15 Lessons From 800 Episodes - #800

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is me. To celebrate 800 episodes of Modern Wisdom, as is tradition, I broke down some of my favourite lessons, insights and quotes from the last 100 episodes. Expect to learn why starting the day with an imagined productivity debt is making you miserable, why being competent can be more of a curse than a blessing, how to easily assess how good an idea is, why obesity is a bigger problem than starvation, and what I learned from Winston Churchill's father, how to predict culture war news stories, why it's so important to communicate directly, and much more. Obviously a big one. 800 episodes is so many. It's wild to think that I've done 800 of these sat in front of a microphone, whether in Newcastle or Vegas or Miami or Austin, Texas or Canada or wherever I've been. I really appreciate all of you. The support is wild. It's been a rough few months dealing with some internal stuff, dealing with some personal stuff, and all the way throughout my passion for the show hasn't slowed down, which I guess is a good sign. Nuclear war goes off and I'm still gonna be trying to do podcasts, which is good. But I really do appreciate all of you, people that share and comment and send emails and support me even when I can't hear it. I really do appreciate it and it means an awful lot. So thank you. This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. The best gym wear on the planet is from Gymshark. So no matter what you are looking for, if you are spending more time in the gym, you will feel better if you've got cool new clothing and Gymshark make the best men's shorts on the planet. Their studio shorts in dusty maroon, willow green, onyx gray and navy were what I wore throughout all of my trip to LA, which you may have seen on YouTube recently. Their crest hoodie is what I am flying in whenever I'm on a flight and their geo seamless t-shirt is also what I train in every single day. All of their kit is unbelievably lightweight, sweat wicking, it's easy to wash and dry. I mean love and the fit and quality of their fabrics are phenomenal. Plus there is a 30 day free returns internationally and you can get 10% off everything sitewide and worldwide. If you go to gymshark.com and use the code MW10, a checkout, that's gymshark.com and MW10, a checkout. I've been loving my cold plunge and sauna from the team over at Plunge. I literally use them every single week because the benefits of hot and cold contrast therapy make me feel fantastic. I have more energy during the day, sleep better at night, and recover faster after hard workouts. Plunge's Evolve collection includes four brand new offerings made to fit your lifestyle, space and goals. The new Plunge Pure Pro Chiller uses state of the art technology to filter water and chill it at the same time. The all new Plunge Air is amazing. If you're looking for a lightweight, space efficient option, you can connect it to the Plunge Pop-Up for maximum portability and affordability, or go with the XL Plunge Pro for their signature style. They are quick to set up and always ready to go. It only takes three minutes to feel amazing. That's how long I spend in it. And they offer a 30 day return policy. Head to plunge.com/modernwisdom and use the code MW150 for $150 off any purchase. That's plunge.com/modernwisdom and MW150. A checkout. If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom reading list, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful and entertaining that I've ever found. Fiction and non-fiction, real life stories, and there's a description about why I like it and there's links to go and buy it. And it's completely free. You can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com/books.
That's chriswillx.com/books.
But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the wise and very wonderful me.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. It is the 800th episode of Modern Wisdom. And as is tradition, I'm going to go through some of the best lessons that I've learned over the last 100 episodes. Some of it is stuff from my newsletter, some of it's things that I've learned from guests on the show, and other bits are just random insights I've encountered in life. So yeah, let's get into it. The first one, productivity debt. I adore this idea. So when Matthew Hussey came on the show, he has this quote from his book, Love Life, where he's talking about how he is an internal tyrant. He says, I struggle to believe I'm worthy of moments of joy and peace without first putting myself through a brutal schedule, monitoring my productivity levels down to the minute. Perhaps some people apply this earn your cookie mindset in ways that lead to healthy achievements, not me. Mine is a mutation whereby joy and self-compassion are regularly outlawed by an internal tyrant who decides when I've been flogged enough for one day. Just when I'm about to collapse, a voice inside says, okay, give him half an hour of peace before bed, but make sure he knows we'll start again, bright and early in the morning. And this insight hurts my soul largely because I see it in myself. And Oliver Berkman, who wrote 4,000 Weeks, has a name for this bottomless pit of self-imposed expected efficiency, productivity debt. He says that many people, by which he meant him, seem to feel as if they start each day off in the morning with a kind of productivity debt, which they must struggle to pay off throughout the day in hopes of reaching a zero balance by the time the evening comes around. He said that few things felt more basic to his experience of adulthood than this vague sense that he's falling behind and need to claw his way back up to some minimum standard of output. It's as if he needs to justify his existence by staying on top of things in order to stave off some ill-defined catastrophe that might otherwise come crashing down upon his head, which is why he is such an enthusiastic proponent of keeping a done list, which starts empty first thing in the morning, and then you gradually fill it with whatever you accomplish throughout the day. And his argument is that each entry is a cheering reminder that you could have, after all, spent the day doing nothing constructive, yet look at what you did instead. And if you're in a serious psychological rut, he says you can just lower the bar for what gets to count as an accomplishment. Nobody ever needed to know that you added brushed teeth or made coffee to your done list. But a done list isn't just a way to feel better about yourself. You need to give up the impossible quest to pay off your productivity debt and instead start thinking about each day as an opportunity to move a small but meaningful set of items over to your done list. You'll find that you make better choices about what to focus on. And because you'll actually make more progress on them by wasting less time and energy being distracted by the stress about all of the other stuff that you're unavoidably neglecting. So, paying off this imaginary productivity debt completely, in other words, working so hard and so efficiently that you no longer feel like you're falling behind is literally impossible. It's not just gruelling and unpleasant. And in the modern world of work, there is no limit to the number of emails that you might receive and the demands that your boss might make and the ambitions that you might have for your career. So there's no reason to believe that you'll ever get to the end of them. Meanwhile, modern media, especially social media, is a giant machine for exposing you to a bottomless newsfeed of far more suffering than St Francis of Assisi himself was ever asked to care about. So whenever Oliver manages to remember that this is just the way things are, that the cosmic debt that he seems to imagine that he has to pay off is in fact inherently impossible to pay off, he finds that he is far better able to relax in the midst of having too much to do as opposed to making relaxation dependent on first getting on top of it all, which he never will. And crucially, he thinks he's better placed to actually do things, the productive and good citizen things that were the focus of all of this angst in the first place. Look, there they are on the done list. Not many of them, perhaps, at least by comparison to the immeasurable galaxy of things that need doing. Still, there are generally quite a few more than zero items there by the time that 6 p.m. rolls around. And then I think he said at 6 p.m. he usually mixes a gin and tonic, but that tends to not get added to the list. Generally, this idea of productivity debt, I think, puts a name on a sensation that lots of us feel. This odd requirement to sort of whip ourselves into submission, this odd sense that we are falling behind. He has this great term. What is it he says earlier on? He talks about this vague sense that you are falling behind. And it's just this sort of ambient thing. He needs to justify his existence by staying on top of things. This vague sense he's falling behind and need to claw my way back up to some minimum standard of output. And, you know, this is kind of, I guess, the dark side of being interested in productivity and deficiency that you set yourself this unbelievable bar and you're probably excited by lots of different things. You're probably good at lots of different things. So the options that you have in front of you are high and you hold yourself to high standards and you want to make an impact on the world and you want to maximize your brief sliver of time whilst you're existing in this, the two eternities of darkness. Here you are, this is your time, I'm going to get the most out of it. And what that ends up doing is this sort of permanent imbalance between the things you want to do and the things that you end up doing, which actually means that even the things you do do have this odd sort of tarnished sense to them. I certainly know this like unbelievably well myself, you know, doing a live show and it's the third show that I've ever done and it's London and it's sold out on a Saturday night at Leicester Square Theatre or wherever we were last year. And everything goes well and it's, you know, it's still early on in my career and yet when I finish up, I'll look back and focus on those two little sections that I didn't quite get right. And forget the one hour and 58 minutes of pretty much perfect, exactly what I wanted and expected and hope to get out of it. But I'll just focus on those other two things. And this sort of negativity bias that we have, plus this sense that we should always be doing more, always be working harder. If you've ever gone through a period of really intense work and all that you think about is, God, I just wish I could have one weekend at home. I just don't want to be traveling again or I don't want to be working again. I don't have to get up on time. I just wish I could have one lie in. And then after two lie ins, you now think, really need to get back on that grind. I'm feeling a little bit lazy. And you're like, hang on a second. You just said only 48 hours ago that you couldn't wait to get a little bit of a break. Yeah, for the sort of type A go getter people, I think this is like just an ambient demon that sits on everybody's shoulder. And Matthew's idea of this internal tyrant that's constantly whipping him, I think, is pretty illuminating. So yeah, that's one of my favorites. Productivity debt is just so fundamental to how lots of people see the world. All right, next one. The curse of competence. This is something I've been thinking about for a little while. You probably are pretty competent if you're listening to this podcast. You can do things and you're prepared to try new stuff. And when you try new stuff, you don't suck that much. And you seem to probably make progress more quickly than most people. And this is the curse of competence because your options for life direction are less constrained by your abilities and more constrained by your choices. And this sounds like a blessing and indeed it probably is better than the alternative. But it's a unique category of problem which occurs while people tell you how fortunate you are to deal with it. So Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice talks about the process of buying jeans 60 years ago and you go to the jean store and there is one type, one colour, one cut. You find your waist size, you pay and you walk out. Now, you may have wanted a slightly different style of jeans or length or colour or whatever, but you had no choice other than what was given to you. So your total utility from the jeans may not be maximised, but your satisfaction with the decision is pretty high knowing that you got the best that you could, given the circumstances. And if you compare that to today and you go to the jean store and look around, do you want skinny or bootcut, straight leg, cropped? Do you want ripped, blue, grey, acid wash with contrast stitching or without? The options are endless and hooray, this means that you can finally select the exact pair of jeans that you were looking for. But it also means that any suboptimal decision is entirely your fault. If you were unhappy with your jeans in 1960, it's the fault of the crappy jeans store. If you're unhappy with your jeans in 2024, it's the fault of your research. Previously, your experience was largely out of your hands and limited by the world. Today, it's only limited by your choices. And this is how a constraint of options makes the decision-making process easier. And the curse of competence plays into this as well. So if you're only good at one category of things, you sure might be unhappy that you can't do something else. And that indeed is a rubbish situation. But the constraint helps to narrow your choices down. On the other hand, if you're good at lots of things, there are many paths open to you, which is liberating, but can also cause you to be scared and confused and frozen in place. And we could call this a Titanic problem, which is an issue everyone says you're in such a privileged position to deal with. Adam Mastriani says this is an extra special type of tragedy, a tragedy that unfolds while everyone cheers. Like being on the Titanic after the iceberg hits, water up to your chin with everybody telling you that you're so lucky to be on the greatest steamship of all time. And the Titanic is indeed so huge and wonderful that you can't help but agree, but you're also feeling a bit cold and wet at the moment, and you're not sure why. Having lots of competencies that you could follow in your life is exciting, but it's also terrifying and paralyzing too, plus you have the added challenge of feeling guilty for your seeming ungratefulness even though the world is at your feet. So it's this very odd sort of concatenation of paralysis of analysis, lots of life choices, lots of different directions that you could go in with things, this sort of shame and guilt around who am I to complain when there's ostensibly nothing wrong. I have all of these different options. Should I not feel grateful for this? And yet I can't help but feel like, I don't know, the decision making, having to choose what it is that I'm going to do just feels exhausting to me and tiring. And I think that this is a challenge that people who are competent face, and it's with the Titanic problem thing, it is exactly the sort of problem no one is ever going to give you sympathy for. Oh, poor, talented person. Look at how many different directions you could go in life. You could go into sales or you could go into marketing. You could go into the family business or you could do whatever. Maybe you want to be a mom or a dad. Maybe you want to be a teacher. You'd be great to do. All of these different options in front of you, no one is going to ever give sympathy to the person who has too many choices. And yet the felt experience of that person is always going to be painful, a lot of the time. So constraining down your choices, picking the thing that you're going to do, periodizing it is a good solution. Instead of saying, I have all of these roads open in front of me and this one that I choose has to be the right one. If you set yourself a maximizing decision criteria as opposed to a satisfying one, good enough or perfect. If you get to good enough and say, well, I'm going to do this, but it's probably a reversible decision. You know, maybe I can try X project for 90 days or a year or something like that. And if I don't like it, then I can pivot into something else. And here's the brilliant thing. If you are competent, there are other things that you can pivot out of. So I think changing from a maximizing lifelong commitment to a satisfying experimental commitment is probably a good reframe. Look, just give it a crack. The thing that you're thinking about, a try. And if it doesn't work, you can pivot out of it. But yeah, the curse of competence, something pretty important, I think. I learned this word as well, actually. William Costello mentioned it to me when I sent him the Oliver Berkman episode a couple of weeks ago. And he said how sanguine he found Oliver. And I'd seen this word written down. I can pronounce it, but I had no idea what it meant. So sanguine means optimistic or positive, especially in apparently bad or difficult situations. He is sanguine about prospects for the global economy. The committee takes a more sanguine view. In medieval science and medicine of or having the constitution associated with the predominance of blood among the bodily humours supposedly marked a ruddy complexion and an optimistic disposition. So like everybody that's florid or ruddy in the UK that gets accused of being gammon is actually just having an optimistic disposition. But yes, sanguine, I really love that as a word and what it describes, I think, is Oliver Berkman and Alain de Botton's approach, this sort of very self-effacing, things are difficult and I am flawed and life is hard and I probably suck quite a lot. But here is a hopeful view of how I can get past it. Taking into account all of my flaws and being sanguine, just that kind of joviality in the face of life's challenges is cool and I'm finding myself gravitating more toward people who create content like that. I think it really sees the human condition in an interesting way. So just a little dictionary moment for you there. All right, next one. This is The Power of Low Self-Esteem. In September 1893, Churchill was admitted on his third attempt to the Sandhurst Military College. He wrote to his father, I was so glad to be able to send you the good news on Thursday. His father, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, wrote back a week later, You should be ashamed of your slovenly happy-go-lucky, harem-scarum style of work. Never have I received really any good report from your conduct from any headmaster or tutor. Always behind incessant complaints and a total want of application to your work. You have failed to get into the 60th Rifles, the finest regiment in the Army. You have imposed on me so extra charge of 200 pounds a year. Do not think that I'm going to take the trouble of writing you long letters after every failure you commit and undergo. I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say if you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle, useless, unprofitable life you have had during your school days. You will become a mere social wastrel, one of the hundreds of public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence. You will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes. Your mother sent her love. Churchill was 19 when he sent that. And that story hurts to read. It hurts me to read, because I don't know the inner texture of Churchill's mind, but I would bet that even after defeating Nazi Germany and winning World War II, he probably still didn't feel good enough. You know, V-Day, whenever it was, June 30th, 1945 or something.