Life Hacks 210
Yusef Smith (guest), Chris Williamson (host), Jonny Watson (guest), Narrator
In this episode of Modern Wisdom, featuring Yusef Smith and Chris Williamson, Life Hacks 210 explores practical Life Hacks: Productivity, Fitness, Sleep, Travel, And Tech This Life Hacks episode of Modern Wisdom features Chris Williamson, Yusuf, and Jonny sharing a rapid-fire assortment of tactics for improving productivity, health, training, sleep, and travel. They cover structured annual reviews, red light therapy, training tweaks, nutritional tracking, caffeine and sleep protocols, and even airport and hotel tricks. The conversation mixes concrete product recommendations (apps, supplements, gadgets) with behavioral strategies and mindsets that make habits easier to start and sustain. Humor and personal anecdotes about injuries, tipping in the US, and social dynamics keep the discussion light while still highly practical.
Practical Life Hacks: Productivity, Fitness, Sleep, Travel, And Tech
This Life Hacks episode of Modern Wisdom features Chris Williamson, Yusuf, and Jonny sharing a rapid-fire assortment of tactics for improving productivity, health, training, sleep, and travel. They cover structured annual reviews, red light therapy, training tweaks, nutritional tracking, caffeine and sleep protocols, and even airport and hotel tricks. The conversation mixes concrete product recommendations (apps, supplements, gadgets) with behavioral strategies and mindsets that make habits easier to start and sustain. Humor and personal anecdotes about injuries, tipping in the US, and social dynamics keep the discussion light while still highly practical.
Key Takeaways
Use a structured annual review before setting goals.
Guided questions about what made you happiest, who you enjoyed, and which habits drove success (via tools like Chris’s review template or Chris Sparks/David Perell frameworks) help you see patterns, avoid repeating negative experiences, and set goals that grow directly out of your actual year rather than arbitrary resolutions.
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Leverage red light therapy and sleep cocktails for better recovery and sleep.
A quality red/infrared light panel (proper wavelengths, not just a red bulb) can support mood, inflammation, and potentially hormones at a relatively low long‑term cost, while Huberman-inspired sleep stacks (magnesium L‑threonate, L‑theanine, apigenin, optionally glycine) can noticeably deepen sleep when cycled intelligently and sourced from reputable brands.
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Vary training structure and environment to maintain motivation and reduce injury.
Rotating a 4‑day program across 3 weekly sessions, using tools like safety squat bars, multiple gyms for different moods (quiet solo, social, class-based), and higher‑stimulus, lower‑fatigue techniques (better range of motion, machine choice) can keep training fun, effective, and sustainable as you age or recover from nagging injuries.
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Track both macros and micros to plug invisible nutritional gaps.
Plugging a typical day of eating into Cronometer reveals how hard it is to reach micronutrient RDAs from food alone; pairing this with macro‑tracking apps like MacroFactor (dynamic calorie adjustments, AI food logging) and, where appropriate, a high‑quality greens supplement or planned meals (via Eat This Much) can dramatically upgrade diet quality and consistency.
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Treat caffeine as a performance enhancer, not a crutch.
Protocols like every‑other‑day caffeine use or staged decaffeination (gradually swapping coffees for decaf, or using low‑caffeine options like Norlo or hojicha) help maintain sensitivity and prevent dependency, so caffeine boosts you above baseline instead of simply dragging you back to normal.
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Exploit psychological and contextual tricks to start and resume work.
Leaving sentences unfinished (Zeigarnik effect) gives you a frictionless entry point into writing or projects, while turning chores into timed games, pairing them with music/podcasts, and using fixed ‘positive constraints’ (calls, appointments, workouts) compresses otherwise bloated tasks into focused bursts.
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Use small social and logistical hacks to improve everyday experiences.
Remembering and using a server’s name improves service; installing USB chargers in bathrooms centralizes charging of wearables and grooming devices; asking for daily room turndown at hotel check‑in and knowing quieter options in airports (e. ...
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Notable Quotes
“The goals manifest, they grow out of the review.”
— Chris Williamson
“If you can’t perform without it, it’s stopped conferring a benefit.”
— Chris Williamson (quoting Alex Hormozi on caffeine)
“If something feels nice and is a pleasant thing to do, it makes you feel good afterwards, you’ll probably keep doing it.”
— Jonny (on red light therapy and habit adherence)
“There’s nothing that will substitute for just physically going through a process and writing it down.”
— Chris Williamson (on documenting goals and reviews)
“You either do [the boring tasks] or you don’t do them, so if you’re gonna do them, you might as well compress them and make them take the least of your day possible.”
— Jonny
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can someone design a simple but effective annual review if they’re starting from scratch and feel overwhelmed by templates?
This Life Hacks episode of Modern Wisdom features Chris Williamson, Yusuf, and Jonny sharing a rapid-fire assortment of tactics for improving productivity, health, training, sleep, and travel. ...
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For red light therapy and sleep supplements, what objective markers (sleep data, blood work, mood tracking) should people monitor to know if they’re actually helping?
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How should training change as you move from maximal strength and performance goals toward long-term joint health and ‘older man’ (or woman) fitness?
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What’s the most realistic way for a busy person to start tracking both macro- and micronutrients without getting burned out or obsessive?
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If someone is clearly overdependent on caffeine, how would you sequence decaffeination, sleep optimization, and work habit changes so they don’t see a collapse in productivity?
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Transcript Preview
If you have a nose like me, you might think, "Surely, the size of those colossal nostrils doesn't need more assistant."
(laughs) Cavernous. Opening them up requires you to put a land registry down so that you can walk through. (laughs)
Yeah. (laughs) Walk through.
You have to get planning permission.
Get planning permission.
Ah! (laughs)
(laughs)
Did you have to get one for Arab-sized noses?
Yeah, you have to tick, tick your ethnicity as you, uh, as you select the order, like-
I can't tell if you're joking. Are you joking?
I, I mean, how racist would that be?
(laughs)
I mean, it's, it's... I didn't think on this episode of Life Hacks I would be the only one here without a pack of nasal strips to hand.
Good face, Chris. That's the-
Come on.
... that's the makeup face.
There it is. (wind blowing) If you're not familiar with this, Life Hacks, it's the longest series that we've done on Modern Wisdom: tools, techniques, and tactics for a productive and efficient life. We do a roundtable. Each of us proposes something that we've fallen in love with over the last few weeks about (inhales) how to create a perfect toasted sandwich, or get out of a parking fine, or a brand new seat that you can sunbathe in appropriately naked while your neighbors can't see. Whatever it is. And then, the other two will critique or go and buy it immediately on Amazon. Links to everything we talk about are in the show notes below. And as is tradition, even in 2023, uh, Jonathan, there is a (clears throat) hot potato for you there, my friend. What have you got life-hacks-wise?
Those fake life hacks that you just reeled off sound, all sounded fantastic.
We should... Well, no, you did one about toasted sandwich. You did one about how to create the perfect-
Did I?
... toasted sandwich-
Oh, so they were real examples.
... maybe about two and a half years ago. Yeah.
My God. I can't even remember my own life. I should maybe go back and be like, "Wow, what a great idea."
Yeah, exactly.
Um, so my first one... Well, (sighs) you might, you'll probably want to change what I say when I say this, based on an email I received from you very recently. I was gonna say, given the time of year, given what everybody will be doing, given it's the first one, it's the one everyone listens to, the, some sort of annual review process. So, we've all used the Chris Sparks annual review, but I believe, Chris, do you have your own now?
I-
Or 100%?
... have taken a, uh, m- ménage à trois from a bunch of different, uh, productivity things.
Phenomenal.
David Perell, Chris Sparks was heavily influential. Uh, some stuff from The Six-Minute Diary, some other shit that I picked up online. Uh, and yeah, if you wanna go and get that, you can go to chriswillx.com review. Uh, it is not too late to do an annual review, even though it's the start of January. Uh, you can go and do that. It'll help you to go back over your last year and set goals for the new one. But yes, 100%, doing an annual review-
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