Modern Wisdom - #261 - Our Biggest Lessons From 2020

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Jonny & Yusef join me today to talk through our biggest lessons from 2020. Expect to learn what we've learned from the weirdest year ever, how Yusef's insight on the front-lines of a hospital has changed his worldview, how Jonny has improved his personal development by removing most of the things he does, how hot a hot potato can be and much more... Sponsors: Get 2 weeks Free Access to the State App at https://apple.co/36nNALG (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Check out Jonny & Yusef's site - https://propanefitness.com/ Learn to build an online business - https://propanefitness.com/modernwisdom Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/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

Oh, hello people in podcastland, welcome back. My guest today are Johnny and Yusef from propanefitness.com and we are doing our mandatory end-of-year review, also wearing beautiful Christmas jumpers, so head over to the YouTube if you want to see us in all of our festive glory. But yeah, I mean, what a year. Definitely a lot of lessons to take from it, and hopefully they will help you to reframe

what 2020 means. So today expect to learn how use of's insight on the front lines of a hospital has changed his world view, how Johnny has improved his personal development by removing most of the things that he does, how hot a hot potato can really be. My lessons from spending some time in Dubai and creating a personal break point and much more. It is really nice to have the boys back. It's such a shame that I can't do it in person at the moment. And I promise as soon as the world opens up that we will do that. I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone that is listening for your support this year.

We've grown 450% like plays and followers, 20 second best podcast in the UK on the society and culture chart as per the Spotify end of your review. I think it's probably the number one independent podcast in that chart in the UK. Everybody else is backed by the BBC or some production house or some big studio and this is just me and video guideine doing nothing. So thank you massively. I adore this and I have some mad huge ridiculous plans for 2021 and yeah I couldn't be happier that you're all going to join me on that journey. But for now it's time for the end of your review with Johnny and Yusef. Ladies and gentlemen, Merry Crimbo. Look at us. Look at how lovely we are. Look at this. Get your Christmas jumpers out for the lads.

So nice. You always have the classiest Christmas jumpers, Johnny. Look at that. It's so apacromy, isn't it? Johnny, duped us last year with the, the light up one. Broken? You said it was voice activated, I think. Yeah, that was a bit. So, where's that from? Is it Hollister? So, this, so the reason I'm wearing this is that Becca has bought all three of us, all three

of us including Dexter, matching Christmas jumpers. So Dexter has the same jumper, slightly smaller obviously. And then Becca also has one. And then the same, but kind of slightly different color themes, but I agree, like it's very, like you could wear it. You could wear it out and just have your hand, the sort of the reindeer arm over the reindeer and no one's anything. Pretty trendy. Like Johnny, Johnny is wearing one of the jumpers you always wear. Well, it's an annual tradition for us, isn't it, to wear either hours or if you use F, your girlfriend's Christmas jumper.

So pre-roll, we had to adjust the neckline because I look like a Christmas Steve Jobs. You look like a festive Steve, didn't you? No festive Steve's coming to join us. So it is Christmas and of the year, we usually do a little bit of a wrap-up, a couple of things that we've experienced, a couple of lessons, a couple of fails, and we might have time for a quick game of bear or bull

at the end as well. What are you doing there? No, this is. You do warm in the potato. Chris warm in the potato. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha throw it to me, Yusef? Can you throw it to me? Chris will have a potato in the pan, scolding.

Right, scolding. It is warm. It is really warm. Johnny, I know you've got a drink in your hand, but catch. Thank you. There you go. Right. First lesson from this year, Blobson.

For me. Okay. So, I think in, obviously, I feel like we need to comment on the fact that it's been a strange year, as in like a lot of people have had a very different life this year to normal. And I think the, what that's encouraged me to do

is I think I entered the year and you to probably remember this like I was constantly adding things to my life like I bought I was doing like cold shower breathing reading jumping and I trampoline doing skipping going for walks doing run-wad and I basically just stopped almost all of that so just trying to use stuff on I've spoken a lot this year about the 80-20 principle. And I feel like that's the sort of thing that I think about a lot, but never actually practice. So I've just tried this year in every area of my life to try and do that, get the same

by doing fewer things or even try and do more improved by doing fewer things across everything. So like, clothes in the wardrobe, apps on your phone, like everything that you like regularly do, think what could I do, just make this simpler and easier for myself. And I think all that's basically like from January 2020, Johnny, to December 2020, Johnny, I just do fewer things and just have more like bandwidth is how it feels. But I've not noticed. What's a morning look like now then? Because you were doing all this stuff, jumping on a trampoline and a cold shower and a walk

in a wrong-word and reading and meditation as well, probably. What's a morning now? Yeah. So I just meditate. Nothing else. But for longer. I think this is a great lesson because we're so wired to look for more stuff, more books to read, more ideas to take on, more methods, more programs, whatever it is that someone's going after. And really that's never the limiting factor in 2020. Squeezing the lemon of what we already have has so much mileage, but people are like, oh no, that's boring, I'm just gonna look for the next thing.

I think it's just that self improvement is very additive by nature, like a lot of people look as like what's the, you know, I'm trying to improve myself but I still feel anxiety or I still feel like I'm not improving. I need to add something else. I mean, maybe I suppose if you're doing absolutely nothing to improve yourself, that probably is the answer, but I think a lot of people listening to this podcast are probably doing lots of different things.

And I'm not saying you should do fewer things, but I think the 80-20 things, so we've done a lot of that in business this year and you do find that 80% of the progress comes from 20% of the things, 80% of the bull egg, 80% of the problems come from 20% of the things as well. So it's like if you just consistently streamline, streamline, I think it's just a happier way of living your life. If you might obviously, you can cut out too many things and slow down. There's a potential that you might have gone too far with that. Just meditation means you're not reading consistently. It means that you're not doing any breath work because we know that if you miss the beauty of a morning routine is that it kind of locks in a ton

of habits early in the day and ensures that you get them done. That's the best, for me, the best hack about having a morning routine is it certifies that you do things that you need to get done every day. I suppose the question is, why are you doing the things? I think that's what I've spent a lot of time thinking about, like, why am I doing Wim Hof? Why am I doing, why am I having a cold shower? Why am I doing, why am I having a cold shower, why am I doing, like, there's a, there's like, you're trying to do something, you're trying to like achieve something,

or change something with all of it. And I think the, the thing that I noticed from, so I suppose the second lesson is like, test, test something's worth by taking it away for a while and see if you notice anything or see what changes. Because again, it's very different, they're very difficult. If you have a morning routine, you may have lots of habits, lots of things you do, just adding things in. And you don't know, really, again it's very different, they're very difficult if you have a morning routine, they have lots of habits, lots of things you do, we're just adding things in and you don't

know really whether it's the thing that you started a year ago that had been doing every day or whether it's the thing you had it last month that's having the change. So if you stop doing something it's like, ah, I took that away, like I took Rommwater away for example and my injury rate was the same. I hate that. The delayed reaction to stopping something and not noticing the decline or the improvement for three months. And then you're like, what was it? And it's not, I don't think it's the case that like these things do nothing. It's just that there's always a trade-off between, I could do fewer things and achieve largely the same result.

And surely that's better. Just from the number of things you have to manage perspective. But it's probably just, it'll be like a, you know, in a year's time, I've probably added 10 things in again, right? It's just a phase that I'm going through, but I think it's been very helpful this year because it's just allowed for a simple structure versus like this time last year. I felt like there was so many things that I was trying to do to

basically just like feel better. We know that at the start of this year, all of us were super, super impressed with how much you'd added in and you were crushing it with this really great routine. So that took quite a bit of agency and some, you know, there's a lot of inertia to get over when adding in even one thing, let alone a whole ton of things. And then to be able to let go of the tether to that balloon of, I've built up this pattern finally, I've actually managed to achieve it and to then be able to have sufficient agency to drop that is like maybe even harder. So I think that that kind of identifies why he's a bit of a mother fucker man like it's just so it is it's the same as it's the same as whenever you hear George Mac talk about something. You just like fucking hell like this guy just doesn't really seem to deal with obstacles in a negative way.

He's just happy to see like input process output. Here's his away around it. And that's like, I think definitely something you can be proud of this year man. To let go of those tennis any year where we're all being neurotic as fuck. I think yeah, that's awesome. I will be interested to see where it goes and I think you're right as well. We keep on bringing it up. I always get this wrong, Seth. Is it girter that talks about the vasilation between extremes of societies?

Is it height or hagle? Hagle. I think you've confused me now. Sorry, I've got it wrong. I'll shit you not about 20 times. But yeah, we do vacillate between these things, right? We go from like minimalists to abundance, we go from excess cerebral to excess mindful to excess physical, whatever it might be. And then eventually, at the age of 65, you'll have finally sorted your morning routine. Yeah, for a reason. The age of 65, just wake up and read the paper Don't you Like it's always you've completed it all you just say it's a point of only a long time for fucking second

For fucking stupid Man, that's that's really awesome. I'm really happy for you this year with regards to that Thanks I think the lesson for people is like try not doing something that you think is helping and see if you're right or not. If you're right, great. Like try not sleeping for a month. A guarantee you conclude that sleeping is helpful. It's a great way to test the hypothesis, isn't it?

I don't think sleep really matters. Try testing. What's that diet where you take out tons of stuff with inflammation in and then add them back in one by one? There's the elimination diet. Yes Basically a personal development routine equivalent of that right See that would be really useful because then it sifts all of the Marketing claims and people selling their

six digit journal and their eight eight-minute booklet in their five-minute filo facts and all this stuff five minute filo facts that's a good one I'd buy that we do all the problem is that we would all buy it if the five minute filo facts came out we'd all buy it because we'd think it would be the answer. You'd buy it for me and I'd not use it. Yeah. And eventually it might read through it like. Right. Scope. What about you? Lessons.

Lesson number one from 2020. This is more of a vicarious lesson. I've seen it in other people because I've got to admit this year for me has been barely any change to my lifestyle. And I think for all three of us, just because we're all anti-social bastards and the work we do either involves being at home anyway or in my case being at a hospital which hasn't changed. But we've seen a massive impact on people's mental health this year. Now a lot of it I think stems from, like in fact, I don't want to downplay the massive impact of people losing their jobs and being alienated from the families and stuff and that's huge and that's circumstantial unavoidable

But the other side of it is people not being comfortable in their own company and If you're this is kind of highlighted it where you put someone as Johnny said if you put someone on their own for some time and they very quickly learn how much they like themselves, how much they can sit in their own company. This is my lesson number two. Oh, no. I've got believable that that would land on that, but I suppose. Well, there we go. I can give you that one. I've got. We can just combine it together, right? If you've both converged on this same thing,

I think it's probably a pretty big lesson. Fair enough. Yeah. No stoooges used. There's no trickery. This isn't wheat. It's coentering. So in brown.

You're seeing this real unfold live. So one of the things that Gary Webber points out is that, oh no, you can see Johnny's reaction if you're listening, is that the worst, the highest grade punishment you can give someone, at least in a civilized world, is solitary confinement. And Johnny's really upset. No. The second highest punishment is taking the hot potato. You're taking somebody else's lesson of 2020 and stealing it without them knowing. Yeah, so Gary Webber says, being on your own. Solitary confinement is one of the worst things you can do because suddenly someone has no distractions available to them.

They have to face the crap that they've kind of tucked away all their life and it's just sat there. And so the lesson is to learn to make peace with that. It's not a quick process. There's no hack. It's just a very long-term habit of taking the tissues out the tissue box until the tissue box is empty. Just to be fully clear on that, that's an analogy, right? You're actually emptying the tissue box and then putting them back in again and emptying the tissue box.

You're going to have loads of listeners that just go out and buy, I bought Kleenex and I'm going to be happy yet. So what's the lesson from that? We need to learn to cultivate the ability to be comfortable in our, with ourselves, in our own company. And a lot of people have learned to do this this year anyway. It's just accelerated, it's catalyzed that process. But it's been so interesting to see that unfold. You got anything to add there?

What? So the the there's a study that Gary Weber references about. Yeah, I think we might we might even talk about this. So before we came on this podcast, I checked the life hacks list. And I don't think any of us have actually ever said meditation. I think we've been apps. We. We've said different particular ways. There's like four or five apps or what like things to try, but the hack that we've not actually suggested people

do regularly is meditation. But the study that Gary references is they took, I think initially university students and put them in a room and they had to sit by themselves for 15 minutes. And they found that, and they weren't like any devices, they weren't like to check anything. And it was incredibly painful for people. So they gave people a bracelet that was attached to a, like a strap around their ankle with the option to shock themselves with electric electricity. And over half of the men I think opted to shock themselves. And just like when you think about that, it is insane that someone would rather

shock themselves with electricity than sit by themselves for 15 minutes. True, you're amazing. It's such a like 14-year-old or like year nine activity as well. Like you're sat there, you've got like a bit of deodorant, you just spray it until you're like... Yeah. ...if you're wearing a bladed bladed bladed bladed bladed. Well, doing that thing with a compass where you go like... ...dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip-dip So yeah, then when you do it, you're going to hit your knuckles. So I think who's the person who said all of man's problems stem from the fact he can't sit in a room quietly by himself? I think that's a philosophy.

Do you have the good, or a legal, or a legal, or a legal, or a legal, or a legal, or a legal or a legal, but I'm pretty certain that's thousands and thousands of years old. And part of me wants to blame hypostimulus and the modern era of devices for ramping Adopamine up that we can't sit in a room on our own, but it seems like that's the sort of thing that's been around for quite a while. I reckon it's worse in this decade than it was. Do you remember 15 years ago, you could like you'd turn up for an appointment for something and you'd sit in the waiting room and you would just be like? So now if someone does that, they're a psychopath. So I really hope that Ben Harrison has listened to this. But he does that.

Whenever you meet Ben and he's there before you and you see him like through the window, he's just sat like this. Just on a stand by. In a holding pattern. And you look at him, you're like, Ben, that's weird. You can't, like, I know it's all my phone. Yeah. But it's weird. You've got to stop doing it. Well, the number one thing that phones have achieved is they've eliminated boredom. Nobody is bored anymore. Nobody ever. As long as you've got battery, nobody's bored anymore. And it's a combination of habitual checking in terms of it.

It's actually drilled into your synapses that you go into the pocket, you get the phone out, which is why your great life hack for anyone that wants to reduce their phone time, the simplest one you can do, just keep your phone in the different pocket, to swap the pockets that you have your phone and your wallet in, and the number of times that you'll take your wallet out

and look at your wallet, and you're like, oh, I'm the idiot. That's a real one to Egypt. And he was driving this, this banger, and it was obviously left hand drive. He kept banging his hand off the wall off the door. He was reaching to get his phone. Oh right, okay.

And also every time he went over a speed bump the airbag would deploy. Every time. It only happens once. Yeah, you don't like this. I have the time. Right. But yeah, he said it was quite so. Wow.

Can I imagine? Did he shout into me? Into me. Any other sort of insights around that surf about the sort of solitude? Not from the solitude one. I've got another one coming up, which may be related. So just to wrap that one up, the new stuff, so someone's heard all of that.

And they think, yeah, I agree. I've had a lot of this year, like, sat in a room, like, bored by the TV, sat with my thoughts. What, what say, like, right, in 2021, I'm going to try and do something about it, and go into... Yeah, so usually if someone hasn't got a handle on this, it's because they're just holding it just at bay, like, just at arm's length the whole time, and the counterintuitive thing is just to let it in, just to do something that does involve total solitude with, you know, as Chris said, but your phone in your other pocket will leave it at home, go for a walk,

like do something that really forces you to do that. And if you can do something that's full solitude for an extended amount of time, many bouts of solitude become much easier to handle and eventually become actively pleasurable until as cheesy as it sounds if you can become your own best friend, then you should have a great time, aren't you? I think this year has definitely highlighted how much people's lives were held up by the scaffolding of not being on their own. Like fortunately, I put this in a news that a couple of weeks ago,

introverts have had a competitive advantage in 2020 for the first time in history. Like almost every extrovert outperforms an introvert because they can network harder, they can spend more time around others. It's kind of what is seen as a more admirable, more desirable trait in other people because it makes them more personable. And you can just spend more time around other people so your networking effect multiplies. But this year, that's been stopped. So it's very much been, are you able to recharge

your batteries on your own? The problem that I see that links in with phone use is that people have got a confused definition of solitude. Cal Newport's got the most useful definition of solitude that I've ever seen, which is time away from the input of other minds. Now, that's not driving in the car with the radio on, calling a friend every so often on a long journey. That's not being in your living room, watching Netflix whilst double screening on your phone.

Like, that's the opposite. That's more input from other minds. Like genuine solitude is something that you can learn from, but hiding from that fact, pushing it away, reputating it by giving yourself this false sense of socialization means that you're not getting the social contact that you desperately desire, but you're also not learning the lesson about solitude and being comfortable with yourself. So certainly progressive overload in terms of that,

even if you can just do it 30 minutes at a time, one hour at a time, 90 minutes at a time, like extending that. There's a really good, I think that's a really good heuristic for what is actual solitude, because yeah, if you're just sat calling mates and watching stuff whatever then yeah, it's not really solitude, it's just

diluted contact with other people. And I did a video on nofap recently, which is an internet movement of people that refrain from joking the GERKIN so that they can improve their dopamine sensitivity and they're claiming all these kind of huge benefits that that they get psychologically and physiologically. And I was saying in the video that a lot of the big benefits people get are because they're going from a pathological state to a normal state and that's what's causing this this big change and that most people probably wouldn't get such a big Improvement from it something. I do think people will all get a big improvement from and that's because we're all pathological with it is this idea you said of like double screening and like even when even Netflix alone something is designed for like

Compulsive retention is not enough to trigger all those dopamine receptors. You have to then get a second screen out. Like we are mental. And so I think doing that repeatedly makes us so desensitized to dopamine, oh, simplifying, but to the reward circuitry, that when we're just with another person that's not enough, it doesn't scratch that itch and so we end up then having to like be with another person but also on our phones and I think people of our age like we recognize this rude and so we don't do it but when you see like teenagers together like you know when you know every city especially like cities like Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, that have like a Casper's ice cream shop.

That's like a... Next to... Next to... It's always outside of a place called The Green, isn't it? Yep, exactly. And there's like pink neons, black leather sofas, and like 30 flavours of ice cream. You all... You see like groups of 18-year-old kids all

sat like in silence on their phones. Yeah. You like? Wow. Well, the, the, the, the mad thing at the beginning of this year, which I said in the first COVID episode that we did was I took a like, unjuw amount of pleasure from other people struggling with the challenge of working from home. Like I was like, oh, welcome to the fucking party. Welcome to this. And then I realized after a little bit of time that that was my own projection, like I shouldn't take pleasure in other people entering my nightmare. Like, that's not a thing. But that's what I was doing. And after a little bit of time, I realized,

okay, no, be a bit more fucking noble and virtuous than that. But very much so, like, this is a pill that we all had to swallow a long time ago. And maybe there might be some other entrepreneurs or sort of working from homers who have felt this for a long time. And then this year, it was like,

like, put me in coach, like this for a long time. And then this year it was like, like put me in coach, like this is my time. And yeah, it's been an interesting year for a fraction. Definitely people becoming more comfortable in solitude. It should have expedited it because you haven't had any choice. Like you've had to do it. And for a lot of people, that's probably something that they can take away. Yeah, there's been a lot of negatives that have come about this year, but you've learned to be on your own. Like that's definitely one positive I think you can take. What's your lesson from this year, Chris? First one is the power of rest.

So classic type A personality, do more, get more done, even though I took the essentialism red pill this year and decided to do less in terms of breadth, that gave me more capacity to do more in terms of depth. So the total amount of time that I spent working wasn't reduced. It was just the number of projects that I worked on. That was constrained heavily by the fact that my main business events had stopped, but that just gave me even more time to work on doing whatever it was that I fucking did. I put this again in a couple of weeks ago, the trip to Dubai gave me such an unbelievable sense of perspective. It was nothing as lovely as

Dubai as it was nothing special about Dubai, but it was about the fact that I had this change in working routine. In a year where everybody has felt like it's groundhog day over and over again, you're looking at the same four walls, you get up, you haven't got five weddings to go to, you haven't got a barbecue, you haven't got somebody's birthday, there's nothing, there's no, I haven't even been ill this year because I haven't seen anyone. I haven't got, I haven't got sick because like who the fuck's going to infect me like we're hiding from a pandemic. So, upon going away, it reminded me of something I learned from Oliolitan who was in the SAS and he had this idea called

a break point so you can imagine before the operatives enter a room or breach a building, they'll stack up outside of the door, outside of the entrance. So they'll have already landed near the objective and then either like, fought or snuck their way through and then they'll get outside and they'll take a moment to just reset, breathe, slow down a little bit, consider what the objectives are and then they'll go. And that period of calm between two periods of intense chaos was what I termed a personal break point. It's called a break point in the special forces and I termed it a personal break point for me while I was in Dubai. And it just forced me to come back. And I think

this links in with what you were saying, Johnny, about kind of really giving a first principles look at your routines and thinking like, okay, is this serving me? Does this actually make my life any better? Or am I just doing it because I've always done it? Even if it was once good, like we can talk about kind of the first level like basic bitch, make you drink three times a week because your mates do, but then even taking that into something which has been the horse of Troy snuck in by been the horse of Troy snook in by it being something that was good once. Breathwork did serve me at one time. Cold showers did serve me at one time. Getting up at 5.30 a.m. every day and going for a walk did serve me at one time.

But does it now? My requirements are different. My routine is different. My life is different. And then that consistent checking of whether the things that you are doing serve you can only be facilitated when you've had a break from it because it permits you to have that perspective and clarity around things and very much I came back and it was the happiest I've been at home in maybe even years. That's amazing. Yeah it was it was unbelievable man I obviously was super inquisitive about like what the fuck's going on

that I've come back from a place that was 32 degrees every day of glorious sunshine to somewhere where I can't leave the house and it's got about eight hours of daylight most of which is gray that why why am I so happy being back home and I honestly think it was because I got to see a life that I've crafted for myself with new eyes and think very much, it was well timed as well going into a new year to think about, okay, what do I want to try and achieve next year? But from first principles, not just what do I want to carry over that I'm already doing or do something

that I already do a little bit better? Like genuinely, what do I want to do? And it gave me this kind of, yeah, a very liberated sense of bottomless potential for next year. So have a break, micro and macro. Yeah. It comes into what you said about,

said last year on this 2019 podcast of Chris Bach's idea of nothing gets grandfathered in everything is up for sale. Just because you've been doing something, whether you think it's good or think it's bad, it has to get reexamined and say, right, should I continue this habit or this project or whatever? Yeah. Did you find that you got the same amount of work done in Dubai? Like did you still get the like the key work done in Dubai. Like, did you still get the, like, the key work done

in spite of like, I presume, working fewer hours? The key work, yes. I can't pretend that I was working on the, probably the long term important on the cusp of important, but not urgence, because inevitably there are some things that will take you away from that. There's a boat party on tonight, there's an MK's playing at a pool, there's whatever's happening, we're going out for dinner, I'm going for a walk, I'm cycling the desert.

But the stuff that keeps everything taking over, I kept on top of, perfectly fine. And had I have been there for longer, and it not had a defined endpoint that we pushed back by a week But had a defined endpoint to it. Perhaps I would have forced myself to do that stuff But for instance, then the next lead magnet that I want to do for the newsletter is a 151 books to read before you die like I was not going to start that project while I was out there

It's got no defined deadline to it. It's while I was out there, it's got no defined deadline to it. It's slightly confusing and messy to begin. There's a lot of inertia to get over. There was no way I was going to begin that while I was out there, but I kept recording. I kept on a recording schedule. I kept meditating while I was out there. I kept on doing my rehab for my Achilles. All that stuff. I think there's something that I found, like not necessarily this year, but like in years where you're traveling, going like three weddings in a week. Sometimes the most for us, like we'll have like the most profitable week ever in propane.

And I've worked some of the fewest hours, and you look at it and you're like, fuck, sake. You know, like all these weeks where I sit and like hammer away at the trying to push the boulder up the hill when there's just a rate that it's going to move. And no matter how hard you push is a nice reminder to say that actually I can't just take, I can't just stop work and have the rest of the day off or I can't take the weekend and not check my emails or whatever. But I think that's harder and harder to do when this fewer, so the average person at

home this year hasn't had the... What the fuck else is there to do? The desert to go in cycle. Yeah. Or the beach party to go to. But yeah, I think a lot of people I know have just let work like fill everything. Because it's either work or Netflix sleep, work Netflix sleep. I think it's about

matching the personality type of the person to the recommendation which you kind of had tipped to before which is that if you're a type A hard driving over achieving personality then you need to engineer in work into your day whereas if you naturally gravitate to sloth, then you need to create structure to do the work. Interestingly, someone called Neve who listens to the Modern Wisdom podcast and got in touch with me as a result asked me to do a talk at my hospital for junior pharmacists and junior doctors on life hacks for hacks for, it's sort of clinical life hacks. And one of them was go for a poo. So bear with me. It's, but when you're on a, an on call shift, which is where you are covering the entire hospital out of hours for 13 hours, it's a long shift. and it's basically your adrenal glands are just slowly getting

nipple crippled for the whole 13 hours. So you get in a phone call every like 30 to 30 to 60 seconds and you've been asked to do loads of stuff and you're just getting like slammed kind of relentlessly. And if you just go from one job to the next without that personal break point, you just you caught us all just going to go, so you do just have to stop and have a poo and be like, you know what, I'm allowed a poo. Like, what if you don't need one? Even if you don't need one, you can just sit and have a, have a shampoo, you know, you have the, the sham surgery with Tuma Gil.

Yeah. Do the same things. You prep as if you're going for a poo. You go into the cubicle. Do you have to wait for food? That's a good question. If you want me to believe it, if you want me to believe your shampoo was a real poo, shampoo. It should be a shampoo, shunny, shampoo. It's actually really dangerous having a poo in a hospital toilet because the emergency buzzer is next to the toilet roll and it's a long cable and it's really sensitive.

I've pulled stuff like that before in the past and then like the security come bursting in. When you're in Alifalysis. I've yanked a red cord like that before in a steam room thinking that it was the like the thing for more steam And this is a more steam cord And a woman with like a like a box run into the steamer A defibrillator It was just like I think a box of like miscellaneous like a lasty. Yeah, yeah Yeah, I'm gonna do with that I'm gonna bandage you up You're gonna bandage you up. I'm passed out.

You're gonna put a plaster on my shoulder. So yeah, that was basically working more can deliver a less output as well. He's kind of a subset of that. That it's the sort of thing that you hear everybody say, but you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's for people who don't actually know what they're talking about.

Like, no, no, no, no, no. It's not just diminishing returns that you get from work. You genuinely can do work, which is so bad or move so slowly that across a week, you will deliver less output by working more. If you decide to under-sleep yourself, over-caffeinate yourself, create work, which is motivationally so sub-par that it makes you feel bad the next day, you don't want to do work. Honestly, just having some sort of rule, I know that like a hard stop can often be difficult because the stop can come at a time which is awkward within the workflow, especially if you finally found focus after fighting to get

a hold of it for the last few hours. But finding a point and saying, okay, that's enough for today, like, congratulations, well done. And then giving yourself genuine rest time away from that, the David Allen quote, your ability to deploy power is directly proportional to your ability to relax. That's not a powerlifter, that's a man who does productivity for a living. So yeah, I guess you'd totally right, that's the micro and the macro. I definitely think that a personal break point

as a prescription needs to be longer than a week. I don't think that you can get the benefits from a personal break point by doing a holiday which has no resemblance to your normal life, or a trip away which is just work in a new place that's exactly the same. The whole point is that everything changes except for the core elements of your life.

And that actually goes back to what you said, Johnny, where you were like, did you get work done across the board? And I didn't, but I got the skeleton done, which is what is the minimum viable product. It's like that what I have to do each week, which meant that everything else was up for sale in the Chris Sparks example. Like nothing gets grandfathered in, except for obviously the stuff that needs to be grandfathered in. Like obviously I need to eat, obviously

I'm going to train, obviously I'm going to do, you know, the projects that actually matter to me. Well, you have to do those things, but the way'm going to do the projects that actually matter to me. Well, you have to do those things, but the way that you eat or the way that you train is up for sale. Right. Johnny, next, you're a second lesson. Well, I've been popped, isn't it? Yeah.

Well, my second lesson was just meditation, which is a really simple one. I was just saying it isn't in life, I was a list. I think it was you stuff that put me on it originally, and then you put me in touch Chris with a meditation teacher. Yeah. And like even the, so like I suppose all of what we're saying, like the sitting alone thing and the even like knowing when to take a rest and all these sorts of things, it just comes back to like awareness of yourself, awareness of how you feel.

Everyone gets to the sort of towards the end of the day and thinks, I'm not getting anything done now, but I'm still gonna sit here and just hit my head off all at the top and hope that something comes of it. But having a formal practice like that, I think it's just the best way to get better after that. Like, when do I need to stop? When am I feeling anxious?

What is feeling anxious? I don't have to identify with being stop where and am I feeling anxious? What is feeling anxious? I don't have to identify with being anxious just because I have this sensation. And just having a practice like that becomes like a really, I think I've taken that a lot more seriously this year, where I've previously done, I'm like 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, whereas now it's like the first thing I do, just because I think it's like having a good night's sleep. You know, when you wake up having having a really good night's sleep and you just, you compare to any other day, it's not even close in terms of like the decisions you make, the way that you feel. I think after doing a long meditation session, I feel the same way, which is a recent thing. Didn't use to happen like that. So I think it's just a compounding hundreds of hours situation.

What's your current practice? I'm going to guess that you following Brian's fight, well, it's Shinzen Young's five ways to know yourself through Brian. It sounds like such a five ways to know yourself through Brian. Yeah, like the meditation accelerator, like get to know yourself the five ways by Brian. Yeah.

So it's a bit of that. It's a bit of, it's, I've been following, um, so this is, this is taken from Ben again, who's missed a meditation, who I know has recommended this to me and you suffer as a film called chasing the present, where this guy interviews like, um, so I mean Gary Webbers, the big name in the, uh, OG in the, in the film, but a lot of his stuff,

like the self-inquiris stuff I've been doing, because he's got some guided sessions online, some of the Shin-Zeng-Yun stuff, like the noting practice, like is it visual or somatic or audible? Just that really. But I think the thing, I spent too long getting caught up in the method, like program hopping, and not enough time, and just, I need to just do 30 minutes a day. I just need to do enough time for this to actually make a difference. I think hearing Gary say needs to be like a minimum of 35 minutes

is a real like, it's not very 10 minutes for 10 days headspace. He basically says, you're wasting your time, if you're doing less than 35 minutes, you're just like, oh Gary, we've all got real life. Maybe alone mate, yeah, still making me anxious. But yeah, I think he's done like 20,000 hours or something.

Not the first, of mindfulness practice. But now just has no thoughts. Yeah, he's the guy that switched off his default mode network, isn't he? This is what I love about Gary Weather because he fully puts his money whereas Malthus, he's been a researcher and participant in a lot of the Harvard Functional Neuroimaging Studies, where he's just like, yeah, put me through an FMR right and his brain just does not work like other people's brains.

So you think I think I like any activity. Sorry about this about having no thoughts. He's like, I say most of the time because it makes it sounds more believable. And like when I'm tired and stuff like they do occasionally come back, but most of the time, like you can use thoughts for problem solving and things like that, but there's no like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, going on constantly. I just love how he admits that if he's feeling a bit groggy, he occasionally has a thought. What is most people with a feeling a bit tired are just drowning in, like,

and he has the occasional, like, that's not gonna work. I'm like, oh, that's shit. Oh, this is gonna go badly. So, when my blood sugar is a bit low, they can occasionally re-emerge. So I think, like, the chasing the present film is a guy who had or has, like, material success. He just outwardly is your average, like millennial, I suppose,

who has all these things go well for him and then realizes, like, hold on, I still feel terrible, like I still worry all the time, I still don't feel at ease with myself. So he goes on this huge journey and interviews loads of like big names in the meditation world, really good film. So if anyone wants like a... Where is it Amazon Pro? Ben sent it to me on YouTube Pro or YouTube paid for whatever that's called, but I'm sure it must be on Amazon, it must be elsewhere as well. But yeah, it's not really a life hack, but I just noticed that meditation is not in the

life hack's guide. There's just loads of ways to track meditations. That says it all, that it's such a taken thing. I assumed. We just presume, like, what, you're not meditating every day. What's wrong with you? You said, it was you said to me in Liverpool after we got out of the lift and said, like, stop being a dick about it and just do 30 minutes a day for 10 days.

And you tell me that you don't feel any different. It's because Johnny was was following like the atomic habits method of like starting at two minutes, building up to four minutes a day and I think three minutes three three done for sorry. And I think for a lot of habits, that can work. But I think when a habit has a minimum effect of dose like meditation, it could be counterproductive, because you're then doing all of the boring bit without the benefit. Do you believe yourself, and I will move on after this, because I'm aware of Sputum and my meditation lot, but do you believe that 30 minutes, like the Gary Leber thing,

if you're doing 15, it's literally pointless. I don't think it's literally pointless, but it, so Gary's purpose of meditation is to quiet the mind enough to do the self-inquiry and fully uproot the illusion of self. So the meditation is almost a means to an end for him. I see. Whereas you will still get the benefits of time and attention with meditation from doing small amounts of it. But I also think it's, so I don't think it's as much of like a there's a switch, but it's like training. If someone's doing six minutes of training a day, they'll get maybe a bit of benefit if that training is like super dialed in and absolutely perfect and really consistent, but it's kind

of making it difficult for themselves compared to the guy who trains an hour three times a week and goes deep with it. What if the six minutes is just burpees for time? That's what I mean, yeah, if it's like, do you mean are you saying because it's like, no, no, I was just, I was just, whenever I think of like, how would I make training as hard as possible for, I think there was a crossfit open workout or there was a crossfit workout, which was just seven, seven minutes of burpees. I can think of, I can honestly think of nothing worse. Training wise, that's as bad as it gets. Yeah, lesson two, scob.

Yeah, lesson two scope Lesson two is that 2020 has been the year of the confidently wrong so This is basically from all of the kind of Online health experts and so on just coming out of the woodwork and praying on people's Health anxiety or fears, not helped by media and so on that's basically been like scam-ongering the whole time and selectively using claims or stats to like really send the shits up people to keep them in the house, which like,

you know, it has a policy purpose, but there's definitely people that have tried to capitalize on that. And they're either knowingly wrong or they're unknowingly wrong. And so this is like people selling immune boosting supplements online or we want to sort someone selling an anti-cancer diet and you know all this kind of thing and you're seeing people repeatedly make predictions about what's going to happen in the next month and then they might even be high profile people that are then shown to be like dramatically wrong and the lesson really is to hold your opinions lightly. I think this is a lesson that I've lesson really is to hold your opinions lightly. I think this is a lesson that I've internalized quite a lot and I think it's been caused by having my a-ness handed to me a few years

ago from big trading losses. And that's because trading is the abstracted version of this. Like, yes, you're just looking at a line on a screen, but that's like the perfect way to distill that down to the pure emotional rawness of being wrong, because you can invest all you go into, like, auto is definitely gonna go up now, like after, and then you go sunk cost fallacy and you invest you, like, you're,

you're energy into it and you're like, oh no, but it's definitely exactly the same. You've seen patterns that aren't really there and then the market just keeps hitting you with pain until you learn the lesson. And so by doing that, you end up realizing actually I have to hold my opinions lightly. Not just for the sake of keeping my ego in check, but because I'm going to be hit with pain if I don't. So I think that was a great teacher and it applies to everything else that if you're able to quickly change your opinion on something based on your evidence,

then you're never going to be stuck in a losing position. I think the problem is, especially with social media, certainty is conflated with truthfulness or expertise. Yeah. So someone that's absolutely hard in the paint about one particular point, I keep using this example, but it was just so fucking flagrant, I couldn't believe it. Joe Biden said at the beginning of this year

that stopping Chinese people coming into the country was xenophobic. And then two and a half months later said that the travel restrictions were entered too late. It's like, dude, you do not get to fucking do that. You don't get to do that. Like you're supposed to be the vanguard of statement like truthfulness and honesty. And the problem is that I don't know why. Perhaps

the media teams say, actually, mate, if you were to track back on that and I identified that you were wrong, it shows in the polls that people are going to lose faith in you or something like that. But that's only if you're so basic that you can only hold one thought in your, in your mind at a time. Like if your mental ram is so constricted that like a goldfish, you can only remember the last thing that this person said and not frame it against the things that they said before. But perhaps this is me being a dickhead, perhaps reputation on the internet is additive with a time limit rather than multiplicative across time. I don't know. Additive with a time limit rather than multiplicative.

So imagine if you multiply it by zero, you'd end up with a big fat zero. If you say something which is just totally, totally wrong and then decide to multiply it by something else which is totally wrong, you're just at zero. Whereas what it might be is it's just zero plus zero plus zero plus one. You're like, oh, look at me, I'm at a one. And everyone's forgotten all of the fucking zeroes in any case. Oh, I see. Yeah. So, so I think the memory span of the feed and all of that stuff is very short. Yes, you'll get the occasional person be like, oh, but you start back in March this and But also the the whole system as you said the polls and the algorithms and everything are all

they don't Reward nuance and restraint which is what every true expert has because they realize how little they know and they're like well, you know, it could be okay, but And they reward people little they know and they're like, well, you know, it could be okay. But and they reward people who are certain than promote our rage in the comments. And yeah, the media thing's a big one. Like I was in the hospital the other day, one of the staff was like, yeah, doctor, are you having the COVID vaccine? And I was like, well, maybe the most likely yes,

but you know, I don't want to be one of the first guinea pig, but I saw it on Facebook, they gave it a bunch of African kids and I'll died. Okay, where did you see that? It was on Facebook. I'll do you be like, okay, Janice. I mean, there's some degree of nuance between those two opinions. Yeah. Okay, I mean, there's some degree of nuance between those two opinions. Yeah. I didn't even know what to say about him, and it makes me viscerally uncomfortable, like the level of, like, especially Facebook this year,

that the nail in the coffin of Facebook has been COVID-2020. Like, it's just a cesspool of people who haven't got... Do you remember when everyone was adamant that the army was being deployed to London to lock people in their houses? Do you remember that? When people were sharing, well, my cousin is actually his part of the Reserve Armed Guard for the 14th Northumberland Division, and he sent... And it was that forwarded through, like a million WhatsApp groups.

You know, like, what is this? It's like a guy wearing his kit, walking down a street. It's not the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, friend is like, well, like my brother is still convinced that doctors are shills putting Covid on death certificates of people that didn't have it and to bump up the numbers. And I said to him, like, you realize I work in a Covid hospital and I've not put that on a death certificate for like seven or eight months. And he was like, oh yeah, but that's because you're too junior. Like it's the seniors that are game paid off to it. You're like, no, because it's us that do it. And also I wish I was being paid off by big farmer. How keep you all orchestrated would this conspiracy have to be? Like how many people would they need to keep quiet about this?

The thing is, I'm not being paid anywhere near enough. I would love to have a little side pack from not really. It's the same thing as when Darren Brown is like, I don't use stooge's. And people are like, they definitely use the stooge's. The tightness of his network for him to use stooge's are not one of them just go to the daily mail and go, I'm a Darren Brown stooge. And that's Darren Brown. So then think like imagine all of the healthcare system in the world is in on this huge thing. The number of people that have to be sufficiently paid off to not one of them just go to the media and go, here's all the evidence. I'll tell their wife or do a one. There's me being told to do this to do this get a big old payout, wouldn't they?

Yeah, it's less there in brown and see threatened their family But but this is a unique individual. Yeah, so that's like the little lens You'd have to go to get to get everybody on board And that's just there in brown. I mean, he'll just make magic is there a is there a heuristic that you use for people online? Scope, obviously, you've identified this problem, which is people being confidently wrong. Certainly, Jordan Peterson in one of the interviews, it wasn't with Kathy Newman,

it was when they sent Kathy Newman away, put her on a really big course of steroids and got her to do five, three, one, and she came back with research and a new haircut and it she worked for GQ. Oh, remember that. It was like, oh, you idiot, you haven't seen my final form. And then he basically said, if I can take one of your opinions

and from that one opinion, predict everything else that you believe, there's something very, very wrong here because you shouldn't take your opinions wholesale, they should be piecemeal. So that's an identifier that I would use. Look, is this person just basic bitch, 101 conspiracy left, right, with absolutely no new ones? But that's difficult to tell online.

Like what do you use? That's a really good way of looking at it, that the world is not doesn't fit into one ideology or category. So if someone only has opinions that have that flavour, there's a big red flag there, isn't there? And so because it shows that they just haven't thought of themselves, they're just taking it. So yeah, the way I filter that is, for example, I was like, I'm supposed to be a representative for healthcare and I don't really know much about the vaccine. So I need to look at some of the data. So I'll just never go to anything that sniffs of social media and I just have to look

at the original sources. I just don't think that any of the filtered down stuff that's getting to social media is ever going to be accurate. Or, well, obviously, there's stopped clock is right twice a day, but trying to find that in social media is so hard. There was a good podcast for the layman, if anyone's interested in kind of understanding this stuff

with Peter Riteer and a guy who is on the board for the FDA approval of vaccines with like, this is his special area and he's worked and drug approval and everything. And he talks through in a very systematic way, some of the mechanisms and processes there. So I would go to things like that. It's a lot of work, that's the problem. It's significant,

easier to read a tweet, take it as true, and then start broadcasting it to everybody else or retweet it or tell tell your parents going and doing research and actually having to think for yourself is hard, which is why most people. There's a really good video from people going, this guy going around like a Trump rally. And he's asking people they've got the hats on and stuff and he's like So what do you think of the allegations about? Trump's thingy and the transcript and they're like

Think for yourself read the transcript So I got to say and they're like oh, have you read the transcript? No, I haven't got time for that kind of things Okay, how long did you wait in the queue to get to this protest. They're like seven hours, seven hours, okay, a lot of free time. Okay. But think for yourself and read the transcript. That's funny. Yeah. You've not read the transcript. Oh, no. Cool. We are running up against my time, the big guys. Sadly. Well, I'm going to have to do my second lesson and we'll finish it there. We won't go into play a little game of bearer ball, but we'll save that for next year. If you do have any bears or balls, basically topics that you want to hear,

whether or not we're bearish or bullish, i.e. negative or positive about and why, just send them to me, I'll put them in the comments and we will be doing an episode next year. So my final one was a lesson that I learned, I guess, from my injury, which is you're more resilient than you know. And I think this probably actually extrapolates out across a lot of people this year.

You know, sadly there's going to be some people who were with us at the beginning of 2020 who aren't going to be with us in 2021 because of the pandemic. And the same goes for businesses, the same goes for relationships and financial investments and bank accounts and all the rest of it. But for the people who are still here and are listening to this, you're still here. Like all of the things that you thought this year that were going to absolutely annihilate your life, all of the worries you had that didn't come to fruition or did come to fruition but didn't end up finishing your world.

Like you are still here. And that was kind of brought front and center for me when I ruptured my Achilles. I presumed that my constitution as someone who's had depression in the past and sometimes just has catastrophic thoughts I just thought I'm gonna deal so badly with this. This is gonna be It's just going to set in motion a downstream fucking like Nightmare and what ended up happening was, yeah, it was uncomfortable. And there was a couple of periods of like just sheer suffering. When I was dealing with stomach cramps from opiate constipation for three days solid, unable to sleep, eat, go to the bathroom,

and doing all of that with one leg was like a particular low light, but all of those things that I went through very quickly just reset my expectations and with sufficient stoicism and a little bit of mindfulness, I actually found like so much more fortitude in myself that I didn't even know existed and that's kind of put a lot of faith in me for what I might be like moving forward because I genuinely opened a door inside of myself in a house I've lived in my entire life to a room that I didn't know existed. And I was like, holy fucking shit, like where's this fortitude and resilience come from? And it was just like when it was, when it was required, it came type of thing.

And that ties in nicely with realizing just how little of our own internal motivations, and the fact that our consciousness gets to see this tiny tiny tiny little blinkered sliver of what our true motivations are and what we're actually able to be aware of is so much less than the elephant that was sat on the back of from a mental perspective. And yeah, realizing that all tied together for me to think like, stopping social re-broll about things, you can't be a reductionist, utilitarian about absolutely every different potential permutation that's going to occur in life.

You are far more resilient than you know. And if you need it, it will be there. And because of that, the person that you are now when you're worrying and the person that you are, if the incident that you're worrying about occurs, are essentially totally different, have faith that the future you is going to be able to deal with whatever's going to come, have faith that the future you will pay the bill, make the business work, regain the client, fix the relationship, get over the relationship, fix the Achilles, deal with the opiate constipation, whatever it might be.

Like, all of those things came together to make me sort of really reassured that everybody's constitution is far stronger than they know. And specifically mine, and I'm like a really, really good example of somebody who I think, who I thought would be terrible in that sort of a situation. And I managed to get through it. So yeah, that was, um, you are more resilient than you know. Nice. Yeah, that is very good. I like the idea of discovering a room in your house that you didn't know was there.

I just hope I don't do my Achilles. I wouldn't advise it. I mean, as a personal development strategy, it was effective, but not necessary. I wish that I hadn't had to do it to realize it, but in terms of... You done a charm Achilles. That would have been better. Like, he's still white. Yeah, but he's still got a white. Yeah.

Gentlemen, I really appreciate it. It's been a year where we've probably not seen each other, probably the least we've seen each other in forever, and maybe even spoken as well, which is a shame, but hopefully next year that'll change and value both of your friendships, I value the fact that you're both in my life, as I always do. propinifitness.com slash modern wisdom to find out the seven things you won't believe about how to build an online business and propnfitness.com slash calculator if you want to get your macro assorted. Did I get it right?

He did? Yeah, you can even just go propnfitness.com. Okay, but don't be lazy. Don't be lazy. Chris, it's been a pleasure. It has, yeah, thanks for having us back on, man. We're going to do it more. We just need, I need to get a hold of you guys.

It's significantly easier when we can sit us down in a living room, so we can get multiple episodes out. I can't wait until we can do that again. I know, man. I got my couch like re-apolstered as well. Yeah, yeah, it's so much more comfortable. It was all flaccid before and now it's very turjid. It's just ready, like, beckoning us to end.

Yeah. Look, Jens, thank you. Have a good Christmas and to everybody that is listening, Merry Christmas as well, I will see you in a couple of days actually Chris Sparks coming on to talk about how to do the ultimate end of your review. So it's a very timely episode. So stay tuned for that one. As we've already said, all the stuff from ProPimp Fitness, if you're an online coach go and check them out and

they will teach you how to transition online or to improve your online business as it is. For now, Jents, Merry Creme Bo! you