Modern Wisdom - #007 - Life Hacks 102

Episode Date: March 13, 2018

Jonny and Yusef from PropaneFitness.com join me again for another Life Hacks episode where we detail a selection of our favourite apps, websites, resources and tools for a productive and efficient life. On this episode, discover how to track sleep quality with an alarm clock and conduct an experiment on your own night time routine, the easiest way to build a meditation habit that sticks, and why increasing the trackpad speed on your laptop will impact your productivity by 10%. Resource Links: Sleep Cycle Pzizz HabitBull Headspace Release Into Now Mindfulness In Plain English Insight Timer Muse Sam Harris Podcast Media Monster MyFitnessPal WaterLogged Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, so today's episode is a little bit late and I ended up having a chase around every hard drive that I had in an effort to try and track down where this recording had gone to after the original one got corrupted. Apple, time machine, you have absolutely saved my life. However, it has taken me 18 hours to work out how to make it work. But we're here. Lifehacks 102, I'm sitting down with Joni and Yusuf again from ProPaint Fitness, expect to find out how you can track your sleep using the alarm clock that you set every night before you go to bed and how you can conduct an experiment on your own sleeping pattern so that you can improve them. Learn how to set and maintain good meditation habits. If that's something that you're wanting to

try, you've always wanted to. Maybe you've had a couple of cracks and you haven't been able to make it stick. We've got the tips and tricks for you in here. And finally, my favourite of the bunch, and I'm absolutely good at that I didn't come up with it while we were recording because I've used it and sung it to praise. It's for so long, but it's something that everybody needs to do with their trackpad speed on the laptop. So make sure that you stay listening right until the end and find out what that is. I promise you, it will change your life overnight. It is an absolute game changer.

So here we go. Life hacks one or two, bring on the mind gains. Yes, it is, there's optimizing on top of a structure that is ineffective. Okay, and there's making a effective process more efficient. Okay. Yeah. I know what he's going to say, and I kind of agree with him, but I think the effort should be put into being more effective before the effort is put into being efficient.

I think it's possible to be very efficient at doing bad things. Like, I think if you're being effective and you take ages, it's still better than being efficient and doing nothing. So life hacks number two Number two you're waving around Peace sign peace listen is peace Okay, so I'm gonna open up on the last episode I mentioned that I will be talking about sleep cycle And that is gonna be my first one today. So sleep cycle is an app that you use for tracking sleep um you

Set an alarm lasting at night and it presumes that that is the final thing that you do. It calls that your sleep, you're going to bedtime. It then tracks when you wake up on a morning, set an alarm off. You can give it a window of time between an hour and ten minutes during which it uses the motion sensor in your phone to detect your mouse sensor or the microphone to detect the depth of sleep The earring and it drives to find a time to wake you when you are closest to light sleep That feature for me. I don't use an awful lot, but I know it can be pretty effective

The thing that I like the most is just tracking the amount of time that I've been asleep I've used it for 1,200 plus nights now. So I've been asleep, I've used it for 1,200 plus nights now. So I've been doing it since the 2000s. Big data collection there. Yes. So your correlates will be very accurate now. It's unbelievable.

Are you still using it? No, you're using it really. Right. Okay. So, do you explain what the correlates are as well? Yeah. So the amount of data that it tracks to do with your sleep is unbelievable. So it associates the weather, the air temperature, the pressure, the moon's position.

The location, the geographic location that you're in based on your phone's location services, it literally uses everything and then plots it against how good was your sleep. So it uses the length of time that you're asleep plus the depth of sleep determined by either the microphone or the motion sensor and then works out a quality of sleep that's based on a percentage. That percentage then gets plotted against all the other bits and pieces and then it shows you an average of your time

over the last week, over month, over all time. And it also tells you people in your country what their average is, so on and so forth. So if you're a bit of a, the sort of person who likes to drill down the date or I'm not sort of think, you can really get into it. And even if you don't, it tells you how long you've been asleep and what the effects on your sleep are.

So I know that when it's a non-full new, whatever the opposite is, like, non-existent moon. What is it? Cretan moon or like... No, lower than that. Half moon. No, lower than what moon. Ship me. Ship me. No moon. When there's no moon, my sleep goes up by 2%. Blue moon. No, that's twice in the same month. And we've had two of them this year. So we had one of them. One of them in a blue moon? Yeah, but that's the same phrase.

What is a blue moon? Blue moon is when one full moon occurs during the same month, but this year it was a red moon and the super moon. So it was a blue, blue red super moon. That was the final one of the blue, no, no, edge is incredible. I like the moon. Bought my mama moon food. The person.

Why do you like the moon. Bought my mom a moon food. You're a person. Why do you like the moon? It's cool. Bought Darren's bought my business part of this kid a moon for his first birthday. I made. Hi, is that mine? No, no, it's still going.

It's going to be a good moon. David's just having a little. Talk about the moon, you should run through. So, I like the moon, David. Hi. Do you like the moon? Yeah. Moon's good. So, sleep cycle, sleep like the moon, David? Do you like the moon? Oh, yeah. Moon's good.

So, sleep cycle, sleep cycle, it's a... You can get a free version. It's an app for your phone available on Android and on iPhone. If anyone follows me on Instagram, I put up screen shots of it all the time because I know that on it. It's really, really useful and I recommend that you try. Last episode we talked about meal prep. This is the man that got me into this little cooker,

currently, prep does meals earlier and he's reaping the benefits now. What's up next for you then? So, sleep cycle, big fan of as well. Do you know, just a quick point in it. Do you know, so like all I would look at in Fitbit is hours, really. I kind of take with the pinch of salt, the whole sleep deck, I agree. The whole like lunar cycle compared to sleep, I agree, you know, it's the half,

but it's a bit like, you know, being told the world's going to end. That's not what you can do with the information. Is there anything that you do look at or is anything you've changed or added stopped? So in terms of the native options on sleep cycle, no. However, you can add sleep notes. I mean, in terms of your sleep routine, you can add the sleep notes in. So sleep notes are more conditional options that you can choose before you go to bed. So for instance, you could have a sleep note which says had caffeine after 6 p.m. today

spent more than five hours at work. Work the night, had alcohol, didn't have alcohol, felt stressed, did meditate, didn't meditate, did went to the gym, did whatever and the correlate between bunches of those mean that you can perform an experiment on yourself with any variable that you want. So for me, I know if I have caffeine after 4pm in the day, I will have 5% worst sleep.

Does it then log that as something you can enter again? Yes. Across time. Do you just build your own date or on your own sleep basically? Yes. So I've used that as well and it kind kind of tells you like, caffeine worsens your sleep and the tone increases your improved sleep. Like things you think you'd expect.

Yes, I expect it. Is there anything that's unexpected that came out of it? For me, yes, but I think my sample size was too small. What was the unexpected thing? ZMA reduced sleep quality a little bit. That's quite a common concern. A common complaint with ZMA. I can't remember the other ones, but it changed over time.

It's probably the effect of melatonin. If I have three milligrams of melatonin or five milligrams. I think that's the strongest thing for me. Unbelievable. 10% improved sleep. I mean, you will be... It's meant to reduce your sleep requirement by an hour. You will become dependent on it. After a little while. Yeah. But, um, right. Okay, scope. So another sleep one. And now,

it is the time for you to set aside the worries, super day. It's as easy to be easy. And let me put the body take care of the rest. We didn't ever know what you're on. As you develop. That is pieces. It's like, go with a delightful soothing voice and some soundscapes to lollewinter sleep. And there's something really Pavlovian about it that when we start to hear the voice you do just get knocked out. So, sorry. Yeah, and then it plays again when you wake up but gently brings you back up. So it's kind of like very similar.

Sleep cycle, but sleep cycle like a literary sleep cycle. Kind of. It doesn't track anything. So if you, maybe if you're going to use pieces and you want tracking data as well, you'll probably need a fit bit or a bit fit. A fit bit fit. You could easily use both, because sleep cycle doesn't work. We should launch bit fit. Yeah.

Bit fit. Just record what you're recording. Yeah, see butt foot. He's an easy slacker. Can you imagine how hard you'd have to Google search engine optimized to get bit fit above fit bit? If there's anyone that can do fit, sorry, fit butt. If there's anyone that can do fit, sorry, fit but, spot spot.

I developed a negative relationship with it. I've realized this. I've done it. Yeah. So I had it, it was initially something recommended by a guy called Dave Asprey when I used to listen to stuff back when I was bogged down. And I used to listen to it when I would struggle to sleep. So the noise, the voice is associated with me, with me, with not being able to sleep. Oh, that's a reverse condition, that's

That's reverse conditioning that's classical but raw. Yeah, that's interesting. Netflix. Netflix made, honestly. I can't fall asleep with something on music, music, audio book or TV. I can't fall asleep. So I think for me, I like for my falling asleep to not be the focus of what's going on. It's not. I like it too easy.

Yeah, if I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to follow you. You're hunting a small woodland animal and if you look directly at it, it's going to run away. So you've got to just... Yeah, you're just pretending. I think I'm far too easily stimulated. Probably an excuse I've used in a room. Oh, sorry. Do these things stimulated you? Honestly, nothing. Should I be not? Oh, sorry. Don't be so excited about it. Honestly, Netflix should have me not. Right.

You're up. Johnny. Oh my god. I haven't talked about it. Let me think. Let me think. Oh, thanks man. Uses just turned a list of over 30.

Bum, bum, bum, bum. Ah, okay. Probably more than 30. So, again, I'm very theme based rather than specific apps, Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum For me, has been the only thing that allows me to do or build any kind of habit or break any kind of habit is direct one-on-one Accountability some kind of challenge with someone else And it's something that I originally hear from Tim Ferriss. There's apps and websites where you can Um, give an amount of money to it's like holding escrow And then if you fail to do the thing or

You hit the table Fail to like continue with the habit or fail to break the habit you lose the money like you're creating loss a version To that thing and so having some kind of competition or looking bad in front of someone having that accountability for me has allowed me to Be consistent with meditation, journaling sleep habits habits. Like all the, all the, I do that. I was supposed to do that. You do that by having a Google Drive document where, really basically, multiple people have access. It's a spreadsheet that tells you it online.

Yep. Both people have access. You log, whether or not you did the thing that you said you were going to do and can see whether the other person did as well. That's it. That's exactly it. External accountability is a big thing, man. Huge.

Huge. And obviously, that's the service we provide, but it's You so for now for those people listening, but yeah, I think that Because I've tried so many Habit apps. Yeah, like there's coach.me or lift habit ball There's loads in my way of life productive. I think I've got at least three. I've never used. Because it might just get the habit of downloading it. Yeah. And you have it. You download it. You think that this is going to be the thing that changes and I've got it now. Habits aren't going to be a problem. I've got this new thing,

or even like people who talk about incrementally adding in habits and things like that. Yeah. Something that meditation is something that we all do. The thing, two things got me meditating. One was, one was you stuff, challenging me. And then the other was being involved in a challenge. Yeah. Of daily, like, if there's a back of your head, someone else is meditating.

Someone else is going to do that thing today. Yeah. I'm not going to be the one that keeps it up. I'm not going to be on the brakes of the chain. Yeah. And having, just generally, on like I'm not going to be on the breaks of the show. Having just generally on these apps and the process of building a habit is being start with two minutes a day, build it up to three minutes a day, form it today, try that. You get to like three weeks in, you're doing six minutes a day of meditation on the

shot. Something in counter-front you get still below the tipping point of actually feeling any kind of benefit. I was harping on about this to use that one day, we were on a course in Liverpool and he just goes, just meditate for 30 minutes a day for 10 days and tell me honestly they don't feel anything. I'm like, fine. Like, if that's what's required for me to get a say to you, see, I told you, I told you

meditation doesn't really think, then that's what, did it. That's what broke the seal. Yeah, really interesting. There's two things there, like the negative feedback from pieces causing it to sleep worse because you only listen to it on the days when you sleep, when you were able to sleep. And the negative feedback of meditating for six minutes a day and thinking like, well, this is a waste of time. And actually, like, if anything, doing that makes you meditate less. I'm going to do two. First one is getting things that will play on your mind out of the way early in the day. So for me, if I don't meditate

before I leave the house, it will stress me throughout the rest of the day that I know I still need to meditate. And I'm like, oh, shit, shit, I didn't get it done. So what I've done is I've programmed in that I can have, I'm allowed to have, in my own mind, a three minute, but this is on headspace, which is gonna be my next one, a three minute emergency session, which is like, you have three minutes,

getting a car before you set off, you have three minutes, just drive a bit faster. Like, so, and that three minutes, at least means, like I still need to come back and try and do a 15 minute, 20 minute and a half an hour later on, but I like right, the anxiety of the fact that I didn't do my morning thing that I said I was going to do.

That's out. Again, another irony, that not meditating makes you more anxious than if you just didn't meditate as a person. Yeah, a little bit. You build a very, very high wall that you then throw yourself off the top. So yeah, my main one is the next one is going to be headspace. I guess when I first heard about it, it was probably about 18 months ago and it seems to have just got everywhere since then. Andy put it on the guy that owns it, it's released a podcast that's massive.

They're working with Nike now. There's a Nike pack. He's working with huge NBA teams, these teams that are best in the country, in America, at basketball, all sorts of stuff. You've just been on a couple of famous podcasts as well, I think. He's getting everywhere at the moment. He was with Russell Brandy the day. Sorry, he was just on Russell Brands podcast. He's fantastic. Anyway, headspace, it's an app for guided meditation. If you haven't ever done meditation before, you will hear us speak about it a fair bit and you might just think it's all a bit woo woo. I've got some friends who know it isn't for them. John Wallace, owner of Rebuck CrossFit Townside, for him meditation is not for

him. And I actually completely agree based on meditation is not for him, and I actually completely agree based on what I know about his personality, and I do genuinely think that there's a lot of people, a large minority of people, should I say, for whom meditation isn't correct. However, I do think that it could benefit an awful lot of people, but the same as we said in the last episode, when we were talking about people who want to get into mobility, but don't know where to start, you need to find the training wheels version. You don't go into a gym and try and pick up 200 kilos off the floor immediately in a deadlift

when you don't even know how it performed when empty bar deadlift. You go in and you do the basics first and you get a coach. Guided meditation is an easy way to start off that journey. You sit down, you press a button on the app and you listen to what they say exactly the same way as you would do with the rumour that we spoke about last time that you go through the poses, these are mental poses or mental states that it asks you to go through thought experiments and over time as you move through different packs you are given less, fewer and fewer cues and you allow yourself to be

more in control of your brain rather than the impetus coming from outside in. It tracks stuff like daily streaks, there's loads and loads of different packs, there's ones for anxiety, small performance, creativity at work, family relationships, all manner of different things. And you can choose between three minute and three, three minute and 20 minute sessions for the most part. For me, I've moved through different guided meditation courses, or the one that I keep coming back to the most has been headspace. And I think the length of the sessions is good, the fact that there's so many and they're all different with a little bit of different introduction is really, really good. And I like the visualizations that he uses. A lot of the ones I

genuinely do feel so he does some about warm, warm so I'm filling up the body, he does a lot of check-ins with the body as well, which is nice. Yet it's definitely one of my favourite resources and it's free again as well, you can get a free trial so you can see whether or not you like it. Meditation apps, what's your... Two things just on what you've said, I think having, then you mentioned about having a backup of the meditation to fall back on, something else that I do with that habit's tracking

is that every habit I do has a scaled version because I think having being able to maintain, I think the psychology of breaking your streak with something is really negative. So again, negative thing, like, because you've skipped today, you're less likely to do it again the next day because the, you haven't got that wave of, you get the catastrophic thinking, right? Yeah, I'll finish the packing.

Yeah, exactly. Whereas if you've meditated for five days in a row, you're more and more likely to hit the sixth day, seventh day, 17th day. Yeah. Meditating, I think. I also started with Headspace. Did the 10 and 10 take 10? Yeah. It is a great introduction.

I think I've since moved away from it. From what I did, I can't speak of what it's like now. When I was doing it, I feel like he made a big deal about... So it's day three. When I was doing it, I feel like he made a big deal about, you know, it's day three. You feel anything? Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it was like you've done a hundred minutes of meditation by the end of take 10, you know, that's enough to change your brain and things like that. And I remember thinking, I must be doing it wrong because I don't feel any changes. I think it vastly, a lot of the calms the same so I've tried some of the calm subscriptions

they've asked the underplay the Time it takes the investment it takes to actually get to the point where you're like, okay I can feel some change from meditation. So I see why they're doing that like if they just delivered this negative Like guys buckle down If you don't have an If you don't have an out of sit down, you can just fuck. Like unless you've got at least 200 hours, like what's the point? Yeah, obviously that's not going to get people to subscribe. You don't buy in. Yeah.

It needs to be inclusive, I guess, as well. Does. So another one, Aubrey Marcus has done a fantastic either guy that owns on it. He's done a fantastic course called Releasing to Now. And I think we've all done it. Have you done it? I haven't done the full, but you've done it. It's a bit too.

That is for me. If you've done it, if you've got yourself into meditation and you've realised that it's for you, or if you're looking for a new guided meditation, I strongly recommend that you buy a release into now. Probably the nicest, most complete meditation course that I've ever done. That's not speaking from a massive pool of options. And it's in high enough doses as well as 30 minutes natural or an hour session or whatever.

That's what that makes it stand out, I think. Yeah, you can't mess about it. Me, there's no errors in graces. Yeah, no. So very much agree with both of you. The headspace is a great intro to meditation. If you have decided that again, you are somebody who would respond well to it. Just to quickly touch on that, you mentioned not everyone is large minority.

I feel like you mentioned that before as well. Yeah. What's the, how I'm sat here, I've never made a meditative before, how might I begin to understand? Don't decide straight away, some people are like, oh, that's not for me. Right. And probably if they're deciding that early on, it may be the thing. Probably is for you. That's what I find so interesting when people like Jordan, you know, how, how do

you arrive at that? You've got to give it a solid shot, 5,800 hours before you start to say, and actually, if you find it really challenging and really unpleasant, that's probably a sign that you should be doing. And if you're like, well, actually, I'm able to do it, but I get more out of physical practice or what it then you may have a different sticking point, and we move through different sticking points as we evolve as much as if we have a static problem. So right now my sticking point

is the body, it's not the mind, but that's just because I've now outweighed my physical spiritual practices by, I've outweighed them with the amount of meditation that I've done. So which is a fucking mental thing to say. And how much, just to give, because again, I'm so scared. I think I've slowly tipped it into this world. The doors have opened and I'm like, fuck me. This is shit. Because you do 100 minutes and you're like,

bloody hell, I've done 100 minutes. How many hours? Well, this is nothing, just before I say this, I think the criticism that you said of headspace is really important that it does try to push you along and be like, oh, you know, this is, it's the 10 minute abs booty blaster, whole knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee,

knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee,, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, knee, get the f**k out. Move away from guided sessions.

They can be done as a crutch, a stabilizer, but really if you start moving beyond it then you can start to make some progress with them. I think the analogy is that if someone's been sedentary on the couch and not exercised for four years, Charlotte Crosby's at home, who would be blast to work out for ten minutes on DVDs, not a bad start? Yeah, get some off their feet. Yes.

And then, yeah. And so there is a tendency when someone's like, oh, I'm going to start meditating. It's like, okay, I'm going to get an app. And it's like, the app isn't the thing. The practice is the thing. So do whatever is needed to establish, to be clear on, to get by and right. Yeah, to get by and get practice on it. And I'd say read, read a book on meditation that there's many very accessible ones by monks, the best one that I found was the most

accessible one is mindfulness in plain English by Heneppaler Garantanana. And I was like, just because, and as it says on the tin, it's like very clearly written, gets by in and teaches you the method very clearly and doesn't give you too much water, sitting, ruminating, think about one, as you can imagine a lot of monks that are writing about meditation can do. It's fairly esoteric in case you haven't really. Yeah, you can't get that much. And I think it's better to save the esoteric knowledge and wisdom for your own experience because all of the stuff that they talk about that is very esoteric comes from the deep states that they've achieved in meditation.

So you may as well achieve them yourself rather than read about them and then try and see whether you like it. Imagine what that might be like. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so let's do it. I do still use an app for meditation, saying that, but the app is completely minimal. It's just a black timer. You set the time you say start or stop. That's insight

to time, right? Inside timer. Now, I do use a little crutch, which is a, the sound of a wooden clave every five minutes, just to like, okay, so some of the time, something I was going to ask you was someone who someone here's like done 10 in 10. It's take 10 right? I'm not sure. Okay, whatever it is You take ten to take that sounds right in the arms Down to the legs If you've ever heard Andy put it come before you know exactly what we do

There's any sounds They say you sit on the side of the road, the cars going down. Andy, there's a really small chance that you might be listening to this and I'm so sorry. You can open the eyes again. So you've done that, you've listened to Andy say, you can open the eyes again. And you're now trying know, I'm trying to do it unguided. So I sit down for 10 minutes. All I think about is emails, shopping, Netflix, there's stuff that floods your mind. And I get to the end of the 10 minutes, whatever long I'm trying to do. And it's annoying. It's frustrating. Like I've just sat there and thought for 10

minutes. Yep. Do you just persist with that? Or in that instance, is a guided session something to bring you back to the first? Yeah, I think if you're really shit, then you need guided sessions which have... The only difference there is you're still applying the same method. No, I don't think... I think pick one method, dig one deep hole rather than lots of shallow holes. But the guided session will just give you frequent prompts. And as Chris said, the progressive overload element of it

is less and less frequent prompts until you maybe have a prompt every 20 minutes or every half an hour or whatever. The back end of most of the packs, if you're doing a 30 day pack on headspace, the back end of most of them will have Andy introduce you, set you down, and then it will be probably about every five minutes

throughout 22. Well, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. You will never get to the point where you sit down and you're like, oh, that was incredible though. I was so focused for that entire time. The whole, if anything, so for anyone who doesn't follow us directly, we, I've just come back from a 10-day meditation retreat where it did sort of

70, 75 hours during that time. And the predominant sense is you realize how insane you are because you said, darling, you're not right. Okay, let's go follow the breath on the other one. Those barely two breaths in. You're thinking about lentils or you think it, you know, you just, it makes me feel so much better that happens to you. Oh, so much and like, and so the reps are bringing it back to the object each time and you do get longer and longer periods, but the so many times where you'll be sat in, in a long session and you'll be like, twat, like the last 20 minutes. So, it's like, ruminating about whatever. And the guy says like, that's okay.

Like, it, that's not the, that's not, yeah. Don't judge it success by, I like the idea of the, I like the idea of the little gong every five minutes because it's not like a, yeah, it's very subtle. It's like a popped tick or something.

I don't know. But, yeah. And I like that. Right, okay, so, we'll do a quick, a quick little leap around, It's very subtle. It's like a plot tick or something. I don't know. But yeah. I like that. Right, okay. So, we'll do a quick, a quick little loop around. What have you got? Insight timer. Insight timer. Oh, do you want another loop now?

No, that's for you. Yeah, I'll go again. You got one? Muse. Muse. We're going deep in meditation, right? So I got a message, I got a message off someone on Instagram via the day after I uploaded a screenshot from Muse saying, can you please tell me about that app

that tracks your naps in the middle of the day? It looks really good, because it's got active neutral and calm in it. Oh, is there you having an app? An app? No, no. Having an active nap, what is that? Is that not just a wake?

I'm not sure, yeah, it's a movie. What's a muse? It is a little headband that you wear on your forehead. Portable EEG? Yep. Basically, it measures your brain activity while you're meditating. And it translates the electrical signal

that it picked up into audio in the sound of either like a busy park or a beach. And when you are calm for extended periods of time, it plays the noise of birds. When you are less calm, it gets the weather picks up, it gets more noisy. And basically, you meditate through that process, and it then gives you a calm percentage. It's actually really clever at how it works. It gives you a score based on how many birds you had, how calm you were, how many recoveries you had. So, it's very similar to sleep cycle. It's brought it back. Yeah, it is. So, for me, I'm very numbers driven, date orientated, and I love seeing, I love being at the chart, my progress.

You want to quantify it, right? Exactly. You're a powerlifter that this is life on percentages and up he is in account. Yeah so yeah you get this built fee. Yeah so when I heard about it and it's like 250 quid if you me or free if you use it. What's that? Like out the alien film. So I was sat in the car on the way to work as an accountant at the time and Paul Mort was the first person who had ever heard and he was like, I've got this headband and when I do really well, I get birds and I was like, right, but I'll fully understand it, give me a bed. But yeah, it's fantastic and I use it, I've used it, I've done over a hundred dollars

with it. Just clarify birds are when you have a sustained amount of time with low, with low brain activity or calm. Birds start tweeting as the... I found... So I also got a headband, all three of us have got them. Johnny paid full price for his. I got mine brand new but second hand on eBay. And Gusef might actually get his for free by... So here it is. Well, he's an interesting point. Who do you think has the most benefit? Out of the muse headband from the three of us. Out of the headband, definitely not me. After this is what I'm saying, so I paid full price. I think you've got the most benefit.

Well, you've racked up so many hours right now. Because it was free. But we know because I get so. He doesn't use it. Right. Fine. Do you use it once? I see what you mean right? So it is correlated to how much he spent for it once the scale but I was saying benefit You know benefit divided by price which is infinite but yeah, but the price is irrelevant If the price isn't a factor in it, then the price is irrelevant. I see a point but The total amount of benefit and so if you. So if you quantify benefit by saying, hours used, right, well, you, then I win.

Yeah. I just can all just agree that you were like, you definitely did win. Johnny posted a spreadsheet the other day, which is, it's fantastic, because this morning, which was how many, it was his score basically comparing a few weeks ago to now on Muse and it's

unequivocally better and it's amazing is then if you are numbers driven and you're like, I'm not fully sold on whether this is just a waste of time, whether so it's all one big prank to get me to sit and listen to my breath for. Cross my mind. Yeah. Well you know, so we did a podcast on this, on the ProPen podcast about your experience and I raised, you know, what if, there's an apology,

who said before, give it a hundred hours before you decide, it's a hundred hours you are never getting back. If you get there, you're gonna learn a lot. So having some way, like, as a, you know, anything else you do, like whether you, if you were saving money every month, but you never looked at your savings,

would you be pretty dreary existence, wouldn't it? If you're trying to lose weight, you never measured your weight. There's no way around it. And this is why you need buy-in because it really now, only at 450 hours, am I able to... You're pretty convinced. I mean, unequivocally.

But you're asking, you're asking, we come back to stay in trade here, right? Because you definitely feel better while you are meditating, because you have a level of calm that you wouldn't have when you're not meditating. I think getting a trait change, which is outside of the meditation is affecting your day-to-day headspace

for one of the better words, that's a lot more difficult to elicit and a lot more difficult to measure. And interestingly, I'm noticing the trade change now, but I'm less interested in the state change, whereas earlier I was chasing the state change. Yeah. Just because it's really like, it's euphoric in this.

If you want to find out a little bit more about what we're talking about here, a couple of podcasts that would probably do you very well. Sam Harris, who is? Yes, Harris. And this is Ham, Sarah. With who's the guy who's with? It's two guys.

Two researchers in 11 It's 111? A sonorous podcast. A sonorous. I just saw the number 111 of Sam Harris's waking up podcast. Should we have the two eminent researchers? I did that by remembering Sam's advice. A bulb, a scone, a bulb. 111.

That would actually be the word tittity. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER Look at Chris looking at the audio, just peaking. And all of the popping pees. Right, so let's do one quick round. This is the quick, simple ones. Yeah, quick, simple ones.

Let me think about a, quick simple ones. Quick simple ones. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I told you both this. Yeah. What is it? The, so you set your trackpad speed to the back. Oh, this is such a good change. And then you set your mate's trackpad scroll to the opposite. And, that's, one of those is correct and the other one is not. The other one's just being nasty. Yeah, that did it to me. You know, where some people scroll the correct way, where you scroll down.

I thought you were going to explain the track path speed. We're doing the quick stuff. People scroll the incorrect way, which is how you set scrolls. And then everyone else uses the Apple standard settings in scrolls the right way, right way. So speed up your track pad incrementally, set yourself a reminder, now, every month, for the next five months, speed up trackpad speed by one setting.

If you do that, in five months time you'll be at the maximum setting that you can get to. So that's the dig head approach. But the... No, that was the pussy approach. Your approach was put it directly to the fastest one and deal with overshoot for the next three weeks as you fly around the screen and control the game. Right. Yeah, the computer's having a panic attack.

I think I just go, balls in. I couldn't. I couldn't. And then you're like, you're balls. You're all right. Okay. Well, go ahead. Go ahead.

Where would you track whatever they are? Put them where they are. And what was the argument that within you become 10% more efficient in every task on your computer? It's hard to say whether that's happened, but it does feel... Yeah, because whenever, even now, you're limited by your trackpad in a way that you can't comprehend. So I've got an analogy. Everybody here has observed their mom try to Google something. They move the mouse down to internet explorer and you're like, oh, even internet explorer and they type www.googleintexfinger as well as a single index finger down onto the keyboard.

Then Google comes up and they'll type Google into the Google search bar and then they'll move the mouse up to the edge. Sometimes like, yeah. And then move the mouse to that little triangle at the very bottom right and just press the down button. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. It's just a pretty good argument. It's just the best argument you've ever given for an offer. Right, Johnny, you're up. This is going to be a very specific one to people who film themselves training, which is, might be a lot of people, might not be right already, people. For a long time, well, so I did powerlifting and for a long time, I wasn't able to film

my set while listening to music. So I even got went to the extent of buying an iPod touch to fill my training so that I could continue listening when you're doing like a one-up max set or whatever. Media monster, which is an iPhone app, lets you video while listening to music through the app, which was like, honestly, game changer. Fucking game changer for me. Wow. And I remember it, so I saw it on Bryce Lewis' Instagram story. Bryce, if you're listening, thank you for this.

But I remember it because he posted a question saying, like, what camera should I buy? What camera should I buy to film my training so I can listen to music at the same time? And someone was like, mate, just use Media Monster. Save them hundreds of times. So your music library in Media Monster? No, it picks up Spotify. Unbelievable. Yeah. What a game changer. I thought you had to jailbreak your phone. No, no, no, no.

It picks up and you can even set it so that it's there's a song that I play all the time for a top set and it's just whenever I press play a medium monster that's a song that plays. That's also. It really is. That's really cool. Right, medium monster. Medium monster. I think my last one is going to be my fitness pal. Now, I'm not going to go through everything for my fitness pal, because you can use it to track your calories, your calorie intake. You also do it to track water intake as well. No.

Zygna water bottle on it. But if you are not water- Water- Water- It's better up for that. Water- Water- Is it? That's a really, really, really good name for.

I know. Fuck, why didn't we think of water locked? Water locked lets you take photos of the water and then photos of the fluid you're drinking so it's like, can't a coke. And then you just press that and it tops up a little human to the amount to the target's the full version. As in, you take a photo, lock the quantity, so that when you're logging, you just press

the photo of the thing that you've had, rather than like, I've had eight cups. That's for me. That's for my first one. My fitness star for logging your weight, if you are not prepared to spend £80 on a wedding scale, it's for nothing, it's no brainer. So, honestly, you're never going to that argument. You're not gonna continue. I haven't bought a withings. For most of these things, we've all ended up in the same camp

now, haven't we? We've all got a news headband. We're all using some form of sleeper. So there's a few. The theme is that I see something that I think is valuable, and I pay the recommended retail price for it. You self-blend requires it in a snotty way for free, and then you get it through some mate who works for night-discounted.

Discounted. And that, I think, is a really accurate representation of everything that happens. Absolutely everything. When you're over six foot, life is just a little bit harder. All of that benefit you've got of being able to call yourself tall. I have to bend down that little bit further. No, but everyone else is like, oh, you're tall, aren't you?

And that nice. And the news have got called short ass because we're under six foot. But it's okay because you get to free yourself because we are not paying our RP. It's all of this. The failing is mine for not, again, it's the same. It's the same. Well, precisely.

Why are they so, like, what if I fail? The same reason why you self gets angry, this is to time travel again. The reason you self gets angry at the guys using word documents, I'm that guy. You are? Yeah. You self looks at it and goes, absolutely not. There's got to be a way around

that and I go, well, words on my laptop. So, I'm going to use a word. That's the price. So, I'm going to pay it. You self-luxury then thinks, that's not the price, it's a proposal for what it... I think you're f- What I might have to say. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thanks for your time. I think we'll see you... Lifehacks 3 coming up soon.

Excellent. We've got so many more. So many, many more. Many, many more. Bye. Bye. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm Felt. Get off it!