 Um, paying for access to a sauna.

Chris Williamson 1:02:42 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 1:02:42 That I can regularly go there, for example. Or if I'm looking at an option where I'm staying that's slightly nearer a gym.

Chris Williamson 1:02:49 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 1:02:49 I, uh, thinking through, just base- I always come back to, like one of the things I think about is, like high-leverage relaxation. So, look at things that recharge you, that give you the most amount of energy, and what has the s- the lowest cost or the lowest energy to produce that. Um, so those two things in particular. Being able to see friends. Um, ge- Like, Dickie gave us this at my birthday, 'cause I've never experienced until I came here the difference between Ubers and Uber COMFORTS. And in America, uh, the Uber can be any car that pulls up. Whereas an Uber COMFORT, you get in this, like, comfy little Tesla, and it's only an extra $2 sometimes for the journey.

Chris Williamson 1:03:27 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 1:03:27 Um, depends on the ride. And that is like an example of a little bit of money there, strategic money. But if I'm going somewhere like today, and I'm in like a nice Tesla beforehand, and I can think about what we're gonna chat about, versus if I'm in like a clapped-up car that's breaking down.

Chris Williamson 1:03:40 Yeah.

George Mack 1:03:41 It's a bit more of a problem.

Chris Williamson 1:03:42 Yeah. Those are, those are really good ones. Dickie had a, a... You can go all the way down to the very bottom, which is, uh, Exec XL, which is a, a big Yukon or an Escalade or something. And you realize, when you actually price it together for the number of people that are going, especially if you're going XL, it's like maybe twice as expensive, but you feel like, you feel like P Diddy-

George Mack 1:04:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:03 ... right? But w- w- without the-

George Mack 1:04:04 With all the stuff. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:05 ... the violence. Without the violence.

George Mack 1:04:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:06 Yeah. You feel like P Diddy in his heyday.

George Mack 1:04:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:08 Uh, that's great. I'm trying to think about other stuff for me. Certainly paying for, uh, assistance with things that I want to do. So you were talking about high-leverage, uh, recovery. Going to the gym is great. Going to the gym with the trainer.

George Mack 1:04:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:21 You leave with more energy than you went in with. It doesn't sap your willpower. There's just somebody there that's telling you what to do. Same thing would be true for, uh, going to a CrossFit class, you know, paying for a CrossFit membership. Like, yeah, you know, The Gym or Planet Fitness or something, I can get that for £13 a month. Okay, but how much of your energy is it sapping? How much of your willpower are you having to use to get yourself into the stage where you can get some energy back? Like, you're spending energy to get energy. Whereas if you're going to a CrossFit class or a Barry's Bootcamp or you get a PT or you do whatever. Uh, last night I did a breathwork class. I think it was $15.

George Mack 1:04:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:56 $15 for a breathwork class for an hour. I did as much breathwork last night as I did all of last week. An hour of breathwork last night, and I think I managed to get four 15-minute sessions in last week. And it cost 15 bucks. So, I think externalizing motivation, that's a big one for me. Um, good quality coffee. Uh, like nice, nice coffee, nice water, stuff like that. And th- these are, for many people, goods that would push their spend to, uh, income ratio up a little bit. But, uh, yeah, you can get an awful lot of happiness out of quite low spend, and you'd be surprised at the places that it comes from.

George Mack 1:05:32 Yeah, the obvious answer is things that you use a lot as well. So shoes, bed-

Chris Williamson 1:05:36 Laptop.

George Mack 1:05:37 ... laptop.

Chris Williamson 1:05:38 Laptop riser.

George Mack 1:05:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:41 Why have you been obsessed with Roger Federer-

George Mack 1:05:44 Uh-

Chris Williamson 1:05:44 ... and Djokovic and Nadal? Because you just won't shut up about them.

George Mack 1:05:47 Oh, this is so good. So this came from Matthew Syed. And for me, this is, I've always enjoyed, like, self-help and self-improvement. But there's a part of it that always felt a bit icky. And this metaphor kind of explains my problem with it. And Matthew Syed is a big tennis fan, and he talks about, he would go and watch tennis, and it was such a unique point in history because you had the three GOATs at once. So in football you had arguably the two GOATs at once, you had Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. In tennis, you had Djokovic, Nadal and Federer. And obviously in the self-help world or that space, it's like, "This is the way." Or you see these Instagram Reels and it's like, "If you do A, B, C, this will happen." And what's beautiful about this metaphor that Syed tells is...You have, he used to watch at Wimbledon, the warm-up courts. So he'd turn up and Nadal's there, and Nadal is, like, full-on Goggins, like biceps bulging, screaming as he's hitting the shots, like, s-

Chris Williamson 1:06:54 In warm-up?

George Mack 1:06:55 Yeah, in warm-up, sprinting up and down to get himself into the zone, like, going as hard as he can. Then you have Djokovic who comes out, who's almost an emotionless, like, robot, who's just laser focused on getting the job done. Watches him warm up, he's like... Hold on, these are the two goats at the same time, completely different way of doing things. Then Federer turns up, and you can hear him laughing before he arrives at the court. He's trialing, like, trick shots, he's doing dinks, he's laughing with his friends. He's just finessing the ball left, right and center, and these three, and obviously there's a debate between them, but these three are arguably the three goats of their, at the exact same time, give or take, and had completely different philosophies to doing things. And that goes to show, and I've always now took that metaphor whenever somebody gives me, "Oh, you need to do things this way," or, "This is the way this gets done." And realizing, "Oh, okay. That's the Djokovic way of doing it. That might not apply to me."

Chris Williamson 1:07:54 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 1:07:54 Or, "That's the Federer way of doing it." Or, "That's the Nadal way of doing it." Ironically, Nadal actually had the most amount of injuries, which is, um, one thing you could take into consideration. But ultimately there's no the way, as shown by those three. There's completely different ways of achieving essentially the exact same output.

Chris Williamson 1:08:12 In other news, this episode is brought to you by LMNT. If you dread the thought of drinking plain water all day, sugary electrolyte drinks and lemon water that turn your teeth yellow just don't cut it, which is why I've partnered with LMNT. They make the best tasting electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. With LMNT, hydration becomes a treat rather than a chore. Each grab-and-go pack replaces essential electrolytes like sodium, potassium and magnesium with no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients. It'll help to reduce muscle cramps and fatigue. It'll mean that you don't need to drag yourself throughout the day. You might not be tired, you might not need more caffeine, you might just be dehydrated. Also, they have a no BS, no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration, so you can buy it for as long as you want, and if you don't like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. I wonder whether one of the reasons that people look for one-size-fits-all answers to questions is that if there's three potential answers to the question, that then puts the onus back onto them-

George Mack 1:09:28 I think so.

Chris Williamson 1:09:28 ... to work out how to do it.

George Mack 1:09:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:30 Right? What people want is a reliable set of inputs that can get them the outcome someone else got. They don't need to go, "What is the way for you to get the outcome?" It's the same thing again, it's what are you focusing on? Inputs or outcomes? You want to get the outcomes-

George Mack 1:09:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:45 ... but if someone says, "Here is the answer," there is no answer. There are multiple different ways, and here are some principles, and you need to work it out. It's like, I fucking... I paid $500 for this course.

George Mack 1:09:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:56 I've paid $500 for the productivity course, and you're telling me that it isn't that I need an external brain, but I might do, and it isn't that I need to do spaced repetition, but I might do, and it isn't that I need to do time blocking, but I might do. Uh, yeah, I think a huge hesitation should be placed on saying this person achieved success and did this thing, therefore doing the thing that they did will cause me, different person, different disposition, different background, different set point, to get the same outcome that they did.

George Mack 1:10:27 Mm-hmm. I think it then comes down to the scientific method. It's, we live in the Enlightenment period. It's only been, what, not a couple of hundred years or so that we've had electricity, had all the things that we take for granted now, and that comes out of the scientific revolution and applying a scientific frame to viewing these problems of, okay, that's the Nadal way of doing it, that's the Djokovic way of doing it, that's the Federer way of doing it. How about I'll try this, see how that goes? I'll try this, see how that goes. Try this and see how that goes, and then judging based off the experiments how it worked personally for you. You're seeing this huge boom in nutrition, right, where for the last 50 years it was like, there's this diet, there's the only banana diet, there's the vomit three times a day diet, and now it's like actually what's probably the best diet for Chris is different to what's the best diet for George-

Chris Williamson 1:11:20 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 1:11:20 Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Chris Williamson 1:11:22 Yeah.

George Mack 1:11:22 And I think we'll just find out more and more with time that personalization is more and more important than we think. But as you mentioned then, it's hard to sell that, so it's not as gimmicky. It's not as easy to get people into a funnel that buys the 699 course because it's often a lot more personalization and the people need to have a lot more agency over their existence.

Chris Williamson 1:11:44 The work is put back onto the person who-

George Mack 1:11:46 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:11:46 ... needs to do the work.

George Mack 1:11:47 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:11:47 Like-

George Mack 1:11:47 But it's the truth, it's the way.

Chris Williamson 1:11:48 I... Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think that you're right. We also

Chris Williamson 1:11:51 had this discussion in Miami, uh, about why hard work is something that people often pray at the altar of, and I'm one of these people, right? You know, Hormozi being on the show, Goggins, Jocko, et cetera. I don't disagree. Hard work is a very reliable route to achieving success, but I think that optimizing exclusively for hard work causes you to miss an awful lot of the higher leverage, uh, routes, and also maybe some of the more personalized ones too. There's very few problems in life that aren't made easier by working harder, but there are other higher leverage, higher return, less painful routes to achieving the same outcome. Those are less reliable though.

George Mack 1:12:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:12:32 Right? Like, hard work will almost always get you closer to your goal. Working harder will almost always get you closer to your goal incrementally. Uh, therefore it's like a, um...... moderately effective but highly robust drug that I could give you to-

George Mack 1:12:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:12:50 ... deal with some malady that you're dealing with. And then here's five other options, four of which won't work at all, but one of which will work ten times better than you just doing the hard work thing. And maybe hard work sits sort of alongside it, you kind of, uh, loop them in as, as, uh, combination. Um, but yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why (clears throat) praying at the altar of hard work is something that's so, uh, it's so pedestalized because when has anybody ever worked harder and it hasn't helped at least a little bit? So it's the panacea, but it's actually only working at sort of a, a, a, a ceiling capped sort of rate. And there's way more effective versions that you could look at alongside that or outside of that, that isn't just, okay, just get up earlier, go to bed later, spend more time in front of the screen.

George Mack 1:13:39 Mm-hmm. What's an example for yourself that's more productive or impactful than hard work, or things that you often neglect because you're too busy working hard that often is a bigger lever?

Chris Williamson 1:13:51 Reading. So I asked myself this question during my end of year review, I think I asked you-

George Mack 1:13:55 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:13:55 ... this as well, what are the things I think are productive but aren't?

George Mack 1:13:58 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:13:58 And what are the things that are productive but I don't realize are? And that's just such a phenomenal question, because you're starting to see where am I putting, investing into hard work, kind of reliable but could be not so useful? And where am I not seeing the penny stocks that have got 1,000 X potential upside? So for me, sitting in front of the computer when I'm not working or when I'm low on energy makes me feel like I'm working, it makes me feel like I'm busy. I actually don't really get anything done. Uh, being on Slack, being on emails and taking calls, for the most part, very, very low ROI. Does move me incrementally closer to the goal of whatever it is that I'm trying to do. Uh, stuff that is productive but I don't realize it, uh, going for a walk without my AirPods in and without a phone. Uh, reading, which is huge. Reading and writing probably should have been in there. Focused reading and writing, massive, massive upsides. Um, going for coffees with-

George Mack 1:14:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:14:56 ... uh, friends, uh, and going for dinner with people that come through town for a short period of time. So, uh, next week we're gonna go for dinner (laughs) . We're going for nut pudding with Bryan Johnson and, uh, a bunch of his, a bunch of his friends. And it's like, you know, it's a Thursday night, it's gonna be one of the last nights that you're here, like, do we really want to, uh, uh, spend the time with you, we're not too sure. But I can almost guarantee that I will come away from that evening with an amazing story or some cool insights or a new friend, or e- something cool. So I just think saying yes to more-

George Mack 1:15:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:27 ... novelty is a good, a good start.

George Mack 1:15:29 One I'd add on to the list that's really meta, that I think when we discussed the UK issue earlier, and I know you chat to, like, young guys a lot or in that space, about feeling lonely or the-

Chris Williamson 1:15:42 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 1:15:42 ... loneliness epidemic. One of the things that doesn't feel productive but I'd say is like the, the most productive thing I've ever done is, whenever I'm on social media, which is by definition often quite unproductive time, or it's like, I describe Twitter now as like swimming through sewage searching for gold. And every day I'll get a bit of gold but I'm covered in shit, and it's like-

Chris Williamson 1:16:01 (laughs)

George Mack 1:16:01 ... that's the trade, that's the trade-off that I kind of make with social media platforms now. And one of my friends recently was saying, um, how he's not got a circle like himself