Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► How does Google Docs not have a dark mode?

00:00:02 ◼   ► - 'Cause they're idiots and I hate them.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - Whoa.

00:00:05 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:00:06 ◼   ► - I'm really (beep) off at Google Docs at the moment.

00:00:08 ◼   ► - I just clicked on the little thing on my icon.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I was like, "Surely there must be a dark mode button here."

00:00:13 ◼   ► I didn't realize I was opening up Myke Fury over that.

00:00:16 ◼   ► - I'm seriously considering moving

00:00:18 ◼   ► to Microsoft Word or something.

00:00:21 ◼   ► - Really? - Yeah.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - I should retract that tremendous question mark really,

00:00:25 ◼   ► because I haven't used Microsoft Word in 10 years.

00:00:29 ◼   ► - Okay, well then.

00:00:30 ◼   ► - So I'm not up to date.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Maybe Word's amazing now,

00:00:34 ◼   ► but when I was putting together worksheets for school,

00:00:38 ◼   ► Word was no fun, no fun whatsoever.

00:00:41 ◼   ► - So there's a lot of asterisks here

00:00:43 ◼   ► because I know that Word has a collaboration now.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Like you can do like Google Docs like collaboration,

00:00:52 ◼   ► but I don't know how good it is.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Like I would need to test that out.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - But the thing is,

00:00:57 ◼   ► Microsoft seems to be adding more features to Word

00:01:00 ◼   ► that are modern on the platforms that they're on,

00:01:03 ◼   ► including iPadOS, than Google is.

00:01:06 ◼   ► So like, you can have multiple Word documents side by side

00:01:10 ◼   ► on iPadOS right now.

00:01:12 ◼   ► You can't do that on Google Docs.

00:01:15 ◼   ► - You can't do that with Google Docs?

00:01:16 ◼   ► - No.

00:01:17 ◼   ► They don't have the multi-window support.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - Wait, what was multi-window,

00:01:20 ◼   ► was that multi-window support last year?

00:01:22 ◼   ► Or was that two years ago? - That was last year.

00:01:23 ◼   ► That was last year. - That was last year.

00:01:24 ◼   ► - It was, okay, I'm thinking, right, sorry, yes.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Multi-window support, they haven't added it.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - They haven't added that, there's no dock mode, right?

00:01:31 ◼   ► Now I don't think Word has a dock mode either.

00:01:33 ◼   ► But like, Microsoft have committed to adding

00:01:37 ◼   ► the trackpad support by the end of the year.

00:01:40 ◼   ► You're never gonna get that kind of commitment out of Google.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Like maybe they'll do it, maybe they won't.

00:01:46 ◼   ► And the thing is with Google, and with Google Docs

00:01:50 ◼   ► and its history over the last few years,

00:01:52 ◼   ► is like, maybe you'll get those features,

00:01:54 ◼   ► maybe they'll take forever to come.

00:01:55 ◼   ► You're just gonna have to wait for them.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Really, these days, Microsoft have more

00:01:59 ◼   ► of a vested interest in keeping the product up to date

00:02:01 ◼   ► because you pay for it.

00:02:03 ◼   ► - Oh, right, 'cause that's the Office.

00:02:04 ◼   ► - Office 365. - Office, yes, of course.

00:02:07 ◼   ► And Google Docs is what, like a charity project

00:02:09 ◼   ► by Google, I guess?

00:02:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I'm paying Google for G Suite,

00:02:13 ◼   ► but that includes so many millions of things, you know?

00:02:17 ◼   ► So yeah, it's something that I've been mulling around

00:02:20 ◼   ► in my head, like I've been thinking about it,

00:02:22 ◼   ► I'm considering it.

00:02:23 ◼   ► And that's why you've caught me at a time

00:02:25 ◼   ► when I'm particularly salty about Google Docs.

00:02:28 ◼   ► But Google Docs is great in the fact

00:02:30 ◼   ► that it's available everywhere

00:02:32 ◼   ► and the collaboration stuff is rock solid.

00:02:35 ◼   ► But if Microsoft can give me most of the collaboration stuff

00:02:39 ◼   ► in almost real time and they also will make an app

00:02:43 ◼   ► that feels modern, then that's probably

00:02:46 ◼   ► where I'm gonna go eventually.

00:02:47 ◼   ► - So you're thinking of this what,

00:02:48 ◼   ► primarily for the show notes stuff?

00:02:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, for show notes.

00:02:51 ◼   ► This is all I use Google Docs for really,

00:02:53 ◼   ► is like shared collaborative documents,

00:02:55 ◼   ► which for me is like 95% of those are show notes documents.

00:03:00 ◼   ► So I do, this is the other thing,

00:03:02 ◼   ► it's like I'm dragging my heels and it's a little bit,

00:03:05 ◼   ► is I have to try and convince everyone to use Word then,

00:03:10 ◼   ► which might not be easy.

00:03:11 ◼   ► So I really wanna make sure that my case

00:03:14 ◼   ► that I make to all of my co-hosts is a solid one.

00:03:17 ◼   ► So I need to really spend some time making sure

00:03:21 ◼   ► that that's the right move for everybody, which is the other reason why I'm putting it off because

00:03:24 ◼   ► that feels like a lot of work. Right, yeah, because I stopped myself because I suddenly realized,

00:03:29 ◼   ► no, this is a collaboration problem as well, right, so you have multiple people. Of all the

00:03:34 ◼   ► possible tools in the world, why would you switch to Word? But I guess maybe that one has the highest

00:03:40 ◼   ► probability of being able to convince people to switch, you know, as opposed to something like

00:03:47 ◼   ► Dropbox paper or Notion, which might be more esoteric, you know, based on users.

00:03:53 ◼   ► We don't say Notion around here because...

00:03:55 ◼   ► Why don't we say Notion around here?

00:03:57 ◼   ► Because it brings out the Notion nation.

00:03:59 ◼   ► People that use Notion, they like really love it, you know, and it's, and then

00:04:04 ◼   ► every time we mention it, people want to know why we're not using it.

00:04:08 ◼   ► And like, I am using it, but don't really understand it.

00:04:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:11 ◼   ► Well, I mean, look, I bring up Notion because recently my assistant has

00:04:15 ◼   ► decided that the entire back end of the Grey Empire is going to convert to Notion and was

00:04:21 ◼   ► like, "Well, I'm along for this ride as well." So Dropbox paper got ejected and now

00:04:26 ◼   ► it's Notion time.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Maybe we need to talk about Notion at some point in the future.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't know anything about Notion.

00:04:31 ◼   ► That's what I mean.

00:04:32 ◼   ► She set up all these things, I'm like afraid, I don't know how to use it.

00:04:36 ◼   ► Why is this so scary, right? Like what is it about—you know what's so scary about

00:04:41 ◼   ► Notion is that there's a million YouTube videos about people that run their entire

00:04:44 ◼   ► lives from Notion, and the notion of that notion is terrifying.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Part of the workflow process for me with the videos is that you have what's called a "work

00:04:53 ◼   ► in progress" document, so it's like the way the animator and I communicate, like,

00:04:58 ◼   ► "Here's the list of all the things that need to be done for the animation in order

00:05:01 ◼   ► for it to be considered complete," you know.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And again, like, that could be Google Docs.

00:05:05 ◼   ► We just happen to use Dropbox Paper for a variety of reasons.

00:05:09 ◼   ► But now that, like, my back end has been switched for me to Notion, I was like, "Well, I'll

00:05:14 ◼   ► how hard can it be to make a new page to start a new area for me and my animator?

00:05:19 ◼   ► And I was, and I was like, Oh, I don't, I'm terrified to click anything.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I don't understand like all of what, what are these permissions?

00:05:26 ◼   ► So the end result there was I found myself in the position of sending a message

00:05:32 ◼   ► link.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Could you please create an area that we could use so that we

00:05:36 ◼   ► could communicate in this way?

00:05:38 ◼   ► And it's like, Oh yes.

00:05:39 ◼   ► No, you can't just create a page.

00:05:41 ◼   ► The page is merely a container for sub pages and the sub pages are where the work in progress documents can go.

00:05:47 ◼   ► That's the thing I can't get my head around.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Like you create a page but that page is now just like an entry in the wiki and it's like

00:05:53 ◼   ► "but why can't I just start writing?"

00:05:57 ◼   ► Because you haven't enabled a text block but why?

00:05:59 ◼   ► Why though?

00:06:01 ◼   ► That's a good comparison. It's very wiki.

00:06:03 ◼   ► It feels like Notion is the new "oh just use a wiki for that".

00:06:07 ◼   ► A wiki will solve all of your problems because it can be everything.

00:06:12 ◼   ► Notion has already spawned a bunch of companies that want to be like Notion.

00:06:15 ◼   ► Have you heard of Rome Research?

00:06:17 ◼   ► Oh yes, this is the other one I'm dimly aware of.

00:06:20 ◼   ► A number of people have messaged me and been like, "Hey man, I've got the solution to

00:06:25 ◼   ► your Evernote problem.

00:06:26 ◼   ► It's called Rome."

00:06:27 ◼   ► That's why, yeah, that's what you're hearing about it.

00:06:29 ◼   ► I know nothing about Rome Research.

00:06:31 ◼   ► I looked at it for two seconds and was like, "This looks like Dropbox paper, I guess?

00:06:36 ◼   ► I don't know."

00:06:37 ◼   ► is at the moment is that it lives on the web.

00:06:40 ◼   ► That's the only place that it exists right now.

00:06:42 ◼   ► So like that's immediately out for me.

00:06:44 ◼   ► Like even though Notion's iOS apps suck

00:06:47 ◼   ► because they're just web views,

00:06:49 ◼   ► I at least wanna have an app, right?

00:06:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I want an app as well.

00:06:52 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I feel the same way.

00:06:54 ◼   ► - The other thing I know about Roam research

00:06:55 ◼   ► is that it's basically just like a really powerful

00:06:57 ◼   ► personal Wiki builder.

00:06:59 ◼   ► So I use Notion, people may remember this,

00:07:02 ◼   ► I mentioned it in the past,

00:07:03 ◼   ► I use Notion to collect up everything to do

00:07:05 ◼   ► with Cortex brand.

00:07:07 ◼   ► So all of our ideas and all of our like little pieces

00:07:11 ◼   ► of information, it all goes into there.

00:07:14 ◼   ► - You mean Evernote, you don't mean Notion?

00:07:16 ◼   ► - No, I mean Notion.

00:07:17 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:07:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I moved it from Evernote to Notion

00:07:21 ◼   ► because I realized I couldn't handle Evernote.

00:07:23 ◼   ► - I think I just mentally blocked out that entire process.

00:07:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:07:28 ◼   ► So like this is what I use for that stuff

00:07:30 ◼   ► and like it does the job,

00:07:32 ◼   ► but this is one of those applications that as I'm using it,

00:07:35 ◼   ► Like I feel guilty for not feeling like I'm using it properly because everybody

00:07:40 ◼   ► talks about how like, Oh, you can run your entire business in this application.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And I look at it and I'm like, I don't know how I would do that.

00:07:47 ◼   ► But it's like, you know, I set up something and it looks like a page,

00:07:50 ◼   ► but no, this is now just a folder.

00:07:52 ◼   ► It's like, okay, so why doesn't it have a folder icon?

00:07:54 ◼   ► It's all very confusing to me, Gray.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:57 ◼   ► I was trying to add something on my iPad where I was writing a sentence.

00:08:00 ◼   ► I just wanted to use the phrase "and/or" in a sentence, and so I'm typing out "and/"

00:08:08 ◼   ► and the second I hit the slash it brings up this big menu of options.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Oh my god I just did it.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Like I'm happy this exists, but why on earth could I drop in a calendar now?

00:08:20 ◼   ► Right yes, and so I was unable to successfully type the slash symbol.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Oh I've just done something terrible.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Why is there a calendar here now?

00:08:30 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what can happen.

00:08:32 ◼   ► So I spent, I don't know, 30 seconds trying to figure out, okay, Notion must need an escape character for letting me type the slash.

00:08:43 ◼   ► So I'm like, what is it?

00:08:44 ◼   ► Was it that I needed to type?

00:08:45 ◼   ► I could not figure out for the life of me how to type the slash.

00:08:48 ◼   ► So I just said, oh, f*** it, I'm doing the other slash the other way.

00:08:51 ◼   ► So like an idiot, I wrote end slash or with the backwards slash.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Because it was just like, "I can't figure out what the escape sequence is that you want here."

00:09:02 ◼   ► I'm on my iPad, it feels a little finicky because it is this web view, like it's not quite working the way it's supposed to anyway.

00:09:08 ◼   ► I'm like, "The hell with this!" They'll know what I mean, and /or, I just look like a moron who wrote it backwards.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't, I don't, I feel like I just don't understand this application.

00:09:18 ◼   ► I have a bunch of YouTube videos that I've saved to my watch later queue

00:09:22 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, of course. - Of various productivity

00:09:24 ◼   ► YouTubers explaining Notion, and like at some point,

00:09:26 ◼   ► I'm gonna watch those videos and see if they can try

00:09:28 ◼   ► and explain it to me, but right now, it feels a little like,

00:09:32 ◼   ► it's a lot, and I feel like I just wanna do something

00:09:35 ◼   ► very simple with it, and it does not want me to do that.

00:09:38 ◼   ► - Right, so this is not a candidate for switching

00:09:41 ◼   ► - Absolutely not, no. - your show notes

00:09:43 ◼   ► and trying to get everybody else on board.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - I don't wanna accidentally drop in a four-page calendar

00:09:48 ◼   ► into my Quotex show notes document.

00:09:51 ◼   ► - Right, or on any of your other shows,

00:09:53 ◼   ► have your co-hosts accidentally drop in a relational database

00:09:56 ◼   ► in the middle of a bullet point.

00:09:58 ◼   ► - Like, oops, I pressed the space key

00:10:00 ◼   ► and now there's a page for every word in this document.

00:10:03 ◼   ► So long and short of it is,

00:10:07 ◼   ► there should be a better tool, I think,

00:10:09 ◼   ► for doing this collaboration stuff now,

00:10:12 ◼   ► like just very simple, like we have outlines.

00:10:15 ◼   ► And I feel like Word is a strong contender for,

00:10:20 ◼   ► Here is a product where there is a vested interest

00:10:23 ◼   ► by the creators of this product to make it modern.

00:10:27 ◼   ► And I just don't think Google has that anymore

00:10:30 ◼   ► with Google Docs.

00:10:31 ◼   ► Well, 'cause plus, as we're recording this today,

00:10:33 ◼   ► there was like this,

00:10:34 ◼   ► I saw this article of like,

00:10:38 ◼   ► Google wants to integrate all of their features into Gmail

00:10:40 ◼   ► to be more like Slack.

00:10:42 ◼   ► - No, no.

00:10:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, man.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Google Chat rooms and Meet to come into Gmail.

00:10:49 ◼   ► And it's kind of just like, well, eventually I suppose

00:10:52 ◼   ► they're gonna wanna swallow Google Docs up into that.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And like, I don't want that, right?

00:10:57 ◼   ► And I feel like eventually that's what they're gonna want

00:10:59 ◼   ► me to do.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And so it's a different type of product, right?

00:11:03 ◼   ► Like Google wants everything all integrated

00:11:05 ◼   ► and Microsoft just want you to pay them every month.

00:11:08 ◼   ► And I feel like that those business models

00:11:11 ◼   ► will end up with me seeing that maybe Microsoft Word

00:11:14 ◼   ► is a better option for the stuff that we're doing.

00:11:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:11:17 ◼   ► Like a native feeling application where we could put our show notes into.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Imagine that.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean that would be nice.

00:11:23 ◼   ► I'm here using Flotato to have Google Docs in a little app on the computer and I hate

00:11:30 ◼   ► it.

00:11:31 ◼   ► It's like it's better than having it in a browser because I won't lose it.

00:11:33 ◼   ► It's like oh yes it's just a thing I can alt tab to but like can I get a desktop app for

00:11:38 ◼   ► Google Docs?

00:11:39 ◼   ► That would be lovely.

00:11:40 ◼   ► What about we could do a little challenge here.

00:11:43 ◼   ► But if I make it so our next episode, we do the show notes, like our internal show notes

00:11:49 ◼   ► in Word and just see what happens.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I mean, okay, I can agree to that because this is 99% on your shoulders and 1% on my

00:11:57 ◼   ► shoulders.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Yeah, basically all you need to do is accept the invitation and you've done all you need

00:12:01 ◼   ► to do.

00:12:02 ◼   ► But that's my 1%, that's my contribution, Myke, is I will click accept and install from

00:12:09 ◼   ► the App Store?

00:12:11 ◼   ► Microsoft Word?

00:12:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Is it on the App Store?

00:12:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:12:15 ◼   ► - Okay, cool.

00:12:16 ◼   ► All right, I can commit to that, Myke.

00:12:17 ◼   ► We can try Word for show notes next time.

00:12:20 ◼   ► You can run Cortex show notes as the beta

00:12:22 ◼   ► for your convince everyone to use Word plan.

00:12:25 ◼   ► - I never could have imagined that this show

00:12:27 ◼   ► would be the beta for something like that.

00:12:29 ◼   ► But I guess I've caught you at the right moment as well.

00:12:32 ◼   ► - You've caught me at the exact right moment.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Yes, this is the only thing I use Google Docs for

00:12:39 ◼   ► is Cortex show notes.

00:12:41 ◼   ► - I guess the only thing that we need to do as a test,

00:12:44 ◼   ► we can do it when we're recording,

00:12:45 ◼   ► is seeing if the collaboration is real time.

00:12:48 ◼   ► 'Cause Google is, right?

00:12:49 ◼   ► Like then that's what makes Docs so powerful.

00:12:51 ◼   ► So if I start typing a word,

00:12:53 ◼   ► you see it literally as it's happening.

00:12:55 ◼   ► - Yes, yes.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Or I think Apple Pages has their pseudo real time.

00:13:00 ◼   ► - Pages isn't good enough, Apple Notes isn't good enough.

00:13:02 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't think about Apple Notes.

00:13:03 ◼   ► You've tried it, it's not good enough,

00:13:05 ◼   ► it's not real time enough?

00:13:05 ◼   ► - It updates frequently, but not real time.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And you know, like in some of my shows,

00:13:11 ◼   ► like multiple people can be adding notes in,

00:13:14 ◼   ► or like the same part in the document,

00:13:16 ◼   ► because like someone's talking.

00:13:17 ◼   ► - Real time matters.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Real time 100% matters.

00:13:19 ◼   ► It can't be close to real time for this sort of thing.

00:13:21 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause it's like, you know,

00:13:22 ◼   ► like imagine if you're saying something now,

00:13:23 ◼   ► it's like, oh, that's a good point.

00:13:24 ◼   ► I wanna make sure I remember it.

00:13:26 ◼   ► Like I will write it down, right?

00:13:27 ◼   ► But in shows where I had three people,

00:13:29 ◼   ► sometimes two people are doing that, right?

00:13:30 ◼   ► And having that real-timeness of it is important,

00:13:33 ◼   ► so then you don't end up with conflict

00:13:35 ◼   ► when it tries to resolve itself in a sync.

00:13:37 ◼   ► So that kind of stuff can be really messy.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And that is why everybody uses Google Docs

00:13:42 ◼   ► for this type of stuff.

00:13:43 ◼   ► And so that's why I've always used it

00:13:45 ◼   ► because it works really great.

00:13:46 ◼   ► But the experience of using Google Docs

00:13:49 ◼   ► on like a phone or whatever, it's just not that nice.

00:13:51 ◼   ► You know, like I would like an application

00:13:53 ◼   ► that felt better. - No, it's terrible.

00:13:54 ◼   ► - Again, I don't know if Word is the right app

00:13:55 ◼   ► for that either, but yeah.

00:13:58 ◼   ► This episode of "Clotex" is brought to you

00:14:00 ◼   ► by the new season of "Wireframe,"

00:14:02 ◼   ► a podcast all about how user experience

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00:14:34 ◼   ► how you can help older family members understand technology.

00:14:37 ◼   ► That is an episode that I checked out myself

00:14:40 ◼   ► and it's super great actually.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Really fun and interesting stories that relate

00:14:44 ◼   ► to helping people in your family with technology,

00:14:46 ◼   ► which I think is something that we can all relate to

00:14:48 ◼   ► and is the theme of the entire episode.

00:14:50 ◼   ► But this episode also focuses on how good design

00:14:53 ◼   ► can help people get around these issues.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Like a good user experience can help new users

00:14:58 ◼   ► from not needing to require the help of younger people

00:15:01 ◼   ► in their lives.

00:15:02 ◼   ► design something for the people you want to use it and include lots of people in it, you'll

00:15:07 ◼   ► have a much better experience for your users.

00:15:10 ◼   ► People shouldn't be left behind because technology is getting more and more complicated.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Anyway, you don't want to hear me explain the episode, you should go listen to it yourself,

00:15:17 ◼   ► it's really engaging, loads of great interviews.

00:15:19 ◼   ► You're going to hear from some seriously impressive designers and design leaders who have built

00:15:23 ◼   ► UX and UI experiences for companies like Headspace, Patreon, Kickstarter and Ythings.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Whether you're into UX, UI, technology or just curious about the way design impacts

00:15:33 ◼   ► our everyday lives, you should check out Wireframe.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Just search for Wireframe in your favourite podcast app, like the one you're using, right

00:15:41 ◼   ► now or check out the link in the show notes.

00:15:43 ◼   ► So thanks to Wireframe for their support of Cortex and all of Relay FM.

00:15:48 ◼   ► Talking about betas, have you installed any of Apple's betas on any of your products

00:15:52 ◼   ► yet?

00:15:53 ◼   ► No, I have not.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:15:57 ◼   ► You were very confident last time, but you know, my,

00:16:01 ◼   ► my feeling is I have no need to do this. It's fine. I can wait this year.

00:16:06 ◼   ► I'm not planning on installing any of the betas on my devices. And you know,

00:16:11 ◼   ► I'm sure also like the thing I'm thinking of and this, this,

00:16:16 ◼   ► you make, you can tell me if this is true or not.

00:16:18 ◼   ► You were giving me a real song and dance show last time about look at all this

00:16:22 ◼   ► magic with shortcuts. Look at everything that I have in my hat here,

00:16:26 ◼   ► like just pulling out these rabbits.

00:16:28 ◼   ► And while that is amazing,

00:16:30 ◼   ► the problem with shortcuts in particular

00:16:33 ◼   ► is installing the beta on one device

00:16:35 ◼   ► means you're installing the beta

00:16:37 ◼   ► on every device eventually, right?

00:16:38 ◼   ► There's the beta spread of the shortcut stuff

00:16:42 ◼   ► won't work everywhere.

00:16:43 ◼   ► And so it's like, well,

00:16:44 ◼   ► if I just start it with my loaner iPad,

00:16:46 ◼   ► then I update some automation

00:16:48 ◼   ► and now it doesn't work on everything

00:16:50 ◼   ► where the beta isn't installed.

00:16:51 ◼   ► And so it's just like, it spreads like a virus.

00:16:54 ◼   ► - I haven't had that happen. - So I'm keeping it.

00:16:55 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:16:56 ◼   ► - I mean, I've installed it on my phone

00:16:58 ◼   ► because I like the shortcut stuff so much on my iPad

00:17:01 ◼   ► that I want it on my phone too.

00:17:02 ◼   ► So I'm running iOS 14 on my iPhone now.

00:17:05 ◼   ► - Okay, and this is still the developer beta, right?

00:17:08 ◼   ► We're not even in public beta season.

00:17:08 ◼   ► - Public beta's out now.

00:17:10 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:17:11 ◼   ► - Maybe that's why you didn't do it

00:17:12 ◼   ► 'cause you didn't know the public beta was out.

00:17:14 ◼   ► Should've thought of that.

00:17:16 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm on the developer beta now

00:17:18 ◼   ► on my iPhone and my iPad, but the public beta is available.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And I cannot wait for September

00:17:26 ◼   ► for the home screen conversations that we're gonna have.

00:17:29 ◼   ► 'Cause they're gonna be big.

00:17:30 ◼   ► I am one screen now.

00:17:32 ◼   ► - You weren't one screen last time?

00:17:33 ◼   ► - No, I had the second screen of all the stuff on it, right?

00:17:36 ◼   ► I had no folders on my first screen.

00:17:38 ◼   ► But now I'm a four by four grid of apps

00:17:40 ◼   ► and then a large widget.

00:17:41 ◼   ► And they're just the Apple widgets.

00:17:42 ◼   ► I know that when I start getting third party widgets,

00:17:45 ◼   ► either in some, hopefully some betas,

00:17:47 ◼   ► but like when they come out in the store,

00:17:49 ◼   ► like I feel like I'm gonna really change up

00:17:52 ◼   ► lot of my home screen for a while, if not forever.

00:17:55 ◼   ► There just feels like a lot could happen with it

00:17:57 ◼   ► and it could be really interesting.

00:17:59 ◼   ► So I'm excited about that.

00:18:01 ◼   ► But the thing that I really love is I was just able

00:18:03 ◼   ► to hide the other two home screens, they're gone forever.

00:18:06 ◼   ► I heard someone say something on a podcast,

00:18:09 ◼   ► I don't remember where I heard it now,

00:18:10 ◼   ► and I thought you might like this thought.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Because it's so easy to, you can have another home screen

00:18:16 ◼   ► that you just can long press and then hide it.

00:18:19 ◼   ► that you could have like a work app home screen.

00:18:22 ◼   ► - Can you explain that?

00:18:23 ◼   ► I don't know what you mean by this.

00:18:25 ◼   ► - Now you're able to long press on the home screen,

00:18:27 ◼   ► kind of, you know where you have the dots

00:18:29 ◼   ► are just above the dock.

00:18:31 ◼   ► And you go into like a zoomed out view,

00:18:34 ◼   ► almost like expose or mission control on the Mac.

00:18:38 ◼   ► And you can uncheck home screens that have apps on them,

00:18:41 ◼   ► then you hide them.

00:18:42 ◼   ► - That's interesting.

00:18:44 ◼   ► - So this is like how people get rid of their home screen

00:18:47 ◼   ► so they just use the app library,

00:18:49 ◼   ► which is what I've been doing.

00:18:50 ◼   ► And then apps just installed to the app library

00:18:53 ◼   ► and that's it.

00:18:53 ◼   ► - Can you hide the app library?

00:18:54 ◼   ► - No.

00:18:55 ◼   ► But you just, it's only there when you swipe for it.

00:18:57 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:18:58 ◼   ► So you can have a home screen that's just widgets.

00:19:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can, I think it's actually possible

00:19:02 ◼   ► to have a home screen with no apps on it now.

00:19:04 ◼   ► - That's interesting.

00:19:05 ◼   ► - I think that you will be a no apps but widgets person.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And I think that I might get close to that,

00:19:11 ◼   ► like just a few apps and then a bunch of widgets.

00:19:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, we'll have to see.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Part of the reason why I'm also able to,

00:19:18 ◼   ► so far hold off on the beta is because widgets are the most interesting thing.

00:19:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and you can't get them for the apps that you want them for.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Exactly. Like everything that I want the widget for, I'd have to harass the developers to let me

00:19:31 ◼   ► into your beta, right? And like that's not going to happen. So I kind of can't play with the most

00:19:35 ◼   ► interesting stuff yet. And I'll be very curious to see when it's actually out and apps start

00:19:41 ◼   ► releasing their own widgets. But there is a little bit of a question in my mind about how much this

00:19:46 ◼   ► is going to be a bit like complications all over again,

00:19:50 ◼   ► where the promise of how potentially interesting

00:19:53 ◼   ► complications are is much greater than the check that is

00:19:57 ◼   ► cashed by what complications are actually able to do.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And so I just wonder about that with widgets, like six months after

00:20:05 ◼   ► the thing comes out and we're done playing around with the novelty of

00:20:08 ◼   ► widgets, like how useful will they actually be one year

00:20:12 ◼   ► from now? I'll be interested to see.

00:20:15 ◼   ► I think the benefit that we have there is that complications on Apple Watch exist.

00:20:19 ◼   ► So if you just think of the widgets as big complications, that's what they are.

00:20:24 ◼   ► We already have a sense of what that type of UI is like.

00:20:28 ◼   ► You have UI that it shows you information and you tap on it and it just opens the app.

00:20:33 ◼   ► That's what these widgets do.

00:20:35 ◼   ► So we have an idea of it already, but just seeing some of the designs that developers

00:20:40 ◼   ► that I follow on Twitter are putting out there for things that they're working on,

00:20:44 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh yeah, you know what? I think I would quite like that."

00:20:47 ◼   ► Or even just like little things like Apple's weather and calendar widgets.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh yeah, I really want these for fantastic current Carrot weather,

00:20:56 ◼   ► and that's going to be amazing."

00:20:57 ◼   ► There's just like little parts of it where I'm like,

00:21:00 ◼   ► "Well, having that widget is so much better than the app icon,

00:21:04 ◼   ► because I get what I want to open the app for like 90% of the time."

00:21:09 ◼   ► Right? I'm opening Carrot weather to find out what the temperature is right now,

00:21:13 ◼   ► or I'm opening Fantastic L to see what events I have for the day.

00:21:16 ◼   ► Well, the widgets will just show me that information.

00:21:19 ◼   ► It will be really nice, and I'm really happy

00:21:21 ◼   ► that we're finally going to have it in this way,

00:21:23 ◼   ► because developers could have done stuff

00:21:25 ◼   ► and have done stuff like this already.

00:21:27 ◼   ► There is already a Fantastic L widget

00:21:29 ◼   ► and a Carrot Weather widget over in the Today view,

00:21:33 ◼   ► but it's just not the same

00:21:34 ◼   ► when it's hidden away in its upper place.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Having it on your home screen,

00:21:38 ◼   ► as soon as you unlock your phone, it's there.

00:21:40 ◼   ► And what I've liked about the ones that I'm seeing

00:21:42 ◼   ► is they're also just there even when I'm not looking for them. So I feel like I just have

00:21:47 ◼   ► that information at hand more.

00:21:48 ◼   ► >> Right, it's ambient awareness of things which can be useful.

00:21:53 ◼   ► >> So and what I really like is that when you put them in these stacks, you can layer

00:21:57 ◼   ► them on top of each other. You can have the phone try and be smart and rotate them through

00:22:01 ◼   ► today to show you what you want. And I've found that serious suggestion type stuff to

00:22:06 ◼   ► actually be pretty typically quite good for me in the past, like the serious suggestion

00:22:10 ◼   ► of apps so like you know when you pull down and it shows you what apps you

00:22:13 ◼   ► might want to be using that's always worked pretty well yeah I agree I agree

00:22:17 ◼   ► that works better than you think it will yeah and I expect it's gonna be a very

00:22:21 ◼   ► similar kind of logic for the widgets right of like understanding what you

00:22:24 ◼   ► might want to be looking at a different time of day it's probably pretty similar

00:22:29 ◼   ► to what apps am I opening on at certain times of day mm-hmm and also like I

00:22:33 ◼   ► always really liked the Siri watch face rest in peace it's still there just

00:22:38 ◼   ► never got changed. But I like that because it did a good job for me to show me what I

00:22:43 ◼   ► wanted to see. And again, I expect the widget rotation to be a similar idea to that as well.

00:22:48 ◼   ► I remember, whatever that was, a couple WWDCs ago, when you were really harping on like,

00:22:54 ◼   ► this is the future of watchOS. I really thought it was. You had very good

00:22:59 ◼   ► reasons and I think made a compelling argument for, yeah, this is going to be the future

00:23:03 ◼   ► of watchOS and then just like with so many things like oh it came out and is never touched again.

00:23:10 ◼   ► It really felt like it to me like it really did and I was so wrong because they really did not do

00:23:19 ◼   ► anything with it ever again. Yeah you wonder sometimes like what's the deal like what's the

00:23:24 ◼   ► internal story with that of it seemed like such a great idea with so much potential and then just

00:23:29 ◼   ► "Oh, it's gonna sit untouched for years and no one's going to make complications for it because it's the only one that can do this."

00:23:37 ◼   ► Now with the shortcut stuff that you were telling me about automating changing the watch faces,

00:23:41 ◼   ► it's like, that Siri watch face is done.

00:23:44 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. - That is totally gone now.

00:23:47 ◼   ► I'm not planning on installing the watch beta on my watch.

00:23:50 ◼   ► I mean, I may as well because I don't wear the watch that much, but it's just not high on my list right now.

00:23:56 ◼   ► That is the only thing that has annoyed me since you told me about it is the ability to say change a watch face at a particular day or at a particular time.

00:24:04 ◼   ► And now every time at night I manually swipe over to my nighttime watch face, I'm a little annoyed.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I'm like milling my own grain here.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Like I don't understand why I have to swipe this over.

00:24:16 ◼   ► So if anything's going to get me for the beta, it's something like that of just the continual annoyance of I shouldn't have to do this.

00:24:25 ◼   ► Like, it's eight o'clock, switch over to the nighttime phase, just do it.

00:24:30 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:24:32 ◼   ► - I've also spent a little bit of time in Mac OS 11.

00:24:35 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:24:36 ◼   ► I just assumed that you would not have installed the Mac beta because...

00:24:41 ◼   ► Well, let me guess, you're not running it on the production machine right now, of course.

00:24:45 ◼   ► - No.

00:24:46 ◼   ► I'm not even running it on a computer that's mine.

00:24:48 ◼   ► - Oh, okay. You stole someone's computer?

00:24:50 ◼   ► - No, some time ago, Apple sent me a review unit of a MacBook Pro.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Ooh, fancy, fancy man.

00:24:56 ◼   ► This was ages ago.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Honestly, like, I think I really like it.

00:25:01 ◼   ► You really like the beta?

00:25:02 ◼   ► The way it looks, like I like the new look a lot.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I've only seen it in the screenshots,

00:25:07 ◼   ► but it seems intriguing.

00:25:08 ◼   ► I've never minded flatter design.

00:25:10 ◼   ► Like, as a general statement, I think flat design

00:25:12 ◼   ► is a safe, solid, and also interesting way to go for things.

00:25:17 ◼   ► I've forgotten what transparency was like.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Did you turn off transparency on your machines,

00:25:22 ◼   ► or what do you mean by that?

00:25:23 ◼   ► I've had transparency off on my computers

00:25:26 ◼   ► since Apple introduced transparency to the OS.

00:25:29 ◼   ► - Right.

00:25:30 ◼   ► - So when I turned it on, I was like,

00:25:33 ◼   ► what the (beep) is going on, right?

00:25:35 ◼   ► Like, why can't I see my wallpaper everywhere?

00:25:38 ◼   ► 'Cause they seem to have made it

00:25:39 ◼   ► a little bit more aggressive anyway,

00:25:41 ◼   ► but it was like a big surprise to me

00:25:43 ◼   ► because I had not seen that in a very long time.

00:25:47 ◼   ► - This had to open up on my computer.

00:25:48 ◼   ► I couldn't even remember.

00:25:49 ◼   ► I was like, oh yes, I too have reduced transparency on.

00:25:53 ◼   ► like what happens if I uncheck that?

00:25:54 ◼   ► Oh, nothing happens because my background

00:25:56 ◼   ► is just a dark gray background,

00:25:58 ◼   ► so nothing looks different.

00:25:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:00 ◼   ► - You wouldn't even know.

00:26:01 ◼   ► - QuickTime gets ever so slightly darker

00:26:04 ◼   ► if I uncheck that button,

00:26:05 ◼   ► and that is the only thing as far as I can tell.

00:26:08 ◼   ► - But yeah, like overall the look of it

00:26:10 ◼   ► just feels fresh and modern in a way that Mac OS

00:26:13 ◼   ► is not for like the last 10 years in my opinion.

00:26:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, this is based on nothing

00:26:19 ◼   ► except just the visual look of it,

00:26:21 ◼   ► but having seen the screenshots,

00:26:24 ◼   ► it does make me really wonder about Apple's statements

00:26:27 ◼   ► of like, oh, guys, we're never gonna merge everything

00:26:29 ◼   ► into one operating system.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Like, we have no plans to do that.

00:26:33 ◼   ► We're just going to make them more and more similar

00:26:37 ◼   ► to each other with each following year, right?

00:26:40 ◼   ► But they're never gonna merge.

00:26:41 ◼   ► That's crazy talk.

00:26:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, but see, at a certain point,

00:26:44 ◼   ► you don't need to merge them

00:26:46 ◼   ► if the application platform's the same.

00:26:49 ◼   ► And I think that's what they're going for,

00:26:50 ◼   ► is like the application platform is the same

00:26:53 ◼   ► across all of them, right?

00:26:54 ◼   ► You write it in SwiftUI and write in Swift

00:26:57 ◼   ► and it can run everywhere.

00:26:59 ◼   ► And then they can still have things like the terminal,

00:27:02 ◼   ► but then they never have to bring terminal to iPad.

00:27:04 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:27:05 ◼   ► - So like I've actually come around recently

00:27:07 ◼   ► on the idea of like, I do believe

00:27:09 ◼   ► they will keep them separate for a long time,

00:27:11 ◼   ► but the things that third parties can make,

00:27:14 ◼   ► they're gonna be the same.

00:27:15 ◼   ► It'd be the same everywhere, or it can be.

00:27:18 ◼   ► but Apple can still have these distinct operating systems

00:27:22 ◼   ► for a while.

00:27:23 ◼   ► - I see what you're saying, but that strikes me as

00:27:25 ◼   ► a distinction without a difference,

00:27:27 ◼   ► in the same way that, oh, there's iOS and there's iPadOS.

00:27:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they do different things,

00:27:33 ◼   ► but they're still the same.

00:27:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, yeah, sure, I get what you're saying,

00:27:37 ◼   ► but it doesn't matter.

00:27:40 ◼   ► I think the way that they say,

00:27:41 ◼   ► we'll never merge the platforms is

00:27:44 ◼   ► heard and interpreted in people's brains

00:27:47 ◼   ► in an entirely different way from what Apple's obvious plans actually are of like everything

00:27:54 ◼   ► the same everywhere. That is very clearly our ultimate plan. Oh, look at the maps in

00:28:00 ◼   ► these presentations. There's clearly not being designed to also be the same for our

00:28:04 ◼   ► future augmented reality platform. Like everything is coming together to be the same and that's

00:28:10 ◼   ► clearly what they're doing. I mean, I don't know what the temperature online is for the

00:28:14 ◼   ► redesigned but like I don't mind it it looks it looks nice having not actually

00:28:18 ◼   ► experienced it myself yeah you're okay with it like you like it yeah I really

00:28:22 ◼   ► like it I really like because it looks interesting to me and and it looks like

00:28:25 ◼   ► the type of operating system that I am more familiar with and comfortable with

00:28:30 ◼   ► and prefer right like it looks a lot like iPad OS in places and I think that

00:28:34 ◼   ► that's a really good idea personally because you can freshen things up give

00:28:38 ◼   ► people that are less familiar with that with the Mac platform more familiar with

00:28:43 ◼   ► with the Mac platform, I think that it's clever,

00:28:46 ◼   ► and I think it's especially clever

00:28:47 ◼   ► as they're moving into these Apple Silicon Macs

00:28:51 ◼   ► with iOS apps that can run on these machines.

00:28:54 ◼   ► And if that's the thing that they wanna do,

00:28:56 ◼   ► and I think will be a thing that they will consider

00:28:58 ◼   ► to be a serious benefit,

00:29:00 ◼   ► having a lot of the operating system around it

00:29:02 ◼   ► be a little bit more reminiscent of the place

00:29:04 ◼   ► where those applications are native might be a good idea.

00:29:08 ◼   ► - Should I put the beta on my laptop?

00:29:10 ◼   ► - No.

00:29:11 ◼   ► - No? - No.

00:29:11 ◼   ► You don't want me to have it on the production machine?

00:29:13 ◼   ► I thought you were trying to push these betas on me.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Do you record from a laptop?

00:29:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I do record from a laptop right now.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Oh, there he goes.

00:29:21 ◼   ► What do you mean? What do you mean there he goes?

00:29:23 ◼   ► You moved away?

00:29:25 ◼   ► I could hear you moving away.

00:29:27 ◼   ► Yeah, because I'm looking at the laptop.

00:29:29 ◼   ► I was looking at the laptop.

00:29:31 ◼   ► What, did you check that it was there?

00:29:33 ◼   ► I don't know, because I was talking about it,

00:29:35 ◼   ► so I had to go look at it.

00:29:37 ◼   ► But no, in my division between

00:29:39 ◼   ► between standing desk and sitting desk in my eternal home office now it's it's ended up that

00:29:46 ◼   ► my like iMac is at the standing desk and my sitting desk which is the podcast desk has a

00:29:52 ◼   ► laptop with the screen attached to it look i've got so much i bought one of those like crazy

00:29:57 ◼   ► external whatchamacallit the eGPUs wait i've got like a huge eGPU that's connected to the little

00:30:04 ◼   ► laptop another one because you went through this before and you had all that trouble with the USB

00:30:08 ◼   ► C cable.

00:30:09 ◼   ► No, we've been looking for it.

00:30:11 ◼   ► Look, this is like, I've been going totally crazy in my home office, like trying to get

00:30:17 ◼   ► the setups just right.

00:30:19 ◼   ► And I eventually had to cave because the laptop running an external display, like it slows

00:30:24 ◼   ► it down and I did have to go back to doing the eGPU and I had used the Blackmagic one

00:30:29 ◼   ► forever ago, but it was super wimpy and didn't really help a lot.

00:30:33 ◼   ► So I ended up getting one of these like Razer Core Chroma enormous eGPU things and then

00:30:40 ◼   ► got one of those like GPUs that has three fans on it and stick it inside and try to

00:30:45 ◼   ► make it work and so I've tried to beef up my sitting down working station.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Oh you're such a gamer!

00:30:53 ◼   ► Oh my god do you have RGB on your eGPU?

00:30:57 ◼   ► You do don't you?

00:30:59 ◼   ► Yes there is RGB on my eGPU.

00:31:02 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, what a gamer. - If that makes you happy.

00:31:04 ◼   ► So I thought you might enjoy that.

00:31:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do enjoy that.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Oh man, that's amazing.

00:31:09 ◼   ► - Anyway, all this is to answer your question,

00:31:10 ◼   ► like yes, I am recording on a laptop right now,

00:31:13 ◼   ► but I've tried to beef it up because I presume

00:31:17 ◼   ► that you don't want me recording at my standing desk

00:31:21 ◼   ► that has a treadmill underneath it

00:31:22 ◼   ► while we're doing podcasts.

00:31:23 ◼   ► - You have a treadmill desk?

00:31:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, didn't I tell you this?

00:31:26 ◼   ► - No, I don't know about this.

00:31:28 ◼   ► - I guess this is,

00:31:29 ◼   ► here's the big problem that I keep having,

00:31:31 ◼   ► is I just have no sense of time or...

00:31:36 ◼   ► I don't know how to like,

00:31:39 ◼   ► if you measure something at two points in time,

00:31:42 ◼   ► there's a difference between them.

00:31:44 ◼   ► So like, oh, what did my office look like six months ago

00:31:46 ◼   ► versus what did it look like now?

00:31:48 ◼   ► Because I have no sense of time,

00:31:50 ◼   ► I have no sense of the ability to understand like,

00:31:54 ◼   ► what is the differential between previous times

00:31:57 ◼   ► that we have spoken and now?

00:31:58 ◼   ► And so when a piece of equipment comes into my office,

00:32:01 ◼   ► I have this feeling of like, has it been here for two days?

00:32:04 ◼   ► Or has it always been here, right?

00:32:06 ◼   ► Like, I have no idea anymore.

00:32:09 ◼   ► -Did it come with a house? -Yeah.

00:32:11 ◼   ► Like, this is also why I'm very confident

00:32:14 ◼   ► that I won't actually put the betas on any of my devices,

00:32:17 ◼   ► because since every single day is the same

00:32:19 ◼   ► as the day that came before it and I have no sense of time,

00:32:23 ◼   ► new phones and the final operating system

00:32:26 ◼   ► will be here before I have any subjective sense

00:32:29 ◼   ► of time passing at all.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So I think I really am going to skip it this year.

00:32:32 ◼   ► Um, but no, I've got so much stuff in my office now.

00:32:35 ◼   ► I don't have any idea.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Like what you know is here and what you, I have a boom arm.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Do you know I'm recording on a boom arm?

00:32:40 ◼   ► I know you wanted that.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Uh, did I know that?

00:32:44 ◼   ► I feel like maybe you have the same problem too, but yeah, I'm I have a boom arm.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:49 ◼   ► We went through it because you were banging on the desk and it sounded good.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Yes.

00:32:53 ◼   ► That's right.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:54 ◼   ► So I have a boom arm.

00:32:55 ◼   ► The boom arm as a bonus point is actually connected to the standing desk so that

00:32:59 ◼   ► not even possible for vibrations at the sitting desk to make it to the standing desk into

00:33:05 ◼   ► the microphone. So it's like it's perfect isolation.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Oh wait, hang on a second. Hang on a second. I have to map this one out in my brain because

00:33:11 ◼   ► the way I had imagined this was very different to how you've described it. So you're sitting

00:33:15 ◼   ► the standing desk and next to each other. Yes, there are two desks there next to each

00:33:20 ◼   ► other. One is a standing desk, one is a sitting desk. I'm sitting at the sitting desk, but

00:33:26 ◼   ► the boom arm is connected to the standing desk so that the microphone then comes down

00:33:31 ◼   ► and is in front of me because that just the way everything's arranged that ends up being

00:33:34 ◼   ► a nice place for it to be.

00:33:36 ◼   ► Can I ask why you didn't consider a sit-stand desk?

00:33:39 ◼   ► Um okay so the reason I didn't consider a sit-stand desk is that the okay so I bought

00:33:45 ◼   ► a treadmill to go with the standing desk.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Because of the treadmill yeah yeah and where's the treadmill gonna go where's the chair gonna

00:33:51 ◼   ► go okay.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Exactly the treadmill is one of those ones in theory you can put it up against the wall

00:33:55 ◼   ► but in practice.

00:33:56 ◼   ► - No one's gonna do that.

00:33:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, you don't wanna ever actually do that.

00:33:59 ◼   ► I could have sworn I told you about it, but anyway, yeah.

00:34:01 ◼   ► So the treadmill desk has been by far and away

00:34:04 ◼   ► one of the best quarantine purchases,

00:34:07 ◼   ► and I usually spend like at least two hours a day on it,

00:34:10 ◼   ► like while I'm working and stuff.

00:34:11 ◼   ► - So what are you, are you walking?

00:34:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I set it for walking,

00:34:15 ◼   ► and then I'm writing while I'm doing that.

00:34:16 ◼   ► So it's taken the place of pacing back and forth

00:34:19 ◼   ► in the office a little bit, is to be on the treadmill.

00:34:22 ◼   ► And also for light editing, for either doing like audio or video editing, as long as it's

00:34:31 ◼   ► not too precise, I can be on the treadmill desk and do that as well.

00:34:35 ◼   ► It's very much a core part of don't let your muscles atrophy away during quarantine time

00:34:42 ◼   ► has been get on the treadmill desk every day and do part of your work there.

00:34:48 ◼   ► But yeah, so anyway, I could have sworn I told you about that, but obviously I didn't

00:34:51 ◼   ► and I have no sense of time and all of this was to say you don't want me walking while

00:34:57 ◼   ► recording the podcast. I think you wouldn't enjoy that.

00:34:59 ◼   ► No, I wouldn't enjoy that. That would be quite disruptive, I think. But I guess it's good

00:35:05 ◼   ► because I know you would pace, right? And now you don't know maybe you do you get that

00:35:11 ◼   ► feeling. Does it feel like the same thing if you're walking on the desk to pacing?

00:35:16 ◼   ► It's not quite the same but it's fine. Just with deciding like I need to have this treadmill

00:35:20 ◼   ► desk so that I have the option of working while moving has reduced the space just enough

00:35:26 ◼   ► in the office that there really isn't enough space to pace without spending 30% of the

00:35:31 ◼   ► time in the turning around moment, which is no good.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Right?

00:35:35 ◼   ► It's walking in a circle.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a ratio of how much length of walking do you get versus time spent turning

00:35:44 ◼   ► around and you don't want the turnaround frequency to be every five seconds.

00:35:48 ◼   ► You're basically just using one leg, right?

00:35:51 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

00:35:52 ◼   ► You're just going around in a circle.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Yes, just going around in a circle that way.

00:35:54 ◼   ► So standing desk with treadmill, highly recommend, has almost certainly prevented my legs from

00:36:01 ◼   ► becoming just vestigial organs during the lockdown.

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00:37:17 ◼   ► CORTEX. I have a little I have a little secret. What's your secret? Do you have a

00:37:22 ◼   ► treadmill desk? No I don't have a treadmill desk. I am not recording at

00:37:25 ◼   ► home today. Oh are you out? Are you in are you in your office? Your outside office?

00:37:33 ◼   ► I'm in Mega Studio. You're in Mega Studio? This is the very first podcast recorded

00:37:38 ◼   ► from Mega Studio.

00:37:39 ◼   ► - Oh wow.

00:37:40 ◼   ► - Yep, I thought it felt special to me to give Cortex that.

00:37:43 ◼   ► - I was gonna say, that genuinely feels

00:37:45 ◼   ► like a really big honor.

00:37:47 ◼   ► - Well, it feels like the right place, right?

00:37:49 ◼   ► Like the whole, I think like the Mega name came

00:37:52 ◼   ► from the show and like I've been chronicling

00:37:54 ◼   ► the studio on this show.

00:37:57 ◼   ► It felt like the, so I would say, you know,

00:37:59 ◼   ► people may notice that I sound a little different

00:38:01 ◼   ► because I might sound a little different

00:38:02 ◼   ► because there's an echo still in here a little bit.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I reckon I'm like 80% there, right?

00:38:09 ◼   ► Like there's still more to do,

00:38:10 ◼   ► but I'm at the point where I feel like it's good enough.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Like I feel like the echo in here

00:38:16 ◼   ► or like the level of quality of audio I can get here

00:38:20 ◼   ► is about what I would get or what I feel possible

00:38:23 ◼   ► when I'm in like a hotel room or something.

00:38:25 ◼   ► And I've recorded many episodes of Cortex from hotel rooms.

00:38:28 ◼   ► So I thought to myself, I feel good about it.

00:38:30 ◼   ► Like I wanna give it a go.

00:38:32 ◼   ► There's a couple of things more that we wanna do

00:38:34 ◼   ► that we still haven't done,

00:38:35 ◼   ► which I think will continue to reduce the echo in here,

00:38:39 ◼   ► but I'm really pleased with the lengths that we've gone to

00:38:44 ◼   ► to make it doable.

00:38:46 ◼   ► So I figured maybe now's the time,

00:38:48 ◼   ► and I'll find out in editing just how it sounds, I suppose.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Like, I've been doing tests.

00:38:54 ◼   ► - Listen, I guarantee you,

00:38:56 ◼   ► no one noticed that anything sounded different.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - Until I shouted echo, maybe.

00:39:01 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, until you shouted,

00:39:03 ◼   ► But even then, people wouldn't notice, right?

00:39:05 ◼   ► And unless, you know, people at this point will be like,

00:39:09 ◼   ► "Oh, I totally know this."

00:39:10 ◼   ► - I knew all the time.

00:39:11 ◼   ► It's like that time when we recorded two episodes

00:39:14 ◼   ► back to back and said, "Haha, nobody knew."

00:39:16 ◼   ► And then some people were like, "I could tell,

00:39:18 ◼   ► but no one knew." - Yes, yes, no, I knew

00:39:19 ◼   ► right from the start. - No one knew.

00:39:20 ◼   ► - Exactly, and it's like, unless you left a comment

00:39:25 ◼   ► before you got to this part of the podcast,

00:39:28 ◼   ► you didn't really know, right?

00:39:30 ◼   ► It's the same way that people trick themselves

00:39:31 ◼   ► when they're doing flashcards to learn something new

00:39:33 ◼   ► and like you can constantly trick yourself

00:39:36 ◼   ► into thinking you've given the correct answer,

00:39:38 ◼   ► but it's like, no, no, say it out loud

00:39:40 ◼   ► before you look at the back of the card

00:39:42 ◼   ► and then you'll find out if you really know

00:39:44 ◼   ► what the back of the card says.

00:39:45 ◼   ► You know, this is the same thing.

00:39:47 ◼   ► So I guarantee you, no one will have noticed.

00:39:50 ◼   ► You could have recorded from Mega Studio for a year

00:39:54 ◼   ► and there would never have been a peep from anyone

00:39:57 ◼   ► about, oh, does Myke sound different?

00:39:59 ◼   ► His echo seems to be 10% more present than it was

00:40:03 ◼   ► when he was working from home, so don't worry about that.

00:40:06 ◼   ► But congratulations on being in Mega Studio.

00:40:09 ◼   ► That's a big thing to actually be there.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Is the plan to be recording from here going forward now?

00:40:15 ◼   ► - No. - Okay.

00:40:16 ◼   ► - My thinking is I will start doing more,

00:40:21 ◼   ► because frankly, I just am not right now

00:40:25 ◼   ► thinking that I will be here all the time.

00:40:27 ◼   ► we're still limiting how much time we're out of the home.

00:40:30 ◼   ► 'Cause it's a whole to do, right?

00:40:33 ◼   ► So I went to get a coffee before we started this show.

00:40:35 ◼   ► And like, there's like a, you know,

00:40:37 ◼   ► like I bring the coffee into the studio

00:40:39 ◼   ► and then I have to use the hand sanitizer

00:40:42 ◼   ► and then the alcohol wipe on the coffee.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Like it's like a whole, it's too much of a to do

00:40:47 ◼   ► for this to be all the time, you know?

00:40:50 ◼   ► But I'm slowly thinking that I will increase.

00:40:53 ◼   ► 'Cause as well, like those things that I've just explained,

00:40:55 ◼   ► they're just gonna become more and more things

00:40:57 ◼   ► that I'm used to, so maybe there'll be less of a thing

00:41:00 ◼   ► that annoy me, you know what I mean?

00:41:01 ◼   ► 'Cause you know I mentioned about the quarantine zone

00:41:03 ◼   ► and we didn't have any of that set.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Well, we've got that now.

00:41:07 ◼   ► We're at home in our hallway, so nothing will go past

00:41:11 ◼   ► this part of the hallway, right?

00:41:12 ◼   ► - Right, yes, yeah.

00:41:13 ◼   ► - It's here and then we can, nobody touches anything,

00:41:17 ◼   ► shoes come off, all that kind of stuff, right?

00:41:20 ◼   ► And we didn't have any of that set up here as like,

00:41:23 ◼   ► well, this is how that operates.

00:41:25 ◼   ► But now we do, like Adina bought colored tape

00:41:27 ◼   ► and she drew a box on the ground.

00:41:29 ◼   ► Nothing leaves this box.

00:41:31 ◼   ► - Right.

00:41:32 ◼   ► - Right, you come in, we have hand sanitizer on every desk,

00:41:35 ◼   ► we have alcohol wipes and we have like food containers

00:41:39 ◼   ► and bags, they will stay here and then the stuff

00:41:41 ◼   ► will be taken out.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Like seeing like, just doing what you do now, right?

00:41:44 ◼   ► But we didn't have any of that set up here.

00:41:46 ◼   ► So it wasn't really working, but like we've got that

00:41:50 ◼   ► in place and now we've got that in place.

00:41:52 ◼   ► We're like, okay, we feel like we understand

00:41:54 ◼   ► the transition from outside to into the studio now.

00:41:57 ◼   ► But then it was like, well, all of the things

00:42:00 ◼   ► that I planned on bringing here computer-wise,

00:42:04 ◼   ► I can't do any of it.

00:42:05 ◼   ► So I'm not bringing my iMac here because,

00:42:08 ◼   ► one, I'm not gonna be recording from here all the time,

00:42:11 ◼   ► and two, even if I decided I was,

00:42:14 ◼   ► that's not the machine I wanna have to bring home

00:42:17 ◼   ► in a hurry if we lock down again.

00:42:19 ◼   ► - Right. - Right?

00:42:20 ◼   ► That thing is gonna go in a moving van

00:42:22 ◼   ► when we eventually move all of the studio here.

00:42:26 ◼   ► And then it was like, well, but I had always planned

00:42:28 ◼   ► that I would do my recording from a laptop,

00:42:30 ◼   ► but I'm not buying a laptop right now for many reasons.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Like the main one of them being,

00:42:35 ◼   ► like if I'm buying an Apple laptop in the next six months,

00:42:39 ◼   ► I want it to have an Apple Silicon chip in it

00:42:41 ◼   ► because why not, right?

00:42:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't really think that the effect is large,

00:42:46 ◼   ► but I can imagine that there's a significant number

00:42:49 ◼   ► of people where the moment Apple said,

00:42:52 ◼   ► we're making our own chips. All computer purchases are ceased.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Yeah, of course.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Like I know I'm in that category of like, I'm gonna wait, right? I don't care how long it takes,

00:43:03 ◼   ► I'm not buying another Intel computer if I could possibly, possibly avoid it.

00:43:08 ◼   ► It is really, it's because like the the Apple Silicon chips are going to be interesting

00:43:12 ◼   ► potentially in so many ways in these laptops. I will want one so I can talk about them on shows.

00:43:18 ◼   ► I'm not gonna buy two laptops, right?

00:43:20 ◼   ► So like that's gonna wait.

00:43:22 ◼   ► But what I have done is I have for a few years now,

00:43:25 ◼   ► I think I've had a Mac mini at home,

00:43:27 ◼   ► just performing some like home server type tasks.

00:43:31 ◼   ► So I brought it here.

00:43:32 ◼   ► It can do all of those things for me.

00:43:34 ◼   ► I can still VNC into it from home if I want to.

00:43:37 ◼   ► But that Mac mini is now here.

00:43:39 ◼   ► I had to buy a monitor because couldn't get the one from you.

00:43:44 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, we never quite figured out

00:43:46 ◼   ► how this transport is going to happen.

00:43:48 ◼   ► - Well, I just figured,

00:43:49 ◼   ► because we agreed to this LG drug deal before the pandemic.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Right, and then at that point I was like,

00:43:57 ◼   ► well, I know I'm not seeing Grey for a long time.

00:44:01 ◼   ► And I figured if I see you for any reason,

00:44:04 ◼   ► the primary reason is not gonna be

00:44:05 ◼   ► because I wanna get a monitor from you.

00:44:08 ◼   ► - Right.

00:44:09 ◼   ► - That's just not really high on my list.

00:44:10 ◼   ► - Yes, would you like to try to transport this home

00:44:13 ◼   ► on a train right now?

00:44:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, not really.

00:44:15 ◼   ► - So I bought a Dell monitor.

00:44:18 ◼   ► It's like one of the Dell,

00:44:19 ◼   ► I think they're called UltraSharp monitors.

00:44:22 ◼   ► And this is mainly because those LGs

00:44:24 ◼   ► are really hard to get right now in the UK.

00:44:27 ◼   ► 'Cause I was gonna get one of the LG monitors

00:44:29 ◼   ► just because then I didn't have to think about

00:44:31 ◼   ► will this be supported properly, right?

00:44:33 ◼   ► Because I couldn't get one,

00:44:34 ◼   ► I had to do the research I didn't want to do.

00:44:37 ◼   ► - Right.

00:44:38 ◼   ► - And found out that the monitor that I was gonna get

00:44:39 ◼   ► was gonna be good.

00:44:40 ◼   ► And it's great, like it looks great.

00:44:42 ◼   ► It's got all of the ports on it that I want.

00:44:44 ◼   ► and it's on a VESA arm here on the desk, which is fantastic.

00:44:46 ◼   ► I love having the monitor off the desk

00:44:49 ◼   ► and the arm is way back, which it wouldn't be

00:44:52 ◼   ► if it was an iMac, right?

00:44:53 ◼   ► Like I'd have to have it closer to me.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And I have more flexibility with it.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I can lift it up, I can move it around.

00:44:58 ◼   ► And I'm really happy with that.

00:44:59 ◼   ► So that's kind of where I am with the desk.

00:45:02 ◼   ► And I've got most of the things set up.

00:45:03 ◼   ► I had to buy some extra peripherals.

00:45:05 ◼   ► Like I got a new Wacom tablet and stuff like that

00:45:07 ◼   ► for this desk, which is stuff I would have bought anyway.

00:45:11 ◼   ► 'Cause what I'm trying to do is, at the moment,

00:45:13 ◼   ► is not to get things that won't be used.

00:45:16 ◼   ► So like, my expectation is at some point,

00:45:19 ◼   ► Apple will release a new monitor,

00:45:21 ◼   ► which I will want for this desk.

00:45:23 ◼   ► But then, Adina will then have this Dell for her desk.

00:45:26 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:45:27 ◼   ► You're planning the pass me down path of electronics?

00:45:30 ◼   ► - Exactly, and also like, all of the gear that I'm using

00:45:33 ◼   ► here is my travel gear, right?

00:45:36 ◼   ► So it's stuff I already had.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Because I'm in this in between,

00:45:40 ◼   ► I don't wanna buy things technology-wise

00:45:42 ◼   ► adjust for the in-between. Because that's not the way that this thing will be used in the future.

00:45:47 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm pretty happy with where we're at. Obviously I'm comfortable enough to be recording

00:45:53 ◼   ► this show. There's more to do. I've realized that I've kind of... to be able to get this place to

00:45:58 ◼   ► where I want it, I have had to let go of some of my aesthetic ideals for the studio. Well, yes,

00:46:04 ◼   ► one of the things I've been waiting to ask you for is, "Send me a picture of where you're recording

00:46:07 ◼   ► from. Like, I want to see what the setup looks like right now." Well, okay, I can send you some.

00:46:12 ◼   ► I mean, you've seen the little kind of room

00:46:16 ◼   ► I constructed for myself, the blankets.

00:46:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, but it's different when you're actually there

00:46:20 ◼   ► and you're really recording in it.

00:46:21 ◼   ► I wanna see what it looks like right now.

00:46:23 ◼   ► What does Myke's recording setup look like?

00:46:26 ◼   ► - So I'll send you a picture of my desk.

00:46:28 ◼   ► When I meet the aesthetic ideas thing that I'm talking about

00:46:31 ◼   ► is for having this little room constructed

00:46:34 ◼   ► of big blankets and dividers, right?

00:46:36 ◼   ► But I've decided that I kinda just have to

00:46:40 ◼   ► let go of that a little bit, you know?

00:46:41 ◼   ► because this thing has to, at its core, be functional.

00:46:45 ◼   ► And I can make the rest of the studio be comfortable

00:46:49 ◼   ► and look the way that I want it to be,

00:46:51 ◼   ► but this recording area, it has to be fit for purpose.

00:46:54 ◼   ► And if that means I have to have these really ugly blankets

00:46:58 ◼   ► hanging to each side of the desk,

00:47:00 ◼   ► then that's just the way it's gonna have to be.

00:47:02 ◼   ► - They seem fine though.

00:47:03 ◼   ► It seems like a perfectly fine setup

00:47:05 ◼   ► to have those two on either side.

00:47:07 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I don't know.

00:47:08 ◼   ► It kind of works with the bricks behind it.

00:47:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you'll notice that I'm struggling

00:47:11 ◼   ► to get those sound panels to stick to the walls.

00:47:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:47:15 ◼   ► - Well, yes, the sound panels,

00:47:17 ◼   ► you have a sad sound panel that's fallen off the wall.

00:47:18 ◼   ► - There should be three of them.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I put all three of them up.

00:47:21 ◼   ► - Ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.

00:47:23 ◼   ► - And then we came back,

00:47:24 ◼   ► first time we came back after the lockdown,

00:47:25 ◼   ► two of them had fallen off the wall.

00:47:27 ◼   ► The one on the left has somehow managed to stay on the wall.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Like, they're light, these panels are actually quite light.

00:47:34 ◼   ► But they have these large kind of Velcro strips on them

00:47:38 ◼   ► that have an adhesive on the back.

00:47:40 ◼   ► and I stuck them on the walls and they were fine.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Didn't really think about the fact

00:47:43 ◼   ► that these brick walls are very uneven.

00:47:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, those 3M adhesives are not gonna work

00:47:49 ◼   ► on a brick wall. - No.

00:47:50 ◼   ► - That's not gonna happen.

00:47:51 ◼   ► - What I didn't really pay attention to about the fact

00:47:53 ◼   ► is that the wall behind me is just a flat wall,

00:47:55 ◼   ► and really my desk should have been against that wall.

00:47:58 ◼   ► And then it would have been better,

00:48:00 ◼   ► so maybe I'll move it at some point,

00:48:01 ◼   ► or I'll do what I can do and just haven't done,

00:48:04 ◼   ► which is to just drill some screws into the wall

00:48:06 ◼   ► and hang them up that way.

00:48:07 ◼   ► But we have yet to really work out the way.

00:48:11 ◼   ► So this is what I'm talking about

00:48:12 ◼   ► when I'm like 80% of the way there.

00:48:14 ◼   ► It's like I have these sound panels

00:48:15 ◼   ► that just all haven't gone up yet.

00:48:17 ◼   ► - I have these sound panels.

00:48:18 ◼   ► They're just not absorbing any sound

00:48:20 ◼   ► in their current position.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - They may be absorbing sound,

00:48:22 ◼   ► but just not the way that I need them to absorb the sound.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Like they're pointing in the wrong places.

00:48:27 ◼   ► And then I'm gonna, the last thing I think we're gonna do

00:48:29 ◼   ► that will probably be the only thing left to do

00:48:31 ◼   ► is to like hang something from above.

00:48:34 ◼   ► We're gonna bring like a professional in

00:48:36 ◼   ► and just like hang these things called like clouds

00:48:39 ◼   ► or something just above me.

00:48:42 ◼   ► 'Cause that's where the echo,

00:48:43 ◼   ► the only echo that's left now,

00:48:45 ◼   ► it's just right above my head.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And then when that's done, I'll be happy.

00:48:50 ◼   ► And ultimately, this is still more better for me

00:48:53 ◼   ► for more what I want than to put a room in this studio,

00:48:57 ◼   ► which was a thing that many people recommended

00:48:59 ◼   ► and a thing that I considered and looked into, right?

00:49:01 ◼   ► To get a soundproof room and put it in the studio.

00:49:04 ◼   ► And I really didn't want to do that

00:49:06 ◼   ► because I didn't like the idea

00:49:07 ◼   ► and I still don't like the idea

00:49:09 ◼   ► of being in this little box.

00:49:12 ◼   ► Because plus I can be gruesome in the summer.

00:49:14 ◼   ► I left the small room to get a big studio.

00:49:24 ◼   ► I don't wanna get a big studio

00:49:25 ◼   ► and then go into a small room inside of the big studio.

00:49:29 ◼   ► Because even though I have these curtains to my side

00:49:32 ◼   ► or whatever, I still feel like I'm part of this bigger space

00:49:36 ◼   ► And I just don't really like the idea of it.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Having had all the research done and everything,

00:49:43 ◼   ► I'm pretty happy with where we've gotten to,

00:49:45 ◼   ► and we just have that one last thing to do,

00:49:47 ◼   ► and then I think we're pretty set.

00:49:48 ◼   ► And then I'll be good to record from here.

00:49:50 ◼   ► And then once I'm really comfortable with that,

00:49:53 ◼   ► I can start being here all the time,

00:49:54 ◼   ► and it will be fantastic.

00:49:56 ◼   ► - Well, it's really exciting that you're there

00:49:58 ◼   ► and recording this first episode.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - I'm so happy.

00:50:01 ◼   ► It just feels like,

00:50:04 ◼   ► it's got that effect that, you know,

00:50:06 ◼   ► I don't know how long this effect will last,

00:50:08 ◼   ► but probably quite a while of like,

00:50:10 ◼   ► I feel productive when I'm here.

00:50:12 ◼   ► You know, like, because I have this mentality of like,

00:50:16 ◼   ► and I always felt this way when I would do co-work

00:50:19 ◼   ► and stuff like that, of like,

00:50:20 ◼   ► if I've left the house to come to this place,

00:50:23 ◼   ► I should just get the work done.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Otherwise I might well be at home.

00:50:27 ◼   ► If I'm not gonna do the work, don't be here, go home.

00:50:30 ◼   ► So when I'm here, I'm like, I'm getting more work done.

00:50:34 ◼   ► There is always like, um, this is the sort of Hawthorne effect where it's like,

00:50:39 ◼   ► Oh, just having done something differently improves your productivity.

00:50:42 ◼   ► Like that, that always is the case, especially in the situation you are in

00:50:46 ◼   ► where you're paying the rent for this to be the office, which is supposed to be

00:50:51 ◼   ► like the production core of the most valuable work that you do, keeping that

00:50:56 ◼   ► foremost in your mind, I think is, is really helpful.

00:51:00 ◼   ► And the most important part of that is recognizing,

00:51:04 ◼   ► like, yeah, if you're not getting work done,

00:51:06 ◼   ► get out of there, right?

00:51:07 ◼   ► Just accept that fact and just go.

00:51:10 ◼   ► And try to keep it like a holy place

00:51:12 ◼   ► where you're doing your work.

00:51:14 ◼   ► - I think I'll be able to do that.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Like, I have a comfortable area here,

00:51:18 ◼   ► but it's still to be worked in.

00:51:22 ◼   ► 'Cause not all of my work needs to be at desks.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Sometimes I'm just reading stuff

00:51:27 ◼   ► and I would like somewhere comfortable to sit to read.

00:51:30 ◼   ► But like being in this space

00:51:31 ◼   ► just has a different feel to it.

00:51:33 ◼   ► It doesn't feel like my home at all.

00:51:36 ◼   ► And that was the whole point

00:51:37 ◼   ► of getting this place in the first place.

00:51:40 ◼   ► It was like having somewhere out of home

00:51:42 ◼   ► where I can come and get my work done

00:51:44 ◼   ► and then go home and then there's no more work done.

00:51:46 ◼   ► When I initially decided this,

00:51:50 ◼   ► we were like the world is very different.

00:51:53 ◼   ► And even though I was working at home,

00:51:56 ◼   ► I was also leaving my home to do things,

00:51:59 ◼   ► social things and whatever.

00:52:02 ◼   ► Not doing that now so much.

00:52:04 ◼   ► So I have that at home feeling,

00:52:08 ◼   ► like the working at home,

00:52:09 ◼   ► living at home, completely at home feeling,

00:52:12 ◼   ► even more than I did when I decided

00:52:14 ◼   ► I wanted an out of home studio.

00:52:16 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:52:18 ◼   ► - Right, so I am very appreciative of having this place now

00:52:21 ◼   ► and I think it will continue to be of great use to us

00:52:24 ◼   ► as time goes on.

00:52:26 ◼   ► but we've just got to get the last little bits done

00:52:29 ◼   ► and we'll be good.

00:52:30 ◼   ► So I'm super happy that we're here

00:52:33 ◼   ► and I've finally been able to record a podcast

00:52:37 ◼   ► from this place.

00:52:38 ◼   ► - Congratulations on getting that done.

00:52:40 ◼   ► I am extremely envious of your non-home place to work.

00:52:44 ◼   ► That's really great that you have that.

00:52:46 ◼   ► - Well, whenever you want to break the seal

00:52:48 ◼   ► on your quarantine, I'll set up a desk for you.

00:52:51 ◼   ► - Nice try.

00:52:53 ◼   ► - I mean it.

00:52:54 ◼   ► ever won it, you can have it, you know?

00:52:57 ◼   ► - Yes, no, we're not going to break the seal just yet.

00:53:00 ◼   ► - That's why I said whenever, right?

00:53:03 ◼   ► - It made me smile because just as this whole thing began,

00:53:06 ◼   ► I was really trying to find another office

00:53:09 ◼   ► outside of my house to work in,

00:53:11 ◼   ► and obviously that got cut short.

00:53:13 ◼   ► But one of the places that I was looking at,

00:53:17 ◼   ► they're like, oh, we don't have any space available

00:53:19 ◼   ► for you for what you need.

00:53:21 ◼   ► I just got this email from them yesterday,

00:53:23 ◼   ► and they were like, "Hey, you messaged us months ago

00:53:27 ◼   ► "about trying to find a space here.

00:53:28 ◼   ► "Well, we have anything you need."

00:53:31 ◼   ► Right?

00:53:32 ◼   ► And what was really great is like,

00:53:34 ◼   ► I was talking to them about one space

00:53:36 ◼   ► where I was like, "Oh, this could work."

00:53:38 ◼   ► But they wanted me to sign like a two-year contract

00:53:41 ◼   ► and I was like, "Forget that.

00:53:43 ◼   ► "Like, are you crazy?

00:53:44 ◼   ► "No way."

00:53:45 ◼   ► And this email that came from them was like,

00:53:47 ◼   ► "Short-term, long-term, big, small, anything you need,

00:53:52 ◼   ► "we got a buddy.

00:53:53 ◼   ► like we can we can do it. Would you like us to knock down the wall between two spaces? We'll do it.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Do you want to just rent it for a week? No problem. Yeah it was just such a funny email to get and

00:54:04 ◼   ► and it's like they have they have got to be hurting because I also imagine like my email

00:54:11 ◼   ► must have been at that like someone's going through their inbox for the past year trying

00:54:16 ◼   ► to find everyone who's ever contacted them about looking for a place and just messaging them

00:54:21 ◼   ► You know, and even for me, I was like, well, you know, because of our situation, like I can't,

00:54:26 ◼   ► I can't break quarantine yet. I'd love to help you guys out and help me out at the same time,

00:54:32 ◼   ► but I cannot help you. So, uh, you know, good luck filling those seats, guys.

00:54:36 ◼   ► [BEEP]

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00:56:22 ◼   ► So you published a little video.

00:56:24 ◼   ► Would we call it a little video?

00:56:26 ◼   ► It was... let me say why I'm calling it that actually.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:56:30 ◼   ► It was shorter than the videos you've been doing recently.

00:56:32 ◼   ► It was pretty timely because it was related to some news that was going on.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And visually it was more typical grey style.

00:56:41 ◼   ► What does typical grey style mean?

00:56:43 ◼   ► I don't know what that means.

00:56:44 ◼   ► - The old style.

00:56:46 ◼   ► - Ah, okay.

00:56:47 ◼   ► - Right, well, like I think it's very fair to say

00:56:49 ◼   ► that like your videos of late

00:56:51 ◼   ► have been much more ambitious visually.

00:56:54 ◼   ► This was more like the standard stick figure style.

00:56:58 ◼   ► There was no spinning spaceships or little animations.

00:57:03 ◼   ► I don't know, am I saying this right?

00:57:04 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm saying.

00:57:05 ◼   ► I don't know what, I hate when you ask me that question

00:57:07 ◼   ► 'cause I know what I mean.

00:57:08 ◼   ► I think everyone knows what I'm saying if they've seen it,

00:57:11 ◼   ► but then I feel like I'm being critical

00:57:13 ◼   ► of the work of your animator,

00:57:14 ◼   ► which is not what I'm intending to do.

00:57:16 ◼   ► - You're not being critical at all.

00:57:17 ◼   ► The reason I ask is because I just,

00:57:19 ◼   ► I always think it's very interesting

00:57:21 ◼   ► with any kind of media consumption is

00:57:25 ◼   ► when you watch something, you have a response to it

00:57:29 ◼   ► and it's often hard to articulate

00:57:31 ◼   ► why you have that response, right?

00:57:34 ◼   ► And so I was asking not because I'm like,

00:57:37 ◼   ► is Myke criticizing this different style?

00:57:40 ◼   ► It's just more like I wanted to see

00:57:42 ◼   ► What are you picking up on?

00:57:44 ◼   ► - All right, I'm watching it now again,

00:57:46 ◼   ► and I know what it is now.

00:57:48 ◼   ► - Okay, what are you picking up on?

00:57:49 ◼   ► - Nothing's moving.

00:57:51 ◼   ► - Yes, okay, that is the key difference right there

00:57:55 ◼   ► that you, this is one of those

00:57:57 ◼   ► you don't notice but your brain does moments,

00:58:00 ◼   ► whereas it's hard to articulate unless you go back

00:58:03 ◼   ► and you're really trying to pay attention,

00:58:05 ◼   ► but that is the key difference.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Nothing is moving, everything is static slides.

00:58:09 ◼   ► - Or like the movement that I just saw was like,

00:58:12 ◼   ► that could have been done in PowerPoint.

00:58:14 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, yeah.

00:58:15 ◼   ► That is a key difference.

00:58:17 ◼   ► There's no, I always forget what it's called,

00:58:21 ◼   ► but there's a visual effect I really like

00:58:24 ◼   ► that we did in the Pirates video

00:58:25 ◼   ► where if you are panning the camera horizontally,

00:58:30 ◼   ► like across a scene,

00:58:33 ◼   ► you can have the distant background

00:58:35 ◼   ► moves less than the foreground.

00:58:38 ◼   ► No one ever really notices it,

00:58:39 ◼   ► but it gives it a sense of depth of like,

00:58:41 ◼   ► oh, those trees are further away than the ship, right?

00:58:46 ◼   ► And the stick figure is closer to the camera

00:58:49 ◼   ► than the ship is, right?

00:58:51 ◼   ► But that kind of stuff's a real pain in the ass to do,

00:58:53 ◼   ► as you might imagine.

00:58:54 ◼   ► But yeah, so you know, you're like,

00:58:57 ◼   ► it's just interesting to me that you pick up straight away

00:59:01 ◼   ► of like, wait, is this a little video?

00:59:02 ◼   ► Something about it feels different.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And it's little stuff like that that I think you're noticing.

00:59:08 ◼   ► Like yeah, there's no motion in the video

00:59:10 ◼   ► or there's very minimal motion in the video.

00:59:13 ◼   ► And my voice is also a little bit different in the video

00:59:16 ◼   ► because I didn't do a hundred takes

00:59:19 ◼   ► and the writing style is slightly different.

00:59:22 ◼   ► So there's a lot of things about that video

00:59:24 ◼   ► that to me register as clearly very different.

00:59:29 ◼   ► - Just like, you know, it's a paper texture video, right?

00:59:32 ◼   ► It's just like the background is all the CGB grade

00:59:35 ◼   ► paper texture, whatever you would call it.

00:59:37 ◼   ► Which again, there are just recently not many videos

00:59:41 ◼   ► that you've put out which have that visual style to them,

00:59:43 ◼   ► which was the style when it was just you.

00:59:46 ◼   ► And so like it is quite different in those ways,

00:59:50 ◼   ► which is why I would say it's a little video.

00:59:54 ◼   ► And I understand exactly why,

00:59:57 ◼   ► because you are making a video about something

01:00:00 ◼   ► that happened just a few weeks ago.

01:00:02 ◼   ► And anyone that's listened to this show for long enough

01:00:05 ◼   ► knows that it is incredibly rare for you

01:00:07 ◼   ► to put something out like that.

01:00:08 ◼   ► With maybe the exception of the lockdown productivity video,

01:00:13 ◼   ► but at the same time, you nearly killed yourself

01:00:16 ◼   ► making that video.

01:00:17 ◼   ► And I'm pretty confident that that wasn't what happened here.

01:00:22 ◼   ► I'm sure you were very busy for a few days,

01:00:24 ◼   ► but it's quite a different thing.

01:00:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I mean, to put it in context here,

01:00:30 ◼   ► so the little video that I put out is titled

01:00:33 ◼   ► The Supreme Court Rules on Faithless Electors.

01:00:36 ◼   ► And yes, this is another Electoral College kind of video.

01:00:40 ◼   ► And basically, the way this happened is--

01:00:44 ◼   ► you know this, Myke, because you use the YouTube studio.

01:00:46 ◼   ► That's the behind the scenes app.

01:00:48 ◼   ► But when you're managing your YouTube channel

01:00:50 ◼   ► as someone who owns a YouTube channel,

01:00:52 ◼   ► you see comments coming in from all of the videos in one place.

01:00:59 ◼   ► And this is actually quite useful as a creator,

01:01:01 ◼   ► because sometimes it allows you to catch, oh, something's

01:01:04 ◼   ► going on with this video in a way that you wouldn't notice otherwise.

01:01:07 ◼   ► Oh right, like the algorithms picked it up so there's new activity on this video.

01:01:11 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah so like oh there's a bunch of comments on an old video that I can see are coming

01:01:15 ◼   ► in why is that? And so I was just doing something in the YouTube back end and I saw that there

01:01:20 ◼   ► were a bunch of new comments on the national popular vote interstate compact video that

01:01:25 ◼   ► I'd made and all the comments were like oh well this plan is dead this plan is killed

01:01:30 ◼   ► now, this is never going to happen, you know, boohoo sad faces. And so of course that immediately

01:01:35 ◼   ► caught my attention. I was like, what's going on with this? And I looked it up and there…

01:01:39 ◼   ► You find out your news from YouTube comments on your old videos.

01:01:43 ◼   ► I mean, look, we can… Here, here's the thing. Here's the thing. We can actually get to talking

01:01:50 ◼   ► about the news in a second. But this is one of the many mechanisms by which when I constantly

01:01:56 ◼   ► proselytize to people, "Hey guys, you don't need to actively follow the news, like, news

01:02:03 ◼   ► will find you whether you're trying to actively pursue it or not."

01:02:07 ◼   ► Like you just don't think of all of the little sieves in your life, and this is totally one

01:02:12 ◼   ► of those mechanisms of like, "Oh, something must have happened in the world related to

01:02:19 ◼   ► the Electoral College and now I need to figure it out because I can see there's a bunch of

01:02:22 ◼   ► comments on this nine-month-old video now all of a sudden."

01:02:26 ◼   ► So I looked it up and there was a recent Supreme Court ruling having to do with the faithless

01:02:30 ◼   ► electors.

01:02:31 ◼   ► And so here's what happened.

01:02:35 ◼   ► This was an evening time and I was just googling around and trying to figure out what it was.

01:02:41 ◼   ► And I did come across a bunch of news stories that were reporting on this.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Like the headlines were "Supreme Court bans faithless electors."

01:02:51 ◼   ► You know, "Faithless electors illegal," says Supreme Court.

01:02:55 ◼   ► you know, this kind of stuff.

01:02:57 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh, that's really quite surprising.

01:02:59 ◼   ► That's quite shocking that the Supreme Court

01:03:01 ◼   ► would step in on this issue in such a forceful way."

01:03:06 ◼   ► And, of course, once you start digging through the details,

01:03:08 ◼   ► like, it's not remotely that.

01:03:10 ◼   ► It's like it's more subtle than the headlines are portraying.

01:03:14 ◼   ► So I spent an evening trying to, like,

01:03:16 ◼   ► dig around and figure out what this was,

01:03:18 ◼   ► and then I eventually got to the actual Supreme Court.

01:03:21 ◼   ► They put out, like, a PDF of, "Here's the summary

01:03:24 ◼   ► our judgment that you can read through and it's surprisingly readable. So I was looking

01:03:28 ◼   ► through that and it was it was interesting and I kind of thought, oh well this was just

01:03:32 ◼   ► an evening's idle curiosity explored of like, oh okay well now I know what the deal was

01:03:40 ◼   ► why this video was being more active. But it has happened sometimes. The next morning

01:03:46 ◼   ► I just woke up mad like I was still thinking about it and the reason I was mad is I was

01:03:51 ◼   ► mad at all the stupid headlines that I'd come across from the day before of like, is it

01:03:57 ◼   ► that hard to write a headline that isn't explicitly wrong about what has actually occurred? Right?

01:04:04 ◼   ► Like there's no ban. Nothing has been made illegal. There was just like a reaffirmation

01:04:09 ◼   ► of 150 year old verdict in the Supreme Court. Like the case was a total nothing. It was

01:04:16 ◼   ► just like, yeah, we're reaffirming a state's rights issue in the US.

01:04:20 ◼   ► had changed, the Supreme Court just reminded everybody of something that already existed,

01:04:24 ◼   ► right?

01:04:25 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, and it's, I was even thinking like, I don't know why the Supreme Court even

01:04:30 ◼   ► took this case, like why did they, what was the deal here? Like, I don't understand. The

01:04:35 ◼   ► way it works is like the Supreme Court obviously gets thousands and thousands and thousands

01:04:39 ◼   ► of cases submitted to them every year. Part of the whole process is that the court picks

01:04:44 ◼   ► which cases they're going to rule on and I mean it's not unreasonable to assume that

01:04:52 ◼   ► they pick cases because there's something in particular that they think was either wrong

01:04:58 ◼   ► or is like really important to make sure that like there's a verdict on this one way or

01:05:03 ◼   ► another. So like Supreme Court news watchers you can make pretty good guesses that if say

01:05:11 ◼   ► say like a case where someone who has been convicted and is in prison, if their case

01:05:18 ◼   ► has made it all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court has accepted that case,

01:05:23 ◼   ► smart money is on the verdict is going to be overturned, right? Like that's part of

01:05:28 ◼   ► why they accepted the case, right? So I don't even know why they accepted this case in the

01:05:31 ◼   ► first place because it was just such a boring nothing. But I woke up like angry at the news

01:05:36 ◼   ► headlines I had read the previous day and it's like, "Why did they have to write it

01:05:41 ◼   ► as though a thing was different?" And so, as happens sometimes when you wake up angry,

01:05:47 ◼   ► it's like, "Straight to the keyboard! You know, type type type type type type type!"

01:05:51 ◼   ► Like, I'm just really annoyed about this and basically realized I had very quickly

01:06:00 ◼   ► written most of what was a pretty decent quick little update script and then decided, "You

01:06:06 ◼   ► know what, I'm going to drop the other thing that I'm working on right now and let me just

01:06:09 ◼   ► see if I can rush a quick and very intentionally light little video around this topic. And

01:06:19 ◼   ► this is just one of these cases of the stars aligning, like, it's a topic I'm already incredibly

01:06:24 ◼   ► well versed in, so I don't need to like re-research a bunch of stuff. The video script itself

01:06:31 ◼   ► can, you know, the majority of it is just a recap of the situation so that you can understand

01:06:36 ◼   ► what the verdict is, with a little bit of me like sticking the knife into the news about

01:06:42 ◼   ► like these headlines are lying to you and then telling you like nothing has occurred

01:06:46 ◼   ► here.

01:06:47 ◼   ► But yeah, so it just sort of happened very quickly and I think that's been on my mind

01:06:52 ◼   ► for a while and goes all the way back to September and changing the business model is I was very

01:07:00 ◼   ► aware that like when the channel was younger I did feel a lot freer to occasionally make

01:07:10 ◼   ► just shorter videos on whatever like on a really small thing.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Oh right yeah because it just as a refresher it's the idea that like if the Patreon was

01:07:21 ◼   ► triggered on a per video basis you felt like maybe you needed to have a real big point

01:07:27 ◼   ► to each video.

01:07:28 ◼   ► Yeah, so yeah, this is exactly like one of the things that was on my mind is triggering

01:07:35 ◼   ► it per video now constantly brought up the question of like, does this video count? Right?

01:07:42 ◼   ► Or does this video not count? Oh, yeah, because you could choose, couldn't you? Yeah, I was

01:07:47 ◼   ► choosing like, if I published a video, was this going to count? Or was it going to not

01:07:53 ◼   ► count. That's a lot to put on yourself. Yeah and it was a thing that over the

01:07:58 ◼   ► course of a couple years I recognized was genuinely becoming a real problem in

01:08:03 ◼   ► the way that I was thinking about topics and like working on stuff. And so when I

01:08:07 ◼   ► was making that decision to switch last September or October or whenever it was,

01:08:13 ◼   ► one of the things that I had in mind was what I was thinking of as light gray.

01:08:19 ◼   ► Alright like hey you know what would be nice? If I can make some light gray

01:08:23 ◼   ► videos, not everything needs to be like big and serious.

01:08:27 ◼   ► I can intentionally try to just keep it on my mind of like, Hey man, you've got

01:08:34 ◼   ► the option to just try and do something that's simpler and shorter sometimes.

01:08:40 ◼   ► Now, of course, like there's always costs with doing any kinds of projects.

01:08:45 ◼   ► So, you know, one of the things I've talked about a lot this year is the

01:08:48 ◼   ► change to my workflow of like, Oh, I have things that are topic locked and I'm

01:08:52 ◼   ► trying to really stick to that and it's very helpful.

01:08:54 ◼   ► And something like this breaks that rule a little bit of, Hey,

01:08:59 ◼   ► we're going to drop everything for this week and just do this one quick thing.

01:09:04 ◼   ► You know,

01:09:05 ◼   ► like I don't want to do that very often because I think that does have other

01:09:08 ◼   ► consequences,

01:09:09 ◼   ► but it's useful to keep in mind of like when the stars align that can make sense

01:09:15 ◼   ► to do.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And since changing the way my business works,

01:09:19 ◼   ► This has been on my mind of like, just keep your eye on the horizon for if this case comes up, this is now an option that's available and you can just do.

01:09:29 ◼   ► And it's not something you have to agonize about.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Does this video count?

01:09:35 ◼   ► And if it doesn't count, does it make sense to work on?

01:09:38 ◼   ► You know, so I have to say I'm really pleased with the way this has gone of just like, okay, I can make a little thing.

01:09:46 ◼   ► I can put it up.

01:09:46 ◼   ► It's totally fine.

01:09:49 ◼   ► And it's another way in which I'm grateful that like through the support of my audience,

01:09:57 ◼   ► I have options to make different sorts of stuff. And I'm always very careful to not say like,

01:10:05 ◼   ► "Hey, I'm going to be able to make more because that's not just the way my channel works."

01:10:10 ◼   ► But I have the ability to like put out a smaller thing like this sometimes. And I think everybody

01:10:18 ◼   ► is happier to like have the video than to not have the video and it's nice to as the creator

01:10:25 ◼   ► be able to think "oh there's just something smaller here that I can do"

01:10:30 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:31 ◼   ► It is very interesting looking at a bunch of my older stuff to realize how short some of the

01:10:37 ◼   ► videos are. The amount of stuff that I have which is under two minutes from the older older back

01:10:44 ◼   ► back catalog is surprisingly high.

01:10:46 ◼   ► But yeah, so this I viewed as in some ways the start again

01:10:51 ◼   ► of this kind of video.

01:10:54 ◼   ► Smaller, simpler, and that can be OK.

01:10:57 ◼   ► So I've made like--

01:10:59 ◼   ► to try to help myself think about it,

01:11:01 ◼   ► I've actually put it as like another playlist genre

01:11:04 ◼   ► thing on my YouTube channel of like, oh, hey,

01:11:07 ◼   ► there's the main videos, and here are the light gray videos.

01:11:12 ◼   ► So maybe your expectations in watching these can be a little lower and that's fine.

01:11:17 ◼   ► And you know, because there's, there's other things to watch here as well and they don't

01:11:22 ◼   ► have the same amount of pressure as like the main videos do.

01:11:29 ◼   ► And that's also one of the things you might be picking up on is even in the video thumbnail,

01:11:33 ◼   ► like it doesn't have the official little line and CGP Grey logo on the side.

01:11:38 ◼   ► It's just like, oh, this is a regular thumbnail

01:11:41 ◼   ► to try to visually indicate,

01:11:43 ◼   ► like this video is different from the others.

01:11:46 ◼   ► It's a little bit of like an off sequence kind of video.

01:11:49 ◼   ► - I'm looking at that.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Okay, so the logo on the left side, that's the key, right?

01:11:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the logo on the left side,

01:11:56 ◼   ► I feel like I put those on serious videos in some sense.

01:12:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I can see like the video

01:12:03 ◼   ► about your YouTube suspension.

01:12:05 ◼   ► - Right.

01:12:06 ◼   ► all the footnote videos and stuff like that they don't have it that's cool that's a nice little

01:12:12 ◼   ► branding trick yeah again i don't think anybody consciously notices it but it's something i just

01:12:18 ◼   ► try to do to enforce like here is this distinction and so i just just going through the back catalogue

01:12:25 ◼   ► and trying to collect up all of the here's the random other videos and put them in one place

01:12:29 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Okay, great. Now this is a genre."

01:12:32 ◼   ► We have official, heavy, serious, like, Grey Explains.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Many, many, many drafts.

01:12:38 ◼   ► Hundreds of hours of animation kind of videos.

01:12:41 ◼   ► And then down at the bottom, it's like,

01:12:43 ◼   ► "Oh, here's the other stuff. Here's the light grey stuff."

01:12:46 ◼   ► You know, "Enjoy. I hope you like it."

01:12:48 ◼   ► -Do you see this as a shift to your theme?

01:12:52 ◼   ► Do you think that -- -No. No.

01:12:54 ◼   ► -No? -Like, what I think of this is...

01:12:58 ◼   ► I mean, like, you know this as well, right?

01:13:02 ◼   ► When you have a direct dependency on the audience for what you're making, it intrinsically changes

01:13:11 ◼   ► the way that you think about things.

01:13:14 ◼   ► And so I just really think that for my YouTube channel in particular, ultimately going to

01:13:23 ◼   ► the per video thing, it made sense for a little while,

01:13:27 ◼   ► but it grew into more of a problem than it was worth.

01:13:31 ◼   ► And so switching to monthly got rid of that problem

01:13:36 ◼   ► and now allowed me to go back to a thing

01:13:42 ◼   ► that I used to do more frequently,

01:13:45 ◼   ► but just died out as the problem of like,

01:13:48 ◼   ► Does this video count?

01:13:50 ◼   ► Grew more and more in my mind.

01:13:53 ◼   ► So I don't think it's a new direction.

01:13:57 ◼   ► It's a little bit of a return to optionality,

01:14:01 ◼   ► I think is the way that I would put it.

01:14:04 ◼   ► But yeah, it's also totally mind blowing from my perspective

01:14:07 ◼   ► to have a video be conceived of and then uploaded

01:14:11 ◼   ► in such a short period of time.

01:14:13 ◼   ► It's like, wow, that's amazing.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Talking about yearly themes.

01:14:19 ◼   ► So I want to talk about yearly themes a little bit today

01:14:22 ◼   ► because I think I may have mentioned this

01:14:24 ◼   ► on a previous episode.

01:14:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, you sneak peeked this last time

01:14:27 ◼   ► that there's going to be an update to your yearly theme.

01:14:29 ◼   ► - The update is I have a new one.

01:14:31 ◼   ► - Right, year of refinements, no more.

01:14:34 ◼   ► - Well, I'll get to that.

01:14:36 ◼   ► So just as a quick aside, I thought that this isn't

01:14:38 ◼   ► a full-on yearly themes episode in the sense like

01:14:42 ◼   ► we're not going to go into the full backstory,

01:14:44 ◼   ► I don't think you are gonna have a new yearly theme today.

01:14:47 ◼   ► - No.

01:14:48 ◼   ► - If you are new to the show,

01:14:50 ◼   ► you don't know what a yearly theme is.

01:14:51 ◼   ► We set these typically at the beginning of every year

01:14:54 ◼   ► and they are like our guides for the year.

01:14:57 ◼   ► It might be a word or a phrase

01:14:58 ◼   ► and it kind of has a lot of meaning behind it

01:15:01 ◼   ► and there's a lot of offshoots from it and what that means

01:15:03 ◼   ► and then it will help us kind of shape

01:15:04 ◼   ► what we want to achieve in a year.

01:15:06 ◼   ► If you want more background than this,

01:15:08 ◼   ► you can go and listen to episode 95 of the show,

01:15:11 ◼   ► which was our 2020 yearly themes episode

01:15:14 ◼   ► where we talk a lot about it and set our themes.

01:15:16 ◼   ► And then there's also a wonderful YouTube video

01:15:18 ◼   ► that Gray made about themes and like whether they're yearly

01:15:21 ◼   ► or quarterly or seasonal,

01:15:23 ◼   ► but like the idea as to what a theme is.

01:15:25 ◼   ► So you can go and get a lot of information from those

01:15:27 ◼   ► if you want a bit more of a background to it.

01:15:30 ◼   ► So what I wanna do is I wanna recap my theme

01:15:35 ◼   ► because I'm not gonna recap this theme anymore.

01:15:38 ◼   ► The year of refinement is done.

01:15:40 ◼   ► - Okay, so this is the post-mortem on year of refinements.

01:15:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:15:44 ◼   ► I hope that it will come back at some point in the future,

01:15:49 ◼   ► but I think it will become very clear

01:15:50 ◼   ► why the theme is over for me.

01:15:53 ◼   ► Because frankly, I just feel like in a nutshell,

01:15:56 ◼   ► I can't achieve what I wanted to achieve

01:15:59 ◼   ► from when I set out this year

01:16:01 ◼   ► for what I wanted this theme to be.

01:16:03 ◼   ► - No.

01:16:04 ◼   ► - And I thought about trying to adapt it

01:16:06 ◼   ► and just like take that meaning and put it to other things.

01:16:10 ◼   ► And I was thinking about that for a while,

01:16:11 ◼   ► but ultimately I ended up landing on something

01:16:14 ◼   ► which is quite different and made much more sense

01:16:18 ◼   ► than me just trying to find ways

01:16:20 ◼   ► to make refinement fit to the other things.

01:16:22 ◼   ► 'Cause frankly, I'm not in refinement at the moment.

01:16:25 ◼   ► That's just not where I am and it's not what my focus is

01:16:28 ◼   ► because I've upended so much of my life

01:16:31 ◼   ► in the last few months.

01:16:32 ◼   ► It's not refinement.

01:16:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and even just the thing of trying

01:16:36 ◼   ► to refit the theme, I feel like, no, no, no.

01:16:40 ◼   ► If you're trying to make it fit something new,

01:16:42 ◼   ► like it's already a bad sign.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Like it should feel like a natural fit.

01:16:46 ◼   ► You shouldn't be trying to make it rework it.

01:16:49 ◼   ► - More of what I meant was,

01:16:50 ◼   ► and this has happened for me in past years,

01:16:52 ◼   ► I will have something come up that I think about,

01:16:55 ◼   ► or it's come my way, and I think to myself,

01:16:58 ◼   ► would this fit in my yearly theme?

01:17:00 ◼   ► And then I kind of look at my yearly theme and be like,

01:17:03 ◼   ► okay, it fits if I think about it in these ways.

01:17:06 ◼   ► And then great, I'll move forward with it.

01:17:08 ◼   ► because like now I feel like this does make sense

01:17:10 ◼   ► for my yearly theme.

01:17:12 ◼   ► So like I did that, I was like, okay,

01:17:14 ◼   ► so stuff like membership, right?

01:17:16 ◼   ► And more tax, does that fit in the year of refinement?

01:17:18 ◼   ► Let me think.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Well, I could say, and then very quickly it was like,

01:17:22 ◼   ► you know what, that doesn't.

01:17:23 ◼   ► And if I'm gonna really focus on this

01:17:25 ◼   ► in the way that I want to,

01:17:27 ◼   ► I need to put the year of refinement away.

01:17:30 ◼   ► So because we won't review the year of refinement next year

01:17:34 ◼   ► when we do our 2021 yearly themes,

01:17:37 ◼   ► I wanted to do that now, 'cause it will also, I think,

01:17:39 ◼   ► give a little understanding as to why I think

01:17:42 ◼   ► I have to put this theme to bed.

01:17:45 ◼   ► So I had a few different areas that I wanted to focus on.

01:17:48 ◼   ► So first was to do what I kind of considered

01:17:52 ◼   ► is to better myself in the ways that I was interested in.

01:17:55 ◼   ► So understanding more on food,

01:17:57 ◼   ► understanding more on culture.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Well, the opportunity is that I wanted

01:18:02 ◼   ► to give myself, I can't do.

01:18:04 ◼   ► So, like, you know, like obviously I'm not eating at

01:18:07 ◼   ► restaurants at all, which was part of it,

01:18:10 ◼   ► but also was to take courses and stuff.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Like I mentioned that wine was a thing

01:18:13 ◼   ► that I was interested in.

01:18:14 ◼   ► Well, I had a couple of courses booked,

01:18:17 ◼   ► but like I'm not doing them.

01:18:20 ◼   ► One of them has been moved to way later in the year.

01:18:23 ◼   ► And really the year of refinement,

01:18:25 ◼   ► like a lot of it was focused around this very first point.

01:18:28 ◼   ► So the fact that I can't really do any of that

01:18:32 ◼   ► the way that I want to,

01:18:33 ◼   ► makes me feel like I liked this theme a lot

01:18:36 ◼   ► and everything that it stood for for me,

01:18:38 ◼   ► because it was a lot more focused on taking time this year

01:18:41 ◼   ► for me, just for me, and being that as like a part thing

01:18:46 ◼   ► that I wanted to work on was myself.

01:18:49 ◼   ► I want to do this,

01:18:51 ◼   ► but I'll do it when the world is in a different place.

01:18:54 ◼   ► The other thing was hobbies,

01:18:55 ◼   ► and the main hobby that I'd set that I was excited about

01:18:58 ◼   ► and interested in was pottery.

01:19:00 ◼   ► and that requires going to places.

01:19:04 ◼   ► - Or getting a pottery wheel for your house.

01:19:06 ◼   ► - You can't put a pottery wheel in your home.

01:19:08 ◼   ► It has to be like, well you can,

01:19:10 ◼   ► but then you'll ruin whatever room you put it in, right?

01:19:14 ◼   ► People tend to put them in basements or in sheds.

01:19:17 ◼   ► I haven't got either of those.

01:19:19 ◼   ► I do have, if you need to buy me a wonderful little gift

01:19:22 ◼   ► of like a hand clay thing, so I'm gonna try that out.

01:19:27 ◼   ► But what I really wanna do with the pottery stuff

01:19:29 ◼   ► is wheel-based, right?

01:19:31 ◼   ► Like to actually do things on a pottery wheel.

01:19:34 ◼   ► And again, I know I enjoyed that

01:19:36 ◼   ► and I know I wanna do more of it.

01:19:38 ◼   ► So when I can, I will go back to it,

01:19:40 ◼   ► but that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

01:19:42 ◼   ► I have gotten kind of two things in my life now,

01:19:46 ◼   ► which I do consider more of new interests.

01:19:50 ◼   ► One is like over the last few weeks,

01:19:52 ◼   ► we've been watching a lot of movies.

01:19:53 ◼   ► We are typically TV show people for home viewing

01:19:57 ◼   ► because we like to binge shows,

01:19:58 ◼   ► but we decided, well, what if we just like,

01:20:01 ◼   ► quote unquote binge movies, pick a director, pick an actor,

01:20:05 ◼   ► watch a bunch of their stuff.

01:20:07 ◼   ► So we've been doing that, which is because I love movies,

01:20:10 ◼   ► but just never really watch movies at home very often.

01:20:14 ◼   ► And this has been like a good reason to watch movies.

01:20:17 ◼   ► It's because at home I like kind of dependable viewing.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Right?

01:20:22 ◼   ► So like you pick a thing and you start watching that thing,

01:20:25 ◼   ► like binging a TV show and you know,

01:20:26 ◼   ► like this is what that TV show is going to be for a while and that's your show.

01:20:30 ◼   ► And movies are like, well, it could be anything. And also like movie to movie.

01:20:34 ◼   ► Do you have any idea what the quality is going to be like?

01:20:37 ◼   ► You're going to like them, right?

01:20:39 ◼   ► But what I found is in picking certain directors or actors,

01:20:43 ◼   ► if you like their work, there's typically a through line.

01:20:47 ◼   ► Yeah. That's it.

01:20:48 ◼   ► That's an interesting thing to do for this concept of binging movies,

01:20:51 ◼   ► of picking a director or picking an actor because like with many things in life,

01:20:56 ◼   ► There's options that you think of as like the high variance option and the low

01:20:59 ◼   ► variance option and TV shows are the low variance option. Like, Oh yeah,

01:21:05 ◼   ► you kind of know what you're going to get.

01:21:07 ◼   ► There's just the question of a season change over, you know,

01:21:10 ◼   ► and especially like a writing team change over,

01:21:12 ◼   ► but like generally you getting what you know.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And then movies are the high variance outcome,

01:21:16 ◼   ► which is why it can be hard to pick them. Like,

01:21:20 ◼   ► I think of our viewing habits and it is always the same thing.

01:21:24 ◼   ► like, aspirationally you want to watch a movie and then you sort of fall back on the TV show.

01:21:31 ◼   ► You stare at Netflix and be like, I don't even know what kind of movie I want to watch,

01:21:34 ◼   ► let alone like if any of these ones will be the right ones.

01:21:37 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And so it's like, oh, there's an hour of not picking a movie and then settling

01:21:43 ◼   ► on the office.

01:21:44 ◼   ► And that is exactly it, right? It's like, if they're gonna say, I want to watch a movie,

01:21:46 ◼   ► I'm like, what movie? And then like, I never know what to pick. Like I get real like paralysis

01:21:51 ◼   ► choice with home movie viewing. I can never know what to go for and so I've

01:21:56 ◼   ► typically will just watch comedies because they feel like the safest

01:22:00 ◼   ► option for me but so we've been you know like we started with like watched a

01:22:06 ◼   ► bunch of Tarantino movies because I think it was just like I wanted to watch

01:22:11 ◼   ► Reservoir Dogs had never seen it and I was like well let's just watch a bunch

01:22:14 ◼   ► of these then I just was like well why don't we watch we've watched like a

01:22:18 ◼   ► bunch of Tarantino movies which all kind of violent or like gangster-y so I was

01:22:23 ◼   ► like you know what I want to watch why don't we watch The Departed which is a

01:22:26 ◼   ► movie that I really like and I wanted to show it to Idina and I was like you know

01:22:30 ◼   ► what I love Leonardo DiCaprio let's watch a bunch of Leonardo DiCaprio

01:22:33 ◼   ► movies so that's that's kind of like the where we're going at the moment and then

01:22:37 ◼   ► it's like a my favorite director is Martin Scorsese and he is directed a

01:22:42 ◼   ► bunch of Leonardo DiCaprio movies so once we're done with Leonardo DiCaprio

01:22:45 ◼   ► movies. I think I didn't want to move on to just watching a bunch of Scorsese movies.

01:22:48 ◼   ► So like I think this might be where we go for a while just like following these

01:22:52 ◼   ► chains but it's like well we don't have to all we have to do is which Leonardo

01:22:59 ◼   ► DiCaprio movie are gonna be watched today. And that's way easier than like

01:23:02 ◼   ► which movie. Yeah that's a million times easier. I'm always struck by the

01:23:08 ◼   ► absurdity of the situation which is like okay turn on Apple TV now I have all

01:23:14 ◼   ► "All media produced by humans available for me to watch."

01:23:18 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:23:19 ◼   ► And it's like,

01:23:20 ◼   ► and I kinda don't wanna watch any of these things.

01:23:23 ◼   ► - Yes. - Right?

01:23:24 ◼   ► - Like, it is an absurd position to be in.

01:23:28 ◼   ► It's, it's, yeah, I don't know.

01:23:31 ◼   ► So I have to say, I'm giving two thumbs up

01:23:35 ◼   ► to this algorithm of yours.

01:23:36 ◼   ► I think this is a great idea to try to constrain it

01:23:39 ◼   ► in some way by director or actor.

01:23:41 ◼   ► I think that's a fantastic idea.

01:23:43 ◼   ► And I like it because it gives you the ability to have a little bit of continuity in the comparison game of, "Oh, what is this actor like compared to these previous two movies?"

01:23:58 ◼   ► And like it gives you a different level to think about and enjoy what you're watching. So I really like this. This is a great idea.

01:24:04 ◼   ► is a great idea.

01:24:05 ◼   ► - And I like it because like I said,

01:24:07 ◼   ► I really do love movies,

01:24:09 ◼   ► but I just find myself never watching them at home.

01:24:12 ◼   ► So it's nice to be able to get into that a little bit more.

01:24:16 ◼   ► You know, 'cause typically like, you know,

01:24:17 ◼   ► like a movie will end and we'll talk about it a bit.

01:24:19 ◼   ► And we don't do that after we watch like three TV shows.

01:24:22 ◼   ► There's nothing to talk about typically, right?

01:24:24 ◼   ► Like with most shows, but like a good movie

01:24:28 ◼   ► will leave you thinking about something

01:24:30 ◼   ► or wanting to talk about like,

01:24:31 ◼   ► oh, I liked these choices that they made

01:24:33 ◼   ► or I'm not sure what I thought about this or.

01:24:36 ◼   ► Oh, we also watch a bunch of Christian Bale.

01:24:38 ◼   ► Oh no, we started, we didn't start with Scorsese,

01:24:40 ◼   ► we started with Christopher Nolan to,

01:24:43 ◼   ► oh no, we started with Tarantino,

01:24:44 ◼   ► then we did Christopher Nolan.

01:24:45 ◼   ► This is not important.

01:24:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:48 ◼   ► And then the other thing that I've gotten in--

01:24:51 ◼   ► - People need to know, Myke.

01:24:52 ◼   ► - They must know.

01:24:53 ◼   ► The other thing that I've really gotten into recently

01:24:55 ◼   ► is Formula One.

01:24:56 ◼   ► - Okay, so this is gonna be your sport to follow?

01:24:58 ◼   ► - Yes, actually.

01:24:59 ◼   ► We watched the Netflix documentary, Drive to Survive.

01:25:03 ◼   ► It's just stupendous.

01:25:05 ◼   ► And both me and Adina really enjoyed it.

01:25:08 ◼   ► So then we were like, "Let's give Formula One a go."

01:25:10 ◼   ► And we love it.

01:25:12 ◼   ► And so we're just gonna keep doing it.

01:25:13 ◼   ► And it's a nice thing 'cause it's something

01:25:14 ◼   ► that we both got into at the same time

01:25:16 ◼   ► with not really too much knowledge beforehand.

01:25:19 ◼   ► So it's like something that it's not one or the other

01:25:22 ◼   ► like saying like, "Oh, you should, I like this thing.

01:25:24 ◼   ► "I think you might like it too.

01:25:26 ◼   ► "There's none of that involved."

01:25:27 ◼   ► So yeah, it's really cool.

01:25:28 ◼   ► And it's like in the sense for me of like,

01:25:30 ◼   ► there's a lot that happens around it,

01:25:32 ◼   ► which I can choose to follow or not.

01:25:34 ◼   ► And that makes it feel more like an interest

01:25:36 ◼   ► than just watching something.

01:25:38 ◼   ► You know, you can read the news about it,

01:25:40 ◼   ► you can listen to podcasts about it,

01:25:42 ◼   ► and there's YouTube.

01:25:43 ◼   ► It's a sport, right?

01:25:46 ◼   ► I feel like I'm trying to explain sport to people now,

01:25:48 ◼   ► but I've never been a sport person,

01:25:51 ◼   ► but this one's just in the kind of the intersection for me

01:25:55 ◼   ► where for whatever reason I'm enjoying it.

01:25:57 ◼   ► So I feel like this is the part

01:26:00 ◼   ► that I've actually had the most success in,

01:26:02 ◼   ► which is introducing things which are refreshed

01:26:06 ◼   ► or new for me that I would consider hobbies or interests.

01:26:10 ◼   ► The next part that I wanted to do in the year of refinement

01:26:13 ◼   ► is to refine my work focus,

01:26:14 ◼   ► like making some small adjustments is what I said.

01:26:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, just some tweaks, just some tweaks to the work.

01:26:20 ◼   ► - Here or there, just like little bits.

01:26:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, everything's going great, just like,

01:26:23 ◼   ► oh, just a little tightening, little adjustments.

01:26:25 ◼   ► That's, yeah, that's what this year is gonna be

01:26:27 ◼   ► for your business.

01:26:28 ◼   ► - There has been no small adjustments.

01:26:30 ◼   ► every adjustment is massive.

01:26:31 ◼   ► So small adjustments just can't cut right now, right?

01:26:35 ◼   ► - Yeah. - For what I'm doing

01:26:35 ◼   ► and for where I am.

01:26:37 ◼   ► And then the last part was to kind of refine

01:26:39 ◼   ► what I'm known for.

01:26:41 ◼   ► And that was kind of through working on new projects

01:26:43 ◼   ► and looking at different areas of type of stuff that I cover

01:26:47 ◼   ► and to show that I do have Austin Evans,

01:26:49 ◼   ► the test drivers is part of that and was part of that idea

01:26:52 ◼   ► because it's talking about different types

01:26:55 ◼   ► of computing platforms, different types of devices

01:26:57 ◼   ► from different types of manufacturers

01:26:59 ◼   ► to what I usually cover, but it's stuff that I care about

01:27:03 ◼   ► but don't usually get to talk about.

01:27:05 ◼   ► There's still more I wanna do in that area

01:27:08 ◼   ► and I think this will be something

01:27:09 ◼   ► that I'll come back to more in the future.

01:27:10 ◼   ► I like where I've gotten to with this,

01:27:13 ◼   ► but basically I cannot right now just focus on me.

01:27:18 ◼   ► - Right.

01:27:20 ◼   ► - It's not about what I am known for.

01:27:22 ◼   ► That can't be my focus right now.

01:27:25 ◼   ► It was going to be, but it can't be now.

01:27:27 ◼   ► I have to look at things much more broadly at the moment.

01:27:31 ◼   ► So ultimately, the year of refinement

01:27:35 ◼   ► is just not the right theme for now.

01:27:38 ◼   ► Too much has changed around me.

01:27:40 ◼   ► I don't feel like I'm the same person

01:27:42 ◼   ► that I was six months ago.

01:27:44 ◼   ► - Right.

01:27:45 ◼   ► - And nor do I feel like I can permit myself

01:27:49 ◼   ► to just fuss on these internal things.

01:27:52 ◼   ► - Fuss is a terrible word there, but that's perfect.

01:27:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:56 ◼   ► have a sort of fussy theme for this year and that was by design yeah and that's totally fine

01:28:04 ◼   ► like but fuss is just it could not be more misaligned with the reality of the previous

01:28:12 ◼   ► six months yeah like oh i'm gonna try some wine i'm gonna go to a pottery class

01:28:21 ◼   ► That was where I was in my life because I'd gotten, I'd worked really hard for years

01:28:28 ◼   ► and things were nice and stable.

01:28:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Now it's time to relax and focus on some of the enjoyable frivolities of life, right?

01:28:36 ◼   ► They're like, "Nope."

01:28:38 ◼   ► Nope.

01:28:39 ◼   ► I mean, not only does it not feel right, it's also just not what I want to prioritize.

01:28:45 ◼   ► So I have a brand new yearly theme.

01:28:48 ◼   ► Oh wow.

01:28:49 ◼   ► first on Cortex, the mid-year Switch, so I'm very excited.

01:28:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I have in the past, I added some stuff in,

01:28:57 ◼   ► I have retired some stuff, but I've never gone like,

01:29:01 ◼   ► all right, that one's done, here's a new one.

01:29:03 ◼   ► And my plan is that this will just run

01:29:05 ◼   ► to the end of this year,

01:29:06 ◼   ► and then I'll pick a new theme for 2021,

01:29:09 ◼   ► which will probably be more in line with this one

01:29:11 ◼   ► than refinement, because I don't expect the world

01:29:14 ◼   ► to have changed that much in the next six months.

01:29:19 ◼   ► but who the hell knows anymore, right?

01:29:21 ◼   ► Anyway, so.

01:29:22 ◼   ► - Six months is a long time now, Myke.

01:29:24 ◼   ► It's both a short and long amount of time.

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01:30:58 ◼   ► My yearly theme for the rest of 2020 is called the Year of Shift.

01:31:05 ◼   ► This name was inspired by my co-founder Stephen Hackett.

01:31:09 ◼   ► He is of the gray mindset of giving project names to all projects.

01:31:14 ◼   ► And when we started working on the membership stuff to change over to introduce the membership

01:31:21 ◼   ► bonus content for shows like this one, he called it Member Shift.

01:31:25 ◼   ► Oh, that's good.

01:31:26 ◼   ► I thought it was a very clever name, it was a funny name.

01:31:29 ◼   ► And then the word shift just kept bouncing around in my brain.

01:31:33 ◼   ► So I have a few points that I'm focusing on now all around shifting.

01:31:38 ◼   ► This is shifting business model for me and my company.

01:31:41 ◼   ► So this is in membership focus, right?

01:31:44 ◼   ► So creating this whole new platform for us to offer more membership content, that's one

01:31:50 ◼   ► part.

01:31:51 ◼   ► And then also continuing to move the sales away from me, which is something that I was

01:31:56 ◼   ► doing more slowly before, but now I think is a thing that I want to continue with more

01:32:01 ◼   ► gusto so I can continue working on content more which is the other big part

01:32:08 ◼   ► so I'll just move straight into that which is for shifting my focus so I want

01:32:13 ◼   ► my focus now to be more on caring about content creation than running the

01:32:19 ◼   ► business because that's where I mean I spoke about this in our last episode

01:32:23 ◼   ► quite a lot so I don't want to rehash a lot of it but I want to make sure the

01:32:28 ◼   ► content that I'm making is so good now that people will happily pay for more of

01:32:33 ◼   ► it. Mm-hmm like that's something that I want to keep doing and so like that

01:32:38 ◼   ► means working hard on making sure that the membership stuff is good but also

01:32:42 ◼   ► that the shows themselves are good so people enjoy they want to keep listening

01:32:47 ◼   ► and they're like you know what I would like more of that so that is like a

01:32:51 ◼   ► focus that I want to continue doing it's a model that I want to follow you know I

01:32:55 ◼   ► I want my model now to be making the stuff as good as possible

01:33:01 ◼   ► for the people that are listening,

01:33:02 ◼   ► rather than how do I keep growing the shows to increase

01:33:06 ◼   ► our ad rates.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Right, right.

01:33:08 ◼   ► So it's the focus being more on what's here

01:33:12 ◼   ► than what it could be.

01:33:14 ◼   ► Lots of content creators will do their best

01:33:18 ◼   ► to make their content as good as it can be in the hopes

01:33:22 ◼   ► that it will grow their audience.

01:33:25 ◼   ► And we wanna grow our audiences for a few reasons.

01:33:28 ◼   ► One of them is because if your content

01:33:30 ◼   ► is advertising focused, your ads are worth more money

01:33:33 ◼   ► if your audience is larger, right?

01:33:35 ◼   ► - Right.

01:33:36 ◼   ► - And that drives a type of thinking.

01:33:40 ◼   ► And it's not saying that that makes shows

01:33:42 ◼   ► less or more enjoyable, but it's just a way of thinking.

01:33:46 ◼   ► I wanna make stuff that's so good that people will share it,

01:33:50 ◼   ► or I wanna make stuff that's gonna be a big splash, right?

01:33:53 ◼   ► But now I think I'm more in the focus of like,

01:33:56 ◼   ► how do I create content which is in and of itself

01:34:01 ◼   ► interesting for the people that already care?

01:34:04 ◼   ► And I, as of right now, do not really know what that means

01:34:10 ◼   ► or how different those things are,

01:34:12 ◼   ► but it's more acknowledging the change in my thinking

01:34:18 ◼   ► that I want to make this stuff as good as it can possibly be

01:34:23 ◼   ► for the love of making the thing.

01:34:26 ◼   ► Which when you are trying to start and grow a business,

01:34:29 ◼   ► you can lose sight of a little bit

01:34:31 ◼   ► because you are in growth.

01:34:33 ◼   ► Like that's where you are.

01:34:34 ◼   ► Your mind is in like, I need to get this thing

01:34:38 ◼   ► to a point where it can be sustainable.

01:34:42 ◼   ► And I'd done that,

01:34:43 ◼   ► but it just never really changed my thinking.

01:34:46 ◼   ► Just like this was the way we did it.

01:34:48 ◼   ► this is what I do, this is how it's done.

01:34:50 ◼   ► And what I want to do now, and what I am doing now,

01:34:55 ◼   ► is taking a step back and thinking like,

01:35:00 ◼   ► am I making the best stuff I can possibly make?

01:35:04 ◼   ► And that's what I'm kind of shifting my attention towards.

01:35:09 ◼   ► So it's quite hard to nail this part down.

01:35:13 ◼   ► This is a very new way of thinking.

01:35:17 ◼   ► Yeah, but like, I just think you're going through a little bit of the early stages of finding your brain considering what does it mean to have a membership program.

01:35:29 ◼   ► Yes.

01:35:30 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly it.

01:35:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:31 ◼   ► This, this is like, I'm, I'm here with you, man.

01:35:35 ◼   ► It's like, you know, this shift is, it's different in the way that you think about things in a lot of intangible and difficult to explain ways.

01:35:46 ◼   ► But I think you did really, you have articulated well one of them, which is that if you're running a business, you have all of these different models.

01:35:55 ◼   ► And of course, with all business models, like growth in general is a good thing.

01:36:02 ◼   ► But some models are more tied to the necessity of growth than others.

01:36:09 ◼   ► and advertising is much more strongly correlated with continual and constant growth than membership

01:36:18 ◼   ► programs are. And so I think you're just, your brain is just starting to feel out the

01:36:23 ◼   ► edges of like, oh, what do these different things mean? Like now I have a business that

01:36:28 ◼   ► balancing these two aspects instead of just having a business that's advertising dependent.

01:36:34 ◼   ► What does that mean for the kind of content that I'm producing or the way that I think

01:36:38 ◼   ► about shows. And like that's something that you have to figure out for yourself, but it

01:36:43 ◼   ► does just change the way you think about stuff to in this shift be much more focusing on

01:36:54 ◼   ► the membership side of it and like the direct relationship with the audience than the advertising

01:37:00 ◼   ► side of it.

01:37:01 ◼   ► And then similarly, I also want to make sure that I'm shifting my attention on shows correctly.

01:37:08 ◼   ► Which shows need the most effort? Which shows require it? And making sure that I am serving

01:37:15 ◼   ► all of those properly. So that's like another part of this. Also like in shifting my finances,

01:37:23 ◼   ► like thinking about where my money is spent. Like I think this is just a good time to do that.

01:37:28 ◼   ► It's a time of risk for everybody, right?

01:37:31 ◼   ► And it's just making me think, okay,

01:37:33 ◼   ► now that I'm spending money in different places,

01:37:35 ◼   ► because I'm not traveling, stuff like that,

01:37:38 ◼   ► I'm just making sure that I have different sets of savings.

01:37:42 ◼   ► I'm making sure that,

01:37:44 ◼   ► just thinking more about where that's going now, right?

01:37:46 ◼   ► Like it's just a time to reset that,

01:37:48 ◼   ► which I think is useful for everybody every now and then.

01:37:51 ◼   ► I'm also shifting product creation for Cortex brand.

01:37:55 ◼   ► So this has been a long time coming.

01:37:57 ◼   ► will have more to say on this in the future but we've been working hard on

01:38:01 ◼   ► what we've always spoken about which was a version 2 of the theme system journal

01:38:05 ◼   ► mm-hmm there is still some version 1 for sale hopefully quite soon but then that

01:38:11 ◼   ► will be the last stock of the version 1 of the book mm-hmm so we've been making

01:38:17 ◼   ► tweaks for the journal and I'm now gonna be much more involved in the day to day

01:38:22 ◼   ► of how these things are actually produced and made so that's been a big

01:38:26 ◼   ► project, a very big project that I want to follow up on in the future. And then

01:38:31 ◼   ► the last part of the Year of Shift is to... so if I was gonna bring one thing of the

01:38:37 ◼   ► Year of Refinement into this, it would be a little bit about thinking about me in