Chris Williamson's Take On ‘Optimization Culture’; Longevity Lessons from 1100 episodes of Modern Wisdom

There's no such thing as not drilling a habit.

Mm.

Even inaction is a habit. There's no impartial decision. Not making a decision is still a decision.

Is a decision.

Like, I started off in the productivity world.

Yeah.

I did a big essay on my YouTube channel talking about my thoughts on optimization culture.

Which of what we're being told is bullshit, and which is actually very high yielding. And I think if we can help them discern that signal from noise, and then say, "Look, you're fine doing 10, 20 minutes a day, as long as you do it every day."

Yes.

So find something that works for you that you can stick to with consistency.

What do you like?

Yeah.

What do you enjoy to do?

Do more of it.

So you have already achieved the goals that you said would make you happy. You said it would be when you got a new car, and then your happiness faded. You said it would be when you got a job promotion, and then your happiness faded. If not now, then when?

You spent many years talking to people about how to optimize for your health, and then you get this diagnosis, right?

Yeah.

You can do everything right-

Mm-hmm

... right? And, and still-

Get smashed in the face by reality, yeah

... yeah. How did you manage to continue working?

With difficulty. I basically kind of shut down my life outside of... I had two jobs, fix myself and run the show.

You've obviously been exposed to a lot of these things. You've tried probably nearly everything. If you had to remove all of them except three-

Yep

... what would you keep? This is actually a little bit weird for me, and I'll tell you why. 90% of the guests that we have on are scientists who are on our council-

Mm

... or, like, physicians or thought leaders within a very narrow vertical.

Didn't you have Robert Downey Jr. on?

Chris, let's cut that out. I was gonna go on to say, aside from a few members, right? And so, um, these are people that have been through the experience-

Mm

... and are ambassadors, all right? You're, you're not Robert Downey Jr. or the scientist. I think you're probably one of very few people in the world, if not a single person in the world that's spoken to the most amount of experts that sit within that other category.

Mm-hmm.

So you're almost the mirror to the typical-

Do I feel, do I feel like a rival to your level of exposure and expertise to the greatest clinicians on the planet?

Yeah, the only difference between us is the 4.5 million YouTube subscribers and-

Yeah

... more than a billion views.

Yeah.

That's w- other than that, yeah.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh, accent's the same.

It's very competitive. You've been doing this for nine years now.

Correct.

Nine years ago, when you set out to do this, was the ambition to build a top 10 podcast and focus specifically on how to, like, help people to optimize their health? Or is that something that you, like, just grew into over 100, 200 episodes?

Yeah, I mean, nine years ago, I was still running nightclubs in the northeast of the UK. I'm from a very working class town. Uh, state primary, state secondary, state sixth form college. First person in my family to complete university. Did two degrees at Newcastle. Um, within the first week or so of being at uni, I'd spent all my money on freshers week