YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Williamson

lines on the record: 179
first: 2025-12-29
most recent: 2025-12-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I like enthusiasm. I wish I could, you know, export some of it back to the UK. You know, I was really disappointed by me you featured in an article recently in a very well-known British paper. Maybe this came across your desk and maybe not. No.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, if you, the upside of never trying is never having to feel the pain of failure. If you never face that discomfort, like if I tell myself that all women are terrible, then I'm excused of ever having to talk to a woman. And as a result, I never have to feel the pain of rejection. If I tell myself that everything is shit or that things will never get better, I'm excused of ever having to try anything. It's more comfortable to get fatalistic and call it pragmatism, like the cope is framing hope as pathetic and embarrassing, and optimism as delusion. This is cynicism, right? The opposite of that is enthusiasm. Since moving to America, I've been surrounded by very enthusiastic people. Americans kind of have permanent first-line cocaine energy.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ring a boss. Ring a friend that is an expert in Excel. So for me, when I look at my procrastination, it caused you to usually one of two things, poorly defined next physical action. I don't know exactly what the next smallest step is that moves me toward my goal. I do know that and I sit down. I don't know how to do it. Like how do I, like if you don't know how to open a file, you don't know how to unzip a file, it doesn't matter how many files you've got in front of you, if you can't unzip them, you can't see them. So, okay, I need to learn, hey, dude, I got this zip file. Where do I go to get it? Oh, oh, okay, thank you. And then we've got moving. So it's either an action issue or a skill issue. And both of those are usually pretty simply fixed.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So everybody's journey begins embarrassingly small, and I think just having a little bit of compassion for yourself, having the humility to go, The first step that I do is going to be so small that it almost wouldn't register on the ledger of accomplishments. It would be minute going, okay, that's still a win. First thing, you don't know what to do? Second thing, you know what to do, but you don't know how to do it So you can sit down in front of the spreadsheet and you know that you've got to do a VLOKUP on this spreadsheet. We have no idea how to do a VLO lockup. Excel thing that Excel nodes will know. ChatGPT Google”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Embarrassing, but also not because that was the first step. But that wasn't the first step. The first step was deciding what name it was going to be and then driving to Gateshead to buy the Yeti secondhand from some dude on eBay and that Yeti went on to do 500 episodes of my podcast and then we changed to Nicer Microphones or something.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the beautiful thing about a lot of stuff on the internet is that it is archived for the rest of time. So you can go back and watch my first ever episode, which is me in my old office for the nightclub stuff that I did, and my business partner yelled at me afterward because I kicked everybody out so that I could record. And he's like, you can't keep doing this. It's not your studio. It's our office. And it's a single iPhone and a blue Yeti USB mic that looks like a big white dildo. And it's up and over the top of the desk. And it's me and a friend from the gym talking about how he might row the Atlantic one day.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is definitely a sense that Focusing our attention on a small step, kind of reveals the smallness of our lives, that like, oh my God, I said that I sat down at my desk, like, how pitiful. Is this really how small I've become? I should have this big cathedral of achievements and monumental stuff. Yeah, well, yeah, but how do you get there? We're going to lay the first break. So humility, being humble and compassionate to yourself. Okay, I did a thing today. I went for a walk. Felt like crap. I ate this bad sushi last night and I, you know, I did one thing, did one thing, one small thing that moved me toward my goal. So anyway.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm down at the desk. All right, there we go. I opened Instagram. Fuck. Okay. Close Instagram. Email client. That's the next action. So any bit, what is it? Like completing a marathon is just a ton of steps, one front of the other. It's just one foot in front of the other. Do this really, really big thing by breaking it down into small chunks. That's the first reason, in my opinion, for procrastination.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You do a next action. So, I'm procrastinating over a task. What is the next physical action that I can do that pushes me toward that goal? I need to write an email. Well, you better go and open your email client. Right? If you don't have your email client open, it is impossible for you to send the email. Well, actually before that, I need to sit down at my desk. Actually, before that, I might need to put my pants on. Campan, hooray, I'm moving”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As far as I can see, there's two main reasons for procrastination. The first one is you don't know what to do. So you have this big book in front of you, but nobody's ever written a book. They've written a sentence, and then that sentence has accumulated over time into pages and paragraphs, and then a book appears, or you've reviewed a book, you've looked at the edit, you've made a decision about the color for the front cover, but you do what's called a next action from getting things done, David Allen's productivity strategy. People want a really, really great productivity strategy, getting things done by David Allen is about as good as you can get.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In order to avoid the one thing that does, it's because it's a big, scary task that people will endure months, years, decades of misery, to avoid a couple of days of pain, and that makes sense it's a good trade, in some ways, but over time you're going to accumulate an awful lot of discomfort.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Question to ask yourself if I could only achieve one thing today, start of every day, if I could only achieve one thing today, what would that be? You're only allowed to do one thing, and it's the big thing. It's usually the scary thing. It's usually the thing that you probably don't want to do. How many times does someone go and clean the cupboard in the kitchen that hasn't been touched for six months? Rearrange, I'll rearrange all of the plates because they don't want to have that conversation with their boss. They don't want to face that particular piece of work, which is like big and scary, and I don't really know how to tackle it, how to begin. You will do”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“destroying themselves in this perpetual sense of not enoughness, they're always chasing the next thing. So all of that is for me to say that people want productivity, desire productivity. I'm just trying to say you're probably working real hard as it is. That being said, how much do I think about productivity and how can we like twist the knife a little bit more to give people some tools?”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You see your own shortfalls from a front row seat, right? And this is one of the curses of people who have big dreams, goals for themselves. The size of their goals is always greater than their ability to deliver them. And we assume that by having very, very, very high standards for ourselves, that's it, shoot for the stars and even if you don't get it, you'll end up on the moon, something like that. Yeah, whatever. That's great for a while, and it's very good at the beginning of your journey. But after a while, I think you just need to give yourself a fucking break, dude. Like people are.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course you are. Why is that surprising? Look at what you've built. How could you not do that if you were seeing how much you did?”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And after a while, you have to accept I'm doing quite a lot. And if you were an athlete on a sports team and your coach only ever pointed at you when you made a bad play You wouldn't feel particularly motivated by that a lot of people have this sense of productivity debt. They wake up every day feeling as if they're already behind, and only if they dominate their entire day perfectly can they drag themselves back up to some minimum level of acceptable output, and only then can they go to sleep that night without feeling like a loser. This means that your set point is lost, and the best thing that you can do if you crush the day is get to a draw. You never win. And then there's this sort of weird drill sergeant in the back of your mind that's saying all right, you can have a little bit of a break now, but just so you know, soon as you wake up in the morning, it's all going to happen again. And you know, I'm speaking to a very particular type of mindset here, that there is a huge cohort of people on the internet who do need David Goggin screaming in their face telling them to go harder and sort their life out.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Yeah, there's a wonderful idea called productivity dysmorphia. It's the inability to see your own success. To acknowledge the volume of your own output. So it sits at the intersection of burnout imposter syndrome and anxiety. Think of it like ambitions alter ego, basically, like the pursuit of productivity spurs us to do more. While robbing us of the ability to savor any of the successes that we achieve along the way. So, first off, people are not particularly good judges of how productive they are. I think so many people are whipping themselves into submission, saying, you're not doing enough, because in the past that motivated them to do more.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This sucks. After you go out for dinner, if you've got lunch break from work, eat your food ten minute little walk. Again, I challenge people to do it and not say that it makes them feel really good. You go for dinner, you're with a friend, you're out with a partner, you're meeting somebody for the first time, say, hey, why don't we have a little stroll? Sometimes it can be freezing outside, whatever. Do what you can. Let's go for a little stroll. It makes a huge difference. Huge difference”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, of course. It's not a bug, it's a feature. This was the price of entry, it's the cost of doing business, of trying to do behavior change that it's not always going to work. Another one, another great resolution. Ten minute walk after every meal. Huge, huge ROI, dude, crazy. So it's called a postprandial walk. And what it does is it helps to regulate glucose. It gets your blood sugar moving, your stomach because of the contralateral movement of how your arms and your legs work. The muscles actually cross across your stomach, which helps you to digest food. You know, you have a huge big meal. You're having a great conversation. And you sit there and you're like, oh, I mean, this conversation's so great. I feel awful”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that means that small errors can snowball into complete demolitions of the habit. But if you just think, okay, at some point this year, I'm going to miss it. And the rule is, if I missed it yesterday, I have to do it today. And that alleviates your issue, which was I cranked it for the first couple of months and then one day came in and I thought, ugh, and then the second day, and then I thought, well, this is just me now.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And alleviates all or nothing mentality that we all have. If you put a packet biscuits in front of me and you, we say you can have none of them or you can have all of them. Easy. Tell me to have two of them. Fuck you, dude. I'm not going to have two. No one has two biscuits, right? You have all of the biscuits or you have none of the biscuits. And that's kind of humans are absolutist creatures, like think in extremes. To be super, super dialed in on my diet, and it's going to be great. And I'm going to get up and do my meditation and do the rest. Or I'm going to go full DGN mode and I'm partying and it's a beether and so on and so forth. Like there is no middle ground really with this.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“best habit book of all time, atomic habits, of all of the things. There's only two that have really, really, really stuck. This is the best rule when it comes to habits. Never missed two days in a row. You are not going to be able to go to the gym every day. There will be one day when an absolute catastrophe occurs, you ate some dodgy sushi last night. You can't go, but what you have is, you know. One missed day is an error. Two missed days is the start of a new habit.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being smart is basically pointless unless you're at peace. Any amount of intelligence can be overridden by ego or insecurity or immorality or bad incentives or impatience or poor sleep. Sleep is, as far as I can see, just it's the pebble at the top of the avalanche. It's the gateway drug to everything else being horrendous. Your caffeine use is impacting your sleep. Your phone use is impacting your sleep. Your alcohol in an evening time is impacting your sleep. If you think that you drink in order to go to sleep, you're not sleeping. You're sedating yourself. Okay, so if we can sort the sleep out, how many other things open up? But you don't sort the sleep out. You sort the caffeine intakeout and you sort the nighttime phone use out and you sort the drinking out. And then, oh my God, I've got all of this extra willpower. The thing that I thought was the issue, which was I kind of always feel a bit tired and sluggish on the morning, I always want to eat salty foods around midday.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reward from Building Good Habits From Now Having a Meditation Practice, from now getting up on time, from being able to go to the gym more, I've become more dependent on that than I ever was on the alcohol.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Means that you've paid all of the pain at the very beginning to not actually get any of the benefits of this being my new habit. Do it with an accountability buddy, do it with your partner, say, hey, I listened to those two British idiots talk about how not drinking might be a good idea. Why don't we do that? Why don't we try going sober until July? You haven't missed the summer? The summer's just about to kick in, so if you think, oh, I can't wait to get back to drinking, you can have a beer and a beer garden. A huge proportion of people will not want to go back to drinking. They'll do it. Take time off, get into it, and realize that. I actually don't like this. I love the fact I got more.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want to go to the gym more consistently. They want to improve their eating habits. They don't realize that the thing that's stopping them from doing that is sat at the bottom of the glass of wine that they have four nights a week. It's tough. Some people are able to do it and they don't mind. The cost-benefit ratio for some people is great. I'm just saying try. Just try. Try six months. And the reason that you need to put an end date on it is that you have, it's like running a race where you know that there's a finish line. There's no finish line. It's really hard to run the race. How are you motivating yourself to get there? I think that 90 days would be the absolute minimum. 30 days isn't long enough. You need longer, right? And especially given that the hardest bit is the start.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct, yeah, of course, but if you take alcohol out for about six months, what it forces you to do is think, do I really want to go to that party? I'm actually having to anesthetize myself of People that I'm around, like if you can only bear to be around your friends when you're drinking, that's probably not a good indication. And if your friends only want you to be around them when you're drinking, they're not friends, they're drinking partners. So I think alcohol is a big question. I just like it. It just makes me have more fun. I get it. But I think if people look at it closely, they realize that they're using alcohol as a bit of a crutch. They're using it to bolster themselves in a way”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“parties and things that you attend are not superbly fun and some people use alcohol in order to make their family or the wedding or the birthday a little bit more comfortable social”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct and tightness. Exactly. And caffeine binds to it and it stops you from feeling tired. Salt acts your on your adrenal system. So if you use some sort of electrolyte drink first thing in the morning, that will help to get that moving. But the main reason for this, regardless of the research, most people have a 1 p.m. slump. They feel a little bit tired. And I think if you just push that caffeine a little bit later, just see if you can hold on. When you wake up, you should be okay-ish. Just the natural cortisol, you've gone for your little walk. Here we are. No alcohol for six months. It's a big one. This is much more high effort for a lot of people, even people that don't drink that much because a lot of the...”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A little walk, bit of fresher, just get up, put your shoes on, get going. Just get moving. You don't need to think. You don't need to do anything at all. You don't need to brush your teeth, get up and go. Probably need to get the bathroom, actually. Get up and go. No caffeine within 90 minutes of waking. Just push your caffeine a little bit later. It seems like the adenosine system isn't dominant during the first 90 minutes of the day, your adrenal system is.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The research around this is fantastic. Humans obviously pushed this a lot morning sunlight in your eyes. Even if you don't have the sun, even if you're somewhere dark and cold and wet, it doesn't matter. Getting up and doing ambulation, so walking through an environment while your eyes scan left and right seems to tune down your fear response. It makes your amygdala just a little bit more calm. So regardless of whether if there's sunlight, fantastic, that would be even better. Five minutes, ten minutes. And I know people have got structural limitations. This is me assuming that you've got 20 minutes on a morning that you could slot this into. And if you're not waking up with your phone in your hand, that probably is the 20 minutes.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Getting your phone and putting it outside of the bedroom is no cost. There's no reason to not do it. The only reason to not do it is somebody needs to ring you or something like that. I get it. Maybe you've got kids that are out late and you need to make sure that they're okay in case some sort of catastrophe occurs. But really, there are very few excuses to not have it outside. Radio alarm clocks have existed for forever. Buy a radio alarm clock. Take your phone cable now and put it in the kitchen or put it in the living room or something. Or put it on the other side of the room, right? Because you don't want to wake up and charge on your phone. It's the single biggest improves quality of sleep. It means that your mornings are better. It means that your nights are better. It means you're less distracted. It means you spend less time on your phone. You're forced to do something even tiny bit more productive, like watch Netflix or read a book or talk to your partner.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to be using your phone before you go to sleep, which means that you're going to cut into your sleep time. You're going to be in an environment digitally that's going to make yourself feel horrendous. It's not good. It's not good for sleep. Whether it's the blue light, there's a little bit of research that seems to say that it's not the blue light so much as it is the scroll sort of dopamine trigger adrenal intermittent schedule reward thing, that that's the main issue of what's going on. But it also means if you can't sleep, you know, you can just roll over and pick your phone up and now you're two hours into a YouTube scroll hole. That's who you truly are, by the way. People think that who you are is your journal entries, your diary entries. No, no. Who you truly are the videos that you watch on YouTube between 10 p.m. and 12 p.m. at night when you can't sleep. That's who you really are.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hit in the face by the world telling you what's happening as opposed to you having a tiny little microcosm of peace, this little oasis for you. And I get it. People that have got young kids are hit in the face by the children, not by the phone. But even if you do, adding the phone and the scroll and everything else on top, that means you're not present with the kids. So even if the kids are a problem, you don't need to have the phone in there. You wake up. It means that you're always on the other side. The world is happening to you. You're not happening to the world. When you go to bed on a nighttime.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an instant 15% quality of life increase. Because when you start your day, if you use your phone as your alarm, you roll over, you turn the alarm off, and immediately you're looking at your phone. You haven't got up, you haven't got moving, you're not hydrated, you're not seeing sunlight in your eyes.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's cool, dude. I want to do it. I want to know what everyone else's big resolutions are. So I'll give you mine. No phone in the bedroom at night. Charge it outside?”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I reflected last year on the highest ROI resolutions that I've ever done. And what I think would be cool would be if people put the single best return on investment resolution that they've ever done in the comments because that will create maybe the biggest repository of the highest value New Year's resolutions that anybody's ever had. And the best ones will get upvoted and the bad ones will be heavily criticized in the replies. So that could be kind of cool.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was the best sex I heard? My favourite quote in song and artist and then there's a plan. What would I do this year if I wanted to make eighty five year old me miserable? What are the things I do to make my day go great? What do I think is productive that isn't What is productive that I don't realize? Those are two big ones. And then there's some final thoughts. What would have had to have happened by the end of next year to look back and consider it a success? Who do I need to become the next chapter of my life to go the way that I want, knowing what I know now, what advice would I give myself 12 months ago? So for the people that are frantically taking notes, they can just go to ChrisWalex.com slash review, and this is available for free.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the end of each year, you need to have some sort of a format. If anyone wants to go and download it, they can go to ChrisWillX.com slash review. It's totally free. They can just copy and paste it into their Notes app of choice and then fill it in. I realized that this big question of it's the end of the year and I need to look back on it. I want to reflect on what went well and badly and I want to plan my goals without a structure, you're just like cast out adrift, free-wheeling everywhere and you have no idea what to do. So there's a bunch of questions. Stuff like how has this year gone? What went well? What went badly? And why? What lessons did I learn? What habit or system accounted for most of my success? What are the most valuable ways that I spend my time? How can I find more time for this? There's a section for memories. What was the best surprise, best meal, coolest new experience, my favorite new city, my favorite new friend? What was my favorite day or my most intense day?”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I don't know, man. I mean, you know. I'm trying I'm trying but behavioral design. I've got better. The one thing that I can say and the beautiful thing about the end of your review, there are some resolutions which I decided on a decade ago that I still do now. And I think that's really cool. So when I'm faced with the opportunity to plan because I gave myself a little bit of space, right? And it never happened. Very few of the habits that randomly appeared in the middle of July are ones that I've stuck with and I really care about. Bad ones maybe. Maybe accumulated bad habits in the middle of July. But most of the ones that I really love that are very conscious that are aligned with where I want to go, the ones that I consciously designed, they're ones that were done purposefully. And that's always been around a review period. So yeah, end of the year is not special. But when else are you going to do it? Right? When else are you going to do it? But yeah, 12 months ago and 10 years ago, I was doing the same thing.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stop working so hard. Stop working so hard. Take a day off. Take a day off. Take a day off per week. Put your phone down. Your phone down, go outside, touch some grass. And it's the same thing now. It's the exact same thing now.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The big problems are the big problems in the same way that you've got the feet that you had a decade ago. The big drivers, psychologically for you, tend to be the same throughout your life. I put other people's happiness ahead of mine. Maybe that showed up when I was a child and I didn't speak up to mum when I felt upset because I was worried that it would upset her. Maybe that happened when I got into my first job and I didn't advocate for myself when my boss was treating me poorly. Maybe that happens when I get into a relationship and I'm scared of making my needs known to my partner because I'm worried that they're going to reject me or think lesser of me. When it comes to my child, I'm terrified to discipline them because I need their love and I don't want them to make them upset. This is a single trend that's occurring throughout your life. And all of the time, one of the most common questions that people ask is, what would you tell yourself ten years ago? Great question to ask. Not because it's trite, but because it is almost always the very same thing that you need to hear right now.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so that's what advice you would have given yourself 12 months ago knowing what you know now. almost certainly what you need to hear right now”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me give you another one. Great question to reflect on. Knowing what I know now What advice would I give myself twelve months ago?”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, oh my God, the thing that I want, and they're just casting it away. Like, how dare you? How dare you say that the thing that I know I want isn't the answer to my problems? And yet reliably Everybody that gets there says it's not the answer.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's the same lesson as Paolo Quayle as the alchemist, which is this young boy goes on a huge big journey, and he finds out the thing that he was looking for was in the back garden all along. But that's an unteachable lesson. And the big lesson behind the alchemist is Going on a massive journey to end up back where you started is not the same as having never left. And this is what an unteachable lesson is. You have to go to the top of the mountain to get up there and go, oh, damn Damn it. I thought that was going to be the answer. But now that it's not, I can rid myself of that. And it's so unpopular, it's so unpopular to talk about this online because everybody that doesn't have a thing assumes that the thing will fix their problems and that the people who have got there achieved it and say that it didn't are ungrateful.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Parable of the Mexican fisherman. An American businessman was away on holiday in Mexico, and he got taken out by a fisherman. And he asked the fisherman, so what do you do each day? The fisherman said, I spend each morning out on the water, I fish a little, I catch some food, I take it home, and I sit in my house with my wife and my family, and we eat what I've caught for the day. The American says, That's stupid. That's a stupid idea. What you should do is you should get a bigger boat, and then you could catch more fish, and then you could go sell it at the market. The fisherman said, Why would I do that? So, well, once you've sold it at the market, you could buy some more boats and you could get your friends to come and work for you, and then they could catch more fish, and you could start to sell it wholesale. Fishman said, why would I do that? Well, then you could create a canning factory and you could export it back to the UK, and you could have a huge business. Fisherman said, why would I do that? Well, then you would be able to retire and fish a little on a morning and catch some fish, and then spend the afternoon with your family.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's difficult to say because you're like, people want and need real resources. I want to improve the quality of my family. That's a noble thing to do. But after a while, you have to admit if you already live a comfortable quality of life and you trade it, you You trade your happiness or your peace in order to get more. You're making a bad choice because you're going to sacrifice something that you want, which is happiness, peace, connection, for something that's supposed to get the thing that you want, which is money, job title, bigger car.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Better job title. One of the problems that you encounter with that is that the length of your commute is one of the most correlated stats with your happiness. Longer commutes reliably make people more miserable. And what's the hidden metric that you've lost by doing that? Well, that's the less time with your family, with maybe your kids that are growing up, with your wife to connect. That's less time to pursue your own passions, even if your job is your passion. So what about a more stressful career, going to move into a different industry that's way more stressful, but it pays more observable metric? What's the hidden metric? What about the peace of mind that you have as you go to sleep at night? What about what that does to your health and the quality of your relationships and your ability to be present on a weekend so you're not able to turn your phone off because your last job was nine to five, but this one is 24-7.”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of course. The only way that your success can be judged is Outwardly so naturally we trade something which people can't see for something that they can see. For instance, lots of people would trade a longer commute for a higher salary or a”
2025-12-29 · The Diary of a CEO · Chris Williamson: If You Don't Fix This Now, 2026 Is Already Over! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT