Jonny

Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of ways you can get one step upstream of that. So there's a native thing on YouTube where you disable the, it might be watch history, or one of these features where it means that when you log onto YouTube, it's just a blank screen. You just have a search bar. You've done that on the propane one. And now I never procrastinate with YouTube.

Like it just doesn't, because you have to then actively like, oh, what am I going to search for? Rather than having stuff like pushed onto you.

In that case, you're trying to fine-tune it. The other thing that you can do is, and I think we talked about this last year, using Readwise or Reader to establish that past George is the only one who can determine what current George is going to watch. So you're not allowed to consume any media unless it's on your to-read list or to-watch list.

And you've made that decision ahead of time so that you've made the decision when you're in a position of strength, not when you're like, oh, I'm knackered and it's 9pm and I just want to... Just to find a potential problem with that, a lot of the time, you know how in three months I'm going to have all of this white space on my calendar, I'll agree to that.

So the problem there is you end up with like a huge queue of stuff.

You're looking in the fridge and you're like, I've got no food in the house at all. And actually, like, there's loads of food, but it's like lettuce and a bit of tomato.

Who knows?

I'm less concerned about Bluetooth earphones. As far as like EMF exposure, I think there are other things.

It's like sending multiple signals through your head.

The problem is you've got to pick your battles, haven't you? It's like air quality, water quality, plastic exposures.

Receipts. So for me, it's like don't microwave plastic and don't be an idiot.

Drive with your seatbelt on and get any dinks in your car.

Delete, automate, then delegate. But there's also, what am I already doing or using that I could be using better? A few examples would be, I'm already spending the time meditating in the mornings. How can I make that time more effective? Or I'm already sleeping seven hours a night. How can I improve the quality of that?

Um, I'm already, you know, everyone's seen someone exercising in the gym, like every time you go to the gym and they're there and they're just kind of like, and they're like texting and just swinging their arms around, not really doing anything. You're like, they're taking all of the steps to get the result, but wasting the actual critical time in there.

But this also applies to the decision of like, do I add something or do I just make what I'm already doing better, get more use out of that, squeeze the lemon? So rather than adding in like a red light box and additional supplements and all this kind of stuff, it's like, well, what am I doing already? We often get clients that ask us like, oh, what's a good bit of software for this?

Or what's a good software for this? And you're like, well, what are you already using? And you like 80% of the time, the software stack that they're already using does the thing that they're looking for, but they're just looking for the next thing. And so.

I'm always on about TickTick, but like the deeper I go with it, the more I'm like, oh, actually like there's no point looking for any other app to solve any of these other problems. Because if you just really like dive into TickTick and now my, my referral, um, My referrals are so much that I've got an account until like 2067 or something. So now I'm just like lifetime believer of TickTick.

So yeah, like, and as I've applied this in the last few weeks, whenever I've like found myself trying to solve a problem, I always take a pause and go, hang on, what in what we already have, what software we're already paying for, what tools we already have can do the thing?

So this is a niche one, but we were looking for a way to convert Twitter threads or X threads into carousels. And I was looking at new bits of software and actually like we already use Hypefury for scheduling tweets and they have a built-in thing for this. But I think it's just the natural habit of like, wow, what's the...

So ironically, we were talking about this just before the episode and last year on this episode, that life is a spiral curriculum and that you look back on your- Beautiful. Yeah, you look on your journals from when you were like 19 and even who you think was your 19 like idiot self was still telling you the same thing that you need to learn.

So this is to distribute the chocolate chips throughout the height of the ice cream rather than all at the bottom like a screwball or all at the top like a

Technically, the light receptors on the skin will also explode.

Your Kelly Starrett hack with pillows has changed my life as well. Wow.

I think it's from a, it'll be from like a 2017 life hacks or something.

To make shift pregnancy pillow.

And resting serious body.

So I presented at the International Posture Summit.

Well, so there is a study that shows that your posture impacts how much you believe your own thoughts, which is interesting. So not so much mood and power pose and testosterone and cortisol ratios kind of been difficult to reproduce in the results, but believing your own thoughts. So if you're sat up... Burrata stand. What does he call it? Burrata. Burrata.

I've got a couple of them.

Are we out of hacks now? No, we can go back. Okay, so I've got two micro hacks, but we can... Do you want to do one more round of hacks?

Both just like.

Don't ask me my preference and then tell me that I'm wrong. Fucking litigate me out of it.

That's the gateway drug, isn't it? He's gradually stepping up.

I knew a guy who, you've met him actually, who would do cardio and just have TikTok on autoplay because he said it made 45 minutes, which is probably terrible for your brain.

Xanthan gum.

I don't want to get involved with that stuff.

You just perfect the art of like perfectly level walking. So only your legs are moving, but you're just squat jog.

All right, Seth, you're up. Create a product promo there.

So this is also to springboard off your hack, which is just to only do voice notes while I'm walking. So it's just to get me out the house, because I know that if I got a desk pad, it would enable my screen time and I'd be doing it more. And so Dickie Bush, who... Twice now.

chris mentioned it before oh there we go double dicky so he just said don't do any work that at your desk that could be done walking and that includes like emails voice notes and to to be honest like most writing now with gpt you can just dump a bunch of words into an audio file and i mean if you get a walking pad it's all work isn't it It's all work. But then you're just at your desk.

This is a nice development from your last year's one, which was treat me like a total idiot and start at zero until I say I understand and then go to step one and then step two.

big mistake that i made when studying medicine was not doing that earlier you have to have like a framework or a skeleton to be able to hang concepts on otherwise you are just learning raw data and it's so difficult there's nothing connected and you're just memorizing like you did at school you're never actually understanding there's like a tipping point yes if you just brute force raw dog enough data eventually you'll start to see the coalescing parts kind of join the dots but it's

Not a fun way to do it, yeah.

I think you're on more.

You really value culinary appliances that allow you to eat low calorie foods and make them nice. So I think an air fryer would be high value.

Yeah.

We didn't coordinate this, but you've described the irony of the human condition, that we will always hit this spiral curriculum and still run into the same problems. And with our clients, we have the same thing. So we help coaches to move online and they often think that if I can just fix my lead generation, then my life will be sorted and I'll be absolutely, you know, I've completed it.

And then all that happens is like very quickly from working with us, you know, we fix that problem. It's not actually that hard a problem to solve. Yeah. But then they end up with a sales bottleneck, and then they fix that, and they end up with a fulfillment bottleneck, and then they fix that, and they end up with an operational bottleneck.

And they're like, oh, actually, life isn't just sunshine and rainbows after this one thing that I can solve. So for me, very similar lesson, which was, we are the ones that define success in our lives. And

Yet, for some reason, we have a desire, we close the gap somehow by fulfilling the desire, and then we move the goalposts, and then we keep doing that, and we're like, oh, why am I perpetually dissatisfied?

And hearing your podcast with Andrew Wilkinson, the billionaire, who's just like, his main conclusion from becoming a billionaire is, oh, I'm still the same miserable, dissatisfied person I've ever been, but with more money. And it's like, it takes somebody who's actually smashed that particular stream to be like, ah, maybe the answers aren't hiding behind more money or whatever.

And so ultimately we defer gratification

for or we feel like we're suffering the most in the thing that we're most deficient in so whether it's money or time or friendships or whatever that's like the thing which is like the the alligator at the boat and whoever has something like that it's like the drowning man wanting air they feel like that is the thing which if they solve it life would be complete and

So like in cell forums, they're obsessed with like, if I could just get a girlfriend, then I'd be totally fine. And the weird thing about all of this, I think when I kind of reflect on this is that

the domains of life that we have sorted and most of us like watching this you know you if you're watching this hopefully you're healthy you have access to being outside you're not in prison you you know you have central heating like all this stuff like physical health and time and family and son and all that stuff is just fully available in abundance but we just go i know but i need another two grand or i need another whatever and so um

Okay. That's Chris's way of life. Eat the whole thing. So it's a saurine in a kilo of yogurt.

I guess the lesson is to stop moving the goalposts, or if you do, recognise that it's just a game that we're playing, but you can still recognise that you are happy right now and all that suffering of the gap is just caused by the mind.

So Felix Dennis has a book called How to Get Rich, which is... He's made it really distasteful in the way that it's branded and stuff, and he's sat there like a maniacal monocle and... You know, the kind of... Because... He's trying to paint this picture that you set that as the goal.

He says, I'm writing this at the age of 83, and if you're reading this book, I would swap places with you in a heartbeat because you have the one thing that I don't, which is time. I've made my $300 million or whatever to then go and sit in a wood cabin and write poetry. I could have done that at 30.

It never does. It's, as Frankel says, it's one of the three insatiable desires, money, sex, and power. And you can keep chasing them. So, I mean, Wilkinson was talking about his mate who was like a multi-billionaire And was like, oh, but Jeff, he's like really rich though, isn't he? And he was like, but what can Jeff afford that you can't? And they're like, oh, super yacht. All right. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Because I'm sure in our 20s, we were like, oh, but the 30s and then the 40s, it's the same.

So is this like, don't conflate suffering with productivity? Or is it more like, don't get attached to old systems that...

And that's one way to guarantee that you won't get the best out of this week is if you just beat yourself up for it all.

Is it? Fuck. I misgendered him. Thank you, George. So I've chosen this suit to introduce the most kind of serious point of the podcast. But I've been doing a lot of...

walking and journaling and reflecting and i've actually been tuning an ai model using a few kind of different database structures to identify the optimal categorization method for life hacks and you're doing it again what i've come down to is physical and digital so You said this exact same thing. Actually, last year it was a team of operational analysts.

Into next action.

That's very cool. The reason I struggle with the values thing is that I think you've got to be very cautious about what you say are your core values.

Yeah. So reading Patrick Lencioni recently, and he said a lot of companies will go like, oh yeah, we'll do our values statement. And they say our country values honesty. And you're like, okay, but unless you value honesty above the market baseline, you don't actually value honesty. That's not one of your core values. Because everyone should value honesty by baseline.

So he's like, the only time you should say you have a company value is if you are actually above the market trend.

Side effect, too.

I think we're getting closer to the same conclusion. What a relief.

Can you regale us of our friend who set himself a target of having a banana every day?

So the physical life hack is to use things that annoy you, like mild irritations throughout the day, as gratitude triggers. So wake up in the morning, 7am, you hear a siren going past, you're like, oh, bloody hell, I just want five minutes more sleep. And that's a gratitude trigger for, that could have been me in the ambulance.

Yeah. There's so many adulterers and sodomites that need stoning. And if you just commit. Where's that from? I don't know. You know what it is? It's like a wispy memory from the guy who I think you spoke to, Chris, who lived the Old Testament for a year. What? Jesus Christ.

I think it's just something you've read on Old Testament or New Testament because those are two very different yeah so he set himself different challenges each year lived inside of a whale built a big did he build an ark so he had to he had to grow out his hair and like throw pebbles at sodomites and adulterers and he had like he basically he tried to live like to live the life of that like

verbatim for a year and then he like his other challenge was uh read the entire um encyclopedia britannica and he said it really pissed off his wife because is this ringing a bell no like he wasn't he'd be like did you know that the byzantine period she's like oh stop it with your trivia but yeah anyway he didn't throw pebbles somebody who did like early on it was early they did maybe something each month for a year a different thing each month for a year

Old wisdom. The process that we use for goal setting each year is stolen from Garrett J. White, who probably stole it from someone else and so on.

Yeah. Big style. Wow. Interesting. So it's splitting your year into quarters. And then splitting that into four domains of your life, body, being, balance, and business, or health, wealth, love, and happiness, but I quite like the alliteration. And you then basically look at, okay, what's my three-year vision? Directionally, where do I want to go? What's my one-year target for that?

Divide that into quarters. What does each 12-week sprint look like in each of those domains? And then how can I do a weekly action or a daily action to hit a weekly checkpoint to hit that quarterly target in each domain? And it's designed so that you're not like blasting it, grinding your face off with stuff.

Or you could be even the driver of the ambulance, still pretty rubbish having to drive an ambulance at seven in the morning. Or you could be in the back of the ambulance. So it's like, oh, okay, there's a little switch. You encounter someone who's a bit of a dick to you at the checkout in a shop or whatever, and you go, They're being a dick because they're miserable at their job.

You're just turning up and just hitting a single each day so that you move towards your goal and you're fully aligned. You don't end up out of balance with like overweighting one domain of your life. So the idea is to kind of counteract people who just like double down on their business and they end up like overweight and spiritually disconnected and divorced and all this stuff.

But they got the million. And so... That framework's been really helpful for me. It also gives me one thing to focus on in each domain. The other big thing that's had the most impact, I think, is single tasking.

For years, I drunk the Kool-Aid that I can multitask and that because I've got like Alfred installed and keyboard shortcuts, whatever, I can just like flip between windows and tabs and it feels more productive because your brain's like, oh great, there's loads of like things happening. But the quality of that work, the attention residue, all that stuff isn't worth it.

And so, like you said about deciding what's the key thing this morning and just blast three hours on it, blinkers on, noise cancelling headphones, whatever, and just do that one thing. And then to create a feedback loop with that, you have something that is a visual or a tactile reminder of this is what I'm working on right now.

And it sounds like overkill, but I think our brains are so like scatty that we need to just be fully hemmed in and forced to focus on that one thing. So whether it's a post-it note stuck on your monitor or like a floating bar that you have pinned on the top of your desktop, whatever it is saying, you are doing this right now.

And then you feel like an absolute dingus if you go off task because everything's screaming like, no, no, no.

They're having a bad time. I can go home and eat my sushi and pot of mango or whatever. They have to be on shift. So just having that little flip has been really valuable.

Well, that or it's Alexander's library. Say, oh, well, there is Alexander's library on the other side of this room with infinite novelty.

Your point about Huberman is great that he's been able to pacify the midwits by providing... Legitimating scientifically. Yeah, for people to just follow the guy on the left stuff.

He deliberately doesn't optimise it because he's like, if I mess with it, then I'm going to sleep worse if it's not.

I'm sure there's loads. Yeah. But it's, I guess it's how flexible do you want to be?

No.

Both are good effects of that, aren't they? I think it's, it's like a nice side effect to have.

Have I told you about this, George? I took a journal every day from the age of 13 to 19. Wow. On a Microsoft Word document. And then one day I opened it, file corrupted. Just like, fucking hell. Oh, well.

No, I was like, well, that's the end of that and just stopped.

Or is that where it starts? This was when I was transitioning Windows to Mac. So it was in that. However, I've still got the file. So I could maybe uncorrupt it now with modern technology. I'd be able to.

I've got a lesson and a fail.

Yeah.

So I'll take the potato.

Actually, that's housed within direction over speed.

It's way harder to operate at the high level. As opposed to like, I want to get stronger.

existentially very difficult but like as a concept yeah because it you would take if i offered you 200 growth and something you would probably your immediate response would be like yeah in business like gino wickman talks about having growth phases and then consolidation phases where rather than just like because if you spam the growth and scale you're going to end up with like on rickety foundations whereas if you take some time you go actually i'm just going to like focus on internal growth for a while and like solidify the foundations before the next sprint you're going to create a more sustainable

You just always have to pay the debt off, don't you?

Have you ever had a chat with someone who says that they want a goal and then you start giving them solutions and they'll keep coming up with rotating reasons and excuses for not doing it? So this is, I think, a novelism. Correct me if I'm wrong. If information was all that was needed, we would all be billionaires with perfect abs.

So something I've really learned over the last couple of years is there is somebody's actual goal, and then there is the story that they tell themselves about what they think their goal is. Often, it's not the same. Someone's actions versus their words. George got me a book a few years ago called The Courage to be Disliked, and it's basically a summary written by Parable about Adler versus Freud.

Adler was one of Freud's contemporaries, and he's kind of the lesser-known Freud, Jung, Adler, those kind of original psychologists. His view is the teleological view rather than the etiological view. So Freud's view is something happened to me when I was a child and it's caused me to behave like this. So past event produces current behaviour.

Adler is the teleological view, which is future goal impacts current behavior. So the example given is somebody is always getting rejected by people and they've made themselves repulsive to other people so that they can tell themselves the story that, oh, no one likes me and everyone finds me whatever.

But the goal baked into that, the hidden payoff of that belief is that it keeps them safe because they can reject themselves before other people can reject them.

so they construct a certain identity that allows them to fulfill that goal and meet the payoff so we we run a program to help people grow their business in a specific niche but quite often you'll see that the more barriers and the more guard rails you put up to make failure absolutely impossible

What's happening is you're kind of backing someone into a corner where it's like you're removing the technological friction. You're removing the blueprint friction. You're removing the what to do and how to do it in the process until suddenly there's nothing left but you as the bottleneck. And so you mentioned this with GPT.

I'm glad you did, which is that now we have infinite access to the best computational models available. working at like super PhD level and all information at our fingertips and people haven't suddenly become infinitely more productive. All it's done is like take away another excuse and another objection to the point where you're like, ah, like now it really is just me.

And so someone's willingness to actually show up and do the thing is still always going to be the, um, the final frontier.

What people tell themselves the goal is isn't always the goal. So look at actions versus behavior and don't think that you just have an information bottleneck and that'll solve everything.

Why do you think the standard of cars in America is generally higher? Is it more of a status symbol?

Is it bimodal? Because you're saying that some Ubers go really low.

100%. What a year it's been as well. What a year.

Okay. And arms overhead.

I need to get my dink fixed, actually.

And he went... Hands at the bottom of the wheel. LAUGHTER

It was the worst storm that Iceland had seen in several years as well. I think just that year. That guy is a source of inspiration.

So is the conclusion to watch like 45 minute Fentanyl in the car park.