Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► OK, yeah, so levels, levels, levels, levels, levels, levels, levels, levels, levels, levels,

00:00:05 ◼   ► the universal way to check the levels.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I'm going to make sure the audio is right.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Levels, levels for musicians.

00:00:11 ◼   ► They say one, two, three, but got to say levels, levels.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Yeah, everyone knows one, two, three is ridiculous.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Levels, levels is better because then you know what you're trying to check.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Yeah, because you very constantly say the word levels.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Yeah. So you make sure the levels are right.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Yeah. I've got to get this.

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm going to get my microphone.

00:00:28 ◼   ► the noise the noise game I realized it's like I think Myke has been complaining

00:00:32 ◼   ► about background noise for me more than often more than normal anyway and I

00:00:37 ◼   ► realize it's because I changed a bunch of stuff in my home office and the

00:00:42 ◼   ► microphone that I have stop it I don't have one of those little I don't know

00:00:46 ◼   ► what you would call it the like I used to have one the the little cages where

00:00:51 ◼   ► the microphone hovers yeah floats shock mount so like shock mounts thank you so

00:00:57 ◼   ► So I think that's part of the problem of why...

00:00:58 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:00:59 ◼   ► It's not part of the problem.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Is the problem.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Is that the main job of that thing, I guess?

00:01:04 ◼   ► Yes!

00:01:05 ◼   ► It's to mount the shock, right?

00:01:08 ◼   ► You need to fix that, now I know what it is, because it's driving me bananas.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I'm like, even I've heard it sometimes like, "Oh boy, you can really hear me touching

00:01:16 ◼   ► the desk."

00:01:17 ◼   ► And I guess that's why.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, because you're not mounting the shocks anymore.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I had one in the rubber bands, the little rubber bands went bad, and then I thought,

00:01:26 ◼   ► I don't need this.

00:01:27 ◼   ► You know what?

00:01:28 ◼   ► I have like three of them in a box.

00:01:32 ◼   ► I'm just gonna give one to you.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Okay, sure.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Great.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Problem solved.

00:01:38 ◼   ► I'll take that.

00:01:39 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:01:40 ◼   ► I've got the like, just screws on at the top.

00:01:43 ◼   ► I don't know what the size is.

00:01:44 ◼   ► I'm sure I can make it fit.

00:01:45 ◼   ► The sizes tend to be universal for these type of equipment, so don't worry.

00:01:49 ◼   ► Although God knows what you're using anyway.

00:01:52 ◼   ► God knows what you're using anyway.

00:01:56 ◼   ► You just do so much weird stuff with your audio equipment.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I don't even understand it.

00:02:01 ◼   ► No.

00:02:02 ◼   ► Listeners.

00:02:03 ◼   ► Myke gets annoyed because I want to optimise for simplicity.

00:02:06 ◼   ► I'm not trying to optimise for…

00:02:08 ◼   ► It is a fixed home office.

00:02:10 ◼   ► It doesn't matter how simple it is.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Conceptually to me it matters that it's simple.

00:02:17 ◼   ► I swapped out the thing into which the XLR cables go,

00:02:21 ◼   ► that then the USB cable goes into the computer.

00:02:24 ◼   ► And I got one that's nice and simple,

00:02:27 ◼   ► and it only has two buttons.

00:02:28 ◼   ► - That breaks all the time.

00:02:29 ◼   ► - No, Myke, once it was confusing,

00:02:32 ◼   ► and it was totally fine,

00:02:33 ◼   ► but it's less of a problem than the old thing

00:02:35 ◼   ► that I used to use that had 10 little switches

00:02:38 ◼   ► on the back that you needed a paper clip to pull.

00:02:40 ◼   ► - Don't touch the switches!

00:02:41 ◼   ► You never need to touch those switches.

00:02:43 ◼   ► You set it up one time.

00:02:45 ◼   ► - Every time I record with that,

00:02:46 ◼   ► I would only record audio to the left channel and I could never figure out what the deal was.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Right, but, but, but, but look, okay, look.

00:02:52 ◼   ► I don't know a lot about this stuff, but I know enough.

00:02:55 ◼   ► You just need to let me in your office for like two hours, and I can get it set up in a way,

00:03:01 ◼   ► I never touch my audio gear, I never need to touch it, because I set it up once, and then I left it alone.

00:03:07 ◼   ► No, but look, the other reason why I want stuff simple is, okay look,

00:03:12 ◼   ► So if something goes wrong with the road super simple USB interface,

00:03:19 ◼   ► well the troubleshooting is much easier because, oh, there's only two knobs, right?

00:03:23 ◼   ► Whereas the other thing had four knobs and ten buttons on it.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Great, great. Nothing goes wrong with it if you don't touch it.

00:03:29 ◼   ► Just don't touch it and nothing can go wrong with it, right?

00:03:32 ◼   ► But I also have to record podcasts on the road sometimes.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Right, but you use separate road gear.

00:03:39 ◼   ► No, no, no. I disagree with your philosophy here.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Listen to my philosophy.

00:03:44 ◼   ► I was tired of having different equipment.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So I thought, look, let me try to optimise

00:03:50 ◼   ► for the equipment that I know I'll use on the road

00:03:54 ◼   ► will be the same equipment that I know I use at home

00:03:57 ◼   ► and this way I'm just using the same stuff

00:04:00 ◼   ► and I don't have to think about it.

00:04:02 ◼   ► But if the home gear is never adjusted

00:04:06 ◼   ► what difference does it make?

00:04:08 ◼   ► It makes a difference if there's problems.

00:04:11 ◼   ► somehow like you know audio stuff is always surprisingly fiddly.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Okay, until you spend enough money that you buy equipment that is rock solid,

00:04:20 ◼   ► which the USB Pre 2 by sound devices is completely rock solid.

00:04:24 ◼   ► You set that thing up, you leave it alone, and you never have problems with it.

00:04:29 ◼   ► That's what I want you to use.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that's the one that I used to use and there was always

00:04:34 ◼   ► trouble and then I didn't know how to debug it.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Right, because you never ask, right?

00:04:38 ◼   ► You don't ask for help.

00:04:39 ◼   ► Instead, you just buy more equipment that is more confusing and annoying for the people

00:04:44 ◼   ► that you work with.

00:04:45 ◼   ► No, but my new equipment only has two buttons.

00:04:47 ◼   ► It's much better.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:04:49 ◼   ► But then what happens?

00:04:50 ◼   ► Every time you call me, you say "hello".

00:04:53 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:54 ◼   ► "Hello".

00:04:55 ◼   ► And then we sit there in silence for 10 to 15 minutes, as for some reason all of your

00:04:59 ◼   ► settings have changed.

00:05:01 ◼   ► But no, we connected perfectly today.

00:05:04 ◼   ► No we didn't.

00:05:05 ◼   ► No we didn't.

00:05:06 ◼   ► No we didn't.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Hello?

00:05:08 ◼   ► Hello?

00:05:09 ◼   ► You did your whole thing and then it takes a minute and you're like, oh, hang on a second.

00:05:12 ◼   ► This is how it starts.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Every call.

00:05:14 ◼   ► This is how they start.

00:05:15 ◼   ► That didn't happen today.

00:05:16 ◼   ► You're just, you're just, you're having like post-traumatic stress from the previous time

00:05:20 ◼   ► that it happened.

00:05:21 ◼   ► I am happy with my new setup here, which is trying to optimize for it.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Stuff is always going to be the same when I travel to America and have to report a podcast

00:05:29 ◼   ► from America.

00:05:30 ◼   ► It's known.

00:05:31 ◼   ► I don't like the thing that you're using, the audio interface that you're using, but

00:05:36 ◼   ► I'll take it. Please, for the love of podcast, get a shock mount.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, yeah. I will get a shock mount because I think I undervalued the importance

00:05:48 ◼   ► of this part of the setup.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been spending a lot of time taking out thumps and thuds from you recently, which

00:05:55 ◼   ► I'm sure you have also dealt with, right? In your podcast editing activities. And I

00:06:00 ◼   ► guess in the audio for your videos too, there would have been thumps and thuds. That's where

00:06:04 ◼   ► they're coming from because there was no

00:06:05 ◼   ► shock mount.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Are you ready now?

00:06:09 ◼   ► Are you set up? Yeah.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Well, well, yeah.

00:06:12 ◼   ► So I'm mostly set up.

00:06:14 ◼   ► You know, still not 100 percent sure

00:06:16 ◼   ► which way to put the microphone.

00:06:17 ◼   ► What do you mean?

00:06:19 ◼   ► Which way? It's talking in the wrong

00:06:20 ◼   ► end now.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Don't talk into the cable end.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Thank you. Don't talk into the cable

00:06:25 ◼   ► end. I don't.

00:06:26 ◼   ► It's still OK.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Look, I've been doing podcasting for a

00:06:30 ◼   ► while. Right.

00:06:31 ◼   ► But I still feel like I haven't I

00:06:33 ◼   ► I haven't nailed the how far away are you from the microphone part.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Super close.

00:06:39 ◼   ► This is like I know it sounds better when you talk right into the microphone.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Yes. That's where else would you talk?

00:06:46 ◼   ► This is what you want. You want me talking right into the microphone?

00:06:48 ◼   ► Yes, that is what I want.

00:06:50 ◼   ► But I can't I can't sit here comfortably the entire show.

00:06:55 ◼   ► And I also have to talk really clearly.

00:06:58 ◼   ► What is your microphone attached to?

00:07:00 ◼   ► A stand, like a little stand.

00:07:02 ◼   ► "Oh, I know, it's the one that Stephen Hackett recommended."

00:07:09 ◼   ► "I don't care, you keep telling me, 'Oh, Marco recommended Stephen, I don't care who recommended this gear to you.'"

00:07:15 ◼   ► People recommending travel gear to you, not home studio gear.

00:07:21 ◼   ► If you ask those same people to say, "No, not for when I'm stuff that needs to go in a suitcase,

00:07:26 ◼   ► recommend the stuff I need at home," they will tell you to use what I am telling you to use,

00:07:31 ◼   ► because we all use the three same pieces of equipment, right?

00:07:36 ◼   ► Yeah, but I didn't like how much space the arm...

00:07:37 ◼   ► USB pre-2...

00:07:38 ◼   ► No, no, no, look, look, so, listeners, also, part of what has happened here is,

00:07:44 ◼   ► as you will have known from listening to the show, I've spent the last, like,

00:07:47 ◼   ► I guess, I actually, since I came back from the summer,

00:07:50 ◼   ► I haven't had an office outside the house, so I've been working from my home.

00:07:53 ◼   ► You've never recorded outside of the house!

00:07:55 ◼   ► No, no, let me finish, you gotta let me finish here.

00:07:58 ◼   ► So because of that, my office in the house has like different needs now.

00:08:05 ◼   ► And I don't I didn't want to have like the desk that I'm also spending a lot

00:08:10 ◼   ► of time working at to have this huge arm that's clamped to it.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Like I just I don't like it.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I didn't want it there. All of your creative work relies on good audio.

00:08:19 ◼   ► It is the only thing that ties them all together.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:08:23 ◼   ► There's only one thing that ties the way

00:08:27 ◼   ► you make money together and that is audio. Audio is consistent through all of them.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Right. Right. Get a boom arm, attach it to the desk and then you know what? You can move the

00:08:36 ◼   ► microphone wherever you want, Grace. So it isn't, you don't have to get to the microphone's

00:08:41 ◼   ► comfortability level. The microphone comes to you. But like the microphone already comes to me

00:08:46 ◼   ► because look, listen, I don't know if you can hear that or not, but I have, so I didn't need a boom

00:08:53 ◼   ► arm because I got a desk so I knew it was going to be at home for a long time so I got

00:08:57 ◼   ► a desk that's a standing desk so I can move the desk up and down which then to me like

00:09:03 ◼   ► the microphone is on a stand on the desk I can move the desk up and down so now I expect

00:09:09 ◼   ► to hear you talking directly into the microphone then right okay so I've put the microphone

00:09:14 ◼   ► I've let me get it exactly right okay so I put the microphone I put the microphone on

00:09:20 ◼   ► the desk. There it is. No, but see, damn it, God, I don't understand why we're having this conversation.

00:09:26 ◼   ► No, I know why. Because you won't do it. Like, so, you just said the way you solve not using a

00:09:32 ◼   ► boom arm is by having a standing desk. So now, what I expect, if you fixed it, is that I hear

00:09:38 ◼   ► you the way I want to hear you. Right. Okay, but then, okay, so if I go right up to the microphone,

00:09:44 ◼   ► I have to talk all quiet. Like, you can hear that it's different in my voice. Right. No,

00:09:50 ◼   ► But see the thing is then you redo levels levels

00:09:52 ◼   ► You want me not now we do this later on like I'm you're not touching that thing now

00:10:00 ◼   ► You want me to turn the levels down now?

00:10:01 ◼   ► Is that setting levels levels based upon the fact that you do not speak directly into your microphone, right?

00:10:08 ◼   ► What you need to do is get the microphone set correctly talk directly into the microphone and then do levels levels right in front of me

00:10:15 ◼   ► I have a USB interface that has one very simple levels dial

00:10:18 ◼   ► So I can turn that levels dial down now.

00:10:22 ◼   ► So I'm gonna do that a little.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Okay?

00:10:25 ◼   ► So is this what you want?

00:10:28 ◼   ► You want me to be talking here with those levels?

00:10:31 ◼   ► Is this what you're looking for?

00:10:32 ◼   ► I don't know anymore.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Does this sound better to you?

00:10:35 ◼   ► But it still doesn't...

00:10:37 ◼   ► It does sound better.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Okay. It doesn't solve the problem though of like popping, of plosives.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Like when you're talking right into the microphone this close.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Gray?

00:10:46 ◼   ► Do you not have a windshield on that microphone?

00:10:50 ◼   ► I do have a windshield on the microphone, but it doesn't fix it.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Like when you're this close, it doesn't fix it.

00:10:54 ◼   ► The windshield is a microphone technique thing.

00:10:57 ◼   ► So a windshield is a lie, right?

00:10:58 ◼   ► The windshield does not stop locus.

00:11:00 ◼   ► All right.

00:11:00 ◼   ► It stops most of them.

00:11:01 ◼   ► But the thing is, all right, so this is we're really getting into it now.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Okay.

00:11:05 ◼   ► You have the microphone close to your face,

00:11:07 ◼   ► but you kind of talk just a little bit over the top of it.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Okay, so I'm actually you actually want me to angle the microphone down.

00:11:15 ◼   ► No, I don't want you to do that.

00:11:16 ◼   ► No, see the thing is-

00:11:17 ◼   ► You want the microphone pointing up in my mouth, not pointing into my mouth.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Hearing what I'm saying, but you're not listening.

00:11:24 ◼   ► That's what's happening right now, right?

00:11:26 ◼   ► What I am saying to you is, leave the microphone as it is, but you just talk ever so slightly,

00:11:31 ◼   ► like not directly into it, but you have the microphone right in front of your face.

00:11:35 ◼   ► That's what I'm looking for.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Microphone is right in front of my face, pointing straight at the back of my throat.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Right? How am I to talk over the microphone in that situation?

00:11:50 ◼   ► Well see, okay, so I tell you what, right? Aim the microphone at your chin.

00:11:55 ◼   ► Okay, so you want the microphone pointing down.

00:11:58 ◼   ► No, I don't want the microphone pointing down.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Okay, you want me then to move the desk. You want me to move the whole desk so that the microphone is pointing at my chin.

00:12:08 ◼   ► You know how you wouldn't have to do this? If you just had a boom arm.

00:12:12 ◼   ► That's all you need.

00:12:14 ◼   ► But I don't need the boom arm because I have the adjustable desk.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Well then adjust the desk.

00:12:20 ◼   ► So I'm asking, microphone, parallel to the floor, pointing straight at my chin. Is this what you want?

00:12:28 ◼   ► I mean I have mine slightly angled up, but whatever it takes.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Myke, I'm just trying to make you happy, Myke.

00:12:36 ◼   ► Well, this whole situation now, all I'm gonna get is just, well actually it's from

00:12:41 ◼   ► podcasts to audio people now, right?

00:12:44 ◼   ► I don't care what anybody else has to say on this, I just want you to do it the way

00:12:48 ◼   ► I want you to do it.

00:12:50 ◼   ► That's all I want.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Because I have to edit it, you know?

00:12:52 ◼   ► So it becomes my problem.

00:12:54 ◼   ► No, I understand that.

00:12:56 ◼   ► That's why I'll put on the shock mount that you sent to me.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Put on the shock mount, get a boom arm.

00:13:02 ◼   ► It's ridiculous.

00:13:03 ◼   ► ridiculous. You got the most expensive boom arm in the world, which is a standing desk.

00:13:08 ◼   ► C - I don't want a boom arm and a standing desk, that's ridiculous.

00:13:12 ◼   ► L - You should know what, Greg, no one told you to get the standing desk. You took it

00:13:14 ◼   ► upon yourself to get the standing desk to solve this problem. No, no!

00:13:19 ◼   ► C - The standing desk is totally amazing.

00:13:22 ◼   ► L - Do you ever use it for like standing or you just use it for podcasting now?

00:13:27 ◼   ► C - Yeah, no, I use it for standing all the time.

00:13:30 ◼   ► L - Do you?

00:13:31 ◼   ► C - I genuinely do.

00:13:32 ◼   ► do. I really do. How long have you had it? Oh, I've had it for, I'm gonna say, three

00:13:39 ◼   ► months now. Like I've had it for a while. And you're still standing frequently? Yeah,

00:13:42 ◼   ► yeah. I don't know why you're so disappointed. The motor on my standing desk broke, so I

00:13:47 ◼   ► can't stand. But it might have been due to the fact that I had a standing desk and didn't

00:13:51 ◼   ► stand with it for like 18 months. That's probably why the motor's broke. Okay, the motor broke,

00:13:56 ◼   ► I'm sorry. I don't care. I never stood.

00:13:58 ◼   ► I only did it because I needed I only realized it broke because I needed to get

00:14:04 ◼   ► under the desk. I wanted to raise the desk and couldn't.

00:14:06 ◼   ► It's like, oh, standing motor's broken.

00:14:08 ◼   ► OK, well, then why did you get a standing desk if you never intended to stand?

00:14:12 ◼   ► Because I thought, no, I intended to stand.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Right. I had great ideas about standing.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Right. Welcome to the show, I guess.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Anyway, I never told you I got a standing desk.

00:14:21 ◼   ► It's great. You should try standing when you work.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Maybe if I ever can work out my office situation.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:28 ◼   ► What is your office situation right now?

00:14:29 ◼   ► What's the deal with Mega Office 3.0, the Mega-er office?

00:14:33 ◼   ► Well, so here's the thing.

00:14:35 ◼   ► It's like, do I go 3.0 or 4.0?

00:14:37 ◼   ► This is where I am in my life.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Okay.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Because 3.0 has not moved.

00:14:42 ◼   ► The office is just an absolute disaster.

00:14:44 ◼   ► Because there's a potential 4.0, which is office outside of the home.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Great.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Let me tell you something that's been going on with me recently.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Okay.

00:14:51 ◼   ► I found an office space.

00:14:53 ◼   ► And I went to view the office space.

00:14:55 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:14:56 ◼   ► - And I told the estate agent

00:14:59 ◼   ► that I wanted to rent the office space

00:15:01 ◼   ► and they've ghosted me.

00:15:03 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:15:04 ◼   ► - Which is very weird because they wanna rent it

00:15:07 ◼   ► and I've said I want to rent it

00:15:09 ◼   ► and they won't respond to my emails.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Then I found another two office spaces,

00:15:14 ◼   ► which aren't as good.

00:15:15 ◼   ► - Sounds like that first office space

00:15:17 ◼   ► is part of some kind of scheme.

00:15:18 ◼   ► - Who knows?

00:15:19 ◼   ► That raises my suspicions of like, hmm, is this flower shop selling a lot of flowers

00:15:24 ◼   ► kind of thing?

00:15:25 ◼   ► You know.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:15:27 ◼   ► So you could either buy or rent this office and I think they want to sell it, I don't

00:15:31 ◼   ► think they want to rent it, and I don't want to buy it.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Right, okay.

00:15:34 ◼   ► And then I found another two on like a real estate agent's things.

00:15:39 ◼   ► And I've sent in two requests for places that are for renting like four days ago and

00:15:44 ◼   ► no one's responding to me.

00:15:46 ◼   ► I don't understand.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Like, does nobody actually want to rent out their office spaces that they want to rent out?

00:15:51 ◼   ► I'm sorry, that sounds very frustrating.

00:15:54 ◼   ► It is very frustrating.

00:15:55 ◼   ► We have discussed it on the show many times, and it is surprisingly hard to,

00:16:01 ◼   ► just as a person, find an office and an office space that you can use.

00:16:06 ◼   ► These places seem to be available.

00:16:08 ◼   ► They ask you to rent them, and then when you want to rent them, they won't let you rent them.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And I don't understand.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Like, what am I supposed to do? What do you want me to do? Right? I just, I don't get it.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I'm sorry. That is... So what are you going to do? Are you going to keep trying to pursue these?

00:16:24 ◼   ► I'm going to keep trying, I guess, to get somebody to email me. I don't really know

00:16:28 ◼   ► what I'm supposed to do at this point. You keep, uh, reaching for the metaphor,

00:16:32 ◼   ► you keep swiping right on office space in your area and you're trying to get a match.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Is that what you're trying to do? It's so relevant. Yeah, that is what I'm doing.

00:16:42 ◼   ► But like, yeah, I guess, because eventually I need it, right?

00:16:46 ◼   ► Because we want to use this, we want to use our house differently, right?

00:16:49 ◼   ► We want this second bedroom at some point to be used for other purposes.

00:16:52 ◼   ► So I need to get an office space and I don't want to be time pressured, right?

00:16:58 ◼   ► So like I'm looking now, because plus as well, when I get an office,

00:17:02 ◼   ► like I want to spend a significant amount of time setting up properly.

00:17:06 ◼   ► So which makes me feel like I want to like buy one, but that's even more tricky.

00:17:12 ◼   ► because nothing that comes up to buy would be in my price range.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Things that come up to rent would be, but then the things that come up to buy are too expensive.

00:17:20 ◼   ► It's like a whole thing.

00:17:21 ◼   ► Because corporate real estate seems very different.

00:17:25 ◼   ► All the pricing is very different.

00:17:27 ◼   ► You can get so much more square footage in corporate real estate than residential.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Which is like, the scale at which you can get is very, very different and very weird.

00:17:38 ◼   ► In a way that I don't fully understand.

00:17:40 ◼   ► But it's all very complicated and I'm very upset about it.

00:17:43 ◼   ► And I don't know why these companies won't just email me back.

00:17:46 ◼   ► They have things for sale.

00:17:47 ◼   ► I would like to buy them, but they don't want to sell them to me.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And I don't know why.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:53 ◼   ► I mean, I've, you know, my own searching for an office, like I come across this,

00:17:58 ◼   ► the same thing where the rental prices are just bizarre.

00:18:03 ◼   ► They're very out of whack with anything else.

00:18:05 ◼   ► And I always sort of assume like this must be a byproduct of whatever the

00:18:10 ◼   ► local zoning for office space is.

00:18:13 ◼   ► It's not coming into balance with necessarily the needs of people.

00:18:20 ◼   ► And so you just get up with these bizarre prices where in some areas,

00:18:24 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, you can have a floor of a building for remarkably cheap."

00:18:28 ◼   ► And then like, "Oh, but I would just like a single office."

00:18:30 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, that is going to cost you a fortune."

00:18:33 ◼   ► Isn't that insane?

00:18:33 ◼   ► It's crazy.

00:18:34 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, do you want this massive two floor office for 20 grand a year?"

00:18:40 ◼   ► Or do you want a room for 50?

00:18:42 ◼   ► It's like, I don't understand.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Why is this happening?

00:18:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's extremely frustrating.

00:18:47 ◼   ► It's like, oh, so if I was a giant corporation,

00:18:50 ◼   ► floor space is sort of cheap.

00:18:52 ◼   ► But if I'm a single person trying to get a room

00:18:56 ◼   ► that is private is like, as far as I can tell,

00:18:59 ◼   ► basically impossible.

00:19:00 ◼   ► - Like everything that I've been kind of requesting

00:19:03 ◼   ► is like four to five times bigger than I need.

00:19:05 ◼   ► - Right.

00:19:06 ◼   ► - But it's all that I can get.

00:19:08 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Well, I can't get anything because nobody will respond to my emails.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:14 ◼   ► It's I like you.

00:19:15 ◼   ► I'm trying to play the don't be rushed and don't be hasty game over this, but I am beginning to feel the impact of not having had a regular place to work outside the home, you know, since the summer.

00:19:28 ◼   ► I was like, Ooh, you know, it's, it is a really big deal as a self-employed person to have a, like a different space to go.

00:19:38 ◼   ► I would say it is more important that you just have the space that you want.

00:19:42 ◼   ► Because some people really do want to work at home and like,

00:19:45 ◼   ► that is so important to them.

00:19:47 ◼   ► And like, you are just more like, you want to work out of home, right?

00:19:50 ◼   ► I just think it's like, as a self-employed person,

00:19:54 ◼   ► having the thing that you want is very important.

00:19:57 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:19:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:58 ◼   ► But like, I would say most of the people I know who I think successfully

00:20:03 ◼   ► work at home and are self-employed,

00:20:06 ◼   ► Also, the reference case here is like, largely people in America who have just access to more space

00:20:12 ◼   ► and so can create an environment that is a much more separated from the rest of the house life environment.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Like, that is way easier to do than the situation of being in a small apartment and trying to make the office a separate area.

00:20:29 ◼   ► I've been working at home for five years now, so I just feel like I want to change,

00:20:33 ◼   ► which is that moving out of home for my work.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Yeah, but so I've been slowly trying to find a place, but it's like no luck.

00:20:43 ◼   ► But that's why I invested in my home office and I got the standing desk and I redid my

00:20:48 ◼   ► podcast equipment and I don't love the home office, but it's fine and it works well enough

00:20:57 ◼   ► for me until I can hopefully find a better place at some point. You know what, Myke?

00:21:02 ◼   ► You and I, we might have to go in on an office together, you know? Like, if we can't find

00:21:06 ◼   ► a place on our own, like, that might be where this has to end up.

00:21:09 ◼   ► What a long game that I've played on you, right? How long ago did I mention this? And

00:21:14 ◼   ► now it's like, what else are we gonna do? But honestly, looking at the corporate real

00:21:18 ◼   ► estate market, we literally could get a place and never bump into each other, because you

00:21:22 ◼   ► could get huge spaces.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Yeah, if we go in on a place together, we can each have a floor and never have to see each other.

00:21:30 ◼   ► You know that that was my original pitch to you, right? Like, was that we would get a building and

00:21:35 ◼   ► have our own floor and we'd never see each other. And back then, in the days in which you thought

00:21:40 ◼   ► real estate was easy to come by, you were like, "No, never would I do that with you."

00:21:44 ◼   ► So when you said that, there was this part of me that was gonna ask you,

00:21:50 ◼   ► "Oh, that sounds interesting. Let me know if you needed a deskmate."

00:21:53 ◼   ► You would be the worst deskmate. You'd be doing podcasting stuff. I'm not splitting the rent with you. This is the whole purpose of this thing.

00:21:59 ◼   ► Exactly! That's why it's so ridiculous to have that idea. It's like, "Oh, this is a good idea! I'll go in with you!" and then realize how terrible that would be.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Maybe we just find somewhere with two rooms and we just never talk to each other.

00:22:12 ◼   ► No, I just... don't take this the wrong way, Myke, but I don't want to be anywhere near you with my office.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Like, it's got to be separate. This is the whole thing. It has to be completely separate.

00:22:22 ◼   ► [Music]

00:22:24 ◼   ► I think I had a childish naivete

00:22:28 ◼   ► that offices for professionals must be a thing that's easy to acquire in a city

00:22:33 ◼   ► Yep

00:22:35 ◼   ► And it's like, no, no it's not

00:22:36 ◼   ► Well, Cortex brand world headquarters 2021

00:22:40 ◼   ► That's the other possibility is that we do just have the Cortex brand building

00:22:43 ◼   ► Coworking space for many, private offices for some

00:22:47 ◼   ► We're going to break ground on it at some point this year

00:22:51 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace,

00:22:55 ◼   ► they will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project. You can register a unique

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00:24:35 ◼   ► Speaking of offices though, offices include equipment.

00:24:38 ◼   ► My office is full of keyboards.

00:24:41 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, that didn't take very long.

00:24:43 ◼   ► - Look, things are escalating.

00:24:45 ◼   ► - Wow, okay.

00:24:46 ◼   ► - We're getting out of control here at the moment.

00:24:48 ◼   ► - Okay, what do you got?

00:24:49 ◼   ► - I got a new split keyboard called the Ergodex.

00:24:52 ◼   ► - Ergodex. - Yeah.

00:24:54 ◼   ► - Now I'm super aware of having touched my desk

00:24:56 ◼   ► when I go to click on the--

00:24:58 ◼   ► - Good, I want you to be aware.

00:25:00 ◼   ► - I'm gonna try very hard not to touch the desk,

00:25:02 ◼   ► but I had to raise the desk up really high

00:25:04 ◼   ► so that the microphone is level with my face,

00:25:06 ◼   ► so it's hard not to touch the desk.

00:25:08 ◼   ► - Now this computer screen's facing

00:25:09 ◼   ► over the top of your head, but whatever it takes.

00:25:12 ◼   ► - Oh, I saw this.

00:25:14 ◼   ► Yeah, this is very interesting.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I was intrigued by this keyboard.

00:25:19 ◼   ► So it is physically, physically split.

00:25:23 ◼   ► Like there's two different pieces,

00:25:24 ◼   ► just a wire connecting them

00:25:27 ◼   ► and you can arrange them however you want.

00:25:28 ◼   ► - And I went with the split keyboard model

00:25:30 ◼   ► because that's what I'm using on my iMac.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And I use a Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard,

00:25:36 ◼   ► which is a split keyboard,

00:25:37 ◼   ► which basically means they take a QWERTY keyboard

00:25:39 ◼   ► effectively put a hole in the middle and then angle the two halves towards each other because

00:25:45 ◼   ► this is more like you can kind of you can imagine that when you have the keyboard you're

00:25:50 ◼   ► kind of making a circular shape in between with your arms there's like a circle in the

00:25:54 ◼   ► middle where typically with a keyboard you're making a more rectangular shape right so this

00:25:59 ◼   ► is more comfortable for your wrists because your wrists are a more natural angle this

00:26:04 ◼   ► is what the science says right as opposed to using a regular keyboard where you kind

00:26:09 ◼   ► of have to angle your wrists in a way that can aggravate nerves and tendons and stuff.

00:26:14 ◼   ► So I've been using a split keyboard for years and I've been very happy and I thought while

00:26:18 ◼   ► I was digging around in the mechanical keyboard world, wondered if such products exist. This

00:26:23 ◼   ► is one of them. There are some other keyboards that I've been looking into. The Kinesis Freestyle

00:26:27 ◼   ► Edge is another one. It is a gaming keyboard. Gaming keyboard is important to me because

00:26:33 ◼   ► I want RGB baby, but I find the Ergadex to be more attractive, but there is a reason

00:26:40 ◼   ► that I may consider the Kinesis which I'll get into.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Wait, when you say RGB, you mean the little LED lights underneath the keys? Is that what

00:26:46 ◼   ► you're wanting? Yes. I have that in the Ergadex keyboard, it's

00:26:51 ◼   ► an option. So I have RGB and it's lots of colours and they can twinkle and shine and

00:26:57 ◼   ► whatever colour I want them to be. I just like that. I have the option, I want it.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Right. OK, fair enough.

00:27:03 ◼   ► So that's where I am with that.

00:27:04 ◼   ► But OK, so here's the thing with the Ergodex keyboard.

00:27:07 ◼   ► Not all of the keycaps are printed.

00:27:10 ◼   ► What's wrong with unprinted keycaps, Myke?

00:27:14 ◼   ► I don't know what the keys are.

00:27:16 ◼   ► OK, so the reason they do this is like they want you to customize it

00:27:21 ◼   ► so it's comfortable for you, right?

00:27:22 ◼   ► Because ergo, the ergo in Ergodex is ergonomic, right?

00:27:26 ◼   ► These are meant to be ergonomic mechanical keyboards.

00:27:28 ◼   ► This company makes two different ones.

00:27:30 ◼   ► And so they create it in such a way that like you have the regular QWERTY layout,

00:27:35 ◼   ► but then it's surrounded by keys that are in a non-traditional layout.

00:27:39 ◼   ► So like there isn't a space bar in the way that you would expect the space bar to be.

00:27:42 ◼   ► They're in these little clusters.

00:27:44 ◼   ► You have to go look at the link in the show notes so you can kind of see this,

00:27:47 ◼   ► because it's really hard to describe.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Yeah, you have like a little almost like a mini number pad below each thumb.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And then surrounding the keys where you would usually have like tab, caps lock and shift and

00:27:59 ◼   ► and stuff, there are just blank keys on each side.

00:28:02 ◼   ► So the modifiers are there.

00:28:04 ◼   ► And it comes pre-programmed with the set

00:28:07 ◼   ► that they recommend, right?

00:28:08 ◼   ► They have lots of, on their website,

00:28:10 ◼   ► they have like a configuration tool

00:28:12 ◼   ► where they have other examples of the way

00:28:16 ◼   ► you can have the keyboard set up.

00:28:17 ◼   ► But you can also, as I have done,

00:28:19 ◼   ► customize what some of the keys do

00:28:22 ◼   ► that make the most sense for you.

00:28:24 ◼   ► - Right.

00:28:25 ◼   ► - But when you make those customizations,

00:28:27 ◼   ► It doesn't do anything to the physical key, right?

00:28:30 ◼   ► So you have to remember what you set them up to be.

00:28:33 ◼   ► - Do you want a little E Ink screen

00:28:35 ◼   ► on each of those key caps to make a picture

00:28:37 ◼   ► of the thing that you've set it up for?

00:28:39 ◼   ► Is that what you want?

00:28:40 ◼   ► - Yes, or you can also just buy replacement keys,

00:28:42 ◼   ► which is like a whole other thing that you can do,

00:28:44 ◼   ► which actually have the printing on them,

00:28:45 ◼   ► and there are companies that make that kind of stuff.

00:28:48 ◼   ► But before I get into that level,

00:28:49 ◼   ► I'm not sure if I'm sold on this keyboard yet,

00:28:52 ◼   ► but I do really like it at the same time.

00:28:55 ◼   ► So like, I'm not 100% sure on it,

00:28:57 ◼   ► but I do like having a split keyboard.

00:28:59 ◼   ► I think this one looks nice

00:29:01 ◼   ► because the Kinesis Freestyle Edge keyboard

00:29:05 ◼   ► is a split keyboard that does have all of the printing on it

00:29:10 ◼   ► but it's way uglier, I think.

00:29:13 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:14 ◼   ► - Neither of these are attractive keyboards

00:29:17 ◼   ► but the Ergadex has more of a quirky design

00:29:21 ◼   ► where the Kinesis looks like they just took

00:29:22 ◼   ► a regular keyboard and cut it in half, right?

00:29:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll agree with that. The Ergodex is better looking at first glance.

00:29:30 ◼   ► And plus, the Freestyle Edge is more about tilting, which isn't necessarily a thing I want.

00:29:35 ◼   ► Basically, this is all to say that I'm in on the mechanical keyboard world.

00:29:40 ◼   ► I have backed a Kickstarter for another one by a company called Keychron,

00:29:45 ◼   ► which is like... Keychron is recommended to me by a lot of people.

00:29:48 ◼   ► Oh, oh, oh! Okay, yes. I saw this one.

00:29:54 ◼   ► I think I must have seen it on MKBHD's office tour thing, like he made a video.

00:29:59 ◼   ► He uses it and our mutual friend Jason Snell uses one. I think the Keychron K2?

00:30:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Two?

00:30:07 ◼   ► Yeah, so this caught my attention because I was watching this MKBHD video where he's doing a tour

00:30:12 ◼   ► of his office and he does the wide shot and the wide shot is there to show off like MKBHD has two

00:30:20 ◼   ► XLR Apple Pro matte displays.

00:30:24 ◼   ► - XDR, whatever. - X-

00:30:44 ◼   ► just under the return key in what looks like a very pleasant way, where you still have

00:30:49 ◼   ► full-sized arrow keys. That caught my attention immediately and added this to the list of

00:30:56 ◼   ► things that I intended to check out of ordering as a keyboard.

00:30:59 ◼   ► I believe, I could be wrong, that it's called a 65% layout, which is like you don't have

00:31:07 ◼   ► the number keys but you do have arrow keys. Because if you remember, the WASD keyboard

00:31:12 ◼   ► that I love doesn't have arrow keys and they're driving me bananas. So that was like a mistake

00:31:16 ◼   ► that I made. So you have to try and find one that has them. And this company, Keychron,

00:31:21 ◼   ► they have a Kickstarter campaign going now for another 65% keyboard, which I have backed

00:31:26 ◼   ► because they're a company, they make keyboards, like they're doing Kickstarter for marketing,

00:31:30 ◼   ► right? Like I get it. They're saying they'll start shipping in March or April. And I believe

00:31:33 ◼   ► that, they know what they're doing. I can't imagine it's going to be crazy late, but like

00:31:37 ◼   ► it's a more advanced version. It's got some additional features and they're Bluetooth

00:31:40 ◼   ► as well as wired so I'm looking at like you know that seems like a fun one and I

00:31:44 ◼   ► also did the Kickstarter campaign because then it spaces out all my

00:31:48 ◼   ► keyboard purchases a little bit right like they're gonna not all come at the

00:31:51 ◼   ► same time but yeah I'm very much enjoying this this whole mechanical

00:31:56 ◼   ► keyboard world I'm following like a ton of accounts on Instagram basically it

00:32:01 ◼   ► was completely correct that the overlap between mechanical keyboards and pens is

00:32:06 ◼   ► very very very like it for me. I also bought my first set of custom keycaps. I bought four

00:32:14 ◼   ► Pokemon keycaps from this company called S-Craft Studio. Let me find these for you, Gray.

00:32:22 ◼   ► Okay, so you unmarked keycaps, no. Pokey keycaps, yes.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Well yeah, because they're just gonna be function keys, right? Like I'm not gonna replace the

00:32:32 ◼   ► A key with Pikachu or something.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Right, but so your idea is just, oh, the f-ing key becomes a Bulbasaur, like that's the idea?

00:32:40 ◼   ► That is the idea, yes. Well, though, not that exact Pokémon, but...

00:32:45 ◼   ► I'm sorry, I don't know your Pokémon preferences well enough to be able to reference the...

00:32:48 ◼   ► No, you were completely correct. If I could get a Bulbasaur, I would,

00:32:51 ◼   ► but they sold out the Bulbasaur. I bought a Pikachu, Gengar, and a Magikarp.

00:32:57 ◼   ► But these are like very beautiful keycaps. Like, do you see the image I just sent you?

00:33:03 ◼   ► or the Instagram link I just sent you.

00:33:05 ◼   ► Oh, that's not what I was expecting at all.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Okay, so it looks much more like there is a Pokémon trapped in the key.

00:33:13 ◼   ► Trapped in the key. Aren't they beautiful?

00:33:15 ◼   ► They're like really fascinating.

00:33:19 ◼   ► That's where I am with keyboards, which is where I am is deep, deep into keyboards.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Lots of subreddits and Instagram accounts.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Jesus.

00:33:31 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:33:32 ◼   ► You fell in really deep.

00:33:34 ◼   ► - Does that surprise you?

00:33:35 ◼   ► - No, I'm not surprised, but it's just funny

00:33:38 ◼   ► how little of a push that took before you went all in.

00:33:42 ◼   ► - It didn't take a lot at all, really, did it?

00:33:44 ◼   ► Like it was just the mere suggestion was all it took.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Just nobody had suggested up until that point, I guess.

00:33:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just keep looking at this K6 keyboard.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Like I'm totally gonna get one of these.

00:33:55 ◼   ► - I'm using them all of my iPad, by the way.

00:33:57 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, interesting.

00:33:59 ◼   ► So they're all just plugged into my iPad over USB-C cables

00:34:03 ◼   ► and I use them with my stand.

00:34:05 ◼   ► I use a stand by a company called ClearLook.

00:34:07 ◼   ► So it's like I have my iPad at eye height,

00:34:09 ◼   ► I plug in the keyboard to the iPad and I go.

00:34:13 ◼   ► 'Cause I can't have a mechanical keyboard

00:34:15 ◼   ► on my recording machine.

00:34:18 ◼   ► - Why not?

00:34:18 ◼   ► I have a mechanical keyboard on my recording machine.

00:34:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, but all that's edited out for you

00:34:23 ◼   ► unless it's kept in for comedic effect, right?

00:34:25 ◼   ► But like-- - Ah, okay.

00:34:27 ◼   ► - I don't wanna have to edit myself

00:34:29 ◼   ► even more than I already do.

00:34:30 ◼   ► I don't want to create my work for myself.

00:34:32 ◼   ► - Right, okay.

00:34:33 ◼   ► So what are you using?

00:34:34 ◼   ► Just like the Apple keyboard or something?

00:34:36 ◼   ► - No, I'm still using the Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard.

00:34:38 ◼   ► - Oh, right, yes, yes. - On my Mac.

00:34:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the one, that's the one, right, okay.

00:34:41 ◼   ► - I also use the Bridge keyboard for my iPad still,

00:34:44 ◼   ► and they have one with a trackpad coming soon

00:34:45 ◼   ► that I'm very excited about.

00:34:47 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, I wanted to ask you about that,

00:34:49 ◼   ► 'cause I still have yet to try the mouse on iOS thing.

00:34:54 ◼   ► Like, I just haven't had a situation

00:34:56 ◼   ► where it makes sense to give that a try.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And when I saw that they came out with the trackpad,

00:35:00 ◼   ► I was kind of curious what your thoughts on that were.

00:35:02 ◼   ► - Well, so I use a Logitech MX Master 3

00:35:05 ◼   ► with my iPad right now.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Like when I have it in that mode where it's in the stand

00:35:09 ◼   ► and I'm using a keyboard, I'm also using a mouse.

00:35:12 ◼   ► And let me say that the cursor support on iPadOS right now,

00:35:16 ◼   ► I would say does the job for me,

00:35:18 ◼   ► but it is far from complete.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Like it's still like a little bit wonky, right?

00:35:22 ◼   ► Like it's very much as it is an accessibility setting.

00:35:25 ◼   ► So it is good enough, it does what it's supposed to do,

00:35:29 ◼   ► but it is not like using a mouse on a Mac, right?

00:35:32 ◼   ► Like there are just parts of it that are weird.

00:35:34 ◼   ► So I feel like the trackpad on the bridge keyboard,

00:35:38 ◼   ► which you'll be shipping soon I think,

00:35:40 ◼   ► will work for me because I'm used to it,

00:35:42 ◼   ► but it will not work for most people.

00:35:44 ◼   ► They're gonna think that it's like,

00:35:45 ◼   ► this is a ridiculously broken experience, you know?

00:35:48 ◼   ► But it totally works for me, I'm very happy, right?

00:35:53 ◼   ► It is, I think, in a lot of ways, much more affected than the Apple Pencil.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Because you can like, bring down notification center with it.

00:36:00 ◼   ► You can change split views with it.

00:36:03 ◼   ► All it's doing is replicating your finger.

00:36:06 ◼   ► That's all it's doing.

00:36:07 ◼   ► You can change the split screen stuff with it?

00:36:09 ◼   ► Yeah, you can do everything.

00:36:10 ◼   ► You can pull in apps from the side, right?

00:36:12 ◼   ► A little slide over. You can do all that stuff.

00:36:14 ◼   ► How does that work? Is it like a right click gesture?

00:36:17 ◼   ► You just go all the way to the edge of the screen and drag it in.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Huh? So all the way to the edge, click and drag in.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it works great when you get into the mode of "this is my finger" not "this is a pointer".

00:36:28 ◼   ► You kind of have to just do that little switch in your brain, which I'm perfectly fine with,

00:36:34 ◼   ► and it's great. And then you can also assign shortcuts to all the keys. So like,

00:36:38 ◼   ► clicking the wheel in the middle takes me to the home screen. Right clicking is like long press,

00:36:44 ◼   ► right? So it's like right click now. And then the two little buttons on the side,

00:36:48 ◼   ► one brings up the dock and one brings up multitasking. It's great.

00:36:51 ◼   ► Oh boy, that is very interesting. I didn't realize you can also assign shortcuts in that way.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Oh, you can, like, it's not just, like, shortcuts in the sense of mouse interactions. You can also

00:37:02 ◼   ► program literal shortcuts to those keys. So if you want to set the right click as "Start time

00:37:07 ◼   ► tracking", you can do that. So you get one of those crazy gaming mice and you just, like, go wild.

00:37:13 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:37:14 ◼   ► That is very interesting. I didn't realize that, and I think that gives me a reason to just play

00:37:19 ◼   ► around with this and see what it's like, because I just didn't realise it could do that.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Any Bluetooth mouse will work.

00:37:26 ◼   ► I'm sure you have one, right?

00:37:27 ◼   ► So just give it a whirl.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that's what I'm thinking.

00:37:30 ◼   ► I might try it on just the iPad that I have at home on the couch, because I often have

00:37:35 ◼   ► a spare mouse nearby for when I'm using the computer anyway.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Yeah, but here's a wild thing.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Trackpads don't work.

00:37:41 ◼   ► So if you have a Magic Trackpad, that won't work.

00:37:44 ◼   ► So my understanding is Bridge, when creating their trackpad, had to create a trackpad that

00:37:50 ◼   ► interacts with the iPad as if it's a mouse.

00:37:53 ◼   ► Right, so it's pretending to be a mouse.

00:37:56 ◼   ► So they also now sell a trackpad as well as the trackpad with keyboard.

00:38:01 ◼   ► So if you just want a trackpad for your iPad, you can do it.

00:38:04 ◼   ► And I'm sure they just made this a product because they had to do all that work.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Right, right, right.

00:38:09 ◼   ► We've done 95% of this work anyway.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Why not make it a separate product?

00:38:14 ◼   ► So like the Magic Trackpad doesn't work, but all mice do.

00:38:19 ◼   ► That I've come across anyway.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Yeah, that stuff about being able to change the multitasking windows is really interesting.

00:38:24 ◼   ► I'm still filled with bitter regret that there are no keyboard shortcuts to handle that multitasking

00:38:29 ◼   ► stuff on iOS.

00:38:30 ◼   ► I mean, just come on.

00:38:31 ◼   ► You've got to do it one day.

00:38:34 ◼   ► It is infuriating that they have not done that.

00:38:37 ◼   ► And I was just like, oh, maybe using a mouse is halfway.

00:38:41 ◼   ► But it's like, come on, guys.

00:38:42 ◼   ► There is no way to like open up second window to drop the thing that I've just searched

00:38:47 ◼   ► for in keyboard shortcut.

00:38:49 ◼   ► It's crazy.

00:38:50 ◼   ► It's incredibly frustrating.

00:38:54 ◼   ► I'm sure it'll be along any day as we were told.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Oh, don't worry.

00:38:59 ◼   ► iPadOS 14, you know?

00:39:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:01 ◼   ► We've got, don't worry about those keyboard shortcuts.

00:39:03 ◼   ► We've got a great solution for you, you know.

00:39:06 ◼   ► Still waiting.

00:39:09 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by Health IQ.

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00:40:50 ◼   ► Do you want to review my time tracking report for the year of 2019?

00:40:54 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's right. I just realized we did that last year.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:58 ◼   ► And I cannot participate in this because my time tracking is nonsensical for this past year,

00:41:03 ◼   ► because I didn't do it for most of the time.

00:41:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:04 ◼   ► But yeah, tell me your-- give me your time tracking report.

00:41:07 ◼   ► Can I click these links?

00:41:09 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm allowed to click these links.

00:41:10 ◼   ► MATT: You can click those links.

00:41:10 ◼   ► I have 2018 and 2019.

00:41:13 ◼   ► 2019, I have a more full picture.

00:41:16 ◼   ► I may-- I haven't actually taken a look.

00:41:19 ◼   ► I may include in the show that it's a more full report,

00:41:21 ◼   ► but there might have been a reason I cropped 2018 the way that I did.

00:41:25 ◼   ► I don't remember.

00:41:26 ◼   ► So I can't promise it, but I've definitely given more information for 2019

00:41:32 ◼   ► because instead I just did that fun blocking thing out or something that I wanted to just keep to myself.

00:41:38 ◼   ► But the eye is immediately drawn to "oh what is that admin project?"

00:41:44 ◼   ► Exactly, imagine such a thing. This is one of those things where like looking at this,

00:41:49 ◼   ► there's a bunch of stuff that I didn't time track this year that was work-related but didn't really

00:41:54 ◼   ► feel work-related so it just didn't go in, which is like a lot of video game type stuff. I stopped

00:41:59 ◼   ► tracking some of that, where before I would track some of that in show prep, but I stopped

00:42:05 ◼   ► doing some of it just because it felt a little redundant in places. I may start doing that

00:42:10 ◼   ► again, I haven't decided, but I might still keep it as it is for 2020 and go on from there,

00:42:16 ◼   ► which is just like I was tracking my time playing video games as work, but I didn't

00:42:21 ◼   ► do that in 2019 and I'm not sure if I want to do that going forward, I'm just not sure.

00:42:26 ◼   ► What are your thoughts around that?

00:42:29 ◼   ► What's the parameters of why you would or why you wouldn't?

00:42:32 ◼   ► So I play video games for video game related podcasts, right?

00:42:38 ◼   ► And that felt like a perfectly adequate thing to be time tracking because I was playing

00:42:44 ◼   ► them for the shows.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Then talking about hobbies, video games have always been a hobby for me and I'm trying

00:42:53 ◼   ► to break up some of that feeling of "I'm playing this game for work" as an excuse to the world,

00:43:01 ◼   ► but instead just choosing that I'm playing this game for me and just enjoying it.

00:43:07 ◼   ► Right, so your thought is "take away the clock so it doesn't feel like this is work".

00:43:14 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:43:14 ◼   ► Because you, unlike me, you're still not time tracking really any of your personal stuff, right?

00:43:21 ◼   ► I do not time track any personal stuff, no.

00:43:23 ◼   ► Okay, so this is 100% works. And then that makes sense. Then that makes sense because your brain

00:43:26 ◼   ► feels like if there's a clock running, this is ostensibly work. But are you are you thinking

00:43:34 ◼   ► very carefully about how much additional value to the review each additional hour of playing the

00:43:41 ◼   ► game gets? Probably not. You're probably not thinking about that in a in a structured manner

00:43:47 ◼   ► of does this make sense to continue? So I don't know that sounds like a good decision. Like,

00:43:52 ◼   ► Like yeah, technically it's work, but the way you're doing things, I feel like,

00:43:56 ◼   ► no, don't time track the games, like just play them and enjoy them

00:44:00 ◼   ► and happen to talk about them on your shows. That makes sense.

00:44:03 ◼   ► - That's what I think I'm gonna do. So that accounts for some of the decrease,

00:44:06 ◼   ► because there's about 120 hours difference year over year, like less.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Doesn't account for all of it, you know, a lot of it is just me doing less in some areas.

00:44:18 ◼   ► And of course, I've said it before,

00:44:20 ◼   ► I don't time track work when I'm traveling,

00:44:22 ◼   ► but that hasn't changed year over year.

00:44:24 ◼   ► I did travel a lot this year,

00:44:25 ◼   ► but I traveled a lot the year before.

00:44:27 ◼   ► - Right, so that's just for the logistics difficulty

00:44:29 ◼   ► of it of time tracking while working.

00:44:31 ◼   ► - It's just a different mindset that I'm in.

00:44:34 ◼   ► And like, I work less, but also more.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Like it's super weird, right?

00:44:39 ◼   ► Where it's like, I'm recording less,

00:44:41 ◼   ► but most of my travel is for work.

00:44:43 ◼   ► So when does the actual work start and stop?

00:44:46 ◼   ► - Right.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Like if me and Steven are hanging out in Memphis,

00:44:51 ◼   ► we're talking about work and doing work all the time.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Like it just doesn't work.

00:44:55 ◼   ► When I'm outside of my usual routine,

00:44:58 ◼   ► time tracking stops making sense for me.

00:45:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:45:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like if we're in WWDC,

00:45:05 ◼   ► should I be time tracking that whole week as Cortex?

00:45:08 ◼   ► It's like, you can make good answers yes,

00:45:11 ◼   ► and good answers for no.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Like it's hard to think about what is this time?

00:45:16 ◼   ► Is it clearly divided?

00:45:17 ◼   ► It just isn't.

00:45:18 ◼   ► - And I choose not.

00:45:19 ◼   ► When I was going through this data, it did happen again.

00:45:22 ◼   ► I had 600 hours that were incorrectly added.

00:45:27 ◼   ► - Of which the timers were left running.

00:45:30 ◼   ► - A timer left running for a super long period of time.

00:45:32 ◼   ► So that was kind of hilarious.

00:45:33 ◼   ► And it was also basically when I was away.

00:45:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I woke up to one of those this morning as well

00:45:39 ◼   ► of like, this timer has been running for 25 hours.

00:45:42 ◼   ► It was like, oh, right, 'cause I just,

00:45:43 ◼   ► I never stopped it yesterday and then just forgot

00:45:46 ◼   ► and then slept on it.

00:45:47 ◼   ► I do really wish Time Trackers would throw up a little alert to say, "Hey, this event

00:45:52 ◼   ► is in the 99th percentile related to all other events."

00:45:56 ◼   ► It's like, I have email alerts turned on in toggle, which you can do for when something's

00:46:02 ◼   ► been running so long.

00:46:03 ◼   ► But I must have just, like, ignored the email or something.

00:46:05 ◼   ► I don't know, like, I don't know what happened, but I just left it on.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:46:11 ◼   ► I want, like, an alert in the app of when I go to the next timer to be like, "Hey,

00:46:16 ◼   ► Your previous one was crazy long.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Are you sure that was correct so that it doesn't just get thrown in the back?

00:46:22 ◼   ► But I never really start timers from apps anyway.

00:46:25 ◼   ► I use widgets and all that kind of stuff.

00:46:27 ◼   ► I've been building some great time tracking shortcuts recently using Timery.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:46:32 ◼   ► I'm so happy with them, Gray.

00:46:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:34 ◼   ► I'm just really happy with them.

00:46:35 ◼   ► I think I told you about one, I don't remember, where it looks at my calendar and then assigns

00:46:42 ◼   ► a tag.

00:46:43 ◼   ► Oh yes, yes.

00:46:44 ◼   ► You did tell me about this.

00:46:45 ◼   ► That is pretty crazy.

00:46:46 ◼   ► done the same thing for editing but I just have to choose from a list as to what show

00:46:50 ◼   ► like I've basically I've you know I've just been creating like shortcuts of lists inside

00:46:54 ◼   ► of them I'm just very happy with them so yeah you know okay so look is there anything particularly

00:47:02 ◼   ► interesting to you looking at my year over year I find so some stuff that I have found

00:47:07 ◼   ► to be interesting and so I'll list those to you podcast editing that didn't change 214

00:47:15 ◼   ► compared to 216 hours year over year.

00:47:18 ◼   ► - That's actually remarkably the same.

00:47:22 ◼   ► - Show prep, 134 hours to 142 hours, same.

00:47:27 ◼   ► That's just like fascinating to see.

00:47:29 ◼   ► Relay FM general, which tends to just be phone calls

00:47:32 ◼   ► between me and Steven, 69 hours, nice to 54 hours.

00:47:37 ◼   ► It's all, like a lot of this stuff is very similar.

00:47:41 ◼   ► The podcast recording was less, but editing was the same,

00:47:46 ◼   ► which on the face of it seems that doesn't make sense,

00:47:48 ◼   ► but makes perfect sense to me.

00:47:50 ◼   ► I recorded less shows this year,

00:47:51 ◼   ► but the shows that I'm editing is the same

00:47:53 ◼   ► that I was editing from the year before.

00:47:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, that doesn't seem remarkable to me at all.

00:47:57 ◼   ► - Well, it's because you're very familiar

00:47:59 ◼   ► with what I'm doing,

00:48:01 ◼   ► but if you just compare those two reports,

00:48:02 ◼   ► it seems weird, right?

00:48:04 ◼   ► The show prep one is peculiar to me in that,

00:48:08 ◼   ► because I'm doing less shows, but I'm doing more prep,

00:48:10 ◼   ► but that's just like a thing.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Like I'm just working harder at it.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Like I wanna make the shows better.

00:48:15 ◼   ► So every year I expect show prep to increase in time anyway.

00:48:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that also seems like when you're comparing

00:48:22 ◼   ► where time has gone, show prep is a good place

00:48:26 ◼   ► for time to go.

00:48:27 ◼   ► - That's where I want it to go, yeah.

00:48:28 ◼   ► - And like the one that I see here of sponsor booking

00:48:31 ◼   ► having been cut in half,

00:48:33 ◼   ► like that seems like a really great improvement as well

00:48:35 ◼   ► of like take that time and put it in show prep

00:48:37 ◼   ► or put it in the blue item on the list

00:48:41 ◼   ► that really catches my attention.

00:48:42 ◼   ► But like yeah, hours gotta come from somewhere

00:48:45 ◼   ► and that's another place that it looks really good

00:48:47 ◼   ► that you've reduced the total number of hours.

00:48:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's like the sponsor booking went down

00:48:54 ◼   ► because our sales manager

00:48:57 ◼   ► became more and more responsible, right?

00:48:59 ◼   ► So as she became more responsible and better at her job,

00:49:03 ◼   ► I didn't need to put as much time in there,

00:49:05 ◼   ► which is great for me.

00:49:05 ◼   ► I prefer that balance, right?

00:49:08 ◼   ► Give people who are better at something more time to do it.

00:49:11 ◼   ► So that's been a great thing.

00:49:13 ◼   ► The same with invoicing.

00:49:14 ◼   ► I've been able to hand over my invoicing

00:49:16 ◼   ► to somebody who is much better

00:49:18 ◼   ► at that type of stuff than me.

00:49:19 ◼   ► So that's why that's gone down.

00:49:21 ◼   ► But that only happened a few months ago.

00:49:23 ◼   ► So invoicing next year will be in probably

00:49:27 ◼   ► the single digit hours,

00:49:28 ◼   ► 'cause there's still a little bit of stuff

00:49:29 ◼   ► that I look at from an admin perspective,

00:49:31 ◼   ► but I'm not sending out our monthly invoices anymore

00:49:34 ◼   ► as a company, which I was doing.

00:49:35 ◼   ► had been doing since the inception of the company until like halfway through the year.

00:49:41 ◼   ► But yes, Cortex brand.

00:49:43 ◼   ► That's the one that jumps out straight away.

00:49:45 ◼   ► No Cortex brand on the previous year, but Cortex brand this year.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Yeah, there would have been maybe a little bit of stuff, but really it has been that

00:49:53 ◼   ► this is…

00:49:54 ◼   ► It didn't make the pie chart from last year.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:49:56 ◼   ► And also this has just been something that has been becoming more and more of a thing

00:50:01 ◼   ► for me this year.

00:50:02 ◼   ► I think I've been tracking more of it as I've been doing more of it and I expect

00:50:04 ◼   ► it naturally to increase now, year over year, because we're working on more and more stuff.

00:50:10 ◼   ► B: Yeah, we were just discussing possibilities for future things before the show.

00:50:14 ◼   ► S - We sure were.

00:50:14 ◼   ► B - Open vistas in every direction.

00:50:16 ◼   ► S - I think the only other thing that is interesting to me is there are way less

00:50:22 ◼   ► out of whack weird months this year than the year before, but that was also like

00:50:29 ◼   ► there was nothing in July of 2018 because that was when I was getting married and going on my

00:50:33 ◼   ► honeymoon. But there were really highs, like a lot of highs in this year has been much more

00:50:40 ◼   ► consistent and really June, July, August are only as low as they are in September because I was

00:50:45 ◼   ► traveling a lot in those months. Otherwise these months would all be a lot more similar I think.

00:50:51 ◼   ► I do wonder like some of these little things at the bottom I'm curious about. You just have an

00:50:57 ◼   ► item that says video. What is video? Well, video used to exist for when I was at #vlogger.

00:51:03 ◼   ► - Ah, okay, that's what that is?

00:51:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, but video now, so like,

00:51:08 ◼   ► the main entry into video this year was creating the video

00:51:13 ◼   ► for the Kickstarter campaign for the pan addict.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Right, we do our live shows every year

00:51:18 ◼   ► and we do a Kickstarter for that.

00:51:19 ◼   ► So I both record a video for the Kickstarter campaign

00:51:22 ◼   ► and also put together like a vlog for backers

00:51:25 ◼   ► of the campaign each year.

00:51:26 ◼   ► So that's probably what video is there.

00:51:29 ◼   ► - Right, project Outpost, I presume is the thing

00:51:31 ◼   ► that you can't tell people about.

00:51:32 ◼   ► No, that's get in the office.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Oh, OK.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Oh, OK.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Right, it's an outpost.

00:51:37 ◼   ► Right.

00:51:38 ◼   ► OK, that's good.

00:51:39 ◼   ► That works.

00:51:40 ◼   ► And then I was wondering about workflows at the bottom.

00:51:42 ◼   ► Is that meta-tracking the time that you

00:51:44 ◼   ► spend building workflows?

00:51:46 ◼   ► Yeah, but then I forgot that that existed.

00:51:48 ◼   ► There should be way more in there,

00:51:50 ◼   ► but I forgot that I did that.

00:51:51 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:51:55 ◼   ► OK, so you weren't properly tracking your workflow stuff.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Which is funny, really, isn't it?

00:52:02 ◼   ► No, I think like, you know, I do the same thing.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Like I have a category for tracking the automation and playing around in

00:52:08 ◼   ► shortcuts and that kind of thing.

00:52:10 ◼   ► It's an interesting category and I do like to see sometimes where it is.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And it's always just remarkable.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Like it's just quite a tiny percentage of the overall time.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Well, but mine should be way more.

00:52:23 ◼   ► It should be more than like video, right?

00:52:26 ◼   ► It should be in the multiple hours, but I've just been...

00:52:29 ◼   ► You just totally forgot that it exists.

00:52:30 ◼   ► completely forgot that it existed in my time tracking list.

00:52:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I think like automation is a time

00:52:38 ◼   ► that pays for itself if you can do it right.

00:52:40 ◼   ► Of like, it's very useful to do.

00:52:43 ◼   ► But no, I don't know, I think this looks good.

00:52:45 ◼   ► I think this looks good.

00:52:46 ◼   ► - I'm happy with it.

00:52:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're the same in areas that should be the same,

00:52:50 ◼   ► you're down in areas that it's good to be down in

00:52:52 ◼   ► and then you're up in areas that it's good to be up in.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Like I think it's a great 2018, 2019 report.

00:52:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I want everything to kind of keep trending

00:53:00 ◼   ► in the way that it is going.

00:53:03 ◼   ► I expect podcast recording will be up a little bit,

00:53:06 ◼   ► but not much.

00:53:07 ◼   ► Editing will be up.

00:53:09 ◼   ► This is kind of my forecast.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Show prep will be up.

00:53:12 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, editing will be up.

00:53:14 ◼   ► - Those three are gonna go up, but that's totally fine.

00:53:16 ◼   ► That's in the plan.

00:53:18 ◼   ► And then the ones below it should all be down more,

00:53:22 ◼   ► except for Cortex brand.

00:53:23 ◼   ► Cortex brand should rise invoicing.

00:53:26 ◼   ► the sponsor booking and inquiries should go continue to go down or kind of be stable around

00:53:30 ◼   ► where they are and then the top three will all go up a little bit I think.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Looks good.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Yeah I like doing this.

00:53:35 ◼   ► I like reviewing this year over year stuff and I especially like doing it on the show

00:53:40 ◼   ► I think.

00:53:41 ◼   ► It's more fun to do it because really like you know I know that you're quite reviewy

00:53:47 ◼   ► but like this isn't like a thing that I've yet really internalized.

00:53:51 ◼   ► For me the idea of doing a review should be with somebody else holding you accountable

00:53:56 ◼   ► So it works for me doing it in a public forum.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Right, you have the cortexes pouring over the mic numbers.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Yeah, and you!

00:54:04 ◼   ► Yeah. Is it a bull market or is it a bear market for podcast recording, right?

00:54:08 ◼   ► That's what people are looking at.

00:54:09 ◼   ► No, it is. It's good to do. It's good to do.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And it's also useful over the longer term to see the trends

00:54:18 ◼   ► over the course of years and to have a sense of where you are.

00:54:23 ◼   ► Yeah, and again to anybody who values their time, you should do some time tracking.

00:54:29 ◼   ► Have you heard the good news about time tracking? You should do it. You should definitely do it.

00:54:34 ◼   ► So like this is here, like these charts, this is like a perfect reason for why you should do it.

00:54:38 ◼   ► Look at all this data I have. Having done this now for multiple years, I've completed another year,

00:54:44 ◼   ► I can now look and see like how else would you know? You would never know.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Because if you asked me these questions about seeing this data, my answers would be all over

00:54:54 ◼   ► the place and they'd be all wrong. Yeah. And if someone asked you, hey, do you think you're doing

00:54:58 ◼   ► more or less podcasting editing this year? The truth is you would give an answer that was based

00:55:04 ◼   ► on whatever had happened in the last two weeks. Yeah. And it'd be like, uh, it's up or it's down.

00:55:09 ◼   ► I would have said probably less, like a lot less because I haven't done that much in the last

00:55:12 ◼   ► couple of weeks because we haven't had a cortex so far this year. Right. But if you asked me next

00:55:16 ◼   ► It could be like, "Oh my god, so much, he won't stop banging the desk!"

00:55:19 ◼   ► Right? So like, if the answers are very relative to your current frustrations, I think,

00:55:28 ◼   ► or like current goals, but it's not accurate unless you have the data. Data is key.

00:55:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, it does give you the data and, you know, my pitch for the time tracking is

00:55:40 ◼   ► I'm much less interested in the specifics of the data. Like for me, I think time tracking is

00:55:46 ◼   ► is also just a great tool of intentionality,

00:55:50 ◼   ► of like, what am I doing now?

00:55:52 ◼   ► What is this thing?

00:55:53 ◼   ► I find it very useful as a tool

00:55:55 ◼   ► to just routinely reassess what are you doing.

00:56:00 ◼   ► And that's one of the reasons

00:56:01 ◼   ► why I really like the time tracking.

00:56:03 ◼   ► Like, I do look at data sometimes,

00:56:05 ◼   ► but I'm just, I tend not to be,

00:56:08 ◼   ► I don't wildly care about the reports.

00:56:12 ◼   ► It's much more for me just taking on a day-to-day basis

00:56:16 ◼   ► Like, how did this day go and thinking about what am I doing?

00:56:21 ◼   ► I'm very pleased you used the word intentionality there because later on in the episode,

00:56:26 ◼   ► I want to take a look at some themes that have been sent in by our listeners.

00:56:31 ◼   ► Oh, have people used intentionality? Is that one of the words?

00:56:33 ◼   ► Probably the most popular, the year of intentionality.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And we'll get into later some of the words on this, but if your year theme is intentionality

00:56:41 ◼   ► and you are not time tracking, you must start.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Yeah, it's interesting to hear.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Like, I'm sure I've said it on the show before, but like, for years and years, I've had like a background idea that I think is really important.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And it is like the war on unintentionally.

00:56:57 ◼   ► I'm very sure I remember you laughing at me talking about doing things like tracking unintentional video games.

00:57:03 ◼   ► You're like, how is that even a thing that you're tracking?

00:57:05 ◼   ► Because it's like, I don't even think I could be aware of the fact that I'm doing it, right?

00:57:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:09 ◼   ► But that's what I mean by like, the time tracking is a tool of intentionality.

00:57:13 ◼   ► of that it is really useful to combat unintentionally of, "Oh, I just sort of

00:57:20 ◼   ► drifted into not really paying attention and just being on the internet for a bunch of hours."

00:57:26 ◼   ► Time tracking is a really useful tool that I think helps avoid that kind of unintentionally.

00:57:33 ◼   ► So if there are listeners who are feeling like intentionality is their year theme,

00:57:39 ◼   ► You really need to do time tracking. Basically, here's the rule. Are you time tracking? Yes or no?

00:57:45 ◼   ► Yes? Great. No? You should do some time tracking. That's how that works.

00:57:50 ◼   ► [DING]

00:57:51 ◼   ► Did you know that there is now a PopSocket wireless charger?

00:57:55 ◼   ► Yeah. I saw this, I think on Twitter. People told me that you bought a wireless PopSocket charger.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Well, I had to buy it because for a span of 12 hours, my entire Twitter feed was full of

00:58:08 ◼   ► what is called the PopPower.

00:58:09 ◼   ► - Oh, the PopPower, okay.

00:58:10 ◼   ► I haven't actually looked at it yet.

00:58:12 ◼   ► I figured you were gonna be mentioning it to me.

00:58:13 ◼   ► - I've been thinking of it as the wireless donut

00:58:16 ◼   ► because that's what it looks like.

00:58:18 ◼   ► It is a wireless charger with an indentation in the middle,

00:58:21 ◼   ► right, because that's where the PopSocket goes.

00:58:23 ◼   ► - Right.

00:58:23 ◼   ► - It's only available in America.

00:58:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, when I just tried to click through,

00:58:27 ◼   ► PopSocket redirected me to the UK

00:58:28 ◼   ► where I can only buy PopSockets.

00:58:30 ◼   ► - And it is currently sold out, I believe, in the US.

00:58:33 ◼   ► - People wanna charge their phones with PopSockets.

00:58:35 ◼   ► It's the number one PopSocket problem.

00:58:37 ◼   ► But I have it here.

00:58:38 ◼   ► It's arrived.

00:58:39 ◼   ► - Oh, you actually got it, got it.

00:58:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've got it, got it.

00:58:42 ◼   ► It's right here.

00:58:43 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:58:44 ◼   ► - I haven't tried it.

00:58:45 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:58:46 ◼   ► - I thought I would leave it for you.

00:58:48 ◼   ► - Do you wanna try it live on the show?

00:58:49 ◼   ► Is that what you're saying?

00:58:50 ◼   ► - That was my plan, yeah.

00:58:51 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:58:52 ◼   ► - Now, it being from the US means I have a US plug.

00:58:56 ◼   ► - Right.

00:58:57 ◼   ► - And I did a little bit of research

00:58:58 ◼   ► and couldn't find a replacement.

00:59:00 ◼   ► It doesn't use what I hoped it would have used,

00:59:02 ◼   ► which is a USBC plug, right?

00:59:05 ◼   ► it's using one of those little barrel plugs.

00:59:07 ◼   ► And it's a size which I've not got anything else of at home.

00:59:11 ◼   ► So I have a US to UK converter.

00:59:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fine, you're fine.

00:59:17 ◼   ► - I'm a little bit concerned about that.

00:59:20 ◼   ► - You're so concerned about the electricity stuff.

00:59:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I am.

00:59:23 ◼   ► - Wireless charging is gonna set the phone on fire.

00:59:26 ◼   ► - And then if the phone doesn't get set on fire,

00:59:28 ◼   ► then the plug will get set on fire.

00:59:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, electricity, is it witchcraft?

00:59:32 ◼   ► This seems to be your level of concern.

00:59:35 ◼   ► It's fine, you can just plug stuff in forever and nothing bad ever happens.

00:59:38 ◼   ► Alright, I'm gonna plug it in now.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Okay.

00:59:40 ◼   ► It'd be really amazing if it just explodes and sets fire to his house.

00:59:43 ◼   ► Don't say something like that.

00:59:45 ◼   ► What?

00:59:46 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't think you could hear me.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Don't say that.

00:59:48 ◼   ► I thought I was secretly whispering to the cortex and Myke wasn't listening.

00:59:51 ◼   ► Can I just say I hate American plugs?

00:59:52 ◼   ► Oh, they're terrible.

00:59:53 ◼   ► I saw a little spark come out.

00:59:55 ◼   ► I have like a surge protector attached to the bottom of my desk, right?

01:00:00 ◼   ► So I had to plug it in and I just feel like one nudge and it's gonna fall out of there

01:00:04 ◼   ► 'cause there's just like nothing to hold it in place.

01:00:06 ◼   ► - The American plugs are the worst. - Yep.

01:00:09 ◼   ► - They really are. I hate that the two-prong thing is so flimsy.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Like, hey, you know what I shouldn't be able to do to the prongs of an electric device?

01:00:17 ◼   ► Just bend them with my hands. You know, they're terrible.

01:00:21 ◼   ► I really hate them that they are the worst.

01:00:24 ◼   ► UK plugs are amazing and satisfying.

01:00:26 ◼   ► - A little light came on. - Okay.

01:00:27 ◼   ► - Now I have a theory here. - Okay.

01:00:30 ◼   ► I'm going to test this theory.

01:00:32 ◼   ► So I have a pop socket case, which I've been using for a while, which I'm very happy with.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Is this the built-in pop socket case?

01:00:41 ◼   ► Yeah, the Autobox case.

01:00:42 ◼   ► I bought it from an Apple store.

01:00:44 ◼   ► But I have an enamel pop socket.

01:00:47 ◼   ► I think it's not going to work.

01:00:48 ◼   ► I'm trying to remember if enamel is a conductor.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I don't think so?

01:00:53 ◼   ► Let's find out.

01:00:55 ◼   ► I'll bet that it will work.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Oh, I'm getting a red flashing light from the pop power.

01:01:00 ◼   ► Okay, that sounds good. So that's not that doesn't work at all. All right, great. So I'm gonna take the pop socket off

01:01:06 ◼   ► Okay, see if that works

01:01:09 ◼   ► Yep, that is charging

01:01:12 ◼   ► So, let me just let me just double check here the pop socket charger charges without the pop socket that I found so far

01:01:19 ◼   ► Okay, cool. Now I have a plastic pop socket here. Okay

01:01:23 ◼   ► That is now on and that works

01:01:28 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure enamel is an insulator, but maybe I'm wrong or maybe there's a metal ring holding the enamel one

01:01:34 ◼   ► There is metal in this pop socket too. In the enamel one

01:01:37 ◼   ► Yeah, like you know like enamel pins have those metal lines that run through them. Right. I think it also might be a tad thicker

01:01:44 ◼   ► So it works. Okay. This is a wireless charger that works with a pop socket. How do you feel about this?

01:01:54 ◼   ► Mixed. OK, tell me.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Because it doesn't work with my favorite popsocket.

01:01:59 ◼   ► But the great thing about popsockets is there are many available.

01:02:02 ◼   ► So I could just get a plastic one that I like, but I do really like this one.

01:02:05 ◼   ► I really don't like that I'm using a plug adapter for this.

01:02:09 ◼   ► OK, I'll say that much.

01:02:11 ◼   ► I have an experiment that I want you to run. OK.

01:02:13 ◼   ► What happens when you put your AirPods in the center?

01:02:17 ◼   ► They charge, but it's kind of hilarious.

01:02:21 ◼   ► What do you mean? It just looks ridiculous.

01:02:23 ◼   ► They fall into the little hole.

01:02:25 ◼   ► - Right, but it still works.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - It still works, yeah.

01:02:27 ◼   ► - Oh, that's actually a plus then.

01:02:28 ◼   ► The hole is, it's like a little nesting place for that.

01:02:31 ◼   ► - Oh wait, there's a red flashing light, hold on.

01:02:33 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:02:34 ◼   ► - No, it's good again.

01:02:35 ◼   ► - Okay. - It's good again.

01:02:36 ◼   ► I think I moved it.

01:02:37 ◼   ► It charges.

01:02:38 ◼   ► That works too.

01:02:39 ◼   ► - Okay, are you gonna keep it?

01:02:41 ◼   ► - I mean, it seems honestly too difficult

01:02:42 ◼   ► to return at this point.

01:02:43 ◼   ► It came from America.

01:02:44 ◼   ► - I didn't mean like, are you gonna send it back

01:02:49 ◼   ► for a refund?

01:02:50 ◼   ► - Am I gonna use it?

01:02:51 ◼   ► Are you going to use it?

01:02:54 ◼   ► [SIGHS]

01:02:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Because-- all right, let me tell you.

01:03:04 ◼   ► This is a very--

01:03:06 ◼   ► I think is fine in the way it looks.

01:03:09 ◼   ► It's quite chunky, but it's fine, right?

01:03:11 ◼   ► But the thing is, is like, do I want

01:03:13 ◼   ► to use a different popsocket?

01:03:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I like the one that I use.

01:03:19 ◼   ► It's kind of hilarious that PopSocket make PopSockets

01:03:22 ◼   ► that don't work with the PopSocket charger.

01:03:25 ◼   ► That is kind of hilarious to me.

01:03:27 ◼   ► I mean, I could take a look at their website

01:03:28 ◼   ► and see if there's something else that I like.

01:03:30 ◼   ► But still though, I just don't know if I will find the value

01:03:35 ◼   ► in this product because my phone is still laying flat now

01:03:40 ◼   ► and I like my phone standing up.

01:03:42 ◼   ► So if I tap it, I can see it

01:03:43 ◼   ► 'cause I have it standing in a little dock.

01:03:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:03:47 ◼   ► At least I have found something that will let me use a pop socket and wireless charge

01:03:52 ◼   ► because that was always like, that was one of my main problems, right?

01:03:56 ◼   ► It's like I was not interested, same as you, in removing the pop socket.

01:04:00 ◼   ► But like, you know, I like the pop socket I have but I can easily find another one.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Like there's other ones that I've liked the design of.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Honestly, I could just use the one that comes with the case which is the same blue collar

01:04:09 ◼   ► and it's a nice blue collar.

01:04:13 ◼   ► I guess it's kind of nice to have a wireless charger for my AirPods.

01:04:17 ◼   ► I enjoy how unenthusiastic your voice is describing this whole situation.

01:04:26 ◼   ► At the same time, all I can do is picture this plug just hanging out, right?

01:04:31 ◼   ► That's all I can picture right now, that it's just not stably connected in any way.

01:04:36 ◼   ► I don't like that.

01:04:37 ◼   ► What I enjoy about that plug in particular is it feels like it, it makes the product

01:04:42 ◼   ► more of what it truly is, which is a weird compromise of wireless charger with a hole

01:04:49 ◼   ► in it that also then doesn't have a regular charger for you. It just doubly clunkifies

01:04:56 ◼   ► up the thing.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Did you see this air-powery type charger that has 16 wireless charging coils in it?

01:05:04 ◼   ► No, I didn't.

01:05:05 ◼   ► By a company called ZENS.

01:05:06 ◼   ► The dream of air power still lives. Everybody still wants that.

01:05:09 ◼   ► - So many companies are still trying to make this thing.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I actually, they make a model that I think you will like

01:05:15 ◼   ► the look of where the top of it is glass

01:05:18 ◼   ► so you can see the coils inside.

01:05:20 ◼   ► - Oh, that's just gonna be just a bunch of ugly copper.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I don't wanna see that.

01:05:24 ◼   ► - I think it looks more interesting than just a black one,

01:05:26 ◼   ► but it also, honestly, it has like a tiny little hole

01:05:30 ◼   ► in it, I think it has a fan in it,

01:05:31 ◼   ► look at something somewhere, but it's thick.

01:05:33 ◼   ► It's real thick.

01:05:34 ◼   ► - Everybody's just trying to do the, oh yeah, I see.

01:05:39 ◼   ► - Ooh, that is very thick.

01:05:41 ◼   ► - Isn't it?

01:05:42 ◼   ► It's a big chunky guy, that one.

01:05:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, see the problem with all of these things though

01:05:46 ◼   ► is none of them really achieve the true dream of AirPower

01:05:49 ◼   ► because it's always, oh, and there's a little add-on

01:05:52 ◼   ► for your watch.

01:05:53 ◼   ► - That's the other part, because this was the problem

01:05:56 ◼   ► with AirPower, right?

01:05:58 ◼   ► So you can do what this company's done

01:06:00 ◼   ► and what other companies are gonna do,

01:06:02 ◼   ► which is throw a bunch of coils in, right?

01:06:06 ◼   ► 'Cause apparently Mophie are also working on one.

01:06:09 ◼   ► loads of companies are trying to make these chargers

01:06:11 ◼   ► that have multiple coils,

01:06:12 ◼   ► but the Apple Watch also has its own proprietary

01:06:15 ◼   ► charging standard, which is kind of based on Qi,

01:06:17 ◼   ► but Apple did their own thing.

01:06:19 ◼   ► So Apple, as well as putting these 16 coils in or whatever,

01:06:22 ◼   ► also had to have the same amount

01:06:24 ◼   ► of Apple Watch charging coils.

01:06:27 ◼   ► And that was why they could never make this product,

01:06:29 ◼   ► because that is bananas.

01:06:31 ◼   ► And I'm sure it just kept catching on fire,

01:06:33 ◼   ► because it's like, you can't do all of that, right?

01:06:36 ◼   ► So the AirPower will never exist, right?

01:06:39 ◼   ► Unless Apple change the Apple watch

01:06:42 ◼   ► to being Qi charging like fully.

01:06:45 ◼   ► Then someone can make something

01:06:46 ◼   ► that's kind of like AirPower.

01:06:48 ◼   ► I'm gonna unplug this charger now, by the way.

01:06:50 ◼   ► - No, leave it plugged in, Myke.

01:06:52 ◼   ► - All right, I'll leave it plugged in.

01:06:53 ◼   ► It's almost like, it's almost so not in,

01:06:55 ◼   ► like I haven't set it up right.

01:06:56 ◼   ► It's just a cable now just hanging, yeah.

01:06:59 ◼   ► - No, it's fine.

01:06:59 ◼   ► It's just, this is like an experiment.

01:07:01 ◼   ► We'll just leave it like the wireless charger

01:07:03 ◼   ► of Damocles hanging over the podcast

01:07:06 ◼   ► and we'll see what happens.

01:07:07 ◼   ► - It's now charging the phone

01:07:09 ◼   ► 'cause I had the AirPods charging in it for a bit.

01:07:11 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:07:12 ◼   ► - I've now replaced my pop socket.

01:07:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:15 ◼   ► I'll just sit there.

01:07:16 ◼   ► - All of this stuff is like the frustrating dream

01:07:19 ◼   ► of wireless charging.

01:07:21 ◼   ► I love it so much and it's also still kind of a pain

01:07:25 ◼   ► in the ass and doesn't really work the way

01:07:26 ◼   ► you want it to work.

01:07:28 ◼   ► It's very frustrating.

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01:09:17 ◼   ► How are your themes going, Myke?

01:09:20 ◼   ► I think pretty good.

01:09:21 ◼   ► Do you feel like a more refined person?

01:09:24 ◼   ► - No, but I shouldn't yet.

01:09:26 ◼   ► This is a long term thing.

01:09:28 ◼   ► I was thinking about this, that like,

01:09:30 ◼   ► unlike some of my other themes,

01:09:32 ◼   ► it's gonna take a while for me to feel the effects of this.

01:09:36 ◼   ► And also I feel like there's a lot more

01:09:38 ◼   ► that I have to put in place.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Like in previous years, it's been more about like,

01:09:43 ◼   ► stop doing this thing, right?

01:09:45 ◼   ► Where this time it's more start doing this thing.

01:09:48 ◼   ► So actually this current weekend,

01:09:51 ◼   ► so just before this episode goes out,

01:09:53 ◼   ► I'm going to be doing that thing that I told you about,

01:09:55 ◼   ► which is like a hobby thing that I wanna try out

01:09:58 ◼   ► and see if that works for me.

01:09:58 ◼   ► So like finding just like a new little hobbies,

01:10:01 ◼   ► it's the first time I'm gonna be doing something

01:10:02 ◼   ► related to that.

01:10:03 ◼   ► I signed up for Masterclass.

01:10:06 ◼   ► - Oh, the app, the Masterclass app?

01:10:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, because they have--

01:10:10 ◼   ► - They're like cooking ones and stuff, right?

01:10:12 ◼   ► - They have cooking ones.

01:10:13 ◼   ► So they have a wine appreciation video class,

01:10:15 ◼   ► but that wasn't why I signed up.

01:10:17 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:10:18 ◼   ► - That sounds perfect.

01:10:19 ◼   ► That sounds absolutely perfect, the wine appreciation class.

01:10:22 ◼   ► - But people have been sending me books, right?

01:10:25 ◼   ► So I've had a lot of cortexes send me books and resources

01:10:29 ◼   ► about, so it seems like pretty much you could learn a lot

01:10:32 ◼   ► about wine without ever actually drinking wine.

01:10:35 ◼   ► They can read books about it, right?

01:10:37 ◼   ► It would give you some basic knowledge.

01:10:38 ◼   ► So I figured, is there a video course?

01:10:41 ◼   ► Because we all know Myke doesn't read.

01:10:43 ◼   ► So--

01:10:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're not gonna read.

01:10:45 ◼   ► - Masterclass has a wine class,

01:10:47 ◼   ► but they also have architecture appreciation.

01:10:51 ◼   ► which is another thing that I realized that,

01:10:55 ◼   ► so in my recent kind of take mic,

01:10:59 ◼   ► takes lots of pictures thing,

01:11:00 ◼   ► which I've been doing for a while,

01:11:02 ◼   ► I take lots of photos,

01:11:03 ◼   ► I realized that I really enjoy taking pictures of buildings.

01:11:07 ◼   ► So I thought that maybe I should learn

01:11:10 ◼   ► what I like in architecture.

01:11:13 ◼   ► - Right, so you wanna be able to say,

01:11:16 ◼   ► ah, that building is a great example of the Baroque style,

01:11:19 ◼   ► that kind of thing?

01:11:20 ◼   ► or look at this Brutalist architecture, you know?

01:11:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:26 ◼   ► - Brutalist was the one that came into my head

01:11:27 ◼   ► and I thought, no, pick something that sounds fancy

01:11:29 ◼   ► and I went with Baroque and then I realized

01:11:32 ◼   ► I am now at the end of architecture styles

01:11:34 ◼   ► that I can name.

01:11:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:36 ◼   ► It's like, I've got two cards to play,

01:11:38 ◼   ► it's Baroque, which means nothing to me

01:11:41 ◼   ► and then there's Brutalist.

01:11:42 ◼   ► - Art Deco.

01:11:43 ◼   ► - Ooh, Art Deco, yeah, that's good.

01:11:44 ◼   ► - Everyone loves Art Deco.

01:11:45 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah, that's good.

01:11:46 ◼   ► - So yeah, I wanna just learn a little bit more about this.

01:11:49 ◼   ► I downloaded them in the Masterclass app to watch on my recent flight to the US, but ended

01:11:55 ◼   ► up watching YouTube videos instead of completely unrelated things.

01:11:58 ◼   ► But you know, it's a start, right?

01:12:00 ◼   ► It's a start.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:12:02 ◼   ► It's only January.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Exactly, it's only January.

01:12:05 ◼   ► We all know we have the whole year.

01:12:06 ◼   ► It's not a new year's resolution.

01:12:09 ◼   ► I changed my daily themes.

01:12:10 ◼   ► I added a new one, which is to learn or expand.

01:12:14 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

01:12:15 ◼   ► I know that "expands" sounds strange when my theme is refinement, but what I mean more is to expand my mind in some way.

01:12:23 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

01:12:25 ◼   ► And I feel like I still want to review the rest of my daily themes because they haven't changed.

01:12:31 ◼   ► But I just haven't gotten around to that yet, about thinking about that more.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think that's also part of the process of living with the theme.

01:12:41 ◼   ► How does it affect other parts of your life?

01:12:44 ◼   ► And honing in on, oh, what are the things

01:12:48 ◼   ► that I want to remind myself on a more frequent basis?

01:12:51 ◼   ► Again, it's not, like, there's no plan here.

01:12:53 ◼   ► - No. - You don't set out with,

01:12:55 ◼   ► here's all the changes I'm gonna make

01:12:57 ◼   ► to my daily review stuff.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that goes along as you go.

01:13:00 ◼   ► - So I will give a refresher for people.

01:13:02 ◼   ► So in my theme system journal,

01:13:04 ◼   ► there is a section, right, your daily theme section,

01:13:06 ◼   ► where every day I am tracking that I am doing something

01:13:11 ◼   ► in what is now nine categories.

01:13:13 ◼   ► So these are to create, to advance something,

01:13:17 ◼   ► generate revenue, focus on teamwork,

01:13:19 ◼   ► focus on my marriage, focus on personal relationships,

01:13:22 ◼   ► engage with my listeners and audience,

01:13:25 ◼   ► think about my health, and now it's learn/expand.

01:13:29 ◼   ► And so every day I either don't color in the circle,

01:13:32 ◼   ► color in half the circle, or color the circle in full

01:13:35 ◼   ► to kind of feel like how I have done

01:13:37 ◼   ► on each of those things every day,

01:13:38 ◼   ► give myself a score out of nine.

01:13:41 ◼   ► But I feel like I want to change some of the other eight,

01:13:44 ◼   ► but I just haven't worked out how yet.

01:13:46 ◼   ► And then there's one last thing which popped into my mind

01:13:49 ◼   ► after a conversation with a friend

01:13:52 ◼   ► and hearing you talk about it, which is meditation.

01:13:55 ◼   ► And I know this is a particularly sore spot

01:13:58 ◼   ► for you right now.

01:13:59 ◼   ► - No, it's not a sore spot.

01:14:03 ◼   ► It's not a sore spot at all.

01:14:04 ◼   ► But tell me what you're thinking.

01:14:05 ◼   ► - I just think that considering that I am

01:14:08 ◼   ► pretty anxious person and I find myself, I work myself up a lot you know. I feel

01:14:15 ◼   ► like it might be a good idea for me to try and have some kind of practice which

01:14:19 ◼   ► is focused on undoing some of that a little bit. You know like trying to

01:14:24 ◼   ► clarify my thinking more and take a bit of breathing space for myself every day.

01:14:28 ◼   ► And I feel like meditation does feel like a idea of refining who I am, right?

01:14:33 ◼   ► it feels like, you know, doing something to try and expand my mind a little bit more,

01:14:40 ◼   ► like, and at the same time kind of sand off edges a little bit, you know?

01:14:45 ◼   ► So do you have an idea of what this looks like in your life?

01:14:50 ◼   ► Literally zero.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Okay, so you're just in the "I think this sounds interesting, maybe it's worth trying" phase.

01:14:56 ◼   ► As of like four days ago.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:14:59 ◼   ► Right, so like it's a very recent thing of just thinking to myself

01:15:03 ◼   ► of do I want to do this?

01:15:07 ◼   ► And if I do, what does it look like?

01:15:10 ◼   ► And I really don't know yet,

01:15:12 ◼   ► but I feel like it's something that could be interesting,

01:15:15 ◼   ► but I haven't really come to any conclusion on this one yet.

01:15:18 ◼   ► - My assessment is that you are right

01:15:22 ◼   ► in the target crosshairs for mindfulness being useful.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Like, I would say that you should probably give this a try.

01:15:33 ◼   ► isn't really like a formal distinction, but I think the way that the words tend

01:15:36 ◼   ► to be used a little bit is like mindfulness is slightly different from meditation.

01:15:43 ◼   ► I think of meditation is more like, it tends to be used more like the pro

01:15:48 ◼   ► yogi level of, you know, your sense of self will disappear and you will have

01:15:53 ◼   ► a, like a unique experience of, of understanding what consciousness truly is.

01:15:58 ◼   ► I feel like I am genuinely incapable of that.

01:16:01 ◼   ► Right.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And mindfulness is much more, "Hey, you're going to do something for 10

01:16:08 ◼   ► minutes and have an immediate benefit."

01:16:10 ◼   ► Like, again, these are not hard boundaries, but that's my impression of the way that

01:16:14 ◼   ► the words tend to be generally used.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And I think you would probably benefit from at least trying mindfulness.

01:16:21 ◼   ► And the people that I talk to who describe it being useful to them on the

01:16:28 ◼   ► mindfulness end of the spectrum often report pretty positive changes over relatively short

01:16:35 ◼   ► periods of time without tremendous effort. So it definitely to me seems like it falls in the

01:16:40 ◼   ► category of worth trying for sure. The mindfulness stuff also does seem to tend to more address

01:16:46 ◼   ► directly those kinds of problems of "oh, I'm feeling anxious." It's the more actionable end

01:16:52 ◼   ► of the end of the spectrum so if you if you're thinking of trying it i would like if i had to

01:16:58 ◼   ► place a bet on it i would i would confidently bet that you would get something out of a out of a

01:17:02 ◼   ► mindfulness practice okay i'll uh i'm i'm gonna spend some time looking into it i think good good

01:17:09 ◼   ► yeah i'll be curious to hear how it goes for you but that's kind of where i am right now with my

01:17:15 ◼   ► with my theme so i guess for you start with there's a video about themes on your youtube

01:17:20 ◼   ► channel now? Yes, yes. Although again, in the perfect timing of Cortex always, we have to

01:17:28 ◼   ► record it before it's actually up. But yes, I have a video on themes that's mostly done and will be

01:17:35 ◼   ► going up a few days from recording time. I'll be curious to see how that goes, as always.

01:17:40 ◼   ► There's a strange experience trying to compress down the concept of talking about themes from

01:17:46 ◼   ► what we must have now as, you know, a dozen or two dozen hours of talking about it over

01:17:52 ◼   ► very many years into, "Can I express this concept in about five minutes?" and "I'm not sure I did

01:17:59 ◼   ► a great job." Well this is the funny thing. So I watched this video this morning, you sent a

01:18:03 ◼   ► rough cut to me, and we both came at this from the exact opposite where I was like almost frustrated

01:18:10 ◼   ► at how good a job you did of explaining yearly themes in a few minutes and think it's like one

01:18:14 ◼   ► of the best explanations of it that exists. And you were like, "Oh, I feel like it's not-- I can't

01:18:19 ◼   ► possibly compress the great conversations we've had about it into a few minutes." So

01:18:25 ◼   ► I guess most people will fall somewhere in the middle of those two things?

01:18:28 ◼   ► Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Your feedback is not helpful on that topic,

01:18:36 ◼   ► because you are already immersed in this idea.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Yes. Yes. Yes.

01:18:40 ◼   ► So that is my concern.

01:18:43 ◼   ► I was trying very hard to think about,

01:18:46 ◼   ► if you were totally unfamiliar with this idea,

01:18:49 ◼   ► how can I try to talk about it in five minutes?

01:18:52 ◼   ► And that's why I feel like I'm not sure I succeeded in this.

01:19:00 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure that I've expressed what's different about this.

01:19:04 ◼   ► And it may just be that, I don't know, like with many ideas,

01:19:09 ◼   ► you know, you have different sizes at which you can try to express the idea.

01:19:14 ◼   ► You know, for any topic, you can have like a book-length discussion of the topic,

01:19:17 ◼   ► you can have a TV show documentary episode length of the topic,

01:19:22 ◼   ► or you can have like a five-minute conversation about the topic.

01:19:25 ◼   ► And, you know, you lose things at various levels,

01:19:29 ◼   ► and some topics are just much better suited to one format or the other.

01:19:34 ◼   ► And I do, I just, I felt very aware that like the theme idea resists compression.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Like I just, I really think it does.

01:19:45 ◼   ► I think it resists compression.

01:19:47 ◼   ► And so that's why I'll be curious to see how people receive

01:19:52 ◼   ► it when it does finally go up.

01:19:53 ◼   ► There is nobody else in the world that understands that problem more than me.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Right.

01:19:57 ◼   ► Because I spent a lot of time trying to work on a consistent

01:20:02 ◼   ► explanation in our last episode.

01:20:04 ◼   ► right? And it was much longer than five minutes.

01:20:07 ◼   ► Yeah, and you've also had the joy of in the theme journal trying to compress down,

01:20:13 ◼   ► "Okay, if I've got to put in something that looks like actionable instructions,

01:20:18 ◼   ► what does that mean in a thing that fits on an A5 piece of paper?"

01:20:22 ◼   ► Well, that's a nice thought. I can embed this video on that webpage. If this doesn't make

01:20:28 ◼   ► sense, can you try this one? Yeah, well, that's also a little bit of this video I'm aware of

01:20:33 ◼   ► of the idea in writing of mixed metaphors of like you're sort of you

01:20:38 ◼   ► don't have a consistent metaphor or you like you've half started with one thing

01:20:41 ◼   ► and you've ended up with something else and that is normally something I try to

01:20:46 ◼   ► really stay on top of in the scripts is like be careful not to mix too many

01:20:51 ◼   ► metaphors or have too many different ways of explaining the thing but I'm

01:20:55 ◼   ► very aware in this video there's a bunch of like a bunch of things and they're

01:20:59 ◼   ► there partly because it's like, "Hey, something's gonna stick with you. Is it tuning forks?

01:21:05 ◼   ► Is it little robots? Is it the rodeo? Is it paths? Is it rainbows? Like, what's gonna

01:21:11 ◼   ► work for you, man?"

01:21:12 ◼   ► More grey metaphors in a five-minute period than I've ever seen. There's a tree, and

01:21:18 ◼   ► the tree is also a road.

01:21:20 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. There's a lot, and that's also one of the reasons why I'm just a little

01:21:24 ◼   ► unsure how it will land, but…

01:21:27 ◼   ► I think that that is a good idea, right?

01:21:29 ◼   ► So like, try and get this idea to stick into people's brains, right?

01:21:34 ◼   ► By like trying - because the Themebot really worked with me.

01:21:38 ◼   ► Imagine that the yearly theme is like this little robot that's gonna be always there

01:21:44 ◼   ► and helping you go from place to place throughout the year.

01:21:47 ◼   ► I like that one a lot.

01:21:48 ◼   ► See, that's interesting that that one stuck with you because very close to the draft where

01:21:54 ◼   ► I was going to record the audio. I had at that point almost entirely written out the

01:21:58 ◼   ► theme bot and there was just like one line.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Well, the problem is that maybe you are my theme bot. So like, it's very, it's like,

01:22:06 ◼   ► it's me right where I live, you know, like, maybe that's why that one works for me. But

01:22:12 ◼   ► also, that's just a fun little character, right? The little CG robot, like the plushie

01:22:16 ◼   ► robot, right? So it's like, it works, I think. But I did have to laugh that that you are

01:22:22 ◼   ► are now taking the idea of themes over seasons,

01:22:25 ◼   ► like to the point where you're putting it

01:22:26 ◼   ► on the YouTube channel,

01:22:27 ◼   ► I feel like it's like a personal attack against me.

01:22:30 ◼   ► - It's not a personal attack against you.

01:22:31 ◼   ► - You're just never gonna give up, but.

01:22:33 ◼   ► - Why would you give up the concept of like,

01:22:35 ◼   ► what you don't want, are you against seasons?

01:22:37 ◼   ► Is that what you're saying?

01:22:38 ◼   ► - I'm not, but it felt like, you know,

01:22:40 ◼   ► like, oh, we want to talk about our yearly themes

01:22:42 ◼   ► once a year, but you can, you know,

01:22:44 ◼   ► I get, it's your whole thing and I get the thing,

01:22:46 ◼   ► but like, as I've said to you many times

01:22:48 ◼   ► and we'll say it many times more,

01:22:50 ◼   ► if we're gonna talk about it,

01:22:51 ◼   ► have one time a year to really do it.

01:22:53 ◼   ► Yes.

01:22:53 ◼   ► No, I agree.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And I understand that for the purposes of the show, a yearly discussion makes sense.

01:22:59 ◼   ► Like I get that.

01:23:01 ◼   ► I mostly just give you a hard time about it because I get frustrated and want to

01:23:04 ◼   ► talk about it at other times, but it does like, it totally does make sense.

01:23:08 ◼   ► The other reason why I did want to put it in the five minute video is because I do

01:23:14 ◼   ► think it's an important part of the concept that you are not bound to this for a long

01:23:19 ◼   ► period of time.

01:23:20 ◼   ► And I think it's in the same reason that we mention it too, because like, if you come

01:23:24 ◼   ► to this idea in June, there still is value in starting it in June, not waiting until

01:23:31 ◼   ► January.

01:23:32 ◼   ► You know, because people come to the shows late or they come to the- and I think the

01:23:36 ◼   ► videos especially, people will watch that at whatever time of the year they come to

01:23:40 ◼   ► it, right?

01:23:41 ◼   ► Whenever the algorithm has decided to give it to somebody.

01:23:44 ◼   ► So don't wait until January if you think this idea is good.

01:23:48 ◼   ► die in May if you want to, but yeah, so like I think that it is a good thing to keep in

01:23:54 ◼   ► there because it would be a shame if you did only say you should only do this once a year

01:23:59 ◼   ► because that doesn't need to be the case.

01:24:01 ◼   ► Yeah, and I even like I was trying to hit on that idea even more because I say something

01:24:06 ◼   ► like you should think about this and I forget what the exact one but like wait until the

01:24:10 ◼   ► next season or like look towards the upcoming season of like just you know have this on

01:24:15 ◼   ► your mind for a little while and then try something. Just trying to express… I don't

01:24:20 ◼   ► know, it's a weird idea. Try this thing, but also it's the world's most low pressure

01:24:25 ◼   ► thing that's possible.

01:24:26 ◼   ► I think you chose good examples. Novelty, reading, health, they were all good. They

01:24:31 ◼   ► were all good examples. I think that they are quite general, which it should be if you're

01:24:36 ◼   ► kind of showing this to a wider audience. I was surprised by the year of novelty. I've

01:24:40 ◼   ► never heard that one mentioned before from you.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, it's funny because that's an example of things that happen because we

01:24:49 ◼   ► sort of do limit the conversation to once a year. And I think if an attentive listener goes back,

01:24:57 ◼   ► I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what year this would have occurred.

01:25:01 ◼   ► But there was a time when talking about time tracking. I remember discussing the importance

01:25:07 ◼   ► of putting novelty in my time tracker and how I was giving myself like this whole other category

01:25:13 ◼   ► of novel experiences from like large or small as just like "oh I want to keep track of what this is"

01:25:21 ◼   ► and so that's an example of like was that theme an entire year? Like not really but it was a sort of

01:25:29 ◼   ► parallel theme that was running along with a bunch of other stuff and like I haven't time tracked the

01:25:36 ◼   ► novelty in a long time because like with other themes it just sort of becomes part of how you

01:25:42 ◼   ► think if it goes well and it just didn't like that one wasn't around at whenever the year breaks were

01:25:49 ◼   ► that it made sense of like yes this is the thing that I that I definitely want to talk about.

01:25:54 ◼   ► I cut a bunch of stuff out of the video but you know that was partly tied into why was I recording

01:26:01 ◼   ► the vlogs. Like, that's a big thing that I was doing and then it was also partly tied into just

01:26:06 ◼   ► on a really small level being aware of things like if you're going for a walk maybe take a walk

01:26:14 ◼   ► along a path that you don't normally walk. Like, that counts. It's a very little thing but that's

01:26:18 ◼   ► a thing that you can do to just increase novelty. Yeah, like, that was a very minor and simple one

01:26:25 ◼   ► but I really liked it and I did think it ended up kind of working well as an example in the video.

01:26:31 ◼   ► Also because I think it has a really explanatory name. I think people can get it straight away.

01:26:37 ◼   ► My life has been kind of samey. Are there big or small things that I can do to just

01:26:44 ◼   ► make it a little bit different? I'm very excited to see how this video is received. I'm excited

01:26:50 ◼   ► about the idea of putting this thought technology out into the world more widely.

01:26:57 ◼   ► I'm really intrigued to see how it's received.

01:26:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. This is why I don't like, I really don't like recording the Cortex episodes

01:27:05 ◼   ► where it's unknown and the video hasn't, hasn't gone up yet.

01:27:08 ◼   ► You should have just posted the video earlier today and then it wouldn't have been a problem.

01:27:11 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's not done yet.

01:27:12 ◼   ► Ah, who cares.

01:27:13 ◼   ► There's, look, look, we're at, you know, like revision five of the animations and we're,

01:27:19 ◼   ► you know, we have to get to like revision 10 of the animations and then it will be all set.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Maybe I still need to tweak some little bits of the audio. Like it's not done. It's not

01:27:27 ◼   ► close to done, but it'll be, you know, it will be up before the video is up. I don't know. I just

01:27:31 ◼   ► keep thinking about this thing where it's... I was really trying to write the video of introducing

01:27:38 ◼   ► this thought into someone's brain and kind of hoping that I've done it in a way that it sticks

01:27:43 ◼   ► with the person and that even if they don't take immediate action, they might come back to that

01:27:48 ◼   ► video in a couple weeks and go like, "Let me think about this." That was sort of my goal and

01:27:52 ◼   ► I just don't know if it will or will not have succeeded. I think my concern is I don't want it

01:27:59 ◼   ► to be perceived as like, "This is just unspecific productivity advice." And I feel like that's my

01:28:06 ◼   ► concern about trying to compress down the idea into a short period of time. And that's also why

01:28:11 ◼   ► I was a little bit trying to think about if we have to write real rules about what themes are,

01:28:16 ◼   ► I have the three points about like broad, directional, and resonant.

01:28:20 ◼   ► Because I think like the three that I could think of if I really have to try to compress

01:28:24 ◼   ► this idea down to the smallest possible size, that's what I was trying to do, but we'll see.

01:28:29 ◼   ► But yeah, seasons. Very important. Never forget.

01:28:33 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:28:33 ◼   ► - Sometimes I lost the seasons, uh, four seasons in one.

01:28:37 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:28:38 ◼   ► - It's a year thing. How is your yearly theme going?

01:28:41 ◼   ► - Oh, it's going good. It's going good. I felt last time I was a little bit

01:28:46 ◼   ► But with a year theme like Clarity, I feel like we are at very opposite ends of the spectrum

01:28:52 ◼   ► for specificness of our themes.

01:28:56 ◼   ► You have a lot of very specific points.

01:28:59 ◼   ► And this year for me really strikes this edge of highly resonant but difficult to describe.

01:29:09 ◼   ► So I was thinking about it since the last episode because I felt like I didn't really

01:29:13 ◼   ► have any good examples of what is the kind of stuff that I'm thinking about in terms

01:29:19 ◼   ► of clarity.

01:29:21 ◼   ► And since that episode, I did come up with one of like, "Oh, here's a thing that I can

01:29:26 ◼   ► talk about."

01:29:27 ◼   ► So one of the challenges for anybody who works in a creative field is the number of parallel

01:29:38 ◼   ► projects that you're working on.

01:29:39 ◼   ► When I talk to other people who work in creative areas, like, this is often a very common thing.

01:29:46 ◼   ► The exception to that is, say, like, you've taken time off because you're going to write

01:29:50 ◼   ► a novel or you are a professor on sabbatical and, like, during that sabbatical you were

01:29:57 ◼   ► given it to work on this research project and, like, that's what you're going to do.

01:30:02 ◼   ► That is the situation sometimes for creative professionals, but more broadly, people in

01:30:10 ◼   ► the creative fields will naturally find themselves thinking about lots of projects.

01:30:17 ◼   ► And you're always having to weigh this game of like, "Which project am I working on?

01:30:23 ◼   ► How many projects are going on at the same time?

01:30:25 ◼   ► Which projects are actually active?

01:30:26 ◼   ► And which projects aren't actually active?"

01:30:29 ◼   ► And so, since the summer, when I really started Year of Clarity, I've been slowly trying to

01:30:35 ◼   ► develop rules around what I'm thinking of as "topic lock".

01:30:40 ◼   ► It's kind of an idea that I'm borrowing from the entertainment industry when you're making

01:30:44 ◼   ► a movie, where if you are making a movie that has a lot of post-processing stuff or special

01:30:51 ◼   ► effects stuff that needs to get done, there is a point at which you should say that the

01:30:56 ◼   ► movie is locked, as in all of the shots that are going to be in the movie, those are the

01:31:02 ◼   ► shots.

01:31:03 ◼   ► When do the cuts happen?

01:31:04 ◼   ► That's when those cuts are going to happen.

01:31:06 ◼   ► And then you can say, "All right, now we can start on all the visual effects post-processing

01:31:11 ◼   ► stuff because this is locked."

01:31:15 ◼   ► Or in my own field, like if you're doing something where there is, say, a voiceover for a documentary

01:31:21 ◼   ► or voices that are going to be used for an animation,

01:31:25 ◼   ► you want to lock the audio track and then say,

01:31:28 ◼   ► "Okay, now that this is locked, other things can happen."

01:31:31 ◼   ► So this is where the idea started,

01:31:34 ◼   ► but it's been becoming clear in my mind

01:31:37 ◼   ► of making really conscious decisions

01:31:42 ◼   ► about locking in what are the current set

01:31:48 ◼   ► of parallel projects.

01:31:51 ◼   ► Because in the past, what I've tried to do is like manage,

01:31:56 ◼   ► oh, how many projects am I going to let myself work on?

01:31:59 ◼   ► And that idea just sort of doesn't really make sense because sometimes you just

01:32:06 ◼   ► get inspired and like, you just want to work on something and you're like,

01:32:09 ◼   ► you want to take advantage of that, you know, or sometimes like a

01:32:12 ◼   ► project doesn't quite work out.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Setting an arbitrary number doesn't really work for, I will not let myself

01:32:19 ◼   ► work on more than five parallel videos because part of the process of having stuff in the

01:32:25 ◼   ► future is like you do have to always be exploring and thinking like, okay, what are the next

01:32:31 ◼   ► things?

01:32:33 ◼   ► But what you can do is have a small number of topics that are locked of I have, I've

01:32:41 ◼   ► locked this topic and I'm going to follow it to the end.

01:32:47 ◼   ► And it's been an interesting experience and I'm still developing this idea, but I've incorporated

01:32:54 ◼   ► a step where I'm really formally making a decision about when a space becomes available,

01:33:01 ◼   ► what is the next topic that gets locked?

01:33:04 ◼   ► And so, at some point last week, when I got the themes video to the point where I recorded

01:33:10 ◼   ► the audio, once I have recorded the audio and I have a final audio track that is all

01:33:16 ◼   ► set and ready to go and like now this gets into the animation phase.

01:33:22 ◼   ► Now I have like a free slot and in the past I never really had a process for thinking

01:33:30 ◼   ► about "Okay, what topic is going to go into this slot?"

01:33:34 ◼   ► It was much more like I would work on whatever was the thing that was most interesting to

01:33:41 ◼   ► me at that point in time.

01:33:43 ◼   ► But after completing the themes video, I was like, "Okay."

01:33:47 ◼   ► I sat down and I made a really conscious decision about, "Now that I have a free slot, I'm going

01:33:53 ◼   ► to pick a topic to lock to this slot.

01:33:56 ◼   ► What is that topic going to be?"

01:33:58 ◼   ► And I already had a pretty good idea of which one it was going to be.

01:34:02 ◼   ► Like there was a video that had been sort of in development in the background and like,

01:34:06 ◼   ► "Ooh, this is good and this is fun."

01:34:08 ◼   ► But I still, instead of just like starting to work on that, I really did sat down and

01:34:13 ◼   ► And I thought, okay, let me compare this to my other options.

01:34:18 ◼   ► Let me think about how this topic relates to the other couple of locked parallel projects.

01:34:26 ◼   ► Like I don't want to end up with too many things where I have too many long term things

01:34:31 ◼   ► going on at one time.

01:34:32 ◼   ► I don't want to have a situation where I have too many short term things going on.

01:34:36 ◼   ► And so it was it was just a much more deliberate process of, I think I want to do this one,

01:34:42 ◼   ► let me sit down, work through, compare to the other options, and then just make this

01:34:48 ◼   ► conscious decision about, "Okay, project title X, this project is now locked as the

01:34:55 ◼   ► next one." That's one of the ways in which I'm trying to increase clarity in the coming

01:35:02 ◼   ► year.

01:35:03 ◼   ► What would you say has stopped you from doing that before?

01:35:05 ◼   ► I honestly think it was more just I kept thinking about the total number of parallel projects.

01:35:13 ◼   ► And I just I feel like there's something about that that wasn't working in my brain.

01:35:19 ◼   ► And the current state of what I'm working with is there can be three locked projects.

01:35:27 ◼   ► And I have a rough idea of like, how should I be distributing my time among the three

01:35:31 ◼   ► locked topics?

01:35:33 ◼   ► But then not worrying about what is the state of other projects outside of those three.

01:35:42 ◼   ► Whereas I feel like in the past I used to much more focus on "don't have more than five

01:35:48 ◼   ► scripts in Ulysses at any one time."

01:35:51 ◼   ► And it never really worked because a thing that often happens is, you know, some afternoon

01:35:56 ◼   ► I'll be reading something and you just kind of get inspired and go down a rabbit trail

01:36:00 ◼   ► for a while and quickly end up with something where you're like, "Ooh, this is interesting."

01:36:05 ◼   ► And I want to leave space for being able to do that.

01:36:08 ◼   ► That is totally fine, but after having gone through a little exploratory phase and something

01:36:14 ◼   ► new, it doesn't change the fact that that can't be a locked project.

01:36:19 ◼   ► And that just has to sort of wait for a lot of further attention until one of the locked

01:36:25 ◼   ► slots is free.

01:36:27 ◼   ► Also as part of this, I spent much more time this year, sort of in September-ish, really

01:36:33 ◼   ► going through and organizing in a slightly different way what are all the potential topics

01:36:39 ◼   ► that I'm working on.

01:36:41 ◼   ► So I've always just had like an outline list into which I throw like a bunch of ideas.

01:36:48 ◼   ► As again, anybody who's a creative professional, like you have a running list of all the various

01:36:52 ◼   ► things that you could potentially do.

01:36:54 ◼   ► But I did the same thing with that list of just going through it, clearing out stuff

01:37:01 ◼   ► that I know I'm never gonna do, or trying to get that list down into a much more manageable

01:37:10 ◼   ► size so that it's a thing that I can review when I'm thinking about what is the topic

01:37:15 ◼   ► to lock.

01:37:16 ◼   ► Whereas before it was just an endless junk drawer of single sentences where I had thrown

01:37:22 ◼   ► a bunch of ideas and now it's much more of a real workable document of review this, you

01:37:28 ◼   ► have a way to see how this relates to other projects and you can make a more clear decision

01:37:36 ◼   ► about which should be the next project. Does that make sense or does it still sound like

01:37:42 ◼   ► it's horrifically unclear?

01:37:44 ◼   ► No, I think I get it. I think a lot of these things they require all of the information

01:37:50 ◼   ► that you have at hand to fully make complete sense, right?

01:37:53 ◼   ► Which is just like, that's just you, right?

01:37:56 ◼   ► But the idea of locking in projects

01:37:59 ◼   ► and deciding you're going to continue

01:38:01 ◼   ► with only these few and like that's it,

01:38:04 ◼   ► is obviously a very logical thing to do.

01:38:06 ◼   ► So you're not getting lost, right?

01:38:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also with the clarity on this,

01:38:12 ◼   ► it is just internally with the people

01:38:15 ◼   ► that I work with in Slack,

01:38:17 ◼   ► Part of it is also making it clear to everyone, like, what is the priority order of these projects?

01:38:24 ◼   ► I can imagine that being very helpful to the people that work with you on videos.

01:38:27 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:38:29 ◼   ► I can imagine that in the past you've been very much like, you know, everyone thinks

01:38:32 ◼   ► that there's something going on. You're like, "No, no, no, no, I've got this great idea.

01:38:35 ◼   ► And I'm gonna work on this one now for a bit instead." Right? And then it's like,

01:38:40 ◼   ► everyone has to down tools and get ready for the next one, right?

01:38:43 ◼   ► where having a set amount of projects that are the only ones that are being focused on and if

01:38:49 ◼   ► something's going to change it's very clear that one is going away. It must add a lot more structure

01:38:56 ◼   ► to the focus. Yeah, well, it's slightly different to that internally because

01:39:02 ◼   ► the locked topic matters very much in the writing phase. I think this is,

01:39:12 ◼   ► If I look at the work that I do, the writing is always the bottleneck.

01:39:15 ◼   ► And so, my experience has been that the concept of Locke has really helped.

01:39:21 ◼   ► This directly led to that little burst of videos before the end of the year,

01:39:26 ◼   ► and there's some stuff in the pipeline for upcoming this year where it's like,

01:39:29 ◼   ► the concept of Locke is clearly helping.

01:39:31 ◼   ► But part of the exploratory stuff,

01:39:35 ◼   ► like I said, if either I find a topic in the afternoon that I think is interesting,

01:39:40 ◼   ► it's great to be able to do that,

01:39:42 ◼   ► And also sometimes, like, with the animation, there are times where it makes sense to say,

01:39:48 ◼   ► "Hey, I just want to explore this concept.

01:39:52 ◼   ► What would this look like in animation?"

01:39:55 ◼   ► And having topic lock also made me realize, "Oh, I need to really communicate to people

01:40:01 ◼   ► which of these projects are, like, the speculative ones, and which are the things that are, like,

01:40:09 ◼   ► you should work on in order."

01:40:10 ◼   ► of like, "This is the one that in theory we want out next, so if you ever have something

01:40:15 ◼   ► to do with this one, do that first."

01:40:18 ◼   ► I think that makes sense.

01:40:19 ◼   ► Yeah, and then like at the bottom of this list is like speculative stuff, you know?

01:40:25 ◼   ► What would music on a video like this sound like?

01:40:28 ◼   ► You know, what would this look like in animation?

01:40:31 ◼   ► Or you know, can we find information about this crazy thing?

01:40:35 ◼   ► Like does it even exist?

01:40:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's kind of what partly what I was getting at, what I was saying.

01:40:40 ◼   ► It's like you're adding importance to things because it reminds me of that Incredibles line, right?

01:40:47 ◼   ► Like, if we're all special, no one's special.

01:40:50 ◼   ► And it's like, I see every request from you will be actioned upon because you've made the request.

01:40:56 ◼   ► But if you're not clear about which requests are real ones and which ones are just like,

01:41:01 ◼   ► "Oh, I wonder," then it gets difficult, right,

01:41:04 ◼   ► to where the focus is supposed to be

01:41:06 ◼   ► and what deadlines are supposed to be met

01:41:09 ◼   ► and stuff like that, because knowing you,

01:41:11 ◼   ► I assume that there are very seldom deadlines, right?

01:41:16 ◼   ► Unless there's like a very specific reason.

01:41:20 ◼   ► So I can imagine that for the creative people

01:41:22 ◼   ► that you work with to create the videos,

01:41:25 ◼   ► it can be difficult to understand importance

01:41:28 ◼   ► and to weight that.

01:41:31 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think that one of the things that does make the videos different is like I'm

01:41:34 ◼   ► very happy to give them lots of time to try to make them as good as they can possibly

01:41:38 ◼   ► be.

01:41:39 ◼   ► And so yeah, like that I don't my business doesn't doesn't very often naturally have

01:41:45 ◼   ► a structure of like there's a deadline which which has an implicit kind of priority to

01:41:50 ◼   ► it so so this is different.

01:41:55 ◼   ► But the other thing I don't know if this is like too far in the weeds of the of the process

01:42:00 ◼   ► But the thing about Topic Lock that has been really interesting and it has happened three

01:42:05 ◼   ► times in a row now is back in a Q&A video a long time ago, I talked about this idea

01:42:15 ◼   ► of fractal creativity.

01:42:19 ◼   ► That in my experience, whenever you're working on a project, like my dad has this thing that

01:42:24 ◼   ► he's always said, like, everything is an entire world unto itself. Like, you can pick any

01:42:33 ◼   ► topic, any human activity, and there is like a whole world that is waiting to be explored

01:42:40 ◼   ► in no matter what you think is the smallest details of life, right? Mechanical keyboards.

01:42:46 ◼   ► How much of a world can there be? There is an enormous world, right? Everything is like

01:42:51 ◼   ► this. And creative projects are fractally interesting to me in very many ways. And so,

01:43:00 ◼   ► topic lock doesn't mean that the original idea for the video is going to be the final

01:43:07 ◼   ► idea for the video. And so, what very often happens is, "Oh, I think the video is about

01:43:14 ◼   ► And then in the process of working on it, you go, "Oh, this part of it is an interesting part of it."

01:43:21 ◼   ► And you can sort of drill down and find like a core of a thing that is interesting.

01:43:30 ◼   ► And so the Mercury video that came out a few months ago now, we discussed at the time how

01:43:36 ◼   ► that was a small part of a bigger thing. And that's an example of, "Oh, I have this much

01:43:42 ◼   ► bigger thing and while I'm working on it like, "Oh yes, that topic is locked," but I've gone

01:43:48 ◼   ► down a couple of levels in the fractal and then found, "Oh, this is a real gem," and

01:43:54 ◼   ► then that project gets completed.

01:43:58 ◼   ► I was like, "Did the Mercury video have anything to do with the original concept of what I

01:44:04 ◼   ► wanted to make?"

01:44:06 ◼   ► No.

01:44:07 ◼   ► When that video eventually gets made, will people even necessarily recognize that there's

01:44:12 ◼   ► a connection between those two?

01:44:14 ◼   ► Very possibly not.

01:44:16 ◼   ► But there's something about topic lock which I have found has really focused this idea

01:44:23 ◼   ► of fractal creativity.

01:44:25 ◼   ► And so the theme video that is going up right now, that was originally for me a topic locked

01:44:32 ◼   ► Q&A.

01:44:33 ◼   ► And so what happened?

01:44:34 ◼   ► It's like, "Okay, I'm working on a Q&A video.

01:44:37 ◼   ► Let me see if I can do this.

01:44:39 ◼   ► The Q&A video then turned into...

01:44:41 ◼   ► Oh, I actually have a bunch of good questions about productivity specifically.

01:44:46 ◼   ► So let me make it a productivity Q&A video instead of just a general one.

01:44:50 ◼   ► You're mentioning this now.

01:44:51 ◼   ► Right.

01:44:52 ◼   ► But like, okay, so I'm working on that.

01:44:55 ◼   ► And then as I'm working on that one, I go, actually, I think a video about productivity

01:44:59 ◼   ► works better if I remove the Q&A part.

01:45:02 ◼   ► So this is just going to be like, it's shrunk down again.

01:45:06 ◼   ► Like we've gone further down the fractal and it's like, "Actually, this is just a thing

01:45:09 ◼   ► about some ideas of productivity."

01:45:12 ◼   ► And then within that script, I found, oh, the theme stuff keeps expanding and it doesn't

01:45:20 ◼   ► make… like the theme idea is hard enough and enough on its own that, "Does this make

01:45:26 ◼   ► sense to have part of a general video about productivity?

01:45:30 ◼   ► Not really.

01:45:31 ◼   ► So let me make this thing the actual video that is going to be made.

01:45:37 ◼   ► So that's an example of going down the fractal, and the theme video ends up being this level

01:45:46 ◼   ► and this size of topic is the thing that makes sense to keep pursuing.

01:45:52 ◼   ► And so that's how that got made.

01:45:55 ◼   ► And the video that is going to go up after themes is the exact same thing of a, like,

01:46:05 ◼   ► Indians are topic locked, but I have a thing that is like seven layers down the fractal,

01:46:10 ◼   ► which seems totally unrelated to Indians, but is going to be like, "Oh, this is great.

01:46:15 ◼   ► Like here's a thing that's come out of this topic lock, and I'm going to make a video

01:46:19 ◼   ► on that."

01:46:20 ◼   ► So I think there's something about this which to me really hits this perfect level of constraint

01:46:31 ◼   ► but also flexibility.

01:46:35 ◼   ► You're not locked into doing the script as originally visioned, but you are locked into

01:46:42 ◼   ► either finding the really interesting gem in here somewhere, or deciding this topic is totally gone.

01:46:52 ◼   ► And so that's another part of like, the clarity around that process has become more obvious to me,

01:46:58 ◼   ► and I find that it's very much working in my favour of, okay, what's locked? I have a little

01:47:06 ◼   ► folder in Ulysses for these are the three topic-locked scripts, and it's been really

01:47:13 ◼   ► helpful. Obviously, as something sort of shrinks down, that means like, "Oh, I have to make a new

01:47:22 ◼   ► page for this different script," and that boots out the parent topic from topic-lock.

01:47:28 ◼   ► And then when this thing is done, then I reassess. It's a really interesting part of the process,

01:47:34 ◼   ► and is at least something that I can try to talk about with some level of specificity about what

01:47:41 ◼   ► does Year of Clarity mean to me, this ridiculously broad name, but this is one of the areas in which

01:47:48 ◼   ► it's already made a really big deal and a really big difference for me.

01:47:52 ◼   ► [Music]

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01:49:39 ◼   ► So our listeners have been sending in via Twitter and via the CORTEX subreddit and on

01:49:46 ◼   ► the CGP Grey subreddit. They've been sending in their yearly themes. I've been absolutely

01:49:51 ◼   ► blown away this year by just how many.

01:49:53 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:49:54 ◼   ► has skyrocketed, which I'm so excited about.

01:49:56 ◼   ► I'm really enjoying seeing it.

01:49:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think this year is a critical mass of difference.

01:50:02 ◼   ► I have a suspicion that there's a lot of,

01:50:04 ◼   ► this is where, again, I think the theme idea

01:50:06 ◼   ► takes some time to bake, and I have a suspicion

01:50:09 ◼   ► that there are a lot of people who have heard us

01:50:11 ◼   ► go through one or two rounds of this,

01:50:14 ◼   ► who are on board the theme train now.

01:50:17 ◼   ► 'Cause I was aware of that too.

01:50:18 ◼   ► Boy, there seems like a big increase

01:50:21 ◼   ► in the number of people doing it.

01:50:22 ◼   ► the journal's done it too though. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. That's a good like focusing

01:50:26 ◼   ► point for the brain. I think there are people that are excited to like get on board with the journal

01:50:32 ◼   ► and like well I want this journal let me try this right or like people that wanted to do a yearly

01:50:36 ◼   ► theme but had no idea how to structure it and now we've given them a structure to work within.

01:50:40 ◼   ► I think those two things have kind of helped each other go hand in hand but I have just this very

01:50:47 ◼   ► minuscule selection of themes that I wanted to just go through very quickly.

01:50:51 ◼   ► Which ones stuck out to you? I want to tell you some of these because I

01:50:56 ◼   ► want to also tell our listeners to try and give a kind of a broad idea of some

01:51:02 ◼   ► of the places that these can go to maybe help spark some ideas more within the

01:51:07 ◼   ► cortexes. So Soya had the Year of Friends which was to strengthen

01:51:13 ◼   ► friendships and feel more connected to the people that they care about. Danny

01:51:17 ◼   ► had the year of clean. There's too much junk in Danny's garage, too many apps on

01:51:22 ◼   ► their phone, they want to eat better and deal with their junk email problem. So I

01:51:27 ◼   ► like this one because it's a bunch of things, right? Apps, so digital kind of

01:51:32 ◼   ► like reducing digital cruft, physical stuff, getting healthier and dealing with

01:51:39 ◼   ► junk email problem, year of clean, very nice.