Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm recording in two places now.

00:00:01 ◼   ► I have been recording this whole time.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm just gonna let it run.

00:00:04 ◼   ► There you go.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Let me close this map of Hawaii.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Pull up the show notes.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Pull up my notes.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Take my hands off the keyboard.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Don't mess up anything.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Sit on your hands.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Yeah, hands off the keyboard.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Back up slowly.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Ready to record.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Sir, do not approach the keyboard.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Can you believe it's the last episode of the year?

00:00:27 ◼   ► No.

00:00:28 ◼   ► I just had that feeling.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Like, I looked at the date on the top of my computer here and it said it was December.

00:00:34 ◼   ► And I was like, "Wow."

00:00:36 ◼   ► Like, that just feels unexpected even though I knew it was coming at the same time.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, that's what happens when your year is only four months long.

00:00:44 ◼   ► So, uh, it's quite—it gets to the end of it quite quickly.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Not entirely sure what that means.

00:00:48 ◼   ► What does that mean?

00:00:49 ◼   ► That is my mental estimation for how subjectively long has this year felt.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Ah, yeah.

00:00:54 ◼   ► I think this year has felt like it is four months long.

00:00:57 ◼   ► I was really trying to pin it down, like, three months, that's too dramatic.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Five months is almost half a year and it doesn't feel like that, so I'm going with four months as

00:01:07 ◼   ► it feels subjectively like it's been about four months long this year.

00:01:11 ◼   ► - Well, Edina mentioned this, what we've been traveling.

00:01:14 ◼   ► It's like, really, our year started in August when we got our second shot.

00:01:19 ◼   ► That's when our year actually began.

00:01:22 ◼   ► It's when we started doing things that weren't that one same thing.

00:01:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And so it really has been like four or five months of an actual different year.

00:01:32 ◼   ► And so it feels like it's gone by quickly.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Because it feels to me, like in my mind, I tell my- like I think like,

00:01:39 ◼   ► "Oh, I have been vaccinated for all of 2021."

00:01:42 ◼   ► But I haven't been. It was August.

00:01:46 ◼   ► So yeah, I think it has got that- weirdly has actually got that feeling to it.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to do the math in my head,

00:01:52 ◼   ► head and I think I've been quad-vaxxed for just about that amount of time so yeah that's

00:01:57 ◼   ► that's how long the year has been.

00:01:58 ◼   ► I don't want to talk about this again. I don't want to talk about how many vaccinations you've had again.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I think about it. Anyway yearly themes time for 2022.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Yearly themes time.

00:02:10 ◼   ► All right so what is a yearly theme? So this is the fifth time I think that we've done this?

00:02:15 ◼   ► I don't know maybe.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Which is kind of an incredible thing. I want to give a very quick overview. I will say

00:02:20 ◼   ► at this point, the best place to get a primer on what is a theme is to watch Grey's YouTube

00:02:26 ◼   ► video, and I'll make sure that that's in the show notes. Was that last year that you

00:02:30 ◼   ► made that video?

00:02:31 ◼   ► I don't know, when is time? I think that's two years ago?

00:02:35 ◼   ► Was it more than four months ago? Then the answer could be yes.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Three years ago? It might have been three years ago, I don't know.

00:02:41 ◼   ► But basically with our themes, we look at what we want to achieve and focus on in a

00:02:47 ◼   ► a year. Themes can be shorter but we tend to think of them in about a year's time

00:02:51 ◼   ► on this show. We look at our working lives, our personal lives, we think about what we

00:02:55 ◼   ► want to change, what we want to continue, and create a theme around that. And then the

00:02:59 ◼   ► theme acts as a guide for us through that time. It can be a phrase or it can be some

00:03:04 ◼   ► key outcomes. Thinking about where do we want to be in a year from now. Themes are not the

00:03:09 ◼   ► same as resolutions because they are not strict goals that you have some kind of success or

00:03:13 ◼   ► failure in. So for example, one of my favorite is saying like year of health is much more

00:03:20 ◼   ► kind to you than I want to lose 20 pounds because if you lost 19 pounds, you failed

00:03:26 ◼   ► on your resolution. But if you only get some of the way with the theme of the year of health,

00:03:32 ◼   ► you've still made good progress. It also allows you to adapt throughout the year. Like maybe

00:03:36 ◼   ► instead of looking at weight or fitness, you look at mental health. It's still part of

00:03:40 ◼   ► your health and you can still make those positive steps towards what you want to be working

00:03:45 ◼   ► on rather than feeling like you have to have completed one very strict and set thing.

00:03:49 ◼   ► >> DAN Yeah, I like to think of it as a unifying idea for the year. This is a phrase that means

00:03:57 ◼   ► something to you and that you can have like thoughts collect together underneath this

00:04:01 ◼   ► this umbrella and I particularly like them especially over the last couple of years because

00:04:06 ◼   ► they can be very flexible and adaptable depending on what's going on in your life or what's

00:04:12 ◼   ► going on in the world.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And what I personally value about the yearly theme process is it gives me an opportunity

00:04:19 ◼   ► to kind of take stock of my life like on a yearly basis and really think about what's

00:04:23 ◼   ► working and what isn't and what I want to change about it. And then on these episodes

00:04:28 ◼   ► which we've been doing for five years, we assess how our previous theme has gone for

00:04:33 ◼   ► the current year and talk about what worked, what didn't, and what we're going to set our

00:04:37 ◼   ► new yearly theme to be. So that's what this episode's going to be today.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Alright. I thought we could maybe talk a little bit

00:04:43 ◼   ► about how we choose our themes. Okay.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Because I've kind of made a note of it this year that I've established a process at this

00:04:52 ◼   ► point. And it kind of runs the whole year through and then in the last couple of months

00:04:57 ◼   ► of the year gets kind of brought together. So, you know, I journal every day. As I'm

00:05:03 ◼   ► journaling, I'm talking about how I'm feeling, you know, writing that down. And as we kind

00:05:08 ◼   ► of get maybe to halfway through the year, I start to make like mental note of the things

00:05:13 ◼   ► that I find myself writing often. You know, this could be like, such and such things going

00:05:18 ◼   ► well, such and such thing is frustrating me, etc, etc. And as these things start to pop

00:05:23 ◼   ► up more and more, I start to add some thoughts to an Apple note around kind of like October

00:05:30 ◼   ► time and so I create my yearly theme note for the next year and I start adding lots

00:05:35 ◼   ► of random thoughts and phrases and ideas like if I feel something about my work, to even

00:05:40 ◼   ► just randomly walking around the day like oh I have this thought, I just put it down

00:05:44 ◼   ► and I just start adding and adding and adding to this Apple note and then what I actually

00:05:49 ◼   ► you did last week is I will open that note up and read back through everything

00:05:52 ◼   ► and start to see what patterns are emerging and I start to bring it all

00:05:57 ◼   ► together and then can build a theme around it. So for me it's very much a

00:06:02 ◼   ► throwing everything in and seeing what is there and then I use that to craft

00:06:07 ◼   ► what my theme will be because a lot of the time I'm talking about my

00:06:11 ◼   ► frustrations in that note and I start to see like oh actually this could be

00:06:15 ◼   ► related to this, and this could be related to this. Let me craft something around that

00:06:20 ◼   ► to see if I can try and make this part of my working life better.

00:06:22 ◼   ► My traditional method has been something of a vision quest during summer travel, under

00:06:28 ◼   ► the stars that it comes to me. Obviously that didn't happen this year, so I've actually

00:06:33 ◼   ► kind of cribbed, because you mentioned this offhandedly last time we spoke about having

00:06:38 ◼   ► a running note that you were adding stuff to, and since we spoke I created a note in

00:06:43 ◼   ► Obsidian and dumped just like a ton of thoughts that I'd had there and collected some little

00:06:48 ◼   ► random stuff that I'd written down over the year in Apple Notes and sort of put it together

00:06:52 ◼   ► in one place. And I've been having that just open up automatically just like in a little

00:06:58 ◼   ► sidebar whenever I'm working in Obsidian on other projects so that I can see it there.

00:07:04 ◼   ► It's interesting, I think I'm going to continue this through the year because whenever we

00:07:08 ◼   ► do these episodes, very often one of the questions people have is, how do you keep reminding

00:07:15 ◼   ► yourself about the theme over the course of the year? And I really like this as having

00:07:22 ◼   ► an always visible, like, working document. So I think I'm going to keep up with this

00:07:30 ◼   ► little habit of just having a little narrow sidebar just when I first open Obsidian, you

00:07:35 ◼   ► you know, oh, here's that document about the year theme.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And you can just look at it and think about it for a second

00:07:41 ◼   ► and kind of remind yourself of what you want to be doing.

00:07:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, a lot of people create a visual reminder.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Like I know we have a lot of listeners

00:07:49 ◼   ► that maybe make a desktop wallpaper

00:07:51 ◼   ► that's related to their theme in some way,

00:07:53 ◼   ► or they write it down on a piece of paper

00:07:55 ◼   ► and stick it on the wall or put it on a whiteboard.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Or honestly, for me, my journaling reminds me of it

00:08:01 ◼   ► because it's written in the front of the journal.

00:08:04 ◼   ► So I think about it.

00:08:05 ◼   ► I think about my theme whenever I sit down to work on my theme system journal.

00:08:09 ◼   ► But I think having some kind of reminder, whatever it is, is good, especially in the

00:08:14 ◼   ► first, I would say three months of the year.

00:08:17 ◼   ► It can be really helpful.

00:08:19 ◼   ► So you're just internalizing what it is that you're working towards.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Because I know that sometimes in the beginning of the year, I struggle with the transition

00:08:27 ◼   ► between from one to the other.

00:08:28 ◼   ► So having that reminder there is is pretty helpful to me too.

00:08:32 ◼   ► So shall we review our years, Myke?

00:08:34 ◼   ► Can you remind me what your 2021 theme was?

00:08:36 ◼   ► My 2021 theme was Year of the Voyage.

00:08:40 ◼   ► I was wanting something that would be specifically flexible.

00:08:44 ◼   ► So it had a dual meaning for me.

00:08:46 ◼   ► It was voyage in the sense of the Spaceship You video that I made about

00:08:53 ◼   ► when you're in a constrained environment, maintaining the routine and the separate

00:08:57 ◼   ► borders of your working spaces and your living spaces and your recreation spaces,

00:09:03 ◼   ► that all of this is really important. So, Year of the Voyage was partly about,

00:09:07 ◼   ► "Hey, this whole situation isn't over yet. Don't lose track of what you're doing."

00:09:15 ◼   ► And sort of maintain the routines and what's worked so well for you in the past year.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And then the flip side of Year of the Voyage was, it was hugely important to me that no matter what happened over the rest of the year,

00:09:30 ◼   ► I was going to find a way and make time to go visit my family in America because it had just been way too long.

00:09:40 ◼   ► So normally, like, I wouldn't include a specific target like that in a theme.

00:09:47 ◼   ► I think that does sort of go against what we set out in the beginning, but it was just too important for me not to do it.

00:09:55 ◼   ► do it. It's like, I'm going to make this happen, and I don't care how much effort or how inconvenient

00:10:01 ◼   ► or how much time. I've got to make this happen, and I'm deciding at the beginning of the year

00:10:06 ◼   ► that this is going to be a thing. Especially not knowing, like, what is it going to look

00:10:11 ◼   ► like in the future? Doesn't matter. You have to make this happen one way or another. So

00:10:16 ◼   ► that was my theme. I would rate Year of the Voyage as two-thirds a big success and one-third

00:10:24 ◼   ► of failure. So the way my year went is that the first third was a big success in terms

00:10:31 ◼   ► of year of the voyage. I did do what I set out to do, which is just maintain those routines,

00:10:38 ◼   ► which I just thought were really important when you have a limited radius under which

00:10:43 ◼   ► you're operating. But it did fall down in the middle, which I have labeled the swamp

00:10:51 ◼   ► of uncertainty for my year. So I did have this like, I mean I can really pin it, the

00:10:57 ◼   ► swamp of uncertainty started the moment I saw a particular shark statue in London and

00:11:04 ◼   ► it ended the day that I uploaded the second unexpected Tiffany video. That is like the

00:11:15 ◼   ► the perfect bookends of when was this middle unhappy time of the year? Oh, Sharks to Tiffany,

00:11:22 ◼   ► that's when it was.

00:11:23 ◼   ► S - Voyages can be affected by sharks. This is a well-known thing.

00:11:28 ◼   ► B - This is very true, yes. If your voyage is going to be affected, sharks are definitely

00:11:33 ◼   ► a possibility. So, I think there's many reasons why I kind of fell down in maintaining my

00:11:39 ◼   ► routines and a whole bunch of my, like, work structures that I had been really great about

00:11:45 ◼   ► over the past year and a quarter just didn't hold up for me. Like, it was a bit of a perfect

00:11:50 ◼   ► storm of different intersecting things. And the main one is just this was the time of

00:11:57 ◼   ► year when maybe the pandemic was coming to an end, but maybe not, and I kept trying to

00:12:06 ◼   ► do the planning for going to America, but it kept having to get pushed back. And also

00:12:12 ◼   ► both of these projects were extremely uncertain in how, if at all, are these videos going

00:12:21 ◼   ► to be finished. They were both just unusually difficult, unusually uncertain projects. And

00:12:26 ◼   ► then combined with the uncertainty about traveling, if I'm going to be here or not, it just ended

00:12:32 ◼   ► up being like a really terrible time. And I'm gonna say something that sounds like so

00:12:38 ◼   ► obvious it's going to sound really dumb, but I feel like I really in retrospect learned

00:12:45 ◼   ► the lesson that you have to pay attention to when you're in an uncertain period of time.

00:12:56 ◼   ► And this is when the routines are way more valuable, not way less valuable.

00:13:06 ◼   ► So I think I started telling myself, "Oh, I don't need to make sure that I'm waking

00:13:13 ◼   ► up at the same time because I might be in America in a few days and then it won't matter.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Like I'm going to need to adjust the time anyway."

00:13:21 ◼   ► And I think like there's always some lazy part of your brain which is looking for excuses

00:13:29 ◼   ► not to do the things that you know are good.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And I think I've really come out the other side of the swamp of uncertainty with a very

00:13:38 ◼   ► sharp sense of notice when this is happening.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And be aware that this is exactly the time to step up the alert of keeping your routines

00:13:52 ◼   ► together and not like letting them slide because you think that they don't matter because this

00:13:58 ◼   ► time is uncertain.

00:13:59 ◼   ► No, this is the time it really matters.

00:14:02 ◼   ► And I don't know, I think that sounds super obvious when I say it that way.

00:14:06 ◼   ► But just going through the experience in this human way kind of made it more visceral to

00:14:13 ◼   ► me than it's been in the past. It wasn't a great time, but I feel like I came out of

00:14:18 ◼   ► it with a really clear lesson. And also as a little bit of a sidebar, this is one of

00:14:25 ◼   ► the times when the journal really helps, like our theme system journal really helped me

00:14:30 ◼   ► kind of exit the swamp. I did a bunch of my tactical journaling at the end of the Tiffany

00:14:36 ◼   ► any project. And, you know, this is just thinking things through, having to put them down in

00:14:44 ◼   ► words on paper, formulating like the set of questions that I want to be asking myself

00:14:52 ◼   ► every day, you know, in the journal and like making a little note with the circles. All

00:14:57 ◼   ► of this like really helped kind of pull me out of it and go, "Okay, you need to come

00:15:01 ◼   ► back out of this time in one way or another, so it was very helpful there. So that was

00:15:07 ◼   ► my like one-third failure of the year. But it was in the middle, and then I did accomplish

00:15:14 ◼   ► the main thing, which was voyage to America. I don't have words to express how grateful

00:15:23 ◼   ► I was for the experience that I was able to have with my family this summer. Obviously

00:15:28 ◼   ► the circumstances that led up to it were terrible, but I would never have, under normal circumstances,

00:15:40 ◼   ► been able to just dedicate that much time to family time. I think I ended up being with

00:15:47 ◼   ► my parents... I have to double check the calendar at this point, but like something like six

00:15:53 ◼   ► weeks and...

00:15:54 ◼   ► Yeah, it was a long time.

00:15:55 ◼   ► I haven't spent that much time with my parents since I lived with my parents back when I

00:16:01 ◼   ► was in high school.

00:16:03 ◼   ► Uh, like it's really true.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Like I was going back through and trying to think like, "Oh, in college did I spend

00:16:08 ◼   ► that much time?"

00:16:09 ◼   ► But it's like, "Actually, no, never that much time straight in a row."

00:16:12 ◼   ► And it was just really fantastic.

00:16:14 ◼   ► MATT: And you can't complain about that, right?

00:16:16 ◼   ► I know that, you know, that maybe there's a world where if you wouldn't have had so

00:16:19 ◼   ► much trouble with those two video projects that you wouldn't have stayed that long.

00:16:24 ◼   ► B: Yeah, that is also true. I have a slight other note about that which kind of contributed to that,

00:16:28 ◼   ► but yes, for sure also the fact that the the swamp of uncertainty was a really bad time

00:16:35 ◼   ► gave me good reason to just say "hey chill out man, relax for a while, just enjoy this."

00:16:42 ◼   ► And also as I mentioned with the journal, like you know, one of the little you know,

00:16:45 ◼   ► check and review that you're doing this every day things that I had at the back, like,

00:16:49 ◼   ► I found it a really useful exercise just to order them from top to bottom of like, hey,

00:16:55 ◼   ► the one that you write at the top is the one that you absolutely have to hit.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Like that is there's no exception to that.

00:17:01 ◼   ► And then they're in decreasing importance of like, okay, if you get down to if you hit

00:17:05 ◼   ► the 10th one, that's great.

00:17:07 ◼   ► But it's not you know, it's not a necessary one.

00:17:09 ◼   ► And it's an interesting way of ordering the daily page.

00:17:12 ◼   ► I've never thought of it that way.

00:17:13 ◼   ► Like for me, they're all like of equal importance, really, like, I just got to hit all of them.

00:17:17 ◼   ► But that's a really interesting way of doing it, of like descending in importance.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Check these off if you get halfway through, you've still done a good job kind of thing.

00:17:25 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I'd never thought about it that way either.

00:17:28 ◼   ► I think all the years we've been doing this, I thought of it the same way you did, of them

00:17:32 ◼   ► as being equally important.

00:17:35 ◼   ► But I think I wasn't in a place where I could look at 10 things and be like, "Yeah, I'm

00:17:40 ◼   ► gonna do all of these."

00:17:41 ◼   ► Like, it was very, "No, I'm not gonna do all of these."

00:17:44 ◼   ► I like it.

00:17:45 ◼   ► I might do something like that because I know I want to redo mine for next year, which I

00:17:49 ◼   ► haven't done for a couple of years, but I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do that

00:17:51 ◼   ► yet.

00:17:52 ◼   ► So I might use this as a starting point.

00:17:54 ◼   ► It's so interesting to me that you haven't changed them for a while.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Like I feel like that to me is actually one of the most valuable things is is like rethinking

00:18:02 ◼   ► those questions.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Well, I see a way that I've used them is not so much for the theme.

00:18:08 ◼   ► It's actually secondary to that part.

00:18:10 ◼   ► It's like you've always got to think about your theme.

00:18:13 ◼   ► That's great.

00:18:14 ◼   ► these 10 set, well for me, these nine set of things

00:18:17 ◼   ► that you have to do just to make sure you're being

00:18:20 ◼   ► the person you wanna be every day.

00:18:22 ◼   ► But I'm thinking I might start tweaking them up

00:18:24 ◼   ► a little bit, 'cause I have space for extra ones anyway.

00:18:27 ◼   ► But you know, it's just basically like keeping contact

00:18:30 ◼   ► with your friends, be a good husband, right?

00:18:32 ◼   ► Like add something to your business.

00:18:34 ◼   ► That it's like it's just, they're very simple to me,

00:18:37 ◼   ► but it's like you gotta hit these every day

00:18:39 ◼   ► as like this is only the beginning of a successful day

00:18:43 ◼   ► if you've hit a portion of all of this.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Rather than, you know, but I might switch it up

00:18:49 ◼   ► because at this point I've gotten pretty good

00:18:51 ◼   ► at doing something in all of those areas, so.

00:18:53 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:18:54 ◼   ► I would suggest trying it out in the ordering.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Like, or at least I was in the right mental space

00:18:59 ◼   ► that this is exactly what worked for me.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And the thing that I put right at the top

00:19:04 ◼   ► was quality time with family.

00:19:07 ◼   ► It's like, this is the whole reason I'm here.

00:19:09 ◼   ► This is a big target for, you know,

00:19:12 ◼   ► what had to happen with this theme for this year.

00:19:15 ◼   ► And so it was great.

00:19:17 ◼   ► And it worked out just perfectly.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And I mean, I've mentioned it before,

00:19:21 ◼   ► but it was just a literally magical time teaching

00:19:25 ◼   ► my mom how to play Magic.

00:19:27 ◼   ► And she would get obsessed at night and play the game.

00:19:31 ◼   ► And then we'd wake up in the morning,

00:19:34 ◼   ► and she'd have just a ton of questions.

00:19:36 ◼   ► And we'd want to get right into it.

00:19:37 ◼   ► And then my dad would be kind of laughing

00:19:40 ◼   ► at the two obsessive weirdos in the house.

00:19:43 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:19:43 ◼   ► Look at these couple of nerds.

00:19:45 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:19:46 ◼   ► Doing this for hours and hours.

00:19:49 ◼   ► It was just great.

00:19:50 ◼   ► I could not have asked for a better time.

00:19:54 ◼   ► It was a peak experience of my adult life,

00:19:57 ◼   ► the ability to spend so much time with my parents

00:20:00 ◼   ► that I just haven't had in years.

00:20:01 ◼   ► So it was unspeakably great and just a huge success

00:20:07 ◼   ► for the end of the year with regards to the year of the voyage.

00:20:13 ◼   ► I think that I know you, I can tell you're a bit up and down on this one because you

00:20:17 ◼   ► had a tough creative time but ultimately that part, what you did at the end, that was the

00:20:24 ◼   ► whole point of the year anyway.

00:20:25 ◼   ► It was like allowing you to get to a point where you were able to make a trip and you

00:20:30 ◼   ► had such a good time on that trip.

00:20:32 ◼   ► It feels like it was a full success to me, your theme this year.

00:20:35 ◼   ► You know, this was all of it, right?

00:20:38 ◼   ► Like it was all laddering up to allowing you to be able to take this time and you did it

00:20:42 ◼   ► and it was great and you've made the most of it.

00:20:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, even though I say I would regard the year as one third of failure, I also wouldn't

00:20:53 ◼   ► do the year differently precisely because it all led to this perfect ending of the year.

00:20:58 ◼   ► So and also I have this funny experience where those two videos, sharks and the Tiffany video,

00:21:05 ◼   ► particularly the second one, I almost never watch my old videos, but I really like those

00:21:12 ◼   ► two.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Like I actually think, oh, they came out great, both of them.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And so that is still also a nice upside that, oh, this unusually terrible working period

00:21:23 ◼   ► has actually produced, I don't know, two of my real favorite videos.

00:21:27 ◼   ► The videos, it's like, this person almost killed me.

00:21:30 ◼   ► What is it, dead person almost? You know what I'm talking about, right?

00:21:33 ◼   ► Like the behind the scenes. That's a classic for me.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I mean. It's that one and the sharks, I feel like.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Those two are really great.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Oh, okay. So you actually, because when you say like the project,

00:21:43 ◼   ► there was two videos to the project, but you mean the second one?

00:21:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean the second one.

00:21:47 ◼   ► Oh, okay then. Then yes, I agree. I think that the Grey in the Real World kind of video,

00:21:53 ◼   ► like, that's I think my favorite video you've done this year.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Close to me with sharks. I love sharks too.

00:21:59 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's, you know, there's totally something to The Tortured Artist.

00:22:03 ◼   ► Where it's like, "Oh boy, look at this great work that came out of someone's miserable time!"

00:22:08 ◼   ► "We would just like to see you suffer." That's kind of it, really.

00:22:13 ◼   ► I look back on this year and I wouldn't do any of it differently, because I think it all

00:22:20 ◼   ► worked out, even the part of it that I would regard as kind of a failure in the middle.

00:22:27 ◼   ► I'm still glad for it and it worked out. So that's my review of the 2020 Year of the Voyage.

00:22:34 ◼   ► 2021.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Oh my god, Myke.

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00:25:12 ◼   ► [BEEP]

00:25:12 ◼   ► How was your 2021?

00:25:14 ◼   ► I was so apprehensive of sitting down to do this part.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:25:20 ◼   ► I don't know what it--

00:25:20 ◼   ► I feel like I hadn't done a good job.

00:25:22 ◼   ► That was-- in my mind, I was like,

00:25:23 ◼   ► I just felt like I had not done a good job of my yearly theme.

00:25:26 ◼   ► And I didn't want to re-listen to the part of the episode

00:25:31 ◼   ► last year where I spoke about what I wanted my theme to be.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Like I was really putting it off and putting it off.

00:25:38 ◼   ► But once I actually sat down and went through it,

00:25:41 ◼   ► I felt better about it than I had initially anticipated

00:25:45 ◼   ► I would.

00:25:46 ◼   ► And I think really for me, the reason for this was

00:25:49 ◼   ► I had lost sight of the fact that my yearly theme this year

00:25:55 ◼   ► was more about setting groundwork for future years

00:26:00 ◼   ► and put way too much stock in about the way that I'm feeling towards the end of the

00:26:04 ◼   ► year of Overwhelm, when really it actually kind of makes sense.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And I think it was just in our episode last year we spoke a lot about how big my theme

00:26:13 ◼   ► was, and we spoke about how there was this element of groundwork.

00:26:18 ◼   ► So listening back to it made me remember that, and I felt a bit better about it.

00:26:21 ◼   ► ALICE; Remind me, what was the name?

00:26:23 ◼   ► SEAN-MARK WILKINSON The Year of Reinvention.

00:26:24 ◼   ► - Right, right, right.

00:26:27 ◼   ► - And I think maybe I suffered with a bad name in the end

00:26:31 ◼   ► 'cause I'm not reinvented, but that wasn't the point.

00:26:35 ◼   ► The point was to start that process

00:26:37 ◼   ► and I think I kind of got lost in the idea of like,

00:26:41 ◼   ► well, I'm not a changed man.

00:26:43 ◼   ► 'Cause that takes a while.

00:26:45 ◼   ► But the year of reinvention was more about setting

00:26:48 ◼   ► some steps in place to move towards changing

00:26:52 ◼   ► a lot of my work life.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And I do feel that now that I've actually sat down and done the review,

00:26:57 ◼   ► which is why I think it's important to do the review because now I've changed my

00:26:59 ◼   ► perspective on my year.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I feel like I have actually set myself on the path to being this future

00:27:06 ◼   ► progression of who I want to be. And I've moved everything forward.

00:27:09 ◼   ► Nothing's completed from the year.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Everything's just moved forward in the direction that I wanted.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And I feel like I made some meaningful progress.

00:27:15 ◼   ► Can you give me some examples?

00:27:16 ◼   ► Yeah. So I had a bunch of objectives, uh, of like things,

00:27:20 ◼   ► areas that I wanted to focus my attention on.

00:27:23 ◼   ► One was completing Mega Studio.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And this was kind of like my,

00:27:27 ◼   ► I'm going to America, that you had.

00:27:30 ◼   ► Of like, there is actually, I believed an end point

00:27:33 ◼   ► to this when I started it.

00:27:34 ◼   ► But it actually turned out that that wasn't the case

00:27:36 ◼   ► as the year went on.

00:27:38 ◼   ► So one thing that I loved about when thinking

00:27:40 ◼   ► about my studio is I spent the full year there this year.

00:27:44 ◼   ► Which I had not done previously.

00:27:46 ◼   ► So I was able to work there as much as I wanted

00:27:49 ◼   ► for an entire calendar year.

00:27:52 ◼   ► And I would say at this point, the studio is kind of as complete as I would feasibly want it for now.

00:27:58 ◼   ► There's like a couple of items of furniture that would be nice to have,

00:28:01 ◼   ► but ultimately what this year has done is proven what we really want in an outside space.

00:28:07 ◼   ► That at the moment, Mega Studio only really works for me, it doesn't work for me and Adina.

00:28:13 ◼   ► And so now it's kind of like, alright, like we've worked out the way that we would want to have an outside studio space.

00:28:22 ◼   ► And ultimately we do need it to have a couple of rooms

00:28:25 ◼   ► or at least one office room for me to record in

00:28:29 ◼   ► and then a larger space and also like our own bathroom,

00:28:32 ◼   ► our own kitchen, which is all stuff we have to share

00:28:34 ◼   ► in the building that we're in right now.

00:28:36 ◼   ► So really I don't think 2022 is the year

00:28:40 ◼   ► where we actually change this,

00:28:42 ◼   ► but it will be the year where we start to put some plans

00:28:45 ◼   ► in place for maybe 2023 of moving to a new studio space.

00:28:50 ◼   ► - Hmm.

00:28:51 ◼   ► But having Megastudio has been the biggest, most positive change to my work in maybe five

00:28:58 ◼   ► years.

00:28:59 ◼   ► Really?

00:29:00 ◼   ► I love it.

00:29:01 ◼   ► I love having a place that I go to and I do all my work there and I come home and I don't

00:29:09 ◼   ► do any more work.

00:29:10 ◼   ► Like this sounds so simple.

00:29:13 ◼   ► It sounds so simple but I know I get it.

00:29:16 ◼   ► You know, I had worked for so many years

00:29:19 ◼   ► just in the second bedroom of the house and the living room,

00:29:22 ◼   ► which kind of just meant I worked everywhere

00:29:24 ◼   ► all the time whenever.

00:29:25 ◼   ► And there is just something so nice about having that space.

00:29:30 ◼   ► There are so many things that I do.

00:29:32 ◼   ► There are things that I don't do

00:29:33 ◼   ► because of having this place of like,

00:29:35 ◼   ► well, I could record this extra show,

00:29:38 ◼   ► but it means I have to go to the studio on the weekend

00:29:40 ◼   ► and I don't want to do that, so I'm not going to do it.

00:29:42 ◼   ► That kind of stuff has just been so great for me.

00:29:45 ◼   ► And while I do still have the emergency gear at home,

00:29:49 ◼   ► I don't like to use it.

00:29:50 ◼   ► I can still edit at home if I want to,

00:29:53 ◼   ► but I don't really want to.

00:29:54 ◼   ► I want to go to the studio and do it

00:29:55 ◼   ► because I like the environment more.

00:29:57 ◼   ► It just feels nicer, it's bigger, it's more open.

00:30:00 ◼   ► You know, there's more light, there's more air.

00:30:03 ◼   ► I have some space, I have things set up

00:30:05 ◼   ► in like a comfortable way.

00:30:06 ◼   ► I don't feel like I'm cramped in.

00:30:08 ◼   ► Like it really has been super good.

00:30:10 ◼   ► So I'm really happy for it.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And I'm also happy that we have had this space.

00:30:16 ◼   ► It hasn't been too much of a disruption

00:30:18 ◼   ► and it's allowed us to learn more of what we would want

00:30:22 ◼   ► in a future space.

00:30:23 ◼   ► Like it's been a good first step

00:30:24 ◼   ► in having an out of home office.

00:30:27 ◼   ► I really love having a commute again,

00:30:29 ◼   ► like all these little things,

00:30:30 ◼   ► which I just, you know, I'd let them go for like seven years

00:30:34 ◼   ► it had been since I'd had this in my working life.

00:30:37 ◼   ► And I really have enjoyed the change.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Like when I think about myself now, you know,

00:30:41 ◼   ► I was like a kid when I used to do the commute and stuff.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I didn't really know what I wanted then.

00:30:46 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:30:47 ◼   ► - You know, like I was in my 20s

00:30:48 ◼   ► and I was still kind of working stuff out

00:30:51 ◼   ► and I also hated what I did

00:30:52 ◼   ► and didn't see any of the value

00:30:54 ◼   ► that can be drawn from that.

00:30:55 ◼   ► And so now I feel like I've grown up

00:30:59 ◼   ► and I've changed so much.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Having that separation and everything that comes with it,

00:31:04 ◼   ► I think works pretty nicely for me.

00:31:06 ◼   ► So very happy with that part.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I imagine a lot of people have recently realized that the commute and the physical separation of space,

00:31:16 ◼   ► there's a lot of advantages to that. And while you might think, "Oh, I don't want to have to do that,"

00:31:22 ◼   ► and it's nice to not have to, there are some big advantages for having a place that you go to,

00:31:29 ◼   ► which is the work, and then you have a transition back home and the work is not done at home.

00:31:35 ◼   ► It's a huge psychological advantage.

00:31:38 ◼   ► - And I have no doubt that it's like a similar thing

00:31:41 ◼   ► is there's just been a bunch of people

00:31:42 ◼   ► that have realized they want the exact opposite

00:31:43 ◼   ► now that they've had it.

00:31:45 ◼   ► And this is more kind of like,

00:31:46 ◼   ► I've just had that experience the same as everybody else,

00:31:49 ◼   ► but in a different way,

00:31:50 ◼   ► because it wasn't COVID related me getting the studio,

00:31:54 ◼   ► but I've just had a similar experience to many people

00:31:57 ◼   ► of having had a change in the way and where I work

00:32:01 ◼   ► and I've learned something new that I love from it.

00:32:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's interesting to hear you say that your review

00:32:06 ◼   ► is more successful than you thought going through it,

00:32:09 ◼   ► because this is also a case where when you say

00:32:12 ◼   ► you spent a full year at the studio, I think,

00:32:15 ◼   ► no, Myke, surely that can't be true.

00:32:17 ◼   ► You've only recently gone, but it's not true.

00:32:20 ◼   ► - I didn't realize this until I sat down to do the review.

00:32:23 ◼   ► - This is the exact reason why it's super useful

00:32:26 ◼   ► to actually write down and track things.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Because if you had asked me how long you've been

00:32:31 ◼   ► the studio I would say, "Oh, a couple months at most?"

00:32:34 ◼   ► - Just a couple of months.

00:32:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:32:38 ◼   ► So like, I'm really happy to hear that that,

00:32:40 ◼   ► both that you've done it and also way more importantly,

00:32:44 ◼   ► at the end of the year during the review,

00:32:47 ◼   ► you realize that you've done it.

00:32:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the most important part.

00:32:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is way more important in some ways.

00:32:54 ◼   ► - If a tree falls down in the studio

00:32:56 ◼   ► and no one's around to hear it,

00:32:57 ◼   ► was I ever at the studio in the first place?

00:33:00 ◼   ► I don't know. It's an unanswerable question. These are life's great mysteries. What isn't

00:33:04 ◼   ► a mystery though is I did visit your studio and it is awesome. Like I'm so jealous of

00:33:11 ◼   ► it. It is crazy to me that you're thinking about a mega-er studio in the future on a

00:33:17 ◼   ► 2023 timeline, but hearing you talk it through it totally makes sense.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't need more space. Like the amount of space that we have is great. It's like

00:33:27 ◼   ► more than enough, we just need it to be separated.

00:33:29 ◼   ► And there isn't really a great way to separate

00:33:32 ◼   ► what we currently have, 'cause the ceilings are so high,

00:33:35 ◼   ► like putting in any kind of fake walls or partitions

00:33:37 ◼   ► is just not gonna do the job.

00:33:38 ◼   ► But hey, if you like my studio so much,

00:33:40 ◼   ► the unit next door is available.

00:33:42 ◼   ► - It's too long of a commute.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Otherwise, Myke, I would, but it's too long of a commute.

00:33:45 ◼   ► - For you it is, for you it is.

00:33:47 ◼   ► For me it's great.

00:33:48 ◼   ► - It really feels like your place

00:33:50 ◼   ► with the way everything is set up,

00:33:52 ◼   ► with the equipment, the way things are laid out,

00:33:55 ◼   ► the way it's designed, your adorable little like quarantine space taped out in the beginning.

00:34:01 ◼   ► That is an Idina invention.

00:34:03 ◼   ► The whole thing is great. I just love it. So I'm very happy that you've spent the year

00:34:08 ◼   ► there. And I'm also very happy that I was able to actually see it in person and check

00:34:12 ◼   ► it out. And yeah, it's great. I'm so happy that you did that. And you've got space for

00:34:18 ◼   ► all your stuff.

00:34:19 ◼   ► So one of the other things was doing something new. And again, I feel like I've ticked this

00:34:24 ◼   ► This works quite a lot with keyboard related stuff and Twitch streaming.

00:34:27 ◼   ► I've really been loving this.

00:34:28 ◼   ► It's one of my favorite things that I've done in 2021.

00:34:32 ◼   ► I stream basically once a week and we have a great set of people that hang out and we

00:34:39 ◼   ► build keyboards and customize keyboards and it's just been a really great hobby and I've

00:34:45 ◼   ► loved learning the new skills that come from it.

00:34:48 ◼   ► And that comes from learning streaming stuff and also just learning how to do these electronics

00:34:55 ◼   ► projects.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Basically, we stream every Friday and I really like that it's at the end of the week and

00:35:00 ◼   ► it's one of the things that I look forward to the most in my week.

00:35:04 ◼   ► And I'm also really happy that after having done this for basically a year, it still just

00:35:10 ◼   ► feels very much in the hobby camp.

00:35:12 ◼   ► It never moved over into work.

00:35:14 ◼   ► It doesn't feel like it at all.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And it just feels like something that I do

00:35:18 ◼   ► to just hang out with some people

00:35:19 ◼   ► and just spend some time, some fixed time

00:35:22 ◼   ► doing something that's just for me that I enjoy

00:35:25 ◼   ► that I don't think I otherwise would have.

00:35:27 ◼   ► I think if I didn't have the idea that I'm gonna stream it,

00:35:30 ◼   ► if it wasn't on my calendar,

00:35:32 ◼   ► I wouldn't spend the time doing it.

00:35:34 ◼   ► But this is also something that if I have

00:35:36 ◼   ► a spare moment to myself,

00:35:37 ◼   ► I might tinker with something for a bit.

00:35:38 ◼   ► But having the time on my calendar every week

00:35:42 ◼   ► to sit down and play with this stuff,

00:35:43 ◼   ► I think has been really valuable.

00:35:44 ◼   ► and I'm really proud of the skills that I've learned

00:35:48 ◼   ► over the last year with this.

00:35:50 ◼   ► - That's all you need to do?

00:35:50 ◼   ► - No editing of any kind is really good.

00:35:54 ◼   ► I don't make YouTube videos about the keyboards either,

00:35:57 ◼   ► which is something that I could do if I wanted to.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I could make a YouTube review of a keyboard,

00:36:02 ◼   ► but I don't wanna do it

00:36:03 ◼   ► because then it's just gonna feel like work.

00:36:05 ◼   ► So spontaneity of it and the fact that not really,

00:36:08 ◼   ► I don't really prepare,

00:36:09 ◼   ► I'm not sitting down and writing down ideas on my streams.

00:36:13 ◼   ► I might have a thing I wanna do,

00:36:14 ◼   ► but it's a totally different thing.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Oh, I want to work on this project on Friday.

00:36:18 ◼   ► Great, I'll get it ready and then I'll go for it.

00:36:20 ◼   ► But it's not, none of the processes that I go through

00:36:24 ◼   ► for my podcast recording at all, cross over into this.

00:36:28 ◼   ► I can't even use a completely different computer for it all.

00:36:31 ◼   ► I can't use my gaming PC or my streaming PC.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Like it's all different.

00:36:34 ◼   ► I have a different part of my studio for it.

00:36:36 ◼   ► It's all very, like this is just what this is for.

00:36:40 ◼   ► And I think that that separation of it

00:36:42 ◼   ► has made it feel just really great

00:36:43 ◼   ► and it just continues to feel like a fun project, not a work project.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Yeah, because you do have that desk that's on the opposite wall for this.

00:36:51 ◼   ► I didn't realize that was your gaming computer.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's kind of split into two.

00:36:55 ◼   ► It's a really large desk, and the left side of the desk is just streaming and keyboard-related

00:36:59 ◼   ► stuff, and then the right side of the desk is kind of where I spend most of my time working

00:37:04 ◼   ► where I'm not recording, because the desk is just huge.

00:37:08 ◼   ► So it works great for it.

00:37:09 ◼   ► Like, I've got these kind of two stations that I sit at at the studio.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Yeah, but you can split a desk in two and make one side the one side and the other side

00:37:18 ◼   ► the other side. But I just I think I didn't realize that the computer over there is also

00:37:22 ◼   ► the gaming computer. I feel like that's a really good way to do it so that it's just

00:37:26 ◼   ► clearly like, oh, this is where I do the fun stuff. And that includes the keyboards and

00:37:30 ◼   ► it's not the it's not professionalizing it. That's interesting.

00:37:33 ◼   ► And that Windows is where I do all my fun. Mac OS is where all the work happens.

00:37:40 ◼   ► But isn't that how everybody thinks of the operating systems? Windows is for funsies and Mac is serious and button-down.

00:37:47 ◼   ► I think that's the reputation.

00:37:49 ◼   ► I think that's the long-standing understanding of those two. Yeah, I think you're right.

00:37:53 ◼   ► So I have a few more. Building new norms was the thing that I wanted to do and I still think that I've got work to do on this.

00:38:01 ◼   ► You know, one of the things that I spoke about and I feel very set in is less overall travel.

00:38:06 ◼   ► I do not envision ever going back to my 2019 travel amounts in a year.

00:38:11 ◼   ► And one of the things that I really want to focus on is different travel to what I was doing before.

00:38:18 ◼   ► So basically more travel for pleasure, less for work, which means vacations.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I only took one vacation in 2021. It's incredible. I'm actually at the end of it. I'm on it.

00:38:27 ◼   ► I'm on it now. But I let it go way too long before I did this, basically the entire year.

00:38:35 ◼   ► You know, the last vacation that I took was in January 2020 and then in end of November 2021.

00:38:41 ◼   ► That was stupid, honestly. To do that, I didn't need to do it. I felt like I had to do it,

00:38:48 ◼   ► but I didn't. I could have taken more time off in the year and a half, the two years,

00:38:53 ◼   ► but I didn't do that. And I feel like this trip has reminded me of the value of proper vacations.

00:39:02 ◼   ► And so I'm not gonna let that happen again.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you're a little hard on yourself for going so long without a vacation in this period of time.

00:39:13 ◼   ► Like, I don't know. I think you're a little harsh on yourself with that and it's extremely understandable why.

00:39:17 ◼   ► I could have taken a week. I could have taken a week or a couple of long weekends.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Like, I could have done that.

00:39:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:39:24 ◼   ► But I didn't do any of that.

00:39:25 ◼   ► You're not wrong. I just think it's a very understandable time period for that to have happened.

00:39:30 ◼   ► But yeah, you're not wrong that if you're thinking about it in terms of a week, you could have done that.

00:39:34 ◼   ► If this was just random time, then I would be way more upset at myself.

00:39:39 ◼   ► Like, I would just think that I was an idiot.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Like, if it's just like...

00:39:42 ◼   ► And then I would 100% agree.

00:39:43 ◼   ► 2017 to 2018, I just didn't take any big gains.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Like, what is wrong with you?

00:39:48 ◼   ► So, you know, I've learned that going forward, I need to do this.

00:39:53 ◼   ► It's very important to me.

00:39:55 ◼   ► I feel so much more refreshed about going into next year than I did like two weeks ago.

00:40:02 ◼   ► You know, two weeks ago my whole world was crumbling down, you know, like,

00:40:05 ◼   ► and now I feel much better. Like, I'm going like as well. When I get home, I am like crash landing

00:40:12 ◼   ► into a busy work period, but I feel more prepared for it. In a way that if this was just the amount

00:40:19 ◼   ► of work that I've had starting Monday from a regular week, I would feel absolutely terrible.

00:40:25 ◼   ► But now it's just like, no, this is just a busy, I've just got like a busy couple of weeks before

00:40:29 ◼   ► Christmas starts and it's fine, you know, I'm going to be able to handle it. I've built up

00:40:34 ◼   ► enough energy now, I'm ready to go. But that's because I've taken this time and it's been very

00:40:40 ◼   ► valuable for me. So I'm not going to let it happen again where, I mean, really it's like,

00:40:46 ◼   ► it's also the prioritization of relaxing time, of overworking time is one of the big things that

00:40:51 ◼   ► I'm going to focus on when it comes to travel now. Can I ask what the reasons are for less

00:40:56 ◼   ► work travel? Like is it specific if like I think this is good right that you're saying oh you want

00:41:03 ◼   ► to you want to travel different more vacations less work but what's the reasoning for the

00:41:09 ◼   ► decrease in the work? Working travel is just for me. Okay. Vacations are for me and my partner.

00:41:16 ◼   ► Right, okay. And if I'm just traveling for work, I get an enjoyment out of that, I get a refreshment

00:41:22 ◼   ► out of that, but it's only benefiting me and I don't think that's fair. And it's, you know,

00:41:31 ◼   ► it's not that I won't do this stuff, I will, but basically all of my travel prior to the pandemic

00:41:37 ◼   ► was just for work stuff. And there needs to be a way different balance for that. And also,

00:41:44 ◼   ► I do get more benefit out of just pure vacations. And I can mix these things up, right? And I have.

00:41:52 ◼   ► This trip has been vastly vacationed, but I've recorded a couple of shows. We've met with some

00:41:57 ◼   ► friends and stuff, and friends that I also work with, right? So there's always that mix there.

00:42:02 ◼   ► But the way that this has balanced has been way more vacationed. It's right. We've been

00:42:07 ◼   ► been away for like 17 days and there's been maybe two days where there's been

00:42:12 ◼   ► work stuff going on. That's been really good. That's vacation. I've enjoyed it

00:42:16 ◼   ► immensely and I think it's important for me to have that time as

00:42:20 ◼   ► well so that's what I kind of want to focus on going forward and I feel like

00:42:23 ◼   ► I've set that up. This is one of those things where like I was thinking well I

00:42:27 ◼   ► haven't I don't really feel like I have a plan for what this stuff looks like

00:42:30 ◼   ► but it's fine because I've started taking the steps this year to enable

00:42:34 ◼   ► that to occur in future years. You know, like this is one of the areas where I

00:42:38 ◼   ► feel like, oh but I don't really have an idea of what I want when it comes to

00:42:42 ◼   ► like new norms, because it's what it's more than just travel, it's a lot of things.

00:42:45 ◼   ► But really I do feel like my mindset has changed this year, where I feel like I

00:42:51 ◼   ► am in a space where I feel like I'm open to changing things that I have otherwise

00:42:57 ◼   ► felt were just the way that things were. And so now I feel like I'm much

00:43:04 ◼   ► more open in future years to adapting what my life looks like.

00:43:09 ◼   ► There are a couple of other things that I can breeze through I think.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Direct support was one and I'm super happy with how membership's been going.

00:43:16 ◼   ► The base and security that it's provided has been really wonderful.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Now I do feel like I have a level of security in my income that I didn't have before and

00:43:25 ◼   ► in a time which still continues to be in flux, like the advertising part of the business

00:43:30 ◼   ► is always up and down.

00:43:31 ◼   ► and it's been up and down all of 2021.

00:43:33 ◼   ► And I continue, I reckon it's going to continue to be the same global supply

00:43:37 ◼   ► chain, et cetera, et cetera.

00:43:38 ◼   ► So having the direct support model and the membership has been really great.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And I do feel like this year I've gotten a much better handle on what the

00:43:48 ◼   ► content is and what goes where for the shows where I do this stuff.

00:43:52 ◼   ► So I've been really happy with that.

00:43:53 ◼   ► And I feel like I've gotten the mix under control,

00:43:55 ◼   ► which I'm really pleased with.

00:43:57 ◼   ► I wanted to think about my relationship to the internet.

00:44:00 ◼   ► I don't really feel like I've done anything different here.

00:44:04 ◼   ► I know I use Twitter less, but I still debate as to whether I want to use it all, but cannot

00:44:10 ◼   ► let go of my grip on it.

00:44:13 ◼   ► So that's just, I think that's just going to continue to be an ongoing question in my

00:44:17 ◼   ► mind.

00:44:18 ◼   ► I feel like my news intake is far better.

00:44:21 ◼   ► Like I feel better informed and I also feel like I have way better filters for myself

00:44:25 ◼   ► feels like I see a new story,

00:44:27 ◼   ► and I feel like I'm better at filtering it

00:44:29 ◼   ► through my own brain,

00:44:31 ◼   ► and working out what I think it means,

00:44:33 ◼   ► rather than what it tells me it means,

00:44:35 ◼   ► which I think has been a valuable skill that I've learned.

00:44:39 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:44:40 ◼   ► - Honestly, this is mostly to headlines.

00:44:42 ◼   ► I feel like I'm handling headlines way better.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Like I see a headline and I'm like,

00:44:47 ◼   ► "I don't think this is true,"

00:44:48 ◼   ► and then I read the story and I'm like,

00:44:49 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, no, they were inflating that."

00:44:52 ◼   ► Like I feel like I've gotten a way better sense,

00:44:54 ◼   ► a gut sense of this stuff, which I'm pretty happy with.

00:44:57 ◼   ► And the last area was product development.

00:45:00 ◼   ► And this was one of the ones where I was like,

00:45:04 ◼   ► "Oh, but I didn't do the thing I wanted to do."

00:45:06 ◼   ► Like we've been working on a new project

00:45:09 ◼   ► and it's something quite new and ambitious

00:45:11 ◼   ► compared to what we've been doing.

00:45:12 ◼   ► It's in the same ballpark,

00:45:14 ◼   ► but it was really starting something completely from scratch

00:45:17 ◼   ► and it's been in development for a year

00:45:20 ◼   ► and I really wanted to have it for sale now,

00:45:23 ◼   ► but there have been unexpected stumbling blocks.

00:45:25 ◼   ► But ultimately the product is becoming better and better

00:45:28 ◼   ► the longer we continue working on it.

00:45:30 ◼   ► That was something I really wanted to have something else

00:45:33 ◼   ► this year, but it just wasn't able to be worked out.

00:45:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know that was your target for this,

00:45:39 ◼   ► but this also I think is a case where you did heroically

00:45:44 ◼   ► under the circumstances for how far along this product is.

00:45:48 ◼   ► So I think you still get full points for this,

00:45:50 ◼   ► even though, yeah, we wanted ideally to be announcing a new thing now, but just the realities

00:45:55 ◼   ► of the world did not allow that to happen.

00:45:58 ◼   ► So I think I'm giving you full points for product development for sure this year, even

00:46:03 ◼   ► though it's going to be a little bit later than we otherwise anticipated.

00:46:06 ◼   ► So this is kind of where I am with the theme of like, nothing major happened, but movement

00:46:13 ◼   ► was in all of these areas.

00:46:16 ◼   ► And so that's why like in my review, I realized, oh, you know what, I did a better job of this

00:46:20 ◼   ► than I thought I did.

00:46:22 ◼   ► And so after completing the kind of looking back,

00:46:24 ◼   ► I felt pretty good in it.

00:46:25 ◼   ► But it just maybe this wasn't really a theme

00:46:29 ◼   ► that like I've had before,

00:46:31 ◼   ► where I felt like where they kind of was like,

00:46:34 ◼   ► oh, when I'm done with this,

00:46:35 ◼   ► I know I'm gonna feel different.

00:46:36 ◼   ► That's how kind of every other theme has been for me.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And it's actually my theme for 2022 is focused around that.

00:46:43 ◼   ► But really 2021's theme,

00:46:45 ◼   ► I should have actually given it a different kind of name.

00:46:48 ◼   ► It should have been like the year of groundwork

00:46:49 ◼   ► or something called the Year of Foundation

00:46:51 ◼   ► rather than the Year of Reinvention.

00:46:53 ◼   ► That phrase really threw me off

00:46:55 ◼   ► as I was going through the year

00:46:56 ◼   ► and I don't think it did a good job with the name.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Because the, you know, reinvention seemed to suggest that

00:47:02 ◼   ► by the end of it, I'm a new man.

00:47:04 ◼   ► It's not as simple as that.

00:47:06 ◼   ► 'Cause by the end of it,

00:47:07 ◼   ► I have actually set myself up to become a new man,

00:47:10 ◼   ► but that's gonna be a longer process.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And so if I could go back,

00:47:15 ◼   ► I would actually call this the Year of Foundation

00:47:17 ◼   ► or the Year of Groundwork.

00:47:18 ◼   ► feel like that would have made me feel way different about the theme overall. I think

00:47:23 ◼   ► it was just poorly branded. How are you even debating between those two names?

00:47:28 ◼   ► "Foundation" is such an awesome name for a theme that's got to go on the list for people of like,

00:47:34 ◼   ► "Hey, are you considering a theme? How does 'Foundation' sound to you?" Like, that's great.

00:47:39 ◼   ► I might go back and re-edit the episode. Just like every time, "Foundation" just comes in every

00:47:44 ◼   ► - Every time, year of, foundation.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Really bad ADR.

00:47:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a fantastic theme.

00:47:52 ◼   ► That's definitely gotta go on the list of suggestions

00:47:54 ◼   ► for sure and it's gotta be in bold.

00:47:56 ◼   ► That's the only way to say it.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Oh, what's your theme?

00:47:58 ◼   ► Foundation.

00:47:59 ◼   ► No even year of or anything.

00:48:02 ◼   ► That's such a good one.

00:48:03 ◼   ► - It breaks out.

00:48:05 ◼   ► - Take that people and go run with it.

00:48:07 ◼   ► And you know what the best way to run with it is?

00:48:09 ◼   ► - Oh, there he goes.

00:48:11 ◼   ► - By buying a journal, theme system.

00:48:14 ◼   ► - Contextmerch.com.

00:48:17 ◼   ► So we've been talking about the theme system journal a bit

00:48:20 ◼   ► and this is where we're gonna pitch you

00:48:22 ◼   ► on why this is important.

00:48:23 ◼   ► So the journaling part of the theme

00:48:27 ◼   ► is a very, very important part for me

00:48:29 ◼   ► because it gives me the ability to take some time

00:48:32 ◼   ► to look at myself every day, think about how I'm doing,

00:48:36 ◼   ► think about what I'm focusing on,

00:48:37 ◼   ► think about what I want to change.

00:48:39 ◼   ► Not only does it keep me on track with my theme,

00:48:42 ◼   ► It serves as a reminder for my theme

00:48:44 ◼   ► and also helps me plan my next one.

00:48:46 ◼   ► Right, this is what I mentioned earlier,

00:48:47 ◼   ► that my practice of journaling every day

00:48:50 ◼   ► helps me highlight the areas in my working and personal life

00:48:54 ◼   ► that I wanna change for the future.

00:48:56 ◼   ► I see what keeps popping up.

00:48:57 ◼   ► For me, like, for example, a really good one,

00:49:00 ◼   ► and I'm gonna talk about this in a bit,

00:49:01 ◼   ► I have a section in my journal every day

00:49:03 ◼   ► where I talk about something that was bad in my day

00:49:05 ◼   ► or something that's frustrating me.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Far too often I wrote, I feel like I'm too busy

00:49:10 ◼   ► or I feel like I'm overwhelmed.

00:49:11 ◼   ► I kept noticing that I was writing that a lot.

00:49:14 ◼   ► So it was like, okay, I need to address that.

00:49:17 ◼   ► And it's the thing that I feel like

00:49:18 ◼   ► if I wasn't writing it down,

00:49:20 ◼   ► if I wasn't like verbalizing it,

00:49:22 ◼   ► I don't think I would be able to pin exactly what it is

00:49:24 ◼   ► that was making me feel not great,

00:49:26 ◼   ► but I was realizing it was overwhelming.

00:49:28 ◼   ► And it was the practice of journaling every day

00:49:31 ◼   ► that helped me uncover this feeling,

00:49:34 ◼   ► which I can then use for creating my next theme.

00:49:38 ◼   ► So I really love it for that stuff.

00:49:40 ◼   ► I'm still gonna make the pitch that I'm thinking of a younger version of me who would be listening

00:49:48 ◼   ► to this and listening to your pitch that you would do this every day over a long period

00:49:56 ◼   ► of time.

00:49:58 ◼   ► Younger version of me knows he's not gonna do that.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And so I still make the pitch that like what the journal is great for me for is this tactical

00:50:07 ◼   ► journaling.

00:50:09 ◼   ► I like it because it's, over time, it's become much more like an object, which is the "hey,

00:50:17 ◼   ► you're serious now" object of you want to change something and you're going to intentionally

00:50:26 ◼   ► work on it with this thing.

00:50:29 ◼   ► And like, I really do mean it, like it helped bring me out of a funk at the end of the swamp

00:50:35 ◼   ► of uncertainty by just going through, writing down the items that I wanted to track every

00:50:41 ◼   ► day, prioritizing them by what matters, like what are the things that I absolutely need

00:50:47 ◼   ► and want to do.

00:50:48 ◼   ► This time in particular, I really like the exercise of thinking through what counts as

00:50:53 ◼   ► a full circle and what counts as a half circle for like partial credit for this thing and

00:51:00 ◼   ► full credit for this thing.

00:51:03 ◼   ► And I find using it really intensely for a period of one to two to three weeks, it never

00:51:12 ◼   ► fails to help really change my mental mindset.

00:51:17 ◼   ► I just love it for this.

00:51:18 ◼   ► But I think you're making a really good example of why our product is good.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Because we created this product together and we use it completely differently.

00:51:27 ◼   ► Because that's how we made it.

00:51:29 ◼   ► We made it to be customizable, that it fits into how you want to work.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Maybe you want to journal every day, maybe you just want to pick it up for a three week

00:51:38 ◼   ► period to journal.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And it works because we don't date it, right?

00:51:41 ◼   ► Like it's not meant to make you feel bad because you don't address it every day.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Yeah, no, we definitely use it differently because – and also it is just very funny

00:51:50 ◼   ► – every time you mention that thing about where you write down something that didn't

00:51:53 ◼   ► go well, I hate that.

00:51:55 ◼   ► I hate that so much.

00:51:56 ◼   ► I'm always like, "Don't do that! That's a terrible idea!"

00:52:01 ◼   ► But you know what? The point is, it works for you.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Whereas my pitch instead for those two boxes at the top,

00:52:08 ◼   ► especially if you want to elevate your mood,

00:52:11 ◼   ► is the thing that always annoys me with how effective it is,

00:52:14 ◼   ► which is writing down things you're grateful for.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And it makes me so angry how effective it is.

00:52:22 ◼   ► but it's like the top box in the morning,

00:52:25 ◼   ► write something that you're grateful for.

00:52:27 ◼   ► And the next little box right below it,

00:52:30 ◼   ► save it for the end of the day.

00:52:32 ◼   ► And at the end of the day,

00:52:34 ◼   ► write something that went well during the day.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And it's like, God damn it, it sounds so dumb,

00:52:39 ◼   ► but it is so effective.

00:52:41 ◼   ► - So I recommend people, they can go to theme-system.com

00:52:45 ◼   ► and we have examples of what people write

00:52:48 ◼   ► in the journaling pages.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And these examples are actually built

00:52:51 ◼   ► on these two ways that we journal.

00:52:53 ◼   ► So there is like, there's one from me where in the four boxes

00:52:57 ◼   ► I write something that's good, something that's bad.

00:52:59 ◼   ► What am I thinking about?

00:53:00 ◼   ► What am I looking forward to?

00:53:02 ◼   ► And then there's one that you came up with

00:53:04 ◼   ► what you're personally grateful for,

00:53:05 ◼   ► professionally grateful for, what's on your mind

00:53:07 ◼   ► and what's your most important task, right?

00:53:10 ◼   ► So they're built on actual examples

00:53:12 ◼   ► that the two of us put together,

00:53:14 ◼   ► just as the kinds of things you can use the journal for.

00:53:17 ◼   ► - It's super flexible.

00:53:18 ◼   ► That's why the boxes don't have any labels.

00:53:20 ◼   ► I feel I've not not not to congratulate ourselves Myke, but I do think we we hit a really sweet

00:53:26 ◼   ► spot of just enough structure on the pages that you can make it work for you in the way

00:53:34 ◼   ► that you want it to.

00:53:35 ◼   ► So with the theme system journal you spend time reflecting on your day while writing

00:53:40 ◼   ► in the journal pages.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Then you keep track of some key points that you want to hit every day in the daily pages.

00:53:45 ◼   ► This is what we were talking about earlier on that we have these basically they look

00:53:49 ◼   ► like checklists and you can mark off if you've completed them, maybe you can color them in

00:53:54 ◼   ► like you can shade them in for if you've completed it or half completed it during the day. And

00:53:59 ◼   ► you know we were talking about I use it as a way at the moment of like these are the

00:54:03 ◼   ► nine things if I do these every day, who I want to be and Gray uses them as like I have

00:54:08 ◼   ► this set of things that I want to do but I order them in importance. And so like this

00:54:12 ◼   ► is the kind of stuff we were talking about earlier, you can track these two things, you

00:54:15 ◼   ► and write about how you're feeling

00:54:17 ◼   ► and have something quantitative that you can tick off

00:54:19 ◼   ► or mark off every day.

00:54:21 ◼   ► The Theme System Journal is made of quality materials.

00:54:24 ◼   ► It took us years of work to get just right.

00:54:27 ◼   ► And we use them constantly as do at this point,

00:54:31 ◼   ► thousands upon thousands of other cortexes.

00:54:33 ◼   ► So you will be in very good company if you pick one up.

00:54:36 ◼   ► - One of my favorite things is whenever I show someone

00:54:38 ◼   ► the Theme System Journal, happens every time.

00:54:40 ◼   ► I hand them the journal, first thing they say,

00:54:43 ◼   ► "Ooh, feels so nice."

00:54:46 ◼   ► Like, yes, that's the result of years of work.

00:54:48 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:54:49 ◼   ► - It's funny how that happens, really.

00:54:51 ◼   ► But it really, look, the whole thing is made to,

00:54:54 ◼   ► I think, a very high specification and standard

00:54:56 ◼   ► that I set.

00:54:57 ◼   ► You know, it is, it opens flat 'cause it has a semi,

00:55:00 ◼   ► like it's like a kind of soft hardcover.

00:55:02 ◼   ► It has some structure, but it opens flat

00:55:04 ◼   ► and it's flexible, which I like.

00:55:06 ◼   ► The paper's really good and it works

00:55:08 ◼   ► with a whole variety of pens.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I try to, basically everything that I own

00:55:12 ◼   ► and I'm really happy with the results.

00:55:14 ◼   ► So you can buy yours today, go to cortexmerch.com

00:55:17 ◼   ► and you can pick one up.

00:55:19 ◼   ► You can buy one or you can subscribe

00:55:21 ◼   ► and get one every quarter, or you can read more about it

00:55:24 ◼   ► and see more examples of how it works at theme-system.com.

00:55:27 ◼   ► As we stand right now, we have more in stock

00:55:31 ◼   ► than we've ever had at this time of the year,

00:55:34 ◼   ► but every single time we've sold out.

00:55:37 ◼   ► So who knows, right?

00:55:40 ◼   ► You know, we have more being made right now, but we never know what's going to happen.

00:55:47 ◼   ► So if you think you might want one of these, or if you think there's somebody in your life

00:55:51 ◼   ► that you might want to pick one up for the holidays, cortexmerch.com.

00:55:55 ◼   ► And if you like setting a theme for your upcoming year, you should have one of these.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Yes.

00:56:00 ◼   ► So we're really trying to make it so that everyone who wants to get a journal this year

00:56:03 ◼   ► can get a journal this year.

00:56:06 ◼   ► But again, just like I said last time, I'm going to re-emphasize, if you're listening

00:56:12 ◼   ► to my voice right now and you think, "Oh, I'd like to get a journal for myself," or

00:56:18 ◼   ► you think, "Ooh, I know someone this would make a great stocking stuffer for," order

00:56:22 ◼   ► it right now because I'm going to promo it again on my YouTube channel.

00:56:28 ◼   ► So if you're listening to the Cortex Podcast, you have the heads up before like a bigger

00:56:34 ◼   ► So go to cortexmerch.com right now and get your journal if you want to make sure that you have one for the new year.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Before we get to the themes proper, Myke, I have a bit of a interregnum theme topic here just to discuss.

00:56:53 ◼   ► to discuss. For the last two years I've had a kind of secret business theme that I've

00:57:03 ◼   ► been working on.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Haha! Secret theme!

00:57:06 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a secret theme. We talk about our themes for ourselves and I've just had

00:57:12 ◼   ► this secret business theme which is really related to the YouTube channel over the past

00:57:16 ◼   ► two years and I thought, well this might as well be a place to review it. I have never

00:57:20 ◼   ► really talked about it, partly because I just didn't know if it was going to work at all.

00:57:24 ◼   ► My business theme for the YouTube channel that I started really just after I did my

00:57:31 ◼   ► very first major Patreon push where I said like, "Oh, I'm not doing sponsorships on the

00:57:36 ◼   ► channel now and I'm just going to be patron and member supported."

00:57:39 ◼   ► That kicked off a theme where what I wanted to try to do on the YouTube channel was to

00:57:47 ◼   ► decrease the average time between real video uploads.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Now I was trying to be very clear with myself, I'm like, I'm not setting deadlines here,

00:57:59 ◼   ► because I hate deadlines.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Did you say that looking in the mirror?

00:58:03 ◼   ► Yes, listen, listen, you're not going to give yourself a deadline, because you know what

00:58:09 ◼   ► you hate more than anything?

00:58:11 ◼   ► Deadlines.

00:58:12 ◼   ► You know what makes you not want to work?

00:58:14 ◼   ► Deadlines.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So don't do that.

00:58:16 ◼   ► Instead, what we're going to do is a two-year running average.

00:58:21 ◼   ► So if you're going to track anything, you're going to make yourself a little spreadsheet,

00:58:24 ◼   ► which is exactly what I did, and I started every video upload tracking a two-year running

00:58:30 ◼   ► average of what was the average time between videos.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And here we are two years later, and no one in the world has noticed, but I was very pleased

00:58:44 ◼   ► because when I started the average was over 50 days between what I considered to be like real

00:58:51 ◼   ► videos and I finally hit the target that I wanted to see if I could hit two years later with the

00:58:59 ◼   ► upload of the Tiffany video which was to get that two year running average under 30 days between

00:59:07 ◼   ► something that I considered to be like a real video. Look at you, that's a big difference.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Yeah, again, I think because I operate on basically geological timescales for a YouTube

00:59:18 ◼   ► channel, no one noticed what was to me like a tectonic difference in sort of working pressure,

00:59:25 ◼   ► but I was very pleased to have actually hit this. I think this is also a case where it's like,

00:59:30 ◼   ► the stars aligned in various ways to make it a little bit easier for me to work over these

00:59:35 ◼   ► previous two years than the two years prior to that. But I mention all of this because

00:59:41 ◼   ► The goal of it was never like, "Oh, this is a thing that I want to maintain."

00:59:45 ◼   ► It was more like, "I want to see if I'm able to do this over a long period of time."

00:59:49 ◼   ► And I'm mentioning it now because in some ways it's a little bit of a prelude to where I am with

00:59:56 ◼   ► the 2022 theme because I think I mentioned it a bunch... I can't remember if it was last episode

01:00:04 ◼   ► or the previous episode, but I kept using this phrase like "tapped out" that after this year

01:00:12 ◼   ► I felt really tapped out. And I kind of want to introduce this formally as an idea which is

01:00:18 ◼   ► it's separate from the concept of being burned out. I feel like burned out has a has a really

01:00:27 ◼   ► precise meaning of like you've overworked and you're like resenting what you're doing

01:00:34 ◼   ► and you just you just feel like totally used up in a really negative way and that's not

01:00:42 ◼   ► the way I feel at all but I do feel like I got myself into a position of having really

01:00:50 ◼   ► on the YouTube channel that I was a bit tapped out after the last main upload.

01:00:56 ◼   ► And the difference there is I feel like I've never liked the YouTube channel more than I

01:01:03 ◼   ► currently do. Like, I really wanted to work on it, but I just I made a decision not to do any work

01:01:10 ◼   ► when I was visiting with my family, and I thought, "Oh, when I come back to the UK, then I will get

01:01:18 ◼   ► right back into things. But spoiler, I did not. Like when I returned, I just still for a little

01:01:26 ◼   ► while found myself completely incapable of getting back to work. I think it wasn't helped because

01:01:33 ◼   ► when I returned I went straight into a conference, which was the first time I had socialized with

01:01:39 ◼   ► anyone in like two years, and then I suddenly met like 120 people and was really exhausted by that,

01:01:45 ◼   ► especially basically stepping right off a plane, but nonetheless I felt really just tapped out

01:01:51 ◼   ► and I've only just in the last two weeks really started to get back into things because it's like

01:01:58 ◼   ► "OMG the end of the year is coming right up and like I need to get a video out before that is over"

01:02:04 ◼   ► But it's left me in this funny place where I have now, without a doubt, had the biggest

01:02:14 ◼   ► continuous break in my working life, you know, since summers in high school, I think.

01:02:23 ◼   ► Like that's probably the the biggest comparison there.

01:02:26 ◼   ► So I find myself like entering 2022 having finished off this.

01:02:34 ◼   ► but I think was good, but is this kind of strange interregnum.

01:02:38 ◼   ► And it just makes me think, like, quite unintentionally, YouTube has,

01:02:45 ◼   ► just in the entertainment world, ended up being like this weird 10, 12 year long experiment in

01:02:52 ◼   ► constant production without seasons.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Like, when you think about people who work in the real entertainment industry,

01:03:03 ◼   ► TV shows operate in seasons, right? Movies and other projects are created in a big burst,

01:03:11 ◼   ► and then there's often a break. And I think kind of no one noticed or just sort of slowly crept up

01:03:19 ◼   ► that YouTube has become this huge booming part of the entertainment industry, but there is no

01:03:28 ◼   ► season break ever just because of the way that it's structured. And I think that that's

01:03:34 ◼   ► that's been good for content production but maybe bad for people. So I don't know, I don't have any

01:03:43 ◼   ► solid thoughts around that right now but it's just it's just been on my mind that like

01:03:48 ◼   ► maybe there should be dedicated downtime instead of like an accidental downtime where it's like

01:03:55 ◼   ► like, "Oh boy, you've really worked a bunch and now you're tapped out and you're sort

01:03:59 ◼   ► of accidentally taking down time over a long period of time." But I don't know, it's just

01:04:04 ◼   ► something that's been on my mind and I feel like I'm just entering what's supposed to

01:04:10 ◼   ► be new theme season in this weird in-betweeny state.

01:04:15 ◼   ► MATT: Well, I'm pleased you hit the little theme that you have for yourself of reducing

01:04:20 ◼   ► that timeframe. I'm also pleased that you realize that you can do it but you don't need

01:04:26 ◼   ► to do it. I think that that's a good thing. You know you have this, so if for any reason

01:04:32 ◼   ► you feel like you must or need to change for a period of time you can, but also knowing

01:04:38 ◼   ► that it's not imperative for you to do so and that you haven't built your business in

01:04:44 ◼   ► in such a way that it requires the timeframe to decrease.

01:04:49 ◼   ► 'Cause I know a lot of people in YouTube,

01:04:51 ◼   ► right, you're talking about that,

01:04:52 ◼   ► like they build large teams around them

01:04:54 ◼   ► and they have home machines that run

01:04:56 ◼   ► that require the feeding of the beast,

01:04:59 ◼   ► but your business isn't made that way.

01:05:02 ◼   ► But it's good to know that if you ever need

01:05:04 ◼   ► to turn up the dial you can,

01:05:06 ◼   ► but also remaining core to yourself

01:05:09 ◼   ► that that's not who you always want to be.

01:05:11 ◼   ► I think that that's two valuable things

01:05:13 ◼   ► you've taken away from that.

01:05:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and I think the YouTube channel

01:05:18 ◼   ► was under attentioned in some ways,

01:05:21 ◼   ► and I mean, it also, it just has been interesting

01:05:25 ◼   ► that while I think basically none of my viewers

01:05:27 ◼   ► have noticed at all, it is the case that it feels like

01:05:30 ◼   ► the YouTube system has noticed,

01:05:32 ◼   ► and so the numbers for the channel have been great

01:05:35 ◼   ► over the last two years with even just like this,

01:05:37 ◼   ► not major, but just slight shift in the frequency.

01:05:42 ◼   ► I think part of that is just simply also you like more uploads mean there's sort of more

01:05:47 ◼   ► lottery tickets that one of them does really well.

01:05:49 ◼   ► But yeah, so anyway, I don't know, I felt a little bit like, oh, I had this secret business

01:05:53 ◼   ► theme that I was working on and like, tee hee hee, updating my spreadsheet, and I just

01:05:57 ◼   ► never told anybody about it.

01:05:58 ◼   ► And it was always like, oh boy, look at that.

01:05:59 ◼   ► The number is slightly going down month by month over two years.

01:06:03 ◼   ► And when I did actually see like, oh, wow, the two year running average hit 28 days with

01:06:09 ◼   ► Tiffany video for the videos that I count as real. I was like, "Wow! That's amazing!"

01:06:15 ◼   ► Like, I'm really happy about that. So I did just want to mention it in this little interregnum section.

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01:08:15 ◼   ► So what's the real theme then?

01:08:17 ◼   ► Okay.

01:08:18 ◼   ► 2022 theme.

01:08:20 ◼   ► I think this is going to be my most nebulous theme ever.

01:08:28 ◼   ► So the name is New Dawn.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Oh.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Oh.

01:08:33 ◼   ► It's an interesting name.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Yes, but of course I have secret brackets in there because I know that's always what you

01:08:38 ◼   ► like.

01:08:39 ◼   ► So New Dawn has been my like short working title.

01:08:43 ◼   ► That's the name for the note in Obsidian.

01:08:46 ◼   ► But the full title for me is "New Decades Dawn" brackets again.

01:08:52 ◼   ► S: Wait, "The Year of New Decades Dawn Again."

01:08:55 ◼   ► BH & H: [laughing]

01:08:57 ◼   ► S; What is that?

01:08:59 ◼   ► What is that?

01:09:01 ◼   ► BH & H; No, it's "New" open parentheses, "Decades" close parentheses, "Dawn" square

01:09:08 ◼   ► brackets, again close square brackets.

01:09:11 ◼   ► That's the way I have it written in my text document.

01:09:13 ◼   ► The year of new bracket decades dawn bracket again.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's very clear, right?

01:09:21 ◼   ► No, I'm there now.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Here, I can message it to you so you see how it's properly formatted.

01:09:27 ◼   ► I would like that.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Although you can ignore the backslashes because that's necessary formatting for

01:09:31 ◼   ► Obsidian to say that it's not an actual link to somewhere else.

01:09:33 ◼   ► So there you go, very clear.

01:09:35 ◼   ► Yeah, that's just what you need.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Yeah, so... I don't-- I'm just gonna be-- I'm gonna be straight up about it.

01:09:44 ◼   ► So this is one of these times where I feel like I have come to the episode about the yearly theme,

01:09:50 ◼   ► and I do not have clearly solidified ideas.

01:09:55 ◼   ► I think part of that is just the year has felt like it's gone incredibly fast,

01:09:59 ◼   ► and I think part of that is this funny interregnum period where I'm just coming off

01:10:07 ◼   ► a huge working break. And like we talked about last time in State of the Apps, there's a lot of

01:10:13 ◼   ► stuff where it just feels like, "Oh man, I've been really out of practice with a lot of what I

01:10:19 ◼   ► consider to be my normal life. I haven't really been using my to-do managers. I haven't really

01:10:27 ◼   ► been tracking time. I haven't been tracking projects in various ways." It just feels like

01:10:32 ◼   ► there's been this real big gap. But I also think that that's kind of an opportunity. And

01:10:40 ◼   ► the thing that happened this year that I feel like I've only just really begun to process

01:10:48 ◼   ► is realizing that I really have been on YouTube for 10 years. And so part of what my

01:10:58 ◼   ► idea for this theme is, what does it really mean to think about the next 10 years of my career?

01:11:09 ◼   ► Now, it's a funny thing to say, because I'm in the entertainment industry, and so careers are

01:11:16 ◼   ► very uncertain. On a knife's edge, at all times.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Yes, it really is true. Part of that is quite seriously thinking about, okay,

01:11:26 ◼   ► what are the bounds of this career? And again, I feel really fortunate that I have found work

01:11:36 ◼   ► that is well suited to my personality and my temperament and the kinds of things that interest

01:11:43 ◼   ► me. And I would love to keep doing this, but I was trying to be very serious about it. It's like,

01:11:50 ◼   ► Like, okay, the projections that I've kind of made are 20 more years of doing this is

01:11:57 ◼   ► my optimistic, great outcome.

01:12:00 ◼   ► Ten years is like the median prediction.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And five years is I feel like is the very pessimistic prediction of, oh, no, something's

01:12:10 ◼   ► gone wrong.

01:12:12 ◼   ► TikTokers or GPT-5 have taken over the world.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And like your career is just totally irrelevant.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:12:19 ◼   ► I really like what I do and I just I find myself thinking about it in these two ways that like

01:12:29 ◼   ► on one hand I feel like I have a really solid base like I've been lucky to build up this audience over time

01:12:39 ◼   ► And on the other hand, I feel like, oh, if you're really serious about trying to think

01:12:47 ◼   ► about a 10 year horizon for what you want to do, you also can't take any of that for

01:12:53 ◼   ► granted.

01:12:54 ◼   ► There's no guarantee that it continues to last.

01:12:57 ◼   ► And so that also means you have to be really serious about what does it mean if you're

01:13:05 ◼   ► deciding here that you really want to do this for another decade. In the same way that when

01:13:12 ◼   ► I started a decade ago, also after a big break, I had to be really serious about what does

01:13:20 ◼   ► this mean that this is my career now? Like, what do I have to do in order to make this

01:13:25 ◼   ► work? And so that's why I have this idea like new decades dawn again, is it really feels

01:13:33 ◼   ► like this is a mirror time to when I started 10 years ago. It's after a big break. I'm

01:13:42 ◼   ► obviously in a much better position now, but I also think I need to take it very seriously

01:13:51 ◼   ► because I don't know, in some ways, over time, it's just kind of felt very natural that like,

01:14:03 ◼   ► "Oh, YouTube is what I do."

01:14:06 ◼   ► And in the way that you forget your past selves, it starts to feel like, "Oh, this is the

01:14:11 ◼   ► thing that I've just always done, right?

01:14:15 ◼   ► This is quite natural.

01:14:16 ◼   ► I've always done this and it'll just always be here."

01:14:20 ◼   ► It was like, "But no, no, no, no.

01:14:21 ◼   ► This is a good time to wake up and seriously think about it again."

01:14:26 ◼   ► And I wish I had more solid thoughts around this theme, but I actually feel like this

01:14:36 ◼   ► is really not something to rush.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Which is why I mean that thinking about this theme kind of is the theme for the year.

01:14:49 ◼   ► Think about the next long-term phase of your career.

01:14:55 ◼   ► And I also just found myself thinking about a lot of things on a much more multi-year

01:15:03 ◼   ► timeline now.

01:15:04 ◼   ► You know, it's very funny that for you one of your things is, "Oh, much less travel,"

01:15:10 ◼   ► right?

01:15:11 ◼   ► But for me the decision has been much more travel.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Like my wife and I have not traveled very much at all in like the time that we have

01:15:19 ◼   ► lived here.

01:15:20 ◼   ► And so we've set a real horizon on like, okay, we need to consciously, over the next

01:15:27 ◼   ► several years, travel more.

01:15:31 ◼   ► And we were also thinking about, do we move out of London?

01:15:37 ◼   ► Where do we want to spend the next big chunk of time?

01:15:42 ◼   ► And we have actually decided that we don't want to move right now, but we have we've

01:15:48 ◼   ► out of like, we will re-evaluate this question in two years. Like we'll come back to this

01:15:56 ◼   ► and then see like, is moving something that we want to do or is it not? But this is like

01:16:03 ◼   ► a lot of the things that's been going on for me is just thinking about things on multiple

01:16:09 ◼   ► year timelines in a way that I just haven't before. On one hand, I have this feeling like

01:16:17 ◼   ► I'm starting from a very solid base.

01:16:21 ◼   ► I have this career.

01:16:22 ◼   ► I also have on the business side,

01:16:24 ◼   ► I've mentioned over the years of like

01:16:26 ◼   ► how much of a pain in the butt it is

01:16:28 ◼   ► to try to like set up business processes in the background

01:16:31 ◼   ► and like get all the paperwork sorted.

01:16:33 ◼   ► And this year has really proven

01:16:37 ◼   ► that we got all the systems right

01:16:40 ◼   ► and the way that they're supposed to be.

01:16:42 ◼   ► - Notion nation, baby.

01:16:44 ◼   ► - I know this is going to sound crazy

01:16:45 ◼   ► that it's a multi-year process to get paperwork in order, but I will again say, if anyone

01:16:51 ◼   ► listening to the sound of my voice is an American living abroad, and you think there is any

01:16:56 ◼   ► chance at all that you will be self-employed in the future, do not ever do that while you

01:17:03 ◼   ► are tax resident outside of the United States.

01:17:07 ◼   ► It will be a living nightmare for you for multiple years.

01:17:13 ◼   ► That's very actionable advice.

01:17:16 ◼   ► That is the most actionable advice I can ever give.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Listen American expats, you will go on the internet and you will read from people,

01:17:23 ◼   ► "Oh, there's no problem, there's tax treaties between..."

01:17:27 ◼   ► Don't listen to any of those people.

01:17:29 ◼   ► They don't know what they're talking about, they're in situations where they're just employed by someone who is handling it all.

01:17:36 ◼   ► The moment you step outside of the normal system, it is a total nightmare for you.

01:17:41 ◼   ► But anyway, all of this is to say like, last year we thought that we had like finally gotten an entire system in place

01:17:47 ◼   ► so that everything just works really nicely and

01:17:50 ◼   ► I just had my end-of-year meeting with my assistant and it's like, great! Everything did work perfectly! Like this

01:17:57 ◼   ► long-term

01:17:59 ◼   ► background nightmare is truly and finally over. It's all set up, all the bits are working,

01:18:06 ◼   ► Everything with Gray Industries, everything with Cortex brand.

01:18:09 ◼   ► It's all very complicated, but it's working and it's fantastic.

01:18:12 ◼   ► And it, it really feels like great.

01:18:14 ◼   ► I have put behind me one of the biggest problems that I had had, which always

01:18:22 ◼   ► kind of made the whole YouTube business feel a bit improvised, like who knows

01:18:28 ◼   ► what we're doing, you know, but now it's all set.

01:18:30 ◼   ► One of the other things that's been on my mind is again, thinking of this

01:18:36 ◼   ► as a mirror time to when I first started, is reevaluating my YouTube channel and my

01:18:45 ◼   ► YouTube business in the face of what YouTube and the internet currently are, not what I

01:18:56 ◼   ► remember them as being slash wish them to be.

01:19:01 ◼   ► And so part of this is I've been real mopey over the last couple years about changes with

01:19:09 ◼   ► the way the algorithm works and changes to thumbnails and like a bunch of stuff about

01:19:15 ◼   ► like boo hoo I wish YouTube was different.

01:19:18 ◼   ► And I really have this strong feeling of suck it up dude like that is over.

01:19:25 ◼   ► And if you're serious about trying to do this for another decade, you've just got to put

01:19:30 ◼   ► that aside and think about like the reality of maintaining a career in the face of intense

01:19:39 ◼   ► global competition in an established industry. And you know what, when you think about that

01:19:46 ◼   ► in a real serious way, I think it becomes easier. I think I had just let myself get

01:19:52 ◼   ► mopey about it slowly over time in a way that I hadn't like called myself out over. This

01:20:01 ◼   ► is what I mean by like being serious about it again, kind of waking up from "oh, YouTube

01:20:07 ◼   ► is just what I always do" and it's like "no no, this is a thing that you have to work

01:20:11 ◼   ► for" and so that's part of what I'm thinking about.

01:20:15 ◼   ► This feels like a very like um, I can't think of a better phrase but like you're slapping

01:20:20 ◼   ► yourself in the face kind of thing.

01:20:22 ◼   ► up.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Yeah, a little bit. It is sort of funny, like, I actually think really pushing the goal of

01:20:27 ◼   ► trying to increase the frequency between videos, while it's not something that I'm trying to

01:20:33 ◼   ► maintain going forward, I think like that sort of started directing my thinking towards

01:20:39 ◼   ► this.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I can draw a line between the two things that you've been talking about, because one

01:20:43 ◼   ► of the things that you said is that when you decreased the time period, you saw that YouTube

01:20:49 ◼   ► favoring you again and then when you think about like alright I should

01:20:55 ◼   ► actually be taking this seriously and doing what a youtuber should do like

01:21:00 ◼   ► that's the line where like really you can as a youtuber say as we do many

01:21:05 ◼   ► times we like bemoan the platform or what they do it's like I just want to

01:21:09 ◼   ► make the videos I want to make and you can do that and you have done that and

01:21:12 ◼   ► that's great but if you decide no I want to participate in this thing that I'm a

01:21:18 ◼   ► part of it is all about doing the things that the system wants you to do to serve

01:21:23 ◼   ► the videos in the way that they want that's what all big youtubers do right

01:21:27 ◼   ► they're like we focus on this we focus on this and you've been doing more of

01:21:31 ◼   ► that and you're getting the results so you don't have to go all in and make

01:21:36 ◼   ► like two uploads a week and you got your shit like but there are things that you

01:21:39 ◼   ► can do to be more serious about being a part of the platform and you know we

01:21:45 ◼   ► spoke about like titles and thumbnails like that's an important part and the

01:21:50 ◼   ► frequency the algorithm seems to like it's like I can draw a line between

01:21:53 ◼   ► those two things of like oh when I did this thing I saw a benefit I'm actually

01:21:59 ◼   ► now gonna try and be more serious about how I approach this I think it's

01:22:03 ◼   ► interesting I would say that there are many ways in which I was actively

01:22:09 ◼   ► bucking the system yeah out of like kind of spite it's like I think I get it I

01:22:15 ◼   ► I get it. It's like I was the same, you changed, and I don't like it.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Yes. Yes, that's exactly right.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I used to be able to depend on my subscribers to always see my videos, and now you've changed.

01:22:27 ◼   ► Well, I'm still just gonna call my video "Exploring Ticoi," and I'll just, you know, it's like,

01:22:32 ◼   ► no, that's a terrible title, dude. That's awful.

01:22:35 ◼   ► That last video, calling it "Someone Dead Ruined My Life Again,"

01:22:38 ◼   ► there's no way that didn't have a huge impact on the number of people actually watching it, right?

01:22:44 ◼   ► It's a behind the scenes video that got more views than the video.

01:22:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think my, I can't remember exactly what it was, but the original title I wanted to give it was something like

01:22:53 ◼   ► "The Poem Project", right? Which is like, oh god.

01:22:56 ◼   ► Ooh, let me click it!

01:22:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:01 ◼   ► Read me a poem, Gray.

01:23:02 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. It's like, that's... I almost couldn't engineer like a worse title, right? This is terrible.

01:23:08 ◼   ► And one of the things that has helped draw this to my attention is a new business theme,

01:23:16 ◼   ► which I am going to mention here, because I think part of what happened in the past is,

01:23:23 ◼   ► you know, subscribers used to really matter on YouTube, and then they made a bunch of changes

01:23:26 ◼   ► and subscribers don't matter. And that's fine. And I was always like, I came to the conclusion,

01:23:32 ◼   ► like, subscribers don't matter. And I think in some part of my brain, I kind of went,

01:23:37 ◼   ► So nothing matters was the rest of that sentence. Every time I was saying like, Oh, subscribers

01:23:42 ◼   ► don't matter on YouTube anymore. I think there was a silent so nothing matters. But I realized,

01:23:49 ◼   ► Oh, I actually can have a target, which is my next business theme, which is a multi,

01:23:57 ◼   ► let me just be very clear is a multi multi year target is called a billion or bust.

01:24:06 ◼   ► I would like, as a career goal, to get to a billion views on the channel.

01:24:13 ◼   ► My lifetime views over 10 years is just about 700 million views, and extrapolating it out,

01:24:22 ◼   ► it's like, okay, I think I'm on track for hitting that in something like five years.

01:24:29 ◼   ► Can I bring that down to four years?

01:24:31 ◼   ► That's cool.

01:24:32 ◼   ► That would be great.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Three years?

01:24:35 ◼   ► you know, that'd be fast, but you know what? It's an actual target, and it actually feels

01:24:42 ◼   ► really- even though I don't like goals, and even then I still use the word like target,

01:24:49 ◼   ► I prefer the word target, but this really is a goal, and it's nice to have a career

01:24:55 ◼   ► goal that's an actually measurable thing.

01:24:57 ◼   ► - Well I think it's good, because you can have this thing up there, of like a thing

01:25:01 ◼   ► you want to achieve and then your theme this year is the beginning of trying to get to

01:25:07 ◼   ► what that eventual goal would be, that target.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Like the theme of, I can't even remember the name, new decades dawn, but now I understand

01:25:16 ◼   ► it, I do actually understand it now of like, this is me recommitting and in that recommitment

01:25:24 ◼   ► it's the beginning steps towards achieving this big business target of a billion. Because

01:25:31 ◼   ► I mean, if you just make videos for the next 35 years, you'll probably get there. But wouldn't

01:25:38 ◼   ► it be great to do it as you say in four years? Yeah, and it's more that it feels nice and

01:25:44 ◼   ► motivating to have a meaningful number to track. Like, the subscriber number is not meaningful on

01:25:52 ◼   ► YouTube, it is a vanity number, but somehow it never dawned on me that like, "Oh, the total

01:25:58 ◼   ► views on the channel is a meaningful number." And it would just be nice when I have to describe like

01:26:07 ◼   ► what I do in a sentence to be able to say like, "Oh, I run a YouTube channel that has a billion

01:26:13 ◼   ► views. Great!" Like I think that's a nice one sentence pitch. I will say though, Gray, saying

01:26:19 ◼   ► I have a YouTube channel that has over 700 million views, it's still also really good.

01:26:24 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying a billion is a great number.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Bigger numbers always good, right? Big numbers, you're always looking for bigger numbers,

01:26:32 ◼   ► but yeah, I get your point. It's also faster to say billion rather than 700 million.

01:26:38 ◼   ► Exactly, and I think there's some way in which when you're saying the number with more digits,

01:26:42 ◼   ► it sounds like you're being much more of a tryhard sort of person, like it just sounds

01:26:46 ◼   ► sounds better than say Billie. Over 744, right? Like, oh, so it's 745, is that what you're

01:26:52 ◼   ► saying? Yes, exactly. This is also a clear example of what do I mean by, I find myself

01:26:59 ◼   ► thinking about multi-year goals, and this is totally a multi-year goal. I'm very happy

01:27:06 ◼   ► to have it. I'll also just say there's another sub part of this for me, which is the "again"

01:27:14 ◼   ► a double meaning here, which is the pandemic for me has, again, personally mostly been a huge

01:27:23 ◼   ► net positive in my life. 2020 was without a doubt one of the best years of my adult life,

01:27:31 ◼   ► and 2021, while I would describe it as a highly variant year, it's also not a year I would want

01:27:38 ◼   ► to do any differently.

01:27:40 ◼   ► - Highly variant? That's a real phrase to use for 2021. I feel the same.

01:27:46 ◼   ► - Whatever, I'm sticking with it. It's been a highly variant.

01:27:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, you do go over it, man. It's all yours.

01:27:49 ◼   ► - I was like, "Should I rephrase it? The variance has been quite high,

01:27:53 ◼   ► but that doesn't make any difference. It's still the same."

01:27:55 ◼   ► But the one thing that I really feel like I resent the pandemic for is it took away

01:28:03 ◼   ► what was my goal at the start of two years ago, which was that I wanted to do more gray goes

01:28:11 ◼   ► outside. And I was like, I was gearing up for, you know what I want to do more stuff in the real

01:28:17 ◼   ► world. I want to go to places I want to try to see stuff. And like I lost that I really did.

01:28:24 ◼   ► It was just terrible timing. And so the again, part of it is, I want to start this up again.

01:28:32 ◼   ► It's a funny thing to do, but it also fits within the multi-year timeline here, because

01:28:40 ◼   ► I feel like I'm trying to start up a sort of career within a career on the YouTube channel.

01:28:47 ◼   ► I've tried lots of times filming a bunch of stuff in the real world, the vast majority of it has not

01:28:55 ◼   ► worked out and has never appeared on the channel. Some of the things that I've done have gone up

01:28:59 ◼   ► up there but they've all been sort of weird and random and this also feels like I either

01:29:08 ◼   ► want to solve this or I want to put this to bed and be like you know what this isn't a

01:29:14 ◼   ► good use of your time don't try to do the real life stuff.

01:29:17 ◼   ► This is also another one where I'm kind of giving myself two years to really make a decision

01:29:25 ◼   ► about is this a good use of my time?

01:29:29 ◼   ► Does this make sense to do?

01:29:31 ◼   ► And maybe at the end of the two years, I discover,

01:29:35 ◼   ► you know what, going places is good for me personally

01:29:38 ◼   ► and I shouldn't waste my time filming.

01:29:41 ◼   ► Or maybe two years from now, I decide,

01:29:44 ◼   ► oh, this is actually like a great use of my time.

01:29:46 ◼   ► But right now, I just don't know.

01:29:49 ◼   ► But that was the thing that I really wanted to do

01:29:52 ◼   ► at the start of the pandemic.

01:29:54 ◼   ► and it was taken away from me, that opportunity.

01:29:57 ◼   ► So I'm booting that one up again.

01:30:01 ◼   ► - I'm pleased 'cause I love those videos.

01:30:02 ◼   ► I always enjoy the videos where there's like that mix

01:30:05 ◼   ► and where you're outside doing stuff.

01:30:07 ◼   ► So I look forward to more of it.

01:30:09 ◼   ► I know it's hard and I know it's like a different

01:30:11 ◼   ► set of skills and they're tricky to make

01:30:14 ◼   ► and they're tricky to get right,

01:30:15 ◼   ► but I always enjoy them when you do them.

01:30:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, we can talk about this another time,

01:30:18 ◼   ► but I'm very-- - I think so.

01:30:20 ◼   ► - I don't know what these videos are yet.

01:30:23 ◼   ► I love the sharks video, but I feel like that isn't even really a Grey Goes Outside video,

01:30:27 ◼   ► that's just its own weird thing. You've seen a video that I'm working on now which is also

01:30:32 ◼   ► very stylistically different and is its own weird thing, I don't know. But I want to solve this one

01:30:41 ◼   ► way or another, and possibly solving it is deciding like it just doesn't make sense, I don't know.

01:30:47 ◼   ► but this is a multi-year project that I want to really get working on and yeah so that's the

01:30:54 ◼   ► again part. Yeah that's the again part. Pretty big theme this one. This reminds me of my last

01:31:02 ◼   ► year theme so my advice to you is don't get lost in it. Yeah I think we may need to discuss that

01:31:10 ◼   ► yeah, because I feel like it is without a doubt my most vague and unclear, but also feels really

01:31:17 ◼   ► important. So I'm very happy to revisit your experiences with this. And yeah, we can talk

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01:33:10 ◼   ► relayFN. Tell me about your theme Myke. Okay I'm gonna start off with the name

01:33:15 ◼   ► which is the year of structure. Hmm. I was tempting to go gray on this and I have

01:33:21 ◼   ► bracket and unstructured but I decided not to do that. That doesn't make any sense. Because I don't like the brackets I always

01:33:29 ◼   ► think of what is it year of less comma me.

01:33:32 ◼   ► That's the one that I always like to just have one word.

01:33:35 ◼   ► And I've really struggled with the word, but I think you'll see why I got to it.

01:33:39 ◼   ► So my kind of description for the theme is that I feel like I need a better structure

01:33:47 ◼   ► in place to handle the various responsibilities that I have in my life.

01:33:50 ◼   ► And also carving out and allowing for more unstructured time.

01:33:56 ◼   ► I feel like I have a, I think, pretty desperate need at this point to have more space in my life

01:34:02 ◼   ► while also balancing the things that I want and need to be working on.

01:34:06 ◼   ► Over the last couple of years, I feel like I have lost some of the grip on my responsibilities.

01:34:14 ◼   ► Like they just continue to stretch in all directions.

01:34:17 ◼   ► And I feel like at this point I have way too many disparate things going on.

01:34:23 ◼   ► and I feel like I need to do some work to get everything back in order,

01:34:27 ◼   ► pare some things down, and find space in my schedule so I can better serve all of the

01:34:33 ◼   ► things that are the most important. So I want to have this unstructured time to allow me to

01:34:39 ◼   ► come up with new things that are related to the most important things that I'm doing.

01:34:44 ◼   ► And I feel like I need to spend a bit more time looking at the wider picture of all of this,

01:34:48 ◼   ► rather than focusing on small aspects which is what I've tried to do in the past like fix this

01:34:53 ◼   ► small thing reduce this responsibility and surely it will make space when I actually think I need

01:34:58 ◼   ► to spend time looking at the overall wider picture of this. One of the traps that I fall into when it

01:35:04 ◼   ► comes to reducing my time is realizing that I want to do this and try to make changes at the end of

01:35:11 ◼   ► the year. It's a terrible time to do it because you have not allowed yourself time to set up for

01:35:18 ◼   ► for the next year.

01:35:19 ◼   ► So if you decide, hey, I want to get rid of this project,

01:35:23 ◼   ► it's too late at that point to do it in November.

01:35:26 ◼   ► Like, I think mentally that's how we think,

01:35:29 ◼   ► oh, well, just because it's before the next year,

01:35:32 ◼   ► but by November, you've already started the preparation

01:35:34 ◼   ► for the next year.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Everything's in motion at that point.

01:35:37 ◼   ► So I am planning on doing the work in 2022

01:35:42 ◼   ► to enable this for late 2022, 2023 onward.

01:35:48 ◼   ► So my plan is to work on the structure,

01:35:52 ◼   ► where I can make improvements,

01:35:54 ◼   ► and start the process for making those improvements

01:35:58 ◼   ► for next year.

01:35:59 ◼   ► Because if I decide now I want the year structure,

01:36:03 ◼   ► it's too late for me to make all of the changes

01:36:05 ◼   ► that I might want to make for 2022.

01:36:08 ◼   ► So 2022 is working on what do I do for the future,

01:36:13 ◼   ► but near term when it comes to making structure.

01:36:18 ◼   ► - Okay, can you give me a specific example

01:36:20 ◼   ► of what you think you're going to be doing

01:36:22 ◼   ► in the first half of next year?

01:36:24 ◼   ► I feel like I'm having a hard time,

01:36:26 ◼   ► which is terribly unfair of me with my really vague notions,

01:36:29 ◼   ► but I feel like I'm having a hard time making concrete

01:36:33 ◼   ► what it is that you're trying to achieve here.

01:36:37 ◼   ► When you say you want more unstructured time,

01:36:40 ◼   ► does that mean more time not working?

01:36:43 ◼   ► Is that what that translates into?

01:36:45 ◼   ► - No, so one of the things that I think will help

01:36:47 ◼   ► is I can run through some of my outcomes for this,

01:36:49 ◼   ► for like what I think are like the things that I would get.

01:36:52 ◼   ► So like, and the first one is,

01:36:54 ◼   ► I want more days with less to no appointments in my diary,

01:36:59 ◼   ► less stuff on my calendar, right?

01:37:02 ◼   ► So these are days where I can be more reactive

01:37:05 ◼   ► to things that are coming up,

01:37:07 ◼   ► but also having large chunks of time

01:37:09 ◼   ► to tackle bigger things, bigger projects.

01:37:12 ◼   ► Like I wanna sit down and work out the layout

01:37:16 ◼   ► for a new journal project, right?

01:37:19 ◼   ► Like, let's just imagine I have something where I'm like,

01:37:21 ◼   ► "Oh, I wanna rethink a new way of looking at things

01:37:25 ◼   ► "from a wider lens," right?

01:37:26 ◼   ► And I can sit down and be like,

01:37:27 ◼   ► "What would that look like?

01:37:29 ◼   ► "How could we make?"

01:37:30 ◼   ► Like, I wanna have that time to sit down and like,

01:37:34 ◼   ► "Oh, I've got the afternoon here.

01:37:36 ◼   ► "What do I wanna think about today?"

01:37:39 ◼   ► Like, I very rarely have that kind of time.

01:37:41 ◼   ► Usually it's like, "Oh, I've only got two hours,

01:37:44 ◼   ► "and then I've got three shows."

01:37:46 ◼   ► - Okay, okay, so that's one of the things

01:37:49 ◼   ► that you're trying to achieve is larger blocks of time

01:37:53 ◼   ► without interruptions.

01:37:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, that are just for me to turn my attention

01:37:58 ◼   ► to whatever it is I wanna turn my attention on

01:38:01 ◼   ► rather than my calendar telling me

01:38:03 ◼   ► what my attention is supposed to be on.

01:38:05 ◼   ► - I mean, I can get behind that.

01:38:08 ◼   ► Your calendar always looks like a nightmare to me whenever.

01:38:09 ◼   ► - It's horrible, yeah.

01:38:10 ◼   ► So this is like creating the structure for less structure.

01:38:15 ◼   ► So like I am creating a structure for unstructured time.

01:38:19 ◼   ► - Does this mean that you're going to be trying to

01:38:22 ◼   ► pile up more shows on recording days

01:38:25 ◼   ► or are you going to be trying to do actually less

01:38:28 ◼   ► or delegate more or like what are your thoughts

01:38:31 ◼   ► on how to actually achieve this?

01:38:33 ◼   ► - Let me tell you at the end of 2022.

01:38:35 ◼   ► - Okay, yes, please don't let me rush you.

01:38:38 ◼   ► I'm just--

01:38:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, but this is the point is I don't know yet.

01:38:43 ◼   ► - You don't know, right.

01:38:44 ◼   ► there might be some things, it might not be shows, but things I have to give up.

01:38:49 ◼   ► [sigh]

01:38:49 ◼   ► Okay, okay, I feel like I'm getting this, because I really liked your point,

01:38:54 ◼   ► and you're totally right that at this point in the year, the next year is already sort of locked in.

01:39:01 ◼   ► I have a funny example that I want to travel more, I feel like I haven't really thought about what my

01:39:07 ◼   ► next year's travel schedule should look like, but discovered in my monthly meeting with my assistant

01:39:14 ◼   ► that next year I am already booked for more days away from home than at home without me even

01:39:21 ◼   ► noticing. And it's like, oh, okay, schedules just get locked in without you even noticing.

01:39:27 ◼   ► And if I wanted to have next year be like year of relaxation, tough nuggies, I would need to next

01:39:34 ◼   ► year, start planning for the year after to be your relaxation. So that's what you're

01:39:40 ◼   ► going for here.

01:39:41 ◼   ► All I know is right now I have the feeling.

01:39:44 ◼   ► Okay, I get it.

01:39:45 ◼   ► And I need to do the work on it.

01:39:47 ◼   ► Right, okay.

01:39:48 ◼   ► Like, I was talking to a friend of mine and they were saying like a similar thing like,

01:39:53 ◼   ► "Oh, I have some stuff that I want to reduce, but it's too late." And I was kind of like,

01:39:58 ◼   ► "Yeah, that's- that's- this time of year is terrible for this." Like, I feel like this

01:40:02 ◼   ► this every couple of years and I feel like at this time, it's like, well, it's too late

01:40:06 ◼   ► to make your decisions. And as well, I haven't even worked out fully what the important areas

01:40:13 ◼   ► are. And it's also like, I, you know, like basically everyone, I feel like I've been

01:40:20 ◼   ► in this holding pattern for the last year and a half and I have these large areas that

01:40:25 ◼   ► that I wanna make forward progress on

01:40:29 ◼   ► and I've stalled on them all.

01:40:30 ◼   ► And now I wanna move all of them at the same time.

01:40:34 ◼   ► So it's like my home, my studio, family, and the business.

01:40:38 ◼   ► And these things have all had to in some way be held

01:40:43 ◼   ► and I wanna move them all,

01:40:44 ◼   ► but now I wanna move them all at the same time.

01:40:46 ◼   ► And that's a lot.

01:40:47 ◼   ► So if I wanna focus on these family areas

01:40:51 ◼   ► and maybe moving to a new home,

01:40:53 ◼   ► I know I've got to reduce some of my work commitments

01:40:56 ◼   ► to enable that as a thing.

01:40:58 ◼   ► - Right.

01:40:59 ◼   ► - So I've got to do this like balancing act

01:41:02 ◼   ► of these things this year.

01:41:04 ◼   ► But what I've learned from 2020 and 2021

01:41:07 ◼   ► is just adding things on top is not a great way to do that.

01:41:12 ◼   ► There has to be a reduction.

01:41:16 ◼   ► Couple of the other areas that I want to focus on

01:41:18 ◼   ► when it comes to the year structure.

01:41:20 ◼   ► So I have my calendar, right, as one.

01:41:22 ◼   ► My second is I want to make my to-do list smaller.

01:41:25 ◼   ► Because I have noticed, I have developed a habit

01:41:29 ◼   ► of opening to-do list and just staring

01:41:32 ◼   ► at my upcoming tasks.

01:41:34 ◼   ► I just open and I look,

01:41:37 ◼   ► and I'm just looking at what I have.

01:41:39 ◼   ► - Looking like a small animal trapped in headlights?

01:41:42 ◼   ► - I think it might be something like that.

01:41:44 ◼   ► But I just feel like I'm just opening it and looking at it

01:41:47 ◼   ► and I'm scrolling through and see,

01:41:49 ◼   ► in a way that I don't think is helpful.

01:41:52 ◼   ► And I feel like I am adding too much stuff.

01:41:57 ◼   ► So I have a thought and I add it.

01:41:59 ◼   ► I have a thought and I add it.

01:42:00 ◼   ► And it all goes into my own to-do list.

01:42:04 ◼   ► And I feel like there's two things

01:42:05 ◼   ► that I want to handle here.

01:42:06 ◼   ► I want to have less stuff bouncing around in my brain

01:42:10 ◼   ► that feel like there's a need for constant things

01:42:13 ◼   ► to be added to to-do list.

01:42:14 ◼   ► And that comes from reducing some responsibilities.

01:42:18 ◼   ► The other is this idea of relying on other people to do things.

01:42:26 ◼   ► I need to start loosening my grip in certain areas

01:42:32 ◼   ► and letting work get done without me needing to be involved in it.

01:42:36 ◼   ► People that have responsibility, allowing them to just handle the responsibility

01:42:41 ◼   ► and trusting that the work will be done.

01:42:43 ◼   ► There's a couple of things here.

01:42:46 ◼   ► is one just like, just trying to relax and like, let go a little bit.

01:42:50 ◼   ► His vacation's actually been pretty good for me on that one.

01:42:52 ◼   ► Where I've realized again that like, I work with a selection of very talented

01:42:57 ◼   ► and competent people, I can trust them and they will get the work done.

01:43:01 ◼   ► I don't need to have a hand on it all, all the time.

01:43:04 ◼   ► I think I need an assistant again, cause I don't have one.

01:43:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:43:10 ◼   ► Well, yes, you had one.

01:43:12 ◼   ► I had one.

01:43:13 ◼   ► my assistant became the vice president of sales at Real AFM because that's what

01:43:17 ◼   ► she's best at.

01:43:18 ◼   ► And that's like another thing of like the sales portion of the business to be

01:43:23 ◼   ► handled by the vice president of sales and respecting the logical structure in

01:43:27 ◼   ► our company, right?

01:43:29 ◼   ► That I don't need to have my hand so much on that and that's the thing that

01:43:32 ◼   ► we're working on together.

01:43:33 ◼   ► But I think I also need somebody to help me with more basic tasks again.

01:43:41 ◼   ► And so this is like, so that goes back to

01:43:44 ◼   ► what's one way I make my to-do list smaller?

01:43:46 ◼   ► Is that some things go into Slack

01:43:48 ◼   ► for somebody else to handle.

01:43:51 ◼   ► - Right.

01:43:52 ◼   ► - So this is like trying to work out now, okay,

01:43:55 ◼   ► 'cause this is why it's like this is the whole year project

01:43:58 ◼   ► is all right, so I've realized maybe I would want

01:44:00 ◼   ► to have an assistant.

01:44:01 ◼   ► What would this person actually do?

01:44:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:44:04 ◼   ► I need to work that out.

01:44:05 ◼   ► Right, so this is the idea of like,

01:44:10 ◼   ► I'm realizing these things, these areas that I think

01:44:14 ◼   ► will be very helpful for this year structure.

01:44:17 ◼   ► - Right.

01:44:18 ◼   ► - But I need to work out what are the movements

01:44:21 ◼   ► that need to be made for that to actually make sense

01:44:24 ◼   ► for me in the long term.

01:44:25 ◼   ► Like I've realized this area that I want,

01:44:28 ◼   ► and now I need to start putting the pieces in place

01:44:32 ◼   ► to make it a reality.

01:44:33 ◼   ► - Right, and yeah, okay.

01:44:35 ◼   ► And so that makes sense then, like you need to spend

01:44:38 ◼   ► time to get an assistant to be able to start offloading all of this stuff to make the end

01:44:45 ◼   ► of next year and the year after much better. But getting an assistant is a big project.

01:44:50 ◼   ► MATT: Exactly. Well, if I even start looking for that, what will this person do for me?

01:44:54 ◼   ► Like I need to actually really – and we did that before with Carrie when she was coming

01:44:57 ◼   ► into the company – like what are the roles in the sales organization that require assistance?

01:45:03 ◼   ► and we went through that process and I worked that out.

01:45:06 ◼   ► But like this person, this assistant,

01:45:08 ◼   ► I actually think it's for me,

01:45:10 ◼   ► it's not for any of my individual things.

01:45:13 ◼   ► It's not for Relay FM, not for Cortex brand,

01:45:16 ◼   ► it's for any of the stuff that might come up for me.

01:45:19 ◼   ► It could span all of that, but I need to think about,

01:45:22 ◼   ► do I need someone to help me with these various tasks?

01:45:25 ◼   ► This is what you have somebody to help you with, right?

01:45:29 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:45:30 ◼   ► - So like, I know that your assistant works with you

01:45:32 ◼   ► for your stuff, your assistant works with me

01:45:35 ◼   ► and us for Cortex brand.

01:45:36 ◼   ► Like I think I maybe need someone

01:45:38 ◼   ► who's a little bit more involved in various areas.

01:45:42 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Possibly.

01:45:43 ◼   ► Then there's a couple of other things,

01:45:45 ◼   ► big focus on Cortex brand is I wanna put more effort in,

01:45:48 ◼   ► even more continued effort in 2022

01:45:51 ◼   ► on design and development of products.

01:45:53 ◼   ► If I was, you know, you have your billion,

01:45:55 ◼   ► you have your target.

01:45:58 ◼   ► My target is three new products in 2022.

01:46:03 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:46:05 ◼   ► - We have some stuff that we're working on.

01:46:06 ◼   ► Some stuff is harder than others.

01:46:08 ◼   ► I think this is an achievable goal, but we have to see.

01:46:12 ◼   ► But I want the time because I want the time

01:46:15 ◼   ► so I can sit down and work this stuff through

01:46:18 ◼   ► because as well, like one of the reasons

01:46:20 ◼   ► I feel like I need this space again

01:46:23 ◼   ► is trying to realistically grow our business here,

01:46:27 ◼   ► I need more time for it.

01:46:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, and especially the product design side,

01:46:35 ◼   ► trying to create something new is not something

01:46:39 ◼   ► that you can do in 90 minutes between two podcasts.

01:46:44 ◼   ► Because it's just, it isn't possible.

01:46:46 ◼   ► And so yeah, if that's something I can see that,

01:46:51 ◼   ► that if you're wanting to do more of the product design,

01:46:55 ◼   ► you have to create more unstructured space in your calendar.

01:46:59 ◼   ► - 'Cause I'm like, I'm really excited about this stuff.

01:47:02 ◼   ► It's a great pleasure for me to do this kind of work.

01:47:06 ◼   ► It's so different to anything I've ever done before

01:47:09 ◼   ► and I love doing it.

01:47:10 ◼   ► But like the design of the product

01:47:12 ◼   ► that we've been working on through 2021

01:47:15 ◼   ► came from an afternoon

01:47:17 ◼   ► where I had a whole afternoon to myself

01:47:21 ◼   ► And I sat down with my iPad and I started drawing out

01:47:24 ◼   ► what I thought this thing could look like.

01:47:25 ◼   ► And then I had this idea at the end of it.

01:47:28 ◼   ► And I want more of that kind of time.

01:47:30 ◼   ► A couple of other things.

01:47:31 ◼   ► I wanna continue my trend of health and fitness,

01:47:34 ◼   ► continuing to build this into the structure of my life.

01:47:37 ◼   ► It was an unexpected thing that occurred to me in 2021.

01:47:41 ◼   ► This was something that I wanted to focus on

01:47:43 ◼   ► in the way that I have been.

01:47:45 ◼   ► And I feel like I've built a great base

01:47:47 ◼   ► to continue moving forward on.

01:47:49 ◼   ► and I want to continue making that just a part of me.

01:47:52 ◼   ► - I'm glad to hear that.

01:47:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's been unexpected,

01:47:54 ◼   ► but I'm very happy with the results so far.

01:47:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and if I can say,

01:47:58 ◼   ► when we finally met up in person, most recent time,

01:48:03 ◼   ► I gave you a hug, you physically felt different.

01:48:06 ◼   ► So you should be very happy about that.

01:48:08 ◼   ► - Thank you, I will say if you hugged me now,

01:48:10 ◼   ► you would physically feel a vacation, but.

01:48:13 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:48:17 ◼   ► But I know the steps that I would take to get back to where I was.

01:48:22 ◼   ► And I find for me, vacation wait, I lose it quite quickly.

01:48:26 ◼   ► I've always kind of been that way.

01:48:27 ◼   ► But right now I feel like I've been on holiday.

01:48:30 ◼   ► That is definitely true.

01:48:32 ◼   ► Like when we did that hug, I was also at my most puffy, I've

01:48:36 ◼   ► just come back from America, wait.

01:48:38 ◼   ► Puffy's a good way to describe it.

01:48:41 ◼   ► Honestly, America makes me puffy.

01:48:43 ◼   ► It's totally impossible.

01:48:44 ◼   ► But like, I made that call.

01:48:45 ◼   ► I was like, you know what?

01:48:46 ◼   ► I'm going to be in America for a while.

01:48:47 ◼   ► it's fine, and then so it's like,

01:48:49 ◼   ► but I came back and I hugged Myke and it was like,

01:48:50 ◼   ► oh boy, this guy has been on the fitness train, I am not.

01:48:55 ◼   ► But you are right, like, yeah,

01:48:56 ◼   ► it does fade away relatively fast

01:48:59 ◼   ► as far as those things go.

01:49:00 ◼   ► - Once you get back into your kind of regular routine.

01:49:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I'm really glad to hear

01:49:03 ◼   ► that you're continuing with it.

01:49:05 ◼   ► Like it just, it seems like you've really found something

01:49:08 ◼   ► that works for you and obviously it doesn't fit in

01:49:11 ◼   ► with the name of the theme in some ways,

01:49:13 ◼   ► but it's a great little like sub thing to continue onward

01:49:16 ◼   ► and to keep in mind over the next year.

01:49:19 ◼   ► - And then this is an interesting one.

01:49:21 ◼   ► I had this thought while sitting on the beach.

01:49:24 ◼   ► Structured time off.

01:49:26 ◼   ► I used to work in a company that had

01:49:27 ◼   ► allocated vacation days.

01:49:28 ◼   ► You got like 25 days a year,

01:49:30 ◼   ► and you had to take 14 of those days in a block.

01:49:33 ◼   ► You had to take a two week vacation,

01:49:34 ◼   ► and then the rest of it you could take whatever you wanted.

01:49:37 ◼   ► And I was thinking about this compared to

01:49:40 ◼   ► the idea that a lot of tech companies

01:49:42 ◼   ► have of unlimited vacation time.

01:49:45 ◼   ► And it's been basically, there's lots of articles

01:49:48 ◼   ► and studies to prove this, and I believe it

01:49:50 ◼   ► from talking to people anecdotally.

01:49:51 ◼   ► When you have unlimited vacation time,

01:49:53 ◼   ► you do not take enough vacation.

01:49:55 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, for sure.

01:49:56 ◼   ► - You feel like, how do you book it?

01:49:58 ◼   ► And also the company culture is not built to handle it.

01:50:03 ◼   ► Because like when I used to work in the bank

01:50:06 ◼   ► and we had that two week vacation,

01:50:07 ◼   ► everyone took that two week vacation.

01:50:09 ◼   ► So everybody knew how to handle somebody else's

01:50:12 ◼   ► two week vacation.

01:50:14 ◼   ► - Right.

01:50:14 ◼   ► - Because we all took them.

01:50:15 ◼   ► So built into the company culture was this idea of a two week handover.

01:50:20 ◼   ► So you finish products to the point that you can, then you hand them over to your colleagues

01:50:24 ◼   ► for a two week period and everyone takes it.

01:50:27 ◼   ► But if you're on limited vacation time, how does that work?

01:50:30 ◼   ► I'm going to take two months off now.

01:50:32 ◼   ► Is anyone going to handle this work?

01:50:34 ◼   ► It doesn't work.

01:50:35 ◼   ► So I also realized that traveling, vacation, traveling, vacations, whatever, helped me

01:50:42 ◼   ► stay grounded in a weird way. Like, leaving makes me feel... I don't know what it is,

01:50:48 ◼   ► but it adds this thing that I enjoy. And it hasn't been possible, it still won't be like

01:50:53 ◼   ► it was I think for a while, for quite a while, but there are feasible breaks/stations that

01:50:59 ◼   ► I can take. So, my plan is to decide an amount of days I take off every year and do it.

01:51:08 ◼   ► So, I will have allocated vacation days that need to be taken every year.

01:51:14 ◼   ► Maybe it's 25 days, maybe it's more, maybe it's less.

01:51:17 ◼   ► But I will set them, and I will take them, and that will be a part of the structure of

01:51:20 ◼   ► my year.

01:51:21 ◼   ► I will book them with myself, book them in my calendar, let people know that I work with

01:51:26 ◼   ► them and I'm going to be doing this, and do it.

01:51:28 ◼   ► May I strongly suggest that this is one of the areas of responsibility for your assistant?

01:51:34 ◼   ► Well currently, this is an area of responsibility for my wife because Adina very much agrees

01:51:41 ◼   ► with this and really likes this and wants to enforce this on me.

01:51:46 ◼   ► Okay right.

01:51:47 ◼   ► Look, the important thing is you have an enforcer and if Adina is the enforcer, that's great.

01:51:53 ◼   ► It also fits with the kind of responsibilities that Adina has with our business that we run

01:51:57 ◼   ► together here in the UK.

01:51:59 ◼   ► Because weird stuff, right?

01:52:01 ◼   ► Like all of that stuff that Greg was saying earlier about working with companies, it's

01:52:05 ◼   ► complicated.

01:52:06 ◼   ► So we have a business here in the UK where we handle all the stuff that we have coming

01:52:10 ◼   ► in from our various companies, et cetera.

01:52:11 ◼   ► It's like very complicated.

01:52:13 ◼   ► But she helps me with running all the finance part of that and a lot of logistical stuff

01:52:19 ◼   ► that I need to handle.

01:52:21 ◼   ► And so she feels like this actually fits quite neatly with what she would keep her eye on.

01:52:27 ◼   ► Plus wants to make sure I do it.

01:52:29 ◼   ► So this is probably a job that she will handle for me.

01:52:33 ◼   ► And then the last thing that I wanted to think about, and this one feels really complicated.

01:52:38 ◼   ► So like I don't really know if it's something that I'm going to do, but I just thought about

01:52:42 ◼   ► it which was, you know, I've spoken about siloing communication, the idea of having

01:52:49 ◼   ► different places for different types of communication.

01:52:51 ◼   ► And I've really liked that my Cortex brand email all goes to a separate email account,

01:52:57 ◼   ► I can, it's a separate email app.

01:52:59 ◼   ► So like I can, when I want to be in that,

01:53:01 ◼   ► I can be in that and I can close it when I don't.

01:53:04 ◼   ► I am wondering if I can silo my personal stuff

01:53:09 ◼   ► away from my Relay FM stuff as well now.

01:53:12 ◼   ► So my notes, my email, and my communication

01:53:17 ◼   ► for the three things that I care about are all different.

01:53:20 ◼   ► So personal Relay FM, Cortex brand.

01:53:22 ◼   ► 'Cause my Relay FM stuff and my personal stuff,

01:53:26 ◼   ► They're all in the same place.

01:53:27 ◼   ► And I think it might be nice to separate them out and have like three different

01:53:32 ◼   ► areas. But I do not even know if I can feasibly do this or if I will like doing

01:53:37 ◼   ► it, but it's just also something I'm going to keep in my mind, I think. Again,

01:53:41 ◼   ► structure, it's all part of structure, you know?

01:53:43 ◼   ► Right. I mean,

01:53:45 ◼   ► are you talking about like separating it out in terms of like even like iCloud

01:53:49 ◼   ► access? Like, oh, you'd have a different iCloud account for work notes.

01:53:52 ◼   ► Is that what you mean?

01:53:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:53:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay, you don't know, you just, okay.

01:53:56 ◼   ► - Like I'm imagining maybe I would use the Apple Notes app

01:53:59 ◼   ► for Relay FM stuff and then a different place

01:54:02 ◼   ► for personal notes, for example.

01:54:04 ◼   ► - Right, right, okay.

01:54:05 ◼   ► - And like I use, maybe would use Spark

01:54:08 ◼   ► for my Relay FM email and like a different email app

01:54:11 ◼   ► for my personal email.

01:54:13 ◼   ► So I can more easily be in the right modes,

01:54:16 ◼   ► the right apps at the right time.

01:54:19 ◼   ► - Okay, I see what you mean.

01:54:20 ◼   ► - 'Cause I have that with Cortex Brands.

01:54:21 ◼   ► Like if I wanna do Cortex Brands stuff,

01:54:23 ◼   ► right I open the GM, whatever app on you know, I lose like MimeStream on my Mac and

01:54:29 ◼   ► Kraft and that's all of that stuff you know, but if I want to do relay FM stuff

01:54:36 ◼   ► it's like well here yeah but here's also my travel confirmation and my Amazon

01:54:40 ◼   ► email like you know it's all like mixed in. I see what you mean right. And I

01:54:44 ◼   ► never really thought it was a thing that I needed but doing it with Cortex brands

01:54:48 ◼   ► has made me realize that I actually can't find value in having it separated

01:54:52 ◼   ► like that. So I'm thinking about what that might look like too, but that's much more

01:54:59 ◼   ► a maybe kind of thing. It's definitely at the lower and the very bottom of the kind

01:55:04 ◼   ► of the commitments and the outcomes that I want. So kind of in summary, the Year of Structure

01:55:09 ◼   ► is about understanding what I need, what I want, who can do it for me, and what it will

01:55:14 ◼   ► take to put it in place.

01:55:15 ◼   ► >> Okay, I like it. I feel like this is, maybe this is the theme of yours that's taking me

01:55:20 ◼   ► the longest to get, but I think it's a very, like it's very reasonable.

01:55:26 ◼   ► I think you really identified a problem with the timing of the way we think about things

01:55:33 ◼   ► and the actionability of changing the next year.

01:55:36 ◼   ► Yeah, this one took me a really long time to work out.

01:55:41 ◼   ► Because it started with some feelings, like this feeling of too busy, too overwhelmed.

01:55:48 ◼   ► And then I had to work out what that meant, what that could look like.

01:55:51 ◼   ► Then I was like, oh, OK, so I'll just my year is about getting everything in order.

01:55:56 ◼   ► It's like, well, no, but I actually don't know what I need yet.

01:55:59 ◼   ► So I need to build this structure

01:56:02 ◼   ► over 2022 to enable me to be more effective and better going forward.

01:56:08 ◼   ► And things could start to fall into place quite quickly.

01:56:11 ◼   ► But I'm giving myself the entire year

01:56:14 ◼   ► to build my new work structure because my work has become more complicated now.

01:56:20 ◼   ► And I've not really taken time to look at all of my various responsibilities and work

01:56:27 ◼   ► out what they actually need to be the best that they can be.

01:56:29 ◼   ► Well, I think we both have some high level stuff to work on next year.

01:56:34 ◼   ► That's why I actually really liked hearing yours because I could see that there were

01:56:37 ◼   ► some parallels in that both of our themes are these ideas for future years.

01:56:46 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:56:47 ◼   ► And like a reframing of what we do rather than like, oh, I'm gonna just focus on this

01:56:53 ◼   ► one little thing, which is maybe my health, or I'm just gonna focus on this one little

01:56:56 ◼   ► thing which is maybe my knowledge intake or whatever.

01:57:00 ◼   ► We're doing like advanced themes now.

01:57:03 ◼   ► That's where we are in 2022.

01:57:05 ◼   ► I like that, like let's pitch it that way.

01:57:06 ◼   ► We're doing the advanced themes for sure.

01:57:09 ◼   ► We've been doing it for five years now, you know, like we're in like, what is it, like

01:57:12 ◼   ► themes 102?

01:57:14 ◼   ► Is that the advanced class?

01:57:16 ◼   ► Is that how it works?

01:57:17 ◼   ► It would be 201.

01:57:18 ◼   ► 201?

01:57:19 ◼   ► Okay, we're in themes 201.

01:57:20 ◼   ► I think it's interesting every year, sort of see if we're at the same place or if we're

01:57:24 ◼   ► at different places and I think this is a byproduct both of the fact that we have been

01:57:30 ◼   ► doing the themes for a while, but also just the reality for both of us of where we are

01:57:38 ◼   ► in our careers, and also a bunch of increasing complexity. Like, we've both made our lives

01:57:43 ◼   ► more complex by starting a company together in addition to doing the podcast together,

01:57:49 ◼   ► and so I think it makes sense that we both are now having this longer term, more meta-thinking

01:57:58 ◼   ► kind of work to do.

01:57:59 ◼   ► If you are setting a theme for yourself, we would love to know what that theme is.

01:58:04 ◼   ► Please leave that in the subreddit or you can send them to us on Twitter.

01:58:08 ◼   ► We would also love if you have questions about setting themes and you want advice.

01:58:14 ◼   ► If you use #AskCortex, you can send those in to us.

01:58:18 ◼   ► If you're in the Relay FM members Discord, you can use ?askcortex

01:58:22 ◼   ► and they go to the same sheet that we can draw some questions from.

01:58:25 ◼   ► because we'd really love to know.

01:58:26 ◼   ► I mean, I always find value in the January episode

01:58:30 ◼   ► kind of talking more about this stuff.

01:58:32 ◼   ► We always do some reflection.

01:58:33 ◼   ► So I would love to bring in some Ask Cortex questions

01:58:36 ◼   ► and maybe share some theme examples that we've liked

01:58:39 ◼   ► that we've seen people sharing maybe on Reddit

01:58:41 ◼   ► or in Discord.

01:58:42 ◼   ► So please send those in.

01:58:44 ◼   ► And don't forget to buy a theme system journal

01:58:46 ◼   ► or cortexmerch.com.