Life Hacks 109
Chris Williamson (host), Yusef (guest), Jonny (guest), Jonny (guest), Jonny (guest), Yusef (guest), Jonny (guest), Yusef (guest), Yusef (guest), Chris Williamson (host), Yusef (guest), Narrator
In this episode of Modern Wisdom, featuring Chris Williamson and Yusef, Life Hacks 109 explores hilarious Life Hacks For Productivity, Travel, Food, And Tech Habits Chris Williamson, Johnny, and Youssef share a rapid-fire mix of serious and silly life hacks covering productivity, tech, travel, food, and daily habits.
Hilarious Life Hacks For Productivity, Travel, Food, And Tech Habits
Chris Williamson, Johnny, and Youssef share a rapid-fire mix of serious and silly life hacks covering productivity, tech, travel, food, and daily habits.
They riff on tools like Vimium, Alfred, Shortcuts, Todoist, and dual monitors, plus scheduling messages, managing to‑do lists, and optimizing phone and social media use.
On the lighter side, they obsess over sandwiches, toastie machines, airport meal deals, yogurt as a ‘non‑savory ketchup,’ and cheap tricks for coffee and supermarket bags.
Throughout, the episode blends genuine, practical tips with comedy, stories about crashes, flying, and Black Mirror, and a broader concern about distraction, back pain, and the next decade of tech and media.
Key Takeaways
Use keyboard-centric tools to eliminate mouse dependence and reduce distraction.
Apps like Alfred, Vimium, and ShortCut let you launch apps, navigate the web, and click on-screen elements purely by keyboard, which speeds up work and makes it harder to drift into mindless browsing.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Structure your day with the 5‑3‑1 method for tasks.
Pick 1 key task, 3 medium-priority tasks, and 5 low-level admin items; this balances meaningful progress with clearing small errands, and works well with tools like Todoist for color-coding priorities.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Pre‑plan your diet in the morning instead of tracking at night.
Entering your day’s food into MyFitnessPal at the start creates a ‘budget’ you adjust from, dramatically increasing the odds you’ll hit your calorie and macro targets compared with logging reactively after eating.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Exploit small platform features for ‘free gains’ in reach and workflow.
Examples include auto‑sharing Instagram Stories to Facebook Stories for extra organic reach, using iPhone screenshot inline cropping, or leveraging Kindle’s send‑to‑device email to push PDFs directly to your reader.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Upgrade your physical workspace to protect your back and focus.
Standing desks, ergonomic ‘saddle’ chairs, and using Pomodoro breaks for light movement or McGill/Starrett drills reduce back issues, improve alertness, and make long hours at a desk more sustainable.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Be ruthless about managing ‘urgent’ requests and notification channels.
Turning off notifications, deleting vice apps like Instagram, and remembering “everything is urgent to the requester” protects your attention so other people’s poor planning doesn’t become your emergency.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Use simple food rules to make convenience eating less damaging.
Aim for at least 10% of calories as grams of protein in ready meals or sandwiches (e. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Notable Quotes
“Yogurt to me is a non‑savory ketchup.”
— Chris
“Everything is urgent to the requester. I decide what is urgent.”
— Youssef (quoting a former boss)
“Your lack of planning does not constitute my emergency.”
— Youssef (paraphrasing a popular maxim)
“Designing for the extremes often means when you dial that back it’s still effective.”
— Chris
“I just have this feeling like I’m being bombarded with media that’s telling me the next 10 years are just gonna be fucking shit.”
— Johnny
Questions Answered in This Episode
Which one or two of these life hacks would have the biggest impact if applied consistently, rather than tried once and forgotten?
Chris Williamson, Johnny, and Youssef share a rapid-fire mix of serious and silly life hacks covering productivity, tech, travel, food, and daily habits.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How far should someone go in optimizing their workflow with tools like Vimium and Alfred before the overhead of tinkering outweighs the benefits?
They riff on tools like Vimium, Alfred, Shortcuts, Todoist, and dual monitors, plus scheduling messages, managing to‑do lists, and optimizing phone and social media use.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What’s the ethical line between clever money‑saving tricks (like bag charges or coffee swaps) and simply gaming systems in a way that’s unfair or irresponsible?
On the lighter side, they obsess over sandwiches, toastie machines, airport meal deals, yogurt as a ‘non‑savory ketchup,’ and cheap tricks for coffee and supermarket bags.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How can you apply the 5‑3‑1 method and pre‑planning macros if your job or daily schedule is highly unpredictable?
Throughout, the episode blends genuine, practical tips with comedy, stories about crashes, flying, and Black Mirror, and a broader concern about distraction, back pain, and the next decade of tech and media.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Given their concerns about phones, social media, and shows like Black Mirror, what practical boundaries should the average person set around technology use over the next decade?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
It is Life Hacks 109. I am telling you, man-
(laughs)
... this episode's gonna be sick, yeah?
I don't think mine are better.
Well, mine-
They're more organized.
Mine are fucking mint.
Mine are new.
(laughs)
I have got so many fucking good life hacks here.
So I love sandwiches. I just think sandwiches are God's gift. Youssef's witnessed what I do to sandwiches.
Oh.
So-
Okay, but you would be banned from Pornhub.
(laughs)
What, what, what Johnny does to sandwiches, like it wouldn't even be-
Yogurt to me is a non-savory ketchup.
(laughs)
Mm-hmm.
It's a garnish.
Yeah. That's the closest I've ever felt to, like a, a religious pulling towards a belief, like that yogurt is a, is a savory ketchup.
(laughs)
(laughs)
I, I just have this feeling like I'm being bombarded with media that's just telling me that, like the next 10 years are just gonna be fucking shit.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by none other than Johnny and Youssef from propanefitness.com.
Hello.
Hi again, Youssef.
It is Life Hacks 109: tools, approaches, apps, and products for a productive and efficient life. And this episode is brought to you by The Protein Works. Thank you very much to The Protein Works for sponsoring this episode. We are massive fans of steel shakers. If you haven't transformed your life and your training by moving from plastic to steel, you have to. Much more durable-
Life changing.
Unbelievable.
Mm-hmm.
Um, they're giving away five for free. All that you need to do is share this episode. Post it on your socials, put it in a group chat, however you want to, and then either show me the screenshot by DMing me or tag me in your share, and I'll pick five people to win one of these. And yeah, they'll post them out.
Between us, we've used a lot of protein shakers.
Yeah, and-
Sorry.
But this, you only need one.
A lot of plastic ones.
You only need one.
Oh, it's beautiful. Nothing worse when you leave a plastic protein shaker behind a car seat overnight-
Just in your, like in your gym bag.
... just somewhere.
I mean, it doesn't fix, the metal protein shaker doesn't fix that problem.
Does it not? How do you wash it?
You can pretty much in it-
It's easier to wash, yeah, 100%.
... it's, it's gone.
(clears throat)
Um, and it's nice, it catches a little bit of condensation on the out of it when, o- outside of it when it's cool.
So that's what I like the most about it, is you pick it up-
Fucking hell.
... and it's cold. It just feels cold. And it's, you know, like mid-training session or after a training session, and that's just ... You don't want, like, like lukewarm plastic. You want cold metal.
Install uListen to search the full transcript and get AI-powered insights
Get Full TranscriptGet more from every podcast
AI summaries, searchable transcripts, and fact-checking. Free forever.
Add to Chrome