Note Apps, Book Summaries & iPhone Tips - Life Hacks 205 | Modern Wisdom Podcast 341
Yusef Smith (guest), Jonny Watson (guest), Chris Williamson (host)
In this episode of Modern Wisdom, featuring Yusef Smith and Jonny Watson, Note Apps, Book Summaries & iPhone Tips - Life Hacks 205 | Modern Wisdom Podcast 341 explores smartphones, note apps, and tiny tweaks for a better life This Life Hacks episode of Modern Wisdom features Chris Williamson with Johnny and Yusef from Propane Fitness sharing practical tweaks for productivity, training, and daily living. They cover iPhone automations, leaving Evernote for Apple Notes, how to think about book-summary apps, and small physical hacks from warmups to Frisbees and stuffing. The conversation also branches into media recommendations, existential risk, and the psychology of goals and birthdays. Overall, it’s a grab-bag of low-friction optimizations mixed with light comedy and some deeper reflections on reading, attention, and what we choose to care about.
Smartphones, note apps, and tiny tweaks for a better life
This Life Hacks episode of Modern Wisdom features Chris Williamson with Johnny and Yusef from Propane Fitness sharing practical tweaks for productivity, training, and daily living. They cover iPhone automations, leaving Evernote for Apple Notes, how to think about book-summary apps, and small physical hacks from warmups to Frisbees and stuffing. The conversation also branches into media recommendations, existential risk, and the psychology of goals and birthdays. Overall, it’s a grab-bag of low-friction optimizations mixed with light comedy and some deeper reflections on reading, attention, and what we choose to care about.
Key Takeaways
Use iPhone Shortcuts to automate repetitive tasks.
Setting automations like enabling Low Power Mode at 20% battery or triggering lights and app shortcuts reduces friction and mental load for things you do constantly.
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Speed and friction matter more than features in note-taking apps.
Yusef abandoned Evernote for Apple Notes because Evernote became slow and clunky; a fast, always-available 'external brain' (with seamless sync and quick capture) beats richer but laggy feature sets.
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Treat book summaries as discovery tools, not replacements.
Blinkist and similar services can quickly expose you to many concepts and help decide which full books are worth your limited reading life, but they rarely provide enough depth for true behavioral change.
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Design a simple, written warmup you always follow.
Having a short, repeatable warmup that gets you literally sweating before training improves performance and reduces injury risk, and a checklist in Apple Notes or on a board helps you stop skipping it.
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Attach physical targets to your age to keep progressing.
Yusef’s example—benching bodyweight for his age reps each birthday—illustrates using age-linked goals (physical, mental, or creative) to combat complacency and track meaningful progress over years.
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Plan for your constraints when traveling, especially protein.
On arrival, buying a tub of protein and a shaker makes it much easier to hit protein targets, stay satiated, and avoid the usual nutrient drift that happens on holidays or work trips.
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Use curated info services to break out of your echo chamber.
Apps like Curio (audio journalism) and newsletters like The Browser give you high-quality, pre-filtered articles and audio outside your usual interests, broadening your worldview without extra search effort.
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Notable Quotes
“Your brain cannot have a lag. Even if it's only a five or a 10-second lag.”
— Yusef
“Most self-improvement books are a single concept that are padded out.”
— Johnny
“You have to have the Wotsit eater for the influenza specialist.”
— Chris Williamson
“It's like year seven PE level advice… but having a written down warm up that you do each time makes such a difference.”
— Johnny
“It’s your duty to give the universe what only you can give it because only you can.”
— Chris Williamson
Questions Answered in This Episode
How do you decide when an app’s slowness or friction justifies abandoning it, despite sunk costs and familiarity?
This Life Hacks episode of Modern Wisdom features Chris Williamson with Johnny and Yusef from Propane Fitness sharing practical tweaks for productivity, training, and daily living. ...
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In what situations is a book summary genuinely enough, and when is reading the full book indispensable for real change?
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How could you design an age-linked personal benchmark (physical or otherwise) that would still be meaningful and safe in 20–30 years?
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What small automations or defaults on your phone or laptop are currently costing you attention that could be reclaimed with a one-time setup?
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How might using curated services like Curio or The Browser change your long-term beliefs or career direction compared to self-selecting all your content?
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Transcript Preview
I suppose I've got to start with-
(laughs)
... the biggest announcement of the year. I'm leaving Evernote. It's official.
Oh, okay.
Having a written down warm up that you do each time makes such a difference in training. It's like year seven PE level advice. This is like-
Arm circles. Do you do arm circles?
Yes. I, so I actually do arm circles.
Hang on, hang on. Can I, can we back up for-
You start small and then go bigger.
Can we back up for a second? Are you, as an international level power lifter, telling us that a game changing life hack for you is doing a warm up? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome back to the show. It is another life hacks episode. Tools, techniques, and tactics for a productive and efficient life. I tried to get some of the world's most productive people on to join me today, but none of them were available. Then I asked Dominic Cummings, he wasn't available. So I've settled for Johnny and Yusef from propanefitness.com. Welcome to the show gentlemen.
Hello.
Thanks for having us.
It's a pleasure. What have you been doing recently other than the first time that we've been out for food in a venue post pandemic so far? Happened last night.
Not much. Well, it feels like I'm doing a lot, but that's just like occasionally leaving the house and going to places ...
(laughs)
... which feels like, gosh, like I can't handle this.
Novelty.
My, my calendar is really strained.
Novelty.
But yeah, it's, I'm, I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying like the slow ... I'm pleased that there's like a, there's a road map of, of gradual release 'cause I think if it had just been in your house for a year and then everything's available.
Like features of Apple products, like you don't want the virtual reality headset right now. You want it-
Yeah.
... to be drip fed to us over the-
That's a, that's a great way of looking at it. I don't think anyone will be ready for like augmented reality, so you need to phase it in, don't you?
Fine, fine, yeah. Just push it back. Keep on pushing it back by four weeks. Anyway, uh, on this episode if you're not familiar with life hacks, we go through whatever we've come up with to make life a little bit more efficient and effective over the last few months since our last episode. All the links to everything that we talk about, if there's any discount codes or whatever will be in the show notes below. And, as is tradition up first is a hot potato for Jonathan Watson. There you go Johnny.
(laughs)
What have you, what have you got for us?
Got it. Got it. Uh, I have a, an automation, a phone, an iPhone automation. Uh, as we were just talking about, I just have, uh, an old, cheap, chatty iPhone XR so I'm sure the new ones can just do this automatically. But one of the automations I have set up is to automatically turn on low power mode at a low battery percentage, which just gives me peace of mind a little bit, a little bit extra.
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