MModern Wisdom
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23 July 2020

Episode 200 Q&A - #200

2Frameworks
15Insights

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Frameworks in this episode

Self-Mastery5 steps

Design Your Perfect Day

Reverse-engineer your goals from the best day you can imagine.

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Strategy5 steps

Top 5% Skill Stacking

Stack several top-5% skills into a combination no one can beat you at.

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Hot Take· 2

Hot Take

Podcasting is a conversion tool, not a traffic tool

Johnny reframes podcasting: it has no virality and won't grow an audience, but it builds unusually deep relationships with people already aware of you. Listeners treat it as a surrogate for friendship, remembering comments from a hundred episodes ago, which creates latent leverage no other format produces.

  • Podcasts have no built-in virality or trending mechanism
  • Best for deepening relationships with an existing audience, not acquiring new one
  • Listeners feel they know you and build a one-sided friendship
  • Creates latent leverage: people buy in and want to work with you

“Johnny said the other day that podcast is a conversion tool rather than a traffic tool.”

Chris

“People see podcasting as a surrogate for having friends.”

Chris
#podcasting#audience#marketing
Hot Take

A side hustle implies your main hustle is insufficient

Asked about side hustles, Johnny argues you should put everything into one main thing; having a side hustle just signals the main one is insufficient. The counterpoint: diversify revenue streams within the hustle rather than across unrelated macro ventures, so the diversification still compounds.

  • A side hustle suggests the main hustle isn't enough
  • Focus everything on making the primary hustle sufficient
  • Diversify revenue streams inside the hustle, not across it
  • Multiple macro ventures fragment focus

“Having a side hustle just suggests that the main hustle is insufficient.”

Johnny
#side-hustle#focus#business

Explainer· 5

Explainer

Why Chris never cuts an episode (and the 2% he's binned)

Chris explains his no-edit policy: episodes air unfiltered like ordering a steak blue. He only cuts for a connection dropout or something libellous (doxxing, a celebrity's real name), and in 200 episodes has ditched only five entirely, usually to spare a guest who didn't come across well.

  • Unfiltered, no-frills editing is a deliberate brand choice
  • Cuts happen only for dropouts or libel/doxxing risk
  • About five of 200 episodes ditched entirely (~2% failure rate)
  • Episodes are pulled mainly to protect a guest who didn't shine

“So in 200 episodes, I've got rid of five... like a two percent failure rate.”

Chris
#podcasting#editing#creator
Explainer

You can't control emotions, you build equanimity

On how to control your emotions, Chris argues you can't stop feeling unwanted feelings; the goal is equanimity, not fixating and not suppressing. The route is meditation (15 minutes a day for a year) plus the unglamorous basics: sunlight, stable sleep, friends, meaningful work, good food, and water.

  • You will always feel feelings you don't want; the aim is to let them go
  • Equanimity means neither fixating nor suppressing
  • Meditate ~15 minutes a day and give it a year
  • The boring basics your parents pushed carry most of the wisdom

“It's a case of whether or not you have the equanimity to let them go... You don't want to fixate, you don't want to suppress.”

Chris
#emotions#meditation#mental-health
Explainer

Don't know what you want? Get out of firefighting mode

Many people don't know what they want because they never step out of reactive, urgent daily 'dealing-with' mode into deliberate planning mode. Purpose won't emerge on its own while you say yes to everything. You have to create space, quiet the mind, and consciously map good day, week, five-year and beyond.

  • Constant firefighting muffles your inner voice and existential questions
  • Purpose won't just emerge; you have to do the work deliberately
  • Step from system-one reacting into system-two planning
  • Map good day, week, month, five-, ten- and twenty-five-year horizons

“A lot of people that don't necessarily know what they want from life haven't ever taken time away from life to ask that question.”

Chris

“Quiet the mind and the spirit will speak.”

Yusuf
#purpose#planning#clarity
Explainer

Fact vs fallacy: assume the common belief is wrong

To judge truth in an unfamiliar area, run it through mental models (Hanlon's, Occam's, Hitchens's razors) and bin anything that breaks them. The deeper insight: when you read news on a topic you actually know, it's often wrong, so assume all coverage is like that. Given how information spreads, the commonly held belief is almost certainly incorrect.

  • Ruthlessly apply mental models and discard what fails them
  • News on topics you know is often wrong, so distrust the rest too
  • Check provenance and source quality
  • Seek out contrarians, then form your own view

“It's almost a certainty that the commonly held belief in that area is incorrect.”

Yusuf
#mental-models#critical-thinking#media
Explainer

Real solitude means no input from other minds

Chris shares Cal Newport's definition of solitude: time away from the input of other minds, not just time alone. Being alone while on your phone, listening to a podcast, or reading isn't solitude. Driving or walking with nothing playing lets ideas surface, which is why people get their best ideas on walks.

  • Solitude = free from other minds' input, not merely alone
  • Phone, podcast or reading time doesn't count as solitude
  • Try driving to work once a week with nothing playing
  • Motion and silence surface ideas that inputs drown out

“Solitude is time on your own, away from the input of other minds, not just time on your own on the phone.”

Chris
#solitude#focus#creativity

Story· 1

Story

The Mortal Kombat / Adventure Capitalist dopamine trap

Both hosts confess to getting hooked on compulsive mobile games during stressful periods. The games aren't fun, they're clever engineering that taps every dopamine trigger. The tell is that deleting them costs you nothing, proving they were compulsion, not fulfilment, even though the pull to re-download in stress is real.

  • Compulsive games spike during stressful or dark patches
  • They are engineered for compulsion, not genuine enjoyment
  • Deleting them and not missing them proves they weren't fulfilling
  • Re-downloading under stress is the recurring risk

“It taps into all of the little dopamine buttons... designed not for actually a fun gameplay experience, but just to be this compulsive thing.”

Yusuf
#dopamine#addiction#phone

Tool· 3

Tool

Cut phone use by adding friction and deleting apps

Practical tactics to reduce phone use: add friction so you only use it standing up, keep it out of the bedroom, use a lockbox, and delete apps outright. The deeper move is digital minimalism: appraise each app against what you actually want from it and ask if there's a lower-cost way to get the same thing.

  • Add friction: only use the phone standing up
  • Sleep with the phone outside the bedroom
  • Use a lockbox that won't open (a friend uses one)
  • Delete apps and appraise each against its real purpose (digital minimalism)

“Distance is one of them. Just add friction. So only use your phone when you're standing up, keep your phone outside of your bedroom.”

Chris
#phone#digital-minimalism#habits
Tool

Why caffeine wrecks sleep even if you 'don't feel it'

Yusuf recounts going from 800mg of caffeine a day in finance (about ten coffees, via pills) to cold turkey. Because caffeine has a 10-hour-plus half-life, it stays in your system and degrades sleep quality even for people who insist it doesn't affect them. Quantify it and it always does; long-term you won't need it.

  • He peaked at 800mg/day (~10 coffees) propping himself up
  • Caffeine's half-life is 10+ hours
  • It affects sleep quality even when you don't feel it
  • Johnny has a taper protocol using progressively more decaf

“Caffeine has such a long half-life, 10 hours or more, for it to just be half the level in your system that it will absolutely…”

Yusuf
#caffeine#sleep#health
Tool

Make affirmations work with the chisel effect

The hosts admit affirmations feel watery, but find they work if you target one trait and repeat the same one consistently, the six-minute-diary 'chisel effect' rather than spreading across many. Pick a weakness, affirm its opposite daily, and the targeted trait genuinely improves.

  • Generic, scattered affirmations feel meaningless
  • Self-audit to find a weakness you want to improve
  • Affirm the opposite trait, the same one, consistently
  • The chisel effect (hammer one thing) beats the spread effect

“If you consistently do one that's the same thing and target one thing, I guarantee you it improves it.”

Yusuf
#affirmations#journaling#self-improvement

Takeaway· 4

Takeaway

Just start: you're supposed to be bad at the beginning

The biggest barrier to starting a podcast, channel, or business is fear of being bad. The hosts point to their own horrendous early episodes as proof there's no way to improve without accepting you'll be terrible first. Waiting until you feel ready means waiting forever, and the market is the best feedback.

  • Everyone's first attempts are bad, including now-successful creators
  • There is no path to good that skips being bad first
  • If you wait to feel ready you'll wait forever
  • The market is the best form of feedback; you can't predict what lands

“There's no way to get better at something like this without just accepting that you are going to be really bad at it in the…”

Chris

“If you're waiting until you feel like you're ready, you're gonna be waiting forever.”

Johnny
#starting#creativity#mindset
Takeaway

Treat failure as tuition you pay the world

Yusuf reframes costly mistakes: if you actively chose something, it turned out badly, and you learned the lesson, that's tuition paid to the world. His forex example cost him around £23k, but the visceral sting of your own loss teaches far more effectively than reading about someone else's.

  • A learned-from bad decision is tuition, not regret
  • Regret only fits chance outcomes where the decision was neutral
  • Trading losses are a direct, expensive but valuable lesson
  • Your own visceral sting teaches better than others' experience

“As long as you learn the lesson, then I would see that as you're paying tuition to the world.”

Yusuf
#failure#learning#trading
Takeaway

Be a friend to yourself, and set arbitrary done-lines

On chasing self-improvement without feeling nothing is ever enough: the gap between healthy toughness and self-flagellation is wider than people think. Treat yourself as someone you're responsible for helping. Because ongoing projects are never finished, set a strict quantified to-do list with a hard stop to earn a sense of accomplishment.

  • Self-flagellation rarely motivates the way people assume
  • Treat yourself as someone you're responsible for helping
  • Ongoing projects are technically never finished
  • Create arbitrary done-lines and stop to feel accomplishment

“You need to treat yourself as if you're someone you're responsible for helping. You need to be a friend to yourself.”

Chris
#self-compassion#productivity#mindset
Takeaway

Read books that are operating systems, not single concepts

Johnny's book heuristic: prioritise books that function as whole operating systems, like Atomic Habits, Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and Getting Things Done. Applying one makes everything else in your life easier or more consistent, a system-wide upgrade, versus single-concept books that help just one thing.

  • Operating-system books upgrade your whole life at once
  • Atomic Habits is the base of the pyramid
  • Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, GTD are full operating manuals
  • Single-concept books only help one narrow thing

“If all you do is apply what's in atomic habits, it's like a master level upgrade to everything.”

Johnny
#books#reading#productivity