PodSearch

Cortex

36: Cortex Cottage

 

00:00:00   So every time that we record I have a coffee with me to help give me the energy that I desperately need to do this show with you

00:00:07   And I wanted to just tell you about the glassware that the method of which I'm drinking this from today

00:00:14   Because I think you might enjoy it. Have you become a fancy coffee person? Yes happening here

00:00:19   Okay, so I have an iced coffee today that I made for myself kind of in a nice latte style

00:00:24   Yeah, it's very nice and my receptacle is made of glass

00:00:29   Mm-hmm, and I have cork like a cork grip that goes around the outside of that, you know

00:00:36   So I can make sure that I don't drop it right and if the the drink inside is hot

00:00:42   I'm not touching the hot glass right to protect your delicate little fingers. Yeah, I mean there the money makers, right?

00:00:49   Right. Yes, of course and I am NOT drinking from the glass

00:00:53   Itself, I'm drinking from a straw

00:00:58   But my straw is made of stainless steel.

00:01:01   I think you're beginning to live a very strange lifestyle Myke.

00:01:05   I went to the seaside and we went to a nice coffee place and

00:01:08   They served me a coffee with a stainless steel straw

00:01:12   And I thought it was the best thing ever so I went straight to Amazon and bought myself a box of eight

00:01:16   Are there bends in the stainless steel straw?

00:01:20   I have four that have bends in them and four that don't

00:01:23   So I have four straight straws and four straws of a slight bend in them

00:01:27   I've only encountered one problem with the stainless steel straw.

00:01:34   Uh huh.

00:01:35   Hitting my teeth against it.

00:01:37   Yeah.

00:01:38   Usually it's not a problem with a plastic straw.

00:01:41   As soon as you said there was one problem, yes, that is what popped into my mind is,

00:01:47   seems like you can injure yourself with this because you're not used to straws being

00:01:51   objects of potentially cutting power as well.

00:01:56   little thin edge pressed up against you but it's it's making me take more care

00:02:02   while I'm drinking my coffee you know which is kind of part of my process now

00:02:05   you know yeah that doesn't sound like a good idea you don't why do you want more

00:02:09   effort with your coffee drinking because otherwise it's just not worth it that

00:02:15   makes no sense that doesn't make any sense at all I have eight do you want

00:02:19   one no no I do not want one of your stainless steel straws they even come

00:02:24   with a little cleaning brush and in a cream plastic case.

00:02:27   - Jesus Christ.

00:02:29   If there was any way you could have instantly made that

00:02:36   infinitely unappealing, that was the thing.

00:02:39   - Yeah.

00:02:39   - To tell me that the straw requires cleaning.

00:02:42   This did not cross my mind.

00:02:45   - Of course it does.

00:02:46   I'm not like a Scrooge McDuck kind of person.

00:02:48   Like I'm not just using them one serving

00:02:50   and then throwing them away.

00:02:51   - They're not, okay.

00:02:54   No single-use stainless steel straws. I'm not crazy.

00:02:58   I was more thinking that maybe they could go in the washing machine, in the dishwasher.

00:03:02   I'm sure that they can, I just don't have one.

00:03:05   Oh, okay. You're one of those.

00:03:07   I just can't fit one in the house. What do you want from me?

00:03:11   One of those unfortunate people whose kitchens too small.

00:03:16   You're up there in Grey Mansion.

00:03:19   When my wife and I moved out of our

00:03:22   first flat in London together, which was

00:03:25   Literally a single room with bare partitions. I remember the door right? I remember the door

00:03:32   We upgraded to doors

00:03:34   one of my

00:03:37   absolute requirements was

00:03:39   Now now that we have more than like five square meters worth of space between two human beings

00:03:46   We absolutely have to have a dishwasher. This is this is non-negotiable

00:03:52   There's no way this is not going to happen because I just I cannot possibly spend any more of my time

00:03:59   manually washing dishes

00:04:02   like it's the

00:04:04   1600s. Edina is totally the gray in this situation. She is making a very similar demand

00:04:09   We're gonna might talk about this later

00:04:12   But we're getting ready to move hopefully to our own place and the kitchen doesn't have a dishwasher right now

00:04:17   But it has space for it and it has the electricals for it

00:04:20   So at some point in the not-too-distant future a dishwasher will be joining the household

00:04:26   But funnily enough I actually quite like doing the dishes because it's a chore that I can do which adds some real value

00:04:32   It isn't incredibly taxing and I can listen to my podcasts when I do it

00:04:37   But you could do other things you could be driving American Truck Simulator while you're listening to your podcast instead

00:04:43   Yeah, but then I'm not contributing so much to the household

00:04:46   But you know what? You're not really contributing to the household now, right? A robot could just do this for you

00:04:51   You're just you're just feeling like you're making a contribution here

00:04:55   This is like oh, I enjoy vacuuming by hand. What a pleasant experience

00:04:59   This is it's like or you can get a Roomba and the Roomba could vacuum for you

00:05:02   I think we're gonna get a Roomba.

00:05:04   Yeah, see? I really want one. Do you have one? We don't have a Roomba in our place

00:05:09   But we have someone who vacuums so we have a human Roomba

00:05:13   - I guess is what we have.

00:05:15   (laughing)

00:05:17   - I was gonna make the joke,

00:05:20   but I thought I can't make that joke.

00:05:22   And I'm so happy you did.

00:05:24   We could call it a Humba.

00:05:25   Oh no.

00:05:29   - So listen, you have to, like this is,

00:05:34   I know you just wanted to tell like a little funny story

00:05:37   about your metal straws that you clean by hand

00:05:39   with a tiny brush.

00:05:40   But really what you're just telling me

00:05:42   is a story about, it sounds like you don't value

00:05:45   your own time very highly that you're sitting around

00:05:49   washing dishes by hand when there's a machine

00:05:51   that could do it.

00:05:52   And I am totally with Adina on this issue.

00:05:56   There needs to be a dishwasher in your new place.

00:05:58   In our place, there was no dishwasher either.

00:06:02   And we are renting a place.

00:06:04   It is not ours.

00:06:05   So any improvements made to the place

00:06:08   are just like throwing money down the drain,

00:06:10   except for the fact that we live there.

00:06:12   So we actually paid someone to essentially like take out

00:06:15   some of the cabinetry on the bottom of our kitchen,

00:06:18   put in a dishwasher that doesn't even really fit

00:06:21   because our kitchen is really, really small.

00:06:23   When you go to open the dishwasher door,

00:06:26   it cannot come down all the way

00:06:28   because the wall is in the way.

00:06:29   - This is serious dishwashing hate over here.

00:06:32   - Right, it is serious dishwashing hate.

00:06:34   So since I am like, I'm very tall,

00:06:37   it's very awkward for me to kind of like

00:06:38   get down on the floor.

00:06:39   Basically only the top rack of the dishwasher is available from my perspective.

00:06:44   Like I can't really access the bottom one. It's super inconvenient.

00:06:47   So I just run the dishwasher, you know, twice as much as I need to because I only use the top rack

00:06:52   because that's the only one that I can fully access when the dishwasher door is open.

00:06:55   But I don't care because I'm not washing the dishes, the robot's washing the dishes.

00:07:00   So what does it matter if the robot has to do it twice?

00:07:02   Doesn't matter to me.

00:07:03   Dishwasher.

00:07:04   You need to have one without a doubt.

00:07:06   Don't spend your time like this, Myke.

00:07:09   hate that you just in our show have moved the priority of the things I need to spend money on.

00:07:15   What do you mean? I'm trying to help you.

00:07:17   She's gonna hear this, right? And then the dishwasher's gonna move higher in the priority order.

00:07:24   Right, because it's the correct decision.

00:07:26   Yeah.

00:07:27   Let's just be clear, like I'm not siding with anybody in an argument,

00:07:30   I'm simply telling you what the better thing to do is.

00:07:33   You're siding with your robot kind, I know what you're doing.

00:07:35   No, I'm just, I mean look, if there's more robots,

00:07:38   maybe that's better for everybody.

00:07:40   But look, it's the right thing to do.

00:07:42   So you need to get the dishwasher.

00:07:44   It's like not having a washing machine for your clothes

00:07:46   and spinning me some tale about how, oh,

00:07:48   you really enjoy racking your underpants

00:07:51   over one of those little bumpy things

00:07:53   that you see in old movies where people are,

00:07:55   I don't even know what they're called,

00:07:56   the washing boards maybe?

00:07:58   - Oh, right, yeah, I get what you mean, yeah, yeah.

00:08:00   - Right, you're there with a barrel

00:08:03   and one of those washing boards

00:08:04   and scrubbing your clothes over that.

00:08:06   Like if you were spinning me a television,

00:08:07   oh, I enjoy listening to podcasts while I do that.

00:08:10   I mean, you're just wrong, right?

00:08:11   You're just spending your time poorly.

00:08:13   Instead, you should be spending your time

00:08:15   playing American Truck Simulator and listening to podcasts

00:08:18   because it's purely enjoyable.

00:08:19   - I found one setback with the straw method.

00:08:22   - Here we go, okay.

00:08:23   - That's the setback.

00:08:26   Trying to get the coffee out of the bottom of the,

00:08:29   it's not as easy.

00:08:30   - Enjoy your straw, Myke.

00:08:33   It sounds like an improvement to your life.

00:08:37   Today's episode of Cortex is brought to you by Blue Apron, the company on a mission to

00:08:42   make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone.

00:08:46   Yes, that means you dear listener.

00:08:48   For less than $10 per meal, Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes along with fresh, high quality

00:08:53   ingredients to make delicious home cooked meals.

00:08:56   Each meal comes with a step by step, easy to follow recipe card and pre-proportioned

00:09:01   ingredients that can be prepared in 40 minutes or less.

00:09:04   So you'll get all the ingredients you need, nothing wasted is going to be fantastic.

00:09:11   You can customise your recipes each week based on your dietary preferences and choose a delivery

00:09:15   option that fits your needs.

00:09:18   There's no weekly commitment, so you just get the deliveries when you want them and

00:09:21   Blue Apron delivers to 99% of the continental United States.

00:09:25   New recipes are created each week by Blue Apron's culinary team and are not repeated

00:09:30   in a year. So there's tons of variety. Stuff like spicy hoisin chicken stir fry with baby

00:09:35   bok choy and sesame ginger cucumber salad. An eggplant and chickpea tagine with island

00:09:41   of pepper, tomato and couscous. Listen to all those incredible ingredients. You are

00:09:46   going to get some new food that you never had before and really expand your horizons

00:09:50   with the ingredients that you're used to, with the food that you're eating and you're

00:09:52   also going to improve your cooking skills as well. With all their great instructions

00:09:56   they'll be able to help you step by step and you'll be able to increase the skill that

00:10:00   have in the kitchen. Blue Apron knows that when you cook with fresh ingredients that

00:10:04   support a more sustainable food system, you can make incredible meals. Blue Apron sets

00:10:08   the highest quality standards for their community of artisanal suppliers, family run farms,

00:10:13   fisheries and ranches. Whether it's Japanese ramen noodles, wild caught Alaskan salmon

00:10:18   or heirloom tomatoes, Blue Apron brings you the best. Check out this week's menu and

00:10:22   get your three meals free with free shipping by going to blueapron.com/cortex. So for free

00:10:28   you will get three meals, no paint for shipping either. You will love how good it feels and tastes

00:10:33   to create incredible home cooked meals at Blue Apron, so don't wait. Visit BlueApron.com/Cortex

00:10:39   and we thank Blue Apron for their support of this show and Relay FM. Blue Apron, a better way to cook.

00:10:44   Corteximus is actually officially over now. So like we had this, we've had an episode which

00:10:52   broke Corteximus for the listener, but now this is Corteximus is over for us.

00:10:58   because as you heard on the last episode that was an episode out of time to

00:11:03   out of timer and

00:11:06   Which basically was recorded such a long time ago that neither me or you could remember

00:11:13   What we'd spoken about. Yeah, it was very strange. It was as I predicted

00:11:19   the closest I think I will ever get to being able to

00:11:26   listen to my own podcast in the way a listener does.

00:11:30   Because most of the time when I'm editing podcasts or listening to edits, I know what's going to be said.

00:11:36   Like I in my head, I know how this conversation unfolds. I know what I'm going to say.

00:11:42   I know what the next person is going to say and that's part of the process of

00:11:45   editing thinking about the sentences that are coming up, the sentences that just went behind,

00:11:49   maybe how to rearrange things, maybe how to make them a little tighter.

00:11:53   that's part of the whole thing.

00:11:54   Whereas when I was listening to this one,

00:11:57   when I was doing the final listen through,

00:11:59   I just, I had no idea what was going to happen.

00:12:01   Everything was a surprise.

00:12:03   Oh, okay.

00:12:04   I have no idea what's coming up.

00:12:06   This me from the past, it could be me from 100 years ago.

00:12:11   I remember nothing about that podcast.

00:12:16   And I think it was in actuality three months ago,

00:12:18   maybe two months ago, I don't even know.

00:12:20   But yeah, it was a surreal experience to listen to that.

00:12:25   - The funny thing for me was when listening back

00:12:27   and just shaking my head at how past Myke

00:12:30   thought his summer was gonna be awesome.

00:12:32   It was awesome, but not as easy and simple

00:12:34   as he thought it was gonna be.

00:12:35   (laughing)

00:12:38   That poor guy had no idea.

00:12:39   - Yes, yes, that was, that was definitely the case,

00:12:44   which I think is always the case with when you try to

00:12:50   project forward about what you're going to be doing,

00:12:55   it is way too easy to underestimate

00:12:59   how much stuff you're going to do.

00:13:01   How long things take,

00:13:02   how much stuff is gonna take up of your time,

00:13:05   and again, I was just thinking of the past me

00:13:10   in that episode, and he's talking about

00:13:13   how he is going to be going to WWDC with you,

00:13:17   which at that point was like a little secret.

00:13:18   Yep, and it was so funny because you were really hesitant to admit it to just me.

00:13:23   Yeah, so we're still in secret keeping mode there.

00:13:27   But listening to that, I was thinking like, oh,

00:13:30   you many months ago, Gray,

00:13:33   you don't know how busy that WWDC week is going to be.

00:13:37   You just have no idea.

00:13:39   You're still imagining in your mind that it's going to be a relaxing time with

00:13:44   occasional things to do, but you don't know.

00:13:46   You don't know what's going to actually happen.

00:13:48   Also, we were living in a different reality then, you know, before we'd experienced

00:13:54   the second reality, a virtual reality.

00:13:56   Our lives are very different.

00:13:58   That's true.

00:13:59   That is very true.

00:14:00   That is the pre-virtual reality experiencing us.

00:14:02   That is the big schism in my life now, pre-VR and post-VR.

00:14:08   So yes, it was basically like listening to the tales of a dead man, right?

00:14:11   It's like, "Oh, so long ago and so many experience ago, you were just like a totally

00:14:16   different person."

00:14:17   of the things that made me shake my head about myself as I was talking about

00:14:21   carving out more time you know like to have quieter days and busier days you

00:14:26   know I still had the busy week and the quiet week but I was talking about how

00:14:29   my Thursdays and Fridays I was trying to keep them as busy as empty as possible

00:14:35   but since then I've now filled them up with new projects and I was listening to

00:14:40   myself and be like oh that was a nice time. So you no longer have the the busy

00:14:45   week and the not busy week where I'm on the not busy week and everybody else is

00:14:50   on the busy week everything's just the same I know have a busy week and a busier

00:14:54   week hmm what do you think about that Myke I don't like it I don't think it's

00:15:00   a good development no it's a bad development so it was you know how we

00:15:04   were also talking in that show about like approaching you know we've gone

00:15:09   past the halfway point of the year it's time to start thinking so like I'm I'm

00:15:13   inches away from grabbing my iPad and opening Notability.

00:15:17   I actually nearly did this yesterday.

00:15:19   I'm writing out all of my projects

00:15:21   and working out where they go next year.

00:15:23   You know, what things have to be adjusted,

00:15:25   how are they gonna be adjusted.

00:15:27   And I'm also thinking about some other stuff

00:15:29   like just from a business perspective,

00:15:32   not just like all of the shows that I'm on,

00:15:34   but what parts of the business do I maybe need to adjust

00:15:37   so I can free up time for myself, that kind of thing.

00:15:40   So that is, funnily enough,

00:15:43   In all seriousness, 2017 is going to be the year of less comma me.

00:15:48   Oh, is it?

00:15:49   I think so.

00:15:50   Hmm...

00:15:51   So let me ask you then, so I'm a bit unclear.

00:15:54   This situation that you have made for yourself,

00:15:56   where you have a busy week and a busier week,

00:15:59   is this...

00:16:00   Are you planning on this being a temporary thing until the end of the year?

00:16:04   And then 2017 will be nothing like this and you'll get back to your busy week and less busy week?

00:16:11   Or not?

00:16:12   I don't think I've got the specifics nailed down. All I know is I want to change the current situation

00:16:18   Mm-hmm. So I want to get it back closer to busy week and quiet week

00:16:24   Mm-hmm. And one of the problems is I've started one new weekly show and it's taking up more of my time

00:16:31   but even within that I'm trying to work out ways to limit those types of things and

00:16:35   And maybe look at some of the other stuff that I do

00:16:38   and see if there's any adjustments that could be made to the frequencies there.

00:16:42   Like I did at the start of this year where I just adjusted the frequencies of

00:16:47   some of the shows that I was recording. So I need to do that again but maybe

00:16:51   maybe I need to be a bit harsher about it and maybe as I said I need to look at

00:16:55   some things that aren't just recording time. Mm-hmm things that are business

00:16:59   time. Or even things that are production. Maybe I need to change some production

00:17:04   processes as well. So this is it you know I'm gonna live with it for now plus it's

00:17:08   It's been personally a super busy time for me since June and I'm thinking that is adding

00:17:13   a lot of weight onto this as well.

00:17:16   Yeah it sounds like that's the case.

00:17:18   I mean I know there's a bunch of stuff going on that we will get to in a little bit.

00:17:24   What I'm just wondering is how did you walk yourself into the busy week and busier week?

00:17:32   Was it one of these cases where you just keep slowly adding on one project at a time and

00:17:37   and then when you look in the rearview mirror somehow at the end of the summer,

00:17:41   all of a sudden you're realizing that you have blocked away all of what was previously free time?

00:17:47   Is that how you got this situation?

00:17:49   Pretty much. And this is my eternal struggle of being excited about something and just doing it.

00:17:59   And that has added more time in.

00:18:02   So one of the things that I've done, some people may notice it, some may not.

00:18:07   I am a fan of professional wrestling.

00:18:08   I have been since I was a kid.

00:18:11   I know it's fake.

00:18:13   You don't need to tell me.

00:18:14   Or as we like to say it, Gray, predetermined.

00:18:16   Predetermined, okay.

00:18:17   So the things that you're seeing are actually happening.

00:18:20   It's not smoke and mirrors, but there is an outcome at the end.

00:18:22   I treat it like my soap opera, right?

00:18:24   That's how I think of it and etc.

00:18:26   Like I don't need to get into this right now with you.

00:18:28   I love how predefensive you are about this.

00:18:31   Like I can hear you trying to shut down all the things that people are going to say.

00:18:37   And my feeling is always there's no explaining what people like or what they're interested

00:18:41   in.

00:18:42   It just is.

00:18:43   So Myke likes wrestling.

00:18:45   Deal with it people.

00:18:47   My podcast is called The Ring Post.

00:18:48   I'll put a link in the show notes if you're interested.

00:18:50   Go check it out.

00:18:51   Anyway Ringpost.fm if that's your bag.

00:18:57   But anyway so I did that now.

00:18:58   This is a new weekly show of mine and I've been trying to do some fun things of it and

00:19:03   record multiple times in the week.

00:19:04   I can't keep doing that.

00:19:06   That's one thing.

00:19:07   And then, it's been a busy time where we've had the membership stuff, so facilitating

00:19:13   all of that, recording the extra episodes, editing the extra episodes, spending 15 hours

00:19:20   on our episode.

00:19:22   I've had just some extra stuff going on recently.

00:19:26   So now as well next year I know that I need to structure that time a bit differently in

00:19:30   August.

00:19:31   I thought that I was doing a good job pre-recording things early but I need to maybe start recording

00:19:35   them even earlier than I thought.

00:19:37   So it's just I've learned some lessons but there are just some things that I'm adding

00:19:42   in which are just too much.

00:19:45   I've overloaded myself again I think.

00:19:49   And it's super easy to do because this is a problem with creative people and again in

00:19:57   the broadest possible sense of making a thing, whether that's starting a business or creating

00:20:03   a podcast or whatever.

00:20:04   If you are making something in the world, I think by definition you have to be a person

00:20:09   who gets excited and interested in things way more than a normal person does because

00:20:17   is the thing that motivates you to start creating a thing that's new.

00:20:21   And so I think if you are of that bent, it is very easy to keep adding on more and more

00:20:29   projects.

00:20:31   Because you get excited about things.

00:20:33   We've spoken about this in the past, that you have that feeling, but you seem to have

00:20:37   a better internal barometer of letting them go so far before you stop.

00:20:43   I don't know how you do that.

00:20:45   I have an idea like the idea of having a show about professional wrestling has been something I've wanted to do for a long time

00:20:50   And I had to do it

00:20:52   Mm-hmm, right. There was no question in my mind. Like I love talking about this thing

00:20:58   I want to talk about this thing on my friends and I want to make a podcast out of it

00:21:02   because that's what I've always done all of my shows come from a love of talking about something with the people and

00:21:07   and I couldn't not do it, but you seem to have

00:21:11   some kind of

00:21:14   barrier that something has to get through like you can be excited about something but you take it so far and

00:21:20   Then you stop and I don't know how you do it. Well for me. It's easier with

00:21:24   external

00:21:27   projects or things that are new like we discussed a while back, you know, I

00:21:32   Was getting pretty close to doing something like a like a video game review YouTube channel, and then I shut that down

00:21:38   I was like no this isn't this isn't gonna happen

00:21:41   And part of that is thinking through the, you know, the maximum benefit, maximum reward

00:21:49   of a project like that.

00:21:50   But it doesn't mean that like I haven't spent a bunch of time on it.

00:21:55   And I think with external projects like a new YouTube channel or say doing another podcast

00:22:02   or getting involved with businesses, right?

00:22:08   These are all kinds of things that, you know, sometimes I say yes to these decisions, sometimes

00:22:11   I say no to these decisions, but I try to think about like the risk return reward, like

00:22:17   what is the best possible way this could go, how much does this look like, what it's going

00:22:20   to take up with my time.

00:22:22   So for new stuff, I find it relatively easy at some point to sit down and seriously think

00:22:28   about it and to cut stuff.

00:22:31   to be perfectly open with you. Like my version of your podcast stuff is that

00:22:40   some mornings when I go into work and I go to write, there is something that I am

00:22:46   really excited about or something that's really on my mind as a thing that I want

00:22:52   to talk about in a video. And I'll end up spending an entire morning

00:22:57   or maybe two days working on a script that ultimately doesn't go anywhere.

00:23:02   Right, but it's like, but this thing has kind of like taken over my mind for a while,

00:23:06   I'm really thinking about this thing and I end up writing a whole bunch of stuff that ultimately goes nowhere

00:23:13   because I eventually decide, "Oh, I don't want to do this video or it just isn't quite working out."

00:23:18   But I have no ability to really say "no" mentally to those kind of things.

00:23:23   It's like well you you arrive in the office and whatever it is you want to write about

00:23:27   Whatever it feels like this is the thing that you're going to write about

00:23:30   That's what you're going to write about like you don't really have a choice in it

00:23:33   I get that but like my point is like you still are able to stop it

00:23:37   Right like you don't keep going like because many people could be like ah this isn't working. I need to start again

00:23:45   Like you know to stop

00:23:48   Yeah, I mean I guess it's it's a kind of

00:23:52   to kind of focus on a sunk cost fallacy

00:23:56   that you know just always keep in mind

00:23:59   that the hours you have put into a thing

00:24:01   and the resources that have you you have

00:24:03   put into a thing are meaningless

00:24:06   the only thing that matters is thinking

00:24:08   about the future hours and resources

00:24:11   that you're going to put into a project

00:24:13   and what you can expect the return is

00:24:15   going to be. Maybe it's just because I

00:24:17   don't really I don't really value my

00:24:21   past self very highly and whatever he has been up to or whatever he has done

00:24:26   so maybe that's why I find it a little bit easier to let go of projects or to

00:24:31   have been writing something for a few days and then to realize that god this

00:24:35   isn't going to go anywhere just forget it and just just leave it and not and

00:24:38   not feel like I am going to spend the next three weeks massaging this into a

00:24:44   thing that is ultimately publishable like I'm very happy letting stuff go

00:24:47   Maybe that's why I don't know.

00:24:50   - Another thing I wonder is the difference

00:24:52   in our attitudes towards the things that we do.

00:24:55   So like I was, I started podcasts as just a fun thing.

00:25:00   Like my hobby, like the thing that I love

00:25:02   and then it ended up being my business.

00:25:05   And I don't think you necessarily feel that way

00:25:08   about YouTube videos.

00:25:09   Like it was always intended as like a business endeavor first

00:25:13   so like I have this, like once I have an idea for a podcast

00:25:16   I'm like I gotta do it.

00:25:17   But then when you have an idea for a video,

00:25:19   like it gets so far and it's like,

00:25:20   this doesn't make business sense anymore.

00:25:23   So like it goes back to the original feeling

00:25:25   about the thing.

00:25:27   Where for me it was like,

00:25:28   this seems like it was gonna be so much fun,

00:25:30   I gotta do it.

00:25:31   I don't care if I make any money.

00:25:34   - You're passionate about what you do, Myke.

00:25:36   - I do, it's a real fire in my belly.

00:25:38   - It is your strength and possibly your ultimate downfall.

00:25:43   - It's, you know when you go to a job interview

00:25:47   your strengths your weakness. This is it for me right? My strength is my weakness. I'm

00:25:53   too focused. That's my problem. I don't know when to stop working. I am too strong of a

00:26:00   leader. I am too much of a team player. Yeah exactly. How's your summer been? I know you've

00:26:10   been on graycation. Well. Oh by the way I have to mention this and just because it's

00:26:16   such a good joke where I called your vacations a graycation, right?

00:26:22   And you called mine a mike-cation.

00:26:24   Why yes that on the Reddit said, "Surely you mean a hurly day."

00:26:30   How good is that?

00:26:33   That causes me physical pain.

00:26:35   It's so good.

00:26:36   That's how we know it's good because it hurts you.

00:26:39   I don't think that's the barometer by which we measure if things are good because they

00:26:43   cause me pain.

00:26:44   I do not approve of this barometer. This barometer is no good.

00:26:47   You wouldn't.

00:26:48   No, of course not.

00:26:50   I don't think I can use Hurley days.

00:26:53   I'm not sure I can bring myself to do that.

00:26:55   We've discussed how my Hurley day went.

00:26:58   How did your graycation go?

00:27:02   It went well. It went well.

00:27:04   So what I had in mind for this #summeroflotsoftravelandnotfun summer...

00:27:11   You keep changing it.

00:27:13   The thing about hashtags is they have to be the same.

00:27:16   Keep changing them, it doesn't work anymore.

00:27:18   - No, I think it's fine.

00:27:20   Twitter's really good about that kind of stuff.

00:27:21   I'm sure they'll auto-merge it or whatever.

00:27:23   - Yeah, yeah, Boolean searches.

00:27:25   - Yeah, that'll be perfect.

00:27:27   My whole frame of reference was last summer,

00:27:33   not the summer most recently passed,

00:27:35   but the summer last summer.

00:27:36   - Yeah, you really helped narrow that down

00:27:38   to that explanation.

00:27:39   (both laughing)

00:27:41   - I'm aiming for maximum clarity here.

00:27:43   You're doing a great job.

00:27:46   It was a disaster that summer that had passed that was not the most recent summer.

00:27:50   Do you mean the one before the one after the next one?

00:27:53   No, that does not sound right.

00:27:54   No, it doesn't.

00:27:55   No, that's wrong, Myke.

00:27:57   You don't know how to do this.

00:27:58   I'm not following it.

00:27:59   Leave it to the professionals.

00:28:00   Yeah.

00:28:01   So that summer didn't go well because I did a terrible job of managing work and personal

00:28:06   life and a bunch of other things.

00:28:08   And so my goal for this summer was it needs to be better.

00:28:14   It needs to be better than last time.

00:28:17   What's better?

00:28:21   Better is measured by do I feel worse after having taken a vacation or do I feel better

00:28:30   after having taken a vacation?

00:28:32   And when I came back from vacation two summers ago, I ended up coming back feeling frazzled.

00:28:38   Like I did not feel like, "Oh, what a great break I had.

00:28:42   This was a fantastic time."

00:28:44   I ended up feeling like I did everything poorly.

00:28:46   I did work poorly and I did vacationing poorly.

00:28:49   And it just, it wasn't a great experience.

00:28:50   It ended up leading into like a grumpy September gray who had returned.

00:28:55   It just, it wasn't, it wasn't a good situation.

00:28:58   So this summer what I mean by better is it's almost measured by a kind of like a mindfulness

00:29:08   or a presence in the moment.

00:29:11   So the feeling is whatever I'm doing this summer at that moment that should be the thing

00:29:17   that's on my mind.

00:29:19   I shouldn't be also having other stuff in the back of my mind.

00:29:24   But I would say for the most part, I was pretty successful this summer.

00:29:31   It fell down a little bit towards the end of August when work life started to intrude

00:29:38   again.

00:29:39   But for the most part I was able to have the feeling of like being at WWDC.

00:29:44   I am at WWDC, this is really the only thing that I have to think about or that I have

00:29:49   to focus on.

00:29:51   again, for the most part I was at VidCon and it's like this is what I'm focusing on, I'm here at VidCon, let me do this thing.

00:29:58   And then later in the summer it's I am with my family and again not entirely but mostly I'm able to focus on this thing.

00:30:07   And then there's a family reunion that happens later on, it's like am I able to focus on this thing?

00:30:12   Again, mostly, not entirely, this is where work starts to intrude like a little bit but it's still relatively minor.

00:30:20   And then after that, my wife and I went on our own to Las Vegas for a bit of downtime

00:30:26   And it was like, yes, I'm able to focus on downtime here for the most part

00:30:32   Whereas last year again, I just felt like I was trying to do everything at once

00:30:37   Vastly, vastly overestimating how much could possibly be done

00:30:42   And this year, since I cut down the number of videos that I would theoretically be working on over this course of time

00:30:52   and of course I cut down the number of podcasts I was doing

00:30:55   I was much much more successful in being able to be present in the moment for the things that I was doing

00:31:03   instead of always having something running in the back of my mind about like

00:31:07   "You need to be thinking about the next podcast"

00:31:09   of what are you going to be talking about and you need to be thinking about the videos

00:31:12   that you need to be writing and what are you going to do about that. I was able to mostly

00:31:16   kind of calm that and move that out of my mind for the vast majority of the summer.

00:31:22   Again, only falling down slightly towards the end of August. So I would say it was mostly

00:31:27   a success. I'm pretty pleased with the way things went.

00:31:30   Yeah, it sounds better. Sounds way better. And you were gone for a long time, so the

00:31:34   fact that you were able to manage it that nicely is good.

00:31:37   Yeah it did it did work out I think again what one of these things is really

00:31:43   trying to just really trying to know about yourself and to make accurate

00:31:50   estimates about yourself and and one of those things that I just couldn't ignore

00:31:54   when I was thinking forward to the summer was the sheer number of flights

00:31:59   that I was going to be getting on and just recognizing that like that kind of

00:32:05   stuff is surprisingly draining for me. That there's an any day that involves any kind

00:32:13   of plane travel, I just have to write off the possibility of even doing work because

00:32:17   it's just like it's just not going to happen because I know I'm going to be thinking about

00:32:20   the flight for the whole time until I get on the plane and then since I'm going to be

00:32:25   moving locations like I kind of spend the rest of the day like settling into wherever

00:32:28   it is that I am. It's like you can't possibly do podcasts on any of these days. You're never

00:32:33   going to do any kind of quality writing on a day like this. So just looking at your calendar,

00:32:37   there's so many days that you're flying, you just have to knock all of those off. And then

00:32:43   also the thing that I have to recognize is both times I went to America when I was coming

00:32:49   back to the EU, I would be coming back from my favorite time zone in the world, California

00:32:55   time which is just horrific for me for jet lag when I come back like it always

00:33:01   knocks out a real week before I feel like a normal person coming back and

00:33:07   again it's like it's it's easy to look at an empty calendar and to be able to

00:33:14   overestimate how much it is that you're going to do or to think that days are

00:33:18   like normal days but I was really trying to think about that upcoming summer

00:33:24   or think about things like people

00:33:26   that I was going to be interacting with

00:33:29   and just accepting and really understanding

00:33:33   how much time and focus and energy

00:33:37   does this really represent,

00:33:39   not how much you want it to represent,

00:33:41   and try to plan for that.

00:33:43   And as always with these things,

00:33:46   even when you think about that,

00:33:48   there's always going to be more that happens

00:33:51   than you expect,

00:33:52   and you're going to be able to do even less than you think so it's like

00:33:57   just trying to just trying to plan for for all of that so

00:34:02   know yourself i guess is what i'm trying to say here and i feel like i did a much

00:34:05   better job of knowing myself this summer

00:34:09   and i think i will will do an even better job of

00:34:12   knowing myself next summer about how to how to work

00:34:16   and how to not work and how to do

00:34:18   gradations

00:34:20   I need to know myself better, it would appear.

00:34:22   Well, you know, like I said, it's...

00:34:28   Well, here's the problem. I know myself, but I ignore what I know.

00:34:32   Well, that's...

00:34:33   That's a whole different situation.

00:34:35   Well, I mean, if we imagine Myke Hurley as a black box,

00:34:40   knowing yourself and ignoring what you know about yourself from a black box perspective is functionally equivalent to not knowing about yourself.

00:34:46   So, I don't really give you any credit for that.

00:34:49   Okay.

00:34:50   I'm sorry Myke. I'm not looking for credit.

00:34:52   That was, I was commiserating.

00:34:55   Ladies and gentlemen, let me talk to you about FreshBooks.

00:35:01   FreshBooks are helping small business owners save time and avoid the stress

00:35:05   that comes with running their businesses.

00:35:08   Me and Grey talk about running businesses all the time, right?

00:35:11   That's one of the main things about this show. We talk about how we get our stuff done.

00:35:14   We talk about some of the things that are difficult and tricky for people that are self-employed.

00:35:19   invoicing and getting paid for your work can be one of them. This can be an

00:35:23   uncomfortable thing to do especially when you're starting out because you've got to send

00:35:26   people invoices for them to pay you.

00:35:28   So what you really want is a tool that can take away a lot of the pain.

00:35:32   So for example, FreshBooks makes it super simple to create an invoice. It takes just 30

00:35:36   seconds.

00:35:37   You can put your logo on it as well if you want so it will be all nice and professional.

00:35:40   It integrates with a bunch of services like PayPal and payments by card

00:35:45   and so you will make sure you get paid quickly. In fact

00:35:48   FreshBooks customers get paid 5 days faster on average.

00:35:52   Some of the really awkward stuff is if you send an invoice and you're not sure if somebody

00:35:55   has looked at it and you've got to send that uncomfortable email to check that they've

00:35:57   got it, FreshBooks does that.

00:35:59   You'll be able to see on the site, on the invoice itself, you can see if it's been opened,

00:36:04   if it's been viewed, if it's been printed and of course if it's been paid.

00:36:07   You can also set up automatic late payment reminders too.

00:36:10   So just come from FreshBooks, they're done on their own, you don't even need to worry

00:36:13   about it.

00:36:14   I love FreshBooks.

00:36:15   use it every single week to send out my invoices at Relay FM. I can't imagine ever needing

00:36:20   another tool. It gives me everything that I need. Great support, tons of third party

00:36:23   integrations that do expense tracking in the US and reconciliation stuff. It's super, super

00:36:28   simple. FreshBooks is offering a 30 day free trial to listeners of this show. If you send

00:36:34   any invoices, I want you to go and check this out. You don't need any credit card to sign

00:36:37   up. This is an unrestricted 30 days of use. Go to freshbooks.com/cortex and enter cortex

00:36:44   in the how you heard about us section,

00:36:46   so FreshBooks knows you came from this show.

00:36:48   Thank you so much to FreshBooks

00:36:49   for sponsoring Cortex and Real AFM.

00:36:51   Part of the problem I have had this summer

00:36:55   is a huge disruption in my life.

00:36:58   - Oh, yes.

00:36:59   - Which has taken place over the last few weeks.

00:37:02   - Yes.

00:37:02   - And that is a second job that I've taken on,

00:37:05   which is trying to buy a house.

00:37:07   - It seems like buying a house, I don't know,

00:37:12   I have this irrational feeling that buying a house should be like buying anything.

00:37:19   How hard can it be?

00:37:20   All I want to do is add house to cart and check out.

00:37:23   Yes, that's exactly right.

00:37:26   That's what I want to do.

00:37:27   Yeah, every once in a while I do look at like property price apps, you know, to see houses

00:37:33   in an area because I'm curious about this kind of thing.

00:37:35   I do feel like all of those real estate apps where you can browse through the houses and

00:37:38   you're like, oh, here's a house.

00:37:39   Yes, they should have a little add house to cart at the bottom.

00:37:43   Like, yes, I would like to buy this house.

00:37:45   Can we just do this?

00:37:46   Can I just press a button and like mortgage approved and it all just goes through?

00:37:51   But no, it sounds like from your experience that it's not nearly that simple.

00:37:56   No, it's a nightmare.

00:37:58   I can't imagine doing this on my own.

00:38:02   Like, me and Adina buying this house together is the only thing that's able to keep me sane

00:38:09   because she is a very detail oriented person and is reading all the paperwork and spending

00:38:14   time on it, like things that I don't want to do.

00:38:18   But while she's doing a lot of that stuff, there's just more that's happening in your

00:38:22   life and it really does feel like having another job because it's adding stress and it's like

00:38:29   a new job.

00:38:30   It's like when you start a job because everything you're learning is completely new and then

00:38:36   you're dealing with a ton of paperwork, right?

00:38:39   So it feels like when it starts, it's a new job.

00:38:43   Then it starts to feel like a job that you're settled in with because you then have to start

00:38:47   chasing people for things that you need.

00:38:51   And this happens by email and it happens by phone.

00:38:55   You start getting a bunch of emails that you don't want.

00:39:01   And the problem that I have found is you have this new job that you have to pay a lot of

00:39:06   attention to and it takes up a lot of your time but you're still doing the job

00:39:10   that you have already as well so I'm working two jobs right now. So this is

00:39:17   part of the background radiation behind the busy week and the busier week is

00:39:22   also essentially you feel like you have a whole other job trying to find and buy

00:39:28   a house. Yeah it's it's a real big thing and something that's making it a little

00:39:34   bit harder for us. There are a bunch of circumstances around the house that we're buying, which

00:39:39   means that we, from putting in the offer, have one month, 28 days, to buy the house.

00:39:48   This process usually takes 12 weeks, 3 months, to do, and we have to compress it to one month.

00:39:55   So it has been fast-paced and action-packed.

00:39:58   Exciting, I'm sure!

00:40:02   - It is exciting, it is.

00:40:05   It's also terrifying.

00:40:06   It's terrifying when you are self-employed

00:40:11   to think about owning a home.

00:40:14   That is a scary thing to think about

00:40:19   and it's something that I am coming to terms with

00:40:22   and trying to come to terms with

00:40:24   and I'm sure that's gonna take a little while.

00:40:26   - Why do you think it's particularly scary

00:40:28   when you're self-employed?

00:40:29   Like what is the thing that keeps Myke up at night?

00:40:32   - It's on you, the money that you make is on you.

00:40:37   Now there is as much risk of me getting fired from a job

00:40:42   as there is from my business falling to pieces, right?

00:40:46   In fact, if anything, I would say it's less likely

00:40:49   for my business to fall to pieces

00:40:50   because if something's going wrong, by and large,

00:40:54   I can know about it and maybe try and fix it, right?

00:40:57   and if something's going wrong in the company

00:41:00   you're employed by, most of the time

00:41:02   you can't do anything about it.

00:41:03   It's not even in your view that there's a problem,

00:41:06   even if there was, you probably couldn't be

00:41:07   the one to fix it, right?

00:41:10   Companies go bust, it happens,

00:41:11   and then if you work for one of those companies,

00:41:13   then you're in trouble.

00:41:15   So in that sense, like okay, maybe I have

00:41:18   a little bit more security in a weird way.

00:41:21   However, the money that comes through the company

00:41:24   or the money that comes to me,

00:41:26   I'm responsible for making a lot of it.

00:41:28   Running this company,

00:41:33   I'm responsible for the directions that it goes in.

00:41:36   And that is scary when you then have to couple on

00:41:41   a financial commitment and a home

00:41:44   and a mortgage payment that you have to meet every month.

00:41:47   And having people rely on you to bring that money in

00:41:52   so you can continue living in the house.

00:41:56   That is a very, very different feeling.

00:41:58   It is a feeling, I didn't expect this,

00:42:02   quite close to what it was like

00:42:04   when I originally quit my job.

00:42:06   - Hmm.

00:42:08   - Because it is the, this (beep) just got real feeling

00:42:13   and it's all on you now, buddy.

00:42:16   - Yeah.

00:42:17   - That's how it feels.

00:42:18   - I can definitely sympathize with that.

00:42:23   So like I don't even know if I'm,

00:42:26   how much more busy I really am,

00:42:28   but everything feels more busy.

00:42:32   So like I've noticed a thing this week

00:42:34   where I've felt that this week that I have been jam packed

00:42:37   and my calendar says so that I've had lots of stuff on

00:42:39   and my task manager says I have lots of stuff on.

00:42:41   However, this week, every day,

00:42:44   I have got my task manager to zero,

00:42:47   which is not something that usually happens.

00:42:51   Usually there's a couple of things left

00:42:52   that I move to the next day.

00:42:54   But I've been clearing my tasks more

00:42:56   and I don't fully understand what's going on here.

00:42:59   Either I'm overworking because I feel like I'm busy

00:43:02   or I'm more correctly planning things

00:43:06   or this is just like a freaking age thing.

00:43:08   I don't know what the cause and effect is here,

00:43:11   but all I know is I feel like I'm busier

00:43:13   and I'm doing more stuff.

00:43:14   It's very strange.

00:43:15   And I don't actually think that those two things

00:43:17   are connected in a weird way.

00:43:20   Like I feel busier and then do more work.

00:43:23   It's not that I'm doing more work and then feeling busier.

00:43:26   - You think the busyness is causing you to do more work?

00:43:29   - I think maybe, which is very strange.

00:43:32   - Yeah, I don't understand how things work in your mic mind.

00:43:34   - No, I think it's like the stress of knowing

00:43:37   there's so much stuff on is pushing me to work longer hours.

00:43:41   I think that might be what's going on here.

00:43:44   - Right, because things are real.

00:43:47   You have a deadline with this house.

00:43:48   - Yep.

00:43:49   to get done and it's all on you so somebody has to stay up and do all of these things.

00:43:58   Because maybe like the fact that I have this insane deadline of a house is making every

00:44:04   deadline feel tougher.

00:44:06   It's like deadlines mean something.

00:44:11   Yeah, this is actually a deadline that means something.

00:44:15   Yes, I do find that one of the things that you learn

00:44:19   in life is many deadlines, they're not really deadlines.

00:44:24   There's actually very few things that are real deadlines.

00:44:28   The things have to happen by a certain date.

00:44:31   Many deadlines have a kind of squishiness to them.

00:44:34   But it seems like this house deadline is a real deadline.

00:44:37   Like if you don't hit this, you lose this house

00:44:40   then maybe you start all over and that's not something that you want to do.

00:44:43   No, that start all over is one of the worst start all overs you can be at, right?

00:44:49   Like you lost a house, go back to jail, don't pass, go, don't collect 200 pounds.

00:44:56   It's really stressful man.

00:44:57   I'm very sorry that it's stressful for you Myke.

00:44:59   I'll give a little background, like I've never rented a place, you know, so like there's

00:45:03   a lot of new things here for me, like even just like going to look at somewhere, you

00:45:08   I live at home right now and I will be moving straight into a house that I own.

00:45:14   Mm-hmm. So there's so many new things happening right now. Like I've never...

00:45:18   well I moved once in my life, you know, and I wasn't controlling the move. My

00:45:25   parents did that. So you mean moved once just as as a human being ever? Yeah. From

00:45:31   born until now, until this moment? Yeah. You have moved once? Technically it's twice but I

00:45:36   - I don't remember the first one, right?

00:45:38   But we moved to the place that we're in now

00:45:40   about 11 years ago, but I wasn't in control of any of that.

00:45:45   Everything was just done around me.

00:45:47   But this is like everything.

00:45:49   Everything's on me, on us.

00:45:52   And it's just a really strange thing.

00:45:54   And it is playing into a problem that I have

00:45:59   of a feeling of busyness stressing me out.

00:46:04   I've spoken about this on the show in the past

00:46:06   where I feel like I'm busy

00:46:07   and I get super stressed out about it,

00:46:09   when I sit down and work out what I actually have,

00:46:12   it becomes a lot more manageable.

00:46:14   I think a lot of people like to sit down

00:46:15   and write out a list of the stuff you've got

00:46:17   and it feels better.

00:46:18   But this time, I actually can't do that

00:46:21   because I can't write out the house buying process

00:46:25   because every day new things are happening

00:46:27   that I cannot foresee.

00:46:29   So when I put in my to-do list, buy a house,

00:46:32   I have no idea what that means, right?

00:46:34   Until the moment that it's done.

00:46:36   - Yeah, this feels like one of those moments where

00:46:40   someone's gonna chime in, like, oh, you just crank

00:46:42   the getting things done methodology, right?

00:46:44   And you just think, well, what's the next physical action

00:46:46   I have to take?

00:46:46   It's like, you know what?

00:46:47   For some big projects, especially projects

00:46:49   where there's just a huge cloud of unknowability

00:46:53   around them, it's not that simple.

00:46:56   - Nope.

00:46:57   - Right, like, you, this is the problem of unknown unknowns

00:47:01   that you don't know what you don't know.

00:47:05   - Yep.

00:47:06   - And that makes estimation and difficulty level

00:47:10   just meaningless.

00:47:12   It's just throw it out the window.

00:47:13   You have no ability to know how hard this is going to be

00:47:16   or how long it's going to take or what needs to happen

00:47:18   because you don't know the step that you don't know

00:47:21   because you've never bought a house before.

00:47:23   - I have a great example of this.

00:47:25   This week we knew that we were expecting

00:47:28   information from our solicitor lawyer.

00:47:32   We call them solicitors here.

00:47:34   And this was gonna be a bunch of information

00:47:36   about the property, contracts and stuff like that

00:47:38   that we'd need to look over.

00:47:40   So we were expecting these documents to come through.

00:47:42   They sent 50 documents.

00:47:45   Right, so I knew this paperwork was coming through.

00:47:52   Didn't expect 50 documents that we had to read.

00:47:55   - Did you read the mic?

00:47:56   - I didn't.

00:47:57   - Oh, okay.

00:47:58   did. so when you say that we had to read. oh I have a stack to read it's just not

00:48:03   the full stack. okay. they have been vetted now. this is the thing you have to

00:48:09   read this read it that's what I've been told I'm very grateful for this but it's

00:48:15   like even the amount that I have to read is more than I thought you know like I

00:48:19   have like maybe like 15 things 15 documents I have to read I thought we

00:48:23   were gonna get like five mm-hmm right so this is like you cannot plan for this

00:48:27   but then even in the back of my mind I know I'm not reading all that stuff but

00:48:30   it's there in my head right it's this thing that is there that needs to be

00:48:35   done I like that you have just admitted on the show that you have been handed a

00:48:39   a pre-screen like please read these things oh I'm so lucky list of things

00:48:44   but you're still not even gonna read the thing is right I this is the thing if it

00:48:48   was on me those not all those documents would be read I would have read an

00:48:51   amount of them because I couldn't find the time for it. Within the

00:48:55   deadlines that have been set for us there's no way that I would be able to

00:48:59   do that and it's because Adina is amazing and she will stay up till very

00:49:06   late doing it but like I just can't bring myself to do that. And it adds

00:49:12   into the busyness feeling right? Where like my brain like I'm doing it right

00:49:16   now my brain is saying you can't there's no way you can do this. Right yeah this

00:49:20   This is the thing, there is something eating away at your mind even if you're not actually

00:49:26   doing it.

00:49:27   Yep.

00:49:28   It's still consuming some part of your brain that worries about it and contributes to the

00:49:32   feeling of busyness.

00:49:34   This whole thing is just crazy.

00:49:35   But for the next episode, we may own this house, which is amazing.

00:49:41   I'm going to have an office, Gray.

00:49:42   Ooh.

00:49:43   You're going to have an actual dedicated podcasting office?

00:49:48   Mega office is what it's called.

00:49:50   Mega Office.

00:49:51   Yeah, I've given it the name Mega Office.

00:49:53   I have a Pinterest board set up called Mega Office.

00:49:55   Wow.

00:49:56   Where I'm adding things in.

00:49:57   I'm looking at IKEA catalogs.

00:50:00   Ooh.

00:50:01   I'm looking at smart home devices.

00:50:04   I'm very excited.

00:50:06   That's what I'm excited about.

00:50:07   I'm excited about Mega Office.

00:50:09   That is exciting.

00:50:10   That's the reason that you're doing this, right?

00:50:11   To get a space that you can make your own space.

00:50:13   This is one of the key reasons.

00:50:15   Yeah, we're getting a two bedroom place and I'm going to finally have an office.

00:50:20   office to work in and we're gonna be in the inner rim.

00:50:24   Oh wow! You're really upgrading your life.

00:50:27   There is a coffee shop I can walk to, which does good coffee. We went to view the house

00:50:33   again yesterday and I had amazing French toast at this place. There is a gym in our building,

00:50:40   Grey.

00:50:41   Oh that's nice.

00:50:42   We are moving into civilization. That's what we're doing here.

00:50:46   That's very exciting.

00:50:47   will be able to jump on a train and be in central London in 15 minutes.

00:50:51   You can fantasize about how productive you're going to be in this new environment. It's

00:50:55   going to be amazing.

00:50:56   I'm going to do four times the shows and I'm going to be a bodybuilder. It's going to be

00:51:01   brilliant, I can't wait.

00:51:02   Well, that seems like a very good reason to buy a house then.

00:51:05   Yep. I mean, in all seriousness, it's going to make big changes to our lives in good and

00:51:12   bad ways right but I think the net result I'm very positive that the net

00:51:17   result of this is gonna be all upside. You know like we're gonna be have our

00:51:21   own space we're gonna be happy in it we're gonna be back in London again like

00:51:26   close into London so you actually go do things I think it's gonna make a lot of

00:51:30   positive effects on our life but it's gonna add some stuff too it's gonna add

00:51:34   I feel like a super adult. This is something a friend mentioned this to me the other day,

00:51:42   the term super adult, and that is how this feels. Like everything has gotten incredibly real. We got

00:51:48   engaged in between the time we recorded these shows as well, right? Oh yes, have we even

00:51:54   mentioned that on the show? I don't know if we did. No, I asked Adina to marry me and foolishly

00:52:00   enough she said yes. So like we're doing everything right now. Congratulations to the two of you.

00:52:09   So this is what you mean by super adult that you are engaged, you're going to be a married man,

00:52:15   you're going to have a mortgage. I guess you need you need like a car payment next. We're thinking

00:52:23   about getting a car yeah. That will also mean I have to get a driving license first because I

00:52:28   don't have one because I'm a Londoner. Right, right. Why would you need a driver's license

00:52:34   in London? You have no need for it. But we get a parking space so now we're thinking

00:52:39   about getting a car. No, see that's a terrible reason to get a car is because you have a

00:52:43   parking space. Not immediately. First we can rent out the parking space. Yeah rent it out,

00:52:47   that's exactly it. You have a parking space in London, it's like owning a gold mine. Rent

00:52:53   that out. So we'll do that but we are thinking about like eventually getting a car, you know,

00:52:58   We're moving head on into adult life here.

00:53:02   - Wow, how do you feel about that, Myke?

00:53:04   Does it feel like mortality crushing down upon you

00:53:10   or are you mostly excited?

00:53:11   - I'm mostly excited.

00:53:12   - Good, I'm glad you are.

00:53:13   - I haven't had the mortality feeling yet.

00:53:15   - Just you wait.

00:53:16   - Oh yeah, there's documents, right?

00:53:17   There's documents coming my way.

00:53:19   Lots of life insurance paperwork and stuff, you know.

00:53:21   That mortality is gonna be outlined to me

00:53:24   in black and white.

00:53:25   - Excellent, excellent.

00:53:27   There is a lot going on right now.

00:53:28   And I'm hoping that once I get through this,

00:53:31   probably year long process,

00:53:34   I'll be back to a better feeling again.

00:53:37   See, like my feeling right now in my brain

00:53:39   is like you are feeling really stressed right now.

00:53:41   You have a lot of things going on.

00:53:42   You have new projects and stuff that you're working on.

00:53:45   But in 2017, you hopefully will have got through

00:53:48   a lot of this.

00:53:49   So then you can start to relax.

00:53:52   Oh, and then you got to plan a wedding.

00:53:53   Congratulations.

00:53:54   - Right.

00:53:55   Yeah, you'll be, don't worry.

00:53:56   You'll be through this in a short four months.

00:54:00   That's what you're planning on here.

00:54:03   At least the buying of the house will be done and we'll be moved in and I'll have mega office

00:54:08   so what can go wrong?

00:54:10   What can go wrong and I can visit you there.

00:54:12   It'll be fun.

00:54:13   Yep.

00:54:14   I feel like the lesson for the listener is to not do what Myke has done.

00:54:21   Yeah take this as a warning.

00:54:24   If you're going to buy a house or do some other equivalently large, unknowable project,

00:54:33   don't also take on a bunch of other new projects right before you do this.

00:54:39   That's a bad idea. You should do the anti-mic plan and try to pare down everything to the bare minimum

00:54:49   bare minimum if you're taking on a big project like this because it's going to be a second

00:54:53   job. Don't do what Myke did. Cut everything to the bone. Then embark on a big project

00:54:59   like getting a house.

00:55:00   Myke I feel like being self-employed is the key

00:55:03   problem here because at least I know in my old day job I could have just worked less.

00:55:10   Right like looked busy.

00:55:11   Myke I like how you said that Myke.

00:55:14   Myke You know I could have just looked busy for

00:55:17   for a while, but also be working on the house stuff

00:55:21   during my work day.

00:55:23   - Yep.

00:55:24   - Because I was running and starting a business

00:55:27   whilst I was in my work day.

00:55:29   But I can't really do that now because the output

00:55:33   is directly responsible for me as the owner of the business

00:55:37   and as a contributor to the business, right?

00:55:40   So with the self-employed stuff, it's like if I don't

00:55:43   do the work, I don't get paid.

00:55:45   but when I was in my old job, I could do less work

00:55:48   but still got the same amount of money every month

00:55:51   because I could hide it.

00:55:53   So I think it's, for me I feel like

00:55:55   at least with my own experience,

00:55:58   this house buying stuff is harder on me

00:56:00   because of my working situation.

00:56:02   Because if I would have still been at the bank,

00:56:04   I could have carved out some time in my day

00:56:07   to do and think about this stuff,

00:56:09   more so than what I can currently do.

00:56:12   - Yeah, I agree with that.

00:56:12   I was just trying to find,

00:56:14   but I'm not gonna be able to remember it now.

00:56:16   Maybe I'll see if I can find it for the show notes.

00:56:19   But I read a book a long time ago,

00:56:22   which was essentially about office culture.

00:56:26   It was particularly in the United Kingdom,

00:56:29   but they were doing studies of essentially watching

00:56:33   office monkeys all day and trying to figure out

00:56:36   how much are they actually doing.

00:56:40   And the main thesis of the book was that

00:56:43   an enormous number of white-collar employees are vastly underemployed.

00:56:48   That the joke in office space where someone comes in and he's like,

00:56:53   "Oh, I actually probably do about 20 minutes of real intense work in a day,"

00:56:57   is like, for lots of jobs, like, that's not necessarily that far off.

00:57:02   So this is the difference with being self-employed versus having a job,

00:57:08   where what you were saying before about the relative security of either,

00:57:12   - Yeah, I do think you may have a very good point

00:57:17   that being self-employed in a bizarre way

00:57:19   is actually more of a secure job.

00:57:22   But the advantage that an office job has

00:57:27   is that kind of coasting that you can do.

00:57:31   - Here's the thing, I can do that.

00:57:32   I can do the coasting, right?

00:57:34   Or like, you know, I'm not saying,

00:57:37   but you just took a ton of time off, right?

00:57:39   which is the equivalent of all the coasting, right?

00:57:43   You took all the coasting that you would do in a year

00:57:45   and you put it in one block.

00:57:46   And I could do that, you could do that,

00:57:50   like the business would continue to run,

00:57:51   I could just stop things down for a while,

00:57:53   we stopped Cortex for a bit, right?

00:57:55   But I made less money.

00:57:57   - But that's exactly it, it's like,

00:57:59   when you're self-employed, I can put a very exact number

00:58:07   on like the opportunity cost of this summer.

00:58:10   And that's a thing that you just can't escape from.

00:58:15   And when you're coasting in an office job,

00:58:18   that salary still keeps coming in

00:58:20   and you can kind of, you can feel better about it

00:58:24   when you're focusing on some other project

00:58:26   for some other length of time.

00:58:27   - Like I had a busy,

00:58:29   I had a lot of travel this summer as well.

00:58:30   So I was happy for Cortexmas, right?

00:58:32   For that like made it easier

00:58:34   'cause I put a lot of work into this show.

00:58:36   We both do.

00:58:37   And it's probably the show that I put the most time into because of the way that we

00:58:42   plan and the way that we edit and that kind of stuff.

00:58:45   But I need it to start again.

00:58:48   Right now, I'm at the point now where like, show needs to come back because I'm buying

00:58:53   a house.

00:58:56   Cortex just can't last forever.

00:58:59   My keys gonna get paid.

00:59:03   So this is the house that Cortex built.

00:59:05   is what I'm hearing right because we can't we can't keep canceling the show

00:59:08   we can't keep taking off forever. Yep we're actually naming it

00:59:12   Cortex Cottage. Fantastic I hope to see that above the door when I come and visit

00:59:18   of course. Cortex Cottage. A million people wrote in to tell us that

00:59:24   Microsoft have launched an Evernote importing tool. Yes yes. So this is a tool

00:59:32   written by Microsoft to look at your Evernote database I guess and import it I'm guessing

00:59:41   cleanly-ish into OneNote and I'm wondering if you have tried this at all.

00:59:48   No I haven't tried this and I received what seemed like all of the messages in the world

00:59:57   from people letting me know about this importer.

01:00:00   Which to me just seemed like one of these prime examples of

01:00:06   I don't think you understand what my problem is.

01:00:09   And while yes, I did complain about the lack of an importer,

01:00:12   I think I also made it pretty clear on the show

01:00:14   that I tried very hard to make Microsoft OneNote work for me

01:00:18   but its fundamental structure of notebooks with tabs

01:00:24   is unworkable for the way that I want to use it.

01:00:27   It's just too clumsy.

01:00:29   I tried it, but it's like, it is not designed

01:00:33   for hierarchies in the way that I need it to be.

01:00:36   So it's like, I'm very glad for lots of people

01:00:40   that the OneNote importer exists on the Mac.

01:00:43   I'm very happy for everybody,

01:00:45   but it is of no use to me.

01:00:48   What was much more useful was the feedback

01:00:52   that people sent with regards to Evernote about tags,

01:00:55   which we touched on briefly last time,

01:00:57   that there are different ways to think about

01:01:01   organizing your data in Evernote with tags

01:01:04   as opposed to using notebooks, which is what I did.

01:01:08   And at this point, I have spent a pretty considerable

01:01:13   amount of time reworking my Evernote system

01:01:21   from notebooks to tags

01:01:24   in a way that Evernote was clearly,

01:01:26   I don't wanna say grumpy with,

01:01:29   but it's like boy has Evernote spent a lot of time

01:01:31   syncing between all of my devices,

01:01:34   going through all of these changes.

01:01:36   But so yes, this is what I have mostly moved

01:01:41   toward at this point.

01:01:42   I think I'm about 80% done, I'm gonna guess,

01:01:45   with trying to convert everything into tags.

01:01:48   and it's workable as is always the frustration

01:01:53   like I find Evernote is just really clunky on iOS

01:01:59   so I have essentially had to do all of this on my computer

01:02:02   and I'm just using Evernote on iOS to save things

01:02:07   but I can't really organize things on iOS with tags

01:02:10   but it's like you know what, this is one of these cases

01:02:14   where I have to weigh the pros and cons

01:02:17   trying to move to a different system, what do those systems have, how do they work, versus

01:02:21   sticking with the way Evernote is and like making it work with tags.

01:02:26   And so my conclusion is, at least from playing around with it for a while, is that like yes,

01:02:31   the tag solution is workable, non-ideal in very many ways, but it is workable and far

01:02:38   less of a time investment than other things would be.

01:02:42   So even though I gave that huge rant about Evernote and even though I am still concerned

01:02:47   deeply about the future of the company, this is one of these cases where I'm going to be

01:02:52   sticking with it, I'm going to use tags, and you know, if the day comes when Evernote gets

01:03:00   shut down or acquired, which is often the same thing in the software world, like that's

01:03:06   future Grey's problem that is not current Grey's problem.

01:03:10   He can deal with that.

01:03:11   Yeah, exactly. I'm sure that guy has lots of time on his hands. He can fix it.

01:03:16   Well, he's got nothing planned right now.

01:03:18   Yeah, exactly. The calendar is clear in 2019 when Facebook buys Evernote.

01:03:24   I had spoken about my system, you know, Evernote being basically just about the holiday planning for me, right?

01:03:34   Now, I have taken some trips, I wasn't using Evernote at all, and I have been completely

01:03:43   happy with saving PDFs to Apple Notes and writing out some information about my trips

01:03:48   into Notes.

01:03:49   I have found it to be a great system, I'm very happy with it, so I'm moving away from

01:03:56   Evernote completely.

01:03:57   So you are probably one of the throngs of customers who has decided that the alternatives

01:04:03   are cheaper and adequate compared to Evernote.

01:04:06   Exactly.

01:04:07   Exactly.

01:04:08   It gives me great confidence in the future of the company.

01:04:11   Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

01:04:14   There was this article that got sent to us about the fact that they're kind of stabilizing

01:04:19   as a company.

01:04:20   Like they did this big, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, I'll find it for

01:04:23   the show notes, but it seems like Evernote are making money again and they've stripped

01:04:27   down and they've gotten rid of a lot of those crazy benefits that we've spoken about.

01:04:32   they seem like that they're getting a bit they seem very confident in the in

01:04:36   the future of the company I remain unconfident but I'm happy that they're

01:04:41   confident yeah I mean I make jokes but I genuinely hope that Evernote does well

01:04:48   yeah cuz you're still using it to exist because I'm still here right exactly

01:04:55   because this particular rat has no exit from this particular ship so I really

01:05:01   hope this ship is doing well. We've spoken in the past about the strange ways in which

01:05:10   things can happen. You know, you've spoken about this in the past about videos, like

01:05:14   you have an idea for a video and you see it in other places. Something weird happened

01:05:20   with YouTube Life, the YouTube simulator game. Oh, the one we talked about on the episode

01:05:26   out of time to out of timer.

01:05:28   - And we spoke about two things.

01:05:30   We spoke about YouTube life,

01:05:32   and we spoke about PewDiePie's video about YouTube life.

01:05:36   The YouTube simulation game.

01:05:38   PewDiePie has announced that he is making

01:05:40   his own YouTube simulation game,

01:05:43   and he announced this about two days

01:05:47   after we published the episode,

01:05:49   which to make it even funnier, was recorded months ago.

01:05:56   That's what I like the most about this,

01:05:58   is we released the episode,

01:05:59   a couple of days later this happened,

01:06:00   everyone's like, "Oh, you just spoke about this."

01:06:02   But we recorded the show in June.

01:06:04   It's very weird.

01:06:06   But yeah, PewDiePie is making his own game,

01:06:08   it's called Tuba Simulator.

01:06:10   I'm very excited to play this

01:06:12   'cause I bet it is gonna be hilarious.

01:06:14   - Yeah, right.

01:06:15   We spoke about this, but not this at all.

01:06:18   We were talking about a different YouTube simulator,

01:06:21   not PewDiePie Simulator.

01:06:22   Yeah, it's just a funny thing.

01:06:25   I think he's put out some other game before,

01:06:29   if I'm not mistaken.

01:06:30   - Yeah, he had an iOS game called Legend of the Bro Fist.

01:06:34   - Ah, okay, okay.

01:06:35   - Which was like an action adventure side-scrolling game.

01:06:39   - Yeah, I will be curious to see what he puts out with this

01:06:43   and I don't know why, but I just have a feeling

01:06:48   like it might be ridiculous and fun.

01:06:51   I'm basing this on nothing, I have no experience with this,

01:06:55   But I can totally imagine that after putting together

01:07:00   that first video that he did

01:07:02   where he was talking about YouTube Simulator,

01:07:04   which I still think is a magnificent, strange meta video.

01:07:09   - Yep.

01:07:10   - I can just imagine that this got under his skin.

01:07:14   Like I can see how this would happen

01:07:16   where he would keep thinking about like,

01:07:18   how would I make a YouTube Simulator?

01:07:20   And also if he would do any kind of

01:07:23   return on investment calculations, like PewDiePie making a YouTube simulator game, that's a

01:07:28   gold mine.

01:07:29   There's no way if he puts effort into it like that that's not incredibly successful.

01:07:35   So I can just see how it would be a thing that would be stuck in his mind as an obvious

01:07:40   project to do.

01:07:42   So I'm going to be very curious to see what this is when it comes out.

01:07:47   Also like this is not important and not really news but since we talk about that and I watched

01:07:51   that video I've been watching quite a lot of PewDiePie videos. That was one

01:07:55   thing that stuck out to me when I listened to the episode "Out of Time 2

01:08:00   Out of Timer" was I referenced in there not really watching very much PewDiePie

01:08:04   and since since watching that YouTube simulator one I've ended up watching

01:08:12   more and more of his videos. Well I bet that what happened to you is what

01:08:16   happened to me. I started getting them suggested to me. Exactly. And then I watched a

01:08:21   couple of them and then I decided the type of PewDiePie video I like, the type that I

01:08:27   don't like, and then I've just started cherry picking them out but I've been watching them

01:08:32   more and more, like a couple a week at least. And he posts like every day basically.

01:08:37   Yeah this is the power of the YouTube algorithm in action. This is like "hey you watched one

01:08:42   PewDiePie video, we're going to pick the most probable ones that you will probably like?"

01:08:48   That's the weird thing is everyone it suggested I loved but then when I started watching them all I didn't like them all so much

01:08:53   The algorithm knows better than I do

01:08:56   What I want to watch and what I have learned is I don't really have any interest in watching his

01:09:01   Videos that are about video games or him doing video game playthroughs and I never realized that he does a bunch of videos that are

01:09:08   Vlog like yeah, I like stuff about his life. Yeah, I think those are those are really well done

01:09:15   Those are interesting and it just confirms to me what I always suspect because PewDiePie ends up being

01:09:21   Like the butt of jokes because he is the number one

01:09:25   Youtuber but even even back when I didn't watch him very much

01:09:29   I thought like well

01:09:29   But you don't get to be the number one person without being good at what you're doing

01:09:33   even if it's not a thing that everybody likes and and I feel like just doubly confirmed in this of

01:09:39   Yes, of course the person who is the number one youtuber is

01:09:44   is good at creating engaging content.

01:09:49   Like he cuts together vlogs and talking about his life

01:09:55   or what's going on with him in a very funny way.

01:10:00   Like he's very good at it.

01:10:03   I mean he had this whole drama with trying

01:10:04   to get his diamond play button from YouTube.

01:10:07   - Those were the videos that got me sucked in.

01:10:10   - Yeah, those videos are hilarious.

01:10:12   You need to put them in the show notes, Myke.

01:10:13   but of him like arguing with YouTube

01:10:16   and he's like bragging about all of his subscribers

01:10:19   in this very funny way.

01:10:21   He is just capable of producing captivating video

01:10:26   even if you don't wanna watch everything that he does.

01:10:29   And I can see why lots of people wouldn't like him

01:10:32   but you don't get to be the number one person just randomly.

01:10:36   And lots of people always make jokes like,

01:10:38   oh, he's just an idiot who's making videos

01:10:42   about video games and just like dumb lucked his way to number one. Like I think that's

01:10:48   what lots of people on the outside seem to think. It's like that's not how this stuff

01:10:52   actually works on the inside. It's like of course he's talented. He has to be.

01:10:56   I mean this conversation is kind of ridiculous in the way that like two old men discover

01:11:02   PewDiePie. Like it's kind of ridiculous but I will say another video of his that I really

01:11:08   really loved was when he did a video about when there was that YouTube bug or something

01:11:14   that was clearing out subscribers.

01:11:15   Oh yes, yes.

01:11:16   And he lost like 27,000 and he was going crazy and like demanding his subscribers back from

01:11:22   YouTube.

01:11:23   It was brilliant.

01:11:24   If you don't, in case you don't know this, like you might not know, but PewDiePie has

01:11:29   47,625,000 subscribers.

01:11:35   That's why 27,000 going missing is really funny.

01:11:39   Exactly.

01:11:40   Because he got really upset about it in the video, right?

01:11:44   His stuff is weird in places, but there is a lot to be enjoyed in there.

01:11:50   Do you know what?

01:11:51   I think he knows this, right?

01:11:52   I mean, again, obviously he does.

01:11:55   He's super smart.

01:11:56   He makes different kinds of videos for different people.

01:11:58   Yeah, it's a really interesting model.

01:12:02   I see a lot of channels that try to do a bunch of different videos and I think that they often don't work

01:12:06   but it seems like he's able to pull it off really well to have very different styles of videos

01:12:13   and to have them mixed together on his channel in a seamless kind of way where it's...

01:12:18   And maybe this is again the strength of the YouTube algorithm, that the YouTube algorithm seems to know

01:12:24   that I'm not super interested in watching him play video games and doesn't seem to suggest those videos to me very much

01:12:29   and mostly suggests the more vlog-like videos to me.

01:12:32   This guy, PewDiePie, he's got really good YouTube videos, you should go check him out.

01:12:36   Let's send him some Cortex love, alright?

01:12:38   Yeah, exactly.

01:12:39   Help give this guy a good kickstart.

01:12:41   Yeah, this is the part where we like slowly and awkwardly spell out his name for people.

01:12:47   That's what we should do.

01:12:48   P-E-W-D-I-E-P-I-E. There you go. PewDiePie, go check him out.

01:12:55   Yeah, kid's really talented.

01:12:57   Yep, he's gonna go places.

01:12:59   [Music]

01:13:00   This episode is also brought to you by Squarespace, the simplest way for anyone to create a beautiful

01:13:05   landing page, website or online store. Start building your website today at squarespace.com

01:13:10   and use the offer code 'CORTEX' at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

01:13:14   With easy to use tools and templates, Squarespace helps you capture every detail of what drives

01:13:19   you, because if it's worth the effort, it's worth sharing with the world. If you're working

01:13:23   on the next big project, that next big idea, you're going to need a site that looks professionally

01:13:27   designed. That's what Squarespace can give you. It doesn't matter what your skill level

01:13:30   is, it doesn't matter if you've ever built a website before or even if you know one line

01:13:34   of code or not like me. I have no idea how to code in HTML and CSS and that's why I've

01:13:39   used Squarespace for years. Because they give you all of the technology that you need, all

01:13:44   of the state of the art technology to power your site, to ensure security and stability

01:13:48   and to build it as well. They have beautiful templates, everything's drag and drop, you

01:13:51   can make your site look and feel exactly how you want. If you need any help, they have

01:13:56   for

01:14:12   code

01:14:30   you don't need any credit card to do this, just go to squarespace.com and then when you

01:14:34   decide to sign up, use the offer code "CORTEX" at checkout and you will get yourself a lovely

01:14:38   10% off your first purchase and show your support for this show. Thank you so much to

01:14:42   Squarespace for supporting Cortex and Real AFM.

01:14:45   Grey, let's do a Caretex question.

01:14:49   Ooh, we have a CareTec question.

01:14:51   No, it's CareTex.

01:14:53   Isn't that what I said?

01:14:54   No. You say it with a K at the end.

01:14:56   Yeah, CareTec.

01:14:58   No, that's CoreTec. That's the other one.

01:15:00   Is that the other one?

01:15:01   That's the technology one.

01:15:03   Caretechs is the caring one.

01:15:05   Yeah.

01:15:06   Caretech.

01:15:07   No.

01:15:08   Let's do it.

01:15:09   Okay.

01:15:10   I think, should we use it, should we get people to send these in with the hashtag Caretechs?

01:15:13   No, Myke.

01:15:14   No, don't do this, Myke.

01:15:15   You're trying to get this too complicated.

01:15:17   I'm trying to make this way too complicated.

01:15:19   Let's just do #AskCortex and for a second I totally forgot what it is.

01:15:28   I'm just a bit rusty.

01:15:30   Yup, it's been a while. You can remember all the names you give, like Cortexmas. Anything else and it all goes out the window.

01:15:37   Evercore is my favorite elephant butt.

01:15:39   Cole wrote in with his #CareTex question. No, I shouldn't do that.

01:15:44   No, don't mind, no, Myke, you're gonna mess the people up.

01:15:47   I read it wrong.

01:15:48   Cole wrote in and said, "I'm currently working on some side projects, but I'm not making any money from them.

01:15:53   I just graduated from college, but my degree doesn't relate to what I am doing with my side stuff.

01:15:59   Should I go and get a high paying job that relates to my degree then quit when I'm able to make money from my side projects

01:16:06   Or should I just get a simple job at McDonald's to get me through and work on my side stuff?

01:16:11   It's a very interesting question

01:16:16   Because the answer is is kind of unclear

01:16:21   So to kind of boil this down to the essence

01:16:25   That's right. Carl has a thing that he likes to do. That thing has nothing at all to do

01:16:29   with the degree that he's just spent years getting. That degree can get him a good job,

01:16:36   but it's not what he wants to do. What he wants to do is what he's doing on the side.

01:16:39   So do you ever get a high paying job, which probably also means high stress and time job,

01:16:45   or get a simple job so you haven't got anything to worry about and then just keep working

01:16:49   on your side stuff?

01:16:54   That's how I look at this question because there's some trade-offs here you know your

01:16:58   stress and time and money there are big factors in these two and it's deciding where you want

01:17:04   to sit on either side of those problems.

01:17:07   Yeah what are you going to do while you're supporting yourself working on your side projects?

01:17:18   Yeah, I actually at one point sort of faced this question, not in quite the same way,

01:17:27   but we mentioned a couple shows ago about how I was a teacher and then took a break

01:17:33   for a while while I was trying to get side stuff spun up.

01:17:35   It didn't work out the first time and then I had to go back to teaching.

01:17:40   But at that point my wife and I did have a few discussions about essentially this, like

01:17:46   "We have no money, we need some money, but do we,

01:17:50   like should I just get a simple job

01:17:53   or should I go back into teaching?

01:17:55   Like which way should I go about it?"

01:17:56   And I went back into teaching

01:18:00   and I feel like my gut response,

01:18:03   as always is a little bit tricky

01:18:04   when you don't know the exact details,

01:18:06   like what is the college degree?

01:18:08   What are the side projects?

01:18:10   But my gut feeling is I would say,

01:18:14   go for the high paying job that relates to the degree.

01:18:18   And I have a couple reasons for this.

01:18:22   The first is I think it's probably easy to underestimate

01:18:28   how taxing like a simple job would be.

01:18:34   I think it's easy to think like,

01:18:39   "Oh, it's a thing that's not necessarily

01:18:42   going to take a lot of my mental time.

01:18:45   But I think any job is gonna be big blocks out of your life.

01:18:50   - Yeah, but if you're working in a high stress job,

01:18:55   you're probably taking work home with you in your brain.

01:18:58   If you're working in McDonald's, I don't know if you do that.

01:19:01   - Yeah, that is definitely the advantage of McDonald's.

01:19:05   - There might still be things that play on your mind, right?

01:19:08   Like company politics are still there.

01:19:10   But I don't think you're going home and worrying about the deadline on the project.

01:19:15   Yeah, that is without a doubt true.

01:19:18   The advantage of a simple job is that you leave the simple job at work.

01:19:23   And everyone I know who has worked those kind of jobs has said that is the best part.

01:19:28   You work as barista at Starbucks and when you come home, that's it.

01:19:32   It's just over.

01:19:33   You don't have to keep thinking about it.

01:19:35   And your time is probably fixed as well.

01:19:38   You don't stay late to get the project done so much,

01:19:40   I don't think.

01:19:41   - Yeah, you don't, that is also true.

01:19:43   That is also true.

01:19:44   The other thing though,

01:19:47   again, it's not a simple thing to decide between,

01:19:52   but my feeling about the high-paying job is

01:19:55   I feel like there are more potential advantages there.

01:20:01   One of which is possibly you can save more money

01:20:07   so that you can leave it with a bit of buffer sooner

01:20:10   if one of the projects seems like it's paying off,

01:20:12   one of your side projects.

01:20:14   The other thing is, I also just,

01:20:18   without knowing the details of the job,

01:20:20   I just, I think that there is the possibility

01:20:24   at a more complicated job of picking up skills

01:20:29   that might be useful in the future.

01:20:31   Whereas at a simple job,

01:20:32   that is probably not going to happen.

01:20:36   So I don't know, my gut feeling would be,

01:20:38   take the high paying job and I would do side projects

01:20:44   in the morning with the best part of your brain

01:20:48   and then go to that job.

01:20:51   That's what I would think.

01:20:51   But it feels like Myke, you're on the other side of this.

01:20:54   - I feel like I definitely was

01:20:56   until you mentioned the skills part.

01:20:58   That's a really good point

01:21:00   that I hadn't properly considered.

01:21:02   'Cause when I think about my abilities

01:21:04   to talk to and deal with businesses now

01:21:07   that came from working in a corporation.

01:21:10   I wouldn't know the language to use,

01:21:12   the terminology to use.

01:21:13   I wouldn't know any of that stuff.

01:21:15   I could take a good stab at it.

01:21:17   The reason that I could probably live with it

01:21:18   in a corporation was because I had a good handle

01:21:22   on just communicating with people anyway.

01:21:25   But it's more forgivable if I get something wrong

01:21:27   whilst in a company because I might just upset someone

01:21:30   but whatever, but if I upset someone

01:21:32   or do something wrong in the business,

01:21:35   then that person might never work with me again.

01:21:37   - Exactly.

01:21:37   - There are worse consequences.

01:21:39   - Exactly, and this is a skill that at least

01:21:43   in my observation of your working life

01:21:47   is an incredibly valuable skill that you have.

01:21:50   - Yeah.

01:21:51   - That even though the listeners here,

01:21:55   the public side of you, which is on the podcast,

01:21:58   like an enormous amount of stuff is behind the scenes stuff

01:22:01   working with sponsors, working with companies

01:22:03   and you do have these skills of talking to companies

01:22:08   that to me seem like magic incantations.

01:22:13   You know the words to say to make things easier

01:22:17   for the person on the other end or to help get stuff done.

01:22:20   And that's an example of a skill that you learned on the job

01:22:24   and so I mean look, the other flip side of this

01:22:30   that is the unpleasant thing to think about

01:22:33   is also the possibility of failure.

01:22:36   Side projects might never go anywhere.

01:22:40   If you have a bunch of side projects,

01:22:42   you're increasing your odds of success,

01:22:45   but you can just be unlucky

01:22:47   and have a string of side projects

01:22:49   and none of them ever pans out.

01:22:51   - Or the ones that you're working on right now won't work.

01:22:54   There's something later that will,

01:22:57   but you'll be more demoralized

01:22:58   when you feel like you've wasted your time

01:23:00   of a simple job.

01:23:01   - That's a possibility as well.

01:23:04   So I view the like risk reward balance here

01:23:09   that the high paying job related to the degree

01:23:14   is the way that I would go.

01:23:16   You can possibly marshal more resources,

01:23:20   save more money as you're going along.

01:23:23   In the high paying job, it is more probable

01:23:26   that you will learn skills that might be useful later on

01:23:31   or that you'll simply in the process of doing that

01:23:35   come across something.

01:23:38   And actually thinking about this,

01:23:40   just like you had the skill of talking with businesses.

01:23:45   I think when I was working as a teacher,

01:23:49   like I definitely refined my ability of explaining things

01:23:53   to people over time. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:23:55   You can teach people.

01:23:57   - Like that's a thing that I got better at by doing that.

01:24:01   And if I had taken a job as a barista

01:24:05   for those last two years when I was doing side projects

01:24:09   that eventually turned into YouTube,

01:24:11   I think I'm not sure it would have been the same effect.

01:24:15   - You might have made some really good coffee videos though.

01:24:18   - I might have made some really good coffee videos.

01:24:20   This is true.

01:24:21   - There is one thing about the money though.

01:24:23   - Hmm?

01:24:24   The more money you make from your job, the more money you have to make from the side

01:24:30   projects.

01:24:31   This is the main downside is not only that but there's a certain amount of I'm going

01:24:39   to say possibility of complacency with the high paying job that you're right you your

01:24:46   side projects have to be more successful before you feel like you're going to want to leave

01:24:51   them because we're again getting into loss aversion territory here.

01:24:55   If you have a good salary and you have a side project that starts making money, you're going

01:25:01   to be hesitant to give up that good salary to dedicate more time to the side project.

01:25:06   And as a person who is clearly very motivated, a simple job might drive you crazy.

01:25:14   It is also very possible that you will go crazy in a simple job.

01:25:17   Carl, I don't think we have a good answer for you.

01:25:20   I think I do have a good answer and that answer is to take the high paying job.

01:25:23   I think risk rewarding it, thinking about it, thinking about the possible outcomes.

01:25:27   I feel very strongly that my advice is the high paying job.

01:25:30   Well I'll refine it and say clear.

01:25:32   I don't think the answer is clear.

01:25:33   I think there's a lot of caveats.

01:25:36   I think I'm leaning towards the only thing I know, right?

01:25:40   Which is I didn't have a very high paying job but it was a professional position.

01:25:44   It was a high stress job.

01:25:46   There are a lot of problems with that.

01:25:47   You need to go into this job, if you take it, setting some boundaries for yourself about

01:25:54   how long you're willing to work, about how much you're going to let it affect your life,

01:25:58   and you need to try and keep those things in clear mind.

01:26:02   Also, if you're starting the job, save immediately.

01:26:08   Cut down the amount of money that you're living on immediately.

01:26:14   Work out the minimum amount and live to that.

01:26:16   I think both me and Grey didn't do this and it made it harder for us.

01:26:20   But if you're starting from step zero, from college money, live frugally.

01:26:28   You can save money so you'll be able to support yourself later and then you won't need to

01:26:33   make as much money from the side roles.

01:26:35   I give this advice to anyone who is in college right now, getting ready to take their first

01:26:40   job but they have this thing that they want to do.

01:26:44   Save money.

01:26:46   it yes and and keep living cheaply yeah like you are more used to that and it is

01:26:55   it is easier to just continue definitely definitely do that good luck Cole good

01:27:02   luck Cole take the high paying job

01:27:06   forget that typing