Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Quiet on set. I'm ready to go.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Quiet on set.

00:00:04 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:00:05 ◼   ► I don't know, I just turned off the few machines that make noise in this office.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I was like, it's quiet on set. Quiet everyone. Time to record.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Except I've never even heard you say anything close to that before.

00:00:17 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:00:18 ◼   ► Lights, camera, action!

00:00:20 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:00:21 ◼   ► We're rolling.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Rolling on sound.

00:00:24 ◼   ► That's it. We're rolling.

00:00:26 ◼   ► [Ding]

00:00:27 ◼   ► How you doing, Myke?

00:00:28 ◼   ► Good, I have some follow up for you.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Oh yeah? Follow up about your sleep? People were very interested in your sleep.

00:00:36 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:00:38 ◼   ► [Sigh]

00:00:40 ◼   ► I've said it many times before, you never really know what people are gonna latch onto.

00:00:45 ◼   ► But oh boy, the people in- especially on Reddit latch onto my sleep patterns.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Everyone was very concerned, Myke. Everyone was very concerned for you.

00:00:53 ◼   ► I'm just happy we have so many medical professionals in our audience.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Who knew?

00:00:58 ◼   ► I wanna just follow up on something.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I mean, you can, people can take from this what they wish.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Surprise, surprise, there was a bug with the data.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Very surprising.

00:01:08 ◼   ► I appear to not have had 240 alarms in a week, because when I checked it a couple of days

00:01:13 ◼   ► ago, that exact same week, the 8th to the 15th of March, it said 84, which is a significant

00:01:19 ◼   ► difference to 240 or whatever the number was.

00:01:23 ◼   ► So basically, all I want to say is, yeah, I do have a lot of alarms every day.

00:01:28 ◼   ► It's nowhere near the amount, it seems, that was originally reported.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Still seems like a lot.

00:01:32 ◼   ► It is a lot.

00:01:33 ◼   ► It is a lot.

00:01:34 ◼   ► But I've been thinking about it.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Like, I overset alarms.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I don't need as many alarms on as I have.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Because what tends to happen for me, Gray, because if you have like a bunch of alarms

00:01:42 ◼   ► set like me, I have one 10 minute intervals, that's like the snooze interval.

00:01:46 ◼   ► So what usually happens is I get like four alarms at once and just dismiss them all.

00:01:51 ◼   ► you've snoozed them and so they're overlapping? Is that what you're saying?

00:01:54 ◼   ► Yeah. Oh okay. Why don't you just snooze the one alarm? Right but because now it's

00:01:59 ◼   ► just as well insane. I've got two things going on here. I'm sure this isn't gonna make

00:02:02 ◼   ► my case any better but here we are. I'm in it now. I'm in it now. I can feel everyone hands

00:02:09 ◼   ► hovering above the keyboard. I set a lot of alarms and I snoozed them all right

00:02:14 ◼   ► and I thought to myself well I could just set one alarm and just snooze it a

00:02:17 ◼   ► a bunch of times, but my neuroses won't allow for that

00:02:22 ◼   ► because what if I turn off the alarm rather than snooze it

00:02:26 ◼   ► and now I've slept through the whole day?

00:02:29 ◼   ► - That is fair, it's very easy to do.

00:02:31 ◼   ► It's very easy to accidentally hit the stop alarm

00:02:34 ◼   ► versus snooze alarm, so I think that's a reasonable concern.

00:02:37 ◼   ► - I give myself an hour, right?

00:02:39 ◼   ► That is the agreement I've made with myself, right?

00:02:42 ◼   ► I have one hour from the first alarm until I wake up.

00:02:46 ◼   ► I can get up any time within that hour.

00:02:49 ◼   ► And I do.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Sometimes it's only two or three alarms and I'm up.

00:02:52 ◼   ► - Oh, very impressive.

00:02:53 ◼   ► - Sometimes it's 10.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - Less impressive.

00:02:56 ◼   ► - Give myself the best part of an hour

00:02:58 ◼   ► and my alarms will just keep going off until then.

00:03:01 ◼   ► That's just where I am.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I do have some good, I think,

00:03:08 ◼   ► objectively good follow up though.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I set a 30 minute daily time limit on Twitter.

00:03:14 ◼   ► - Ooh, very good.

00:03:15 ◼   ► I just thought to myself, why don't I do this?

00:03:17 ◼   ► You know, like, you want to spend less time on it.

00:03:20 ◼   ► I've just spent two hours talking about a system

00:03:22 ◼   ► that is supposed to do this.

00:03:24 ◼   ► So that's what I've been doing.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And obviously I've been keeping to it.

00:03:27 ◼   ► There's been a day or two where I gave myself

00:03:29 ◼   ► a little bit of extra time.

00:03:30 ◼   ► But now, like I'm down to like two and a bit hours a week,

00:03:35 ◼   ► down from like four hours.

00:03:37 ◼   ► - So you're getting the, the screen comes down

00:03:39 ◼   ► when your time is up and it says, no more Twitter for you.

00:03:42 ◼   ► - And then it's like, you can ignore it for the day.

00:03:44 ◼   ► I like one more minute, that's my favorite.

00:03:47 ◼   ► It's just funny to me that that's like,

00:03:48 ◼   ► "Hey, just one more minute, come on one more minute, please."

00:03:51 ◼   ► - The one more minute does make me smile

00:03:52 ◼   ► because it always makes me feel like a child

00:03:54 ◼   ► when I press it, right, that I'm asking

00:03:57 ◼   ► from my parents for one more minute.

00:03:58 ◼   ► - That's what it's written for.

00:03:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I know this isn't the case,

00:04:01 ◼   ► but it feels a little bit like it's a hangover

00:04:04 ◼   ► from the days when we used to have to save files

00:04:07 ◼   ► or something like, "No, you don't understand,

00:04:08 ◼   ► "I just need one more minute to press a couple buttons,

00:04:10 ◼   ► "wrap something up."

00:04:11 ◼   ► - There is something useful in that though,

00:04:13 ◼   ► 'cause usually when I hit that,

00:04:14 ◼   ► I was doing something, right?

00:04:16 ◼   ► And I just want to finish the thing that I was doing.

00:04:19 ◼   ► 'Cause I've been like composing a tweet,

00:04:21 ◼   ► like if you publish a show, put in a tweet out

00:04:23 ◼   ► and then like the thing pops up and I'm like,

00:04:26 ◼   ► I just need one more minute.

00:04:27 ◼   ► I was like halfway through something here.

00:04:30 ◼   ► What I do appreciate about Apple system is,

00:04:33 ◼   ► it like attracts me everywhere, right?

00:04:35 ◼   ► Even on the web.

00:04:36 ◼   ► So I like that.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I think it's smart that they do that.

00:04:38 ◼   ► - Oh, right, I forget.

00:04:39 ◼   ► I forget that they did do that,

00:04:40 ◼   ► that they have their different way of recognizing

00:04:42 ◼   ► that this is all the same service as Twitter.

00:04:44 ◼   ► That is a good feature.

00:04:45 ◼   ► For all of the complaining that we've done,

00:04:48 ◼   ► that is a good feature.

00:04:49 ◼   ► - And it's just been really interesting to me

00:04:51 ◼   ► to just take kind of mental stock of what time of the day

00:04:54 ◼   ► I'm hitting the 30 minutes.

00:04:56 ◼   ► It's like some days it's not even lunchtime.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Some days I don't see it at all.

00:05:00 ◼   ► I've still got a lot to learn about myself from this.

00:05:02 ◼   ► I've only been doing it for like a week and a half,

00:05:04 ◼   ► but I actually think it might be the right move for me.

00:05:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I think that's great.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I'm glad to hear that you're doing that

00:05:09 ◼   ► and that it's working for you.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Again, this is the promise of the system, is to try to bring in alignment what sitting

00:05:18 ◼   ► down rational you wants you to do, and then what in the moment you want to do.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Getting those things into alignment, it's not always as easy as we wish it would be.

00:05:30 ◼   ► No.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So I'm basically making my computer shame me.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Which I'm fine with.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:34 ◼   ► It's in the privacy of your own home.

00:05:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:05:37 ◼   ► You're punchy today.

00:05:39 ◼   ► You're sleepy, that's why.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Yeah, this is gray on five hours of sleep.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Yeah, we are recording this the day after you published a video, so...

00:05:51 ◼   ► It turns out that drinking coffee at 10pm to do a director's commentary

00:05:57 ◼   ► is not a great recipe for a good night's sleep, so...

00:06:01 ◼   ► That decision, that late night coffee decision is just killer.

00:06:05 ◼   ► You know, it happens to me a few times a year as well, right?

00:06:08 ◼   ► "Alright, I've got a thing and I just gotta do it.

00:06:12 ◼   ► I have no other way around this and I know the only way I'm gonna get through it is

00:06:15 ◼   ► I need that little extra.

00:06:18 ◼   ► But if I do this, everything afterwards is worse."

00:06:21 ◼   ► And I said, "Well, I'm sorry, but this is how I'm going."

00:06:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like this is what the drugs are for sometimes, right?

00:06:29 ◼   ► I was like, "Well, I'm gonna inject myself with this and keep going and pay for it later."

00:06:35 ◼   ► And now is later.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Great, I have some good news for you today. I had asked the audience for some Ask Cortex

00:06:41 ◼   ► questions. I like to touch on these every now and then. And I know that for you these

00:06:46 ◼   ► episodes are easier on you, which is good.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Oh, thank you, Myke.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Gonna hold my hand and we're gonna take you through the show today.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Oh, you're leading me through the Garden of Ask Cortex. That's delightful. It's also,

00:06:57 ◼   ► it's been a while since we've been in the Ask Cortex garden. So I'm very happy to be

00:07:01 ◼   ► here on a sleepy Saturday afternoon.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Although to be honest, the first question is kind of a big one. I apologize.

00:07:07 ◼   ► Vlad asks, "What do you think the state of the workplace will be after the pandemic?"

00:07:11 ◼   ► Oh, that's not a big question at all.

00:07:13 ◼   ► But I mean it though. It'll be the same. That's the answer.

00:07:16 ◼   ► I think everyone's dramatically overestimating this.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Uh-uh. I disagree with you.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Okay, why? Convince me.

00:07:21 ◼   ► Corporations have now realized how much money they could save.

00:07:25 ◼   ► I'm not sold on this argument. But go on. Tell me more.

00:07:30 ◼   ► This is a little bit informed by some conversations I've been having with people

00:07:33 ◼   ► that work in large businesses.

00:07:35 ◼   ► - Oh, intriguing.

00:07:36 ◼   ► - That there are lots of companies

00:07:38 ◼   ► who have let some of their workspace go.

00:07:43 ◼   ► And there are also companies that are realizing

00:07:45 ◼   ► that now some of their employees have had that sweet taste

00:07:48 ◼   ► of working from home life and won't wanna give it up.

00:07:51 ◼   ► So I do think that for a lot of companies,

00:07:54 ◼   ► not all, but for a lot of companies,

00:07:57 ◼   ► the workplace is going to be different.

00:07:59 ◼   ► There is gonna be more remote working.

00:08:01 ◼   ► There is gonna be less office space in general.

00:08:03 ◼   ► There will be lots of businesses that will return just as normal, right?

00:08:07 ◼   ► No doubt about it.

00:08:08 ◼   ► But I believe that there will be lots of businesses that will reduce the amount

00:08:13 ◼   ► of people that they have coming in.

00:08:14 ◼   ► So we'll have to change the way that the workplace is set up to have more

00:08:19 ◼   ► collaborative space, more meeting spaces and stuff like that for the people that

00:08:22 ◼   ► are just dropping in for the day.

00:08:24 ◼   ► I think there's going to be a lot of that.

00:08:26 ◼   ► So like there's some companies that I know in the UK, large companies, media

00:08:30 ◼   ► companies that are looking at this as their approach now.

00:08:33 ◼   ► The saving money thing, man, it's a real deal.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And also as well, I will say a lot of technology companies,

00:08:39 ◼   ► like American technology companies,

00:08:41 ◼   ► but they said that like, we now have a completely

00:08:43 ◼   ► do what you want remote working policy forever,

00:08:46 ◼   ► which just wasn't a thing that existed before

00:08:48 ◼   ► for a lot of these organizations.

00:08:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, okay.

00:08:51 ◼   ► So the saving money thing that,

00:08:53 ◼   ► obviously that's a good argument.

00:08:56 ◼   ► I just, I'm not convinced it'll hold over the long run.

00:09:02 ◼   ► And like my suspicion is this is also just partly about the way humans are.

00:09:07 ◼   ► And I think that as the pandemic recedes into distant memory, you're going to

00:09:14 ◼   ► have the same phenomenon where managers want their direct reports in a building

00:09:20 ◼   ► around them.

00:09:21 ◼   ► Butts on seats.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Yeah, butts on seats.

00:09:23 ◼   ► And I think the internal company politics of that, you know, look at this tiny

00:09:30 ◼   ► kingdom I oversee and the people who report to me and I'm so busy interrupting them all

00:09:36 ◼   ► day from getting their work done as a manager.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I just think that's a strong, irrational pull that I just expect will return and will come

00:09:47 ◼   ► back.

00:09:48 ◼   ► It's a little bit like I've been talking to some people who are convinced about, "Oh,

00:09:53 ◼   ► there's going to be so many people who are living out in the country and cities are going

00:09:57 ◼   ► to experience depopulation."

00:09:59 ◼   ► like, I don't know. There's a reason that people go to cities.

00:10:03 ◼   ► People don't just live in cities because there's job opportunities in cities. Like, there's

00:10:06 ◼   ► many reasons.

00:10:07 ◼   ► It's not an accident and like the gravitational pull of cities is like, yeah, sure, it's been

00:10:12 ◼   ► loosened but I'm pretty sure that if we draw a graph of city populations going 10 years

00:10:20 ◼   ► back and 10 years in the future, it'll be hard to even see the pandemic on that graph,

00:10:24 ◼   ► you know, for having any kind of impact.

00:10:26 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:10:27 ◼   ► I hope that you are right.

00:10:29 ◼   ► I think that home working for people who can swing it

00:10:33 ◼   ► is a much better situation.

00:10:35 ◼   ► - Well, okay.

00:10:37 ◼   ► - What's that well?

00:10:38 ◼   ► - So there's another part of this which,

00:10:40 ◼   ► so I have painted the rosy picture for many people,

00:10:43 ◼   ► but you brought up company politics.

00:10:45 ◼   ► So there is gonna have to be a lot of change

00:10:49 ◼   ► in the way that companies operate.

00:10:50 ◼   ► And I think I could see there being an initial change

00:10:53 ◼   ► and then a bounce back from it a little bit.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Because if some people are in the office all the time,

00:11:00 ◼   ► some people aren't, what is the relationship change

00:11:03 ◼   ► for those people?

00:11:04 ◼   ► Like if there are six people in a team

00:11:07 ◼   ► and five of them are in the office

00:11:09 ◼   ► and then there's one person that works remote,

00:11:10 ◼   ► does anybody remember the remote person?

00:11:13 ◼   ► Do they end up feeling left out?

00:11:15 ◼   ► And then also what if certain managers,

00:11:17 ◼   ► they just promote the people they see all the time?

00:11:21 ◼   ► So companies that aren't used to this

00:11:23 ◼   ► companies that don't fully embrace it but just have it as a thing you can do,

00:11:26 ◼   ► if they have to go through the culture change, honestly, because otherwise...

00:11:31 ◼   ► That won't happen. That's not going to culture change for the companies.

00:11:34 ◼   ► It is a culture change. It is a culture change.

00:11:37 ◼   ► I'm saying that things are different, but what will not happen is that there's going to be some

00:11:41 ◼   ► kind of culture change where we're... And that's the problem.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Yeah, where, oh, we here, our culture here is to go completely against the human grain

00:11:50 ◼   ► of who you're talking to and scheming about, you know, at the water cooler. We're going to treat

00:11:55 ◼   ► the people who are remote in their cabins in Montana as equal players in this game of monkey

00:12:03 ◼   ► politics of getting, you know, one up on the other person. It's like, there's no way that's gonna go

00:12:08 ◼   ► away. So this is partly what I mean, like the gravitational pull of an office is just too strong.

00:12:15 ◼   ► If you're going to work remote, I think you just have to accept that part of the deal in that is

00:12:22 ◼   ► you are not going to be promoted as frequently. You are not going to be thought about as much.

00:12:28 ◼   ► And that's why I say for people who can swing it, like for some people, that's great, you know,

00:12:34 ◼   ► like that's a plus, not a minus. But for many people, like they don't want to have a job where

00:12:39 ◼   ► they are forgotten and never promoted. So this is why I think you're making a case for why people

00:12:45 ◼   ► will end up back in the office over the long run, even if it saves a company money.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Oh, I see. The point that I'm making is that I think there are two things that will happen.

00:12:55 ◼   ► I think there will be a change and then there will be another one. And I think the place that

00:13:01 ◼   ► we'll end up at, there will be more people that work remotely than they did prior to the pandemic.

00:13:05 ◼   ► But it is not going to be at the numbers that a lot of people think, which is,

00:13:09 ◼   ► hey, this worked fine. Yeah, it's worked fine because you will all remote.

00:13:13 ◼   ► So unless your workplace goes all remote, it's not going to be like this.

00:13:17 ◼   ► When people start going back to the office, you're going to see a different result to how it's been

00:13:23 ◼   ► for the last year. Yeah, I think for companies, it's like all remote or nothing is like the two

00:13:28 ◼   ► optimal solutions. I'm trying to remember, what is it? I think it's WordPress? Like they're an

00:13:34 ◼   ► entirely remote company with a huge number of people. And it's like, yeah, you can make it work

00:13:40 ◼   ► if everyone is remote and then that does mitigate the in-person politic stuff. But half remote,

00:13:46 ◼   ► half there, there's always going to be an advantage inside the company for the people who

00:13:51 ◼   ► are physically present. So we'll see, but I don't expect much change. In-person meetings,

00:13:57 ◼   ► handshakes, they're all coming back, baby. They're all coming back.

00:14:03 ◼   ► They're going to come back with a vengeance too. Handshakes will last a full 25 seconds.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Yeah, people are going to be so happy to do handshakes, they're going to do that aggressive

00:14:12 ◼   ► two-handed handshake, right?

00:14:13 ◼   ► Put the whole upper body into it.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I've completely enclosed your hand in my hand for this shaking.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Uh, the handshake hug.

00:14:22 ◼   ► It's going to be handshake hug.

00:14:23 ◼   ► To make sure all of the surface contact that's possible, all of the germ transfer that can

00:14:30 ◼   ► happen, it's going to happen.

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00:16:32 ◼   ► Betty asks, "For busy people who get hundreds of actionable emails a day, how do you stay

00:16:37 ◼   ► on top of it when your full time job is not dealing with your email?"

00:16:40 ◼   ► Myke, would you like to answer this question? So I wondered if you, I mean, there was a

00:16:47 ◼   ► time in your life where you did have to deal with the email that you got, like maybe before

00:16:51 ◼   ► you were a YouTuber. When you were a teacher, did you get a lot of emails as a teacher?

00:16:54 ◼   ► Yeah, no, you got hundreds of emails as a teacher.

00:16:57 ◼   ► I mean, but this is why my answer is probably not helpful because my, my

00:17:02 ◼   ► answer would be along the lines of, yeah.

00:17:05 ◼   ► When I was a teacher, the name of the game was try to figure out what's

00:17:10 ◼   ► really actionable as in which of these things will cause me problems.

00:17:15 ◼   ► And everything else that is actionable now becomes actionable with a

00:17:21 ◼   ► bunch of air quotes around it, you know?

00:17:23 ◼   ► And for me, the real answer there is like brutal triage

00:17:27 ◼   ► of I only care about the things

00:17:29 ◼   ► that are going to cause me problems.

00:17:31 ◼   ► But I don't think that's generally good advice.

00:17:34 ◼   ► You know, I was in a very particular situation at the time.

00:17:37 ◼   ► So that's why I think whatever you have to say

00:17:39 ◼   ► is gonna be much more valuable

00:17:40 ◼   ► than what I have to say on this topic.

00:17:41 ◼   ► - I don't think it is, Gray.

00:17:44 ◼   ► 'Cause I have the same advice.

00:17:45 ◼   ► - Okay. - Here's the thing.

00:17:47 ◼   ► Not all actionable email actually requires action.

00:17:51 ◼   ► - Okay. - In my corporate job,

00:17:52 ◼   ► I got more email than I get now.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Everything was done by email

00:17:56 ◼   ► and everybody thought they needed the answer, right?

00:17:59 ◼   ► This is part of the problem.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Actionable email, a lot of it is just people think

00:18:04 ◼   ► they need it to be actioned by you

00:18:06 ◼   ► more than you need to action that email.

00:18:08 ◼   ► So what I would say is for anybody who is finding this

00:18:13 ◼   ► happen to them and it's new,

00:18:15 ◼   ► you have to do a bit of training on yourself over time

00:18:19 ◼   ► of trying to work out what is the stuff

00:18:22 ◼   ► that truly requires your attention

00:18:24 ◼   ► and learning over time the things that you're able

00:18:27 ◼   ► to just ignore and see if they come back.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Like that's the real thing that everyone, I think,

00:18:35 ◼   ► ultimately learns who's in this position.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Like what are the actual real requirements

00:18:41 ◼   ► or what are the real things that need my attention

00:18:44 ◼   ► and what are the things that will just naturally go away

00:18:47 ◼   ► if I ignore them?

00:18:49 ◼   ► This is not, quote, actionable advice.

00:18:51 ◼   ► But it's just a thing that is the only way to deal with this.

00:18:55 ◼   ► I will tell you, it always feels like

00:18:58 ◼   ► there is more on the line than there is a lot of the time.

00:19:02 ◼   ► And I have found, like Gray has found,

00:19:05 ◼   ► that you can kind of let some stuff go

00:19:07 ◼   ► and it will just disappear.

00:19:09 ◼   ► The person forgot about it.

00:19:10 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

00:19:11 ◼   ► Again, I think my bad dial is turned up slightly here

00:19:15 ◼   ► where it's not even things that would go away,

00:19:18 ◼   ► but stuff where it's like,

00:19:20 ◼   ► I can take the negative consequences of that.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Right, that's fine.

00:19:23 ◼   ► A bad thing will happen.

00:19:24 ◼   ► - But that's part of the risk factor

00:19:26 ◼   ► of trying to decide what needs to go away.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Is someone might say to you,

00:19:29 ◼   ► "This is unacceptable, why have you not replied?"

00:19:31 ◼   ► And then you need to reply, right?

00:19:32 ◼   ► Like, what are you gonna do?

00:19:34 ◼   ► - Then you stumble around,

00:19:35 ◼   ► "Oh, I was so busy, so sorry, I missed it."

00:19:38 ◼   ► - Oh, I never got your email.

00:19:40 ◼   ► - We have your read receipt right here.

00:19:42 ◼   ► Oh, uh.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - Can't fill in the keyboard, I don't know.

00:19:46 ◼   ► Yeah, this is a really tricky one,

00:19:48 ◼   ► but it is ultimately something you need to remember

00:19:51 ◼   ► that for most people, your job isn't answering email,

00:19:55 ◼   ► your job is doing your job,

00:19:56 ◼   ► and you've gotta try and find that balance for yourself.

00:19:59 ◼   ► One of the ways that actually really helped me

00:20:01 ◼   ► get out of this was I, for a while,

00:20:04 ◼   ► decided I was only gonna check email

00:20:05 ◼   ► for half an hour twice a day,

00:20:07 ◼   ► and if you're setting that kinda hard limit on yourself

00:20:09 ◼   ► and you get lots and lots of email,

00:20:11 ◼   ► you'd be surprised how quickly you start to realize

00:20:14 ◼   ► what you need to respond to.

00:20:16 ◼   ► If you limit the amount of time

00:20:17 ◼   ► that you actually have to spend on it,

00:20:19 ◼   ► because it's gonna keep building up.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Then you start to build your own filter

00:20:22 ◼   ► of what can just be removed,

00:20:24 ◼   ► what could be filed away for later, that kind of stuff.

00:20:27 ◼   ► It's tricky.

00:20:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, it's totally tricky.

00:20:30 ◼   ► This also just kind of goes back

00:20:31 ◼   ► to the previous question a little bit

00:20:33 ◼   ► and our recurring fascination with big companies

00:20:38 ◼   ► and the what is everybody doing here kind of question.

00:20:42 ◼   ► And I just remember thinking that a lot

00:20:44 ◼   ► when I got a whole bunch of teacher emails

00:20:46 ◼   ► is. It's like, oh, you log in and there's 200 messages, all of which are supposedly,

00:20:51 ◼   ► you know, requesting something from you. And just, just having that experience of,

00:20:55 ◼   ► what are all of these people who send these emails doing? Like, I'm not replying to them.

00:20:59 ◼   ► I suspect a lot of other people are also playing the same game that I'm playing. Like,

00:21:03 ◼   ► there's a lot of like turbulent flow in bigger organizations, I think, where the water is

00:21:09 ◼   ► fighting itself as it's flowing through the pipe and there's a lot of unnecessary motion.

00:21:15 ◼   ► And you just want to stay away from that.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Like you answer a bunch of emails and you just train other people that you are part

00:21:23 ◼   ► of this world of people who are sending emails back and forth all day long.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And that can quickly spiral up into a lot of busyness that accomplishes just

00:21:31 ◼   ► absolutely nothing in terms of the real hard, valuable things that need to get done.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Any day now Slack's going to save us from email.

00:21:41 ◼   ► Any day.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Any day.

00:21:43 ◼   ► Any day now.

00:21:44 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:21:46 ◼   ► You probably missed this, but they had a horrific day trying to set up this, like,

00:21:52 ◼   ► a system that anyone can DM you from any Slack organization if they have your email address.

00:21:59 ◼   ► Oh, here we go. This is the "Slack wants to be Discord" phenomenon. Great.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Every company just wants to be every other company. Can Slack be Instagram? Can LinkedIn be YouTube?

00:22:12 ◼   ► I don't know you've seen they announced this a while ago that slack is creating stories. Are you for real?

00:22:17 ◼   ► I'm being serious. It almost looks like an April Fool's joke, but they're working on it stories like stories

00:22:22 ◼   ► That's I mean that would sound like an April Fool's it really when I saw it. I I genuinely checked like is this an old story?

00:22:30 ◼   ► But no, it's a real thing that they are apparently working on but they created this system of like, you know

00:22:35 ◼   ► Oh, you'll be able to basically want to be like the work chat app, right?

00:22:39 ◼   ► So grey industries could talk to relay FM people inside of those companies.

00:22:45 ◼   ► You just got to know the email address that's associated with the Slack.

00:22:47 ◼   ► And it was one of those like just typical catastrophe type things where they put this

00:22:53 ◼   ► out there and then they just got a ton of pushback because so say you wanted to contact me and you

00:23:00 ◼   ► knew my email address, right? And you would open up in Slack.

00:23:03 ◼   ► When you send the invite to me, you could say whatever you wanted in the invite.

00:23:06 ◼   ► - Oh, so I'm sending you an email.

00:23:09 ◼   ► That's what this is, right?

00:23:09 ◼   ► - It would either come to email or into Slack, right?

00:23:13 ◼   ► But the problem is you could say whatever you wanted to me.

00:23:17 ◼   ► So like from a harassment perspective,

00:23:20 ◼   ► you can't stop these emails coming

00:23:22 ◼   ► and you can say whatever you want.

00:23:24 ◼   ► - It's worse than email.

00:23:26 ◼   ► It's worse than email.

00:23:27 ◼   ► - Big backtrack.

00:23:28 ◼   ► - It's amazing.

00:23:29 ◼   ► - And they're like, "Oh, now you just can't customize

00:23:32 ◼   ► the invite, but you can still send the invite."

00:23:34 ◼   ► So they're moving down this path.

00:23:36 ◼   ► This is them trying to, I guess,

00:23:38 ◼   ► this is more of the push towards getting rid of email.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And it's just like, ah.

00:23:43 ◼   ► - That is an amazing full circle though of,

00:23:47 ◼   ► we won't be email, oh, it's worse than email.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And I just, I love all of the companies

00:23:51 ◼   ► trying to be all of the new hotness.

00:23:54 ◼   ► When can I clubhouse from Google Docs, Myke?

00:23:58 ◼   ► That's what I wanna know.

00:23:59 ◼   ► - It's probably not that far away.

00:24:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:04 ◼   ► Dylan asks, "How many iPads did the two of you currently have in rotation and what

00:24:08 ◼   ► are their purposes?"

00:24:09 ◼   ► B - What's your iPad in lockdown situation?

00:24:12 ◼   ► H - It's all change, really.

00:24:17 ◼   ► So like, I wasn't using – I haven't really used one for months.

00:24:24 ◼   ► I actually have just changed, like in the last couple of weeks.

00:24:27 ◼   ► I think it was after we recorded last, you referenced couch iPad.

00:24:32 ◼   ► And I thought, "Oh, I should do that."

00:24:34 ◼   ► So like my 11 inch iPad Pro now lives on the couch, and that's where I read my news and

00:24:40 ◼   ► like if I'm just hanging out on the couch that's what I use now instead of my phone.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And I find that to just be much more comfortable.

00:24:46 ◼   ► >> Oh my god, yeah, if you're using your phone on the couch, that's awful.

00:24:49 ◼   ► No, couch pad, best pad.

00:24:51 ◼   ► >> But I'd never really thought of it that way, because for so long my iPad has been

00:24:55 ◼   ► my work device, right?

00:24:57 ◼   ► Now I am 100% working on the Mac.

00:25:01 ◼   ► This is what lockdown did to me.

00:25:03 ◼   ► just been a complete 180 plus the new Macs are so good and I like the new Mac OS and

00:25:08 ◼   ► So I've just basically transitioned completely to working on the Mac again. So my

00:25:14 ◼   ► Big iPad Pro has been in the studio in a drawer

00:25:18 ◼   ► For the best part of a year. Oh, that's so sad

00:25:22 ◼   ► And I actually used it for the first time a couple of days ago because I had to read through some legal documents and it's that's

00:25:28 ◼   ► What this is perfect for it using the Apple pencil and making notes on a document. It's great

00:25:33 ◼   ► But other than that, I've been using the smaller one at home and I've now been using it more

00:25:37 ◼   ► because I've kind of like repurposing it again.

00:25:40 ◼   ► Now that I am pretty much set on the fact that I'm working on the Mac again, that's

00:25:44 ◼   ► just where I get my work done now.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Now I can start thinking about what the iPad again is for in my life.

00:25:51 ◼   ► It's interesting because it seems like we're on the eve of new iPads and it seems like

00:25:55 ◼   ► the best technology could potentially be coming to the bigger one and I don't know how I feel

00:25:59 ◼   ► about that because I don't think I want the big one anymore.

00:26:02 ◼   ► I just want the little one.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And I will just say, people have always asked us this,

00:26:06 ◼   ► I think that the smaller iPad Pro is the iPad Pro

00:26:10 ◼   ► for like 90% of people.

00:26:12 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, for sure.

00:26:13 ◼   ► - The big one is only if you are either A,

00:26:16 ◼   ► deciding you want to do your work from an iPad,

00:26:19 ◼   ► or B, if you're an artist.

00:26:20 ◼   ► I think they're really the only two reasons

00:26:22 ◼   ► to get the big one, other than that,

00:26:23 ◼   ► the 11 inch is perfect.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So for me personally, I think that's probably

00:26:28 ◼   ► where I'm gonna be now.

00:26:29 ◼   ► And so that means in current use, it's just one iPad.

00:26:33 ◼   ► It's my 11 inch iPad Pro.

00:26:35 ◼   ► - And it's now the couch pad.

00:26:36 ◼   ► - It's now the couch pad.

00:26:37 ◼   ► - As you were talking, I was just remembering

00:26:38 ◼   ► Steve Jobs brought that couch on stage

00:26:41 ◼   ► to demo the first iPad.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Like that's the home of the iPad is the couch,

00:26:46 ◼   ► right from day one.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I have my couch iPad and I love it.

00:26:51 ◼   ► It's great.

00:26:52 ◼   ► And I've actually been using it a ton

00:26:54 ◼   ► for you recommended on our State of the Apps episode.

00:26:57 ◼   ► recommended Reader as a your RSS reader and it got kind of stuck in my brain and I've been slowly trying to

00:27:03 ◼   ► get back into the world of RSS and I've been really loving it and

00:27:08 ◼   ► part of what's great about it is it's just perfect to kind of blast through the internet using

00:27:14 ◼   ► That like as the RSS reader on an iPad on the couch. It's just perfect great for reading. I love it

00:27:21 ◼   ► I really love that feeling of oh, I'm at the end of the Internet

00:27:25 ◼   ► I don't have to keep going in circles anymore.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Like, I know that I've covered all of the places that I want to cover,

00:27:32 ◼   ► and nobody has posted anything new, so fantastic.

00:27:36 ◼   ► That's been one of the big uses of my couch iPad.

00:27:39 ◼   ► In the pandemic, the big victim has been my research iPad,

00:27:43 ◼   ► which for me has been basically untouched most of this time,

00:27:49 ◼   ► because like you, since I'm not going anywhere,

00:27:51 ◼   ► I might as well take advantage of the full desk setup

00:27:55 ◼   ► that a Mac provides. But also, the research pad was pretty much killed when I started playing

00:28:03 ◼   ► around with Obsidian, because if I'm exploring a topic and I'm reading a bunch of things around

00:28:09 ◼   ► a topic, I'm going to constantly want to throw in little notes into my new note system. And it's

00:28:15 ◼   ► like, well, you totally have to have a Mac to do that. So the research pad just languished forever

00:28:23 ◼   ► untouched. But just as of I don't know, like a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, Obsidian is

00:28:30 ◼   ► making their iPad version. Like I think they've really ramped up the order that they're intending

00:28:38 ◼   ► to do these things because I suspect the number one piece of feedback they got from absolutely

00:28:43 ◼   ► everyone was I love this, but I wish it was on iOS. And if you're part of the like VIP supporters,

00:28:50 ◼   ► you can get access to TestFlight. And so I put it on my iPad and-

00:28:54 ◼   ► Oh, they have it. Like they actually have a beta app now.

00:28:57 ◼   ► They have a beta for people to test. It is very beta. I installed it and synchronized my database

00:29:05 ◼   ► and lost 50% of the data. But you know what's great? This is-

00:29:10 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:29:11 ◼   ► No, no, no. But this is the whole, this is the beauty. Like this is what I love about

00:29:14 ◼   ► this system. My whole database is just a bunch of .md files in folders and before I synced it I was

00:29:21 ◼   ► like well this feels like a dangerous operation let me just create an archive you know zip it

00:29:26 ◼   ► all together like have have an extra backup. Great! So it just deleted them? I think the problem was

00:29:33 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff didn't sync over you know maybe it would have synced over eventually but it didn't

00:29:38 ◼   ► on the first run and I also as part of the beta testing process it clearly didn't like I use

00:29:45 ◼   ► emojis in some of my file names so I can just visually distinguish some of the more important

00:29:50 ◼   ► files and it threw up an error like emoji files don't exist sync completed no problem though

00:29:58 ◼   ► thumbs up you know I was like no it didn't complete no problem but anyway they've already

00:30:02 ◼   ► released it a couple of versions and and now it seems to be working totally fine and this is

00:30:07 ◼   ► single-handedly revived the existence of the research pad in my life.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Well, it makes sense though.

00:30:13 ◼   ► Shouldn't we just be playing around with it?

00:30:14 ◼   ► Well, because if the research iPad was great when you were doing your research there, but

00:30:20 ◼   ► then when one of the key research tools became an application that had no iPad version, well,

00:30:29 ◼   ► goodbye research iPad, right?

00:30:31 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Like, if you can't get to the data in the way that you want it, well, what are you going

00:30:35 ◼   ► to do?

00:30:36 ◼   ► surprised, but now I also wouldn't be surprised when the app is in a good state

00:30:40 ◼   ► to see the research iPad come back with a plum.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and again, just like with reading with Couchpad, it's just a nice

00:30:48 ◼   ► form factor for

00:30:52 ◼   ► "I'm going through a bunch of stuff, I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, I'm just making some notes"

00:30:56 ◼   ► I really do love the iPad for that.

00:31:00 ◼   ► I love using it with the pencil, and it's also really nice to

00:31:04 ◼   ► I've always been a big fan of this, have physically separate devices that you can set up to have

00:31:11 ◼   ► limits on what they are used for.

00:31:14 ◼   ► I've always loved that.

00:31:15 ◼   ► I think it's very conducive to working.

00:31:19 ◼   ► So yes, I'm very happy to have that device come back more into my life because I've never

00:31:26 ◼   ► loved doing all the research stuff on the Mac.

00:31:30 ◼   ► It just feels like there's too many different sorts of things that are occurring here and

00:31:34 ◼   ► I want to be in a different, like, mental space when I'm doing that sort of work, which

00:31:38 ◼   ► is why it's great to be, you know, sitting at a desk but working on something like you're

00:31:43 ◼   ► working on a piece of paper.

00:31:44 ◼   ► So if this question had been asked three weeks ago, I would say that I have one we just used

00:31:50 ◼   ► for internetting and reading, but now I think I have two, which is the casual couch pad

00:31:56 ◼   ► and the serious work research pad.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Thanks to the Obsidian beta for now.

00:32:01 ◼   ► Which is like for me, I don't really feel like what I'm doing now is my definitive always.

00:32:07 ◼   ► One of the reasons that I loved using the iPad for my work is I could just take it wherever I needed to be and I travel a lot.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Yeah, iPad also really wins with mobility, which has not been an issue lately.

00:32:19 ◼   ► No, so I don't really know what the future is gonna be for me, but I've been enjoying using the Mac.

00:32:25 ◼   ► There's things that I love about the Mac, things that I don't love about the Mac,

00:32:29 ◼   ► but I do love that it's powerful and everything's right there and everything is available, but I

00:32:34 ◼   ► Don't like the messiness of the Mac. I don't really like windowing, you know

00:32:41 ◼   ► like it's just I

00:32:42 ◼   ► Can never get things how I want and everything's overlapping and it looks terrible and like what I like about iOS

00:32:48 ◼   ► There's only so many ways that I can arrange things

00:32:51 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's also the power I don't like any of the window snapping tools. Like I don't like them on the Mac

00:32:57 ◼   ► I don't know why, I just don't like it.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Because it just feels alien to me, which is very strange.

00:33:03 ◼   ► Like even though I don't like Windows overlapping,

00:33:05 ◼   ► when they don't overlap it doesn't look like a Mac anymore

00:33:07 ◼   ► and I don't know where I am. It's very strange.

00:33:09 ◼   ► [Laughs]

00:33:10 ◼   ► The messiness of the Mac is also the power of the Mac.

00:33:13 ◼   ► And it is still the one thing that I wish they could get.

00:33:16 ◼   ► Like, I always feel on my iPad that I want to be able to

00:33:20 ◼   ► easily switch between three things, not just two things,

00:33:24 ◼   ► and it always kills me.

00:33:25 ◼   ► like, "Oh God, it's such a pain in the ass to get this other window up on the screen at the same time."

00:33:29 ◼   ► Yeah, it does feel to me like there is a medium between iPadOS and macOS for window arrangement,

00:33:36 ◼   ► and it's not what either one of them is doing, there's something in the middle,

00:33:39 ◼   ► but I just haven't found it yet.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I'd love the iPad to move a little bit more in the Mac direction, but I'm also very

00:33:47 ◼   ► very aware that that is a supremely dangerous request that risks all of the things that

00:33:54 ◼   ► make the iPad great.

00:33:55 ◼   ► We did have a bunch of questions about which notes app you're using now, and clearly you've

00:34:00 ◼   ► stuck with Obsidian.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I'm sticking with Obsidian.

00:34:04 ◼   ► The more I use it, the more I like it.

00:34:06 ◼   ► You know, I've ended up now with hundreds and hundreds of notes in there, you know,

00:34:09 ◼   ► connected to each other in this nice way that Obsidian does.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Still don't understand it, you know.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I was thinking about this a couple of days ago and I still don't understand how it works

00:34:19 ◼   ► fully.

00:34:20 ◼   ► I don't know, think of it like freeform journaling.

00:34:24 ◼   ► There's not a set structure and that's part of what the advantage is.

00:34:29 ◼   ► I very often come across lots of stuff that I just think, "This is a fun piece of information,"

00:34:35 ◼   ► or "This could make a good video at some point."

00:34:38 ◼   ► and it's nice to be able to throw it in Obsidian in a way where there's a tiny bit of structure.

00:34:47 ◼   ► You know, the things, everything that goes in there now is connected to at least something else.

00:34:53 ◼   ► That's what I was gonna ask, like does every note always have a connection to something else?

00:34:58 ◼   ► Okay, I understand.

00:34:59 ◼   ► Yeah, at this point there's almost nothing that doesn't have a connection.

00:35:02 ◼   ► You know, when you start there's fewer notes that's different.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Again, I think most people who use it dramatically overrate the value of the connections,

00:35:10 ◼   ► and I think people like to show the pictures of the connections because they look pretty.

00:35:14 ◼   ► I don't really... I don't think that that sort of stuff is directly useful, but it is nice to,

00:35:20 ◼   ► in a note, be able to just connect it to somewhere else so that in the future you can,

00:35:25 ◼   ► you know, through serendipity, happen to find like, "Oh, right, I had something that was related

00:35:31 ◼   ► to this. So I guess the thing that Obsidian does for me that's perfect is it's not completely

00:35:38 ◼   ► structureless like throwing something into the Notes app where I would just have a ton of random

00:35:45 ◼   ► things, and it doesn't have the burden of loading information into Ulysses where I'm going to be

00:35:53 ◼   ► writing the actual scripts because I want to keep Ulysses relatively clean and with the smallest

00:35:58 ◼   ► number of active projects in it as possible. So it just hits a nice middle ground where I don't

00:36:05 ◼   ► feel like there has to be enough to be a sort of proto-script or "oh this one fact is too small to

00:36:11 ◼   ► bother with." It just it handles this in-between state of information really really well and I

00:36:17 ◼   ► think this is also the case where being an Electron app is the advantage that they could

00:36:23 ◼   ► could get it on the iPad real fast once they decided to actually do that. It does feel

00:36:28 ◼   ► a bit like a weird alien on the iPad like "oh you don't belong here"

00:36:33 ◼   ► Mykey looks like a weird alien everywhere like it doesn't look like any user interface

00:36:38 ◼   ► I've ever seen on anything.

00:36:39 ◼   ► No, no that's outrageous Myke. It does not look like a weird alien on the Mac. It's

00:36:44 ◼   ► a friendly faceless rock from space to help you with all of your notes I don't understand

00:36:49 ◼   ► what your problem is.

00:36:50 ◼   ► I'm not saying it is bad UI.

00:36:52 ◼   ► What I'm saying is the user interface--

00:36:54 ◼   ► - Is not for you.

00:36:55 ◼   ► - No, it just doesn't look like anything else I've seen.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Well, you know what actually it looks closest to?

00:36:59 ◼   ► Like the Adobe Pro apps.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - I guess I can kind of see that.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I can kind of see that.

00:37:04 ◼   ► - And so, you know, and one of the things

00:37:05 ◼   ► about Adobe's apps is they also don't look like

00:37:08 ◼   ► they belong everywhere because they are designed

00:37:10 ◼   ► to belong everywhere. - No, they don't.

00:37:11 ◼   ► - So they don't look like they belong anywhere.

00:37:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's totally fair.

00:37:14 ◼   ► But yeah, so to answer the other question about my notes,

00:37:18 ◼   ► it's Obsidian, really, really like it.

00:37:20 ◼   ► It's still hard to say what the actionable part of Obsidian is, but it's served me very

00:37:25 ◼   ► well and I'm still playing around with it a lot and figuring it out, and I'm very happy

00:37:28 ◼   ► that it's on the iPad.

00:37:29 ◼   ► - One day in the future when we record an episode in person again, I really want you

00:37:34 ◼   ► to just give me a very basic demo of how this thing looks and works.

00:37:40 ◼   ► - I can't show you all my secrets.

00:37:42 ◼   ► - No, this is why I'm saying a basic demo.

00:37:44 ◼   ► I don't want to see everything, but surely you can show me like a tree of some description,

00:37:49 ◼   ► I just feel like someone needs to explain this to me

00:37:53 ◼   ► and every explanation I've come across doesn't help me.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Maybe it's just not for me.

00:37:58 ◼   ► Maybe my brain just can't handle it.

00:38:00 ◼   ► - I can send you the picture.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - No, the picture's, the picture's don't help me.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - The picture everybody loves to see in their notes.

00:38:05 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:38:07 ◼   ► - I can look at pictures on their website

00:38:08 ◼   ► and I don't understand it.

00:38:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you haven't seen it

00:38:12 ◼   ► in the 80s neon theme, right?

00:38:14 ◼   ► So here.

00:38:15 ◼   ► - I wanna see that now.

00:38:17 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:38:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's right.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I thought you might like that.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Okay, so here we go.

00:38:22 ◼   ► This is the state of my knowledge.

00:38:24 ◼   ► Let me still send it to you over Skype.

00:38:28 ◼   ► I don't have my message on this computer.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Because Myke, this is the writing computer.

00:38:32 ◼   ► The only thing that it's used for is writing and as a server and podcasting and live streaming.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Yeah, the writing computer.

00:38:40 ◼   ► That's the only thing that's...

00:38:42 ◼   ► Oh, I also...

00:38:43 ◼   ► It's also my fastest computer, so I use it to do all of the processing and all of the

00:38:48 ◼   ► exporting of all of my videos as well so it does that too.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Just writing.

00:38:53 ◼   ► That's the writing computer.

00:38:54 ◼   ► It's all the different types of writing, you write on it, the files write to the disk,

00:38:57 ◼   ► it's all just writing really.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Oh my god, Grey, I hate it.

00:39:02 ◼   ► It's just a globe.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Yeah, so those are all of my notes and how they're connected to each other and I don't

00:39:10 ◼   ► understand what's complicated about this at all.

00:39:12 ◼   ► I like that there's a couple of just like singular dots on the outside.

00:39:15 ◼   ► They are the lost notes.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Yes.

00:39:17 ◼   ► aren't connected to anything.

00:39:18 ◼   ► So here's my question for you then.

00:39:20 ◼   ► So the notes that aren't connected to anything or the notes that are just connected to one

00:39:24 ◼   ► other note, how do you ever find them?

00:39:28 ◼   ► Like how do you know they're there?

00:39:30 ◼   ► Okay, let me pitch it to you this way.

00:39:34 ◼   ► Everyone likes to share this picture but no one who's really getting anything done I think

00:39:37 ◼   ► is using this picture.

00:39:38 ◼   ► It's just fun to look at.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Obsidian is very much like how on your computer you can just use Spotlight to try to find

00:39:48 ◼   ► whatever it is you're looking for.

00:39:50 ◼   ► That's very much what the actual interface is.

00:39:54 ◼   ► And so say I come, I'm reading and I come across an interesting piece of information

00:39:58 ◼   ► about like the Royal Albert Hall.

00:40:02 ◼   ► In Obsidian then I'll just, just like Spotlight, they have a Spotlight-like interface that

00:40:08 ◼   ► I can open up and start typing "Royal Albert Hall" and if I have a note already with that

00:40:14 ◼   ► name it'll just pull up and I can add this fun fact to the file that existed and if it

00:40:19 ◼   ► doesn't I can just create the file instantly at that moment and add the fact.

00:40:24 ◼   ► That's how 99% of the time I'm finding stuff is I'm not like looking around for it on this

00:40:31 ◼   ► giant mess.

00:40:32 ◼   ► I'm actually just using a spotlight type.

00:40:34 ◼   ► You're either searching, and if it exists, then great.

00:40:37 ◼   ► If it doesn't...

00:40:38 ◼   ► Because I guess the thing that you have to rely on,

00:40:41 ◼   ► and I'm not saying this is a bad thing,

00:40:42 ◼   ► but the thing that you have to rely on

00:40:44 ◼   ► is that you consistently create notes in a certain way, right?

00:40:50 ◼   ► Yeah, you have to name things what they are,

00:40:54 ◼   ► is the way I would say it.

00:40:55 ◼   ► This is why, you know, I don't know

00:40:57 ◼   ► what other people are specifically using it for,

00:40:59 ◼   ► but for me, when I'm trying to...

00:41:02 ◼   ► you know, in some ways my job is to try to collect all of the things that I find are

00:41:10 ◼   ► interesting about the world. And that's what I'm building up here is like a personal database

00:41:17 ◼   ► of everything that I've ever come across that I find interesting enough to make a note of

00:41:23 ◼   ► that I might think is useful in the future.

00:41:25 ◼   ► - But once you've created that Royal Albert Hall note, if you then find out something

00:41:30 ◼   ► else about the Royal Albert Hall, where you add it to the existing note that already exists,

00:41:34 ◼   ► or do you create another new note that –

00:41:36 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I would add it to the existing note.

00:41:37 ◼   ► Okay.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Because this was one of the things that confused me last time, that this has now helped. Because

00:41:42 ◼   ► my understanding was just like, every piece of text you ever write gets its own note.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Like that was what I took away from that discussion, and that didn't make any sense to me.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Right, and they're not separated sentences, no. They're not separated sentences.

00:41:53 ◼   ► That's what I couldn't get my head around. It's like, this is madness! But now – okay,

00:41:58 ◼   ► So what I'm kind of seeing is it's not too dissimilar, I guess, from the way that I would

00:42:03 ◼   ► make a note, but I think I would have still a lot less singular notes.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and the way that the link stuff is useful is that there are situations when you're working

00:42:16 ◼   ► on something else, you can kind of see if you've connected to this thing from somewhere

00:42:23 ◼   ► else in the database.

00:42:25 ◼   ► draw that to your attention, you know, "Oh, you know, you're working on this video which,

00:42:31 ◼   ► you know, is related to this thing in London and in the Royal Albert Hall note you made

00:42:37 ◼   ► a connection to this other thing here." And so it's just like reminding you that these

00:42:40 ◼   ► two ideas are related or, you know, this might be a nice time to make an off-handed reference

00:42:45 ◼   ► to this other fact that's connected.

00:42:47 ◼   ► Does this happen automatically? So say you were writing a note about some street in London

00:42:52 ◼   ► and then you just wrote the words Royal Albert Hall in there.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Does Obsidian automatically link or alert you?

00:42:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, so even if I don't manually link those two together,

00:43:04 ◼   ► later on, if I'm working on the Royal Albert Hall note,

00:43:07 ◼   ► I can see that in other places I've mentioned this.

00:43:10 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, okay, there are connections here.

00:43:12 ◼   ► That's one of the things that's nice about the software

00:43:14 ◼   ► is trying to draw your attention to the connections,

00:43:18 ◼   ► even if you haven't always explicitly, in the way the program wants you to, made a connection

00:43:26 ◼   ► between two notes.

00:43:27 ◼   ► But things could get out of hand though, right? Like if you had a note called "the", would

00:43:31 ◼   ► it link to every other time the word "the" has been used in Obsidian?

00:43:35 ◼   ► That would be stupid.

00:43:36 ◼   ► No no no, I know it's super, I'm making a stupid example but I'm just trying to understand

00:43:40 ◼   ► it. But would it do that?

00:43:42 ◼   ► Do the backlinks for "the"? I don't think it would work that way.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:46 ◼   ► "The." Oh, okay. You have 50 notes that start with the word "the."

00:43:51 ◼   ► So it's only checking for if a note starts with the phrase?

00:43:56 ◼   ► That's the ones that it's just pulling up because those are the most likely ones.

00:43:59 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:43:59 ◼   ► So I've just... Okay, so "the." Shift to create.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Yes, so... Okay, so I have what they call "unlinked mentions."

00:44:09 ◼   ► Yep.

00:44:10 ◼   ► there are in my database 12,155 unlinked mentions

00:44:15 ◼   ► of the word "the" in the database.

00:44:18 ◼   ► - And so then what do you do to link those?

00:44:21 ◼   ► Please don't, but like,

00:44:21 ◼   ► what do you do to like, do you have to do something

00:44:26 ◼   ► or do you create a link from those?

00:44:28 ◼   ► - So the other thing I like about this

00:44:29 ◼   ► is that it's basically markdown with one additional feature,

00:44:33 ◼   ► which is if you put two square brackets around a word

00:44:36 ◼   ► that creates a link.

00:44:37 ◼   ► That is you explicitly saying,

00:44:40 ◼   ► I want to link to the note that has this as the title.

00:44:44 ◼   ► - So now if you put two square brackets around the word the,

00:44:48 ◼   ► there will be 12,000 linked mentions.

00:44:50 ◼   ► - No, no, I would have to go to another note

00:44:53 ◼   ► where the word the exists

00:44:55 ◼   ► and put square brackets around that word the,

00:44:59 ◼   ► and then only that instance will be linked to my note,

00:45:03 ◼   ► which is called the.

00:45:04 ◼   ► So the links are very deliberate.

00:45:06 ◼   ► they don't happen automatically, you have to say,

00:45:09 ◼   ► "I want to do this thing."

00:45:11 ◼   ► - But the app still does create a dotted line link

00:45:16 ◼   ► to everything, but you then have to go in and be like,

00:45:19 ◼   ► "Yeah, I want these to be hierarchically linked together."

00:45:23 ◼   ► But the application itself will highlight to you,

00:45:26 ◼   ► like if you've missed something, like for example,

00:45:28 ◼   ► if you go to the Royal Albert Hall one,

00:45:30 ◼   ► if you've missed one, you now could link that together

00:45:32 ◼   ► if you wanted to, the app is smart enough to tell you that.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Yes, there is a place where you can go

00:45:37 ◼   ► where the app will suggest if it thinks there's something

00:45:40 ◼   ► that isn't connected that you might want to.

00:45:42 ◼   ► That's what it will do.

00:45:43 ◼   ► - This is making a lot more sense to me now.

00:45:44 ◼   ► - Okay, are we finally beginning to get there a little bit?

00:45:48 ◼   ► Okay, good.

00:45:49 ◼   ► - The more I learn about it, the more I realize

00:45:50 ◼   ► I do not have a use for this, and that's totally fine.

00:45:53 ◼   ► I just was really struggling to understand what it did,

00:45:57 ◼   ► but I'm feeling like I'm getting it a bit more now.

00:45:59 ◼   ► And honestly, the example of the did help me,

00:46:02 ◼   ► because that was what I wanted to check.

00:46:05 ◼   ► is that the application is cross-referencing every single note with every single note.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Because I think that's what you, in my mind, that's what you would want it to do.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Because you're relying on this system to pick up pieces of information you've otherwise

00:46:17 ◼   ► dropped.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Yeah, and that has totally happened to me a few times as the database has gotten bigger,

00:46:23 ◼   ► where I've realized, "Oh, I phrased something in a slightly different way, and I have two

00:46:27 ◼   ► things that can be merged, or I didn't realize that I've already written something about

00:46:31 ◼   ► this."

00:46:32 ◼   ► But that feels like the superpower for someone like you.

00:46:34 ◼   ► And this is why I really like it, yeah.

00:46:36 ◼   ► If you've been going on a train here and a train over there and then at a certain point

00:46:41 ◼   ► they intersect, I mean, we're off to the races, right?

00:46:44 ◼   ► Now you've stumbled across something which could be super interesting in a way that you

00:46:48 ◼   ► wouldn't initially think about.

00:46:51 ◼   ► So as a person who is collecting pieces of information, eventually you get enough of

00:46:56 ◼   ► them to link together, you've got a cool story to tell.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the idea of it.

00:47:01 ◼   ► Even if it wasn't serendipitously connecting things in this way, it would still be useful

00:47:05 ◼   ► just as a database.

00:47:07 ◼   ► But I view that as a like, the more that goes in here, there's a higher chance of this lottery

00:47:12 ◼   ► ticket paying off someday with an interesting connection that I didn't think.

00:47:16 ◼   ► But it's still valuable to use even without that.

00:47:19 ◼   ► And also just for me, the other thing I like to be able to do is connect the related videos

00:47:25 ◼   ► to each other.

00:47:26 ◼   ► So as any intense viewer of the channel will know, I love making little connections between

00:47:30 ◼   ► And this is one way where when I'm thinking about stuff, it's helpful to me to be able

00:47:35 ◼   ► to mark explicit connections.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Like "Oh, this video is related to that video at this point."

00:47:42 ◼   ► It's not really actionable, but I do find it helpful in some way just to be constantly

00:47:47 ◼   ► contextualizing how all of the videos are related to each other.

00:47:50 ◼   ► That was helpful.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Okay, great.

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00:50:00 ◼   ► Jordi asks "I'm wondering why you're so secretive about the exact number of theme

00:50:04 ◼   ► system journals that you order or sell each time.

00:50:07 ◼   ► You've mentioned a number in the past and I appreciate that but now it's cloaked in

00:50:11 ◼   ► mystery again."

00:50:12 ◼   ► Oh it is cloaked in mystery.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Why is that Myke?

00:50:15 ◼   ► That phrase, honestly the phrase cloaked in mystery makes me want to keep it a secret

00:50:18 ◼   ► more.

00:50:19 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:50:21 ◼   ► - So this is interesting.

00:50:22 ◼   ► - How many journals are under this cloak?

00:50:24 ◼   ► No idea.

00:50:25 ◼   ► - Could be one, could be a million.

00:50:26 ◼   ► Depends how big the cloak is.

00:50:27 ◼   ► - Depends on how big the cloak is.

00:50:29 ◼   ► - This is a good question because,

00:50:31 ◼   ► like thinking back across it when I saw this question,

00:50:33 ◼   ► I was like, oh yeah, this is weird.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Because there have been times where we've been very explicit

00:50:37 ◼   ► about the number and times where we haven't.

00:50:39 ◼   ► I'll be honest, there is no real rhyme or reason why.

00:50:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:50:44 ◼   ► - I didn't wanna talk about how many we ordered

00:50:46 ◼   ► the first time, the very, very first time, which was 200.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Because if we didn't sell out, I didn't want to look like an idiot.

00:50:53 ◼   ► - Right, it would just be embarrassing. - It would be so embarrassing.

00:50:56 ◼   ► And then there was a little bit of that for the second time,

00:50:59 ◼   ► where I think we ordered like 2,000 of them or something.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And it was still, that was still a hangover there.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And then the first time we ever shared the numbers when we made a bet on it

00:51:07 ◼   ► was when we ordered 3,000, which was the next time.

00:51:09 ◼   ► - That's right, that's right.

00:51:11 ◼   ► - So that was the point when we actually shared a concrete number.

00:51:14 ◼   ► So it's always been a bit up or down, and I've never really felt

00:51:18 ◼   ► one way or another about it.

00:51:19 ◼   ► So like I'm happy to share some numbers like now.

00:51:23 ◼   ► So should we talk about how many we sold version two?

00:51:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:51:28 ◼   ► - So version two is what we've sold this year.

00:51:29 ◼   ► So all of these sales have been basically this year,

00:51:32 ◼   ► I guess starting in late November.

00:51:34 ◼   ► So version two we've now sold as of recording now

00:51:38 ◼   ► 7,300 journals.

00:51:40 ◼   ► That's a version two, which has now eclipsed version one.

00:51:43 ◼   ► So we've sold more version two journals

00:51:46 ◼   ► in the last three months,

00:51:48 ◼   ► then we sold of all of the version one journals,

00:51:52 ◼   ► which was 18 months.

00:51:53 ◼   ► - Right.

00:51:54 ◼   ► - And that was just under 7,000

00:51:56 ◼   ► was how many we sold of the first one.

00:51:58 ◼   ► It was like 6,900 and something.

00:52:00 ◼   ► So those are the numbers.

00:52:02 ◼   ► People really like the second version.

00:52:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:05 ◼   ► As they should, it's fantastic.

00:52:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, it's going really well.

00:52:09 ◼   ► I think this is one of these things

00:52:12 ◼   ► that we just sort of slipped into

00:52:14 ◼   ► not talking about the numbers,

00:52:15 ◼   ► And the question's a good time to decloak the mystery of how many there actually are.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And they're just big numbers that are also a little intimidating when placing orders

00:52:30 ◼   ► and hoping to God they're not getting wet on a dock somewhere as they're delayed in

00:52:35 ◼   ► customs or whatever.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And you try to visualize like, how big is a box of several thousand journals?

00:52:42 ◼   ► It's probably pretty big.

00:52:43 ◼   ► And we've ordered 10,000.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Right.

00:52:46 ◼   ► That's also the terrifying part.

00:52:49 ◼   ► There's 10,000 on the way,

00:52:53 ◼   ► which we're hoping will basically last us the year.

00:52:57 ◼   ► That's roughly what we're thinking will be the case.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Well, you know, we'll have to see exactly how that goes,

00:53:03 ◼   ► but that's the next big order that's coming in

00:53:06 ◼   ► to try to have it so that people can always buy a journal

00:53:10 ◼   ► and have it shipped to them,

00:53:12 ◼   ► just like the way inventory management is supposed to work?

00:53:14 ◼   ► - I think we've solved it.

00:53:16 ◼   ► I think we've solved the stock problem now.

00:53:17 ◼   ► - You're confident in that?

00:53:19 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Okay.

00:53:20 ◼   ► I believe in you, Myke.

00:53:21 ◼   ► - I am genuinely, 'cause now, like,

00:53:23 ◼   ► I know how long it takes to make more.

00:53:25 ◼   ► And for me, I think the only time

00:53:28 ◼   ► that we're ever gonna be at a risky point again

00:53:31 ◼   ► will be December, January.

00:53:34 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:53:35 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause that's gonna be

00:53:36 ◼   ► the onboarding point for more people.

00:53:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:40 ◼   ► And so, you know, like I'm gonna spend a lot of time now

00:53:43 ◼   ► over the next nine months trying to forecast

00:53:45 ◼   ► how many shall I actually order at that point.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I have no idea right now, but it will be a lot.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Because again, like we are now in a point

00:53:57 ◼   ► where we can make these bigger bets

00:53:59 ◼   ► because the product is fixed or it wasn't before.

00:54:03 ◼   ► So one of the reasons that we had a lot of struggle

00:54:05 ◼   ► with version one and couldn't make an order of this size

00:54:09 ◼   ► that we've been making is because we didn't wanna keep stock

00:54:14 ◼   ► for a long time because we wanted to change it.

00:54:16 ◼   ► So we didn't wanna have so much stock

00:54:19 ◼   ► that it would take us two years to sell it

00:54:21 ◼   ► when in six months time we wanted a new version, you know?

00:54:25 ◼   ► So now that we don't have that, like it doesn't matter.

00:54:29 ◼   ► If we still have 6,000 of these in January of next year,

00:54:34 ◼   ► it doesn't matter because they'll just get sold then too.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, we're not competing with the new versions

00:54:40 ◼   ► of our own thing anymore,

00:54:42 ◼   ► which does dramatically simplify the problem.

00:54:44 ◼   ► - So that's been a big help.

00:54:46 ◼   ► And now I don't feel the threat of embarrassment anymore,

00:54:50 ◼   ► right, because I feel pretty confident in what we've got.

00:54:53 ◼   ► So those are the numbers that we have.

00:54:56 ◼   ► Oh, actually a bit of follow up.

00:54:58 ◼   ► We was talking about the UK VAT stuff.

00:55:01 ◼   ► - Oh, right, yeah.

00:55:02 ◼   ► - Well, we still don't have a VAT number.

00:55:04 ◼   ► That's not the follow up.

00:55:05 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:55:06 ◼   ► I ordered a journal when it arrived, no problem.

00:55:09 ◼   ► - Oh, great, fantastic.

00:55:10 ◼   ► - I can't say that that's gonna happen to you

00:55:11 ◼   ► if you order one, but it did arrive, so great.

00:55:16 ◼   ► - So yours wasn't stuck on that ship in the Suez Canal,

00:55:18 ◼   ► it made it through just fine.

00:55:21 ◼   ► - I had some people reach out to me to ask

00:55:23 ◼   ► if we would be affected by this.

00:55:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:55:25 ◼   ► And as far as I'm aware, no.

00:55:27 ◼   ► I mean, obviously the journals are made in Europe now

00:55:29 ◼   ► and the paper comes from Europe, but gosh knows, right?

00:55:31 ◼   ► They might be like some little component somewhere,

00:55:34 ◼   ► like some ink or something.

00:55:36 ◼   ► But as far as I'm aware, we are unaffected by the Suez Canal.

00:55:39 ◼   ► Yeah, the company needed one new debossing stamp

00:55:43 ◼   ► and it was in the Suez Canal.

00:55:45 ◼   ► But I will tell you, I really felt it when I saw that.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Because I now know what that feels like.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And I actually have a friend who has products on that boat.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Oh, god.

00:56:02 ◼   ► That's brutal.

00:56:03 ◼   ► On that exact ship, the Evergreen.

00:56:05 ◼   ► - That's awful.

00:56:06 ◼   ► - I know someone who has container ships

00:56:07 ◼   ► or products on that.

00:56:08 ◼   ► - I mean, if you see a picture of it, it's enormous.

00:56:12 ◼   ► - I mean, it's the size of a city.

00:56:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, those container ships, the size of them,

00:56:18 ◼   ► it just blows your mind, even in just a photograph.

00:56:21 ◼   ► And you start looking at like, okay,

00:56:23 ◼   ► how many containers can I count on the deck of that ship?

00:56:27 ◼   ► And then you remember, oh, right,

00:56:29 ◼   ► there's entire companies that convert those containers

00:56:31 ◼   ► into micro apartments for people.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Like, they're very big.

00:56:35 ◼   ► But I am hoping that it gets resolved soon before we have to ship anything by air again.

00:56:40 ◼   ► Oh, right.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Because I guarantee you that all shipping rates are up for everything right now.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Yes, I was like, "Why?

00:56:47 ◼   ► But Myke, if we're using airplanes, the airplanes don't get stuck in the Suez Canal."

00:56:50 ◼   ► Well, they might.

00:56:51 ◼   ► I don't know what's on the boats, but now all shipping, all freight shipping is going

00:56:56 ◼   ► to be more expensive.

00:56:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:56:58 ◼   ► That ship stuck in the Suez Canal, I haven't been able – like, I've been dying to really

00:57:03 ◼   ► dig into all of the details of it since I was only just able to see the headlines and

00:57:06 ◼   ► I was in my real crunch "gotta finish a video" period. But it's just, I don't

00:57:11 ◼   ► know, there's something like delightfully chaotic about the whole situation. Like it's

00:57:17 ◼   ► bad that a ship is stuck in the Suez Canal, but it's also kind of funny because it looks

00:57:21 ◼   ► ridiculous.

00:57:22 ◼   ► MATT: Oh, I mean, you've seen the memes with like the one little digger trying to

00:57:26 ◼   ► get the… right?

00:57:27 ◼   ► BRIAN and MATT laugh

00:57:28 ◼   ► BRIAN No, I haven't seen any of the memes.

00:57:29 ◼   ► MATT Oh, there's just this one little digger trying to get the, like trying to wear away

00:57:32 ◼   ► some of the stuff like the wall, like the bank, and it's like this tiny little digger

00:57:36 ◼   ► in this astronomically large container ship, like as if it's somehow gonna help.

00:57:41 ◼   ► I've got a lot of fun internet catching up to do around that.

00:57:44 ◼   ► It's been good.

00:57:45 ◼   ► This has been one of those rare things which unites people into making fun of something.

00:57:50 ◼   ► It's just so incomprehensible.

00:57:53 ◼   ► No, I disagree. It's the exact opposite.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Okay.

00:57:55 ◼   ► It's funny because it's really understandable. The problem is very basic.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Come in at this from different places, I agree with what you're saying.

00:58:02 ◼   ► You know what the problem is? There's a ship, it's too big, it's stuck.

00:58:07 ◼   ► Right? Like, am I just a weirdo here? There's something kind of delightful about it. It's like,

00:58:12 ◼   ► oh. No, it's very relatable. Somebody just made a little screw up. But what I mean is like,

00:58:16 ◼   ► the sizes and scale of things are just too much for us to comprehend. But the idea that somebody

00:58:22 ◼   ► made like, just did a whoopsie and now, like the entire globe's shipping has stopped.

00:58:29 ◼   ► Again, another reason it's relatable is, "Oh, great, we're stuck in line behind the person

00:58:34 ◼   ► at the grocery store who, you know, wants to take a long time or is trouble for some reason, right?"

00:58:39 ◼   ► It's like, it's the ship version of that, like, "Oh, great." Except the problem is the entire

00:58:44 ◼   ► world's supply chain is trying to pass through this one narrow canal. I don't want to place a

00:58:51 ◼   ► bet on how long it's going to take to get that ship fixed. I feel like I have no ability to bet.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Is it before the podcast goes out or is it a month from now?

00:59:00 ◼   ► I mean I saw something that suggested that we're gonna have it out this weekend but I don't believe it for a second.

00:59:06 ◼   ► You don't believe it for a second?

00:59:07 ◼   ► No, I just feel like this is not something anybody can estimate.

00:59:12 ◼   ► It will happen when it happens.

00:59:14 ◼   ► It's the one that I look at it as like, this will just happen when it happens and that's that.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Enjoy going around the Cape of Good Hope everyone.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Have fun with that.

00:59:24 ◼   ► Alex says, "What is something you wished you would have known earlier when designing your works up?"

00:59:30 ◼   ► I feel like this is a you question, but I have one little one.

00:59:33 ◼   ► My little one is, you need a charging station.

00:59:38 ◼   ► So even if you don't think you have a lot of things that need charging,

00:59:42 ◼   ► you have more than you think you do.

00:59:45 ◼   ► And it's a real pain in the butt to just try to have some random wires in random locations to charge your things.

00:59:53 ◼   ► So it took a while, but I think halfway through this whole situation at some point, I have

00:59:58 ◼   ► a little, it's just right behind me, but I have a little like multi-level open tiny storage

01:00:03 ◼   ► space thing that I got a 10 USB hub for and just like bought a bunch of wires and went

01:00:10 ◼   ► around my office and thought, "What's everything that needs charging?"

01:00:13 ◼   ► Great.

01:00:14 ◼   ► You're all gonna live on one of the shelves of this thing and you're gonna be plugged

01:00:18 ◼   ► in all the time, and this is where all of the things charge. And I made a ridiculously

01:00:24 ◼   ► big improvement to the tidiness and the readiness of my whole office, and I just kept thinking,

01:00:31 ◼   ► "I don't need a charging station." But I really did, and I think everyone should just pick

01:00:36 ◼   ► a shelf, put a bunch of USB cables on that shelf, and that's where all the things charge.

01:00:42 ◼   ► What about you?

01:00:43 ◼   ► I wish I would have known and there would be a global pandemic which has shut my studio

01:00:47 ◼   ► down for over six months.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Okay next question.

01:00:50 ◼   ► Next question.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Yeah I don't think that's the spirit of the question.

01:00:54 ◼   ► It's also not very relatable.

01:00:56 ◼   ► No.

01:00:57 ◼   ► Because I mean let's hope.

01:00:59 ◼   ► This isn't something you need to think about.

01:01:00 ◼   ► My office people got in touch again by the way.

01:01:03 ◼   ► Oh they did.

01:01:04 ◼   ► I thought was funny yeah I got another email.

01:01:08 ◼   ► You got in touch with us looking for some office space.

01:01:11 ◼   ► ready to accept customers let us know what you need and just dragged it into

01:01:18 ◼   ► the trash and didn't reply I'm into year two of my lease now Wow that's much

01:01:24 ◼   ► longer than I would have guessed it's very upsetting what percentage of that

01:01:28 ◼   ► time have you actually been able to be in the office less than half less than

01:01:31 ◼   ► half the real advice that I'll give and this is good for any environment is know

01:01:36 ◼   ► that in six months you will want to redo it so yes start paying attention

01:01:40 ◼   ► attention immediately from when you're working of the things that you would wish would be better

01:01:44 ◼   ► and just keep a note of them all so then when you get to the point after six months

01:01:48 ◼   ► where you hate your office you already have a list of things to improve it.

01:01:51 ◼   ► Yeah that's totally perfect and I think that that's bang on for me. I think whatever it was,

01:01:55 ◼   ► seven months, maybe eight months into this, I rearranged the desks and also changed all of

01:02:01 ◼   ► the storage. You're totally right Myke, that's a great one. When you think you're done,

01:02:04 ◼   ► start making notes on all of the things that annoy you and in six months change it.

01:02:10 ◼   ► You know, I barely started. I've genuinely barely started to get this studio to a point where I'm happy with.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I never actually got to do it.

01:02:18 ◼   ► Well, I hope you're taking notes.

01:02:19 ◼   ► I will be when I begin.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I'm so sorry, Myke.

01:02:25 ◼   ► It's just, you know, what are you gonna do?

01:02:28 ◼   ► Look, it's brighter days are coming up fast.

01:02:32 ◼   ► So, you're gonna get all the mega office you want.

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01:04:23 ◼   ► Theodore asks, great name Theodore, actually.

01:04:26 ◼   ► Yeah, you like Theodore?

01:04:27 ◼   ► Yeah, Theodore's a good name.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Anyway, Theodore asks, how would you describe yourselves when you were in school?

01:04:33 ◼   ► How did you manage your tasks then?

01:04:35 ◼   ► And how do your systems today differ from the ones that you had at the time?

01:04:39 ◼   ► What was school-age Myke like?

01:04:42 ◼   ► I feel like I don't have any idea what you were, what you were like as a young

01:04:46 ◼   ► lad working your way through your GCSEs.

01:04:50 ◼   ► I wonder if it would be surprising actually, if I describe, I kind of had a

01:04:56 ◼   ► couple of different stages of school, Myke. I guess the first stage was kind of

01:05:04 ◼   ► just like really followed all the rules and tried to get all my work done to the

01:05:08 ◼   ► best of my ability. Then I did the exact opposite.

01:05:12 ◼   ► Stage one is foreshadowing what stage two must be.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Yeah like stage one version of me was just like teacher's pet kind of and then

01:05:24 ◼   ► stage two was just acting out. Like I look back on myself then and I'm just

01:05:31 ◼   ► like why were you the way that you were? Like one of my things was like I wrote

01:05:36 ◼   ► all of my English coursework in a pen that had purple ink just to be annoying

01:05:42 ◼   ► just to be in it which is unacceptable so when my work was done I had to

01:05:47 ◼   ► photocopy it or to hand it in so it would be in black and I knew that I was

01:05:52 ◼   ► was gonna have to do this, but just kept doing it.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I just kept turning the work in.

01:05:57 ◼   ► It wasn't me that was photocopying it,

01:05:58 ◼   ► my teacher would photocopy it.

01:06:00 ◼   ► And this is like when I would be put into a situation

01:06:04 ◼   ► where I was having to stay after school

01:06:06 ◼   ► to do my English coursework, 'cause I just wouldn't do it

01:06:09 ◼   ► without being put in a room to do it.

01:06:12 ◼   ► - Right.

01:06:13 ◼   ► - And it was one of those situations

01:06:15 ◼   ► where I was probably, I knew this,

01:06:16 ◼   ► like looking back I understand it,

01:06:19 ◼   ► I probably knew it at the time where I was good in school,

01:06:22 ◼   ► right, like I was smart and I had good grades.

01:06:26 ◼   ► They could have been better

01:06:27 ◼   ► if I would have actually applied myself properly,

01:06:29 ◼   ► but I went to a school that kind of needed good grades,

01:06:34 ◼   ► so the teachers would have to put up with my (beep)

01:06:38 ◼   ► - Right, okay, I see, I see.

01:06:40 ◼   ► - Which like when I look back on it now,

01:06:43 ◼   ► like it annoys me that I was that way,

01:06:46 ◼   ► but it's just how I was, right?

01:06:48 ◼   ► So like, it was like, oh, you're gonna be in coursework class.

01:06:51 ◼   ► No, you're putting me in detention,

01:06:53 ◼   ► but we're not gonna call it that.

01:06:55 ◼   ► - No, coursework class, Myke, it's not detention.

01:06:57 ◼   ► - And you're gonna take the work that I put in pink ink

01:07:02 ◼   ► because you need that and you're just gonna photocopy it.

01:07:05 ◼   ► So that was up until the ages of like 16.

01:07:09 ◼   ► 16 to 18 when I was in A levels, I just changed again

01:07:13 ◼   ► and just really wanted to do the best I could do.

01:07:16 ◼   ► So like it really, my problem was in the ages of 15 to 16,

01:07:21 ◼   ► I made a lot of friends quickly.

01:07:23 ◼   ► 'Cause like the way that,

01:07:24 ◼   ► I don't really know how this sort of stuff works in America,

01:07:26 ◼   ► but when you go into GCSEs, you choose your subjects.

01:07:30 ◼   ► And so the classes get mixed up.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And so I was exposed to a lot of people

01:07:35 ◼   ► and then started to make more friends.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And then the making of more friends

01:07:39 ◼   ► kind of made me start to act out a bit.

01:07:41 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Your friends were a bad influence on you.

01:07:44 ◼   ► That's what you're saying?

01:07:45 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Okay.

01:07:46 ◼   ► Like what is that?

01:07:47 ◼   ► Like is there, what is GCSE?

01:07:48 ◼   ► How would Americans understand what GCSE level is?

01:07:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, don't try it.

01:07:51 ◼   ► It doesn't matter, look, like Myke was able to do

01:07:54 ◼   ► something a little bit more intense than electives

01:07:57 ◼   ► where he was able to have control over his schedule

01:07:59 ◼   ► for what classes he was taking.

01:08:01 ◼   ► And he took- - There you go.

01:08:01 ◼   ► You've just did it.

01:08:02 ◼   ► - He took classes that ended up with him

01:08:05 ◼   ► with a bunch of troublemakers

01:08:06 ◼   ► who also picked those electives.

01:08:07 ◼   ► - Correct. - Because humans

01:08:09 ◼   ► dramatically underestimate how powerful selection effects

01:08:12 ◼   ► are and this is one of those cases.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Which kids pick what classes?

01:08:17 ◼   ► It's not a random selection.

01:08:19 ◼   ► It tells you something about the kids.

01:08:21 ◼   ► That's what that is.

01:08:22 ◼   ► - But then when I did my A levels, which is 16 to 18,

01:08:27 ◼   ► I was much more,

01:08:28 ◼   ► well, I think part of the reason for me then was

01:08:30 ◼   ► I actually got to choose the things I wanted to do.

01:08:33 ◼   ► So I was just more engaged

01:08:35 ◼   ► because I got to choose the subjects I cared about the most.

01:08:38 ◼   ► 'Cause the places where I tended to act out the most

01:08:40 ◼   ► was the stuff that I didn't care about.

01:08:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've always thought the whole A level system

01:08:43 ◼   ► the best part of the UK educational system, that at 16 you get to both choose and have

01:08:51 ◼   ► complete control over the schedule, and also dramatically reduce the number of classes

01:08:56 ◼   ► that are being taken. I think those two are a great combination.

01:09:00 ◼   ► MATT: And then a very normal thing people do is the second year to change it again,

01:09:03 ◼   ► you drop one. Like I did four and then dropped one for my second year.

01:09:08 ◼   ► That reduces a lot of student unhappiness.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Like, you can pick the things that you like, and you can also drop all of the annoying

01:09:17 ◼   ► surrounding parts that, you know, are what make it feel like you're going to school.

01:09:21 ◼   ► And instead you get to experience a kind of mini college.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Like, I think that the A-level system has a lot to recommend it, you know,

01:09:27 ◼   ► broadly speaking in the way that it works.

01:09:29 ◼   ► I did make one fatal flaw with my A-levels though.

01:09:31 ◼   ► Yeah?

01:09:31 ◼   ► They tricked me, right?

01:09:33 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

01:09:33 ◼   ► They're like-

01:09:34 ◼   ► How did they trick you?

01:09:35 ◼   ► You should do politics.

01:09:36 ◼   ► There's no coursework.

01:09:37 ◼   ► It's just exams.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Oh, that sounds great.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Right? And it's like, "Oh, wait, so much worse.

01:09:44 ◼   ► There were so many exams for politics that you basically just ended up doing the coursework

01:09:49 ◼   ► in a timed environment. It was terrible.

01:09:53 ◼   ► Plus, I didn't really enjoy politics that much.

01:09:55 ◼   ► Did get a couple of cool school trips, though.

01:09:57 ◼   ► So, wasn't all bad.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Right, so no coursework, 10 times as many tests.

01:10:02 ◼   ► But they just didn't mention that second part.

01:10:05 ◼   ► No, it's only exams, but not that like it's three times more exams than any other course

01:10:11 ◼   ► that you're doing. You just write, the exams are just essays. So it's like, I hate this.

01:10:16 ◼   ► This is terrible. I'm now writing my course, I can't drive time and environment, but maybe

01:10:20 ◼   ► I'd actually prepared for that in GCSE by not actually spending the time to do the course

01:10:26 ◼   ► work and doing it all against the timer anyway, because I was going to run out of time before

01:10:30 ◼   ► or I needed to have had it in.

01:10:31 ◼   ► So anyway, so I had some trouble years,

01:10:35 ◼   ► but overall I did try to do my best.

01:10:38 ◼   ► - That's very noble of you attempting to do your best.

01:10:41 ◼   ► I unfortunately was a terrible slacker

01:10:43 ◼   ► who never attempted to do his best at school.

01:10:46 ◼   ► - Oh, I was still slacking.

01:10:49 ◼   ► I would only do my best up to the level

01:10:51 ◼   ► at which I was willing to commit,

01:10:53 ◼   ► but within those parameters.

01:10:54 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:10:56 ◼   ► I was, I was, uh, shall we say, not strongly motivated to do anything in school.

01:11:04 ◼   ► And, and yeah, I was as an extremely strategic slacker.

01:11:09 ◼   ► And it's one of those things in life where it just, it feels like everything

01:11:14 ◼   ► comes around, it all comes full circle.

01:11:16 ◼   ► And it's why when I was a teacher, it was 10 times worse of a strategic slacker

01:11:21 ◼   ► than I ever was when I was a student.

01:11:23 ◼   ► But it's like, oh, right.

01:11:24 ◼   ► The, you know, the kid who slacked off as a student is also a slacker teacher.

01:11:28 ◼   ► Like what a, what a shocking surprise.

01:11:30 ◼   ► Like he's only, only wants to know exactly what really matters, you know?

01:11:34 ◼   ► And I, I like in high school, I was always this pain in the ass kid doing

01:11:37 ◼   ► these calculations for exactly how much is this assignment worth and try to

01:11:43 ◼   ► constantly predict out what my grade could be like, you know, B.

01:11:50 ◼   ► B is an excellent target to aim for.

01:11:53 ◼   ► And like, higher than a bee is more work than it's worth.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Lower than a bee is no good.

01:11:59 ◼   ► So like, don't, don't spend one iota more energy than you

01:12:04 ◼   ► absolutely need to get that bee.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Like, bee plus is great, but it's a, you know, it's a sign

01:12:09 ◼   ► that you may be pushing too hard.

01:12:11 ◼   ► And so like, that was, that was very much my take on it in school.

01:12:15 ◼   ► And I feel lucky that it didn't bite me in the ass in some ways.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Like, you know, being a strategic slacker is...

01:12:24 ◼   ► it's a risky move.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Like, you know, you better not get anything wrong

01:12:29 ◼   ► because if you do, problems can compound really quickly.

01:12:33 ◼   ► And I just sort of...

01:12:36 ◼   ► I lucked out with that stuff,

01:12:38 ◼   ► but I did not enjoy being a student at all.

01:12:41 ◼   ► I thought basically everything

01:12:42 ◼   ► that the teachers were asking me to do

01:12:44 ◼   ► was pointless, busy work,

01:12:48 ◼   ► and adult me felt vindicated that child me was correct in this matter. That like, yes,

01:12:54 ◼   ► 90% of it was total pointless busy work. All of this is to say it is not surprising that I had

01:13:00 ◼   ► absolutely terrible work habits when I left the education system and, you know,

01:13:07 ◼   ► stumbled around as a young adult for a while trying to figure out, "Oh, how do I actually

01:13:13 ◼   ► get things done that I care about when there isn't like this whole system and structure

01:13:19 ◼   ► around me. So that's what I was like.

01:13:20 ◼   ► So I think it's fair to say if you were listening to this show and you're in school,

01:13:26 ◼   ► you were doing a better job than both of us were because you are the type of person that

01:13:32 ◼   ► cares about having your life in some kind of order, right?

01:13:37 ◼   ► I mean, I mean, yes, but I also know that younger me would listen to this podcast

01:13:43 ◼   ► because he would know that the older me was the way that he is.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Like I remember being a kid and like, you know, because back then there were no

01:13:54 ◼   ► podcasts, but you know, you just hear people talking, you know, there's

01:13:57 ◼   ► interview shows or whatever.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And I just remember like always feeling like I was listening really hard for

01:14:05 ◼   ► Yeah, but how is this successful adult really?

01:14:09 ◼   ► And I always felt like my ears perked up a lot when I heard people say like,

01:14:13 ◼   ► just casual remarks about being a slacker in certain situations.

01:14:18 ◼   ► So I don't recommend this as a general path, but you know, you can't change the

01:14:24 ◼   ► nature of the way that you are to some extent, you've just gotta like, you

01:14:29 ◼   ► gotta work with what you've got.

01:14:31 ◼   ► And it's also again why, like I said, I like the A-level system because it sooner gives

01:14:37 ◼   ► students more control so that they can select things that they're actually interested in

01:14:43 ◼   ► and then be like, "Oh, now I have a reason to try to be effective in what it is that

01:14:49 ◼   ► I'm doing," as opposed to feeling like I'm in a prison system and I'm just trying to

01:14:54 ◼   ► shirk the pointless work that they're foisting upon me.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Devon asks, "How do you guys get back on track when your day's plans go horribly wrong?"

01:15:05 ◼   ► I like this "horribly wrong".

01:15:08 ◼   ► I like the assumption that if something goes horribly wrong, I have the ability to get

01:15:13 ◼   ► my day back on track.

01:15:15 ◼   ► That's what I enjoy most here, is that there is the assumption that that is what happens

01:15:20 ◼   ► to me.

01:15:23 ◼   ► So what you're saying is when the day's gone horribly wrong, the answer is just bail.

01:15:28 ◼   ► bail on the day?

01:15:29 ◼   ► LINDSAY: Well, if my day goes horribly wrong, the first thing that I would do in the attempt

01:15:34 ◼   ► of trying to bring any order in it is taking a real serious look at my to-do list and realizing

01:15:39 ◼   ► how much of it can be delegated to, like, can be moved to different days.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Like, that is the first thing that I would do, is like, taking a very real look at it

01:15:47 ◼   ► and being like, no, no, not what would you prefer was done today, like, what can you

01:15:51 ◼   ► actually realistically do today?

01:15:55 ◼   ► Everything else is moving.

01:15:56 ◼   ► Right, right. Not your fantasy day. Let's get real about what could happen in the remaining

01:16:03 ◼   ► three hours of productivity that you have left or whatever. Yeah, I think that's a

01:16:08 ◼   ► good idea. I mean, obviously, horribly wrong is a lot of things. I do think it is a real

01:16:16 ◼   ► skill to be able to know when a day is lost and just accept that. That is better than

01:16:23 ◼   ► and feeling bad for the rest of the day,

01:16:26 ◼   ► but it can be hard to know when to make that judgment call.

01:16:31 ◼   ► A thing that I've done over the past few months,

01:16:34 ◼   ► which has been very helpful is,

01:16:36 ◼   ► my problem is always getting started in the morning.

01:16:39 ◼   ► So while I am very protective of my mornings,

01:16:43 ◼   ► if a day goes wrong, it's because I'm having a hard time

01:16:47 ◼   ► like just getting going with what needs to be done.

01:16:52 ◼   ► And I have calendared out what my theoretical morning should be.

01:16:59 ◼   ► And you can very easily get into the situation of like, "Oh, I've dilly-dallyed for an hour,

01:17:04 ◼   ► and now I've already pushed all of these things back, and you just get this cascade problem."

01:17:11 ◼   ► So I actually have a little thing in OmniFocus, which is the dumbest thing, but it's the first

01:17:16 ◼   ► item that pops up after I've brushed my teeth and done all the normal boot up stuff is,

01:17:22 ◼   ► it says like, "If it's a late start, start at the beginning and go until exercise."

01:17:30 ◼   ► So I have a kind of blocked off what should be the beginning of the morning, which is

01:17:35 ◼   ► like two work sessions and an exercise session.

01:17:39 ◼   ► And that's, you know, maybe a third of what the theoretical morning should be.

01:17:44 ◼   ► But I've actually genuinely found this dumb reminder to myself that, "Hey man, yeah, you've

01:17:50 ◼   ► got a late start today, you know, you slept in or you just couldn't get going or whatever.

01:17:55 ◼   ► Cool!

01:17:57 ◼   ► But right now you can just start at the beginning and go for like three of these double units

01:18:05 ◼   ► and still have a victorious day, even if this is all that you accomplish."

01:18:10 ◼   ► And as is often the case when you set a kind of lower bar for yourself, it can be one easier

01:18:16 ◼   ► to start and you can end up doing much more than you originally planned to anyway.

01:18:20 ◼   ► So it is the dumbest psychological trick, but it's basically this way of telling myself

01:18:27 ◼   ► you can start at the beginning anytime.

01:18:30 ◼   ► You're not actually late for this imaginary writing appointment that you've put on the

01:18:35 ◼   ► calendar.

01:18:36 ◼   ► You can just start right now.

01:18:38 ◼   ► So that's one of the things that I do.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Well, it said double unit. You said double unit.

01:18:42 ◼   ► Oh, sorry. All of my time is broken down into units, which are 40 minutes. That's like the

01:18:47 ◼   ► writing blocks is how I think of that. It's like, okay, two double units of writing in

01:18:52 ◼   ► the morning is like a session of 120 minutes, a quick break, and then another session of

01:18:57 ◼   ► 120 minutes, and then exercise. That would be the ideal start to a morning.

01:19:02 ◼   ► This idea of blocking out your ideal day kind of feels like there's some parallels to me

01:19:07 ◼   ► and my morning alarms. I'm never actually gonna wake up at 8.30 but I'd like to believe I will.

01:19:13 ◼   ► I'll disagree because I do hit the mornings more often than not and it sounds like you are planning

01:19:21 ◼   ► to fail with the first alarm. To be fair, I've talked about this before, like planning out a

01:19:28 ◼   ► theoretically perfect two weeks. Again, it's not like I'm creating a schedule that I'm really

01:19:34 ◼   ► holding myself to. I always think this is much more useful as a limiting exercise in terms of

01:19:40 ◼   ► thinking, even if you had the perfect two weeks, how much can you really get done if you actually

01:19:48 ◼   ► put it all on the calendar? And I think that helps constrain being over-ambitious in goals and

01:19:56 ◼   ► trying to be much more realistic. I can imagine it helps you be realistic about anything additional

01:20:02 ◼   ► you could put into a week too, right? Like if someone wants to have a meeting with you

01:20:06 ◼   ► – you're like, "Well I know I can't do it on these two days because even if I

01:20:12 ◼   ► was just doing the bare minimum of these two days, I wouldn't have the time for it."

01:20:16 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. It's less about interruptions – I mean, especially in the past year, because

01:20:20 ◼   ► I haven't had any, which is delightful for the most part – and it is more just about

01:20:24 ◼   ► knowing like, "Oh, I only have so many hours of writing in a day, and only so many hours

01:20:30 ◼   ► of writing in a week, and by putting that down on the calendar, it can help constrain

01:20:37 ◼   ► – yeah, yeah, there's many interesting projects you would like to work on, but you

01:20:41 ◼   ► can't spread these hours over too many things, or you can't always chase down the most

01:20:46 ◼   ► exciting thing at this particular moment, otherwise you'll never get finished.

01:20:50 ◼   ► Again, like, that is always something that I am struggling against, but this is one of

01:20:54 ◼   ► the tools that is helpful.

01:20:56 ◼   ► You know, like I have it in Fantastic Al open a lot, is the theoretically perfect schedule,

01:21:03 ◼   ► but I'm not really trying to match that down to the minute.

01:21:09 ◼   ► It's again just more of like a guidance.

01:21:11 ◼   ► - Is it a separate calendar?

01:21:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it's the way in Fantastic Al you can bring up those calendar sets, which

01:21:16 ◼   ► is one of the reasons why I love it.

01:21:17 ◼   ► - That's cool.

01:21:18 ◼   ► So you could turn it off if you're like "I need to be realistic about what I'm actually

01:21:21 ◼   ► supposed to be doing today."

01:21:22 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I have it open to just sort of look at sometimes and to think about what's going to happen

01:21:29 ◼   ► this week, but yeah, it's not an actionable calendar.

01:21:32 ◼   ► When we're planning when the next Cortex recording is going to be or if I have to set up a meeting

01:21:36 ◼   ► or whatever, that calendar goes right away.

01:21:39 ◼   ► It's like goodbye!

01:21:40 ◼   ► And then I have a separate actionable calendar.

01:21:42 ◼   ► I'm sorry, we can't record this week.

01:21:44 ◼   ► I have seven theoretical writing blocks that I'm not going to do.

01:21:48 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:21:50 ◼   ► I think that I do have some element at this type of thing when it comes to my task list.

01:21:57 ◼   ► I have things in my task list where it's like, in an ideal world they would be done today,

01:22:03 ◼   ► but they don't have to be.

01:22:05 ◼   ► So it's not exactly the same, but there is this element of like, I kind of know when

01:22:09 ◼   ► looking at my list, like what are the things that actually need to be done today, and what

01:22:14 ◼   ► are the things that I could move if I needed to.

01:22:18 ◼   ► I couldn't really work with calendars that way.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Like for me, calendars are very much a source of truth.

01:22:25 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:22:25 ◼   ► - A lot of my work really is based on time, right?

01:22:30 ◼   ► Because I'm collaborating with people in real time.

01:22:33 ◼   ► So it means we both have to be where we're supposed to be

01:22:36 ◼   ► at the time we said we're gonna be there.

01:22:38 ◼   ► So I can't really have this like,

01:22:41 ◼   ► maybe I'll show up, maybe I won't.

01:22:46 ◼   ► My life doesn't really work that way.

01:22:48 ◼   ► But we've really, it's kind of funny,

01:22:50 ◼   ► 'cause now this question has gone horribly wrong,

01:22:52 ◼   ► 'cause we're not actually talking about the question anymore.

01:22:55 ◼   ► So how do you get your day back on track

01:22:57 ◼   ► when it goes horribly wrong?

01:22:59 ◼   ► I really think that one of these things is

01:23:01 ◼   ► you just gotta forgive yourself.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Right, like I had one of these days recently

01:23:07 ◼   ► when I lost an entire day trying to get our notebooks

01:23:09 ◼   ► from customs.

01:23:10 ◼   ► I just lost the entire day because I was asked

01:23:13 ◼   ► produce paperwork that I couldn't even conceive of. And so we had to spend the entire day

01:23:19 ◼   ► researching what on earth I was being asked to produce. And the real great thing that

01:23:26 ◼   ► can happen on a day like this is that you fix the problem, right? Because if you fix

01:23:31 ◼   ► the thing that was major that you go horribly wrong, then you can give yourself a pat on

01:23:36 ◼   ► the back and you don't worry about all the things you didn't do. Because it's like, man,

01:23:39 ◼   ► And I got through that one, but this isn't always the case and sometimes things can go

01:23:43 ◼   ► on for longer.

01:23:45 ◼   ► Sometimes you just have to be like, well, there was nothing I could have done about

01:23:48 ◼   ► this.

01:23:51 ◼   ► If it's gone that bad, like I don't even think you can get that one problem fixed that you

01:23:57 ◼   ► want for the day or the one most important thing you want to do for the day.

01:24:00 ◼   ► You kind of just have to let it go.

01:24:02 ◼   ► Not an easy one.

01:24:03 ◼   ► No, it's not easy at all.

01:24:05 ◼   ► And yeah, I completely agree with you.

01:24:06 ◼   ► That's what I mean by it's difficult to recognize.

01:24:09 ◼   ► the situation sometimes and just say, "Okay, this one got lost, but it's way better to

01:24:14 ◼   ► do that than beat yourself up over it for the rest of the day."