Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome back, Gray.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Oh, you sound chipper on this lovely British morning.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Is it morning? I don't know what it is.

00:00:08 ◼   ► We're not on Gray Standard Time anymore, my friend.

00:00:11 ◼   ► No, we're not on Gray Standard Time.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Which is a shame.

00:00:14 ◼   ► So you are back in the UK.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:17 ◼   ► It's the middle of July.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Is it? Okay.

00:00:19 ◼   ► You left the UK at the beginning of June?

00:00:22 ◼   ► Uh, yes.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I arrived back in the UK six weeks to the day from when I left. That's what happened.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Is this the longest-- no, it's not the longest trip you've taken away, is it? You've done longer than this.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Well, I was trying to think about it. It depends a lot on what you mean by a trip.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Like, I have done-- there have been longer periods of traveling.

00:00:51 ◼   ► But I think it-- I think in the way that any reasonable person would think about

00:00:55 ◼   ► what is a trip versus

00:00:58 ◼   ► what is simply being nomadically homeless. Like there's a boundary there.

00:01:03 ◼   ► And I think if we're constraining it to trips

00:01:07 ◼   ► this is the longest trip I think I have ever done.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I can probably safely say that. There's a couple things that come close, but I think this is the longest continual

00:01:20 ◼   ► Thing that is still clearly a trip that I have ever done. I have this coming up to actually in just a few weeks

00:01:26 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, so in I'm gonna be in the United States of America for all of August. Oh, I didn't realize that

00:01:34 ◼   ► Yeah, this is this is something different for me. I have

00:01:37 ◼   ► three independent events

00:01:40 ◼   ► That I need to work that I need to do. So I have three things I have to attend during August

00:01:47 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, and I decided that I would just stay in America for the entire time rather than coming back and going back again

00:01:54 ◼   ► So I've done that before

00:01:55 ◼   ► Right way like, you know

00:01:56 ◼   ► You've got something one week and you've got a week break and then another thing and I've done that and it will kill you

00:02:02 ◼   ► Right like terrible just destroys. Yep. So I've decided this time to pack up my bags

00:02:08 ◼   ► For a month and go so I'm ending it with a vacation

00:02:13 ◼   ► But the first three weeks are all work related activities

00:02:16 ◼   ► So I was hoping that you could give me some kind of

00:02:20 ◼   ► travel tips life hacks

00:02:23 ◼   ► For an for an individual who's gonna be spending a large period of time away from home. You want life hacks? That's what you want

00:02:31 ◼   ► I don't even know how to do laundry. Like how would you you know, like

00:02:35 ◼   ► There are all these things and like meals do I eat restaurants the whole time?

00:02:40 ◼   ► Like I don't really know how to handle this.

00:02:43 ◼   ► The first thing is your simple decision to just stay in America.

00:02:47 ◼   ► That is the correct decision.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Good.

00:02:49 ◼   ► That's by far and away the best thing to do and that's why my previous trip was so long.

00:02:54 ◼   ► It was the exact same situation.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Like I had a bunch of things at inconvenient times from each other

00:03:00 ◼   ► that like maybe I could have gone back to the UK but it would have been terrible

00:03:05 ◼   ► and I would have done something like

00:03:07 ◼   ► eight transatlantic flights in six weeks and like nope not happening

00:03:10 ◼   ► It's a similar thing right like yeah to me like a bunch of conferences

00:03:13 ◼   ► and then just some work-related meetings and activities that are better if I'm in person rather than in home

00:03:19 ◼   ► Yeah

00:03:20 ◼   ► Yeah, so I can I totally understand

00:03:22 ◼   ► how this can end up happening and then this is also at least I find it becomes a little bit of a um

00:03:28 ◼   ► a self-sustaining cycle because once you

00:03:31 ◼   ► commit to being in a place for a while then you can start

00:03:35 ◼   ► gathering up other things that are useful to do while you're there.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, like I'm spending a bunch of time in New York, which just from a business perspective could be very valuable to me.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Right, so there are things I haven't planned out yet, but I know it's gonna be a

00:03:49 ◼   ► beneficial trip.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. You can start making these things more useful

00:03:56 ◼   ► than your time would be spent on a plane going back and forth.

00:04:00 ◼   ► Yep.

00:04:01 ◼   ► And then dealing with jet lag and all the rest of this.

00:04:03 ◼   ► So yeah, it's I think it's a smart move to try to bundle things. This is why like the the summers for me are always

00:04:08 ◼   ► big blocks of travel is because of this exact thing. Like I find that the flights are very

00:04:14 ◼   ► costly in every in every meaning of that word.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And so

00:04:21 ◼   ► decreasing the number of flights and bunching as much together into one big block of travel is much more

00:04:27 ◼   ► valuable to do than breaking it up into a bunch of little trips.

00:04:32 ◼   ► And it's just interesting talking to other people that I know I think the default human response is if there is time enough to go

00:04:38 ◼   ► Back home that you should go back home, but I really do

00:04:41 ◼   ► urge people who travel a bunch to think about

00:04:44 ◼   ► Bunching things together into bigger blocks like I personally find it much better to do even if it's inconvenient for a long stretch

00:04:53 ◼   ► I totally understand that right because I felt that way and it's why I've done it in the past

00:04:57 ◼   ► Like if I have a week or eight days or something where I've where I could be at home then I would do that

00:05:02 ◼   ► But like this particular trip, it's never more than like four days at a time

00:05:06 ◼   ► And that's just not tenable right like I would be traveling for 50% of those four days

00:05:13 ◼   ► So right, it doesn't make sense. It really just doesn't make sense

00:05:18 ◼   ► I don't think anybody will benefit from that right like the reason I would go home is because I don't

00:05:25 ◼   ► particularly want to spend three weeks away from it.

00:05:27 ◼   ► You know, like it's just not really a thing that I'm keen on doing.

00:05:30 ◼   ► But the time that I would be here, I wouldn't be very.

00:05:35 ◼   ► Great to be around.

00:05:38 ◼   ► So, like, you know, this is the end of the trip is we're taking a vacation

00:05:42 ◼   ► together, which I think is a good way to cap it all off. Right.

00:05:45 ◼   ► We'll be away for three weeks, but then we'll be back together

00:05:47 ◼   ► and going on the holiday, which seems just I don't know.

00:05:51 ◼   ► It seems better than like Myke being a zombie for a day and a half

00:05:54 ◼   ► before he gets ready to go again.

00:05:56 ◼   ► 'Cause then there are still these things

00:05:57 ◼   ► that are just more frustrating,

00:05:59 ◼   ► like for example, me waking up at 4.30 in the morning

00:06:01 ◼   ► to go back to the airport, right?

00:06:03 ◼   ► Just nobody wants or needs these things in their life,

00:06:05 ◼   ► so I'm, I think I'm, I mean, I'm gonna see how it goes.

00:06:08 ◼   ► I might hate this, right?

00:06:10 ◼   ► But I think that this seems like the right course of action

00:06:14 ◼   ► for this particular set of trips.

00:06:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can definitely see that.

00:06:21 ◼   ► All right, so you want life hacks?

00:06:23 ◼   ► I need real usable chips. I need takeaways, I need some key takeaways.

00:06:26 ◼   ► I mean, I'm just trying to think like

00:06:30 ◼   ► Okay, so things that matter for, okay, we'll start with number one. Mm-hmm. Laundry. When I do this kind of trip

00:06:38 ◼   ► Laundry just becomes a big part of it because you can't actually pack six weeks worth of clothing

00:06:45 ◼   ► You can't pack a month's worth of clothing. It's just not gonna happen

00:06:50 ◼   ► But I like to view this as an advantage because

00:06:54 ◼   ► Once you assume that laundry is going to be part of this process

00:06:58 ◼   ► You can actually pack less than you would for a trip that's like a week-long trip

00:07:05 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, because if you think about it, if you know you're going to be doing laundry

00:07:11 ◼   ► You can probably cut down the number of outfits you would take on a week trip by like

00:07:17 ◼   ► 30% at least so I just I just assume that it's that this is going to happen and

00:07:24 ◼   ► It depends on like what exactly your situation is but like very very often in America like if

00:07:30 ◼   ► Depending on where you are there just are not

00:07:33 ◼   ► Convenient laundromats around or like it's such an incredible hassle, and you're usually busy

00:07:39 ◼   ► so I have yet to meet a hotel that won't do the laundry for you and

00:07:46 ◼   ► this is this is one of these places where

00:07:50 ◼   ► Yes, are they gonna charge you a fortune to do the laundry?

00:07:54 ◼   ► Of course they are because because they've got you right is they have like a laundry monopoly in this in this little moment

00:08:01 ◼   ► Also, they should because nobody wants to do other people's laundry. Yeah, nobody wants to do other people's laundry

00:08:06 ◼   ► No, people need to be paid handsomely for that task. Yeah

00:08:12 ◼   ► Someone's got to fold your socks Myke and I find that this is one of these things that if you can mentally get on board

00:08:20 ◼   ► With the idea that you just accept that that you're not getting like a deal on your laundry

00:08:25 ◼   ► And of course if you went to a laundromat, it would cost less. But what you're getting is a bunch of

00:08:32 ◼   ► Hassle removed from your life. Yeah, and a thing that just happens automatically

00:08:37 ◼   ► I tell you why I wouldn't want to go to a laundromat gray. Okay, tell me why

00:08:40 ◼   ► I know I wouldn't know how to use the machine and I don't want to have to deal with not knowing how to use the machine

00:08:46 ◼   ► Right, like I would get there

00:08:48 ◼   ► Yeah

00:08:49 ◼   ► And I like would be bumbling around and I'd maybe need to ask for help like I don't want to be in the situation

00:08:55 ◼   ► Where I have a washing machine, I don't know how to use I know how to use my washing machine

00:09:00 ◼   ► But I was taught how to use our washing machine

00:09:02 ◼   ► No one's gonna like it's not gonna be just an implicit thing that I arrive at the laundromat and they're like, mr

00:09:07 ◼   ► Hurley come this way. Let's show you the machine. That's not what's gonna happen

00:09:10 ◼   ► happen. So like I'm going to stand in front of this washing machine and like American

00:09:14 ◼   ► washing machines are so different, right? Like you put stuff in the top. That's not,

00:09:18 ◼   ► I don't even know how to do that, right? Like that doesn't make any sense to me.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Gravity pulls it down. That's how it works. You hold the clothes over and you let go and

00:09:26 ◼   ► gravity pulls them into the washing machine and then they just pop out the other end.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Is that how it works? No, it's like one shoe up. You pick them up out of the hole and you

00:09:34 ◼   ► put them in the dryer. Yeah, I just I don't know man. I just there's too many variables

00:09:38 ◼   ► So I I'm scared of the laundromat, honestly.

00:09:41 ◼   ► Okay, look, well, I've got some bad news for you because

00:09:44 ◼   ► When I say that I've never been at a hotel that that doesn't do the laundry

00:09:48 ◼   ► Many hotels will just take your laundry away and bring it back to you folded up in a little box

00:09:55 ◼   ► Which is like a gift from heaven when you're traveling I go. Thank God

00:09:58 ◼   ► It's a thing that I don't have to worry about

00:10:00 ◼   ► But if they don't do that, they will have a little mini laundromat in the hotel. And so you you may

00:10:07 ◼   ► You when I say doing laundry at a hotel you may have to functionally use what is a laundromat

00:10:12 ◼   ► Just in the but it's very easy Myke all you do is you go to go to the front desk

00:10:17 ◼   ► you ask the nice person at the front desk to turn a

00:10:20 ◼   ► $5 bill into a bunch of quarters and you put the quarters in the machine

00:10:24 ◼   ► And it's essentially all automated like you you will have almost no options

00:10:28 ◼   ► Except to put your clothes in the machine feed the machine and that's it

00:10:34 ◼   ► You see, the thing is, in the hotel I would be more willing to ask for help and I wouldn't feel so awkward.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Right? Like if I needed help I would ask the person at the front desk.

00:10:42 ◼   ► But like in the laundromat, I don't know, it just feels like a more intimidating experience for me.

00:10:47 ◼   ► To walk into this, you know, room of people doing their laundry and then I'm like, "Oh!"

00:10:52 ◼   ► Bumbling around in my Britishness and I drop my top hat and then like, oh it would be a nightmare.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Yeah, but you gotta make that work for you, Myke. You just be like, "I'm from a foreign land.

00:11:01 ◼   ► We don't we don't have laundry machines. Please help me

00:11:04 ◼   ► So I should basically what you're saying is I should walk in there with like a Union Jack waistcoat

00:11:08 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. That's what you need to do tip everybody off straight right at the beginning

00:11:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's that's that would that would work best for you

00:11:16 ◼   ► But you won't really have to do that because the hotel will just handle it for you great

00:11:19 ◼   ► and that's that's the number one thing and I

00:11:22 ◼   ► Guess especially especially the summer for me with with the conferences that I was at. Mm-hmm

00:11:28 ◼   ► I cannot I cannot tell you what a mental relief it is to just have this one part of the problem just handled

00:11:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like great. My bags are lighter, but my clothes will always be clean

00:11:39 ◼   ► Because I'll just every other day

00:11:42 ◼   ► I'll hand the hotel that I'm at a bag with some small amount of laundry and

00:11:46 ◼   ► It will just be returned and everything will be fine. So that's great. That's really great. That's it

00:11:51 ◼   ► Okay, so next two of the three weeks, right? I am gonna be working

00:11:57 ◼   ► I'm just working as normal in hotels.

00:12:01 ◼   ► The third week I'm staying with Steven, my co-founder, and I'm going to be working

00:12:06 ◼   ► from his office.

00:12:07 ◼   ► Some people do let me work in their offices with them, which is just really nice.

00:12:12 ◼   ► It's just a good thing to do.

00:12:14 ◼   ► So you're office surfing, that's what you're doing?

00:12:16 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:12:17 ◼   ► So I'm just going to be working in his office because he offered – because he's kind

00:12:21 ◼   ► – you know, it's like a good thing, right?

00:12:23 ◼   ► Like you've got a friend, you need some time to spend in an office, and he's like,

00:12:26 ◼   ► I'll bring a desk in for you. We'll work together in the office." Some people are just really

00:12:31 ◼   ► good about that sort of stuff. So we're going to do that for the third week. But for the

00:12:36 ◼   ► other two weeks, I need to be working as normal, but I'm living in the hotel. Where do I work?

00:12:42 ◼   ► Do I stay in the hotel or do I go to places?

00:12:46 ◼   ► All right, it always depends on the hotel. But one of the things I really like about traveling

00:12:57 ◼   ► and being at hotels is exploring a new hotel because I have yet to find a hotel that doesn't

00:13:07 ◼   ► have some kind of nice area to work in but it's not always obvious where this area is.

00:13:15 ◼   ► You're saying you spend time in the business center? Is that where you go?

00:13:19 ◼   ► Well, okay, so some places will have business centers, right? And that can be very nice.

00:13:24 ◼   ► But very often the business centers are terrible confined areas.

00:13:28 ◼   ► It's a printer and one computer in a closet.

00:13:31 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's not very nice.

00:13:33 ◼   ► But almost every hotel has some kind of area that's like for people having meetings who might be at the hotel.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And even surprisingly small hotels will have a little mini conference center of some kind.

00:13:51 ◼   ► And I often find that you can either just like find these areas of the hotel which are essentially abandoned and you just use them.

00:14:00 ◼   ► What are you laughing at?

00:14:02 ◼   ► No, because I've been in those hotels where like you walk down a corridor and there's nothing there.

00:14:07 ◼   ► There's nobody there and it doesn't look like anybody's been there in five years.

00:14:10 ◼   ► years, but there are these huge rooms. Like all of the San Francisco hotels that I've

00:14:14 ◼   ► stayed in are like this.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah. There was one of the hotels I was at this summer, it's like I was just

00:14:21 ◼   ► walking around, essentially trying to do this, like I'm trying to find a place to work, and

00:14:27 ◼   ► it's like, oh, there's a gigantic ballroom in the basement. And I was just like, just

00:14:33 ◼   ► go down the stairs, all the doors are open, like there's this whole place here, it's just

00:14:36 ◼   ► But there's nobody here. There's nobody here all day. Maybe for not for ten years, you know, it's like you just don't know

00:14:42 ◼   ► But it's it's it's surprising how many hotels if you look around have a space to work

00:14:49 ◼   ► That is almost certainly better than whatever sad little desk you have in the actual hotel room. Okay, so so I have I have

00:14:57 ◼   ► extraordinarily rarely not been able to find some better space in the hotel and

00:15:05 ◼   ► If you can't find any place I've asked at the front desk like oh are there like is there is there a meeting room somewhere?

00:15:12 ◼   ► that I can use if nobody's using it and

00:15:14 ◼   ► You know, usually if you're nice to the person at the front desk like oh, yeah, whatever

00:15:18 ◼   ► There's some there's some space that nobody goes into and it's fine

00:15:20 ◼   ► So do you not look for like cool coffee shops and outside places to work or do you just tend to stay in the hotel?

00:15:27 ◼   ► Well what I'm trying to the reason why I'm discussing the hotel here is I'm running under the assumption that you you might be in

00:15:35 ◼   ► a place where it's there's nothing around the hotel which is useful because

00:15:39 ◼   ► like sometimes in America particularly if you don't have a car you can be a

00:15:43 ◼   ► little bit isolated depending where you're staying. Well so most of this time

00:15:48 ◼   ► I'll be in New York City. Okay so you'll be in New York City. Yeah. Alright well

00:15:52 ◼   ► then then it's a different thing like then then you can try to find cool

00:15:57 ◼   ► hipster places to work in. I'll make you think that that's what I'm looking for.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Well, I don't know. I just assumed that you'd go out on the streets and your hipsterdar would point you in the correct location to...

00:16:09 ◼   ► You were close there. I think like hipster, hipster would have been better.

00:16:13 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:16:13 ◼   ► As a pun. You really nearly got it. Nearly got it.

00:16:17 ◼   ► I think it was perfectly fine.

00:16:18 ◼   ► But yeah, like that can totally, that can totally work.

00:16:21 ◼   ► But I prefer if I can find a guaranteed quiet spot in the hotel to work, I would usually rather do that.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Because it's just it's just like a more it's like a more guaranteed space. Yeah. Yeah

00:16:33 ◼   ► There's no expectation if you need them to leave because you haven't bought enough lattes, right? Like it's yeah

00:16:38 ◼   ► Yeah, even if it's just in the back of your mind, like what's the latte counter per hour here?

00:16:43 ◼   ► And yeah, it's like I've gotten a lot of really good work done in like weird abandoned places in a hotel

00:16:51 ◼   ► So it's that's why it's just particularly on my mind and it's like a life hack. All right, that's what that's what you're

00:16:56 ◼   ► That's what you're looking for

00:16:57 ◼   ► So when you're in these weird abandoned places, are you also playing Thunder Sound?

00:17:00 ◼   ► Or do you not do that?

00:17:02 ◼   ► Depends.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Oh man.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Depends on how likely I think it is that someone's gonna walk by.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I imagine like someone walking past the closed doors of the ballroom, just hears some person

00:17:11 ◼   ► muttering to themselves these thunder and lightning noises.

00:17:15 ◼   ► It's, "Oh, that must be incredible."

00:17:17 ◼   ► Yeah, this is how haunted hotel rumors start.

00:17:20 ◼   ► Alright, I have one last thing.

00:17:24 ◼   ► One last thing that I need your advice on for this trip, right?

00:17:26 ◼   ► food.

00:17:28 ◼   ► Now, I have noticed about myself that if I am away from home for like a long period of time,

00:17:34 ◼   ► I start to feel a bit sick from eating out all the time.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:17:39 ◼   ► So how do you combat this? Because like, you can't, I mean at least not in the hotels that I'm staying in, I can't prepare myself a meal.

00:17:47 ◼   ► So what do you do? Do you eat out for every meal?

00:17:51 ◼   ► I'm totally with you on this you can get kind of travel food sick yeah especially

00:18:00 ◼   ► in America yeah I'm sorry Americans like you have such amazing food but it's

00:18:07 ◼   ► really bad for your Constitution yeah and it can also be like this food is

00:18:11 ◼   ► amazing but also kind of plastic at the same at the same time

00:18:19 ◼   ► Gray said it, not me. I didn't say that.

00:18:22 ◼   ► That's why. You didn't need to say it. The American can say it and then it's fine.

00:18:25 ◼   ► I can say that out loud.

00:18:27 ◼   ► But it's even like, oh...

00:18:31 ◼   ► Like if I go into IHOP and it's like, oh, IHOP, you can make me an omelette any time of day. That's great.

00:18:36 ◼   ► That's a fantastic standard meal.

00:18:38 ◼   ► But after three of them, it's like, these omelettes are both delicious...

00:18:42 ◼   ► and plastic-y.

00:18:45 ◼   ► Like I feel like I have some kind of plastic residue building up inside of my body.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Or the food can just start to feel a little bit unreal.

00:18:58 ◼   ► And again, or again in America, sort of samey. Like every burger place is sort of the same.

00:19:05 ◼   ► So yeah, it's like America, fantastic for two weeks.

00:19:09 ◼   ► But it can, if you're there longer, it's like you need to start planning for this kind of stuff.

00:19:13 ◼   ► I don't have a lot to tell you about this because it depends so much on what you eat.

00:19:20 ◼   ► But there's two things here. The first is I will very--like on this past summer, I very frequently would just try to find a supermarket that was nearby.

00:19:32 ◼   ► And almost in a way, like, eat out at the supermarket. Like I'm just gonna go to the supermarket, I'm gonna buy some things that I can immediately assemble into a meal that I will just eat.

00:19:42 ◼   ► instead of eating out at a restaurant because it's just sort of like I said the food is sort of tiring constantly eating out at a restaurant

00:19:50 ◼   ► but what I also try to look for is

00:19:53 ◼   ► a lot of American hotels are sort of family oriented in that they will have like a little

00:19:59 ◼   ► fridge or maybe a super tiny kitchen area and

00:20:04 ◼   ► And that can be helpful. So if you know, you're gonna be in a place for a while

00:20:07 ◼   ► I will very often try to find a hotel that won't just have a mini bar

00:20:13 ◼   ► But they'll have here is a little refrigerator and maybe just like a like a one pan electric stovetop

00:20:20 ◼   ► Like it makes a huge difference. I think I you know, look, you know me right like the places that I've booked

00:20:27 ◼   ► That they're too hipster to have a little kitchenette like it's right. Let's be honest. I'm staying in Brooklyn for

00:20:36 ◼   ► You know, I yeah the kind of hotel that I assume has it like a dog at the front reception desk

00:20:41 ◼   ► maybe I'm not interested in the dog, but

00:20:44 ◼   ► It's very possible. Yeah a dog with glasses

00:20:47 ◼   ► And a bow tie so I may have shot myself in the foot on that one

00:20:51 ◼   ► Now if you already made reservations, I can't help you. Of course. I've already made reservations

00:20:56 ◼   ► I leave in like two and a half weeks gray. No, we don't all live on the edge like you

00:21:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I love I love to leave everything into the last possible second

00:21:05 ◼   ► Everybody who knows me is irritated to no end

00:21:07 ◼   ► This is a this is a hangover of standby flying is like how late can I leave this decision until I will leave it until the

00:21:16 ◼   ► last possible moment

00:21:18 ◼   ► But yeah, so I'm sorry that your hipster hotels won't have

00:21:21 ◼   ► Refrigerators. Yeah, I mean look they have all the other amenities that I'm looking for

00:21:26 ◼   ► But maybe not maybe then maybe it has a refrigerator, but I doubt it has a little stove top or anything

00:21:32 ◼   ► Yeah

00:21:32 ◼   ► Well, I think even with the refrigerator a thing that that becomes I've noticed becoming more difficult over time is that

00:21:38 ◼   ► You used to be able to kind of at least pack stuff in a little refrigerator

00:21:42 ◼   ► Even if it was explicitly intended to be a minibar

00:21:45 ◼   ► But more and more hotels are using those minibars that are pressure sensitive

00:21:48 ◼   ► So if you try to like pack some stuff in the refrigerator it registers that you have purchased everything and you're right and you have

00:21:54 ◼   ► Like a $500 bill the next morning. So it's those those those refrigerators are super annoying

00:22:01 ◼   ► There's one last thing that I'll just mention for long-term travel, which people don't often think about but

00:22:08 ◼   ► You can have things

00:22:11 ◼   ► sent to a hotel in advance of your arrival.

00:22:15 ◼   ► Mmm.

00:22:16 ◼   ► And...

00:22:18 ◼   ► What?

00:22:19 ◼   ► I'm just thinking about your cupboard full of audio equipment.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Look, look, we don't need to get into the details. We can gloss over the details.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Uh-huh, uh-huh.

00:22:29 ◼   ► But

00:22:30 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say for

00:22:32 ◼   ► very long travel it is it is worth

00:22:36 ◼   ► thinking about are there things that you can have sent to the hotel instead of having to carry it to the hotel or

00:22:42 ◼   ► things that you'll need on on the trip which are simply easier instead of

00:22:47 ◼   ► Getting them before you leave and packing them having them sent to where you're gonna go

00:22:50 ◼   ► you just you need to speak from experience you need to contact the hotel before you do this and

00:22:57 ◼   ► and find out whatever their little system is

00:22:59 ◼   ► because each hotel will have some squirrelly system for how you're supposed to address

00:23:03 ◼   ► the mail that they're going to get for you in advance

00:23:06 ◼   ► but this is also a hugely helpful thing

00:23:10 ◼   ► and so this summer I was actually very fortunate in that I was

00:23:13 ◼   ► I was re-upping on some of the clothes that I buy in like packages

00:23:17 ◼   ► as we've mentioned before, it's like "oh it's time to get new shirts"

00:23:20 ◼   ► so I need four new shirts of the exact same kind

00:23:24 ◼   ► And so I had a bunch of clothes that I was able to just have shipped to the hotel,

00:23:29 ◼   ► which were the new clothes that I was going to wear in bulk,

00:23:33 ◼   ► so that I didn't have to actually have it shipped to me here in the UK,

00:23:39 ◼   ► and then pack it all and travel with it to America.

00:23:42 ◼   ► It's like, no, I'm just arriving and this stuff is here.

00:23:45 ◼   ► And yes, there may be some other equipment or other things, who knows,

00:23:48 ◼   ► that it's useful to have sent ahead of time.

00:23:50 ◼   ► But it's just like I just want to mention it because it's a thing that people don't

00:23:54 ◼   ► think about but it's useful to just have in mind, especially if you're doing a long trip where I feel like

00:24:02 ◼   ► It's very easy to overwhelm yourself with packing just to keep this in mind as a tool

00:24:07 ◼   ► You can send stuff to a hotel in advance

00:24:11 ◼   ► And they will have it for you when you arrive and there may be things that you can do this with instead of having to

00:24:17 ◼   ► Pack them up and bring them with you. So just keep that in mind

00:24:20 ◼   ► This is something that I'm familiar with because quite frequently there will be a call from

00:24:25 ◼   ► the front desk for me and I have to go pick up a package which is probably something from

00:24:31 ◼   ► Levi's that Adina has ordered for me to bring home.

00:24:33 ◼   ► This is the thing.

00:24:34 ◼   ► B: Oh yes, yes.

00:24:35 ◼   ► That's a whole other category of things to bring home for somebody else from America.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Because America is full of treasures.

00:24:42 ◼   ► A; It's like, "What's the name of the hotel that you're staying in?

00:24:45 ◼   ► What's the address?"

00:24:46 ◼   ► B; Yes.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Yes, it is not possible to return from America without bringing things back for people unspecified.

00:24:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I once went down to the front desk, came back upstairs with a box.

00:24:58 ◼   ► I opened the box and there was a cooking thermometer in the box.

00:25:02 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:25:04 ◼   ► That's good.

00:25:06 ◼   ► It is a really good thermometer, though.

00:25:09 ◼   ► You know, America, they make good stuff there.

00:25:11 ◼   ► Except omelettes, right?

00:25:12 ◼   ► right? The omelettes are good, but not more than three in a row.

00:25:16 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Casper. Most people don't really think about

00:25:22 ◼   ► the science behind a mattress, but the Casper mattress was designed by a team of 20 engineers

00:25:28 ◼   ► and perfected by a community of nearly half a million sleepers. The Casper team are really just

00:25:35 ◼   ► a bunch of engineering nerds digging as far as possible into the science of sleep and the

00:25:40 ◼   ► technology that you use to deliver it. They've put their expertise into creating a mattress

00:25:45 ◼   ► that combines pressure relieving, supportive memory foam with a breathable open cell layer

00:25:51 ◼   ► for all night comfort. Don't just take my word for it, Fast Company recently named Casper

00:25:56 ◼   ► the most innovative brand of 2017 because of this.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Buying a Casper mattress is so easy it's completely risk free. They offer free delivery

00:26:06 ◼   ► and free returns to the US, Canada and the UK too and they ship directly to your door

00:26:11 ◼   ► in an impossibly small box. This box is so small you can get it up your stairs if you

00:26:16 ◼   ► live in an apartment building. You open the box up, you get the mattress out, it comes

00:26:21 ◼   ► in this vacuum pack thing which you open up, the mattress breathes to life and it's ready

00:26:26 ◼   ► to sleep on. Casper understand that you actually want to take some time before you make this

00:26:31 ◼   ► decision which is why with Casper you actually get to sleep on the mattress before because

00:26:37 ◼   ► Casper gives you 100 nights to try it out. They understand that you want to spend some

00:26:42 ◼   ► time on that mattress before you commit to sleeping on it for the next third of your

00:26:46 ◼   ► life. If you don't love it they will pick it up and refund you everything. Dive deeper

00:26:52 ◼   ► into the science behind the perfect mattress and get $50 towards any mattress purchase

00:26:58 ◼   ► by going to casper.com/cortex and using the code CORTEX at checkout. Terms and conditions

00:27:03 ◼   ► apply. We thank Casper for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:27:09 ◼   ► So I have a question for you. I feel like over the time that I've known you, over the

00:27:13 ◼   ► few years that we've been working together, you've been very influential on me in a few

00:27:17 ◼   ► different areas, you know, like making me think about different projects to start, different

00:27:21 ◼   ► ways of thinking about work. I just want to see if it is possible that I influenced you

00:27:28 ◼   ► in any way to start vlogging.

00:27:32 ◼   ► No. I'm sorry, Myke.

00:27:36 ◼   ► You should give me one. You know, just throw me a bone, you know? Look, just say yes and

00:27:43 ◼   ► then I can edit it in that way.

00:27:46 ◼   ► Myke, we have to be truthful with the listeners.

00:27:51 ◼   ► And it's like I can like I can hear it

00:27:54 ◼   ► I can hear it in your mic voice and I feel like I would I would love to give this gift to you

00:28:00 ◼   ► but if I give this gift to you

00:28:03 ◼   ► Then like I have to I'd have to like lie about all of the other questions

00:28:07 ◼   ► You're gonna ask me about vlogging and so we have to we have to go into this truthfully. What you said there's absolutely zero

00:28:14 ◼   ► influence from our discussions about vlogging which

00:28:20 ◼   ► pushed you into creating a vlog. Literally zero.

00:28:23 ◼   ► So Myke, if you go back to the CGP Grey 2 YouTube channel, and you look at some of those early videos,

00:28:32 ◼   ► those early videos are there because they are discards from vlogs that I tried to make

00:28:39 ◼   ► right from the start of the channel. Like, were there test footage for things that I was trying out.

00:28:47 ◼   ► So that vlog that I put up was probably the

00:28:52 ◼   ► Fifth or sixth serious run

00:28:56 ◼   ► That I had done

00:28:58 ◼   ► towards vlogging of some kind in the past many years

00:29:02 ◼   ► so

00:29:04 ◼   ► I'm sorry Myke. Well moving swiftly on then

00:29:07 ◼   ► Why did you do this? I really I can't understand why you did this like there are so many

00:29:16 ◼   ► Things that you just put out a video right like a couple of days before

00:29:20 ◼   ► It was a really big video that you've been working and I know for quite a while

00:29:24 ◼   ► Which was very good called seven ways to maximize misery that I don't want to talk about

00:29:28 ◼   ► Because I'll have to think about that video again, and it just makes me sad, right?

00:29:34 ◼   ► If I think about me and that video, I don't want to talk about that one

00:29:38 ◼   ► So we're just gonna move swiftly on past that. Moving swiftly along. Extremely swiftly

00:29:44 ◼   ► Almost at breakneck speeds. Yeah, that video has made a lot of people uncomfortable. Yeah, that's perfect. Don't want to think about it

00:29:51 ◼   ► Don't want to talk about it. Yep, great. I haven't thought about it for a while and now I don't even want to be here anymore

00:29:56 ◼   ► You'd like just put it up and it was doing really well and then you're like, oh surprise here is a vlog that I made

00:30:03 ◼   ► which is

00:30:05 ◼   ► 16 minutes long, which is 15 minutes 34 seconds to be precise

00:30:12 ◼   ► My my number one piece of critique for you is that your your time lapse was too long

00:30:17 ◼   ► That is that is my critique for you

00:30:19 ◼   ► If I know you didn't ask for it, but that would that would be it. I'm interested in your input. So

00:30:26 ◼   ► So I'm just very I'm really I was really struggling at the time to try and work out why

00:30:31 ◼   ► You did this. Mm-hmm, and I still don't think I have a good a good idea for it

00:30:36 ◼   ► Do you have any guesses you just like to surprise people? I don't know like I feel like sometimes, you know, just

00:30:42 ◼   ► About 60% of your overall work is just like a real long con on someone, right?

00:30:47 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:30:49 ◼   ► There is like, you know, some trolling event that you're working towards and like when we get there

00:30:55 ◼   ► You know, it's like a prestige type thing

00:30:58 ◼   ► Wow, that would be a lot of my work

00:31:04 ◼   ► That would simply be a long con

00:31:05 ◼   ► I wouldn't put that past you though, right?

00:31:07 ◼   ► Like my whole YouTube career was just a long con for this moment, like surprise, I'm actually

00:31:12 ◼   ► a vlogger, I just haven't told anybody.

00:31:16 ◼   ► It's just gonna be vlogs from now on, yup.

00:31:19 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, someone upset you like 15 years ago, and like you've been working towards

00:31:24 ◼   ► the payback, like, and eventually you'll get there.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Wow, that's an interesting perspective.

00:31:30 ◼   ► No, no, Myke, it's not a long time.

00:31:33 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, of course.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Although I do have to say it was in a perfect lineup of things

00:31:39 ◼   ► in the universe.

00:31:41 ◼   ► I was planning to post that video

00:31:43 ◼   ► when I did a couple days after the previous one had gone up.

00:31:46 ◼   ► But what I absolutely loved is the day before I posted it,

00:31:49 ◼   ► some guy on the Reddit had a top-voted comment where he's

00:31:53 ◼   ► like, oh, let me just--

00:31:54 ◼   ► I know what kind of videos Gray makes.

00:31:55 ◼   ► He makes two kinds of videos.

00:31:56 ◼   ► And he wrote this long explanation

00:31:58 ◼   ► of this is exactly what Gray does,

00:31:59 ◼   ► and we can expect all of his videos to look like this.

00:32:02 ◼   ► I was like teehee-heeing inside of her. I was like, you don't know it's coming tomorrow, buddy.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And it was great because a lot of people remembered that comment the you know when the vlog went out

00:32:12 ◼   ► They're like, hey didn't this guy have a top-voted comment about he knows exactly what's going to happen

00:32:16 ◼   ► So I you know, you know, I think the listeners of the show know that

00:32:22 ◼   ► the expectation is that you should not have expectations as you put it once Myke and I feel like this

00:32:31 ◼   ► Doing a vlog certainly fits into that category of an expectation breaker.

00:32:38 ◼   ► It was one of the many things that you do.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Like sometimes you do something and then I start getting texts from people.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Oh, I'm sorry, Myke.

00:32:47 ◼   ► And people, they just want to know you're okay.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Right? Like if you go on one of your particularly interesting Twitter excursions for an evening,

00:32:57 ◼   ► you know, like people are like, "Is he alright?"

00:32:58 ◼   ► I'm like, "I think so, yeah."

00:33:00 ◼   ► So this was one of those.

00:33:02 ◼   ► I like the idea that people don't message me about the video, people message you about the video.

00:33:09 ◼   ► It's more about just your overall state, really.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Oh, okay. That's why they don't ask me, because they're worried. They want to know, "Is he okay?"

00:33:16 ◼   ► Well, no, I think it's because people just know you won't respond.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I'll respond eventually. I get back to text messages within at least a week, most of the time.

00:33:23 ◼   ► That is really good, yes. It's a good friend.

00:33:26 ◼   ► I try to keep that a real tight loop.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Do you have like a good reason for why you did this? Like what what made you want to like what what was it that?

00:33:34 ◼   ► One like made you make the video and to put it on the main channel as well

00:33:38 ◼   ► Like it really is an out of character move like it but to be serious. Like it is a

00:33:45 ◼   ► It is a strange

00:33:48 ◼   ► Thing to do I think

00:33:50 ◼   ► Well, I don't know. I mean again, it doesn't seem out of character to me

00:33:53 ◼   ► I mean, okay, let's compare it to every other video on the channel. Shall we right like it is different

00:33:58 ◼   ► It's different in a harsh way to everything else that you produce.

00:34:03 ◼   ► Because people learn things from your videos, but like the lesson that you were teaching in the vlog,

00:34:07 ◼   ► people shouldn't learn.

00:34:09 ◼   ► What do you mean? It's a perfect-- that's a great lesson.

00:34:11 ◼   ► That when you travel, that you should keep your time zone of home.

00:34:14 ◼   ► Like I don't-- that was very particular--

00:34:16 ◼   ► Are you seriously going to say that that's not a great-- like I think that's genius.

00:34:20 ◼   ► I think everybody should do that.

00:34:21 ◼   ► It is a good idea for if you're in this very specific set of circumstances that you were in.

00:34:28 ◼   ► And very rarely when people travel are they in those exact set of circumstances.

00:34:34 ◼   ► I think more people could get more utility out of this than you might be expecting, Myke.

00:34:38 ◼   ► Alright.

00:34:39 ◼   ► I think this is great.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I think this is a fantastic idea.

00:34:42 ◼   ► Have you done it since?

00:34:45 ◼   ► Well I've only done one...

00:34:47 ◼   ► Uh...

00:34:48 ◼   ► Actually...

00:34:48 ◼   ► Wait a second.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Okay so what I'm realizing is I have to do the mental calculation because in my mind

00:34:55 ◼   ► Publishing the vlog when I did puts the actual trip in my head in the wrong timeline, right?

00:35:01 ◼   ► I think like oh that trip happened much more recently than it actually did because it happened a while ago

00:35:04 ◼   ► But so the answer is yes, I have done it but only on trips that are going to time zones that are very close and

00:35:12 ◼   ► This summer six weeks, I think would have been too long to try to maintain

00:35:17 ◼   ► Grey Master Time. I think that would have been a

00:35:21 ◼   ► fast recipe for disaster. So I have not had a short trip to America that it would make sense to do this

00:35:29 ◼   ► but I feel like there are many trips to America in which this makes total sense that this is this is the best idea ever.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Was it under very specific circumstances?

00:35:38 ◼   ► Right, like if you're only going for a very short period of time where you don't really need to interact with other humans in regular

00:35:45 ◼   ► settings, this is a very

00:35:47 ◼   ► abnormal trip to take.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Don't know it seems like a lot of my trips are like this

00:35:52 ◼   ► Surely everybody travels this way again like completely centered around you and your

00:35:58 ◼   ► Intricacies as a human. Okay, but it's a great idea and I'm glad we can both agree on that

00:36:03 ◼   ► So I still don't have a good answer for why you did this. Well, I

00:36:09 ◼   ► guess there's two things here one of which is if you go back to

00:36:15 ◼   ► Again, some of the older videos on the CGP Grey 2 channel, where I'm doing like test footage of trying to figure out some stuff

00:36:22 ◼   ► for vlogs and you're seeing like little leftover bits.

00:36:24 ◼   ► I'd always just kind of thought that there was some space on the channel for doing a different kind of video.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Something that wasn't

00:36:36 ◼   ► animated explanation.

00:36:38 ◼   ► And I like I had it in my mind that doing something like a vlog and

00:36:44 ◼   ► talking about stuff. Like there was some kind of space for this on the YouTube channel, but

00:36:49 ◼   ► I could never quite

00:36:52 ◼   ► figure out what that was.

00:36:56 ◼   ► And so there's just a bunch of like aborted attempts over the years of

00:37:00 ◼   ► kind of getting an idea and shooting some test footage and then realizing, "Oh, that doesn't work."

00:37:07 ◼   ► I think actually on this podcast

00:37:09 ◼   ► I made reference to one of these attempts where I talked about like I bought I did buy the Osmo because you recommended it

00:37:14 ◼   ► And I think I made a reference about like I was shooting some test footage for something and it's like that was an attempt

00:37:19 ◼   ► I spotted that I figured something was going on when you bought that thing right because why else would you buy a

00:37:25 ◼   ► Gimbal, exactly right like what project is this for right? It's it's it has a very limited number of uses

00:37:32 ◼   ► I think that's a good example of

00:37:34 ◼   ► like acquiring tools over time

00:37:38 ◼   ► Each time I tried to make a run at vlogging it didn't work for a bunch of different reasons

00:37:43 ◼   ► But this has been one of these things that has been on the back of my mind for forever

00:37:48 ◼   ► And this is one of these examples where you know when I make reference to side projects

00:37:52 ◼   ► This is the kind of this is one of those kinds of things like I've been tinkering on

00:37:57 ◼   ► something like this and in the background and

00:38:00 ◼   ► Like I said, this is maybe the fifth or sixth

00:38:05 ◼   ► go at it, and I feel like each time I made a go at it, they didn't work at all.

00:38:10 ◼   ► But I kind of figured out what part of a thing worked.

00:38:15 ◼   ► Like I'll give a perfect example. There is a monument in London, which is like a

00:38:21 ◼   ► it's a monument to animals in war. It's sort of on the side of Hyde Park and

00:38:26 ◼   ► a few years ago, I made an attempt of

00:38:30 ◼   ► shooting a thing talking about that monument, so I was trying to put together like, "Oh, here's a thing that I can

00:38:36 ◼   ► talk about something, but in sort of a more casual way and I'll upload it to

00:38:40 ◼   ► the channel." And I shot a bunch of stuff and recorded it and put it together and

00:38:45 ◼   ► when I was finished with it, I was like, "Oh,

00:38:48 ◼   ► all I've done is I've made it like a terrible version of the vlogbrothers' thoughts from places."

00:38:54 ◼   ► I was like, "This is... it's so clear when I cut it together. Like, oh, this is what this thing was."

00:38:59 ◼   ► And so it's like, okay, I'm not gonna upload this because I don't think it's very good and it's not just very good

00:39:05 ◼   ► it's also like a worse version of something else, but shooting that and

00:39:09 ◼   ► getting practice for

00:39:11 ◼   ► talking while I'm shooting a thing like that

00:39:14 ◼   ► It helped build towards something else

00:39:17 ◼   ► So I did this a bunch of times

00:39:19 ◼   ► Someone actually spotted in the vlog because people are always amazed at what people are able to spot in in videos and in vlogs

00:39:25 ◼   ► but somebody spotted

00:39:27 ◼   ► that in my Final Cut Pro library, there's another library that's called the Cardiff vlog

00:39:33 ◼   ► And it's like yes, that was another aborted attempt at like a thing that I tried to do

00:39:37 ◼   ► But they were like, "Ooh, Cardiff vlog confirmed!" and I was like, "Oh no,

00:39:41 ◼   ► that's just a dead project that I haven't moved." But it's like on one of the screenshots

00:39:45 ◼   ► you can see it there, but somebody was really excited about a Cardiff vlog. Sorry guy, it's not happening.

00:39:50 ◼   ► It wasn't very good. Probably lives in Cardiff, let's be honest.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Probably.

00:39:54 ◼   ► So like I guess the the most direct answer to your question is like why did this thing happen?

00:40:01 ◼   ► It's partly that has just been on my mind for a long time

00:40:05 ◼   ► not a high priority project by any means but something I've been thinking about and

00:40:10 ◼   ► then it was also

00:40:13 ◼   ► just the result of a bunch of things coming together that felt like oh

00:40:17 ◼   ► I've made enough goes at this that I've learned how to do a few things and

00:40:24 ◼   ► I happen to be doing a trip that I think is interesting to other people in a particular way.

00:40:32 ◼   ► And like I can look at that vlog and very clearly see things from older vlogs that like I changed or adapted.

00:40:42 ◼   ► Like last year at VidCon I was trying to shoot a bunch of stuff for, I thought like,

00:40:45 ◼   ► "Oh, I'll do a vlog about going to VidCon, like this will be kind of interesting."

00:40:48 ◼   ► No one's done one of those before.

00:40:50 ◼   ► Yeah, well this is it, like I thought I had an idea about how to do it,

00:40:53 ◼   ► And it's like, oh this-- and when I was there, it was so clear, like, this is terrible.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Like, this is a terrible idea.

00:40:58 ◼   ► But there were a couple of things about that that I thought, like, while this whole thing is terrible,

00:41:02 ◼   ► I have an interesting idea about a way to do something, and I'll just-- I'll put that in my pocket for later.

00:41:08 ◼   ► So I feel like this is...

00:41:10 ◼   ► This is another one of these examples where it kind of...

00:41:15 ◼   ► I think it kind of looks to people like it-- like it's a thing that comes out of nowhere,

00:41:20 ◼   ► But it's actually like everything it's it's grown out of other stuff. Okay, I think it's for you

00:41:27 ◼   ► Specifically vlogging is weird. Why?

00:41:30 ◼   ► Well, because you don't show yourself right like that is a thing that you have made a concerted effort

00:41:35 ◼   ► Over the years that you've been working right that you're you're quite a private person and you never show your face like I don't show

00:41:44 ◼   ► My face in the vlog though

00:41:46 ◼   ► I know but what I mean is the fact that you are a very private person and you don't show your face is

00:41:51 ◼   ► Why when people see see to be great vlog?

00:41:55 ◼   ► They're surprised by that because those two things are pretty prevalent in vlogging now again

00:42:01 ◼   ► Look, of course

00:42:01 ◼   ► You can do things your own way you did you did a good job of how you did pieces of camera

00:42:05 ◼   ► You can see why like it is surprising for you to vlog

00:42:09 ◼   ► Because you don't like to talk about your private life and you don't like to show your face and that's kind of like

00:42:16 ◼   ► like a big part of what the vlogs that people expect to see include.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I can see that. And this is where, from the behind the scenes stuff, like one of the rules that I had for myself about these various projects is...

00:42:32 ◼   ► I don't know how to put this, but like, um...

00:42:35 ◼   ► Let's say, like, you know, if you know a bunch of people who are vloggers, there are ways that you can see that the vlog is their whole life.

00:42:43 ◼   ► I had just had it in mind for this Las Vegas one in particular that I was only going to do this if I could do it in a way that doesn't interfere with any of the other stuff that I'm there for or doesn't interfere with my life in any way.

00:42:56 ◼   ► I am very, very conscious of this myself.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Whenever I take vlog footage of a trip, like a conference, I only take what I need.

00:43:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And, you know, a lot of times, like people will say to me,

00:43:10 ◼   ► oh, you're not vlogging this because but it's like, well, yeah,

00:43:13 ◼   ► but I just choose not to take video footage of all of us sitting around together.

00:43:17 ◼   ► Right. Like I'm very particular when I do it of what I'm shooting,

00:43:23 ◼   ► because I don't intend for the vlog to be all that I do when I'm traveling.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And it's not about this, like be in the moment type, you know, like,

00:43:33 ◼   ► you know, that whole idea of like, don't have don't take pictures, be in the moment,

00:43:37 ◼   ► Which I kind of understand to a point, but that's not what I'm doing.

00:43:40 ◼   ► That's not your reason.

00:43:41 ◼   ► I have a life that is not the vlog.

00:43:43 ◼   ► The vlog is not that important to me that it needs to become my life.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:43:48 ◼   ► So I will just take the footage that I want and need and not film everything because I get that perfect moment.

00:43:53 ◼   ► I actually do feel very strongly a kind of presence focus.

00:44:00 ◼   ► And that was something in particular that when I mentioned like trying to film a vlog at VidCon last year.

00:44:06 ◼   ► That was a thing I was hyper aware of doing wrong, was a kind of

00:44:10 ◼   ► thinking about everything in terms of

00:44:13 ◼   ► filmability and just realizing like, "Wow, this makes me really unhappy

00:44:18 ◼   ► immediately." Like I just, I hate having this loop run in my mind.

00:44:24 ◼   ► Which should have been obvious because it's like there's plenty of things I do in my life

00:44:28 ◼   ► that are to increase a kind of now focus.

00:44:32 ◼   ► And it's like this is one of the reasons why I took Twitter off of my phone is because I recognized having Twitter on my phone

00:44:37 ◼   ► Means there's a constant demon process running in the back of my brain

00:44:42 ◼   ► Which says is there anything you could tweet right now?

00:44:44 ◼   ► And it's like something like that sort of pulls you out of just being somewhere

00:44:49 ◼   ► so I feel like I'm I am very sensitive to that and

00:44:52 ◼   ► Like that's something I learned from trying to film a vlog like in a place where there are people and I'm doing stuff is like

00:44:59 ◼   ► Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm not I'm I refuse to do this because it makes my life worse makes my life

00:45:04 ◼   ► Dramatically worse. I found myself just naturally

00:45:08 ◼   ► Doing this over the last couple of years as my life has changed, you know in that like the people that I'm closest to I

00:45:15 ◼   ► See a handful of times a year in most cases

00:45:18 ◼   ► Yeah, like most of my closest friends do not live in the same country as me

00:45:25 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. And so when I am on these trips where we're all together

00:45:28 ◼   ► I just don't want to do anything else that's contained within the little box in my pocket

00:45:34 ◼   ► right, like I've just become naturally quite good at it like without

00:45:38 ◼   ► Trying because it's important to me. So, you know, I haven't had to force myself

00:45:43 ◼   ► I can see really see why people do like I can totally see why like people make the effort to force themselves

00:45:49 ◼   ► But when I'm on these sort of trips like it's just not something that I want to be

00:45:54 ◼   ► Doing or dealing with and honestly like the Apple watch has been a big help for me

00:45:59 ◼   ► With that because I don't need to get my phone out of my pocket because I'm confident that everything that I need to know

00:46:06 ◼   ► We pushed on my wrist. Oh, yeah, and and like you think that I'm aware of in conferences is I

00:46:11 ◼   ► Sort of have to open up my phone more I think of it as putting the phone in conference mode and

00:46:18 ◼   ► And like one of the reasons is there's a bunch of people,

00:46:22 ◼   ► like Twitter is a conferencing, networking kind of tool.

00:46:26 ◼   ► And so when I'm at a conference, I'm aware like,

00:46:29 ◼   ► oh, there's many people I follow

00:46:30 ◼   ► who don't have my iMessage or phone details,

00:46:34 ◼   ► but who might direct message me on Twitter.

00:46:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, of course. - Then I'll meet up with.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And so it's a funny thing like,

00:46:39 ◼   ► because I've, the feeling that I had was

00:46:42 ◼   ► when I'm at conferences,

00:46:44 ◼   ► I have to have more notifications on and my phone

00:46:46 ◼   ► my phone has to be more opened up than it would normally be.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And then adding on top of that, doing something like--

00:46:53 ◼   ► and now I'm constantly thinking about what

00:46:54 ◼   ► I'm going to film for the vlog.

00:46:55 ◼   ► It's like, it's too much.

00:46:56 ◼   ► Like, I just-- it makes--

00:46:57 ◼   ► like, I don't like having the phone even this open

00:46:59 ◼   ► in the first place.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And then adding one more thing on top of that was just like,

00:47:03 ◼   ► oh, I hate this.

00:47:04 ◼   ► So that's-- but that's partly why,

00:47:05 ◼   ► like, when I was thinking about that Las Vegas trip,

00:47:08 ◼   ► it was a thing that was kind of like a test for myself is,

00:47:11 ◼   ► is there a way I can do this where I feel like there--

00:47:15 ◼   ► I'm never having a moment, like it doesn't intrude in my mind and it doesn't intrude

00:47:20 ◼   ► on the people around me in any way that I'm doing a vlog.

00:47:25 ◼   ► And so like that was kind of one of the tests for me is I think I know a way I can do this

00:47:30 ◼   ► but I have to actually try it to see if it works.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And obviously like it did work.

00:47:35 ◼   ► I wouldn't have done it or I would have stopped filming if I felt like oh this is impinging

00:47:40 ◼   ► on my life.

00:47:41 ◼   ► So it was-- this is what I mean, like that vlog kind of just ticks a bunch of boxes in my head that I feel like

00:47:49 ◼   ► I had an idea for

00:47:51 ◼   ► how a format could work for me and I had an idea about

00:47:55 ◼   ► how to like film appropriately without getting in the way of my own life.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And the other thing is like why have I been messing around with vlogs in the background is

00:48:08 ◼   ► If people go back and listen to a bunch of maybe like the last

00:48:13 ◼   ► five or so episodes of Cortex there are times in there where we're having conversations about like

00:48:19 ◼   ► oh you need to have other creative outlets like when you're talking about your vlog as like an additional creative outlet and

00:48:25 ◼   ► I think if someone goes back and listens to those conversations, I think it'll be much more obvious now

00:48:31 ◼   ► That's like oh I was clearly coming close to the end of finishing this vlog that went up because that that's another benefit of it is

00:48:38 ◼   ► is it is useful to make different things on occasion.

00:48:48 ◼   ► Like if you work in a creative field,

00:48:50 ◼   ► this is a beneficial thing intrinsically.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Even if it's not going to necessarily

00:48:57 ◼   ► be like an incredibly popular or profitable thing,

00:49:01 ◼   ► doing something different creatively

00:49:05 ◼   ► can be beneficial in all other kinds of ways.

00:49:08 ◼   ► So that's why I feel like it ticked all of these boxes

00:49:10 ◼   ► for me and so to me, it makes perfect sense

00:49:13 ◼   ► to make this vlog.

00:49:14 ◼   ► - Can we take a quick sidebar on that?

00:49:16 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:49:17 ◼   ► - So I've been feeling this again,

00:49:19 ◼   ► I'm in that mode right now.

00:49:21 ◼   ► And I thought that making YouTube videos

00:49:25 ◼   ► would fill the creative gap in my life

00:49:29 ◼   ► that I was looking to fill.

00:49:30 ◼   ► It has to a point and I feel like I know

00:49:35 ◼   ► where I'm going with the YouTube videos now.

00:49:38 ◼   ► I'm trying to make one a month,

00:49:40 ◼   ► and it's about something that I really want

00:49:42 ◼   ► to make a video about, so I'm not forcing the topic,

00:49:45 ◼   ► which keeps it good for me, 'cause I make a video

00:49:50 ◼   ► when I have something I wanna do.

00:49:52 ◼   ► And if I don't have something in a month,

00:49:53 ◼   ► I'm not beating myself up about the fact

00:49:55 ◼   ► that I haven't done one.

00:49:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is super smart.

00:49:57 ◼   ► That is a super smart way to think about it and handle it.

00:49:59 ◼   ► - It is purely just an outlet, a different thing,

00:50:03 ◼   ► trying to learn some new skills.

00:50:04 ◼   ► That's why I'm doing this.

00:50:05 ◼   ► But it hasn't filled the creative hole that I felt.

00:50:10 ◼   ► And I think I've gotten closer to working out

00:50:14 ◼   ► what it might be, but I don't know how to get there.

00:50:17 ◼   ► And basically, I think I want to do something

00:50:22 ◼   ► that isn't based in reality.

00:50:25 ◼   ► - Ah, okay.

00:50:26 ◼   ► - Everything that I do is focused on real things.

00:50:31 ◼   ► - Right.

00:50:32 ◼   ► And I think I want to do something that is fiction based.

00:50:36 ◼   ► That's the move that I'm going towards.

00:50:39 ◼   ► So--

00:50:40 ◼   ► - That's very interesting.

00:50:41 ◼   ► That's very interesting.

00:50:41 ◼   ► - I don't really have any idea yet.

00:50:44 ◼   ► But just looking at my own tastes

00:50:47 ◼   ► for things that I'm enjoying, I feel like,

00:50:50 ◼   ► and just thinking about me as a person, right?

00:50:53 ◼   ► Like, I was one of these kids that used to write stories

00:50:56 ◼   ► and like did when I was a teenager, right?

00:50:58 ◼   ► Like, you know, I have many beginnings of novels, right?

00:51:03 ◼   ► Like, you know, I was one of those sorts of kids, right?

00:51:06 ◼   ► That I would write stories.

00:51:07 ◼   ► And I think that that is where I'm leaning right now,

00:51:11 ◼   ► but like I don't have,

00:51:13 ◼   ► I don't really have anything for it.

00:51:14 ◼   ► It's like, I just wanted to mention it

00:51:15 ◼   ► because it is a thing that I'm feeling right now.

00:51:17 ◼   ► And I think, and I hope could become a little

00:51:21 ◼   ► running trend for a bit of me trying to work out

00:51:26 ◼   ► what that might be.

00:51:26 ◼   ► like that is where I've gotten to with my kind of like I feel like I have to do

00:51:31 ◼   ► something new and different and that's where I'm leaning towards right now

00:51:35 ◼   ► that's very interesting not that I ever expect to fill that by the way yeah no I

00:51:40 ◼   ► don't I'm not like oh this is the announcement that in two years Myke the

00:51:44 ◼   ► book is going to be out right like we're not that's not the expectation well and

00:51:47 ◼   ► all I mean just that like if I do something that I think that it will be

00:51:51 ◼   ► the magic bullet and I won't feel and I will feel creatively satisfied right

00:51:56 ◼   ► Right, just retire.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. You'll be sitting upon a lotus throne and like, "Oh yes, I am now. I've reached enlightenment."

00:52:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:02 ◼   ► No, I don't think that's the expectation.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Like with all these things, I think it's good to be aware of that and to just have it in the back of your mind.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And you can just turn on it for a while. Like it's the exact same thing with me for this vlog.

00:52:14 ◼   ► It's like I'm aware that there's a thing here.

00:52:16 ◼   ► It's a background process now.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's like I'm just gonna turn on this and

00:52:21 ◼   ► Maybe it's going to take five years before something pops out, but it's like this is just running in the background as

00:52:27 ◼   ► a thing and it and I think in your position it's also

00:52:30 ◼   ► It's very helpful to be aware of the specific nature right to be aware like oh the vlog is not exactly

00:52:39 ◼   ► Hitting what you want on this and there's something else and you're able to put words to precisely what it is like that's very helpful

00:52:46 ◼   ► I have an Apple note where I add random things to every now and then right like that's that's kind of where that project is

00:52:53 ◼   ► In its life and it's very like is as likely right now that nothing will ever come of it

00:52:59 ◼   ► But it's where I'm kind of

00:53:01 ◼   ► Pushing towards yeah, and and that like for anybody who has

00:53:05 ◼   ► Creative projects on the back of their mind like the thing that you've just mentioned there

00:53:10 ◼   ► that

00:53:12 ◼   ► process of

00:53:13 ◼   ► collecting I think is super important even if you

00:53:17 ◼   ► don't specifically do anything with the items that you have collected

00:53:21 ◼   ► But this is this is where I feel like in many ways. I'm almost a kind of digital hoarder because I like I

00:53:28 ◼   ► For any of these like background processes like I'm very aggressive about collecting

00:53:33 ◼   ► thoughts and notes and links and set and sections of other things like anything at all and

00:53:39 ◼   ► and just putting it in a bin that is the bin related to whatever this project might be.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And I think that's a great way to make it more active in your mind

00:53:51 ◼   ► as opposed to like, "Oh, someday I'll write a screenplay."

00:53:54 ◼   ► It's like, well, actually just have a note called "screenplay" and just put whatever in there.

00:53:59 ◼   ► Like, put lines from a movie that you like or just random thoughts that you have.

00:54:03 ◼   ► I think the act of collection is disproportionately valuable to the value of the collection itself.

00:54:11 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Blue Apron, the number one recipe delivery service

00:54:18 ◼   ► with the freshest ingredients. Blue Apron's mission is to make incredible home cooking

00:54:23 ◼   ► accessible to everyone while supporting a more sustainable food system. They set the highest

00:54:28 ◼   ► standards for ingredients whilst also building a community of home chefs. For less than $10 a meal,

00:54:34 ◼   ► Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes with fresh, high-quality ingredients to make delicious home

00:54:39 ◼   ► cooked meals in 40 minutes or less. Each meal comes with a step-by-step, easy-to-follow recipe

00:54:45 ◼   ► card and pre-portioned ingredients. And by shipping just the right amount of each ingredient

00:54:50 ◼   ► that you need, Blue Apron is also reducing food waste as well. Their freshness guarantee promises

00:54:56 ◼   ► that every ingredient in your delivery arrives ready to cook or they'll make it right. You can

00:55:01 ◼   ► choose from a variety of new recipes every single week or let Blue Apron's culinary team surprise

00:55:07 ◼   ► you with some fantastic meals. Right now you'll be able to cook food like creamy shrimp rolls with

00:55:12 ◼   ► quick pickles and sweet potato wedges, seared chicken and creamy pasta salad with summer squash

00:55:17 ◼   ► and sweet peppers or maybe even fresh basil fettuccine pasta with sweet corn and cuban

00:55:22 ◼   ► and

00:55:44 ◼   ► you want to. Maybe you're only just going to get a handful of recipes from Blue Apron every week and

00:55:48 ◼   ► then you can use your newfound skills to cook even more. But with Blue Apron you're going to expand

00:55:53 ◼   ► the knowledge that you have as well as just making lovely food. You're going to love how good it feels

00:55:58 ◼   ► and tastes to create incredible home cooked meals at Blue Apron. So get started today by going to

00:56:03 ◼   ► BlueApron.com/Cortex. We'd like to thank Blue Apron for their support of this show. Blue Apron,

00:56:09 ◼   ► a better way to cook. So going back to the topic at hand. Oh right yes. If we can put

00:56:14 ◼   ► on our business hats for a moment. Business hats? I think that CGP Grey is in the viral

00:56:20 ◼   ► video business. Oh is it this conversation again? Yeah. You are in the business of making

00:56:26 ◼   ► videos that go viral, like that is whether you intend to do that or not, like that's

00:56:32 ◼   ► the business you're in. Now a vlog of you going to Las Vegas is unlikely to go viral

00:56:40 ◼   ► and if we're looking at the view counts didn't. So from a business perspective,

00:56:45 ◼   ► did you achieve the goals that you intended when you made this video? Right, like it is not a 1.7

00:56:52 ◼   ► million views video, right? Like it is a extremely respectable number, a number I would be very happy

00:56:59 ◼   ► to achieve, but like in the trend of your videos it's not so much and I wonder kind of from a

00:57:06 ◼   ► from a business perspective, how you feel about the performance of the vlog?

00:57:09 ◼   ► Well, I mean from a business perspective

00:57:13 ◼   ► this is

00:57:15 ◼   ► maybe one of the worst business decisions I've made in my entire career.

00:57:19 ◼   ► This is kind of what I was angling towards without saying it, but yeah.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Time and money investment for this one must be a sh*t show, right?

00:57:28 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, I really think this might be

00:57:32 ◼   ► Literally the worst thing I've ever done in terms of a pure ROI calculation.

00:57:37 ◼   ► But as we have established many times, I think people have an expectation of you which is different

00:57:42 ◼   ► It's not all about the ROI, right? Yeah, it isn't but this one is especially bad

00:57:49 ◼   ► It's especially bad

00:57:50 ◼   ► I mean

00:57:52 ◼   ► I mean for God's like if you want to consider all of the aborted attempts before this one came up

00:57:56 ◼   ► Like let's not even think about how many hours this represents

00:57:59 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah equipment like all of that kind of stuff and then

00:58:03 ◼   ► It's like I didn't put this video up on Patreon. It didn't have an embedded sponsor at the end

00:58:10 ◼   ► So it's like this is this has got to be by far and away the worst the worst thing in terms of return on investment

00:58:16 ◼   ► at all

00:58:17 ◼   ► however, I

00:58:18 ◼   ► feel

00:58:19 ◼   ► Super happy about uploading this this video. I was a little uncertain about how it was going to be received

00:58:25 ◼   ► I get it and I did a very different thing

00:58:28 ◼   ► uploading this video than I normally do when I upload videos

00:58:31 ◼   ► Which is that I actually as part of the big long travel that I was doing

00:58:37 ◼   ► this summer when I arrived in America, I was actually visiting my parents first, so I flew into North Carolina and I had actually

00:58:46 ◼   ► exported the final version of the vlog on the plane on the flight over

00:58:51 ◼   ► Which really kills your battery, but so I get to my parents house. I connect to their Wi-Fi and

00:58:58 ◼   ► And I uploaded the final version of that vlog, and then I just pressed publish.

00:59:04 ◼   ► So I told my parents like, "Oh, I have something I just need to do for a few minutes."

00:59:07 ◼   ► So I uploaded it, hit publish, and I thought, "Great."

00:59:11 ◼   ► Because what I'm locked into now is, I've just arrived to visit family.

00:59:16 ◼   ► It would be the rudest thing in the world to be on my computer constantly checking and seeing what's happening.

00:59:22 ◼   ► So it was locking myself into not having any ability to look at the reactions or see how it was going

00:59:29 ◼   ► for essentially the rest of the evening because I hadn't seen my parents for quite a while.

00:59:33 ◼   ► What an interesting form of online-based torture that you performed on yourself.

00:59:39 ◼   ► I did it for the exact reverse reason because it's such a lock-in that it simply removes the option to even think about a thing.

00:59:48 ◼   ► about a thing. So I genuinely didn't even think about or worry about it because it's just like

00:59:54 ◼   ► this is not, this is not gonna happen. Like you're not going to

00:59:57 ◼   ► see your parents for the first time in many months and be sitting in front of them

01:00:02 ◼   ► hitting command R, command R on a web page to see how the stats are doing. Like it's just out of the question.

01:00:09 ◼   ► So I think I didn't actually

01:00:11 ◼   ► look to see how anything was doing until at least six hours later

01:00:17 ◼   ► when my parents had gone to bed, so

01:00:19 ◼   ► It's very different

01:00:23 ◼   ► because I think it was discussed on one of the much earlier

01:00:26 ◼   ► podcasts, like I often like to have a little command center to see how things are going when the videos go up because they're

01:00:31 ◼   ► infrequent enough that each one is disproportionately important

01:00:35 ◼   ► but my like my feeling was I was

01:00:38 ◼   ► super happy with the results. I had mentally calculated, I thought, if I get

01:00:46 ◼   ► 250,000 views on this thing and

01:00:49 ◼   ► All I wanted was a

01:00:53 ◼   ► 75%

01:00:56 ◼   ► Like to dislike ratio on the actual video itself. I thought that'll be a huge win that was that was kind of my

01:01:02 ◼   ► Mental oh you did way better than that. Oh, yeah, but that's what I mean like as far as I'm concerned

01:01:09 ◼   ► I was this was like incredibly successful in some ways this may be the most successful video

01:01:14 ◼   ► I've ever had in relation to my feeling about uploading it right I see because it's like when you upload a thing

01:01:21 ◼   ► That's different. I'm aware that you know what people don't like Myke change change

01:01:25 ◼   ► It's any kind of change right change for the better no good

01:01:30 ◼   ► I they don't like it

01:01:32 ◼   ► And so I thought like I could be looking at a video where people are just reflexively hitting the downvote button

01:01:37 ◼   ► Immediately like I could be having a video where it's 50%

01:01:40 ◼   ► dislikes, you know, and then that becomes a thing that kind of feeds itself.

01:01:44 ◼   ► So,

01:01:47 ◼   ► I expected a bunch of people to not like it because it was change and it was different. And I also was anticipating,

01:01:52 ◼   ► I mean one never knows the mind of the algorithm, but I was walking into this assuming

01:01:59 ◼   ► that since this video was probably going to have a bunch of people

01:02:03 ◼   ► hitting it, realizing it's something that's different and

01:02:08 ◼   ► Turning it off immediately that this might get recommended to very very few of my subscribers

01:02:13 ◼   ► That the algorithm would clock this right away as a video that just doesn't do well because everybody closes it at a super small proportion

01:02:20 ◼   ► of the time so that's why I like I was really

01:02:23 ◼   ► Expecting much lower and worse numbers than I got so that's why I feel I feel thrilled and then I add on top of that that

01:02:30 ◼   ► Overall the commentary was

01:02:34 ◼   ► Ridiculously positive. I think that's partly a side effect of the algorithm probably not recommending it

01:02:41 ◼   ► To the less intense members of the audience. Yeah, like that's my guess is that there's sort of a self selection bias there

01:02:49 ◼   ► But I feel like great

01:02:51 ◼   ► Perfectly happy with that that the people who wouldn't have liked it didn't get recommended it and the people who did like it did

01:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly like two thumbs up algorithm. Thanks algorithm. Yeah, that's exactly what you're supposed to do. I

01:03:03 ◼   ► I feel ridiculously happy with the way that it went like it was succeeded beyond my wildest

01:03:09 ◼   ► expectations even though it was by far and away my worst business decision ever

01:03:15 ◼   ► So you're gonna do it you're gonna do any more of these like, you know without committing yourself

01:03:20 ◼   ► Like did you be gray the vlogger is a thing that could continue like you feel from this project that like, okay

01:03:26 ◼   ► I could potentially do more of these if I wanted to

01:03:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like that's the least comfortable way to try and put that. I feel like if the stars align in the right way

01:03:37 ◼   ► That this that this makes sense to do again

01:03:42 ◼   ► But there I feel like there are a lot of stars that have to align in order for this to work out

01:03:47 ◼   ► So it's not like oh yeah vlogs are definitely a thing that I'm going to be actively pursuing. There's not

01:03:53 ◼   ► There's nothing active about this in the same way that over the past many years there was nothing really active about it

01:04:00 ◼   ► But there are projects, you know that you've begun that you did a thing for and then you killed them and then it dead right?

01:04:06 ◼   ► Like yeah, but this isn't one of those it's not dead. Yeah, it's not a dead thing

01:04:11 ◼   ► but but like for example it when I did the

01:04:13 ◼   ► Amsterdam wool conference a while back where I was sort of going back back to back to VidCon and Ireland

01:04:21 ◼   ► Like I was I sort of started to film a bunch of stuff there

01:04:25 ◼   ► I thought like oh this might be interesting and then like very quickly while I was doing I was like

01:04:29 ◼   ► "Oh, this is actually not interesting at all. Like it's super boring." And so it just stopped. But that was a thing that I was filming

01:04:34 ◼   ► after I was very confident that the Las Vegas vlog was going to become a thing. I just needed to continue

01:04:41 ◼   ► chipping away at it and editing it. So I've already done some small attempts at trying to film a thing.

01:04:48 ◼   ► But

01:04:51 ◼   ► yeah, I just think it has to feel like it's a thing that I can film without interfering in

01:04:56 ◼   ► my life, and

01:04:58 ◼   ► that has to have some level of interestingness

01:05:02 ◼   ► I also need to I think set expectations that that Las Vegas vlog will almost certainly be if I ever do another vlog

01:05:09 ◼   ► the most interesting vlog by a factor of five like just

01:05:14 ◼   ► Just to be real clear to set like to set the expectations for people like if another vlog comes out you should expect it to be

01:05:21 ◼   ► Way more boring like a regular vlog

01:05:24 ◼   ► That like that that's one of the reasons why I like this worked out as a as one in particular

01:05:27 ◼   ► It's like oh, it's so clear that this might be a thing that people are interested in so future vlogs

01:05:32 ◼   ► Way more boring that should be the expectations, but yeah, so I guess that's me saying I don't rule it out

01:05:37 ◼   ► but it's not something I'm actively pursuing and

01:05:41 ◼   ► And because it is such a terrible return on investment of my time. It's also not something that could ever

01:05:47 ◼   ► That could ever be any significant amount of the way that I spend my time

01:05:52 ◼   ► Like I would I would literally rapidly go out of business if I spent a whole bunch of time on vlogs

01:05:58 ◼   ► Like not as an exaggeration like like Greg Industries would have to shut its door if I'm like, I'm a vlogger now

01:06:03 ◼   ► So there are many constraints

01:06:05 ◼   ► But you know possibilities in the future, I guess.

01:06:09 ◼   ► I look forward to our future collab.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Great.

01:06:12 ◼   ► It's gonna be great.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:06:13 ◼   ► Mm-hmm

01:06:13 ◼   ► You can you can keep that in your mind you can hold on to that.

01:06:19 ◼   ► So that's a thing you can look forward to, possibly forever.

01:06:23 ◼   ► Well, you know, fun fact, we already have.

01:06:26 ◼   ► So, you know.

01:06:28 ◼   ► What?

01:06:29 ◼   ► You provided a piece of footage for my WWDC vlog.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Oh, yes, that's right.

01:06:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:06:35 ◼   ► That's right.

01:06:36 ◼   ► I forgot, I forgot about that.

01:06:37 ◼   ► There's a little secret in there,

01:06:39 ◼   ► which I didn't call out.

01:06:42 ◼   ► I wonder if people can work out what piece of footage

01:06:45 ◼   ► you shot in my vlog.

01:06:47 ◼   ► There is a piece of footage.

01:06:49 ◼   ► There's two pieces of footage in your vlog that I shot.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Two?

01:06:52 ◼   ► Yeah, there's two.

01:06:53 ◼   ► Oh, I thought there was only one.

01:06:54 ◼   ► So there you go, now I need to work out what the second one was.

01:06:57 ◼   ► In the Reddit, I want to know, people can try and guess,

01:06:59 ◼   ► what parts of my WWDC vlog did Gray shoot?

01:07:04 ◼   ► I don't think that counts as a collab.

01:07:06 ◼   ► That was just-- I was being a voluntary cameraman for you

01:07:10 ◼   ► there.

01:07:10 ◼   ► I consider it a collab.

01:07:12 ◼   ► OK, you can do that.

01:07:15 ◼   ► So we've both been using iOS 11 for a couple of weeks now.

01:07:17 ◼   ► On I'm assuming our brand new iPads. Did you buy both iPads?

01:07:23 ◼   ► Did you buy one iPad? What iPad did you buy?

01:07:25 ◼   ► Uh, I am currently running the iOS 11 beta on my

01:07:31 ◼   ► 10.5 inch iPad that I picked up while I was in America.

01:07:35 ◼   ► I did not pick up a 12.9 yet

01:07:40 ◼   ► because I didn't feel like traveling in America with my MacBook Pro, a 12.5 inch iPad and a 12.9 inch iPad.

01:07:48 ◼   ► That's too much.

01:07:50 ◼   ► I thought about it, don't get me wrong, like it crossed my mind.

01:07:53 ◼   ► And I was like, well, I will save a lot of money if I buy it in America.

01:07:57 ◼   ► But ultimately travel packing convenience trumps everything.

01:08:02 ◼   ► So I have not used iOS 11 on the big iPad, I've been using it exclusively on the 10.5 inch.

01:08:10 ◼   ► And I have been using the 10.5 as my exclusive iPad while traveling for, I guess close to 5 weeks?

01:08:18 ◼   ► Or no, close to 4 weeks, that's what it is. Yeah.

01:08:21 ◼   ► So I've been using it for quite a while. That's my situation here.

01:08:25 ◼   ► That's a pretty great iPad, right? That 10.5?

01:08:30 ◼   ► It is pretty good. It's close to perfect. It's close. It didn't make it, but it's close.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that is a bit how I feel. I really like it. It's a great machine, but it does just fall

01:08:43 ◼   ► short of the mark in a variety of ways for me to possibly replace the 12-9. But it is a machine

01:08:50 ◼   ► that I could recommend to anybody. Like, I think it's just like, if I didn't know anything about

01:08:57 ◼   ► about someone, they say, I need to buy an iPad, which iPad should I buy?

01:08:59 ◼   ► The answer is 10.5 inch iPad Pro.

01:09:02 ◼   ► Yeah, there's no zero question.

01:09:04 ◼   ► It's so much better than one inch bigger, right?

01:09:07 ◼   ► Like than the one that came before it.

01:09:09 ◼   ► Like that extra inch goes a long way.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Like the screen feels fantastic.

01:09:13 ◼   ► You know, how much of the screen ratio there is to the body is brilliant.

01:09:17 ◼   ► That's just like, you know, if you're coming from the 12.9, it's hard to lose

01:09:22 ◼   ► the resolution, right?

01:09:23 ◼   ► Like it's hard to lose the two full size apps next to each other that you get from the big one.

01:09:28 ◼   ► But if you're coming from anything else, like you would have to make a real strong case to me for me to recommend 12.9 to you instead of the 10.5.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Yeah, you need a good reason to use that one.

01:09:39 ◼   ► It's wonderful.

01:09:40 ◼   ► The thing that I miss the most is the larger screen simply for the kind of thing that I mentioned before.

01:09:45 ◼   ► Like when I'm thinking about stuff, I like to have like a big piece of virtual paper in front of me to draw on and make notes and think about stuff.

01:09:52 ◼   ► And I was aware this summer there were a bunch of times where I was like, "Oh, I'm in a thinking kind of mood, let me sit down."

01:09:57 ◼   ► And the 12-- the 10-5, I just felt like, "I feel a little cramped on this screen."

01:10:03 ◼   ► So I'll be very happy to get the full-sized one.

01:10:07 ◼   ► But the 10-5 is a great machine, and if I have to do traveling in the future where I need to bring my MacBook Pro,

01:10:16 ◼   ► I will always bring then the 10-5 as the companion iPad with it.

01:10:21 ◼   ► and if I'm ever able to travel without the MacBook Pro, then it'll just be the 12.9 only.

01:10:26 ◼   ► Like that's what I can see is the current travel configuration going forward.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Yeah, because I will be taking my MacBook with me on my trip in August,

01:10:36 ◼   ► I'm going to be taking the 10.5 as my usual work machine.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:40 ◼   ► It's a really great pairing.

01:10:41 ◼   ► I really like it. Fantastic. Beautiful thing.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Let me tell you though, that 12.9, the screen.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Oh great.

01:10:49 ◼   ► Oh, it's real good, man.

01:10:52 ◼   ► With the true tone, the true tone on this screen, that size,

01:10:57 ◼   ► everything is so wonderful.

01:11:00 ◼   ► And just the you know, the 120 hertz stuff,

01:11:03 ◼   ► the promotion on that big screen.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Oh boy, it's it's wonderful.

01:11:09 ◼   ► It is an absolutely fantastic upgrade.

01:11:11 ◼   ► If you're coming from the 12 nine, like it is a really fantastic computer.

01:11:16 ◼   ► I look forward to it,

01:11:17 ◼   ► Although you forget that I am the only person in the world who despises true tone.

01:11:21 ◼   ► [laughs]

01:11:22 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I forget that about you.

01:11:24 ◼   ► It gives me a headache, and I hate it.

01:11:28 ◼   ► I don't understand how that's possible, but you know, I also know people that the 120

01:11:32 ◼   ► hertz makes them feel nauseous.

01:11:33 ◼   ► So you know, people's brains and eyes are wired in completely different ways.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I was very worried about that.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I was super concerned.

01:11:41 ◼   ► And one of the first things I did actually when I got the new iPad was I tested out that

01:11:45 ◼   ► accessibility setting where it can turn it, where it can crank it back down to 60 frames

01:11:49 ◼   ► a second. I turned that on and I immediately opened up GoodNotes because I wanted to see

01:11:53 ◼   ► does that affect the pen latency? And I was like, okay great, it doesn't affect the pen

01:11:59 ◼   ► latency at all if you turn on that accessibility setting. So I felt like I have a safe fallback

01:12:03 ◼   ► in case the 120Hz does bother me, but I feel it still looks a little weird, like I'm still

01:12:09 ◼   ► taking a little bit of getting used to it, but I'm not in the place where that bothers

01:12:14 ◼   ► But True Tone does give me a headache because I know my brain is trying to color correct back the way computer screens look

01:12:20 ◼   ► from a lifetime of looking at computer screens.

01:12:23 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:12:24 ◼   ► And it just it makes me exhausted to look at the color corrected screen. It really does so I have to turn that off.

01:12:28 ◼   ► That is interesting because it's one of the things that I love the most like the way it makes the colors look.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Oh, I know like everybody everybody loves it. Everybody I've set up with iPads

01:12:38 ◼   ► It's like I turn that on for them and it's like you'll like this thing. You won't even notice. So yeah, everybody loves it.

01:12:44 ◼   ► I'm the only person I have ever come across who just cannot have it on.

01:12:48 ◼   ► So thank you, Apple, for having an option to turn it off. I really appreciate that.

01:12:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it also has just other benefits, you know, it has wider color and stuff like that.

01:12:56 ◼   ► So the screen really is just wonderful. It's wonderful.

01:12:59 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Squarespace.

01:13:03 ◼   ► Enter offer code "CORTEX" at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea.

01:13:12 ◼   ► Maybe you want to create an online store, maybe you want to create a portfolio or a blog,

01:13:17 ◼   ► maybe you just want a single page to show off all of the photos from your most recent summer travel.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Whatever you want to do, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that makes it easy.

01:13:29 ◼   ► There's nothing to install, no patches to worry about, no upgrades needed.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Speaking as someone who used to run a server before he switched over to Squarespace,

01:13:40 ◼   ► That's a huge pain in the butt that I'm very, very happy to never have to deal with.

01:13:46 ◼   ► And you won't either. Squarespace has got you covered.

01:13:50 ◼   ► They have award-winning 24/7 customer support if you need any help.

01:13:54 ◼   ► And if you aren't a designer, no worries.

01:13:56 ◼   ► They have award-winning templates that you can use and tweak to show off your great ideas.

01:14:04 ◼   ► I use Squarespace for all of my websites and I really think that you should too.

01:14:08 ◼   ► They're just fantastic.

01:14:10 ◼   ► Squarespace plans start at $12 a month,

01:14:13 ◼   ► but you can begin a trial with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com.

01:14:19 ◼   ► They let you build your site before you have to enter in your credit card details.

01:14:23 ◼   ► It's really great, so you can see how it works before you have to commit.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Then when you decide to sign up with Squarespace, which you totally will because they're great,

01:14:32 ◼   ► Use offer code "CORTEX" to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for this show.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay FM.

01:14:44 ◼   ► Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

01:14:47 ◼   ► But this isn't the only thing, right? I think iOS 11 is the bigger of the two shoes to drop.

01:14:53 ◼   ► Mmm.

01:14:54 ◼   ► It's very, very different. I mean, we've both been using it for quite a few weeks now.

01:14:59 ◼   ► I have it on both of my iPads now because once I moved to 11 on one,

01:15:03 ◼   ► I had to move to 11 on the other.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Like I couldn't completely focus on the way that things have changed

01:15:09 ◼   ► if I was 50% of the time using something that was not changed.

01:15:12 ◼   ► You know, like it was it was breaking me a bit.

01:15:15 ◼   ► There is what I think of as beta creep

01:15:18 ◼   ► that if you put the beta on one device, it slowly creeps to the other devices.

01:15:23 ◼   ► But but this one has the strongest beta creep.

01:15:27 ◼   ► if you are living the multi-pad lifestyle.

01:15:29 ◼   ► That if you're gonna put it on one iPad,

01:15:31 ◼   ► don't kid yourself, it has to go on all of them.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Like there's no, there's no ver,

01:15:36 ◼   ► 'cause the muscle memory is just too different.

01:15:39 ◼   ► It's so different you cannot possibly be running two iPads,

01:15:43 ◼   ► one with iOS 10 and one with iOS 11.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Like it will destroy your brain.

01:15:47 ◼   ► So yeah, you have to put it on,

01:15:48 ◼   ► you have to put on everything if you're gonna,

01:15:50 ◼   ► if you're gonna play the Dangerous Beta game.

01:15:52 ◼   ► - What is your overall thought about iOS 11 and iOS 11?

01:15:57 ◼   ► on the iPad. I mean we can get into some specifics if you want to, but overall how do you feel

01:16:03 ◼   ► about this version of the operating system on the device that you use? Are you happy

01:16:08 ◼   ► for the change? Are you unhappy? Like what is your overall feeling?

01:16:11 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, overall I'd have to give it a thumbs up. I know like I'm, I feel pretty

01:16:17 ◼   ► good about it. There are things obviously that I would like changed. There's something

01:16:21 ◼   ► that I particularly, I've got a sales pitch for Apple later on something I think they

01:16:25 ◼   ► should add.

01:16:26 ◼   ► That always goes well.

01:16:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, well it did go well last time actually.

01:16:30 ◼   ► - That's one point.

01:16:31 ◼   ► We have a 100% success rate on that.

01:16:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh god now you're gonna break the streak.

01:16:37 ◼   ► But no, overall I have to give it a thumbs up.

01:16:40 ◼   ► There's a lot to like about it.

01:16:43 ◼   ► There's a lot of additional power that's coming with it.

01:16:47 ◼   ► There's a lot of nice features.

01:16:48 ◼   ► - There's a lot of stuff we haven't even got yet, right?

01:16:50 ◼   ► Like that's one thing to really consider, you know,

01:16:53 ◼   ► The full power of drag and drop and the files app we won't realize until September

01:16:58 ◼   ► Yeah, so I've got to say my overall impression is a thumbs up. I presume that you feel the same way

01:17:06 ◼   ► Oh, I'm incredibly enthused about this

01:17:08 ◼   ► This really is the version of iOS that I have wanted for my iPad for nearly three years like this is

01:17:15 ◼   ► Exactly what I wanted

01:17:19 ◼   ► It is it has its foibles. It's not perfect, but I wasn't expecting that

01:17:23 ◼   ► Personally, you know the biggest criticism is that it is more complicated

01:17:28 ◼   ► But I don't really understand why that should be a problem for professional users because that's who this is aimed for

01:17:35 ◼   ► Professional operating systems are complicated and all we need to do in my opinion is just learn

01:17:41 ◼   ► The way to use it in the same way that we learned the to use the weird app picker. Yeah

01:17:47 ◼   ► Well, there's also I'll throw something else in there because I think I mentioned a couple of shows ago that I moved my my very

01:17:55 ◼   ► non-technical aunt over to an iPad Pro

01:17:58 ◼   ► when it first came out and she was thrilled with that device and

01:18:02 ◼   ► I was thinking about her as I was using the beta just thinking like oh here

01:18:07 ◼   ► we go here was it gonna be a software update and I actually think they've done a really good job

01:18:11 ◼   ► with while they have added a ton of

01:18:15 ◼   ► Stuff I just kept thinking from my aunt's perspective

01:18:19 ◼   ► Actually, very little will change. She wouldn't even know. Yeah, like she'll she'll never know that a whole bunch of this stuff is here and

01:18:26 ◼   ► Importantly the thing that she does which is double tap the home button to change apps

01:18:31 ◼   ► Like the only thing that's happened there is she'll just be able to see more apps on the screen at once

01:18:36 ◼   ► Because it's just in a grid now instead of in a big sheet with more visual information

01:18:41 ◼   ► to what you're actually going to be picking.

01:18:43 ◼   ► So I have to give them, I have to give Apple credit

01:18:47 ◼   ► because I do think the iPad is a product where they have this problem where there are

01:18:52 ◼   ► there are going to be a disproportionate number of very non-tech savvy users

01:18:57 ◼   ► and also just like users who are young children, like parents giving their kids an iPad

01:19:03 ◼   ► and while they have added a whole bunch of stuff for

01:19:08 ◼   ► the more professional end of the spectrum, they have successfully in my view retained a lot of the simplicity of

01:19:16 ◼   ► when you just press the home button twice, like you've always done, it's still the same, it just looks a little bit different, but you might not even notice.

01:19:24 ◼   ► So I have to give them real credit for that because I think it is more complex, but for the vast majority of users it won't matter and it won't affect them in any way.

01:19:34 ◼   ► So how do you feel then, like in using this from a more kind of like going through all the different changes?

01:19:41 ◼   ► You know, how do you feel about the dock and multitasking and all of the changes that have come with it?

01:19:47 ◼   ► How do you feel about kind of the real rethink? I think the Apple have gone through for how we should be using

01:19:53 ◼   ► our apps on our iPads?

01:19:56 ◼   ► So

01:19:59 ◼   ► Again overall

01:20:02 ◼   ► Big thumbs up. I like a lot of the stuff that they have done.

01:20:06 ◼   ► I love the ability to now have the smaller app on the opposite side.

01:20:11 ◼   ► It's nice to be able to have a way to

01:20:14 ◼   ► sort of use three apps at once where you can have two on split screen and pull another one out

01:20:20 ◼   ► from a little drawer. Like that's very nice. I think the dock is actually a really

01:20:26 ◼   ► great improvement. I think it's super intuitive, and I think it's a great move

01:20:32 ◼   ► that they have made the same gesture to pull up the dock also be a gesture to

01:20:36 ◼   ► get to control center and to slide into the app switching view. Like I think that's a very natural

01:20:42 ◼   ► gesture that has a lot of power.

01:20:45 ◼   ► So I think all of that stuff is great. If we get to the section of

01:20:49 ◼   ► things that I'm concerned about though, I will say the

01:20:52 ◼   ► there's

01:20:55 ◼   ► one main concern and one main

01:20:58 ◼   ► request is how I'll phrase my thoughts on iOS 11. And my main concern is

01:21:06 ◼   ► how they have implemented the idea that apps pair together.

01:21:12 ◼   ► I was thinking about this earlier today, and as far as I know the first person I ever heard mention this idea of pairing apps together

01:21:20 ◼   ► was Jason Snell, probably on upgrade talking to you. I remember hearing Jason a long time ago talk about the idea of

01:21:27 ◼   ► of buddy apps that he wishes he could specify that two apps should be buddies, that this

01:21:37 ◼   ► would be a good way to handle some stuff on the iPad.

01:21:40 ◼   ► And I remember hearing him talk about that and I thought, "Yeah, oh yeah, that's a great

01:21:43 ◼   ► idea."

01:21:45 ◼   ► But what I kind of feel has happened is it's like Apple is a genie who heard that wish,

01:21:52 ◼   ► and you know that genies, they always grant your wish but in a way that you wish they

01:21:57 ◼   ► They grant it incredibly literally.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Yeah. And so I feel like the Apple Genie granted the wish and said,

01:22:05 ◼   ► "All apps are buddies. Every app will have buddies. All of them."

01:22:11 ◼   ► And it's a bit like, "No, I don't think that's what Jason was asking for.

01:22:15 ◼   ► I don't think that's what anybody was asking for."

01:22:17 ◼   ► So there's this really, really fundamental assumption in the,

01:22:24 ◼   ► in the, like I don't even know what to call it, but in like the metaphor of how apps are arranged

01:22:30 ◼   ► or the metaphor of how you're moving through this iOS space.

01:22:34 ◼   ► And this really fundamental assumption is that there are stable pairs of apps that will just always go together.

01:22:47 ◼   ► And in my several weeks of using iOS,

01:22:54 ◼   ► I have just found that to be a totally invalid assumption.

01:23:00 ◼   ► That in my own workflow and the way that I use apps,

01:23:04 ◼   ► there's no pair that has become a stable pair

01:23:12 ◼   ► in this arrangement.

01:23:14 ◼   ► It's like everything is constructed on the fly as a pair, or I want to switch between a few different things.

01:23:20 ◼   ► And so this ground-level assumption that an app exists as a pair with one and only one other app

01:23:30 ◼   ► is concerning to me because it just-- it seems like it's such an-- like, it's just built that way,

01:23:37 ◼   ► like, "Oh, of course, this is a stable arrangement for iPad users."

01:23:41 ◼   ► And maybe I'm an outlier here, but I just don't find that to be the case.

01:23:46 ◼   ► And I'm kind of, I'm very curious to know in your time using it,

01:23:51 ◼   ► have you found that there are stable app pairs that you just leave alone,

01:23:59 ◼   ► that you don't break apart and you switch back to?

01:24:02 ◼   ► No, but I don't think of it the same way that you are.

01:24:06 ◼   ► Okay, tell me how you're thinking about it.

01:24:08 ◼   ► I consider it as a state saving thing.

01:24:11 ◼   ► So, and I'll also, I don't believe that even Apple are considering this from the

01:24:17 ◼   ► perspective of like, you have these two apps that will always remain locked together.

01:24:23 ◼   ► I think it's just purely you, I have been using these applications side by side.

01:24:27 ◼   ► So when I switch out to something else and come back, they should remain until I break

01:24:32 ◼   ► it.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Right, like that's kind of my, the way that I've been thinking about this is like, these

01:24:37 ◼   ► applications they are paired, they are buddies, until I break the pairing and if

01:24:43 ◼   ► I come back to an application later on and it's in its pair it doesn't bother

01:24:46 ◼   ► me I just close the other application which is very simple to do just by

01:24:51 ◼   ► dragging the little divider or I bring in a new app to pair with that

01:24:55 ◼   ► application. You know I also have wanted the pairs thing for a while in the idea

01:25:00 ◼   ► that like I could hit an icon and it would launch two apps at the same time.

01:25:04 ◼   ► right the pairing that we have isn't that but I'm also perfectly fine with it

01:25:09 ◼   ► it's I've had to change some of my workflows right like I got really used

01:25:14 ◼   ► to command tab switching out one application which it doesn't do anymore

01:25:17 ◼   ► it kind of just switches the entire thing it will move you to another space

01:25:20 ◼   ► or another pair or another full app mm-hmm but I've just changed my workflow

01:25:25 ◼   ► and the fact that I can have three apps on screen at the same time makes it work

01:25:29 ◼   ► perfectly fine in most instances so you know it's like it's just different but

01:25:33 ◼   ► But it's not different in a way that I've not been able to become accustomed to.

01:25:37 ◼   ► And the pairing of applications is fine for me.

01:25:41 ◼   ► Honestly, I don't think I want to be able to pair Google Docs with six different other

01:25:48 ◼   ► apps.

01:25:49 ◼   ► I want, honestly, just to have the flexibility to move them around at my will.

01:25:53 ◼   ► The idea of having these multiple instances pairings, I think honestly would get really

01:25:59 ◼   ► messy really fast and quite quickly there will be certain applications that would have

01:26:04 ◼   ► a pairing instance with almost every other app that I use which I don't think will work

01:26:09 ◼   ► out to be something that I can keep track of in my head.

01:26:13 ◼   ► Yeah I wouldn't be asking for that either. I think that's another way the genie could

01:26:19 ◼   ► grant the wish which is like not what anybody like oh I don't want to have notes paired

01:26:23 ◼   ► with every single other app on my iPad right because it's like that's what would obviously

01:26:27 ◼   ► happen over time. So yeah, I'm not asking for that. The reason why I say it feels like

01:26:34 ◼   ► there's an expectation that they're stable is connected to the thing that I would sort

01:26:42 ◼   ► of request here is that, again, I think they have done a great job with the visual drag

01:26:49 ◼   ► and drop from the dock, like the way that you can add another app to be the thing on

01:26:57 ◼   ► And again, I'll use another example of a family member. So I was showing my mom the iOS 11 beta while I was there over the summer.

01:27:06 ◼   ► And my mom is about as pro of a user as you can get without being an actual professional on the iPad. Like, she's very good.

01:27:16 ◼   ► And it was just interesting to see that she immediately got it. Like, yes, because they've done it in this visual way, like you pull up the dock,

01:27:24 ◼   ► the dock and you take the icon that you want and you put it where you want and you let go.

01:27:29 ◼   ► It's like great. My favorite thing is how it fades out the area that it's going to go to.

01:27:34 ◼   ► Yeah. It squeezes in the entire screen if you're going to the edge.

01:27:37 ◼   ► Yeah. It fades out the previous app when you hover over it. I think that's all done so beautifully

01:27:42 ◼   ► well. Yeah, they've done a great job of making it visually clear what are you doing, right? And

01:27:49 ◼   ► And to a user who is now at the level where they will discover or find out or want to use the multitasking

01:27:56 ◼   ► Again, great. I think that's a much better solution for most people

01:28:00 ◼   ► Than the old version of swipe in from the side and then swipe down from the top

01:28:05 ◼   ► It's just like no look look at the thing you want to do and just do the most

01:28:09 ◼   ► Sensible thing if they were physical objects, right? That's what you're doing

01:28:13 ◼   ► So I think that's very good. But the thing the thing for me that I find is

01:28:18 ◼   ► is if you're very intensely using the iPad with a bunch of different apps,

01:28:25 ◼   ► I find that I am constantly breaking apart and reassembling these pairs.

01:28:33 ◼   ► And when you do that, it's a lot of steps actually to do,

01:28:39 ◼   ► and I find the process clunky.

01:28:42 ◼   ► So there's no way to do it quickly,

01:28:45 ◼   ► and that's why to me I have this feeling like these things are buddies

01:28:47 ◼   ► and they're not expecting you to be very rapidly, say, having mail on one side

01:28:54 ◼   ► and three or four other little apps that you're working with on the other side.

01:28:58 ◼   ► Like, it's clearly not designed with that idea in mind,

01:29:02 ◼   ► that there's like one main thing that you're using

01:29:04 ◼   ► and you want to keep that on screen and there's other things on the side

01:29:07 ◼   ► that you want to keep swapping in.

01:29:09 ◼   ► Because I find it clunky and part of the reason is because

01:29:14 ◼   ► there is this state change between if you're using the external keyboard

01:29:18 ◼   ► You have your hands on the keyboard and then you have to reach on the screen and then it's hands back on the keyboard

01:29:23 ◼   ► It's not quick to do and and that's why I'm like I'm just a little bit concerned about this idea that there are these

01:29:31 ◼   ► This state saving this because I feel like I'm constantly undoing that

01:29:36 ◼   ► like I'm undoing the previous state things were in just constantly and

01:29:43 ◼   ► It's a bunch of steps like it's you know the fastest way to do it if there's not an app

01:29:48 ◼   ► That's already on your dock is actually a bunch of steps like it's

01:29:52 ◼   ► Command space to bring up spotlight you start typing in the words to try to find the actual app

01:29:57 ◼   ► You then put your finger on the result, but you have to wait a second for it to pop

01:30:02 ◼   ► So this is now we've introduced a time delay

01:30:05 ◼   ► That's part of the long tap which which brings it under your finger as opposed to just opening that app straight away

01:30:11 ◼   ► And then on the spotlight screen you drag it to where you want it to go,

01:30:16 ◼   ► but again you have to wait to watch the background pop either in the way you want it to go in or

01:30:21 ◼   ► show that it's going to hover.

01:30:23 ◼   ► You know, you can let go and then you have to dismiss spotlight. It's like

01:30:29 ◼   ► it's sort of seven taps and hands on and off the keyboard and two periods of waiting

01:30:36 ◼   ► to swap out an app. And I just I think that is

01:30:40 ◼   ► That is, for an action that may be performed a hundred times a day, I think it's far too

01:30:49 ◼   ► long.

01:30:50 ◼   ► I think it's too many steps.

01:30:53 ◼   ► And while dragging from the dock and placing is great for, I guess what we'd call like

01:30:59 ◼   ► the low-end pros, I don't think it's a good solution for someone who is replacing their

01:31:07 ◼   ► laptop with an iPad.

01:31:08 ◼   ► I think it's just too many steps to do a thing that you're going to want to do a whole bunch

01:31:13 ◼   ► of times.

01:31:14 ◼   ► I hear your complaint.

01:31:18 ◼   ► Do you feel my pain, Myke?

01:31:19 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't agree with the idea of changing it.

01:31:22 ◼   ► I think trying to implement a way to do this with like an app changing over or keyboard

01:31:29 ◼   ► shortcuts being able to change this stuff would add an additional layer of complexity,

01:31:35 ◼   ► which is stronger than the one we currently have.

01:31:37 ◼   ► how do you define where the app goes because I would be very confident in the

01:31:43 ◼   ► fact that now you can move things where you want to put them you would want to

01:31:47 ◼   ► be able to define where the app is going to be and trying to do all of that from

01:31:52 ◼   ► the keyboard over time would become quite complex. Right like if I can swap

01:31:56 ◼   ► my apps left and right hitting command tab changing one of them might not

01:31:59 ◼   ► necessarily change the one that I wanted to change so then I have to perform some

01:32:03 ◼   ► of our action to make sure that it's going to be in the place that I want

01:32:05 ◼   ► That's all gonna be tricky and I understand the idea of like you need to bring up spotlight and hold and drag but I

01:32:14 ◼   ► Think it is more. It honestly is a more elegant solution

01:32:18 ◼   ► Than anything else that I've tried before to attempt to do what this is trying to do

01:32:22 ◼   ► Yeah elegant. Yes, because it's all visual like I will totally grant that but quick it is not

01:32:30 ◼   ► So I've been thinking about this a whole bunch because here's here's one thing. It's like, okay

01:32:35 ◼   ► we're in beta season now and

01:32:37 ◼   ► I often think people people sometimes think like there's gonna be major changes in betas

01:32:43 ◼   ► But if I experience apples just refining stuff. Yeah, especially at the point that we are right now

01:32:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very unlikely that they're gonna make any significant change. Yeah

01:32:52 ◼   ► I don't think this and and the thing is with all of the betas there have very rarely been actual significant changes

01:32:58 ◼   ► They're looking for bugs

01:32:59 ◼   ► You know

01:33:00 ◼   ► They might adjust some minor things like they change some of the behavior with their bizarrely confusing

01:33:04 ◼   ► notification screen. It's like, but it's very minor stuff. So I've been thinking about this a lot about

01:33:10 ◼   ► what is a suggestion that I could make that I think would solve the problem that is also

01:33:17 ◼   ► within the universe of possibility of the kind of thing Apple might add into an actual beta.

01:33:25 ◼   ► So here, because it's like I'm not asking for a big rewrite of this thing. Again, I think this whole multitasking paradigm is

01:33:33 ◼   ► Overall a great solution that's hitting a lot of different people on a lot of different levels, which is very hard to do

01:33:39 ◼   ► So I'm not I'm not coming along and saying like oh you should totally abolish this

01:33:43 ◼   ► Foundational analogy of state saving or buddies right like I'm not even remotely suggesting that because I don't even think that would necessarily be a good

01:33:49 ◼   ► Idea here was just my my only thought for

01:33:52 ◼   ► What I've been thinking of is like a search and swap right because it's like we have drag and drop

01:33:58 ◼   ► This is great like we need a search and swap for professionals

01:34:02 ◼   ► So here is my proposal, which has the minimum number of changes that still achieve the goal of

01:34:08 ◼   ► How do you get an application that is not on your dock on-screen as fast as possible

01:34:15 ◼   ► Just for professionals who would look for this thing not expected to be used by normal users

01:34:21 ◼   ► my suggestion is when you pull up spotlight and you

01:34:27 ◼   ► search for an app, and you have that app selected with the little highlight bar that you can pull down,

01:34:32 ◼   ► I think at this very moment,

01:34:35 ◼   ► all I would ask for is a keyboard shortcut.

01:34:40 ◼   ► Command-left arrow puts that highlighted app on the left side of the screen.

01:34:45 ◼   ► Command-right arrow puts that app on the right side of the screen.

01:34:50 ◼   ► Command-up puts it in the floating position on the screen.

01:34:54 ◼   ► That's what I think is the minimum way to do this successfully in a way that is actually

01:35:01 ◼   ► achievable in the current beta state.

01:35:04 ◼   ► That would be pretty perfect.

01:35:06 ◼   ► I would be really happy with that.

01:35:08 ◼   ► It allows you to swap out either side.

01:35:11 ◼   ► I think it's a pretty understandable keyboard command.

01:35:16 ◼   ► And you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard to put an app anywhere on the

01:35:22 ◼   ► screen.

01:35:24 ◼   ► That's my pitch to Apple.

01:35:25 ◼   ► If you want to do some kind of search and swap, I think a keyboard command in the Spotlight

01:35:30 ◼   ► interface that already exists to just move the app to the left, the right, or the top

01:35:37 ◼   ► of the screen, I think that that would be like a perfect search and swap that is implementable

01:35:43 ◼   ► in a beta period with the minimum amount of having to rewrite anything.

01:35:47 ◼   ► I fully endorse this message.

01:35:49 ◼   ► Oh, thank you.

01:35:50 ◼   ► This is really good.

01:35:51 ◼   ► This is really good.

01:35:52 ◼   ► I thought you were going to push back on this one.

01:35:54 ◼   ► No, no, because this is super low friction. It's not changing anything.

01:35:59 ◼   ► It's keeping what I think is actually a really good system in place.

01:36:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:04 ◼   ► But it's just adding just one little extra thing that most people would never even notice.

01:36:09 ◼   ► Like, for example, you know, the way that you do the drag and dropout spotlight,

01:36:13 ◼   ► that's already a super pro move.

01:36:15 ◼   ► Oh my God, I would never know that had existed if Tichi hadn't told me about it.

01:36:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's great, it works perfectly, it's a good pro move, like I like that.

01:36:24 ◼   ► But the idea to be able to just simply do it with these like three sets of keyboard commands

01:36:29 ◼   ► that I came to myself as you started describing it, right, like they were so obvious what they

01:36:34 ◼   ► would be, right, like left, right, and I didn't think of up, but I was thinking of left, right.

01:36:38 ◼   ► I really, really think that this would be good and wouldn't break anything. It would keep everything

01:36:44 ◼   ► just as it is. I'm trying to think of like what could reasonably occur, and I think that would

01:36:49 ◼   ► it would remove almost all of the feeling of clunkiness,

01:36:53 ◼   ► constantly switching over apps on one side of the screen

01:36:58 ◼   ► or the other side of the screen.

01:36:59 ◼   ► So I have one question for you, Gray.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Yep.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Did you file a radar?

01:37:02 ◼   ► I have filed many radars.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Good man.

01:37:08 ◼   ► Look at you.

01:37:09 ◼   ► I think that that's--

01:37:10 ◼   ► I have filed radars on behalf of other people who are not

01:37:12 ◼   ► running the iOS beta, because I feel like, ooh, if that's

01:37:15 ◼   ► a thing that you want, put it in.

01:37:17 ◼   ► But I have to say, most of the radars that I file are not--

01:37:22 ◼   ► they're not things that I necessarily realistically expect

01:37:24 ◼   ► Apple to do.

01:37:26 ◼   ► Like, they're things that I would hope for,

01:37:28 ◼   ► but I would not be expecting.

01:37:31 ◼   ► For anybody that doesn't know, radar

01:37:32 ◼   ► is the name of Apple's bug reporting system.

01:37:35 ◼   ► Yeah, but this is perhaps the only thing I can think of that

01:37:38 ◼   ► is a change I could--

01:37:40 ◼   ► if not realistically, I think I could optimistically

01:37:44 ◼   ► hope Apple might actually do.

01:37:47 ◼   ► So yes, after the show is over, I will officially then go file

01:37:51 ◼   ► a radar with this suggestion.

01:37:53 ◼   ► I like it a lot.

01:37:54 ◼   ► I think it would really help, and it wouldn't be too breaking

01:37:57 ◼   ► of everything that they've done.

01:37:59 ◼   ► So thumbs up from me.

01:38:01 ◼   ► Unfortunately, I have absolutely no way of helping you.

01:38:04 ◼   ► Are you the chief radar?

01:38:06 ◼   ► No?

01:38:07 ◼   ► Funnily enough.

01:38:09 ◼   ► No, can't help you, but I can endorse it

01:38:11 ◼   ► for anything that that means.