Life Hacks 104 - #018
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Hi again. Life hacks 104 this time. Johnny is not here. 104 104. He is in somewhere hot sweating and he's complaining that being 105 kilos is too It's your own fault, Johnny. You're 105 kilos. It was his choice to move to the 120s, wasn't it? As a powerlifter. So, yeah, that is Oh, my god. Nearly forgot. Nearly left. Nearly left the phone on non-airplane mode. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. You're on airplane mode.
There we go. He knows that the one time the one time that the phone's on airplane mode, someone will ring me.
life hacks 104. Who's going to go first? Do you want to go first? Sure. Right. So, one that I've realized that I've been using seamlessly as you said, it's the ones that are the most background that are probably the most useful Mhm. but they're the least ones that they're the one not the ones you'd be like, "Oh, yeah, I do that thing." They've integrated themselves so seamlessly in your life that it's like talking about
breathing or talking about eating. Exactly. So, what is water to a fish? So, Splitwise Okay. is one that So, this is a tool. It's free. There is a paid version, but it's so the paid version is so high-powered that you just don't need So, it's too much optimization. Yeah, exactly. So, if you live in a flat share and one of you handles the bills, this phenomenal. So, it's it's got like a there's like a machine learning element
to it and everything, but what it is, each person gets an account. You join a group, which is your flat, and then you input expenses. So, you can set recurring expenses that are like broadband, council tax, yeah, and you can input individual ones. It then creates a running tally of how much each person has owed. And so and and it'll it'll offset based on what other people have bought. So, if you pay
the council tax and then your flatmate goes and buys some toilet roll and puts it into Splitwise, it'll balance it again. This is just like your wet dream. Incredible. And then once a month it sends you all an email saying who is owed what. Wow. Um and as you type in electricity or whatever, you know, British Gas or whatever, it'll then detect it'll based on the words that are typed in it'll create a little icon like
light bulb, categorize under electricity and utilities. Yeah, that's just stiffy inducing for you, isn't it? Incredible. That's awesome. That sounds really really good. I remember when I was at uni like we left with I'm pretty certain there's still like three or four CCJs out for like some of the people in my flat because they they'd left without like paying their their bit. Yeah, it is an it is an
absolute ass on. I wish that there was a better app for um working out who owes what at the end of a meal because we go out for food all the time and it's an absolute nightmare. And like I'm sat there with Or you just Apple Pay stuff as you go along. If like I just have it come over and the starter is here and then it's you Or like an iPad menu where you just say I want that, that, and that and it just
charges you. Yeah, that would be good, wouldn't it? Right, my one. Oh, what am I going to start with? Right, okay. So, WhatsApp Web, um not everyone knows that there is a uh browser based partner to WhatsApp. Are you did removing it? Oh, no. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You're just opening it with Alfred. Um yeah, so basically if you go to web.whatsapp.com and then scan the QR code with your phone when your phone's on WhatsApp, you
get all of the functions of WhatsApp. You only have to scan the code once and then it's It's logged in. Um and yeah, you you get all of your chats, all your broadcast lists, all your groups. You can upload um files and photos directly from your desktop. It's web It's browser-based, so if you go to If you're away from your normal computer and you want to use it, then you can just log in. It is such a game-changer
when we're talking about strategies to try and reduce our phone usage and get away from the human in the loop idiosyncratic use of your phone, this is one of the best ways because you use your laptop for distinctly different purposes than you use your phone for. It's very easy to go on to WhatsApp to deal with something which you can {quote} {unquote} have as productive and then tumble into Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, so on and
so forth. Whereas on your laptop, personally for me, I find that my time is a lot more it's a lot more directed. It's definitely a lot more mindful. So, yeah, it means phone can be down face down. And obviously, if you've got a MacBook, as we said, life hacks 101, the first one that we said was Apple product. If you've got iMessage linked up between your MacBook and your iPhone, you've got your two main platforms.
your entire phone You've got your phone on your on your laptop. Yeah, exactly. Which is unbelievable. So, I'm part of team fat thumbs as well, and I just can't like I'm using a I use an iPhone SE, which is the same size as a 5. Yeah. And texting is just a nightmare every time I really abhor texting on my phone. But, I only do it when I have to. So, WhatsApp Web, at least it means that you can write out a more considered response cuz
you're not dealing with the hassle of trying to text and think what I'm going to say. And actually, I've got myself in trouble by sending short messages or trying to be too concise cuz I can't be bothered to type it on I know this is like Some people would be like, "Oh, first world problem." Like, yeah, I know. But, I'd rather batch process WhatsApp, type it properly on a computer, not have to deal with a touch
On the side of that, control, command, and space. On a MacBook. That brings up the emoji menu. Now, this is going to trigger Yusuf because he has an even more shortcut-y way of getting them up, but for me and mortals like myself and most of you who are listening. Oh god, this is how when I realize how lame I am. So, it's a great shortcut. The only reason I've set up an Alfred quicker version is because it takes
about 1 to 1.5 seconds to load. It does take a little bit of time. It's too long for you. But yeah, if you have your MacBook open and you press control, command, and I'm going to make sure that this is actually correct or else I'm going to be giving people Yeah, control, command, and space. It's quicker on yours actually. Maybe I've just got a slow Mac. Um and yeah, it brings up the full emoji keyboard.
So, if you're writing statuses or WhatsApp web, iMessage, stuff like that. it's it's indexed. So, as you start typing watermelon, it'll Yeah, it'll come up, yeah. It's I used to have all of my commonly used ones in a note or notes and then go onto the note, copy them out, and then I found control, command, and space and I was like, "Well, I don't even need to be there." Um right. What do you want to do next? What's your
next one? So, my next one is Oh, by the way, just before we go onto this, speaking of Splitwise and paying your friends, Apple Pay Cash is coming out soon, which is going to be a way that you can just iMessage your friends money. Okay. So, again, with the paying the bill and stuff. It'll probably be all integrated into something like that and you just send a text and the text sends the money So, we could maybe even with meals and
things, it could even be up to the One person pays pays the bill. just texts them the money. Or gives them Right, moving on. Moving on. We talked about Alfred and the emoji search. So, you can either do control, command, space or if you use Alfred and you listen to one of the other life hacks where we mention it every time cuz it's incredible is um a shortcut that's So for me if I'm just typing an emoji
open Alfred so command space e and then just type the word. So e lemon and that will come up with the emoji. another discovery I made on Alfred is the Google search. So you can now do a built-in Google search function. So let's say I want to type I want to find my Ramadan article on Propane Fitness. Okay. It gives you an inline response. Okay, I understand. Yeah. There. So That's lovely. Yeah, that is cool. So then if I want to
copy the link, I just do that and then paste the link to people. So basically just everyone should download Alfred. I don't think we've actually gone from top to bottom on what Alfred is. Can you very very very basically explain what it is on a low So if you've used a Mac and you've opened Spotlight which is the universal search bar that comes up with is a currency converter, calculator, file search, any of those
Alfred is like that but it's a bit more superpowered in a way. It's like it's like that on steroids and at a speed at the same time. Yeah, exactly. And so it's faster on steroids and there's workflows as well. So you can it builds in certain keys or shortcuts or whatever that will do a bunch of things. So you can like select a file and then Alfred will move it to the folder that you want it to or you
can open a website in about two key presses or whatever. So It's like it's a very very powerful shortcut It's great like you can call people with it, open bookmarks, um I found the other day there's a a plugin that you can get for it where it'll tweet from Alfred. So I can just be on here now and in fact I'm going to do it this very second. It looks the same as Spotlight. So I can command and space, I can type in the
word tweet which goes send tweet and then all I need to do is type I am tweeting from Alfred. Press return and space and it'll send it'll send it a tweet out and then it'll give me a little you were going to say we're recording Life Hacks 104, tune in, but No, no, no, it's just inane. Yeah, I'm tweeting from Alfred. I mean, it's it's definitely accurate. It's what happened. Exactly. So So the reason that this Google search
thing is so useful, at least for me, and I'm sure that you guys listening, like if you ever have to constantly bring up links or whatever for work and paste someone a link, now that um you can just type it in there, you know that it's going to be the first thing on Google cuz you know the specific keywords and you just paste it to the main thing. So So this is this is another one of the the things to do with Life Hacks. You
are so far you're so deep in Alfred. You are up to the hips in him. I have an hour-long webinar on Alfred that you can The problem is you've missed off some of the best stuff because it's too basic. So the the most used things for me on Alfred are the fact that it gives you a clipboard history. Oh. So if you can if you can imagine that when you copy something on a normal MacBook, you you only can command and V, you can only
You overwrite the thing you just copied. you've done. Whereas Alfred gives you a clipboard of, I think it's the most recent 100. You can change the number as Yeah, okay. So it gives you a history of pretty much everything all the time. text format, so it doesn't strip the the formatting through and all the rest of it. whatever. And if you want to strip the formatting, you hold down shift and then it does that. Yeah, it's about as slick
of a workflow tool as you can get, but it's across everything. So whether you use your web your computer for designing websites, whether you're a writer, even if you just use it for your your MacBook for doing articles or university work, whatever it might be, there's something in this that I think will improve. It is akin to speeding the trackpad. Makes me so happy to hear the good because I recommended
Alfred to Chris and it's 20 quid or Yeah. And obviously there's a sense of like oh [ __ ] like he's just told someone to buy this, yeah. If he doesn't get his value for money out of it, it's going to be on my head. Which is the single most painful thought that you could have, isn't it? That someone else has spent money at your request. And it's not it's not been of value to them. So yeah, that's Alfred definitely
does another part of Alfred which is a game changer which is the snippets. So if like me, I do a lot of social media and a lot of the social media posts that I write have elements in them which are the same. Alfred will allow you the same as what's called text replacement on iPhone. Basically you can write a short uh selection of characters which will expand out into either a full word, a website, um a
us some examples? So for me I use a lot of the time I use get a get on guest list text space-space and then a phone number. Now that phone number is different for each event that we use. So for me to go back and have to copy this out of my notes was really arduous previously, whereas now I've got VV1 for Voodoo, AA1 for Aloha, MM1 for both the Manchester nights. And what that means that I don't need to go back
in, it's just automatically pulled across. Now what I've also got is much longer replies and responses. So I've got my um It was standard canned responses that you would Yeah, so if I get if if if someone asks about they want to send some product out or something like that, then I've got a canned response in there with line breaks, formatting my address, my phone number, my telephone, all of the bits
that that people need and it's just Um the the expediency is incredible. Yeah, it's pretty terrifying. So have a look at Alfred. I don't think you can download a trial version. You can get the free version but it's not fully functional. Okay. Um but to be honest, once you've played with the free version, you'll be like, "Okay." Yeah. It's 20 pounds. It's 20 pounds though. is, like so the func- the functions
you've described there, even just the text expander and clipboard manager, Worth 20 quid. Better than So, there are dedicated clipboard manager apps and dedicated text expander apps that I've and are either more a candle to Alfred. Yeah. And Alfred is still better even like for each of them individually, even though it's not a dedicated app for it. So, just absolutely get it. Just buy Alfred. For example, yeah. So, as Chris said,
you can start typing your phone number or your address or whatever and it'll expand. I have kind regards, Youssef. The problem is sometimes I forget that I have it on, so I'll type kind regards regards. You're And it'll jump on the back. Yeah. Um right. So, text replacement on iPhone was actually one of mine. So, what this is is um the exact same thing as the text expander that we've spoken about on Alfred, but it's on your phone.
So, if you think especially on your phone a lot of the time, what are the things that you need to type in? So, your phone number, your email address, addresses. Um if you go This is on iPhone. I'm not sure what the equivalent would be for Android.
Text replacement. And then if you go It's got the entire I've got it mapped. It's in my mind palace, yeah. Um top right. Plus the press the plus button. The phrase that you put in at the top is what you want it to say and then the shortcut is optional and that allows you to expand it out. So, for me, I've got EML expands out to my email. MYNUM expands out to my phone number. And it means One of the
main things is you're never, ever going to get it wrong. If you've got it right that one time, you're never going to typo your email address or your phone number again because you've outsourced getting it correct to a previous point when you knew it was correct. Exactly. So, unless you got it wrong then. Yeah. Well, in which case you're really [ __ ] and you've been [ __ ] for a long time. So, you can also have some fun with it,
like we did with Ben, where you change at or the or in I really like it when you put your thumb in my bum. Thanks very much. And then And then whenever they send a message to a friend or whatever complete gibberish. Yeah. Yeah. Right. What have we got next? Okay, so shall I just quickly run through the potential features of Alfred, just in case you're listening and you want um I I think we've sold Alfred on this one
and we'll come back to advanced Alfred. Okay, cuz you are right. I didn't I didn't expand on the We'll go advanced Alfred on another one. Fine. I mean, we As I say, I've got a 1-hour webinar on Alfred that you can listen to. So Yeah, get in touch. Um so, next for me is Tube Now, this is one that you actually got me onto. You know, I think we are the chosen few at this point. Oh, they're not allowed to download it anymore.
Yeah. Oh, god. We You know what? We can I think You can send it. Yeah. I can I? if you have the on your iPhone, you can Make sure you back it up on your Mac and then anyone on request, you can send them the file. Is that how it works? Yeah, so but it just means that they can't get it from the App Store anymore. Ah, well. Tube X was is {slash} was a alternative for YouTube which allowed you to play YouTube videos in the background while
you do other tasks on your phone. Which iPhone just doesn't allow, which is so Yeah, it's crazy. I suppose it makes sense from YouTube's side, but yeah, it would allow you to use YouTube as audio only, the same way as a podcast app might do or whatever it might be. So, I'm going to Considering the amount of audio on YouTube like the amount of lectures and stuff there. There used to be a way where you could open it in a browser and
then close the browser, swipe up from the bottom and press play and that would work, but that I don't think that does anymore. Right, okay. So, I'm going to we'll have to check on Tube X and see. If anyone's got an alternative to it, I'm going to presume it gets shut down because it's breaching YouTube's terms of service which include not playing when you have it's a YouTube term not but if you have
a rooted a rooted Android phone or a jailbroken iPhone then you could do it as well. even a thing anymore? It is people it's not becoming it's not as popular cuz more and more features are coming in. Do you remember when you had to download an app on your iPhone to have a flashlight? Or you'd like put the video mode on and swipe Did you ever have an iPhone when that was the case? Yeah. There wasn't an an native
flashlight from the bottom from the dock at the bottom. I'd forgotten about that. Crazy. So Okay, next one for me Quidco. So this is again we're on financial terms today, aren't we? You can tell it's new tax year. Um Quidco is a cashback site online. Now I couldn't believe that probably the most frugal person who I know, which is you, didn't know about it. And then increasingly the more people that I speak to, they also don't
know about it. So I'm maybe thinking it's not quite as renowned as I set up an account in I think 2009 2010 from my flatmate's advice and then just never used it. And I've realized that actually yeah, I missed out on so much potential. Probably close to 1,000 pounds over the last like 5 years. Yeah, so basically basically Quidco is a site a cashback site you can go through it to get to purchase pretty much
anything online. Myprotein, Muscle Food, BT, Sky, a lot of utilities, First Utility, all that sort of stuff, EDF, they're all on there. There's pretty much everything from groceries to utilities, electronics, consumables, all that sort of stuff. And yeah, you get varying degrees of cashback amount. Now the the big money is to be had when you sign up to uh stuff that's monthly direct debit. So things like switching your energy over,
switching your um What are you looking at there. You get £110 if you switch to First Utility. First Utility, yeah. Yeah, like I'd managed to batch together I think about £150 to go over to Sky plus with like a new new member joining thing, and it meant that my first 6 months with Sky was free and my my next 6 months was 50% off. Like Great. So, yeah, it was it's pretty it's pretty impressive. But, yeah, it's it's
the easiest thing in the world to do. going to use Alfred to create an a calendar event so that I can remind myself to do that to Virgin Broadband. There you go. I mean, it's just it did the optimization is just through the roof at the moment, isn't it? So, yeah, Quidco's definitely one that everyone should be using. You You're spending the money anyway, so you may as well try and save it. Are you still Alfreding or do you want
me to go again?
I'm going to go again. Cool. Um So, I've only recently started using this site and I can't remember who introduced me to it. So, I think I might have just found it online, but it's called Medium. And I've got Johnny and Yusuf onto it as well. Medium is essentially a hosting site for articles kind of the same way that Reddit is a meta blog, this would be a meta I guess news / article site. So, you got
to think of Yeah, if you type in on Google if you want to find out about biohacking, let's say, and you type in biohacking for sleep. Google will rank your results based on relevance, but not actually based on quality. Whereas, Medium is one platform which has a whole bunch of articles hosted on there. Annoyingly, Google ranks it based on relevance to you as well. Yeah, so And your previous search terms,
which just means you get stuck in this echo chamber and you don't actually get That's a big thing, isn't it? Like there's a a whole um a bunch of studies that have been done where they'll have one person will type in like war in Iraq and or just just Iraq and then one person will get loads of war articles and the other person will get like want to travel to Iraq. Oh, really? Yeah, like based on what their history's
been cuz you you get this curated Um so yeah, Medium instead of it being based on relevance, Medium bases it on other users' ratings. So there's kind of an upvote and a downvote the same way similar to the way that Reddit works, I And yeah, the the content that's on there for me personally is fantastic. I spent as much time on a site in ages. There's a lovely partner app for iPhone. It remembers your um reading place.
It'll deliver you similar articles to ones that you've upvoted previously and that you've um that you've been reading. It'll give you an estimated read time at the top as well, which I absolutely love. Yeah, it's lovely typography as well. Yeah, it's just really really clear, very well put together, and some of the articles that are on there are fantastic. A lot about optimization, lots of stuff to do with news. It's a
bit Silicon Valley-ish, but I suppose any emerging platform like this is going to be. But there's literally everything on there and I think you as It's more intellectual than something like Reddit as well. Oh, yeah, 100%. It's it's quite serious to a degree. But I found out the other day, so I was reading about um what the scientific basis is for why Snapchat filters make girls look more attractive.
Okay. Really really interesting. I don't know my ethic. Clears skin blemishes, so it achieves the same objective as makeup does. Like it does the same thing. larger eyes convey honesty, youthfulness, which is male to female trait. Interestingly, female to male, males need to have smaller eyes because it's um a maturity and masculinity. cheeks blushed, lips blushed happens also on the Snapchat filters, which is
indicator of readiness for sex. And then it started talking about what will happen apparently over time in a society that values particular characteristics is you get and I'm going to butcher this. I think it's recursive that recursive Fisherian uh progress or something like that. What happens is characteristics which are attractive become exaggerated over time to the point at which they become caricatured.
So, you've got to imagine if you if everyone in the world likes women who have big boobs, naturally through sexual selection women with big boobs will procreate more. Which ends up run it for 500 years, you've just got these heads of tits with legs like walking around. So, you get this almost like you overshoot on the other side and it's playing off the being a little bit ahead of the curve. It's the maximize the number of paper
clips Yeah. thing, isn't it? So, and this was this was all on Medium. Just some guy who wrote about marketing on on there. So, what's up next for you? Very interesting. So, mine is a Pyrex Large Pyrex bowl cost me about £1.50 back in 2008. I've had it for 10 years. This is the only thing you eat out. It's the only thing I've eaten out of and it I like I I invited my girlfriend round for the first time to have a share a meal with
me and then I realized like actually we're both going to have to eat out of this Pyrex bowl. This is how dysfunctional as a human I am. So, um So, we we've got other plates and things now, but like that is just cuz it's so easily cleanable, It's indestructible. Yeah. Microwave it. It's big enough to cook large like bulk food in. Mhm. Um you can do cakes in it. You can literally anything. It could be a mixing
bowl. So really if you're going to cuz I So I saw this I saw an article by a guy who has 21 possessions. Okay. And that's it. And I if he'll have like a spork and a Pyrex bowl. And that'll be his his And then he'll have like a pair of boots and Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you want to go full minimal Pyrex bowls are good. I mean two Pyrex bowls would be even better. Yeah, potentially twice as good. So I mean the
just again the washing up time any of these things there's no intricacy about it. It's just a Done. Yeah. I like that a lot. That's Okay. So up next for me is something that we've been I've done for absolutely ages which is bypassing going to the and getting my hair cut either in the office or at home. So pretty much every single hairdresser that you go to will also work privately. So all that you need to do go into a
salon move to a new city or you're in a current location where you've been going for a little while speak to the stylist that you usually deal with ask them if they do home visits more time like privately. More times than not they will do. And then get them round to your house or get them to your office. You don't have to leave where you are. Yeah, you need to clean up afterwards that's a negative but on the plus side
it'll be usually between 50 and 60% of the cost and awful lot less inconvenient. Yeah. I would have thought they would charge you for a call out. No, not at all. Bloody hell. Okay. And did she Do they just do all the guys in the office? Yeah. So we we have one person who'll come round and there's been periods where she's done back-to-back like four guys four of the guys in the office and they just go in and back to back four
guys here you go. Yeah, she'll come around and and that's it and you're there working away on your phone. You don't need to leave work. Um and on the same as that is a home visit car washes. So, rather than having to drive to go to the local hand car wash or the Shell garage to get your car machine washed, you shouldn't be getting your car machine washed by the way and this is what the guy who does
our valeting said because the brushes break through the resin on the top of the paint cover for your for your car. So, if you actually look at your car, the side of your car if you've been getting it done with a machine wash in the sunshine, you'll see that there's these tiny little lines that bounce off the sunlight and what that's due to is the fact that these brushes are too harsh and they actually chop away at the
Chop away at it, that's interesting. So, if you can if you're in the office or or if you're at home, some people like the idea of washing their car. Like, that's cool. I can see it as a therapeutic uh activity. The same way as some people actually enjoy hoovering the house. But, for me it's not. So, we've got a guy who comes around. Yeah, we've got a guy who comes around. And I think typically for a hand car wash, you'd be talking about
maybe £5 or inside and out you like for a mini valet, you'd be talking about 10. So, he'll come around and do I think inside's maybe seven and inside and out's 15. But, the quality's significantly higher. Can you give me this guy's Yeah. details? I'll give you afterwards. Bloody hell. Cuz there's a place in Wallsend that does the best hand job in town according to I've seen the sign. according to their sign and you can see that they've
they've realized their mistake and they've had to like rub away the word job and you can see it like with the best hand and they've written wash like on the side. Okay. But like And wash. But like it's faint. You can still see the faint like it's like faint job. They've really uh So, yeah, find find someone who'll do home visits for you for your car or your house uh for your uh car or your hair. Because God, I'm ill. I'm not thinking
straight today at all. Uh it's it's more efficient. It's going to save you time on the haircut. It will 100% save you money. And on the car valet, maybe you're going to be similar, but you're definitely going to get a better level of service. I mean, what what do you value your time at? Because driving to town, especially if your hairdresser's is in town, you got to drive to town, got to park up, pay for parking. Mhm.
Get out of the car, go to the Do you know what I mean? Like it's just And the the other thing as well is that you don't have to take any time out of your day to do this. Because most of the times when I'm fully sold on this now. hairdresser's are free. Only reason I resisted it is cuz I thought it would cost more. I thought it would be like 30 quid just for to call out and No. No, no, not at all. Well,
it's because you've got to think like the guys when they're working in salons, got to pay overheads. Yeah, they're they're paid whatever it is an equivalent of a rental fee or sometimes they have like a they they have like a minimum that they pay and then over X number of customers per week or month or whatever, that's when they start to be able to take their commission. So, if they can if you can cut out the middleman, which is
essentially the unit. And the other thing is as well, like I I always thought, "Oh, well, I don't have the the kit at my house to get my hair cut properly." It's like bottle of spray water, which they'll bring, clippers, which they'll bring. Put like do it on hardwood floor or put a mat down or something like that. Bundle it up and you're away. Just in the garden? In the garden, you would get over the
course of a year, you'd get a very hairy I don't know what I see. Especially you. Yeah, true. I shaved my entire body from the neck down the other day. How did that go? So, I thought it cuz I'm I'm going away to a hot country soon, so I thought I better better cool down. You got hair on your arms, though. Uh yeah, I mean, arms like What about legs? Yeah, I've done legs. Did legs? Did legs, but not arms. Yeah.
So, but I've realized it just makes you more sweaty. Yeah. I didn't realize the purpose sweat I think I won't be doing that again. So, Was it a lengthy task? No, didn't take long. Took 5 minutes. I bet you're Just a very rare Arab to be able to say that. Yeah, I I mean, I've luckily I've not got a hairy back. So, my brother has. He's inherited all of the back hair. Yeah, he's got all of the Arab He
he also got the swirl gene, which I find really annoying cuz he's like he doesn't lift. Yeah, barely. Yeah, but looks like he does. Yeah. Very my life hack Mhm. is BetterTouchTool. We didn't discuss this on the first one, did we? No, no. So, on a Windows computer, this is this feature is actually something that I've seen so many Apple users just jizz over because they thought that it was never going to
come to Mac, which is on a Windows computer, you drag a window to the left or to the right, and it divides the window or it snaps it to that side. Yeah, that This This has been around for quite a while on on Windows. on Windows, Yeah, well, I I don't know how you describe it, but when you drag it to the top and it it makes the window half the It's like a window a window optimizing um a shaping tool, right?
it shapes it to one side or the other side or whatever. BetterTouchTool allows you to do that. It also gives you a lot more customizability over things like hot corners, so which corner you put the trackpad in the on the Mac. Um you can create key sequences and things. So, I've got one that's like if I've got a tab open, um I can move it to another space by holding down command and pressing double tapping right or left.
Okay. Um there's also things for yeah, maximizing windows left and right with shortcuts, compressing all the pictures in a PowerPoint. So, you've got a PowerPoint open, you want to make a file size smaller. So, if you're a student and you're downloading loads of PowerPoints and they're all like 10 15 megabytes each, very soon it's going to fill up your computer. So, BetterTouchTool will give you a a way to
set up a workflow so that you can just it goes through all the pictures, compresses them, makes them smaller, saves the file down, drops the file size of your PowerPoint presentation, um launching certain apps. So, I can I launch Evernote by like command shift J. It's a shortcut tool, isn't it? It's the It's the other side to Alfred, I suppose, to a degree. Kind of, yeah. And and you can make this app specific, too.
And if you have a new Mac, you can it integrates with the touch bar, so you can completely customize all the shortcuts and touch bar and that kind of thing. Okay. I am at birds on Instagram. I'm not trying to I'm trying to So, this is a girl who I know also has the melatonin gummies, which is what I was going to speak about next. Oh, hello. Uh but I can't remember the name of the company. It'll be in the
description below. So, melatonin In fact, I'll put this over here. to use the Alfred uh search. GS Yummy. That's it. Yummy. No. So, you can't get You cannot buy melatonin on Amazon in the UK. You can buy products branded as melatonin, but actually it's 5-HTP or it's something else. Yeah, you can't get it in the UK. And if you try to buy it in the UK, it'll say that you can't. Yeah, see you've just got add to wish
list there or see all buying options. So, that's not This is Amazon America, yeah. Well, there you go. And it won't ship to the UK, either. So, um can you briefly explain what melatonin is? So, melatonin is the sleep neurotransmitter. It's just uh it's the metabolite of serotonin. So, serotonin metabolizes into melatonin, which is just what's released naturally when you go to sleep. Now, you can supplement with it, which
will promote your natural production of melatonin and help you to sleep better. And in the studies, it looks like melatonin reduces your sleep requirement by about an hour in some, according to some data. So, it's nice to use as a way to reset your sleep cycle if you've either been traveling or you've had a late one and you need to kind of reset things a little bit. It's not something that I would take every
day, but it's useful to have as a backup for nuclear warhead. So, Matthew Walker from Why We Sleep, um he talks about melatonin use and says that his sole, um advice for it, or his primary advice for it, should I say, is for resetting sleeping patterns. And that would be particularly useful if you are someone who does shift work, someone who has varied working hours like myself, or someone who travels a
lot and is potentially moving through different time zones. So, I use these melatonin gummies. I've got no idea, don't ask me how. It's called Yummy, which is the company that does them. Uh link will be in the show notes I have no idea how they're retailing them in the UK because as far as I'm aware, melatonin isn't available. You can't even get melatonin, I don't think, on prescription. It's just not available
in the UK. Mhm. You can get it on prescription, but you you have to That's if you've had a severe uh like severe insomnia cuz I went and spoke to my doctor about this about 6 months ago. sure even doctors would prescribe it to someone who's not autistic or um have a child developmental problem. Really? I think as an adult, I don't know if they would give you melatonin. I think they'd probably give you zopiclone or
some kind of sleeping pill. Okay. But yeah. Which is potentially is that a a lesser list holistic less natural approach? Less natural and it's been implicated in all cause mortality, which is interesting. So, All cause mortality. So, like you will you will die of any cause. You you you're more likely to die of any cause if you take more than three sleeping pills a year. Oh my god. Which is ridiculous.
That's terrifying. So, like if I get hit by a bus, whatever, just What a stupid statistic. Well, anyway. So, yeah, I've got no idea how this company's retailing them, but I am I spoke to them I dropped them an email. And I asked them to explain why it is that the gummies work more effectively. Now, I'll do a um I'm going to be talking about sleeping in a in an upcoming podcast. So, we'll go through that a little bit more
detail then. But, yeah, melatonin for resetting sleeping patterns, especially if you're doing shift work, if you're traveling a lot, it's a real game changer for me. Um I struggle to get to sleep. There's a lot of times I'll get in from work at 6:00 in the morning, and I'll look at my clock, and I'll think, "Right, I'm finishing work now, and in 24 hours I'm going to want to be getting up." Mhm. So, I need to go to sleep,
wake up, go to sleep, and wake up in the space of 24 hours in order to be able to reset my sleeping pattern appropriately. And the only way that I can do that is by using melatonin. Because my circadian rhythm is just so off. Yeah, it's so thrown out. Um and the dangers of shift work, people who do shift work, they die, I think on average, 10 to 15% sooner. It's then It's pretty bad, isn't it? High rates of diabetes, high rates of
heart disease, um high rates of much higher rates of Alzheimer's. Um so, yeah, try and treat sleep as sacredly as you can, and assist yourself with melatonin. It's a it's been a real a real assistance for me. So. Yeah. Well, I think it's good. I've I've got some as well. I You can Yeah, I imported some. It's legal to own everything, but not a controlled substance. It's just strange why in the UK they don't have
it. So, I got some brought over from Canada that I've been using some sublingual ones that you dissolve under the tongue. Um and then moved on to the um melatonin gummies after that. Yeah, exactly. One of the problems is that because they're kind of like just chewy sweets, they taste really good. Mhm. the temp- the like temptation to overshoot is massive. Yeah. put myself into a coma with 20 g of melatonin gummies.
that's it. And the the optimum dose of melatonin is 1 mg. Yeah. So, there is like uh if you have too little or too much, it has less of an effect than what you should strange. It is odd. Some some drugs work like that. And luckily, I've got a um I've got the loz- lozenges as well. You can split them into quarters. Yeah. And they're 5 mg lozenges. So, splitting them into 1.25 mg, that's fine. Like, does the job for me.
Next. Next is my current electricity supplier called Bulb. Oh god. Now, I was with Npower. Who Npower, if you're listening, you are terrible. Like, I looked them up on Trustpilot. 0.4 out of 10 rating. Oh my So, What? They're just They've just been Surely, they could just get some of their mates to go on and give them a 10-star rating. I think there's just such an overwhelming majority of people that are just like zero, zero. Awesome.
Um so, they're they're really awful. And I switched to Bulb. I went on the thing and I was like, okay, um switch to Bulb. It's like, hey, put in your address. Here's what your quote will be. And it it's consistently the cheapest tariff possible. And they only have one tariff. Npower have about 150 tariffs based on It's so weird. It's designed to obfuscate it and confuse you. Is that what it says? It's like fit
January fit Whereas Bulb is is the cheapest and they only have one. It's just like flat low cheap. And it's because they they Everything that they do is from renewable sources. Okay. And as a result, they get a huge amount of angel investors and government is massive. Pi- piling into it. Yeah. So, basically, that happened. I filled in the form, which was like a page. It It was like four fields to fill in. And
I pressed okay. And it was like, there you go. You've switched to Bulb. I was So, I called them up and I was like, "Hi, um it's a In fact, right, I I gave them a call on the number on the website and it just went "Hello, this is George speaking. Thanks for calling Bulb. How can I help you?" And you're like, "Hang on, where's the 45 multiple option things for me to Yeah, like straight through to a here Oh, I'm
a bit taken about you. ready. I was I was prepared for 10 minutes of selecting of selecting circular options. Yeah. And I was like, "I've just filled in the form. Um Is that it?" He was like, "Yeah." I was like, "What? So now you're my energy supplier?" He's like, "Yeah, we like to make things easy." I'm like, [ __ ] hell, man. So from doing that, I got 50 quid. Yeah. Did you quidco it? No, you didn't quidco
Didn't quidco it. I should have. Yeah. But you can also If you refer any Yeah. they get 50 quid as well. Awesome. So if you don't mind, Chris, I'll switch I'll switch at some point soon. I'm not joking. Oh, well, I I was going to say if you don't mind me mentioning my my referral I'll put it in the show links below. y u s e f And you get 50 We both get 50 quid. That's awesome. It is great. So I've made 250 quid from Bulbing, [ __ ] which
is amazing. That's That's like a Is it in Bulb credit or is it in real money? It's in Bulb credit. Okay, but that's real It is real money, isn't it? But you you're going to spend it anyway. And the app is excellent. It's all really simple. Like look at look at how simple the interface is on the website. Oh, yeah, that's And you can select There's the addresses that I've got on Bulb. Yeah, that's cool. Just switch between Hang on, did
you Have you referred like your mom and you can refer anyone. Yeah, it doesn't have to be I'm just trying to think about how how far you've I've referred my sister, my mom, yeah. Cool. Um on a similar vein to booking.com Uh unbelievable. I don't I don't know who else like hotels.com I suppose on late rooms are all right, but booking.com for me is by far and away the best place to book hotels. Have you
used Trivago? Trivago, I haven't either. Have you not seen the adverts for it? Yeah, I see the adverts for it as well. Um booking.com is the best interface, large selection of hotels, always got good ratings from users. So, the same reason that I like to use Amazon is because there's a high amount of a high degree of user feedback on all of the products, and the same thing goes for booking.com. Mhm. So, there's an awful
lot of previous customers that leave feedback about where you're going to go and stay, and this mediates the um search priority that you get. So, you get ones that might be a three-star but like nine out of 10, or one that's a four-star but five out of 10, and the four-star will be ranked further down, and it does it does stuff based on um the number of options and all the rest of it. Is the star determined by objective
Yeah. Yeah. So, the actual star is the Like the amenities, the number of bathrooms, or whatever. Yeah, the whatever criteria it is that hotels are gauged on, but then there's a user rating, which isn't. And you can sort by not like it's a nine out of 10 for a No. Although customers will have used that in their review because a three-star presumably will be cheaper. You're not a bad dancer for an Englishman. You know, Yeah, yeah. That
kind of thing. No, I understand. Um so, yeah, booking.com. And then, if you pound it enough, I think it's if you spent about 500 pounds on it, you get something called genius level discount, which is 10% off all valid um stays. Forever? Yeah. What? So, once you've spent 500 quid on I think I don't know what the I don't know what the criteria is, but basically, when I was in Thailand, I was using booking.com for everything. And
partway through my partway through my stay, they said, "Congratulations, you've now um uh you're now eligible for genius discount." And basically, there's some hotels that do sign up to it and some hotels which don't. But recently, I've just booked my hotels for LA where I'm going in a couple of weeks. And Best Western, LA is so expensive. Best Western for 9 nights should have been 18 or like 1760 and I got it for like 1530 or something
like that. Wow. Okay. Great. Yeah, it's it's awesome. Um Do you use booking.com as well? It's And you can get start What reminded me of it was the fact that you can get um 15% uh sorry, 15 pounds refer-a-friend. Refer-a-friend and you both get 15 pounds. Nice. It's just the sheer number of places that are on there, as you said, and the amount of data and choice and rooms and things. Yeah, very good. Yeah. What's next? So,
I'm trying to alternate between online and offline ones cuz I feel like so many of mine are silly little apps. Yeah. So, this is called IINA, I I N A. Okay. It is a wrapper, a user interface wrapper for a um something called MPlayer, I think, which is a a Mac audio uh Mac multimedia video audio player. Okay. The reason I like it is again, keyboard shortcuts, very simple, very lightweight. It's like really small file
size, opens instantly. Um it saves the place where you were at. So, you open if you're watching a long lecture or something and you close the window, if you open it again in a month's time, it'll just restore you back to where you were at Okay. Um I know a lot of people use VLC. Yeah, that's what I've got. I've switched over from VLC to this just because it's it's just so much better. You can change the
speed and the the volume and everything and skip forward and back 5 seconds or 30 seconds with the arrow keys. It's all just so instant and it just feels like you're just plugged into the the media rather than having It's weird, isn't it? On a Mac especially on a MacBook, the QuickTime is just so [ __ ] clunky and [ __ ] Oh, it's and it has it and they seem to have this deal with QuickTime that they've had for like
however many years. Apple, I think. Is it? Yeah, I think so. Oh, okay. You remember when Windows used to do RealPlayer? Yeah. That was a prick. But, yeah, Media Player Classic, if you're on Windows, is what you need. That's the Or you can get VLC, also. Um but, Media Player Classic is about as lightweight as you can get. And you can do stuff like you're you're talking about there, which is where you uh you
can actually overshoot the audio volume, so you can do like a preamp, so you can actually have volume audio volume at 150%. Obviously, it'll degrade the quality, but it'll make it louder or Yeah, it just sounds like sounds like noise. Uh right, let's get two more each, and we'll finish up. Um so, I'm going to do a bit of a plug here, not for anyone who's affiliated with me, but just something that I love, called
Anjunadeep. Um so, Anjuna Beats is Above & Beyond's record label. They also have a podcast, which is called Group Therapy. And Anjunadeep Group Therapy with Above & Beyond. Exactly. It's really good. Anjunadeep is the deep label portion of that. So, if you can imagine what For anyone, I'm trying to explain what like deep progressive house music is to people who don't understand, it's slow, melodic, non-droppy trance,
for want of a better term. It's very, very ethereal, gentle, flowing music. It's it's simultaneously non-intrusive, but also it's not just muzak. It's like You can have it on while you're working, and it's not going to like disrupt your exactly That's exactly what it's here for. So, Anjunadeep for working is what I use. So, Anjunadeep podcast has 210 episodes, something like that, now. And most of them are
There's more than enough to Oh, yeah, there's loads, and they release one every single week, and they're all awesome. And from start uh from the start intro, which is also very gentle after a minute, there is pretty much usually no vocals until the end, except for a few songs that tend to have that in and vocal samples. And for working, it just provides this lovely soundscape that doesn't intrude on what you're
doing. Very serene, very gentle, nice and melodic. Some of the guys in the office like to work to some more popular music or the more sort of clubby stuff, hip hop and stuff like that. But for me personally, I find it's really distracting. My my mind gets carried away by the words that come in from the music. for me, Anjunadeep is just the perfect soundscape to work to. So, search on whatever your podcast app is,
have a look at Anjunadeep and give it a crack when you're working. It's also another thing, if you, like me, work in an office that can be loud and you need to not have distractions, um audible distractions in order to focus, one of the advantages of this kind of music is that because it moves across a number of frequencies and there's a lot of synths going on, it doesn't actually have that much dead
space in. You can imagine if you were listening to hip hop or drum and bass not drum and bass, sorry, hip hop or other music like trap music, I suppose, where you'd have these breaks and silences in the music that you actually end up hearing the sound coming from other people. So, it glazes over any of the Exactly. If you've got if you've got earphones in, it's almost like white noise, but really really lovely white noise.
So, apparently people find random so, it's silence but with random noise, unpredictable noise, It's compared to Yeah. I'd say like apparently humans find as if Well, I'm saying it's like not a human. Yeah, like there was I've seen that Yeah, there was studies saying that compared to Right. rice cooker Have I Have This isn't the previous one. You know, I need to order the life hacks to do the ones that we've discussed
already as we start to do more and more of these. Yeah. Rice cooker, you can pick one up for 30 quid new, 10 pounds on Facebook um which is another life hack. I don't know if it is a hack or not. It's not. It's like a curse, isn't it? It's definitely a failed life hack for Yeah, definitely. But yeah, so rice just makes perfect rice every time. Like, how easy is it to mess up? It It Wait. Um this is not a rhetorical question. It
is very easy to mess up rice in a pan. I've never found this. Darren's Darren's Darren's wife's sister, Hannah, cannot cook rice. Like, can't do it. Can't cook rice. But she can bake cakes and you as well like you you Arab? Yeah. I mean? Like, rice is rice is literally in your blood. Well, so so I mean, I've got I've got the the hang of it now of making rice in the pan. But then it's like it's just unnecessarily difficult
compared to rice cooker. Put the rice in the thing, cover it with a bit of water, and press on, and then you just leave. And then if you let's say you go to the gym. Yeah. Like, if you were cooking rice in the pan, you wouldn't be able to go to the gym. Whereas this, you you press on, it detects how much water is in the thing by weight, and then it stops cooking when it's the perfect the when it's at the optimal optimal fluffiness.
I like my I like my rice slightly well done. Can you Can I edit Yeah, you can. So, um depend There's difference There's eight settings on it. Oh my god. Oh, man. Eight different types of rice. what like if this is what the Chinese use All right. It's good enough If it's good enough for them, then it's It's definitely good enough for us. Right, on topic of food, We haven't done MuscleFood yet. They're
good. Yeah, they are. So, are a bulk meat supplier. Um they a UK-based company. Um, I'm I'd be very surprised. They are for me as ubiquitous as Myprotein now. But, they basically allow you to buy large volumes of meat and other things as well now like pre-packed vegetables, like potatoes and stuff like that. A lot of supplements and buttons and all sorts of stuff. But, for me the main thing that I use it for is for ordering
chicken breasts. the bodybuilder's grocery is it? Uh, Yeah. Um, their meat is also really nice quality. It's not just like the [ __ ] supermarket chicken breasts will often you fry it and then it'll shrink by half the size or something. Yeah. Um, all of the meat there is what you see is what you get. They do an excellent pastrami, thick thick-sliced, really tender, like as if it's just been cured off the
well, it's all cured meat. It's been cured off the cow, but it just is so fresh and lovely. Quite expensive though, so Yeah, a little bit, but there's there's enough variety on there that you can have different uh, different options. So, for me getting 5 kilos of chicken breast, I think it's it's so cheap. Like it's it's far far cheaper than going to Tesco. It arrives at your house. The only issue that
you've got is the fact that you're going to get meat delivered in a package. And if you're not in at the time, it'll get left somewhere because they won't take it away. If they take it away, it'll perish. So, it's like it'll get left at the front door. It'll get left at the office door. So, you've got to leave a special place. Yeah. And the problem is if you're not there, like if your availability isn't tied in with the
delivery schedule, you're either left not being able to order because you don't want it to waste or potentially risking wasting it. Mhm. Which isn't ideal. They put it in a cool bag, don't they, though? They do. Yeah, so it'll last for, I it'll last for about 48 hours in that or they claim that it'll last for 48 hours. It's got It's got a lot of cool, like, uh ice packs and stuff that So, if you're not going to be home over
a 48-hour period, then you shouldn't be ordering large amounts of meat. Yeah. Uh so, yeah, there is a uh there's a code that Muscle Food has very kindly given me that anyone who's listening can use. Um for transparency, I'm not making any money off this. It's just the same I use the same deal that they gave me when I need to order when I need to order chicken. But, um I'll pop that in the show notes there as
well. It's uh M wisdom 10 at checkout and you'll get some uh you'll get some free chicken. M wisdom 10. M wisdom 10. to do that now. Um so, yeah, one more. One more. I bought a roll not a roll-on, like a balm deodorant Yeah, the other day. on Amazon. So, previously, I used spray deodorants. I'm not a big fan of aerosols or um and I wouldn't use a aerosol antiperspirant either cuz there's there's a lot of other
disruptive stuff This is a big thing in America, right? Like Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm not like super paranoid about them, but How do we use this? It's like magnesium content and stuff, isn't it? Or like I The The aluminum Aluminum content. Yeah, there's a few other things that I I just think like given the choice, even if it's not that bad, like I realize cuz I think going full tin foil hat on this stuff,
like you're pissing in the wind because there's so much environmental exposure to xenoestrogens and that kind of thing that you're not going to be able to shut it all out. Yeah. But, I feel like if I'm going to be spraying something in, like, lymphatic drainage points probably makes sense to go for something that's not going to be adding to it. Yeah. So, it's I'll I'll find it It's called Man Cave Eucalyptus
deodorant balm thing. It's a stick. I've only used it for a month so far, but I've it's barely touched the sides in terms of how much I've used. Yeah. 7 pounds, but I feel like it's going to last 5 or 6 months at least. Really? And it smells lovely. So, is it It's quite effective. I was going to say, is it um It's like an all natural Yeah. What's What's the difference between that and what you spray on yourself?
So, this is It's alcohol-free and it's made from a bunch of like plant plant balms and that kind of thing. Okay. Um and it also It also just smells really nice. Like that's that's primarily the reason why I got it cuz I thought It was after you mentioned in the previous life hacks about burning eucalyptus oil and I was like, "Oh, it'd be lovely to have some kind of toiletry that smells like that." So, I
had a look online. I was like, "Okay, that looks fine." Like, if it wasn't for the smell, honestly, I wouldn't have bought a natural alternative thingy cuz I don't care enough about it to But it just kind of tilted the balance cuz I thought, "Well, it smells great and it's good Yeah. Go for it. That's pretty cool. I guess if you're not um And as far as like deodorizing, What's the effectiveness rate?
Very good. Is it Like, I'd say better than sprays, honestly. Yeah. That's I'm no expert on this stuff, but no. Uh right, okay. Let me see. I got time for one more. Right. So, final one that I'm going to use is a tactic called working from zero. Uh now, I think I'm right in saying that this is David Allen's Getting Things Done, right? I think that's where it comes from. Um if not, it's a productivity tool which
allows you to try and clear as mental clutter as you can. So, you'll have all seen someone's phone where you you you go to type something. Oh, man, just put your phone number in there or whatever and you look and it's got like 45,000 unread emails. Oh, man. And you need to has 13,000 unread and it's on her home screen all the time. Yeah, and it's got this red number and it's like, okay, so how do you know when
you've got a new email? Do you reset your baseline of zero to that 13,152? Like that's that okay, so it's 13,153. I must have got an email but I need to check, yeah. So, um working from zero is an approach to productivity which is that all notifications and all unreads are taken out at all times. And I think for me it's a really really nice way to keep my uh phone screen clear. Now, obviously I can clear my phone screen by
not having notifications on, but that defeats the purpose of the usefulness of notifications. Yeah. For me, if I've got an email that comes through, I deal with it as quickly as possible. And if I can't deal with it as quickly as possible, I'll read the email. Uh sorry, I won't read the email. Clear off the red and then set a reminder to go back to the email. Because what you don't want to do So, we discussed Mail Butler in the last
one where you can you can do that, snooze it for example. So, your inbox only has things that are need to be actioned or yeah. immediate. Um it's just a nice way to work. And marking things as unread is a useful up to a point. If you have got slope, isn't it? Yeah, if you've got stuff that's been unread for like three, four days, you're like, I just need to deal with it. Like and it's there in the back of your mind causing anxiety and
So, the only emails that I have in my inbox that remain So, so the So, open my inbox, it's either things that I haven't looked at yet and I need to go and process, which is which is done in batch every week, or the things that remain there would be like a flight itinerary for an upcoming or like a train ticket or something that needs to be in there. Even with that, you would you could put it in Evernote.
Take it out of that, put it into Evernote, clear off the notification. So really, there's no excuse to have emails in your inbox, especially not 13,000. No, but yeah, it that just terrifies me. Like the the level of of anxiety that that would cause would be would be frightening. Cuz people say, "Oh, I'm numb to it." it's designed, as we discussed in the technology What is technology doing to us podcast with a hacker in your pocket,
that the little red notification circle is designed to It's It's It's red for a reason. It's the alarm color and it's designed It's on your home screen to make you like always be like, "Oh." So there's going to be this background hum of stress from having 13,000 emails. Yep. It also makes you feel like a waste man when you've just got Yeah, it's just an ugly-looking home screen, isn't it? Like I've seen so many
guys who've got like 53 unread iMessages. I'm like, "How do you have unread iMessages?" That's just the most priority people that you've ignored. Like cuz the thing is, you can't even mark them as unread. You haven't even opened them. So with iMessage, I guess rather than like the the ball ache of opening a message, "Oh, I'll deal with it later. I'll set a reminder." Easier to just open it and deal with it. So in that
That ties in with the 2-minute rule, which is from David Allen's Getting Things Done. If any task takes less than 2 minutes, I think you can extend that to probably like 3. If any task takes less than 3 minutes, just do it. Do it now. Do it immediately. Don't schedule it in cuz it'll take longer to schedule it. Schedule it, go back, oh, what Oh, hang on, right, what's the Especially So this is the thing I was saying about don't
read the email. Just put the reminder in. Because if you read the email, contextualize it, then put the reminder in. You've already done half of the And you've You've the background noise in your head. another thing. just get it done. Get the get the work out the way. It's going to take 3 think something important to add to that is you said managing your notifications making sure that it's working from zero
is also to only have the permission for apps to give you notifications that have some materiality in your life. Yeah. So don't allow notifications from an app that you're never going to be able to do anything with. Don't allow notifications from like Asda Yeah. or whatever it is because unless it's something you need to do Yeah. it shouldn't be interrupting your Like for instance, I've got notifications off for
Headspace, but I've got banners on and they send like two or three mindful moments throughout the day. It's like What was You can't control the sea, but you can learn to surf the wave. Yeah. Like great, that's nice. That's a nice little thing for me to see partway through the day, but it doesn't leave anything as red on my home screen even though Headspace is on my home screen. I suppose in a way as well that's it's
kind of value adding. It's not But the same thing goes the same thing goes for group chats here or any notifications that aren't generated by people directly aimed at you. This is going back over old ground on hack in your pocket podcast which everyone should listen to. Yeah. But yeah, like group chats you can afford to knock the notifications off because you will check your phone in any case. To be honest,
I'm pretty militant about just leaving group chats. As soon as anyone adds me to a group chat, I'm I'm leaving it. It's like if someone wants to talk to me, they can send me a message. Right, are we done? Do you want another one? Yeah, final one. Final one. You pack. This is great. What's that? So how often have someone sent you a YouTube link or whatever and you click on it and it's like not available in
your country or like Yeah, copyright actually. So replace the word tube with pack. Pay p a k. Okay. In the URL, leave everything else the same and it'll mirror it'll find the mirror that works. No way. video, yeah. It's amazing. That's all you need to do.
That's crazy. So, is it like a a VPN service or something? Yeah, someone's just made a copy a direct copy of YouTube and it must feed in live. Mhm. Just you pack. And there's all I think there's also buttons added to the bottom of like download video and all that stuff. so it's just the most like counterfeit YouTube. Yeah, I I don't know how it's allowed, but it's great, right? Well, if that's allowed and Tube X is gone. I feel bad
for the people that can't have Tube X in their life. I know. I'm sorry, guys, but It's a real game changer. I mean, we we could bring Tube X back one person at a time. We could, but But it would be your your inbox is going to get flooded with stuff like that. I'm not sure. Anyway, um we will be back very soon. Life fails 101 will be coming. Uh we started it, but we still need to finish it. Um I think you've got more life fails
than you do life hacks, don't you? many. Both. Yeah, but we're going to need to just sit and bash through them all, I think. Um who else have we got coming up? So, I've got Dr. Yu Professor Yu and Lawrence, who is the writer of um the author of the healthy writer, which is a book on workstation optimization. I've also got Leon Scott, who is the main model for Chain Enable and Hera Nice big Instagram following.
You would think from the outside looking at it, professional footballer as well, you'd think pretty much nothing between the ears, but this guy is mad into his mindfulness. Crazy, crazy deep into his mindfulness training, does a lot of compassion stuff. Really, really interested to speak to him, so I'm going to sit down with him. Obviously on video, he's going to look lovely as well. Of course, I'm excited about
these, especially healthy writer. Yeah, I think I think uh Yu and Lawrence is going to be really interesting guys. Just come off uh Ben Greenfield's podcast, actually. I had a binge of your other episodes recently. Yeah. The Quinn Henoch was excellent. If anyone's listening and hasn't heard that Yeah. Yeah, it clears up any misconceptions about mobility, flexibility, um self-myofascial release, any of the kind
of self-maintenance stuff. Yeah. Um also, I would be keen cuz I know people message you a lot more than they message us. Really upset. Why do But, um if you can let us know about the life what problems you were trying to solve in your life or what field cuz there's so many of these that um it would be good to know generally what the kind of More than likely it is if someone else has encountered the problem
that we've probably got a solution for it as well. It's just that again, can't see the wood for the trees due to this obsession with optimizing. Yeah. we'll we'll have we'll have bypassed it the same as Alfred. It's exactly that. Like, because of our ma- manic obsessionality with the stuff, we'd probably come across it and done something for it. already been fixed. Yeah. But Yeah, so drop me a message. Or give me a DM and
we'll go for that. Until next time, it's Here in spirit. Here in spirit and in blob, but not here in real life. Okay, bye then.
Yeah. offense