#881 - Christmas Special - Life Hacks, Biggest Lessons & Best Resolutions

26:25So now I'm just like lifetime believe it. 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 are already paying for, what tools we already have can do the thing. Let me get another example. So this is a niche one, but we were looking for a way to convert Twitter threads or X threads into caracels. And I was looking at new bits of software and I was actually like, we already use hype fury for scheduling tweets and they have a built -in thing for this.

27:01But I think it's just the natural habit of like, wow, what's the shiny new thing? something new to solve this problem as opposed to looking where you're already on. What's your one of, you don't need new lessons. You need to relearn your old ones. Yeah. I mean, most of the stuff that you already, most of the answers to problems you have now you already know, and you probably learned five years ago. 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 back on your... Beautiful. Yeah, you look on your journals from when you were like 19, And even you think was your 19 like idiot self was still telling you the same thing The same problem doesn't have same problems over the day one feature of like today a year ago five years ago Ten years ago when you write in the same fucking Well, you're the same person that's why like the common thread between all of that is you and lots of stuff changes on the surface But fundamentally the same challenges that you have the same emotions that come up the same worries and concerns You do oh my god so much has changed in life, you know I'm a dad now in a different country now a different career now whatever it might be and you go you me, you're still the same person.

28:04It's been a long time. All right, my next one, one that we've done a long, long time ago, but continues to pay huge dividends, clip the curtains together in hotel rooms using the trouser hanger. I've challenged anybody to take me on with that. You get into a hotel room and these curtains for no reason, I've got a three -inch or a two -inch gap between them and you've tried to sort of do that weird thing where you push them. and see, and then they sort of settle, and they settle a bit better sometimes, and you're like, oh, is that good? Should I leave it? And you go, I'm gonna go again, you do it, and it's further apart, and you're like, fuck.

28:40A set of trouser hangers from the wardrobe, pin it at the top, if you've got two trouser hangers, one, two, and then three, four at the bottom, pitch black, beautiful. Why not just wear an eye mask? You could, but sometimes even with an eye mask, you're rolling around, it comes off a little bit. Yeah, it's just I think you should always optimize for environment first and then other stuff Yeah, technically the light receptors on the skin I think that all the back of your knee can actually wake up So that's that and then I guess the other one which is related to sleep I spent a lot of time on the road again this year a lot of time in hotels Good pillow bad bed good night sleep bad pillow good bed bad night sleep basically the pillow is for most important fish Pillars the most important thing because it's the most sort of obvious experience of you interacting with the bed is whether or not it's this sort of...

29:37No wonder those ones that fucking have to... I think it's so much I know. My fucking sleeping are drowning here. And yeah, that's it. Pin the curtains together in a hotel bedroom and optimize for better pillows. And the way you can do that, what you want to do is find what pillow do you like, and then how available is it on Amazon Prime worldwide? And then if you can find one that you like that's available like that and it isn't in the same price, you can add 25 pounds or whatever onto a stay, but improve your sleep quality by maybe 30 minutes or an hour or night by just ordering a pillow to the hotel.

30:15You get in, you're like, ah, fuck, it's one of the ones. Get the order done next day. Get a good night sleep. There's a Kelly Starratt thing, a piece of advice from years ago where if you lie, on the mattress and you bend one leg, the mattress is the wrong level of turgidity. So like if you, that's it, you're going into extension, so you bend you bend one leg to get out of extension. And I think that's it, the mattress is too hard. That's the thing. So with the pillow versus mattress thing, I could sleep with no pillow. But if the mattress is bad, I wake up and I'm like tight -edged. Your Kelly Starrot hack with pillows has changed my life as well.

30:52Wow. It I think it's from, it'll be from like a 2017 lifehack or something. It's back when it was like phone video Kelly Starrot on YouTube. Is it the entire roller thing? That's, and it's lying like it's like tucking you shoulder back in that towel sits here. And then you, everything's interesting. So I followed that, but I just put another pillow in between the two top arms. So the pillows are crossed? Yeah. So one's behind my head and then I turn over to like, just to make shift pregnancy pillow. But it's not for the legs because I found that if I had one too hot, it's just like, just disrupt.

31:25If you've got, you've got to do this Brazilian jujitsu, you know, like sweep the legs and then pull it up and over. If anyone that uses a pregnancy pillow consistently very impressive, but you can't move side to side. So normal pillow. G, what you got? My one relates to, you mentioned then being on the road, big thing for myself this year again, don't have an office. I'm often working from hotels, coffee shops and things like that and the combination of the boyata portable laptop stand with the Apple Magic keyboard and the Apple Magic mouse. So a few points on this. Number one, this is a bit Tony Robbins, but my kind of contrarian take on the world right now if I sit in that Peter Teele interview, one of my contrarian takes that I give is that...

32:21It's very on brand credit. Very good. The contrarian take right now is if you had to picture a depressed person's body language in your head, what do they look like? Slouched over. Sheldon, real contrarian. Slouched over, hunch, where's the rise? Down. Down. and people are spending eight to 10 hours a day, like that, whether it's on their laptop or on their phone. So the boyata stand means that the laptop's raised like perfectly in front of you like that. You're sure there's a back on the mouse, and you go, once you go to that, you can't go back. Like everybody else, you go, how are you spending two hours in this depressed posture?

33:02It's like we've spoken about this previously that I think a significant amount of people being miserable is just being in resting serious face versus resting smile face. I thought about that. And resting serious body. So I presented at the International Posture Summit. Oh, even on us? Here we go. Up next to me in the Irrinal there. Come on. I don't know. You see this? No. Well, so this is, 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 cortisol ratios kind of been difficult to reproduce in the results, but believing your own thoughts.

33:44So if you sat up, Barata stand. What do you call it? Barata. So I have a cheese in it. I've got a couple of left. Delicious. So yeah. But my take with that is you've seen the, is it Jonathan Hyte who did the whole Anjus Miley says, since 2008, Anjai has gone through the roof and it lines up with social media. Obviously that's I think had a factor, but that's well discussed. However, it also lines up with everyone's head being down. Their eyes being down. Host your shoulders hunched over. Host your pillow. No, I'm a big fan of it. I will say you're the height that you have it at and the closeness that you have, you'll laptop to yourself.

34:23I would come down the stairs when we were both living in the Colton House in Austin and you don't see a person. What you see is this massive MacBook, like this and because it's spread out as well, it's covering his entire body. And then this, just a set of air pod pro maxes poking out the top, you know, I'll, George is behind there somewhere. It's terrible for day game. If you want to pick up girls at the coffee shop, you can't do any keynote escalations. It's good for net, the amount of people go, he must know. He's hardcore. What does he do? I mean, I've seen while he's reading David Doge's at the beginning of the Affinity, which chat you be seeing open.

34:58He's second time. Fuck. All right. Should we do a lesson? Oh, I got it. Bring it on. Bring it on. Oh my God. Yes. Fine. Are we out of hacks now? No, we can go back and go. Okay. So I've got two microhacks, but we can... Do you want to do one more round of hacks? Do you want to do another hack? Do another hack? Let's do another round of hacks. I know that. I had another hack chambered. Ready to go. Fire it. But now it's made me question the hack I picked. No, I'm worrying. I am worrying, though. I'm going to say walking pad. Have we done that before? Walking pad. walking pad. It's like under the desk treadmill.

35:34Both just like. Yeah exactly. So you need a standing desk and then it's a treadmill that's like, you can't run on. I mean, I've never tried, but it says don't run on it. So I figure like, probably best to listen. That's why you stopped running. Exactly. Yeah. But just that as a way of, you just do like two hours of work while on that. You forget that you're on it. And you think it's like 2000 steps every, like maybe 4 ,000 steps an hour? Can't be 4 ,000 an hour. Why? Oh, no, it could be. Yeah, you know, at that pace, yeah, probably about 4 ,000 an hour. Cause you thought that was too many. I originally, but now I've repurposed.

36:09Realized you're wrong. Yeah. I am. Walking bad. And what kind of pace? Cause you ever get to a pace where you're going too fast, then you can't go on. Very correctly. Yeah. The classic type of high pay problem. Then you're like, all I'm doing now is walking, walking at my screen, trying not to Just slightly miss the walking part and walk into the computer. What types of work, A, sorry, what speed have you found useful and then what types of work have you found? 3 .5, 3 .5. And that miles kilometers? It's just what it says on the screen. You've both got the same one. Right. I think we might have this similar one.

36:42We have the same one. Right, but your legs are longer. Doesn't matter. I would imagine you walk quicker than these two. Does that matter? We're talking about preferences here. You actually mean you're asking? They're walking a little bit more quickly than that. The question was, what speed of a U -fam? They're all like the same speed. Don't ask me my preference and then tell me that I'm broken. Listen, give me out of it. Time me up. So yeah, 3 .5. Next question. What type of work? So you would think it needs to be like email or, but it can be anything. I think it just helps. you just drop into whatever you do.

37:20Well, there's that kind of thing about when you're on a phone call that's getting intense, you stand up and start walking right here because we're meant to locomot while we think. I'm picturing you, Alan Partridge style, with like a Bluetooth headset on short shorts, going 100k, it's going to sky. I once heard a story of, you know, so Arya Manuel, Well, that's the can't see, I guess not that bad. Arya Manuel, who Ari Gold was based off on entourage. Should they own the UFC, WWE? He's like the apex lawyer in America for entertainment. And he's heavily dyslexic, so he just spends all day on the phone, rather than doing anything that would use dyslexia, I guess.

38:06And I knew somebody who was in the office walking past his room and he's on a full incline treadmill with like speaker on just saying, fuck him, fuck him for another million, fuck him for another million. We're not moving till we fuck him for another million. That's the gateway drug, isn't it? He's gradually stepping. You're going to be 12 months time. Oh, the other line of one of those. A, uh, sister to your one is I found when I was in America, because of the time zones reverse. I'd wake up at 6am and you've already got so many bits of work that you have to do. So you have such a high cortisol state going on my phone, incline treadmill, and then just working for the first 30 minutes Replying to messages and emails meant that the cortisol in the morning is then getting counterbalanced by the incline treadmill.

38:54Yeah, I knew a guy who you've met him actually who would do cardio and just have tick tock on like auto play Because he said it made 45 minutes just what it's probably terrible brain, but yeah, only allowing social only allowing social media usage when you're doing incline cardio is actually that's not bad, but but like purposefully doing social media usage because you're an incline cardio, it feels like you end up fitter but also a bit like tweaked. Do you find, because Steve Jobs famously used to only do walking meetings or a lot of walking meetings, have you found doing it for meetings useful?

39:30Or do you not want to be that guy? I mean, Johnny used to try and record podcasts So I was going to say that. It's not really the audience to say, well, I think I did better podcasting because this is quite good at podcasting, but I think it's, you produce a better podcast while walking apart from the sound, apart from the sound, but who cares about the sound. Meetings are the only thing I was struggling with for some reason. I think because you just feel like, you know, I'm that guy walking on the meat. Very much depends what sort of a meeting it is as well. You know, if it's you just, okay, you like recap me on this way, it's kind of sort of standard and stuff.

40:06Okay, like here we go. I'll have a little plot. And if it's a really serious meeting and you're the only one walking, and you're the one being really serious. You expect the art of like perfectly level walking, so you only like moving, but you're just... Squat jog. I think you'd have a little bit of... Shift. What brand did you go for? I don't know, but I do know it's out of stock. But if you go on Amazon, that's two great things. If you go on Amazon, they cancel each other out, don't they? It doesn't matter. If you go on Amazon and search walking part, walking part, pretty much any of them, they range from, I think, you try to find, like a bean wand, didn't you, for 50, 60 quid?

40:43Up to 300 quid, 200, 300 quid. Got you a good one. All right, Saf, you're up. Great, a product promo there. Well, I don't know, that's what it is. And they can reach 50 quid maybe. So this is also a springboard off your hand, 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 Dicky Bush who, um, twice now, Chris mentioned it before. There we go, double Dicky. So he just said, don't do any work at your desk that could be done walking. And that includes like emails, voice notes, and to be honest, like most writing now with GPT, you can just dump a bunch of words into it, audio file, and...

41:38I 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. It's the walking time. So, what is it that you're looking for to get outside? To get outside. Or have environment change. And you can now walk with air pods in, talking to yourself, and people no longer think you're a Yeah, that's not bad. Good, all right. Which one am I going to choose next? Last year I said, sleep token this year, I'm going to say, Betooth, and it's going to make you very happy that that finally come round to listening to Betooth, really phenomenal. Most recent album, they just put out the London vlog, the song at the end that we had in the tune that was threaded throughout, shout out to Caleb, the front man, who sent me the stems from the track.

42:25So he sent me the track broken up into its individual component parts so we could really really dial that in It was very kind of him to do and I just that they were my top -lay track of this year I felt like That's alive We hit attention. Yeah, of course. Good bit mincey compared but It's alright. No good that whole album's that whole album's fantastic It only came out in October and I think they still managed to get into my spot if I wrapped so So, place of, I'll do another one given that that one was just music. Mitchem Deodrant. So Luke got me onto this last year and there is no Deodrant that's anywhere near as good.

43:05This isn't just, like, the smell of it is fantastic, the price of it's great, the quality doesn't leave any white marks and everyone's sort of looking for what's the best sort of Deodrant and not fucking medieval peasant. I don't use roll on Deodrant. but spray, mid -chim, and they also have in every boots of UK airports, they'll have to travel size, so you can actually take a 50 -mil travel, throw that in your bag, pretty sick. Mid -chim and Bertuth. So what's good about it? Smells good. Doesn't leave any white marks, and you don't sweat. It just seems to take you all the boxes. It's good. And as of yet, most of them have a lingering smell like Dove.

43:41Dove deodorant. You can smell somebody wearing it from like fucking a few miles away, and I don't like that. It's like it basically odeless, but does the job so unbeatable naughty naughty Speaking naughty My one is not naughty. It's a prompt for AI So either chat GPT, Claude, whatever your that's actually a lifehawk within itself is to be an absolute LLM haul. Yeah, if you can Is the following prompt so So do you know the Elon Musk quote, it's around how to learn. It's essentially this idea that you want to view knowledge as a semantic tree. So you start at the roots, then you go up to the trunk, then you have the branches, then you have like the secondary branches, then you have the leaves.

44:31Whereas often the way we'll approach things is, oh, I want to learn about the heart. I'll just put on this random Andrew Jubeman podcast with a specialist about the heart and just kind of hop in, but you don't have any of the roots or anything there, so you never actually retain any information. Whereas when you treat knowledge as a semantic tree, you work all the way up from the base and then all the way there. And a big realization this year was it's kind of a, a, a, a, a Deutsch concept, but essentially this idea that the only thing, the only bottleneck that really exists is knowledge. And then you look at, okay, you have all these great people who are self -taught, so you can just teach yourself from Nicola Tesla to Leonardo Da Vinci.

45:13You have access to the alphabet, so you can understand any concept with words. You have access to numeracy, which is only 10 digits, but you can access, you can understand any mathematical equation with numbers. Therefore, the only bottleneck to literally every single thing in your life skill issue, knowledge. So placing that into chord or chat GPT and And you realize I can learn anything starting from there. So you start with the, you say, the specific Elon quote, and you say, teach me about X, but start with the roots and then work all the way up and don't move to the next layer until I say I understand.

45:48And you're constantly just moving up. And you realize, oh, I can literally teach myself anything. 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 the CPU. Step here is to really then, you can then just move it into like a mind mapping software and literally just build the tree yourself. Then you have that semantic tree in your head of all the interweaving parts. 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 hand concepts on.

46:23Otherwise, you are just learning raw data and it's so difficult. There's nothing connect and you just memorizing like you did at school. You're never actually understanding. There's nothing 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 here. It's just something you've used that for recently I started yesterday with longevity so I'm going because that's a topic that I've always wanted to learn about But I just kick the can down the road because I'm like where do I even begin?

46:56So I started with that with any kind of topic that will come up now, I will just... What are you for the LLM non -monogamous out there? What do you use each platform for? Have you found certain things about Ronson? I mean, there's a huge asterix here that this will be outdated by tomorrow, because it's constantly literally yesterday, they released the new O version. And then you have X now getting... It's like three times the number of super computer clusters with the GROC AI that's going to go live So me right now I vary between Clawed and chat GPT, but I would be shocked if next year I'm saying the exact same thing Yeah, it seems like Google is Google's great.

47:41Yeah, the new GROC one now where you can be on Twitter and ask GROC to explain things to you GROC has way fewer bottlenecks. It's way less politically correct as well it has access to Twitter's live data. It's being updated much more quickly, but it's also being updated by people who are on Twitter. Highly dangerous data set that to use. Lesson. Johnny, you're a lesson? So it's a reframe on hard things or a hard thing. So I think, so something that I think I've been guilty of is not necessarily thinking like when I achieve this I'll be happy. But rather like when I achieve this problem's gone, like solved that thing now.

48:24And actually, when it's mainly a propane thing, so like propane's grown a lot over the last two, three years and you always think like, we'll hit this revenue, we'll hire this person, we'll achieve this thing, no more problems. But actually all that happens is the new more thorny, harder problem. And reframing that as like that is the thing where the development, that's the development opportunity because the next revenue level, the next achievement just always just feels exactly the same as the last one. It doesn't matter the size of it, exactly the same, but the who you become as a result of solving the problem at the level you're at.

49:02That's the gain. So the phrase that I remind myself of is for every level as a devil. And it's just the current devil you're facing. That's because we've had a very weird year in business, like a very lots of problems that I think we'd have never expected. And you're immediate response to that is like, but actually if you reframe that as like that's where the growth is, that's where the personal growth is. See it differently. And it becomes almost like not exciting, but like it's like wow there's something on the other side of this. So that's been my lesson for this year. Probably the biggest one.

49:39I mean, it's really good. It's not too dissimilar to what we spoke about last year, and I think what all of us are kind of zeroing in on, which is accepting the things are going to be tough, but not necessarily white knuckling our way through it and not assuming that there's any additional nobility in white knuckling it and trying to increase the difficulty or sort of the hustle -pawning your way through things. If there's a way that I can make this simpler or... Yeah, exactly. How can you have a creative gummy for every different thing? and yeah, I think assuming the one day you're going to wake up and there be no problems is.

50:14I remember that I think it was Mark Zuckerberg on maybe on Rogan where he was describing his morning. Does anyone heard this? So Mark Zuckerberg's morning was like he wakes up and he goes and serfs because when he looks at his phone, it's really all really shit bad news. And I was like, well, that's my morning. And it's like his bad news will be far worse. How many unreads have you got currently on Telegram? I don't know. The other day it was 46 ,000. I think you're right more. No, I think the other day it was like 1, 2, 3, 4 for me. And I screenshot it. It was particularly satisfying. On this lesson, there's a beautiful...

50:54Have you ever heard of the book called The Gap and The Game? Benjamin Arty. Yeah, so there's one line in that that's stuck with me and I still think about it and it's kind of a semi -life hack related to this, which is to get your current problem, whatever it is. Just go back to a maybe even a more severe problem in the past, whether it's girlfriend cheated on you, fired from job, insert problem, whatever it is, right? And you go back and go, with the benefit of hindsight now, what would have been the worst interpretation of that problem? It's like, okay, girlfriend cheated on me, I'm a loser, I'm gonna binge -alert a food, I'm gonna write a lot of angry Facebook status, is about her, didn't work.

51:36That's the worst interpretation of that problem. You go, okay, well, what was the damn detachment? What would have been the best interpretation of that? It's like, okay, I'm going to book this personal trainer for three months. I'm going to book this trick with my friends that I was putting off because I was supposed to go on holiday with her, etc, etc, etc. And you look at that now in the cold light of day and which one do you wish that you chose? It's so obvious. So you do that for the pass problem. And then you just got, okay, now I'm a current problem. What, what's the current worst interpretation of this?

52:08Dada Dada. What's the current best interpretation of this? Dada Dada. Which one do you want to choose? Nearwood, what would you tomorrow want you to do today? Yes. Did you okay? Good. And then literally do the exercise and just refuse to get up until you've hypnotized yourself that it's the best thing to ever happen to you. The Mark Andreessen on the show the other week and he gave me this quote from Sean Parker that said, running a startup is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood. And I think that's the acceptance that after a long enough amount of time problems are always going to be there.

52:39You're not going to get to a point where there aren't any problems as the CEO or founder of a business. Your only job is to work on the hardest problems. The problems that nobody else can fix and they always stop with you and there will always be pressure. Well, okay. The more advanced you are in any field and any pursuit, the problems are worse. or more complicated, more painful. Yes. And it's just easier to be at the basic level of everything. Yes. So if you're going to pursue the journey of like, well, I want to achieve the highest level in anything, it's like, well, the final level going from level 9 to level 10 is going to have the worst problem attached to it.

53:11So that's the price. Is that going to be rising or prepared today? I think there's some truth to that, but I think that's also the benefit of hindsight. You now look back at level 1 problems is so obvious because you're now a level 9 person. Yeah, but then as soon as you get to level 29 you'll look back at level nine in the same But that's the cost of the person you become by some of these problems That that's a much more succinct way of saying what I was saying is that like it's only It's the it's the person you are was on the other side of the problem of like wow That was so basic like two years ago.

53:38I was worrying about this thing. That's really easy now Yeah, because if that challenge came back up to you again now You're so fine. Yeah, that's very interesting. That's cool. I like that you good one We didn't coordinate this but But that 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 that the absolute, you know, I've completed it.

54:12And 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. But then they end up with a sales bottleneck and then they fix that and they end up with the 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.

54:45And we're like, oh, why am I perpetually dissatisfied? And hearing your podcast with Andrew Wilkinson, billionaire, who's just like his main conclusion from becoming a billionaire as 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 like 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 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 alligator at the boat and whoever has something like that, it's like the drowning man wanting air.

55:32They feel like that is the thing which if they solve it, life would be complete. 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, if you're watching this, hopefully you're healthy, you have access to being outside, you're not in prison, 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 need another two grand or any other whatever.

56:17And so I guess the lesson is to stop moving the goalposts or if you do recognize that it's just a game that we're playing but you can still recognize that you are happy right now and all that suffering of the gap has just caused by the mind. So Felix Dennis has a book called How to Get Rich, which is he's made it really like distasteful in the way that it's branded and stuff and he's sat there like a maniacal, like monocle and the kind of because he's trying to paint this picture that you are, you set that as the goal. And 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.

57:04And I've made my $300 million or whatever to then go and sit in a wood cabin and write poetry. And I could have done that at 30. Yeah. I had that realization. It's kind of like a nice meme, but you're already a billionaire just in a illiquid asset, which is your health, because any billionaire, and there'll be lots out there right now or centa millionaires that are on their deathbed would give everything for your health. Therefore, yes, you can't liquidize it yet. Maybe you will be the future. But a liquid wealth, you're already a billionaire, which is a wild thought. The inside around the thing that you design most is the thing that you assume will fix all of your problems.

57:46I came up with this idea the other day of unteachable lessons. I think one of the unteachable lessons is money and fame won't fix all of the problems that you have in life because the total addressable market for more fame and more money is basically everybody. And Andrew Wilkinson is a billionaire coming on. It's so done. It's so done that when he even comes on, there's a bit of me that thinks we can't go down that road because I know of the antibody response system on the internet. I also know that it just doesn't, it seems to not land and maybe you wouldn't have landed with me and it probably still doesn't But never does.

58:17It's as Frankl 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? You're like, oh, super yacht. Right. Okay. So, yeah. What was it you? Was it, who was it that taught us that That lesson about how when you ask people what they want their annual income to be, it's always the deal. Yeah, do you want to tell that story? Can you remember it? Yeah, essentially whenever you ask somebody what would be your kind of goal income where you'd stop and relax a bit more, it's basically always 2 .5 to 3x where you are right now.

59:03And then as soon as you hit that, it just rebates. 3 .5 to 2 .5. 3x, 3x. Yeah, it's so funny. That thing going around social media where they ask someone, like, you can, I'll give you 10 million but you can't wake up tomorrow. Would you accept? Or like, would you want 10 million? Everyone goes, yes, yes. But then you can have 10 million but you don't wake up in the morning. Do you still have the 10 million? And everyone goes, oh, no. As you say, well, waking up tomorrow is worth more than 10 million. And people go, but if you really think about that, it's it is like, oh, right. So the most valuable thing is the thing that I take for granted every single day, which is, I suppose, the it's the youth.

59:36It's like the future that you have ahead of you. But you ignore that. But a lot of that's a lot of that as well as framing because you can't cash the future in right now. Like the fact that nothing is promised beyond just this moment now right now. And sure, your felt sense of it as your older, maybe you can do less, as less you can do with this moment right now. But tomorrow at 80 and tomorrow right now with the exact same amount of time. So beyond the health impact of it, there is no difference. The only thing is remember when you used to go back to school, what a Monday for me, it's a good example on a Monday.

1:00:07For me, I've got a bed on a Sunday night, I reliably have good sleep and I'm fired up for a Monday because it feels like the whole week is ahead of me. But I get to sort of a Friday or a Saturday and I have this sort of retrospective energy to me where I'm thinking about the week and then it gets to Monday morning again and I'm sort of excited. And it almost feels like that but with age, it's like there's no real reason if you can do the full non -dual fucking attachment thing. There's no reason why a day now and a day in 20 years time is worth any more or any less. In fact, you should... What?

1:00:36We do it at all time frames, don't we? because I'm sure in our 20s, we were like, oh, but the 30s are, and then the 40s, it's the same. But at some point, it's gonna flip, right? At some point, it's gonna be like, oh, if you're not careful about it, you're gonna get older and start thinking wistfully about what was behind, not hopefully about what's to come. Is it not multiplied by like physical ability? By the big margin. Like enjoying anything is magnified when you can walk. There's no pain, there's no fully mobile. All right, my first one, that was fucking awesome. That was a good one too. That was a good one.

1:01:07This again from your birthday outcomes matter more than inputs. You've been on this flex for quite a while. Not too dissimilar to, I look for efficiency over, I look for effectiveness over efficiency, but outcomes matter more than inputs. A lot of the time, especially as you get sort of further into black belt territory on the productivity bro optimization world, you do this sort of weird rain dance, this sort of productivity to rain dance of lots of things that maybe you needed them previously or maybe they'd never served you or maybe they did serve you but they don't serve you now. But you keep doing them.

1:01:41You have these sort of odd attachments to ways of working and things that you do or members of staff or systems or processes or whatever it is. And what's that quote about people working so hard and achieving so little? Who's that? Andy Grove. Andy Grove. There are so How many people working so hard and achieving so little? How far? Is this like don't conflate suffering with productivity? Or is it more like don't get attached to old systems that got you to work? The suffering thing is probably a part of it, but this is probably even more zoomed out than that, which is a lot of the time people focus on how hard I've worked during the day, regardless of whether it was suffering or not.

1:02:21It's what I did all of this stuff, look at all of the effort that I put in, it goes, what did you do on the back end of that? because we've all had jobs, projects, things that we needed to finish, and the very thing that you're putting off is the most important thing that you're supposed to do. And you go, did I work all day? You go, track what you did today. You cleaned the kitchen. You had this huge email to write, and you spent 45 minutes cleaning the fucking kitchen. Why'd you do that? Well, I worked really hard today. It's like, yes, yes, yes, but what were you trying to achieve? And it's also, I think, just a reminder that effectiveness is really the only thing that matters.

1:02:56You can continue to put your foot harder and harder and harder on the accelerator, but if you've also got your foot on the brake or if you're driving in the wrong direction, it kind of doesn't matter. So, outcomes matter more than inputs as in a lot of the time because your, the feedback loop on when am I going to get the output is usually a little bit down the line. Maybe it's going to be tomorrow, maybe it's going to be next year, maybe it's going to be in five years time or whatever. the only thing that you can bounce off is inputs. How much work did I do today? And then, for instance, you wake up on a morning and you've slept in by three hours and immediately feel like a piece of shit.

1:03:34You think, I'm a piece of shit because I slept in. And you go, red okay. You're looking at such a brief window, like the entirety of your life. But I'm in the lower quartile of the - You're for the - The window irregularity. The entirety of your life, and you've taken this one moment and be like, because of that one thing that I did, it's like, what if that allows you to get way more out of this week? What if this allows you to get closer to your goals much more quickly? What if this is just something that your body needs so that you can be happier? And that's one way to guarantee that you won't get the best out of this week, because if you just beat yourself up for all the results that you've made, there's a fun idea here, which is just only setting on your, like, to do list, the biggest thing that you have to do.

1:04:17And sometimes I might be like 10 minutes long. I might be sending email or fired this person or put this job at live and then just give yourself the rest of the day off. I did that for a few weeks and it was fucking me. You feel brilliant. But you also still have it to your point, that kind of Protestant guilt that I need to be working. Why you're not working? Even though I've achieved more than I would do by doing the most important thing, there's then just this sense of anxious I need to be busy. I need to be busy. So that's the first one and then the second one is, yeah, if you don't know what the most important thing is, you've identified what the most important thing is.

1:04:54It's a figure out what the most important thing is. It's a beautiful loop. Is it like a really old Tim Ferriss article about this, about like how he stays productive? It's called productivity tips for the presser people like me or something like that, but it's, there's loads of quotes in it like doing something well doesn't make it important, which I think about all the time. doing something well doesn't make it a good concept. And like being busy is a form of like indiscriminate action and procrastination. Like busy people just don't know what to focus on. But your calendar is a better indication of your wealth than your bank account.

1:05:26Yeah. And then write out the practical thing is write out all of your to -do's, pick like the top three that make you most scared, then pick one of them and just do it for three hours. Beautiful. And that's how he says productive. Like, wrestling with theirs. Would it be a need to do this then? I'm counting an axe. Even if I'm just legally representing Lilly Phillips. Jesus. It's always the thing that makes you... I mean, it needs to be guy a hundred. It's like I need to do a lesson, pick the thing you're... So the asterisk I give to that, you know, you mentioned then the one that will... And then do three hours on that.

1:05:58The key thing there is even, you know, Elon Musk algorithm of like question every assumption and then simplify, simplify, simplify. Even that I would drop off, do three hours. because the biggest thing might just be, I need to break up with this person, or I need to do to just do that thing. It's like, I just, we Parkinson's Lord, the breakup out in three hours long. Yeah, yeah. Right, so we've got, so I need to book this flight to this location, or I need to set up this banking account. But if you've got three hours blocked out, you're definitely gonna get it done, aren't you? True. I think that's the point is like, fence off, like don't try to be this like, I'll just do 10 minutes later, I'll do it.

1:06:34Like, the most important thing to do today is that thing that's what you're doing until lunch, until it's finished. But it's no one ever does it. And people write too many things that they do, let's don't get them done and push them over to tomorrow. You want me to, you know, kind of relate to this one. It's a good, it's a very cool one. So funny how all of the hacks and all of the lessons and we haven't coordinated this before. Yeah, we don't talk about doing it. This is like a life hack slash lesson. They're both both related and I call it turning bullshit into reality. And I'll do the exercise with you guys.

1:07:09If I only did this every day, whenever I've done it, I've gone, that's a great day. So we start with bullshit. What are your values? Do you have any that come to mind? And if you don't have, like I've fought through like my values, but that bullshit, any values that you just immediately come to mind of things that you'd like to do more of. Johnny, there's no wrong answer. Physical challenge. Physical challenge, you stiff. Just come on, you come on. Just give me something that you value, like that you would have more. Or personal gratitude. I don't know. Yeah, gratitude. Graphshoot, okay, cool.

1:07:42Adventure. Adventure, okay. So you create an Apple note and you put that value at the top. Now you have to creatively brainstorm. 10 ways you can do that. So for example, physical challenge, it could be. Run. But like run 5K, right? Run 5K. It could, what was yours again? Is it gratitude trigger? Gratitude. It could be right, a thank you letter to ABC. And yours was adventure. Adventure. It could be message to the group chat to arrange this holiday that we've been putting off. Okay. So just write down 10 and then just go through, do, go through, do, go through, do. And you've taken this kind of esoteric bullshit value that you've always wanted to have.

1:08:22into next action from neurons to atoms. 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. So you can mix those up. Yeah, but so reading Patrick Lensyoni 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 in tech, 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 for that.

1:09:01All the only thing that matters with values is did you do the thing? Because even if you didn't think of the values but you did the thing, then you actually valued it more than saying I have values. So even there, that's unless you whip yourself into doing a thing that you didn't want to do and then after the fact you did the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. So I put it on the top. The reason why this exercise I think is actually useful is because because what ends up happening when you do it is it's a load of things that have been rattling around your subconscious in the shower or before you go to bed that begin to percolate.

1:09:30Yeah, someday. And as you guys know, as you mentioned earlier, as you move up levels, levels, levels, the thing that seems to happen is you get way more urgent, but not still important, but not super important stuff. Whereas this is time to moving from like just being reactive each day to being proactive. it. For example, the gratitude one, when would you really go, I'm going to write this thank you letter? You might have been putting off this thank you letter for four years that would take you 10 minutes to do. And then when you actually reflect on the year, it's one of the few things that you actually remember.

1:10:03You've also brought yourself in alignment with the person that you want to be as well, which is quite a nice side effect. Exactly. And then if you can just move that to another note, you just keep storing, storing that I am that person. Nice. Should we do some resolutions? I basically had this idea that coming up with resolutions for yourself, a lot of the time, whatever it is, by March, some ungodly percentage of people have already stopped doing the thing. They said was the most important thing at the start of the year. A good part of that is maybe have it change, a behavior change is difficult to do, but maybe a bigger part of it is, well, they chose the wrong things.

1:10:41Like the stuff that I've chosen that stuck with me for the rest of my life, and I figured, I don't think I've ever seen anyone do this before, but what are the highest ROI resolutions on new habits or behavior change things that you've done simple things, given that, you know, this is going out on Christmas Eve Eve, and people are going to be thinking about it. This might actually be a nice little finger food buffet that people could go, actually, the boy said that this one really stuck, so I'm going to go with that. So have you got any? I do. I for the last I didn't do it last year I did like three years in a row of a version of 75 hard didn't even have done that before.

1:11:20Dapted 75 hard just because when you look at actually 75 hard out of the box there are things in it that I think are too hard to have. No just there for I think maybe slightly destructive in some ways and also I just don't want to do which ones did you find. So like training twice a day every day I don't I just don't think there's any I I think it's ways to pursue that sort of goal without those things. It's like sticking a gallon of water. Stone the air filter is. It seems like an arbitrary, yeah, I realize it's there because it's hard, but I think the thing, the holy war, like you, the view of those things, not for me.

1:11:55The thing that's hard about it is you have to do the things that, like, the habits you set to do for so many five days in a row. And if you miss a day, you go back to the beginning. And I think as a, like, just trying to do that, you realize how hard that is and how many, like, you know, bullshit reasons come up and how you have to kind of like go out of your whale all the time to tick off the box. And I think it's a good lesson. Can you regale us of our friend who set himself a target of having a banana every day? Yeah, I mean, yeah. So our friend Ben, one of his things was have a banana. I think because he'd read it was something to do, like good for bowel health.

1:12:32And it got to like 11 o 'clock night he was staying in Cambridge, didn't have a banana. So he was driving around Cambridge, tried to find a banana. He's also like meditated. So one of his things when we were doing it was meditating an hour a day. He's meditated at a wedding before like gone out. I'm sorry, I was in the groove. He went out and sat in the car, meditating in the car, just to tick the box. It's not something to like sustain for the rest of your life, but I think you learn, you learn something about yourself when you're doing it. One of the problems of it is that it doesn't agree with a very lifestyle.

1:13:07Exactly. 75 hard is brilliant for the first sort of autistic two and a half months of the year, but as soon as you get into it's wedding season. Yeah. So it's good luck for me. Yeah. Well, you have to go to finding your men. Finding your men. Finding your men. Me and the boys flew to Australia. You're on a plane for 17 and a bit hours. But where's the banana? It's where you can plan the banana in advance. You're like, for a team. It's more that you just, you don't view any like personal have a change of behavior changes difficult. If you've been able to stick to something for 75 days without interruption, any other change you want to make is easy.

1:13:41So it's the meta lesson, not the individual. It's got nothing to do with the, as long as you don't pick like ridiculous, the easy things. So you would basically say that a good resolution is to do some version of 75 hard but adapt it into stuff that you really, really value. Yeah, and it can be anything like anything you're trying to do, but keep putting off or something you're inconsistent with, just commit to. It also doesn't have to be 75 days, but like committing to a period of time of, I'm not going to miss a day. I mean, like move heaven and earth to not miss a day. And you get to then you're like, oh, I wouldn't achieve anything else would be easy.

1:14:11So that's yeah, there's so many adulterers and sodomites that need stoning. And if you just commit where's that? Right. Oh, it's that you know what it is. It's the like a wispy memory from the guy who I think you spoke to Chris who lived the old testament for a year. like, what? Jesus Christ. So I thought I would have heard about that. I don't think new. I think it's just something you've read. I'm not new to this guy. So yeah, so he set himself different challenges each year. I'm inside of a whale. Built a big building arc. So he had to visit, you had to grow his hair and like throw pebbles at sodamites and adulterers and like he, he, he, he, he, he tried to live like to live the life of that like verbatim for a year.

1:14:58And then he like his other challenge was read the entire encyclopedia Britannica and he said it really pissed off his wife because is this ringing a bell? No, I was just, he wasn't on the level. Did you know that the Byzantine period, and she's like, ah, stop it with you, trivia. But yeah, anyway, you did in the first couple that you did. You think somebody who did like early on, early on, they did maybe something each month for a year, a different thing each month for a year. Yes, yes, yes, But it wasn't the old test. No, he didn't build an arc and try and get to 2x2. Hi, it's got welcome back to the show.

1:15:34This is a sweet big turn man. Expect to learn. Like it's Pebbles and M &S. Bummers. What a derailment. So, always the... The process that we use for goal setting each year is stolen from Garrett J. White, probably stolen from someone else and so on. It's got lots of youth in them. Yeah, it's youth. 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 likely a and you then basically look at, okay, what's my three year vision, directionally, where do I wanna go?

1:16:16What's my one year target for that? Divide that into quarters. What does each 12 weeks print look like in each of those domains? And then how can I do a weekly action or a daily action to hit a weekly check point 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. 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, spiritually disconnected and divorced and all this stuff, but they got the million.

1:16:59And so that framework's been really helpful for me. It also gives me one thing to focus on in each domain. thing. 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 because I've got Alfred installed and Peebord shortcuts, whatever, I can just flip between windows and tabs, and it feels more productive because your brain's like, oh, great, those are 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 -counseling headphones, whatever, and just do that one thing.

1:17:47And 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, no, no. The only reason to go here, the only reason you're here is to do that.

1:18:25That's cool. like that. So I had two, I guess you brought up sobriety, which is one of those ones that's so sort of taken for granted now that I've forgotten about it. No, that used to be quite contrarian when you first started it. I remember, yeah. Yeah, it was fucking crazy. Give it five years, old testament will be right in here. Yeah, you're getting stoned.

1:18:46Wow. Okay, so my two highest ROI resolutions that I've done, they've stuck with me, number one, sleep with your phone outside of your bedroom, and number two, go for a walk first thing in the morning. I've always wondered about the phone thing. Is it something specifically to do with the phone being in the bedroom, or is it just next to your bed? Is it like the fact that it's near -unitimating radio waves? No, no, no, no. It's just being too far away. It's just being so far away that you can't use it on a night time and that it's not the first thing that you do in the morning. It's basically intermittent fasting for your phone with environment design, but you just take the charger for your phone and you put it outside of your phone.

1:19:22bedroom. It's like I can't believe how many people still have it. It is sapping days of sleep out of you every year, days and days and days, even if you've got the best relationship with your phone in the world, because if you can't sleep, there is always the most compelling device in human history only with an arms reach. And even if it's over the other side of the room, the problem that I would encounter is I'm like, well, you know, like it's just there. I'm going to get up. I'm going to go downstairs into the kitchen. I'm going to unplug it from the place that it lives where it sleeps overnight.

1:19:53And then also when you wake up on a morning, it's not there for you to see what we're saying about Mark Zuckerberg or whoever it is, you know, all of us. We open our phone and there's just bad thing. There's terrible issues. Well, that's a problem. Alexander's library. So, oh, well, there is Alexander's library on the other side of this room with infinite. Yeah, whether it's not what's being framed well or badly, what's your one task now? Go to fucking sleep. So go to sleep. And then the morning walk thing, just, you know, this was something that I'd started doing probably from some shit I'd learned from us researching things forever ago.

1:20:23And I just noticed that if I woke up and I was feeling a little nervous or sort of anxious energy or whatever, whatever I was feeling on the morning, by the time that I'd done a 15 minute walk, by the time I came back, it just felt less strong and less important. And there's all manner of human explanations about whatever it is, the ventral dorsal stream and you're locomoting through while you're doing lateral eye movement, which down regulates the web, blah, blah, blah. It's like the midwit, the guy in the left says, morning walk makes me feel nice. And those two things, I think, you know, the two that I've done in every different hotel, every different place that I've stayed, every different country that I've gone to, those are two things that I really, really try and rely on.

1:21:02The phone outside of the room when you're on the road is difficult. Like plug it in in the bathroom and then go into the bedroom. But morning walk, phone outside of the bedroom has been two of the highest ROI. Do you still do no caffeine first there? Yeah, yeah, so I'm avoiding that. Your point about Huberman is great that he's been able to pacify the midwits by providing this. The legitimating scientifically. Yeah, that's true. For people to just follow the guy on the left stuff. Yes, we have this joke that, so Huberman did a day, and I do love Huberman, but he did a five -part podcast with Matthew Walker on sleep, and I think it was like 20 hours long.

1:21:38And I joke that I'd be willing to bet nobody who listens to that Sleep's as good as my make -winnie who's just like just shut your eyes lad You know what I mean like who just doesn't overthink it He doesn't optimize it because he's like if I mess with it then I'm gonna sleep sleep is not one of those perfect examples of One of the reasons a lot of people have insomnia is trying to overthink sleep There was a famous study where they took two groups one that were paid to go to sleep as fast as they can on the other group that wasn't paid anything, and the group that wasn't paid anything fell to sleep three times as faster was the other group.

1:22:14So outside of all the sleep science, the number one part of the semantic triaries don't put too much stress on yourself. Oh, because they don't sleep. They don't take money for it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it's an interesting realization that you need, especially now, this super rational, hyper evidence -based world where experts are only the people that are allowed to comment on stuff, that you need someone to justify something that you already did that already made you feel good. You know, it shouldn't be the case that I need Andrew Huban to explain to me why the thing I do and like and is good and effective for me is something that I should do and like and is good and effective for me.

1:22:53So that's why I brought up caffeine. Hmm. Because I'm not sure on, like, my personal experience of that, I'm not sure I feel much of a difference by not having a caffeine first. All having caffeine first, yeah. I'm sure the science will tell me differently, but I think that's a good example. You're like a heavyweight boxer that can just take slugs with caffeine. No, I think I just have like the appropriate amount and then I stop lots. Lots. I just don't get silly with this. Lots. Not before, not after midday. Good draw. Gee. So I do have one, but to go like meta New Year's resolutions to begin with, the first thing is to kind of question the question.

1:23:30So I found this stat when I was researching New years resolutions last year. And it's said or it said that 91 % of new years resolutions fail. So a quick little thought experiment for your Christopher, right? Let's say you come to me and you got off, I need to get this flight to Paris with air's gone. I don't really Chris, I've got this airline. It's got the 91 % failure rate. Are you going to get on it. No. Or let's say you say, I know what you're like, you've been out on the town, you've been out with Mr. Old Testament, you're having fun, you've met a lovely lady, you go back to the room, you've got no condoms and you knock on my door and I go, oh yeah, you take this one.

1:24:11And it just says on the teal, 91 % fail your rate. Would you do it? No. So if something has a 91 % fail your rate, you have to look at it before I think you do it. So then you look at things like alcoholics and onamus, that seems to work. Just question something. Go on. I think the failure in those examples is, it's like saying 91 % of people fail to make the flight on time. Yeah. Or 91 % of people can't get the condom on. So you've got a metra about my metha. So can I go metra about, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, infinite labs like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson.

1:24:42What do you mean by truth, Jonny? You mean by condom, exactly. So basically, I would first look at things that actually work. So I'd look at alcoholics anonymous where you have a group. So you have kind of social shame, you have a recurring theme, you have basically New Year's resolutions operate like a the psychological version of North Korea versus you kind of want to move towards Singapore A system that actually works versus a horrific failure, right? So even small things of okay, whatever the thing is Like I'll sometimes do this never have a deadline that I'm being a bit about is I'll just message my my Harry and say hey I'm going to bet this uncomfortable amount of money But I will do the thing and as a result I will do the thing.

1:25:25There's the scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden goes into this random shop and he finds this Asian guy behind the counter takes him outside, gun to his head and says, tell me what you want it to be Raymond. Raymond! Raymond! And he's like shaking, unsure, and he goes, I want it to be a veterinarian. And he goes, if I'm I'll come back here in 30 days and if you're not a veterinarian, you'll be dead. You can bet that he didn't have a 91 % failure rate. So I think first off question the question which is pretty hard, but then the real soft call nice thing that I would recommend is journaling All of that is Journalism is a dog bother with it.

1:26:06So this one is less about it is essentially You don't appreciate writing a journal now. It's kind of like investing in the SMP You got a copy doing all these activities, but a journal five years hence the value of that is so significant I can go through exactly how I fought 10 years ago or what I was doing. You forget so much and going back to your point earlier, it's just the same problems over and over again. I had a friend of mine who I think had his journal stolen and because he left it in his suitcase, they got stolen. I go, how much was that worth to you? It's probably like 15 % or 20 % of everything I have.

1:26:43It's so valuable. Jim O'Shaughnessy, who's one of the smartest guys I know, I've all the gentleman, he's about it 60. And he was telling me about journals he has from when he was like 21 and the value that that has to him. I've 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, oh well. Did you never back it up? No, I was like, well, I'll last the end of that and just stopped. Not backing up that up is the least you thing ever. Or is that where it starts? This was when I was transitioning Windows to Mac.

1:27:15So it was in that however, I've still got the file so I could maybe uncorrupt it now with modern modern technology What are you able to like whether it's you do this very well? You take a lot of photos videos. I don't do that I'm trying to do it more but more photos more videos more journals because the value of it is So significant 10 day one day one. No, you can use you can leave audio messages. You can photos videos She's big apple notes for everything apple one side on the left apple notes. It's frictionless one size fits all Should we do what have you got left? Should we do one more round of life hacks?

1:27:48What have we got? I've got a lesson and a fail. Okay. I have a lesson. Oh, we do fails We can do let's do let's do another lesson and then we'll see where we come in it. Okay. You got another lesson Yeah, beautiful So I'll take the potato you're up potato. Oh, you potato in me. Yeah, you look to him. Well on you. Yeah

1:28:09Trying to you find the microplate equivalent in happiness. What's a microplate? It's a plate that's less than 2 .5 kilos usually. So it's like half a kilo, 0 .25 of a kilo. So when I was doing power lifting, you realize really quickly that like 200 kilos, when that's your 1 -Ret max, that feels the same as 210, feels the same as 220. It's just always your 1 -Ret max. But what makes it engaging is the fact that it's slightly more than you did last week, last month, last year. And I think whenever you go like the steroids equivalent in anything, there's just always the debt to pay in hindsight. So in business again, most of our lessons are business wise, we grew really fast and you're like fantastic.

1:28:56We're like, was it really this really steady growth rate and then like 300 % and you think phenomenal. Like next, next thing, next thing. But actually like going back, I'd taken a way slower growth rate year in year out because that the experience is way better. And finding the like just take the PB, like just take the extra rep, just take the extra kilo week in week out because I for me, I think the only thing that matters is the feeling that you're making some kind of progress, something's moving in the right direction. It doesn't actually matter what the absolute number is. And that's a reason, because now we're further on, it's harder to find the half a kilo.

1:29:36Then if we just thought, hang on a minute, this is growing way too quickly, let's slow down. I'm going to have to leap forward ahead of you because it's my lesson. Your podcast. True. Yeah. A trajectory is more important than position, which is a Jimmy Carism, but that being number 300 in the world, but last year being 350 feels better than being number two in the world, but last year being number one. Because you're so tightly attuned to what is the direction that I'm on, not what is my absolute position. Happiness is relative, it's not absolute. And yeah, I'd spoke to weirdly enough, got this theory co -signed by Dan Bilsarian before he went all anti -Semitic.

1:30:19And Old Testament Dan. Old Testament Dan, that's what he calls himself, Old T Dan. And he basically said like he sort of gone to the top of the hedonic mountain, so to speak. In some ways, do you wish that you'd dragged out that progress a little bit more because it would have allowed you to have had more places to go to? But basically every new record you set, especially big step changes in terms of success, is just a new high bar for you to now. Yeah. So what you would say success isn't more, success isn't a better vantage point to have a view from. It's a higher point to fall from and it becomes increasingly difficult to get those, to improve your lifts when you're first going to the gym by 5 % is maybe five kilos.

1:31:07But after a couple of years in the gym, it's a significantly larger amount. It's a significantly higher level of pressure. So yeah, trajectory more important than position. So Chris Sparksism as well, direction over speed. How is it? Yeah, I don't know whether that's quite the same.

1:31:24Trajectory over position. Trajectory is more important position in that your growth is more important than your absolute location. Actually, that's housed within direction over speed. So going from a 220 deadlift to a 220 -25 deadlift, this is a 395 to a 400 kilo deadlift. It feels the same. As opposed to way harder to operate at the high level. As opposed to, like I want to get stronger. And also the 400, so James Smith says all wins feel the same. Yeah. But there's no Uber surcharge for going 395 to 400 versus going 210 to 20. Any revenue level, any bank account number. It's all over the world.

1:31:57Don't mean it's dopamine is it? Yeah. So the problem is, are you suggesting that you purposefully throttle? Yes. How? It's difficult. But like anytime you notice yourself progressing and something just accept the, accept a slow rate. Because everyone's always trying to make things faster. They're always trying to get leaner quicker, get bigger quicker, make more money faster. Like, that's the world, right? But just look, accept the smaller rate of growth or the smaller rate of progress. How do you, to Chris' point, how do you do that now? Are you intentional of go, okay, I want 15 % this year and then I'm cap - Just eight, yeah.

1:32:26Aim for a steady improvement in something rather than going for big targets. Obviously, it's, I don't have all the answers to what I'm sorry. Existentially very different. But like, as a concept, as a concept, as a concept. probably your immediate response would be like, yeah. But why? 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 in scale, you're going to end up with like on -ricotty 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.

1:33:01You're going to create a more sustainable. You just always have to pay the debt off, don't you? Yeah, always. Good insight. Nice. 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 vileism correct me if I'm wrong. If information was all that was needed, we would all be billionaires with perfect apps. 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.

1:33:45And often it's not the same. Someone's actions versus their words. So 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. So Adler was one of Freud's contemporaries and he's kind of the lesser known, you know, Freud, Jung, Adler, like 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 caused me to behave like this. So past event produces current behavior. Adler is the teleological view, which is future goal impact current behavior.

1:34:31So 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 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 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 guardrails 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.

1:35:33And so you mentioned this with GPT, I'm glad you did, which is that now, like we have infinite access to the best computational models, 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. How would you summarize that lesson overall? What people tell themselves the goal is isn't always the goal.

1:36:15So look at actions versus behavior. Yeah. And don't think that you just have an information bottleneck and that'll, that'll solve everything. Yeah, I guess it's weird to think how can you say that you value a thing if your actions show no indication in that way. Yeah, look at your calendar to find your priorities. Yeah. It's all shit that we learned. Fucking 10 years ago. Yeah. Then now you're like, Oh, yeah. Gee, lessons or life hack or lesson, please. Okay. Um, have we got more after this or is it final one last one? Okay, cool. I'll try and get through as much as account. So first one is going back to Old Testament for a second is the the Socratic method.

1:36:57So one thing I would do what do you mean by that George? There we go. Matter about that. What do you mean? What do you mean by truth? You mean by Socratic? What do you mean? Exactly. So one thing that I would typically do being an idiot is whenever somebody would say something I disagree with, I would just stop listening to what they're saying, and then just start processing the dumb kind of about to do in my head. And then as soon as they stop talking, I'm dunking, but I'm noticing they're just doing the same thing. So now just rather than disagreeing with people, just asking questions. And not only do you actually not necessarily room relationships or have emotional issues with other people.

1:37:41You actually also sometimes changed their mind quite a lot as well. So one example I was in the car and I was with a friend of mine and he was telling me about how he has his current job and he would like to work remote but there's not that many remote jobs out there. So my immediate like Don Combrangers hold on. I hire people in these roles all the time. I can pull up these numbers, what are you on about? I was like, okay, I was like, hmm, so I was like, here's a question. How many kind of in -person jobs do you think there are in your town? I don't know. If you just had to guess, I don't know, 10 ,000?

1:38:20Okay. Okay. And then how many remote jobs do you think there are in the world? And he's just paused for a bit. And he goes, yeah, you might be right. Versus if I would have tried letting them come to write the code in their own head and being a... Seeing behind the head. Socrates calls it being a midwife, you're helping them give birth to the new idea rather than trying to push it into them is a big thing. And then the other one, so I've been quite fascinated by doom loops this year. So a doom loop would be, I'm feeling anxiety. Fuck, why am I being anxious? Why are you criticizing yourself for being anxious?

1:39:02and it's just anxiety. You get anxious about your anxiety, which leads to more anxiety and it's boobooble or why am I so depressed? And so you have the initial stimuli that's kind of you don't really control and then it's your reaction to that. And getting a little bit deeper into meditation this year, there were two things that I found useful. One is to I caught the Pilkington fork, so Karl Pilkington, who the philosopher K Pilkington once said of he's telling a story to to base about when he got mugged in the center of town. Some guys came over to him and like, give me your phone and usually there's two ways you react to that.

1:39:39It's like punching them or it's like running away. Yeah, sure, sure. And he goes, but I love this phone. He goes, it's my favorite thing. And he starts like being very strange. He goes, how are you by the way? He goes, we've met before and just like completely freaks them out that he doesn't know how to react the mugger. And he just walks away. So using that on my own brain. So if I get super, if I get, there's a few things. one asking my brain, what's the next thought you're going to have? And it just stops. And then sometimes a random thing will appear. And then you go, well, what's that mean?

1:40:09Because I didn't try and bring that up. So you have this natural attachment, as well as when I hear anxiety, go, say I'm anxious about the event, I've got going up. And then I'll start going, I'm being anxious, I'm going to go, I'll get it. I'll get why you're anxious. And all of a sudden, because you've not had the cortisol reaction to the cortisol, So it kind of the pylchent fork occurs and you break out. So those are my two wants. Yeah, I think I called them second order emotions. Oh, I like that. That infinite regressive resentment at your frustration about your bitterness, about your anxiety.

1:40:45Final one, because we did it. You guys might like this from a business perspective, from a friend Harry Dry, phenomenal human being. He gave me this nugget, which is positioning is arranging information in the customer's head. So I do it again. Positioning is a range, I'm arranging, you see I'm arranging, you matter again. Positioning is arranging information in the customer's head. So example would be, loom used to be, record your screen, say, record your screen, whereas then they didn't change the product, they just changed the positioning, how it was structured in the customer's head to removing meetings, and it explodes and separated from the rest of the competition.

1:41:26And then I thought, okay, frame is how you arrange information in your own head. And frame itself is positioning is completely underlocked. And frame is completely underlocked as well. That was brilliant. Cheers, mate. You're on fire, mate. I feel like the information's been arranged differently in my head. I feel really good to have some kind of energy. We need to go to the local M &S and just throw stones at people. I actually, that was exactly what was next. It's that and then chicken. boys I love you all I appreciate you too. Merry Christmas. I'm sad that we don't get to spend as much time together as we used to.

1:41:57You said we're not under that act. No fails. No fails. Why don't we save them for next year? We can keep everyone coming back but now I really do. I'm so happy and so proud of what all of you have done. It's fucking fire. It's great. It's great. Glad that you're in my life even though we're apart from each other. 100 % what a year it's been as well. What are you? Fire ladies and gentlemen very Christmas. I'll see you next time

1:42:21We Peak say oh yeah, I actually can't raise my arms, but Credit results are you gonna take us through this? This isn't my thickness as yours Okay, and on's overhead