Modern Wisdom - #281 - Life Hacks 203

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Jonny & Yusef from Propane Fitness join me for another Life Hacks episode. Sit back & enjoy as we run through our favourite tools, apps, websites, strategies & resources for a productive and efficient life. Expect to learn why I brought a potato to a podcast, my biggest productivity tip for 2021, how Jonny is generating ideas in the shower, Yusef's favourite journalling app, how to ensure you never miss your creatine again and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount on Reebok’s entire range including the amazing Nano X1 at https://geni.us/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Buy a Waterproof paper & pencil - https://amzn.to/2LkqHBm Be careful with 2FA and use Safari. Count down from 10 and breathe fast to wake up. Powerhooks - https://www.thegymrevolution.co.uk/index.php/brands/other-brands/power-hooks.html Miniature Taser to light candles - https://amzn.to/3rcDdlq Turn on music & do some mobility for energy. Have a sacred training playlist. Evernote Legacy - https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote Find joy today. Use a note taking app to always record insights from a book. Stop the inner voice in your head when reading - https://www.dummies.com/education/language-arts/speed-reading/how-to-stop-vocalizing-and-become-a-speed-reader First things first. Plan what you’re going to do on the night before. 6 Minute Success Journal - https://amzn.to/3r9KvXk Break large tasks down into single actions. Day One for Journalling - https://dayoneapp.com Remember that you are the common denominator. Creatine Tablets to ensure you don’t miss your dose - https://www.myprotein.com/sports-nutrition/creatine-monohydrate-tablets/10575029.html Blob Opera - https://g.co/arts/iKptTTA3QDaEm7bk7 Red Rising - https://amzn.to/3rklWHo Leave badges on for notifications. Upgrade to the quickest internet you can get. Ctrl+Cmd+Space for emojis. Get Propane's Free Online Business Training - https://propanefitness.com/mwbusiness Get Propane's Free Online Fitness Business Tips - https://propanefitness.com/modernwisdom Get free diet advice from PropaneFitness - https://propanefitness.com  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

Hello wonderful people, welcome back my guests today and none other than Johnny and you said from propin fitness.com and it is another life hacks episode. If you are new here you may not have heard one of these yet, we did the last one in October but this is maybe the 15th episode we've done on life hacks. Basically we go through our favorite tools, tips and tactics for a productive and efficient life, everything from apps to strategies, books, ways to make a toasted sandwich and everything in between. And then we discuss them for a little bit and everything that we talk about is linked in the show notes below so that you can go and buy

it or check it out for yourself or just remember it later on. So today, expect to learn why I brought a potato to a podcast, my biggest productivity tip for 2021, how Johnny is generating ideas in the shower, Yusuf's favourite journaling app, how to ensure you never miss your with Johnny and Yusef. I've got a present for you here. I'm not sure if you can see that. Oh, yes, this is a very, I mean, it's burning my fingers. I'm having to sort of, so if Johnny, if you can just... What we all need is a potato prop. Yeah, well, you've got one. And then Dean can make it look like a real potato, yeah, but this is a real potato. You're a first Johnny. What have you got for a picture?

It looks room temperature, but I'm happy to catch it. So I have what I think is the best list of life hacks I've ever had in the history of life hacks. Are we ready for life hack number one? I think I've already told you this, but it is a waterproof no pad for the shower. So, I have the most ideas and thoughts that ever occurred me all day happen in the shower. And what I do is like try and leave my phone within sort of kind of touching distance so that, hey Siri, exactly, but that doesn't work because the sound of the water is louder or like gets in the way and then

you try and make a note on your phone with shower hands and it's just not going to happen because it's like you end up typing the wrong word. So I bought it off Amazon. It's waterproof paper with a waterproof pencil. It's a suction onto like a tile or glass. And I just write it down. Then when I get out the shower, I pull the thing off, put it in my army focus, captured.

Turn showers, I reckon, I reckon we've generated revenue now from my showers. How does a waterproof pencil and waterproof paper work? It's like, it's hard to describe, to be honest. It is like no other pencil paper I've ever used in my life. So it looks like a pencil, it functions like a pencil, but somehow you're able to write on wet paper and it works and it doesn't wash

off. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. But of course this requires, so I suppose it's part of a general kind of way that I'm trying to improve my life, which is I'm so confident now in not many focus because it's so much better than tick tick that I know that the only thing I make to do is make sure I'm capturing everything. So I have like a part of paper when I meditate and because that's another time that it happens and I have this in the shower and then I use like Siri in the car and my AirPods and I'm training and things like that. So it's just a game of how do I ensure that nothing slips through the cracks? And the shower, the waterproof part of paper

is the one I'm most proud of. Any questions? You thought quite a lot of you started it so far. Loads. You said you, I think you must have a really high density of shower thoughts. It's an average of like three to four things of shower. How long's a shower for you?

Five minutes? Some time long. What's interesting is I found shower thoughts correlate with viral tweets for me. So there's been times when I've poured my heart to crafting a tweet that I think, yeah, this ticks all the boxes to gain traction, gain followers, go viral,

tumbleweeds. And then a stupid shower thought that you just think, I'll just next day you wake up and it's got thousands of likes. And you're like, I don't need to get you out and go viral. What proof of paper? I think so. Tweet from the paper. Shower tweets, yeah. That would be good. Like, I know what a proof iPad built into the wall. I think anything that increases or reduces friction for capture is going to be a winner.

I don't think I have very many ideas in the shower, but I tend to shower on a night and you tend to shower in the morning, don't you? Yeah. Yeah, so by 9pm, 10pm at night when I'm having my shower like I'm all I de-ed out So a few of these life hacks came from shower shower the capture Wow, okay, I'm a step-as-search on you body were showering in the nighttime because of sleep quality So I do after the training I show in the nighttime after training, but not every night

Interesting I do after the training. I share in the night time after the training, but not every night. Interesting. There we go. Yusef, what you got for us? So I've got an anti-hack to start with. And the reason I'm saying this is because it might impact this episode. I've ordered a new dash cam because last time I had a car crash,

my dash cam didn't pick up the footage because it was so old. So I got the worst of both worlds. And because it's over a hundred pounds value, Amazon have now started doing a one-time password that they send you within five minutes of the delivery mile coming and you have to quickly tell him the passcode and then you take your leave and go. So the problem is this might happen now. So yesterday I was on a podcast with Johnny and Mano Henselman's and the Amazon man was like absolutely going mental on the door and my flatmate answered the door and he couldn't accept the parcel because he didn't have the password. You think, would someone really like break into my house to take a parcel to get a dash

cut? Like it's it's health and safety gone mad. So what's the hack? So the the hack is like, yes, it's a nice piece of security, just like online banking, but it's possible to lock yourself out of your own accounts in many ways where it... So I actually am anti, I don't know, everyone's all like, oh, you need to factor authentication and one time pass words and stuff, but I think it's a pain. The hack off the back of it is if you want to avoid that and there's certain accounts that you have to use for, you know, when it texts you a verification code and you have to type it in, is use Safari, because Safari will auto pull it in from your phone and then you just put your finger on

the touch ID and it'll fill it in. Does that work with everything? Does that work with PayPal, for example? Yeah, really? It sends you a number, if it's sent to mine then. No, of course. So the point is like instead of having, because a lot of a lot of companies have two factors for authentication now, but I guess because cybercrimes increased I assume because of the last year. So you can just get rid of that and do it with your face. If you use Safari on your computer, you can do it with your finger. I think they're going to launch Face ID in the next generation of Macs. Okay. Face ID do it with your finger. I think they're going to launch Face ID in the next generation of Macs. Face ID on Mac with a slightly more robust set of payment presets and address and details

and all that sort of stuff is going to be so good. Matthew Koehback that I had on the show a while ago owns fast and the goal of Fast is that you never need to put your payment details in again. So that's like a cross platform solution for this. So you'd have your Fast membership, and that would be across any website ever that you go into, it'll just auto populate. That's cool.

It's just a real slippery slope, but it's so convenient. Lots of people are buying stuff through e-com and other online stores, and they can't be asked to put their details in. Right, my first one. This is taken from Elietzer Yukatsky, who is one of the guys behind LesRong.com, part of the rationalist movement. And he was talking about how he encourages himself to get out of bed, given that I've had a pretty

unstable sleep and wake pattern for quite a long time getting out of bed, even during COVID, just sinking into a regular sleep and wake pattern's been challenging. And for me, if I get out of bed on time, when I said I would, most of the rest of the day goes right, whereas if I don't get out of bed on time, when I said I would, most of the rest of the day goes right, whereas if I don't get out of bed at the time that I said I would the rest of the day

often tends to be a catastrophe. So getting out of bed, not staying in bed, not hitting the snooze button, those are all important things for me to make sure happen. I'm using two different sunrise alarm clocks to, because it's quite dark at the moment. So that's the first thing, but I've already spoken about that. Eliad's advice is to count down from 10 and breathe quickly with each count.

So if you think about anyone that's ever done a CrossFit workout or any sort of high intensity class, the coach will look at you if you're not doing something and go three, two, one, back on the bar, and there's something about a countdown that forces you into action and gets you, he's like, well, you counted down from three, like you've got to do it. And honestly, if you struggle to wake up on a morning, I am one of those people count down from 10 and Big breath with each one. Honestly, it's such an easy hack, because there's no way I'm going back to sleep

after 10 breaths plus I can't be down and then you just throw the covers off you and you're up. Yeah, exactly. You're full of O2 and the covers are off. So what I have a similar contraption, which is when my lung goes off, I've got a spring load on the head of my bed, which flips me up and drops me into some trousers. Do you know the dog to press that, though?

The dog presses it, and the toaster comes up in the air. The jam hits it. The potato gets baked. Exactly. The only problem is if you're out of toast because then it'll ping up the jam. Files go over. Should be hitting you in the face. Then it's the wrong trust. I don't believe that for a moment because you have cereal for breakfast rather than toast. The rest of it was fine. Until I find it. So a toast through me. You know what? The

there's a few little moments like that where you get rumbled for a little detail. Like someone went into my flatmates bedroom and wrote a semi-eligible note and he came in and he was like, you said, did you write me that hang on? You don't have a pen. Yeah. How do you guys make sure that you wake up on time on the morning? I know you're alarm-free now, Johnny. I know, it's correct. So that's like the biggest win of 2020 for me was just because every day was so similar and there was no social stuff in the evening when I think they threw it me off. Some of it is back in my girlfriend, to be honest. Like, she loves sleep, whereas I find sleep and inconvenience.

So like, she wants to go to bed at the same time every day. So that's kind of my bedtime alarm, like, TV's off. So I'm not just going to sit in the dark on my own. So I go to bed at, same time every day. So that's kind of my bedtime alarm, like TV's off. So I'm not just gonna sit in the dark on my own. So I go to bed at the same time, roughly. And then just having the same wake time every day for a year. And now I've even tried. So recently kind of tried to get a bit more sleep,

tried to like push my sleep time, my wake time back a little bit and I can't. So we need to get back her on the podcast. She's just got the wisdom of her forefather, that says, isn't she like drilled into it really? I don't think she wanted to come on the podcast. I'll ask her, if Chris wants to run, but I don't think she should. She'll be at a wedding. She wised to come on. She'll be busy at a wedding. Right, Johnny, what you got? So this one's a lit, I suppose, right now, not necessarily that relevant, but when Jim's back open again, I ordered. So I don't often use dumbbells in training because a lot

of the things I would use dumbbells for, I'm limited because I'm so musilian strong, I'm limited by being able to get the dumbbell in position. So like dumbbell press, incline press, overhead press, I just can't, I can't, I'm not strong enough to get it in position, then use the range of motion. So I ordered from, like, it was like, they used to be alarms and they're not anymore. They're now on like fitness superstar or something. Power hooks, which they're any like 20, 30 quid, so you could take them to a gym with you. It's a metal handle that wraps around the dumbbell and then attaches to the handle itself. And you hold onto it and you're able to basically un-rack the dumbbells as you would a barbell. So in a standing over here press, you just hook them onto like a rig or a barbell,

it's shoulder height or un-rack it like a bench press. And suddenly, dumbbell variations become how much weight can you use on the dumbbell variation? No shoulder injuries? Brilliant, brilliant. So they are like 20, 30 quid, put many gym bag, and then sort it. What is your number one dumbbell movement that you've missed? Or what is the movement that dumbbells give you that you think a barbell can't? Like the most what's the first place that you've missed or what is the movement that dumbbells give you that you think a barbell can't, like the most what's the first place that you go to with regards to a dumbbell movement? So for me, I've always found when I do dumbbell bench press, it helps my bench press, which I know like obviously, but like I'm always limited by just being able to get there. You have to like

get the dumbbells on your knees and then lie back and flap around and then getting them off against a pain. So dumbbell bench press for me is the biggest thing. And I don't like overhead press with a barbell particularly it just doesn't, my shoulders don't like it whereas dumbbells because you can kind of angle the dumbbell and it's an easier range of motion. So those two, like the most obvious, that's why I bought them. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's awesome. I like it, man. I really fell in love with seated strict press, seated strict overhead press this year.

Such a good exercise. Because it's very nice. Yeah, you can just get yourself locked in, especially if you have a little bit of spinal instability, let me in, Säftoo, like you can just brace yourself again. So you'd have the bench at that one, like the first notch that allows you to sit back a tiny bit, and then you can give your upper back a little bit of room. And I think it would be interesting to see if you find that overhead position uncomfortable from a seated strict press, Johnny, because

it's a lot more comfortable for me. So I don't have an incline bench. I train in my, like I have a gym in my garage, I don't have an incline bench, some limited it with that. But dining. Got dining chairs though. I do have dining chairs. I've never thought about that, you know, but that literally would fix the problem.

Well, did you not see this over summer when the first lockdown happened? There was tons and tons of videos of like, lads in the garden, I, with like some unfortunate garden tressal chair, it's just a, you know, like a classic plastic barbeque chair, and they've got themselves plus like quite a bit of weight. And you can see the legs are just going like this. Horrible. I think like falling with a barbell in your hands while you're falling.

It's just, it's awful, isn't it? The thought of it. So much can go wrong. Yeah. I've seen people put barbells your hands while you're falling. It's awful, isn't it? The thought of it. So much can go wrong. Yeah. I've seen people put barbells on wheelie bins, like two wheelie bins, and then the wheelie bin, lids cave in and stuff like that. I think we've probably had every possible variation of barbell injury from dropping it on your toe

to like clipping your chin when you're doing an overhead press. That is awful You have done that yeah, or you might you know, yeah, that's bad. Well, I thought I thought of you Chris with it with these because didn't you Wasn't the source of your back injury a dumbbell clean? It was yeah, correct So that's three years. Yeah, I don't know well remember. I didn't know why I remember that But it's something that I always whenever I'm like moving something into place. I was sent like Be careful Chris hurt himself. So yeah, so like whenever you're doing a dumbbell overhead press I didn't know why I remember that, but it's something that I always, whenever I'm like moving something into place, I was like, be careful. Chris, I'm self-suffered. So, yeah.

So, like, whenever you're doing a dumbbell over her breast, if you're doing like four sets, that's four, maybe more. So, I'm actually doing like, density style circuits with these dumbbells at the moment, such as multiple sets of low reps. That's like 10 or 15 cleans that I would have to do and I'm terrible at it. So there's a recurring theme there like I remember a few years ago I've got a really crisp memory of me lying on the floor like in tears and Chris came with a care package of malt loaf and smoothie and it was and like Valtarolle it was really really hard one. Valtarolle. And that was because I think it like six in

the morning I had the 50 kilo dumbbells trying to get them into place for a seated bench and lying bench press and like it's when you try and get it onto your thighs as the first step before you roll back onto you back and I missed my leg and so I'm like swinging around with one dumbbell and I felt something pinging and I was like I'll just deal with that in a second did my my set, while you're doing the set, you feel your back is just going like, oh no.

And then when I put them down, I was like, I'm just gonna have to go home. There's one other moment like that where someone we know Robbie was doing lateral raises with the metal dumbbells. And between reps, he just dinked his bell end between the dumbbells. And that was game over. He just like stops the workout, went home. Glanzo megalenegary isn't it?

Instant. That would really hurt. Really, really hurt. Power hooks. I like it. Seth, what you got? This from AliExpress. I mean, AliExpress should be the life hack actually because it's a great way to just buy a bunch of TAT. I think I'm going to do a series on YouTube of TAT. I bought on AliExpress.

This is a lighter. Chris, one of your recommendations a while ago is have a long lighter so you can light candles and stuff. This is basically how dodgy is this? Oh my god. Can you hear that? Yeah. So can you describe for people that are listening?

Can you describe what it is? It looks dangerous. It's just basically, I think it's a taser. Taser, taser, but it's a taser. But you just put it into the candle, and it lights it up. You charge it with you, USB-C. Wow. I mean, only on AliExpress, are you going to get that, because there's no way that it's

legal. I mean, what am I even going to call that, like, buy a miniature Taser to light a candle? Illegal Taser. Yeah. Like, I'm so tempted to just be like, but I feel like I'm like, I was gonna say if you done it, put if you stuck something in it. To scared. If you don't, just do it to yourself, just go out really quickly. Sorry, I mean, high voltage is it? No, but like, so what do I start to gain? Like, I know it's gonna, it's gonna hurt in some way. Ient. You know where the parameters are and also content, yeah.

So knowing how much it hurts, is it? I think it's good to know like the the layer of land, isn't it? Was something like that? Okay, I did that once. I'll not do that again. Yeah. Okay, what am I going to do? Right, so one of the things that I and probably almost everyone else have been struggling with over the last year has been finding that sort of gas and that motivation and that energy throughout the day not in a I need a coffee way or I need to have some food more like I've been on my own in my house working or doing whatever and I just need to feel a little bit more energized the same way that you would whenever you have a conversation with some owner have to get out of the car and especially before a podcast because I tend to record on an evening. I'm trying

to find you know 6 p.m. I've maybe been up since 6.45 so it's 12 hours after I got up and I've got to do the thing where I peak perform. So what I've taken to doing is turning some music on, like making a miniature playlist of maybe sort of two or three songs on Spotify and just doing a little mobility circuit of a couple of press ups, a couple of squats, you know, maybe some stretches us for me for my Achilles, some carphrases and stuff like that, whilst listening to some music at a fairly good volume, and the difference with a little bit of blood flow, you'd think I'm going to move more that would make me more tired. But that time where you've got brain fog and you thought it

aren't really too clear, it's quite difficult to describe, but you know what I mean, you just feel foggy and not really sharp and not on it. And you're like five minutes, even just five minutes of that and a big glass of cold water. I think a lot of this, the unifying thread that we discovered was when you told me about your acupuncture, Matt, Seth, and you said, it's just a state change. You're just looking for something to change the state that your body's in. Could it be cold shower, could it be sauna, could it be a walk, could it be some exercise with some music that gets you emotionally invested into it, all of these different structures, but this is one that you can pretty much always do no matter where you are. You can always go and do a little couple of press ups, couple of squats,

some music on. And I feel better. It's not a panacea for low energy, but it works more often than it doesn't. I really like that. Just a little kick up the bum and it's always accessible. Yeah. Minutes you little playlist on Spotify, like some good tunes from when you were a little bit younger that you absolutely love that are energetic, and then yeah, you're away. So my I have a life hack that's very, very related to that. A little bit different but very related. So specifically for like, so I think generally I underestimate, I think a lot of people underestimate how a song can completely,

like night and day change, you mood either for the, for the battle or for the worst. And something I've heard a lot of people talk about, but I've never really done is protecting your like training playlists. So have songs in your, have a playlist in Spotify that you only listen to when you're training. You have a PR song. I do have a few. Problem is that comes on shuffle and you like you've got to always have your belt on underneath whatever clothes you wearing and you just leave it on. Just picking up Janice in the office. Sorry Janice how much do you wear? 102 right brilliant.

But so the thing that I've noticed especially is like songs that you, so I have a, you know every year you get a favorites thing on Spotify, like a 2020 re-vavorance, I'm whatever. So I have a, I have a playlist which is all of the, all of those in one called just past favorites. So it's all of my favorites from every year since like whenever I got Spotify, like 2015. So it's all of my my favorites from every year since like whenever I got Spotify like 2015. So it's a lot. Yeah, there's a so advanced video Spotify you. It's a little bit fun. It happens when you pay two pounds a month for a membership. As opposed to as opposed to scoening it for free. Yeah. Okay, so you got all of these and then what have you done if you made

a top filtering off the top of all of them. It's just that, well, so it's when something comes on generally, like I'll occasion this in my place, I've got nothing to listen to, and there'll be something coming up, I'm like, oh, I haven't heard this song in three years, put it in the training playlist, and only listen to it, and it, songs like that just create this effect, and we've all had it, right, like a song that comes on when you're somewhere, and you're like, oh my god, I've not heard that in ages. So I have a training playlist that you're always curating and always adding things to but protect it because those that affect is diminishes the more you listen to them. Have a sacred training playlist. Yeah, I like that. You can do that with everything, right? So you can

have a sleep playlist, a morning playlist, a work playlist. This is one of the things that I've been reading Jonathan hates, the happiness hypothesis and he talks a lot about the sacred and the profane and there's not really much now that people treat in normal day-to-day life as sacred. Like, if you actually think about what it is, it's weird stuff. Like, well, it's obvious stuff, like not being molested on the street. Like, your personal body is sacred, right? Like, obviously. But think about like other things around rituals, like even people wear their shoes in their bedroom, people wear the shoes they've been outside in in their bedroom, that would never be accepted in like a subcontinental culture. Like, oh, God,

if you did that in a, in a Muslim household, you'd get the slipper. Yeah, but the slipper wouldn't touch the floor. The slipper would be off and it would be there to beat you with. Yeah, you'd have to go outside to the porch, take the slipper. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I like having more sacred things, like having routines. I think that's part of the reason why we all love having morning routines, right? Like it's sacred, sacred bit of time. Thank you. Very good. Just say what you got. So you guys might not be aware of this, but I actually split my life hacks into physical and digital. And so I'm attempting to, to alternate here, I'm attempting to alternate here. My digital one is Evernote Legacy. So I'm currently a Evernote refugee. Evernote, for anyone who doesn't know, they rolled out an update that was basically a

global downgrade to every part of the function of Evernote. It's lost its fitness for purpose. And so while I'm waiting for another app to bridge the gap and allow import functionality, which for me, I've got my eyes set on craft. I'm just waiting for the developers to allow Evernote import is you can use the legacy version of Evernote in the meantime. So the hack is don't upgrade to the new Evernote,

even though it looks nicer, it just won't work. Stick with the legacy version but the problem is that's unsupported. So as operating systems grow there's going to hit a point where it's no longer compatible. So by wanting to continue to use evernote legacy you also can't update any other parts of your operating system in case it gets. Yeah exactly so this

is not a permanent hack. This is an interim measure until. Can you downgrade? Let's say that I accidentally upgrade to new Evernote. Is there a way that I can downgrade? You can, but you might lose all the notes because, yeah, this is why how bad it is because they've removed the offline storage functionality.

So it's just risky business. I wouldn't do it. Hopefully no big Evernote fans are sat there with you, those should have oven out. I don't think anyone's a big fan of Evernote now, man. Like, notion, Rome, have just come in and captured the attention on the internet for all that. This is exactly it. Evernote have stayed so far in the past. And it's such a shame, because there was such a big company that had so much capital and, you know,

put poison to the... Massive first mover advantage in the note-taking space as well, right? Like, think about, do you know what it is? It's blockbuster to Netflix. Like, you had it all. You had the brand equity, you had the user base, you had the faith in the brand. I don't trust this new internet business.

All right, fine, but if you can't get it on it, it's not worth a look unbelievable. Okay, I listened to Johnny Wilkinson on the High Performance podcast with Jake Humphrey and his scientific friend and it's one of the best podcasts that I've listened to in a very long time. If you want to hear someone that you think should just be a hard guy talking about being in the present moment, about detachment from the ego, about embracing your true self, all this stuff. And you just think, like, hang on, I thought he was like a posh meathead.

And Johnny Wilkinson just sounds like he's done about 50,000 ayahuasca ceremonies. It's wonderful. And one of the things. This is the rugby player, John Wilkinson. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man. He's fucking fully awakened now. Like, absolutely fully awakened.

And the episode's amazing. It's one of the best podcasts I've ever heard. Wow. Which is it? What should we search for? It's Johnny Wilkinson High Performance Podcast. Also on that show is Eddie Hurn. And Eddie Hurn, you just think as the same thing,

kind of a Essex-wide boy idiot with some cash behind him who understands fighters. Now, like, he's quoting Warren Buffett, he talks about how he understands his inemotivations from the way that his father treated him as a kid, like the guy is switched on. He's just so many more layers deep than I knew. Yeah, both of those guys really changed my opinion of them in great ways whilst listening to them. But what I took from the Johnny Wilkinson episode

is find joy today. And what he talks about is that a lot of people presume that happiness is something that they will get to enjoy in the future when they've got past the things that they need to do today, but the future never comes. Like, joy has to be found in the moment and one of the most consistent mantras that I've written as part of morning journaling. Mornal journaling has been just fine joy today, like fine joy in the thing that you do.

So this morning I went for a walk and it's frost, like sharp frost on the floor, but it's really nice. It's really still. The sun's sort of shooting through the clouds. I haven't got my phone on me and I'm just able to be like, this is really, really nice. Like this makes me quite happy. The sky's clear. I can see birds. There was a dog on the other side of the street, I enjoyed the dog, like just finding joy today and not presuming that it's a thing that you get to do in the future once you've got today out of the way. It's a really important point, especially for people that listen to this podcast, I think we're going to be more on the spectrum of deferring enjoyment and investing in ourselves long-term and it's quite easy to lose sight of the fact

that you're still living your life right now and so finding some kind of inherent enjoyment from things that you do today is really important. I think you're quite good with that, Johnny, obviously that was one of the big reasons that you bought a dog, right? It was to kind of take you out of that neurotic sort of self-involved business involved mind. And I'm going

to kind of focus on another being and kind of just be present with it. Yeah, well, it's like there's just certain aspect of having a dog that you just cannot avoid, like it needs to be taken for a walk. There's no, it's not negotiable really. So yeah, and it is like the automating laughing and happiness. Definitely. Davey thing. It's brilliant. Johnny, where you go? It's me. Right. So my this hack is related to reading speed, but I should preface this with I am now big moment drumroll reading again. And the reason that I'm reading again, which is kind of a life hack within the life hack, is something that Yusef really kind of looked to switch my brain and explained

to me, which is the power of things like Evernote, Craft, all these bits of software. I've never really how to use for them. I've never really understood, like, I just take notes and then don't refer to the notes and it's just pointless. But hearing use I've explained this like second brain idea and how with if you as you read a book or as you listen to a podcast or you're learning something that you think like the I'll need this in future, then using that app as your searchable database for information. So I've now when I'm writing notes about books and when I'm writing notes about Q&A calls I'm just until on courses we're on. I'm writing it as though when I need this in the future,

what do I think I'll search for? What do I think I'll type in to find it? So this morning, you said ask me a question. I was like, I'm sure I typed literally a keyword in and suddenly three or four notes that I've made on that thing get brought up. I'm like, I'm sure I typed literally a keyword in and suddenly three or four notes that I've made on that thing get brought up and I'm like, oh yeah, I remember, that's already in my brain. I just can't recall it. So I'll have to use something else. So that means that I've kind of, all right, it makes sense to read now. I kind of understand why I'm reading

again. And a tip related to that that I got from Mark Manson, which you two may have already come across. When you're reading, you tend to have like the inner voice that's reading aloud. So you're like reading in your head, and that limits your reading speed quite a lot. And if you just stop that, so like when you're watching a film with subtitles, you don't read the words in your head

as the film's happening. You just look at it and you read it. And you can do that with a book if you just decide to do that with a book. So you just look at the words in your head as the film's happening. You just look at it and you read it. And you can do that with a book if you just decide to do that with a book. So you just look at the words and you're like, I've read the page and I'm going to hold it to there. So just I suppose two and one, I've kind of jumped the key a little bit, but one of them is using something like Evan, if you have it as whenever I learn something, I'm going to put it in here so that I can search for this topic in the future. And what would that look like, that note?

And then secondly, if you are then going to read from that, or read as a result of that, just stop reading the words in your head and you read way quicker. Nice. So using the like, I have a note, but not I have a note. But not enough. Shit. Well, so I, you so recommended craft to me. So that's what I've started using. It seems at the moment like Rome is really sort of picking up speed, but I've never touched Rome. I've seen notion and a couple of other things. What advice have you got for stopping the inner voice in your head whilst reading other than just saying stop?

I don't know. I think like what I think of is if this exactly the example I gave, like if this were a film and I was reading subtitles, I would just look at the words. Like when you read things in normal life when you're not trying to read them, you still read the words. Like you can still understand the sentence written down. Like when you look at a sign, you don't go turn left at the next exit. It's just look at it and you understand it. You just scan it quickly.

There's a tip from Tony Busan about stopping this, which is you give your audiophonic loop in your head something to do. So you either think of a tune that doesn't have words or you repeat something to yourself. This isn't exercise. This isn't something you do for all of your reading for the rest of your life, but it's just to be able to learn that you can, as Johnny said, you can detach the audio-phonic loop from reading and you don't have to be like the cat sat on the... That's awesome. That's a good tip. It feels like you're not reading initially, but if you kind of test yourself on the recall of what have I just read, it's amazing how like,

it took you seconds to read the page when it previously would have taken a minute, but you've still taken it all in. The problem I have with note taking whilst reading is that I don't sink into the content anywhere near as deeply. And this is why for me reading on Kindle and then using progressive summarization highlighting makes a lot more sense because you can just go through highlight as you go and then single batch process the entire book once you're

done. Go back through and make the key takeaways. Plus if you're using read wise, which is actually, I'll just explain that one as my next one after this. But if you're using read wise, then they'll deliver them to you on a daily basis. So I suppose the tip is more like, if you, so I see, I was explaining this to you stuff, and you stuff's way further down the rabbit hole with me than this stuff. I'm just learning, but I see om like, I was explaining this to you stuff, and you said, like, wait for the down the rabbit hole with me and this stuff. I'm just learning, but I see Omni focus is like my RAM on a computer.

So like, if something is said to me, all I need to do is make sure it goes from there and into it. And I know that that system will take care of it. And then the other thing, so ever know, craft or room or whatever, is like your hard drive. So I don't need it now, I may never need it, but if I have a findable version of it in the future, when I want to learn, when I'm like, I want to get more in a meditation, want to invest, one of the best resource about meditation, I'll just type meditation into my hard drive. And I'm like, oh yeah, I read a book six months ago about the reference something tiny that now I can make

you so that doesn't really matter how you make the note to suppose as long as it's findable whenever you want that thing in the future. That is a great analogy. As long as you have a, as you start to build more and more notes, because I think I've got 5,000 at this point, that's where you start to need a decent tagging structure more and more. And the benefit of tags as well as notebooks is notebooks are the hierarchical structure that's organized and you've created it deliberately.

But tags allow things to straddle across multiple notebooks because they are themes that are shared but don't necessarily fit into a single notebook. And over time, you start to build this emergent structure and eventually cross links between notes that previously didn't happen and that's why the benefit of that's why Rome has become so popular because it allows ideas to have sex with each other. Or you can downgrade back from new evidence to have a note legacy and just get rid of all of your notes and you don't have this problem at all. Exactly. It's like the men in black flash penismate. So actually Tiago Forte threw shade at the new evidence in a tweet recently saying,

like, I love how the new evidence is like replicating the human brain by like randomly forgetting certain notes. No. like randomly forgetting certain notes. Like. It's like a true second X-ray like it acts. Like sometimes you're going to find it's not there anymore. Yeah, we did. We just. Come on. Yeah.

What you got, Seth? So. So this one is a physical life hack. And this is the, what does it say? Arse pearl or something? Arse pearl. Arse pearl. Is this for AliExpress again?

This is actually from Amazon, but I, you can definitely get them from AliExpress as well. And it is a retractable, triple charger. So it has all three, because everyone's got like a hundred little USB cables that are different and things and it's really, you've got like a drawer with them somewhere. This just has three in one. It's a little Medusa and it's got the big three. So it has that one, that one. So is that USB-C lightning and micro USB? Yeah, yeah. And it's exactly, it's on a little sort of retractable

real with Ratchet's on, so you can make it longer and shorter. It's fantastic, because then it just tidies up you room as well, because we've got those little devices, you know, like your little taser. If you ever accidentally retracted it whilst the device has been attached to it and flung it across the desk. It either breaks the device or stops charging it depending on how heavy the device is. I have to say, like, everyone's gone through a million charges across their lifetime and I treat my charges now with so much care.

I'm just like, right, I'm not going to wind them up like hard. I'm just going to keep them as straight as possible. That device programs in the opposite to that. It's just stretching them and bending them and twisting them around. Yeah, but it's in a controlled way. But yeah, you're right. We all know how long it's going to last. It's the last is like a year so far. But yeah, we all know someone who's got like a charger that's like held together with like bits of like hair bubbles and rope and like live wires like sticking out of it going like, you know, well, having you isn't one of your previous life hacks, the like the putty that you put at the end of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the end of the, to stop it from fraying, because if you, if you're Mac charger phrase, it's like 56, 80 quid. 80 quid. That was with student discounting, it was 86 quid without.

Fucking fuck. They've just got you by the curlies, aren't they? They really do. They're the short and curable. Right, this is the biggest change I've made to my productivity in 2021, and probably been the single best thing that I've done,

and Johnny's gonna hate me because he's been doing it for ages. It's called first things first. So basically, what is the one thing that if I did it today, it would make the entire rest of my day feel like a success. And you just do that when you sit down at your desk. I'm actually gonna do it. I'm gonna do a double-a here. So first things first is just choose what the highest leverage task, the most important task for the day is that requires the most energy, the most important, do that as you sit down.

One of the things that I'm big into is trying to remove the anxiety you have of undone tasks because of an open loop. At the end of every day, you kind of shake the etch your sketch and you get to restart the next day, but each day you have to meditate and exercise and go for a walk and do the rest of it. And the longer that you get through your day without having done that,

the more that your mental realm is taken up, thinking about the fact that you still need to do it. Whereas if you can do those things first in the morning, I've already meditated, I've read, I've done my journaling, I've got the main task for the day out of the way, the rest of the day just feels so much more liberated. And you can genuinely enjoy it as opposed to constantly having this like future task that you're concerned about. So first things first is important. And this is related to Chris Sparks' number one productivity tip, which is plan what you're

going to do today, the night before. And he says that every one minute you spend planning on the night before is worth 10 minutes the following day. So what I've been using is the six minute diaries new product, which is the six minute success journal, very similar to most other productivity journals, but I just prefer the process that they've got. That'll be linked in on Amazon. And just my evening routine now involves choosing the task, that thing, they call it big piece of cake,

but it should be what frog do you want to eat? Like what is the most high leverage, uncomfortable, but best return task that you need to do. And I'm just waking up on a morning and I know what I need to do. And if I do that thing, even if the rest of the day is completely awful, it doesn't matter.

So I've got this TED Talk coming up and like planning for a TED Talk to go and do some time writing it like three in the afternoon. It's just bollocks. But if you've got up, you've done your morning routine, you sit down at your desk and you nail two and a half hours, planning a talk, you're like, right, I've done it, that's it, I've completed my day. Now I don't care about these annoying little emails because I'm like, it's like dancing through a, dancing through a daisy field, because you just feel like everything's already been sorted. So yeah, first things first, and then plan what you're going to do the night before,

and the process I'm using for that is the six minute success journal, which I think is absolutely awesome. Fantastic. Cool tip. So I've got one on the same theme as that. A lot of these things for me, like productivity tips, are things that I learned, like the first time I read getting things done whenever that was and I read it at the time I was like, no, no, no, no, have on our to do something like that, or maybe maybe a to do is just full of things like that that seems so large and painful and difficult, that you just kind of never do anything with them. So actually what those are in GTD land,

our projects, not single actions, and all we can ever do is a single action. So we can never do is the thing that is the one like I'm going to do this and it's completed. So breaking something like that down into single actions and then only looking at the one only considering the first step of that project is such an easy way to kind of always be nudging things forward all the time in your life. So like I want to get some artwork from a room in my house. I, all right, got it, and then you sit down to try and do it, and there's 10 steps to it. Then you try and do all of those at once. You're probably not gonna do it. But if step one is ask a friend to recommend

two websites that I can look at, you can file that text off, and suddenly 10 projects are moving forward every day in little ways, and there's not really any resistance to it. And before you know it, they've all been done. So basically the hack is, if you've got anything on you to do list, that you are considering doing today, that is a huge thing. Instead of that, break it down into 10 things, into the 10 steps. So if you are explaining to somebody else, how are you going to do this action? What do those 10 steps look like? And the only the first one should be only to do list. Does that make sense? And that's for anyone who's read getting things

done, that is just how David Allen explained it 30 years ago whenever the book was read. It's only just... We just come across it now. Yeah. I think one of the main reason to people procrastinate is that they don't know what to do next. So a lot of the time I'll speak to the boys that are in the office about an assignment that they're struggling to do and they're like, oh, mate, I was in the library all day yesterday. And I'm here. I was in the office today and you know, I've got this big assignment coming in. You go, okay, have you made the document on which you're going to write the assignment?

Oh, well, no, I mean, right, okay. And it's like, so a big part of that, and I think me and you, if probably suffer with this a little bit more than you, Johnny, is to know that time dedicated to planning and reviewing is more important than time dedicated to the task. Like, if you spend time before you do a thing, constructing how you're going to do the thing, it makes everything so much easier. And if you don't do it, it's basically a different challenge. It's a totally different challenge to try and manifest

what do I need to do and then how am I going to do it? As opposed to batching, okay, first I'm going to do this, then I'm going to do that, how am I going to do it as opposed to batching okay first I'm gonna do this then I'm gonna do that then I'm gonna ring the person then I'm gonna get the paperwork then I'm gonna go blah blah and just doing that and after that it's literally just a case of some some past version of you yet step after step after step the next step from that is sorry I know just similar to the Chris box thing that is an answer of planning is worth a pound of execution or something like that. I definitely, yeah, I definitely do struggle with if I haven't

done that. I wrote into the morning like a PS1 RPG character that walks into the wall and then carries on walking and slowly rotates on that axis. He keeps walking. Yeah, it's a linked link. So it's just that we presume if I can get started on this task now, I'll make progress on this task now. Planning's taking time away from me doing the thing. You're like, yeah, but it's it's deciding to drive to a place without knowing where the place is or the route you're going to take. It's just getting in the car and putting your foot down. Like, okay, I mean, before that, you should probably get the map out, have a look at the route, realize where I need to go, and then I can do it.

The hidden benefit of all of this, that you don't necessarily realize until you've broken things down in that way, is that when you have like, when you're on a walk and you think, oh, I'll call for someone. Right, all right, I've got a bit of spare time, I'll call someone and you've got 20 projects in your life broken down at the next steps and five of them have things in them with the tag phone call. You can make five phone calls in the 50 minutes that previous you, well, like at some point,

you need to make this phone call, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and like fight. all those things have been moved forward. So it's kind of facilitating there. When you have, you know, you sat waiting, you're on your phone or you're browsing Amazon, you think, oh yeah, I wonder if there's anything that I've kind of forgotten. And you can filter through all of the little tiny subsections in your life that when I'm putting the art on the wall that I'm going to buy, I'm going to need picture hooks, so I'm going to need, so done. So it's just a way of like, reducing resistance, I suppose, planning and then making things easier on yourself in the future. And who doesn't want that? Everyone. Easy things in eyes, aren't they?

They're lovely. So, on the journal theme, there's an app called day one, which I can't remember if I've mentioned it on a previous live hacks, but it is beautiful. And it's very much designed for journaling and diaries and stuff. So it bridges that gap, where Johnny was talking about the RAM, which is working memory of your brain stuff that needs doing and needs to be in the system, but isn't going to be stored long-term, it's not going to be archived, and actually if it was in your external brain, it would clog things up. And then you've got the archive, which is the stuff that you want to refer to in the future. But you might have this stuff in the kind of in between Bay, which is reflective stuff that doesn't have an immediate next action, but is a way to kind of take all these

thoughts and neuroses and patterns and things and just put them into boxes and clarify your own thoughts and manage your emotions. And that's the whole purpose of a diary or a journal. And I think I definitely see the value in Chris's approach of like having a handwritten journal that gives you prompts and questions. But if you're the kind of person that hates handwriting and you want a free form thing, then day one is very good. The other benefit of it is that it's because it's designed like a diary.

It allows you to, it tracks a lot of data, but it's all held on your device. In terms of location, photos that you took that day, it's designed to really create a tapestry of your life. So you can look back on it, and it's just quite a cool way to be like, oh, yeah, this is like a memoir. I use day one for more significant emotional life events. It's also password protected, which is kind of good.

So people can't just stumble upon. Well mean, to be fair, like my journal is not where the worst stuff on my phone is. But like, I'm a camera roll, it's got some fairly awful stuff on it. So that's another one. When you like, you know, you're trying to show someone, oh, here's the new wall that I've had painted and you have to like scroll through the, and people are like, you know, look at my fucking camera roll mate. Yeah. So not to kind of bow there and do that,

like, what I was doing at Forest Cool, I've been using day one since February 2012. Wow. So the additional thing that it does, which you, you too may have heard, is like, occasionally it'll say, read this post on this day from five years ago.

It's my own design, doesn't it? The thing, the benefit I get from it is like, you know, you go down this personal development rabbit hole and you think, like, is it really doing anything? I'm not really sure. And then you read something, you read like the thoughts that you were having four years ago. That's my favorite thing. You look back on something old, you read like the thoughts that you were having four years ago. My favorite thing, you look back on something old,

you're like, what? That's what I completely resisted. I think there's an equivalent to hedonic adaptation, it's like productivity adaptation, because you're always wanting to further refine the edges, and it's difficult to remember how bad you were. And also, you presume that as you get older, you should be compounding your effectiveness. So you don't want to be comparing your productivity now to your productivity

five years ago, but your mindset around mindset around, yes, around how you feel and the thoughts that consume your consciousness, that is really stark. Like when I think, man, I once wrote in my day one, I once wrote a major concern that the MC that spoke on the mic over the R&B DJ in room two at Riverside had left. And I was concerned that that was going to ruin the room and that would be the end of the business. And that was worthy of putting into my personal thought emotion journal. And now, I don't even know the name

of the person that does that. It just doesn't matter. I respect on your, doesn't even arise in consciousness. There was something I read a guy we've had on our podcast, couple of times called John Rominello, talks about the value of having a long-standing journal being, you realize, like, firstly, brilliant things, and terrible things come and go, they pass, and you have got through all of the things that have been the worst things that have ever happened to you and now it's full-fung. So, like, you can read back to how you were dealing with what you perceived to be the worst thing ever

at the time. And like, cheerling at the time helps a bit because you'll get to write it down, I guess, and that it externalises the mental talk. But being able to look back on that three years later and go, you know what, if anything like that happens again, it'll probably be okay. It's just a nice tapestry of this is how my thoughts have evolved, but now when something similar happens, I deal with it better. So yeah, I think it's a day one of the end, probably the best app for it, isn't it? It's really as well. I think it's a paid version for extra features too. It's got a partner up on Mac. But as well, doesn't it?

There's links in a little tab at the top, like a little bookmark thing. The dropstamp. I've only recently got the phone app, to be honest. I've had a map like the... That's for all the music you listen to, or does it do that on the Mac app as well? Not as much. The phone app, as you say, the design for the tapestry. I think it gives you prompt as well.

It's not totally free form. Like I think you can say can say like what's the so it's the it's the phone app where I get like the see what you were doing in January. Have you got notifications for day one turned on? Wow. To get to be allowed through the gate that is your notification barrier. Special. I've got a life hack related to that as well. Interesting. Deliveroo, I think, is the only, Deliveroo and Foncoles are the only two things.

Your food is coming. Yeah, that's it. That's all I've bothered about. So the only things that day one notifies me about is either read this journal entry, which is always interesting. And you can set the notification to fill the journal in to be randomised. And I think that's the best way of- What have you done this week or whatever?

Yeah. And so I just use that as the prompt. And if there's nothing interesting, I just don't bother. So that's really cool. Yeah, I've got to be fair, all of these different functions I haven't bothered taking into. Right. So this is one that I realized last year, and it's a bit of an uncomfortable truth, but I think I'm really enjoying telling people things that they don't want to hear at the moment. So I got shouted out on the internet for talking about Trump, and then I got shouted out on the internet for talking about existential risk, and I got shouted out on the internet for talking about the single biggest predictor of extra marital sex being premarital sex. But facts don't care about your feelings

and this is another one of them. The thing that you need to remember, whoever you are that's listening, is that you are the common denominator in every experience within your life. So, imagine that you always seem to be looked over for promotions at work or people just, your partner has always seemed to kind of get sick of you after around about six months or your friends always do invite you out to things or you always are the first person that gets picked for the sports team or whatever it is, both good and bad. If there is a recurring theme in your life, you are the common denominator, not them.

So a lot of the time I'll have a conversation with someone, I had a conversation with someone yesterday, who I regularly sort of spent, semi-regulatory speak to, maybe once every couple of months. And the conversation always has the same tone to it, always has the same sort of feeling. It's a little bit antagonistic, so it's quite sort of debatey. It's a little bit self-righteous.

And I remember saying, like, man, is this how you are with everyone? Is that no? No. And I was like, well, I don't have this conversation with anyone else, but you. So in the nicest way possible, it's not me. Like, I only do this when you arrive. So you're the common denominator within this situation. And it just reminds us that so much of what happens in life is within our control, at least with regards to our responses

and the way the tenor that we have when we do things. So yeah, remember that you're the common denominator. So if ever there's a theme, if ever there's like something happens more than it doesn't, you think, well, if it's normally happening to me, then I probably have some involvement in it. Yeah, I mean, imagine if you always, if whenever there's a problem, you always deal with it. Like you're the common denominator. Like you are, you are dealing with the problems, and the reason it's an uncomfortable truth is that it forces us to realize that our failures are ours to bear,

but also our successes are ours to bear, especially if they're consistent. It's not a truth that a lot of people would accept or want to hear it, because they get more benefit from being the victim, or the martyr, or whatever the role that they're playing Then they do from taking personal responsibility and taking agency And I think yeah, I can see how if you say that to certain people like oh, you know that thing always happens to you

It doesn't happen to anyone else so maybe it's It can be like oh well no because they're just all a, like every boss I've ever had has been a dick or every every ex-girlfriend has always found me to be possessive. Okay. Like what's more likely that all of them happen to have the same weird work or that you are the person that is causing it. I mean the problem is obviously there are things that aren't our fault and there are things that go wrong which are out of our control and that are unfortunate and unlucky. So the kernel of truth that this could have occurred once you could have been with a girl who was an absolute or a guy who was an absolute dick to you and said that you were a bunch of ways that you're not. That can be true. But if that continues to happen, then with a higher and higher confidence

interval, the probability of it being them becomes lower. If you. Yeah. There's also just no downside to doing like the the jaco will like just taking complete responsibility for everything because there's never really like, yeah, it's, it might make, it might make you feel a bit sad, but like at least you're trying to solve the problem and working towards a solution or an improvement. That's a good point, even when it's not you, it probably benefits you to be like, well,

I'll just take it away. I'll try anyway. Johnny, are we still on long form or are we doing QuickFire? Yeah, let's do a quick fire. Also, if you've watched anything on Netflix or read anything recently, probably be a good place to throw some stuff in here. Okay, so I have some fitness-y ones, some Quick ones. Quite a lot of people I know myself included are very consistent with,

like a multivitamin and vitamin D, but quite inconsistent with praise. I don't know whether either of you have this problem. with a multivitamin and vitamin D, but quite inconsistent with creatin. I was in one of the either reviews who have this problem. You have just described me, my friend. Yeah. So I have had this problem in my life for ages, for it like as long as I can remember.

And it's actually credit to my protein who fixed this. So they sent us a box of stuff to review pre-Christmas. And in that box was a tub of creating tablets, creating monohydrate tablets that like I'd always looked over because I thought well, you know, what benefits that. But now I just take five creating tablets when I take my multivitamin and I always take my creating. That's great. That's a good way to put it in because the only time that you have creatine, if you're not having it in tablet form, is if you also have a shake and you don't always have a

shake every day. Exactly. So I like, I very rarely miss Vitamin D because it's like in the morning with breakfast, like, Motivitmin, Vitamin D, and then creatinine, later I'll mix some kind of like squash and water and I'll have it then and I always forget. Well, it mostly gets. Yeah, in creating. I think off the back of that. I have been more Consistent with creating recently, but that's because one I use Korea pure rather than create in monohydrate Which is the same but it's just more purified doesn't give me the same nausea that normal creatin does

Which is again, it's like the whole James clear thing, if it's unpleasant to do, if it makes you feel nauseous, then you're like, yeah, you're like, well, I'll have it after my meal, not before, and also mixing in hot water. So if I have a morning cup of tea, I'll have it before or after the tea. I just can't, I just completely out of the thought of putting, like, creating in my morning coffee, just feels, I wouldn've just had it for a while after with a little bit of hot water, not boiling. So all those stuff after? Yeah, the only downside of the tablet are they are quite big. So if you're like if you're not great with taking tablets in general, but I've actually found it's a nice quite nice thing to train yourself. So it initially had to do

one tablet at a time. Now I'm just all five in at once. So I'm trying to. When Johnny was at mine and I ordered a big bag of carrots and he helped me put them away in the fridge. So that I could train that as well. Anyway, my next life hack is blob opera. So this is a digital one and it's very, very high brow. Google have made a series of AI projects and blob opera is an AI opera thing. There's five blobs and they've all got faces and each one is like tenor and soprano and bass and whatever and depending on how you move the mouse or your finger or if you don't own your phone, they do different harmonies and different, um, and you can actually produce some really beautiful blob operas. So if you're listening, search for blob opera on Google, have a play around and say goodbye to your evening because you'll be on a program.

It's time for music. You produce the music. Yeah, and you can record them, send them to friends. Can you see popular ones that other people have done? I think you can. I don't know how, there must be a library of them, some... What? I've seen the videos. They're quite sort of cute characters and they all go like, yeah exactly like that don't they? Yeah, stand up straight and open them up.

Right, so I have been, I've sent this to a bunch of different people and I also put it in my newsletter but it's going to go in here. Red Rising is a series by Pierce Brown who is going to come on the podcast once he finishes writing his sixth book, but it's just every single person that I've given this fiction series to has become addicted and it's consumed quite a lot of their life. So please take care with this life hack. I am warning you now. But redrisings, it's a really easy to read, very fast-paced, engaging. I guess it would technically probably fall under sci-fi, but there's a lot of sort of history references in there. And it's just to do with politics and backstabbing, and there's this guy rising

up through the ranks, and he's infiltrating different societies. But the whole world, very similar to the Harry Potter thing, the whole world feels quite encompassing, red rising, gun, gun, read it, and the first one is sick, and then there's five in the series that you can get stuck into if you enjoy it. So, how do they recommend? Nice. Is it me? Go away. When, so, you probably heard one of the tips is to note all notifications off, do you mention before? I think you should have most, if not all, notifications off. The problem I found with that, I don't know whether you two, I think you've changed to

what I'm about to say, I don't know what you do with this grist, but when I did that, I was like, right, it's full blackout, like I don't want anything, I don't want the barge notifications, I don't want the noises, I don't want anything, I don't want the badge notifications, I don't want the noises, I don't want anything. And what that actually started to create was a worse version of the app spiral of you'll go on your phone, and you're like, look at your email, like, I wrote it as an email, so I think I'll have a, I wonder if there's any WhatsApp, so I'll have a look and WhatsApp. And then before you know, you back at your email again. And basically turning notifications off, all that does is creates, well, I need to go and check when something new, because there's no way, but no other way of knowing. So basically, turning all notifications off, but leaving the red badge on allows you to relax a bit. Because you can see, I know it's like,

you can see it accumulating, but there's no need to go in and check. And with things like iMessage, sometimes if you open iMess and it opens on someone's message, that's then marked as an red and you can easily forget about it. So for me, leaving the notification badge on, but it doesn't bombard with me. When I want to look at my phone, I'm like, okay, I've got some emails, got some what's my messages. I can't respond now, but I'll look at them later,

for example. So I'm terrible with replying to things. Pretty much everyone who knows me knows that I'm terrible at replying to things. And I think this is contributed to that over time. I think not having the badge on, not having any way of knowing this unprocessed stuff in that app means that it's easy to forget. So that's really helped me recently. Yeah, I had notifications turned off fully for WhatsApp for a while and I've sent sent and received millions of WhatsApp messages over the last few years. From my like for me, I still keep badges off. I've been through the the valley of despair that you went through and now because I like to use the web app for WhatsApp, I like to use I message on my desktop and

I don't ever have emails that are urgent, not anymore, you guys may, but nothing that I ever receive if it's urgent will ring me. And if it's not, I'll check in when I check in and I'll check in on my laptop. So I think this is, it's a really good point and it's one that I still do agree with, but I think I've found a technique that works slightly better for me for where I'm at at the moment. I think you're even further through the evolution by the sounds of things. I mean Chris is global WhatsApp analytics for total number of messages sent and received,

makes me want to throw up. It's actually like to like the WhatsApp and your conference of like heaviest users. It's in like the tariff lobs of... LAUGHTER Oh, here's the thing that I learned. The entire internet in terms of the electrons that make up the data, not the storage devices

that they're on, but the electrons that make up the data is smaller than an orange. Is that if you push them all together, there's no space between? Yeah. I don't know what to make of that. These information, Chris. Also, if you were to write out on double-sided A4 paper, all of the information that is generated by the internet every day, and then stack them up in a single stack that go from here to the sun and back four times. Daily. Yeah. Suppose it depends on how big your handwriting is, doesn't it?

But either way, you get into the sun. Yeah, it's an effort. Sir, what are you up? I may have mentioned this before, but upgrade to the maximum internet that your location allows. Just like for the sake of an extra 20 quid or something to have the fastest internet, like just think of the amount of time that that saves overall. Like all these little, all these little bits of time waiting for something to buffer or waiting for a page to load. And if that's just eliminated, like you, so this was actually from George McGill when he was just saying you should always pay for more speed because if you can eliminate friction for stuff, then amazing. And now we're going to hit a point soon where this is no longer applicable for most humans

because then we'll be limited by the person. I think we've been talking about this in terms of using Alfred or using software that makes you really fast at something when actually now it's your brain that's the slow thing, which is great. We want things to move in that direction. But that's why the M1 Macbook Pro. But that's why the M1 MacBook Pro. It's fast, it's good. And if you're a power user of Mac, then you will get the full use out of it. But for a lot of people, if you ever use the truck pad

to go to the address bar and then type Google.com and then scroll with it, just don't bother with any of this stuff. Get a Chromebook until you can max that out. So I think the whole moral of that story is like whatever technology you use, squeeze the lemon of it and then say, right, I've earned the right to upgrade to the next level of speed, just making sure that you're never bottlenecked by the technology. So the bottleneckings, the big things, it's like the, so I have this conversation with people who think that max out worse than PCs and they'll say like, well, I've built my own PC and it's got. I've got more RAM than you have and I spent half the money. It's like that's that's a valid argument until you have to restart your computer once because the app was great. Like yeah, the mic stuff office crashed or it doesn't work. And it's the same with internet.

Like yeah, you save $20,000 a month and that might be great across a year. But if you have to deal with like a date on that every day, a video that buffers for a minute, think how long that accumulates. It's like the whenever you bottom that by something regularly, it is usually worth just paying to remove the problem. And then you just never realize. It is usually worth just paying to remove the problem.

And then you just never realize. It's just it's an emotional thing. Like I tweeted the other day saying like, does anyone have a legitimate reason for having a PC over a mark? And all the answers were like, oh well, if I want to change the graphics card on this thing. I will, okay, but like they're all special use cases. Yeah. If anyone does have a legitimate reason using a Windows operating system computer over a MacBook, please leave it in the comments below. I'm more than happy to have my mind changed about this, but every use case is specific. Like, Windows computers just don't work the same way as Macs do. That is both. Like, day to day, I probably use a Windows computer more in total hours than Mac.

And there's just no comparison. I mean, in fairness, I'm using Windows 98 or something. So yeah. Yeah, the reasons are always like, oh, I use this bit of like stock trading software and it only works. OK, specific case. Like M2 4.

We're talking about general day-to-day use of just using a computer without a solution. As you give two people eight hours and a different device and you say, right, you've got this section of work to do. Off you go. You don't see who. Fuck, you know.

Yeah, it's not evening. So this actually relates to the people who are on MacBook. You've told me about this when I first got my Mac, I think, or when you first maybe Alfred did me by pressing control, command, and space, you first maybe Alfred did me, by pressing Control Command in Space, you bring up an emoji keyboard and you can select them from there. Now, Seth has gone one step further and put an Alfred emoji shortcut in, which means that he can do it directly from his Alfred dashboard, but presuming that you don't want to go that

deep. And I, even though I'm an avid Alfred user, I still use control command space. A lot of the time, I think, because I don't actually know quite the emoji that I need. I'm like, oh, this is an emoji that space. It's a bolt, but is it electric or is it? Not even that, I'm just, I want inspo. I want emoji inspo.

So I'll have a little look. I'm like, ooh, should it be an apple? Should it be an or it? Oh, is that a croissant? Like, do you know what I mean? I just want to, is that a potato? It's like, there is a potato. I think there's a sweet potato now as well.

There is, yeah. Exactly, this is technically a sweet potato, by the way, as well. So, sorry about that. Yeah, fair enough. I think if you want to browse the emojis, there's another app actually that does that but slightly quicker called Rocket for Mac. There's like $3. What's it?

What's it worth it? It's very similar to the command space control, just slightly more nicer interface. Interesting. Should we leave it there? Jents, I think we got some in the tank still for moving forward. That was really good. I've written everything in the show not to below. If you want to go and check them out, I will find some links for a waterproof paper and pencil and a miniature taser where I can. If there are any discount codes that I've managed to find as well, I'll throw them in too. If you enjoyed it, if you've got your own life hacks, just put them in the comments or DM me at Chris WillX, or if you follow me, where should people go if they want to check out

more of your stuff boys? Two places. If you're thinking like, oh, online coaching, those guys are online coaching, their life looks so appealing. Probe in fitness.com forward slash modern wisdom. If you just want some macros for free, then prope and fitness.com use the calculator on the main page.

And a new URL, if you're just thinking about starting an online business, or you want to learn a little bit more about how to go online, Prope and Fitness.com, so you're MW business. You got it right? I did, you got it right. Yes indeed.

I love it. Gentlemen, thank you for this. We will come back. We will it right? I did. You got it right? Yes indeed. I love it. Gentlemen, thank you for this. We will come back. We will do more life hacks soon. It is a pleasure. you