Christmas Special | Hacks, Fails & New Year Plans
Chris Williamson (host), Jonny Watson (guest), Yusef Smith (guest), Jonny Watson (guest), Chris Williamson (host), Chris Williamson (host)
In this episode of Modern Wisdom, featuring Chris Williamson and Jonny Watson, Christmas Special | Hacks, Fails & New Year Plans explores christmas Chaos: Habits, Health Scares, Overtraining Myths, And New Year Mindset Chris Williamson and the Propain Fitness duo, Johnny and Yusuf, do a loose, comedic Christmas special that mixes extreme personal stories with reflections on habits, productivity, and goals. They recount health scares (hospitalization, norovirus, severe nut allergy), training experiments, and some spectacular nutrition and supplement disasters. Woven through the humor are serious discussions on journaling, morning routines, deep work, habit formation, and the limitations of traditional outcome-based goal setting. They close by questioning New Year’s resolutions, emphasizing process over outcomes, and urging listeners to prepare properly and focus intensely on fewer, higher‑impact habits.
Christmas Chaos: Habits, Health Scares, Overtraining Myths, And New Year Mindset
Chris Williamson and the Propain Fitness duo, Johnny and Yusuf, do a loose, comedic Christmas special that mixes extreme personal stories with reflections on habits, productivity, and goals. They recount health scares (hospitalization, norovirus, severe nut allergy), training experiments, and some spectacular nutrition and supplement disasters. Woven through the humor are serious discussions on journaling, morning routines, deep work, habit formation, and the limitations of traditional outcome-based goal setting. They close by questioning New Year’s resolutions, emphasizing process over outcomes, and urging listeners to prepare properly and focus intensely on fewer, higher‑impact habits.
Key Takeaways
Treat your morning routine as ‘sacred’ to reshape your day.
Chris describes designing mornings he genuinely looks forward to (journaling, meditation, reading, stretching, writing, training), before touching his phone, which compounds into better days and a greater sense of control.
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Journaling is only valuable if you review and apply what you write.
Yusuf notes that mindlessly accumulating notes and diary entries is low‑yield unless paired with a review system (e. ...
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Prioritize process goals over outcome goals for genuine life change.
Influenced by Derren Brown and James Clear, Johnny shifts from 90‑day ‘hit this number’ targets to installing daily behaviors, arguing that your lived experience comes from routines, not one‑off achievements.
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Block distractions aggressively to enable deep work.
Both Johnny and Yusuf use the Cold Turkey app to lock themselves out of distracting apps/sites (or the laptop entirely at fixed times), which forces fixed‑schedule productivity and limits constant context switching.
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You are capable of far more training volume and intensity than you think.
They highlight examples like widowmaker squats and high‑volume strength programs to show that most people stop because the mind gives up first; true ‘overtraining’ is rare compared to chronic under‑effort and poor programming.
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Take practice seriously: ‘wishy‑washy practice leads to wishy‑washy results.’
Quoting meditation teacher Daniel Ingram, Yusuf stresses that whether it’s meditation or lifting, vague, half‑hearted efforts won’t move the needle; precise, measurable, demanding practice does.
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Prepare *before* January 1st and do fewer things, better.
They criticize the ‘new year, new me’ rush without preparation—no shoes, no plan, hungover—and recommend using December to decide on a very small number of habits, gather resources, and then execute consistently.
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Notable Quotes
“Do not concern yourself with the opinions of the C players.”
— Yusuf (quoting Josh Waitzkin)
“Wishy-washy practice leads to wishy-washy results.”
— Yusuf (quoting Daniel Ingram)
“Having a really lovely morning every morning—that’s a big change in your life. Doing one thing in 90 days’ time doesn’t have a big change in your life.”
— Johnny
“People are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death.”
— Johnny
“Work done equals time times intensity.”
— Chris
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can someone with a chaotic schedule realistically build a ‘sacred’ morning routine like the one Chris describes?
Chris Williamson and the Propain Fitness duo, Johnny and Yusuf, do a loose, comedic Christmas special that mixes extreme personal stories with reflections on habits, productivity, and goals. ...
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What practical systems would you recommend for turning book notes and journal entries into regularly reviewed, implemented actions?
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Where is the line between pushing training volume hard enough for rapid progress and actually overreaching or getting injured?
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How should people decide which single habit to focus on each month if they want to ‘do fewer things better’ in the new year?
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In what ways can most of us apply the idea of ‘not listening to C players’ without ignoring constructive criticism we genuinely need to hear?
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Transcript Preview
(jazzy music plays) A very merry Christmas to you, welcome back. I'm joined by Johnny and Yusuf from Propain Fitness.
Hi, there.
Hello.
As you can see, we are-
Merry Christmas.
... festively adorned-
Merry Crimble.
... for that time of the year. And-
Got my flowers undone.
... for the listeners at home-
Christmas winky. (laughs)
(laughs)
For the listeners at home, we have a special present for you as well, don't we, Jonathan?
The specialist of presents.
Oh.
If, on the count of three, you say the word lights, on one-
Very clearly.
... two, three. Lights.
Oh.
Look at that.
So wonderful.
For the people-
Warms my heart.
... who are not watching on YouTube, Johnny is lit up, very spangly, uh, Christmas jumper, which is, uh-
Look at it.
... available from Next, I think discount code Jon-
Like two, three-
... Johnny, JohnnyWatson25-
Three years ago.
... for, uh, 25% off.
Yeah.
But it's, it's a lovely man. Uh, can it stop now?
I don't know.
My epilepsy's gonna kick in.
Maybe if we say lights again. On the count of three, one, two, three. Light.
Light. Still on.
Didn't work.
Oh.
That's shit. Right, anyway. So, uh, we are going to do a year in review. We're gonna talk about the best life acts that we've come up with this year, what habits we have set which we think have worked, talk about some massive fails, of which there will be numerous, uh, examples, and then maybe discuss some plans going into 2019. So by the end of this episode, you may have got some inspiration for some, uh, habits that you can instantiate as we move forward into the new year. Um, and if not, you will be able to laugh at some of our failures from the last one. Also, you will notice that our, our friend Robin is perched upon the top of the mic.
Not called Martin?
Martin.
Martin.
Martin.
Martin.
He's South African.
It's Robin. Okay, so-
Flown a long way.
... Johnny-
Are you gonna start with me? Why don't you start with me?
Okay. Scone.
It's like (snaps fingers) hot potato, off you go. (laughs)
(laughs) There you go.
Hot potato.
Catch this. Um...
Yusuf's got a big bowl of hot potatoes that he's dying-
He does, he's got loads.
(laughs)
Um, Yusuf.
Mm-hmm.
Biggest fail.
It is Christmas.
(laughs)
It is Christmas, it is the time of giving. I want you to give the listeners at home a massive Yusuf fail, from this-
Big, big fail.
... from this year.
Yeah. I, I just failed into this year, to be honest. So I started this year having just come out of hospital-
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