Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, it's that time of year. It's time for yearly themes.

00:00:04 ◼   ► [Ding]

00:00:05 ◼   ► Are you ready, Myke?

00:00:06 ◼   ► Oh, I'm so ready. I've been ready for about three months.

00:00:10 ◼   ► You've been ready for about three months with your yearly theme?

00:00:13 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:00:14 ◼   ► This has become, partly against my will, an annual Cortex tradition.

00:00:22 ◼   ► The discussion of the themes.

00:00:24 ◼   ► How long have we been doing this, Myke?

00:00:25 ◼   ► Well, the idea of themes for a year first kind of came up in 2016, and you were bouncing

00:00:33 ◼   ► around the idea of what you were calling the "year of less," which was just kind of like

00:00:39 ◼   ► an idea that you had, a thought that you had going on around in your mind about reducing

00:00:43 ◼   ► your commitments over the year.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And then in 2017, we decided that we would actually set it up as something we would do

00:00:50 ◼   ► every year in January to eschew the idea of resolutions because they're trash and to

00:00:56 ◼   ► put our stake in the ground for yearly themes. In 2017 we both had a year of less, which

00:01:05 ◼   ► I actually, I was thinking about this when I was preparing and we could talk about a

00:01:08 ◼   ► year of less a little bit more in a bit, but I think that is a really good starting theme

00:01:13 ◼   ► for most people looking to do this. You think that's a good starter theme? I do because

00:01:17 ◼   ► I think most of the times when people feel like they need to get some more order in their

00:01:22 ◼   ► life it's because they have too much stuff going on.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So the idea of taking a year to really think about the amount of projects you're taking

00:01:30 ◼   ► on to maybe weigh up the projects that you're currently doing and try and weed out some

00:01:34 ◼   ► of the stuff that's not necessary is probably a really good starting point for adopting

00:01:40 ◼   ► this type of idea in your life.

00:01:42 ◼   ► the new year people are thinking about how they want their life to change and as a general

00:01:48 ◼   ► statement people are looking to add things. If you think of what people usually describe

00:01:55 ◼   ► as new year's resolutions it's always additive to life. Life is going to be the same except

00:02:00 ◼   ► more. I need to do more of this thing. I need to work harder to do to stop this thing or

00:02:07 ◼   ► I'm going to completely change my eating habits and I'm going to cook myself a beautiful dinner every night.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Like all this stuff, right? People are always thinking "more". I'm going to go to the gym more.

00:02:19 ◼   ► But the fundamental thing about life is it's limited.

00:02:23 ◼   ► And you only have so much and the removal of things is almost certainly the better place to start than the addition of things.

00:02:31 ◼   ► of things because the addition of things is a little bit of,

00:02:35 ◼   ► I am going to work harder by simply like knuckling down

00:02:39 ◼   ► and making myself do a thing,

00:02:41 ◼   ► which is why new year's resolutions almost always fail.

00:02:44 ◼   ► So yeah, I think you're right there that year of less

00:02:47 ◼   ► of simply trying to simplify a life

00:02:50 ◼   ► is probably a pretty good starter theme.

00:02:52 ◼   ► If someone's trying to survey the landscape and think,

00:02:55 ◼   ► what do I want to have for a yearly theme?

00:02:58 ◼   ► - So like yearly themes themselves,

00:02:59 ◼   ► They are guiding principles, they are ideas,

00:03:03 ◼   ► they are not actions like a resolution might be.

00:03:06 ◼   ► So the way that we described this in the past,

00:03:08 ◼   ► I think of my yearly theme as like my North Star.

00:03:12 ◼   ► It is the thing that I look to

00:03:14 ◼   ► when I'm trying to make decisions.

00:03:16 ◼   ► It's the thing that I look to when I feel overwhelmed

00:03:19 ◼   ► and try and keep that as my focusing point for the year.

00:03:22 ◼   ► Because for me, a yearly theme is born out

00:03:25 ◼   ► of a sense of frustration with my current situation.

00:03:29 ◼   ► So I have found something about myself that I want to change.

00:03:32 ◼   ► I have found something about my work that I want to change.

00:03:35 ◼   ► And I think, right, so next year,

00:03:37 ◼   ► what I can do is focus on this.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And so that becomes my yearly theme.

00:03:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think back when we first started

00:03:44 ◼   ► talking about this, low in 2016,

00:03:47 ◼   ► when I wanted to do my year of less,

00:03:49 ◼   ► like the frustration with New Year's resolutions is twofold.

00:03:55 ◼   ► They are pass/fail targets on a very long time scale.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And so people are setting a New Year's resolution

00:04:04 ◼   ► and they're saying, "This time next year,

00:04:06 ◼   ► "X is going to be the case."

00:04:08 ◼   ► And I think it's terrible for a couple of reasons.

00:04:11 ◼   ► The pass/failness of the target,

00:04:14 ◼   ► it can be incredibly discouraging to people.

00:04:17 ◼   ► And it's also just on too long of a time scale very often

00:04:22 ◼   ► people to really be able to hold it in their mind that, oh, if there's an action that they're supposed

00:04:28 ◼   ► to do, well, does anybody really start that action on January 1st? Probably not. You think like, oh,

00:04:34 ◼   ► I have time, I have a year. So I think it's just like it's a poorly structured thing for actually

00:04:41 ◼   ► implementing human behavior change. And so, yes, you like the metaphor of a North Star. I tend to

00:04:49 ◼   ► to think of it more as a background process of it's specifically not a target, it's not

00:04:55 ◼   ► a goal that you're trying to achieve, it's something to keep in the back of your mind

00:05:01 ◼   ► as you're going through the various decisions in your life.

00:05:05 ◼   ► And you know, will this help me towards whatever the year theme is?

00:05:09 ◼   ► Will this help fulfill that theme?

00:05:11 ◼   ► Or will this work against that theme?

00:05:14 ◼   ► And so again, with the Year of Less One for me, as a background process, the thing I kept

00:05:19 ◼   ► thinking of with many decisions and with regards to a lot of work was, does this have to be

00:05:25 ◼   ► done by me?

00:05:27 ◼   ► Or is there a way that someone else can help me with this task?

00:05:31 ◼   ► And like just keeping that in the back of your mind is a way to direct your actions

00:05:36 ◼   ► slowly over time.

00:05:37 ◼   ► And of course, a theme itself, just the words, can be empty for some people, right?

00:05:43 ◼   ► Because what are you trying to achieve?

00:05:46 ◼   ► So I think we both do this, I definitely do this.

00:05:49 ◼   ► I have some ideal outcomes, some things that I want to focus on when it comes to looking

00:05:54 ◼   ► at my theme, but I'm very focused on not putting fail states to them.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Yeah, yes, yeah.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Right?

00:06:01 ◼   ► So these are a selection of things I would like to focus on, that I would love to happen

00:06:05 ◼   ► as part of my year of stabilization, for example.

00:06:09 ◼   ► But if I don't achieve them, I haven't failed.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And we both have done this before,

00:06:14 ◼   ► you've done this even more so,

00:06:16 ◼   ► have a year theme, ideas of that theme

00:06:19 ◼   ► continue through multiple years

00:06:21 ◼   ► because you feel like maybe you didn't do this part of it.

00:06:24 ◼   ► You twist it, you change it a little bit

00:06:26 ◼   ► to allow you to continue focusing on it.

00:06:28 ◼   ► But just because the year ticked over again

00:06:31 ◼   ► and you didn't get to where you wanted to be

00:06:32 ◼   ► doesn't mean you failed.

00:06:33 ◼   ► It just means you have to keep your focus.

00:06:35 ◼   ► - The other thing about it is,

00:06:36 ◼   ► and this is this weird thing where we've ended up

00:06:38 ◼   ► falling into this tradition that you like

00:06:42 ◼   ► of talking about it every year around this time.

00:06:45 ◼   ► And I think that's partly as a result

00:06:46 ◼   ► of what we're trying to do is,

00:06:49 ◼   ► I feel like we're trying to change minds here.

00:06:52 ◼   ► - Yes, we need to get to the people, to the cortexes

00:06:55 ◼   ► at the time they are considering resolutions,

00:06:58 ◼   ► considering another year, and say, "No, don't do that.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Come this way.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Yes, this is like, you are walking along a dangerous precipice.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Perhaps, perhaps instead of going down that path, which is along this sharp edge,

00:07:13 ◼   ► come, come along, come stroll with us along this beautiful garden path.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Look at these beautiful guide rails that we have along this path.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Yes, yeah.

00:07:21 ◼   ► There's no way to fail here.

00:07:23 ◼   ► It's a much gentler slope and we're talking about it now to try to change minds

00:07:29 ◼   ► and to try to capture people before they make the terrible mistake of making a New Year's resolution.

00:07:34 ◼   ► But the thing that is always a little bit strange for me about talking about it on an annual basis is

00:07:39 ◼   ► is also the--

00:07:41 ◼   ► I'm very against the idea of it has to last for a year, or that it has any particular set time at all.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And so we just end up talking about it now.

00:07:51 ◼   ► But, you know, I feel very strongly about

00:07:54 ◼   ► the themes, they come into your life,

00:07:56 ◼   ► and they serve their usefulness,

00:07:58 ◼   ► and then they dissipate when they're no longer useful.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And it's interesting to hear you say that you've been

00:08:05 ◼   ► thinking about your theme, it's been in place for three months,

00:08:08 ◼   ► and I'm very aware that my theme has been

00:08:10 ◼   ► very strongly in place since the summer,

00:08:12 ◼   ► and now is finally the time when I can actually talk about it.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Well, you know, I think that we have a history of that.

00:08:17 ◼   ► I think we should talk about some of our previous themes,

00:08:20 ◼   ► so again, we can give people more ideas when they're coming to this.

00:08:23 ◼   ► But one of mine was the Year of Positivity,

00:08:26 ◼   ► which lasted from June to June.

00:08:29 ◼   ► - Yes, yes. - Right?

00:08:30 ◼   ► Because I was finding myself,

00:08:31 ◼   ► 'cause a big part of what I do is talking about

00:08:35 ◼   ► and focusing on technology, especially Apple.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And the year, I think this was 2016 to 2017,

00:08:42 ◼   ► because at that time,

00:08:44 ◼   ► a lot of the rhetoric around Apple products

00:08:46 ◼   ► was very negative,

00:08:48 ◼   ► and I was finding myself becoming increasingly frustrated

00:08:52 ◼   ► with the idea of talking negatively about the things

00:08:56 ◼   ► that I enjoy because it was just making me sad.

00:08:59 ◼   ► So I was trying to find more positivity in that stuff.

00:09:04 ◼   ► And that helped me enjoy the technology part of my life

00:09:07 ◼   ► way more, but it lasted from June to June

00:09:10 ◼   ► because that was just what I decided to do.

00:09:12 ◼   ► But I had like the year of adulting,

00:09:14 ◼   ► which was one that I did a couple of years ago,

00:09:17 ◼   ► which encapsulated getting married, moving into a house.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Well, after I got married, it was done.

00:09:22 ◼   ► So, but with that, typically for me, I will have a couple of themes for a year in those

00:09:27 ◼   ► situations.

00:09:28 ◼   ► And over the last two years, I've had multiple themes for each year.

00:09:32 ◼   ► Although gray, spoilers, I have one this year.

00:09:35 ◼   ► Well, one and a sub thing, but you'll see, you'll see, you'll see.

00:09:39 ◼   ► Okay, so it's already two.

00:09:41 ◼   ► No, it's not, you'll see.

00:09:43 ◼   ► You'll get it.

00:09:44 ◼   ► Yeah, again, they're flexible and they serve you as they wish.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And I also view this as, under ideal circumstances, the theme sort of fades into the background

00:09:55 ◼   ► because it becomes a natural part of your thinking.

00:09:59 ◼   ► And so the Year of Less became very much that for me, that it just became a natural part

00:10:04 ◼   ► of my thinking of, you know, is this work that it is critical that I do it or is it

00:10:09 ◼   ► work that can be helped by somebody else?

00:10:12 ◼   ► And then after that, I did the year of new, which the idea was I was just trying to do

00:10:20 ◼   ► some expansion of my life into things that I was a little bit uncomfortable with.

00:10:23 ◼   ► This included things like going to conferences or being more social or just trying different

00:10:29 ◼   ► kinds of stuff.

00:10:30 ◼   ► That was the year that I decided, oh, let me try to make a vlogging video on my channel.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Like that was part of the year of new.

00:10:37 ◼   ► And that just, again, became a part of my thinking process of, I'm still not like a

00:10:45 ◼   ► crazy guy who does all kinds of wild stuff.

00:10:47 ◼   ► But I do find that that just got incorporated into my thinking of, on some of the cases

00:10:53 ◼   ► in the margin, I'm a little bit more likely to try the different thing that I would have

00:10:58 ◼   ► been in the past.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Because I guess yearly themes, if followed, will either help establish or break habits.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Yes, yeah.

00:11:07 ◼   ► that sort of stuff can last for a long time. Oh, and also depending what you do,

00:11:10 ◼   ► so like in our year of years off less that we did, we both hired people. Well,

00:11:16 ◼   ► that will continue, right? The work that those people will do to help give you

00:11:20 ◼   ► more time to take away things that you don't want to focus on in the same way

00:11:24 ◼   ► anymore, well that is a lasting impact that that one year had, or two and a half

00:11:30 ◼   ► years in your case, the year of less it kept going. But yeah, that is a thing that can

00:11:35 ◼   ► will last longer than the year theme, which can be very valuable.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Yeah, so again, I just think as Myke and I go through this episode and we talk about

00:11:43 ◼   ► our previous year, and we talk about what we've been up to and the upcoming year of

00:11:49 ◼   ► themes, I just think it's important to keep in mind this loose structure. It's something

00:11:56 ◼   ► to have in your mind. It's a background process, or it's a guiding star. But you are not setting

00:12:04 ◼   ► a target. You're not setting a goal that you can fail at.

00:12:07 ◼   ► This is much more gentle guidance

00:12:10 ◼   ► in a broader area of your life.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Be kind to yourself.

00:12:14 ◼   ► Yeah, be kind to yourself.

00:12:15 ◼   ► And I was thinking about it this morning,

00:12:18 ◼   ► you know, knowing that we were going to record today,

00:12:20 ◼   ► and I realized that this happens

00:12:22 ◼   ► to take advantage, I

00:12:25 ◼   ► think, of a process of the human

00:12:27 ◼   ► mind, which is

00:12:28 ◼   ► to...

00:12:30 ◼   ► like, your brain is always involved in sort of telling

00:12:33 ◼   ► yourself a story about your own life.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And there are many cases in which that can lead you astray.

00:12:39 ◼   ► But I think this this is one of the areas where you can use that

00:12:43 ◼   ► as a as a tool to your advantage.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And I know that in in the past years we've discussed how.

00:12:49 ◼   ► By having a theme.

00:12:52 ◼   ► You sort of view your life through this lens, and the open endedness of it

00:13:00 ◼   ► allows many things to be incorporated under the banner

00:13:03 ◼   ► that were not necessarily originally the idea

00:13:06 ◼   ► that you had started out with.

00:13:08 ◼   ► But that doesn't matter.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And so, you know, things like year of new

00:13:12 ◼   ► or year of positivity or year of less

00:13:14 ◼   ► or year of order or year of health

00:13:16 ◼   ► or whatever it is you want to choose,

00:13:19 ◼   ► it is a good thing that your brain can start

00:13:22 ◼   ► telling yourself a story

00:13:24 ◼   ► about how lots of things in your life

00:13:27 ◼   ► are related to this positive directional change.

00:13:31 ◼   ► So this again is why I think the fuzzy borders are a feature of this idea in the selection of a theme.

00:13:38 ◼   ► And don't get too wrapped up in the details about it.

00:13:41 ◼   ► It's just a broad umbrella over your mind to sort of guide it.

00:13:46 ◼   ► So shall we review our 2019 themes?

00:13:50 ◼   ► I know we said that year themes cannot have a fail state, but…

00:13:54 ◼   ► No, don't undo the work we just did!

00:13:57 ◼   ► No, no, I'm not undoing it.

00:13:59 ◼   ► I just, I think it's, I want to bring it up because it's an interesting case, right?

00:14:03 ◼   ► So not the previous year, but the year before this one, I had picked the year of order as my yearly theme.

00:14:10 ◼   ► And basically after a year of new, I felt like I needed a bit more order in my life.

00:14:16 ◼   ► I felt like I wanted to try to give myself a schedule.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And I was like, okay, we're going to have order in life.

00:14:23 ◼   ► And I just-- it just so happened that I picked a terrible year

00:14:27 ◼   ► in terms of a number of personal and professional things that occurred

00:14:30 ◼   ► where it's like, I had a year that there was no order that was going to be done.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:34 ◼   ► So that year in some sense could be regarded as a epic fail.

00:14:38 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I still think of that as a time where

00:14:44 ◼   ► having that on my mind allowed a lot of damage mitigation.

00:14:49 ◼   ► So I was able to keep my life more ordered when I was traveling

00:14:52 ◼   ► and there are a number of times where I think I kept things together much better than I otherwise

00:14:58 ◼   ► would have had that not been the year theme. But so all of that is to say that last year then,

00:15:04 ◼   ► when I was picking my theme, I decided to do the Year of Order again, which I was calling the Year

00:15:10 ◼   ► of Reorder. This is one of the rare cases where I felt like I hadn't really thought about the year

00:15:17 ◼   ► theme enough, like I actually wanted to extend it for a longer period of time. And it also was

00:15:25 ◼   ► a case of the reason I picked the name "Reorder" is because I was thinking about how it was a real

00:15:31 ◼   ► transition time in my life that I think I hadn't quite realized of. I've been a self-employed

00:15:38 ◼   ► person for a really long time, and part of the reason that the Year of Order didn't work out

00:15:45 ◼   ► the way that I wanted to was I felt like, "Oh, I am trying to impose on myself the ideals and wishes

00:15:53 ◼   ► of a previous version of Gray whose concerns and interests I don't really care about."

00:15:59 ◼   ► That I need to sort of think about what are the goals that I want for myself given the situation

00:16:07 ◼   ► that I am in now, and to sort of not really be carrying over stuff from the previous idea

00:16:15 ◼   ► of like, "This Grey wants a very rigid schedule to which he sticks to the work all the time,

00:16:20 ◼   ► and that's like what he should be aiming for."

00:16:23 ◼   ► So I'm happy to report that the Year of Reorder has been a great success.

00:16:29 ◼   ► I'm very pleased with the way that it's gone.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Hooray!

00:16:32 ◼   ► This is good news.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Uh, spoiler, my theme for next year is not going to be the year of re-reorder.

00:16:40 ◼   ► I'm actually pretty pleased about that, honestly.

00:16:43 ◼   ► I'm looking for something new.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Were you worried that was a possibility?

00:16:45 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know, year of reordering, or like, year of reorder two, or order more,

00:16:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:16:53 ◼   ► But so, I'm just, I'm very pleased with the way that it went.

00:16:56 ◼   ► There are a number of areas in my life where I feel like I had specific targets for what

00:17:01 ◼   ► I'll call "chaos reduction".

00:17:04 ◼   ► So you can't control all the areas of chaos in your life, but I did spend a bunch of time

00:17:10 ◼   ► looking around and trying to think, you know, what are some of the things that are chaotic

00:17:16 ◼   ► over which I do have control and how can I work to minimize those things?

00:17:21 ◼   ► And so that was really good to do.

00:17:22 ◼   ► I feel like having that as a background process in my mind really helped on some of those

00:17:27 ◼   ► marginal decisions about like, okay, how can I work on this area to work on that project?

00:17:33 ◼   ► One of the areas that I feel like was the biggest tremendous success was it's not exactly

00:17:40 ◼   ► a schedule, but I did want order in my life in terms of regular exercise.

00:17:48 ◼   ► And this was something I was trying to achieve.

00:17:52 ◼   ► And I am pleased like I have never been in my life with my current exercise habits as

00:17:58 ◼   ► they came to be in the year of reorder.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Now you and I have discussed, Myke, we are not huge fans of exercise.

00:18:06 ◼   ► It's the worst.

00:18:07 ◼   ► It is the worst!

00:18:08 ◼   ► My opinions on exercise have not changed.

00:18:11 ◼   ► It is still the worst.

00:18:15 ◼   ► And I still do not like exercising, and I still feel disgruntled at the people who describe

00:18:21 ◼   ► how they're so invigorated after exercise, when really the only thing I want to do is

00:18:26 ◼   ► take a shower and have a nap because I'm just exhausted.

00:18:30 ◼   ► I can't remember when I first came across it but like if you're trying to think about

00:18:38 ◼   ► exercise you want to try to find something that works for you like something that you

00:18:41 ◼   ► actually like so I've done things like tried running and realized no I hate it this is

00:18:47 ◼   ► not for me I've tried various things I'm so pleased you didn't like running that would

00:18:52 ◼   ► have just really upset me I know that you were worried you were worried during that

00:18:55 ◼   ► "Frank Gray becomes a runner."

00:18:57 ◼   ► It's just, 'cause it's so, I can't do it,

00:19:00 ◼   ► and it would've annoyed me because we were so in sync

00:19:03 ◼   ► about hating exercise and not being good at it,

00:19:06 ◼   ► and then you go and become like,

00:19:07 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm a great runner now,"

00:19:09 ◼   ► and it's like, "Oh, you've betrayed me."

00:19:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I completely understand that feeling.

00:19:12 ◼   ► I get it, Myke.

00:19:13 ◼   ► But we were so on the same page

00:19:16 ◼   ► that that project was doomed to failure right from the start.

00:19:18 ◼   ► I just had to go through it to know

00:19:20 ◼   ► that this was not gonna work for me.

00:19:23 ◼   ► So one of the things that I eventually found, which I always want to minimize it when I

00:19:28 ◼   ► say it, but is weightlifting.

00:19:30 ◼   ► It does not mean like, raw, like Hulk level weightlifting, but just, you know, moving

00:19:34 ◼   ► things that weigh more than books.

00:19:37 ◼   ► And this, this just really worked for me.

00:19:39 ◼   ► But I've had just a hard time in the past few years being regular with that schedule.

00:19:46 ◼   ► And so going into the summer for this year, I was like, okay, the year of reorder time,

00:19:52 ◼   ► Let's think about this.

00:19:54 ◼   ► What are the problems with exercise?

00:19:57 ◼   ► Why is it that you routinely, talking to myself here, why is it that you routinely

00:20:01 ◼   ► do a weightlifting routine for a while and then it stops and you don't do it for a while?

00:20:07 ◼   ► Like what are the actual causes of this?

00:20:10 ◼   ► And so I was trying to identify things and okay, so the problem again, here is

00:20:17 ◼   ► the traditional idea is to think like, well, I'm just going to try harder.

00:20:22 ◼   ► I'm going to really mean it.

00:20:24 ◼   ► I'm going to buckle down and like, try really hard to exercise a lot.

00:20:28 ◼   ► And I just fundamentally do not believe in this as a solution to human problems.

00:20:34 ◼   ► The just do it philosophy, like that's great for people who are naturally

00:20:38 ◼   ► productive, but it's not great for the rest of us, for the rest of us, you have

00:20:41 ◼   ► to try to like arrange your environment to make it easier.

00:20:47 ◼   ► You've got to trick yourself.

00:20:48 ◼   ► You have to trick yourself.

00:20:49 ◼   ► yourself. So I did a couple of things and the first one I will talk about, it strikes me as

00:20:55 ◼   ► so dumb I can't believe it. So Myke, where I live there are two gyms within walking distance of where

00:21:04 ◼   ► I am. Now the one gym that I've been a member of for years is I am going to say 200% nicer than the

00:21:14 ◼   ► It's a much nicer gym.

00:21:15 ◼   ► But you know what it also is?

00:21:18 ◼   ► Four minutes farther walk than the other gym.

00:21:22 ◼   ► And that walk is also ever so slightly uphill.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And I've been thinking for years, I should try to join that other gym.

00:21:33 ◼   ► And then I thought to myself, no, don't do that.

00:21:36 ◼   ► That's dumb.

00:21:36 ◼   ► It's basically the same distance.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Don't, don't do this.

00:21:39 ◼   ► That's just a total waste.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Plus it's a worse gym.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Plus it's a worse gym.

00:21:43 ◼   ► worst gym, but you know what?

00:21:45 ◼   ► I finally bit the bullet.

00:21:47 ◼   ► I was like, forget it.

00:21:48 ◼   ► I'm going to cancel the other gym membership.

00:21:49 ◼   ► I'm going to get the one that's closer.

00:21:51 ◼   ► That's four minutes closer and is not uphill.

00:21:53 ◼   ► And I cannot tell you how much of a difference this single change has made

00:21:58 ◼   ► in just the reduction of friction.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And it's like, you feel like a moron when you trick yourself in these ways.

00:22:07 ◼   ► And it works.

00:22:09 ◼   ► There's, there's some part of you, which is like, I am a human being, right?

00:22:12 ◼   ► I have a brain, I have a functioning pre-cortex, right?

00:22:16 ◼   ► Like the smartest animal on the planet, but also walking up a slight hill is enough that I'm just not going to do perhaps one of the most important things that I can do, which is to try to stay healthy.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Right?

00:22:28 ◼   ► Like it's, it's totally ridiculous, but it was a thing where I looked around at the like, let me, let me just try to solve this problem.

00:22:35 ◼   ► And so this has made an enormous difference.

00:22:39 ◼   ► And then the other thing that I was trying to solve is a flexibility problem.

00:22:44 ◼   ► This is gym related too?

00:22:45 ◼   ► Yeah. So this is gym related too.

00:22:47 ◼   ► Not like bending flexibility.

00:22:50 ◼   ► I spent some time on the balance beam.

00:22:52 ◼   ► No, I'm not spending any time on the balance beam.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Balance beam, maybe it works for you, Myke.

00:22:57 ◼   ► It doesn't work for me.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Oh, sorry.

00:22:59 ◼   ► But so the other main problem is most of like the weightlifting routines that

00:23:04 ◼   ► you're going to find are relatively strict in the sense that there's particular equipment

00:23:11 ◼   ► that you should be using.

00:23:12 ◼   ► You should be doing sort of like the same exercises at very regular intervals and changing

00:23:17 ◼   ► the weights a relatively precise amount.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And they're great if you always have access to the exact equipment that you need.

00:23:26 ◼   ► But this was my other big hindrance is, especially when traveling, you can't depend on having

00:23:33 ◼   ► equipment that you need.

00:23:34 ◼   ► I mean, and plus, though, like, you know, no one wants to be the person at the gym who's

00:23:38 ◼   ► like, waiting on the other person to finish doing their thing.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And you're just like, oh, I need that machine, but they're on it.

00:23:44 ◼   ► And like, do I have to ask them to come?

00:23:46 ◼   ► It's just the worst.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And the equipment that I would normally need is an Olympic bar.

00:23:52 ◼   ► And most gyms will have one, maybe two of those.

00:23:56 ◼   ► You know, no hotel gym will have an Olympic bar.

00:23:58 ◼   ► So it already means like, if I'm traveling, I need to go somewhere else.

00:24:01 ◼   ► And this is why, like, over the summer, any exercise routine that I might have built up

00:24:07 ◼   ► while living just my normal life was always destroyed over the summer.

00:24:12 ◼   ► And you know, you'd have some little hotel gym and I think, "I don't know what to do."

00:24:15 ◼   ► So I think I downloaded literally every single exercise app on the App Store.

00:24:21 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:24:22 ◼   ► [

00:24:22 ◼   ► Fit bond!

00:24:24 ◼   ► No, but look, here's what I was trying to do.

00:24:26 ◼   ► I was trying to solve a problem, which is...

00:24:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:24:31 ◼   ► I was looking for like, what can I do in terms of exercise?

00:24:34 ◼   ► And this again, I feel like you should be with me on, Myke, because

00:24:38 ◼   ► we are both people who do not like exercise.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And so, what I don't want to do is like, I don't want to become an exercise enthusiast.

00:24:46 ◼   ► You know, like, I look at exercise the same way I look at brushing my teeth.

00:24:51 ◼   ► This is a thing that needs to be done.

00:24:53 ◼   ► It's better for me if I do it.

00:24:55 ◼   ► If you told me I didn't have to anymore, I wouldn't.

00:24:57 ◼   ► If you give me a pill to take so I stop brushing my teeth every day, I'll just take the pill.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I don't want to become like a toothpaste aficionado, this kind of thing.

00:25:06 ◼   ► So, I was trying to find a solution to this problem.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And of all of the exercise apps, I did find one.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And I'm mentioning it here because I want to talk about the solution that it provides.

00:25:21 ◼   ► So it is an app, it's called Fitbod, which I had been pushing on every single person

00:25:25 ◼   ► that I know about like, "You should try this exercise app."

00:25:28 ◼   ► But here's the key thing, and it's like, "Yes, this is what I was looking for."

00:25:33 ◼   ► It is an exercise app that basically asks you in various ways three questions.

00:25:38 ◼   ► It's like, "What exercise equipment do you have available right now?"

00:25:43 ◼   ► And this scales from nothing to like a full gym with everything you could possibly imagine.

00:25:50 ◼   ► The second question is how much time do you have available?

00:25:55 ◼   ► And you know, what's your confidence in your exercise skills?

00:25:59 ◼   ► So I could say none, none, none.

00:26:03 ◼   ► You'd have to have some time available, right?

00:26:05 ◼   ► You can say five minutes.

00:26:06 ◼   ► None, some, none.

00:26:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:26:08 ◼   ► But based on this, it automatically generates a little exercise routine for you.

00:26:12 ◼   ► it's weight based primarily, like that's what it's focused on, it's not a cardio app.

00:26:18 ◼   ► But the thing that also makes it incredible is it keeps track of what have you actually

00:26:24 ◼   ► done and auto-rotates through all of the various muscle groups to make sure that you're balancing

00:26:32 ◼   ► out your exercise.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And it's just like the flexibility of it is tremendous and it solves exactly this problem

00:26:39 ◼   ► that you were just saying, like if you go to the gym, even when it spits out, okay,

00:26:43 ◼   ► here's the five exercises that you should do. If you go to the gym and someone's on the machine

00:26:48 ◼   ► of what it says you should do next, you can just press this little button, which was like,

00:26:51 ◼   ► recommend me an alternative exercise. I don't want to wait for this guy. And it just gives you,

00:26:55 ◼   ► okay, do this other thing. And when you're done, it has a record of like, how easy were each of

00:27:01 ◼   ► these various exercises? You know, they have like machine learning magic, which then generates the

00:27:06 ◼   ► recommendations for next time. But it just does an incredible job of solving this problem of,

00:27:15 ◼   ► I have inconsistent equipment or I don't always have equipment that's available whenever I want.

00:27:20 ◼   ► I don't want to learn anything about exercise routines and what I should do.

00:27:25 ◼   ► Just tell me what to do. I don't care at all about exercising. Just tell me what to do

00:27:30 ◼   ► and I will do it. And so it's been a really great solution. I said last time on our State of the

00:27:35 ◼   ► Apps episode where we go through all the apps on all of our devices so people can find recommendations.

00:27:40 ◼   ► I'm not in the business of app of the year awards in the way that you are with the upgradees,

00:27:47 ◼   ► but if I had to give an app of the year award, I would give it to Fitbaud as by far and away

00:27:53 ◼   ► the app that has had the largest positive influence on my life this year.

00:27:58 ◼   ► It's just made exercise a million billion times easier by solving the exact problem

00:28:04 ◼   ► that I'm looking for.

00:28:05 ◼   ► That was like a very huge success for me on the Year of Order.

00:28:10 ◼   ► And I don't want to go too much farther on the recap, but I will say that while I wasn't

00:28:18 ◼   ► trying to implement a schedule in my life, exercise really is a sort of foundational

00:28:26 ◼   ► habit that has a lot of positive impacts on other areas.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And I do feel that being able to have a regular exercise routine had a lot of positive impacts

00:28:36 ◼   ► on my work.

00:28:39 ◼   ► One of the things that I really thought about a lot is the old me was very interested in

00:28:47 ◼   ► trying to maintain a schedule for "here are the times that you should work" and arranging

00:28:54 ◼   ► things this way.

00:28:56 ◼   ► And I think over the year of order, I really came to accept the natural flow of creative

00:29:04 ◼   ► production.

00:29:05 ◼   ► I just don't have a great metaphor for talking about it, but just thinking about that it's

00:29:11 ◼   ► a little bit like breathing.

00:29:13 ◼   ► That you have inhalation, you hold the breath and then you exhale.

00:29:18 ◼   ► And that this is the way that information is processed.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Okay, there's various phases where, even if I'm not writing on a schedule, am I doing

00:29:27 ◼   ► something like, it's the summertime and I'm taking in a lot of information, right?

00:29:31 ◼   ► I'm going to places that are related to videos.

00:29:33 ◼   ► I'm doing something new that might turn into a video.

00:29:37 ◼   ► This is the part of the process which is taking in information.

00:29:40 ◼   ► And it shouldn't be surprising that if I'm doing a lot of that, the amount of writing

00:29:46 ◼   ► per day goes down.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And that then when you have all of this information, there's a sort of processing and reviewing

00:29:52 ◼   ► phase.

00:29:53 ◼   ► And then there's the final phase of like the actual production of like, okay, things have

00:29:58 ◼   ► been processed and sorted and thought through.

00:30:00 ◼   ► And now it can actually be written out into a script.

00:30:04 ◼   ► And each project has this sort of phase over time.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And so I feel like I've really come to terms with this, especially now having done YouTube

00:30:12 ◼   ► for a long time of trying to force the work into a particular schedule.

00:30:19 ◼   ► I'm just going to like let this idea go and I'm going to work along with what current

00:30:24 ◼   ► me views as the natural creative process.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Mornings are high quality time and I will always protect them for high quality work.

00:30:32 ◼   ► But what is the nature of that work in that time?

00:30:35 ◼   ► Well, if I start to write and the writing isn't really working, I can move into instead

00:30:41 ◼   ► taking in more information with reading something on a related project.

00:30:46 ◼   ► And if that's not working, I can, as discussed last time, go on a focused little work walk.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Hold an idea in your head, think about it for 20 minutes, come back and then try again.

00:30:57 ◼   ► And so this is my overall review for the Year of Reorder.

00:31:02 ◼   ► And I just feel very happy and in a really good place after this year.

00:31:06 ◼   ► So I'm really pleased.

00:31:08 ◼   ► That's really good to hear.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm really glad to be coming to you, not with another do-over.

00:31:16 ◼   ► At the beginning of the year I was really thinking about trying to figure out what are the needs

00:31:21 ◼   ► and what is it that the current me wants to really focus on.

00:31:24 ◼   ► And I just feel like keeping that in the background in my mind helped clarify a lot of things as the year went on.

00:31:30 ◼   ► And so, yeah, I'm gonna feel like I'm in a really good place.

00:31:33 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Doordash.

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00:33:01 ◼   ► Now, how are you doing with your year theme, Myke?

00:33:04 ◼   ► So I had two themes for 2019.

00:33:07 ◼   ► They were kind of linked together, but there were some slight differences.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So I wanted to split them in half.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Stabilization and diversification.

00:33:14 ◼   ► So stabilization for me, I had a couple of different offshoots from it.

00:33:18 ◼   ► One of the main ones was to take away for 2019

00:33:24 ◼   ► my continued focus on growth for my company, for Relay FM.

00:33:30 ◼   ► year over year, it'd be like growth, growth, growth.

00:33:32 ◼   ► That was what I was focusing on.

00:33:34 ◼   ► And it wasn't something that we necessarily meant to do.

00:33:37 ◼   ► But as the company started growing, it was like, well,

00:33:40 ◼   ► we should keep focusing on the growth, right?

00:33:42 ◼   ► That seems like a good idea.

00:33:44 ◼   ► And it is a good idea.

00:33:45 ◼   ► But I felt like we needed to take some time to focus

00:33:50 ◼   ► on making some differences where it mattered and also stabilizing

00:33:54 ◼   ► some of the core parts of our business.

00:33:58 ◼   ► So this was putting more processes into place

00:34:01 ◼   ► and refining stuff to make sure that as we continue

00:34:05 ◼   ► to grow in the future, we were set in a good place.

00:34:09 ◼   ► So that was kind of where I was coming from.

00:34:11 ◼   ► And I feel like we, I did a great job with this this year.

00:34:15 ◼   ► Like the stabilization thing I feel very good about.

00:34:18 ◼   ► So I was working with Kerry, my sales manager,

00:34:21 ◼   ► and between the two of us, mostly her,

00:34:24 ◼   ► put a lot of really good processes in place for the year.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Like I'm really happy with how that's all come together and we're going to continue

00:34:30 ◼   ► that work into 2020, but it did what I wanted it to do.

00:34:35 ◼   ► I feel like we have a much better handle on our process from kind of like the perspective

00:34:41 ◼   ► of making sure everything is in order.

00:34:43 ◼   ► And I feel like that has led to just a much easier year for the both of us.

00:34:48 ◼   ► What happened was what I kind of thought would happen.

00:34:51 ◼   ► We did, the company's revenue did grow, but not as much.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And I'm totally happy with that.

00:34:56 ◼   ► that was best case scenario for me. I also, okay, one thing that I wanted to do in the

00:35:02 ◼   ► year of stabilization was not to get distracted by big new things. Totally failed in the summer,

00:35:07 ◼   ► but it was worth it. So my summer was completely distracted in part due to the fifth anniversary

00:35:16 ◼   ► show that we did for Relay FM and also the podcastathon. These were things that came up

00:35:21 ◼   ► during the year and like we should do these, we want to do these, and it completely distracted

00:35:26 ◼   ► my summer and I wasn't focusing on the things that I would usually focus on over that period of time

00:35:31 ◼   ► but I was happy to have failed at that because what we got out of those two events was worth it.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So I wouldn't want to change that but it was something that was not stable. They were two new

00:35:44 ◼   ► huge things happening at the same time which was challenging.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Yeah to give you credit however they were one-off events like they were unique

00:35:55 ◼   ► in like, you're not going to have a fifth anniversary show every year.

00:35:58 ◼   ► The fifth anniversary show for sure. We're not going to do that again next year.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Right. Is the podcast-a-thon maybe going to happen again next year?

00:36:05 ◼   ► I wouldn't be in a position to talk about that, but right now.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Of course.

00:36:08 ◼   ► But we have always every year tried to raise money for St. Jude.

00:36:12 ◼   ► So we will want to do something again next year. I don't know what it will be,

00:36:15 ◼   ► but I wouldn't want to say we'll never do it again.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Right. No commitments are being made.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Not right now.

00:36:20 ◼   ► So that was like the business side when it comes to stabilizing.

00:36:24 ◼   ► And I feel like I did that.

00:36:26 ◼   ► And so there was some personal stuff,

00:36:27 ◼   ► but I'll come back to that in a minute,

00:36:28 ◼   ► because I also have some business stuff

00:36:30 ◼   ► around diversification.

00:36:31 ◼   ► So the stabilization stuff was really,

00:36:33 ◼   ► from a business perspective,

00:36:34 ◼   ► focusing on my existing company.

00:36:37 ◼   ► Diversification was around me, Myke Hurley,

00:36:42 ◼   ► ensuring my own long-term stability

00:36:44 ◼   ► by looking at new business opportunities.

00:36:46 ◼   ► - Right.

00:36:47 ◼   ► - And this is where Cortex Brown came from.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Now we've spoken about Cortex Brown a bunch on this show,

00:36:51 ◼   ► we're gonna continue to,

00:36:53 ◼   ► But the original path that we had in mind

00:36:56 ◼   ► for the Cortex brand company this time last year

00:36:59 ◼   ► is very, very different to where we are now.

00:37:02 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:37:03 ◼   ► - Because one of the products that we were going to work on

00:37:06 ◼   ► was a journal called The Theme System,

00:37:08 ◼   ► which we're gonna talk about later on.

00:37:09 ◼   ► The success of The Theme System that we've had so far

00:37:13 ◼   ► completely moved the focus of Cortex brand

00:37:18 ◼   ► to the point where I haven't really been able

00:37:19 ◼   ► to focus on much else.

00:37:21 ◼   ► we started out with making some new clothing merch

00:37:25 ◼   ► that we wanted, right?

00:37:26 ◼   ► And like the subtle line.

00:37:27 ◼   ► It's like, oh, let's keep, and that went well,

00:37:29 ◼   ► so we keep focus, but I haven't been able to look

00:37:31 ◼   ► at any of that stuff because the theme system

00:37:33 ◼   ► has been needing to take all of my focus

00:37:37 ◼   ► that I have to give to Cortex brand

00:37:39 ◼   ► in trying to stabilize now that,

00:37:43 ◼   ► because we are not stable with that yet.

00:37:45 ◼   ► But that is the thing that I wanna keep working on,

00:37:48 ◼   ► we wanna keep working on,

00:37:50 ◼   ► to see if it can be a sustainable business.

00:37:51 ◼   ► But I consider it a huge success

00:37:54 ◼   ► for the year of diversification

00:37:56 ◼   ► because I think it's the beginning

00:37:59 ◼   ► of something really exciting.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And that was way more,

00:38:02 ◼   ► like the way the theme system has succeeded

00:38:05 ◼   ► is way more than I could have imagined

00:38:07 ◼   ► the diversification beginning for 2019.

00:38:11 ◼   ► So I was really happy with that.

00:38:12 ◼   ► - It's funny 'cause the diversification stabilization

00:38:14 ◼   ► almost sort of, they're like very different things

00:38:18 ◼   ► where you can have a bunch of different projects

00:38:21 ◼   ► that are not necessarily individually stable,

00:38:23 ◼   ► but that are helping with the diversification.

00:38:25 ◼   ► And I feel like Cortex brand right now is at that point.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Cortex brand is in the growth stage,

00:38:32 ◼   ► which doesn't make it a stable thing.

00:38:34 ◼   ► But yes, the existence of it is totally

00:38:37 ◼   ► like a success on the diversification front,

00:38:39 ◼   ► especially for you as an individual, Myke Hurley.

00:38:43 ◼   ► That's one of the things where when you're self-employed,

00:38:45 ◼   ► You have to keep an eye on that kind of stuff and you always have to be aware of this because

00:38:53 ◼   ► the income situation for a self-employed individual is always more unstable than it's going to

00:38:57 ◼   ► be for someone who is an employee.

00:39:00 ◼   ► It is a good thing to think about.

00:39:02 ◼   ► I have all my eggs in one basket.

00:39:05 ◼   ► And now I have another basket that's got an egg in it.

00:39:08 ◼   ► One egg.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Not all of them.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Right?

00:39:11 ◼   ► And so, but that basket is attached to the other basket.

00:39:15 ◼   ► This metaphor is getting very complex at this point.

00:39:17 ◼   ► - No, no, but it is, you have two baskets,

00:39:20 ◼   ► but you're also the only person who's carrying them

00:39:23 ◼   ► at the same time, I guess.

00:39:25 ◼   ► So if you stumble, it's still a real disaster.

00:39:28 ◼   ► So yeah, there's like, looking towards the future,

00:39:31 ◼   ► there may be ways in which you want to change that,

00:39:32 ◼   ► but things have to start.

00:39:33 ◼   ► - To have separate baskets with different people

00:39:36 ◼   ► carrying the baskets. - Separate baskets,

00:39:37 ◼   ► different people. - And there's varying eggs

00:39:39 ◼   ► in those baskets. - More eggs, yes.

00:39:41 ◼   ► - We'll get there.

00:39:42 ◼   ► - Look, baskets and eggs, that's the bottom line.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - I'm not sure where it is.

00:39:46 ◼   ► But there were personal things

00:39:47 ◼   ► to both stabilization and diversification.

00:39:49 ◼   ► So still keeping on the diversification line,

00:39:53 ◼   ► using Instagram more and Twitter less, Big Tech,

00:39:56 ◼   ► like I have statistics that show that, right,

00:39:59 ◼   ► in my screen time, screen crimes information.

00:40:02 ◼   ► It's all, it shows me, I can see it.

00:40:05 ◼   ► I wanted to look for an office space outside of the home.

00:40:07 ◼   ► I have been looking, cannot find anything.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Please let me know when you wanna build that building.

00:40:12 ◼   ► - Oh man, I didn't mention this,

00:40:14 ◼   ► as part of my own year of reorder, but yeah. One of the other things I identified was that

00:40:20 ◼   ► my office space outside of the house was not working for me for a bunch of reasons that

00:40:24 ◼   ► don't matter. I am in the same boat as you of like, "Okay, I know what I'm looking for.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Let me just find that office and tumbleweeds blow across the desert." Yeah, it's shockingly

00:40:36 ◼   ► hard to find usable office space outside of the home, so my sympathy is with you.

00:40:41 ◼   ► What I have learned is if we want to start a shop, it's very easy. I can buy shops up

00:40:46 ◼   ► and down this town, but I can't rent an office space. It's wild. Also for stabilization,

00:40:55 ◼   ► I wanted to approach my health. I've had some complex health-related stuff this year, which

00:41:03 ◼   ► is nothing too serious but has not allowed me to focus on everything that I wanted to.

00:41:09 ◼   ► I wanted to get fitter, but that has not been something that I've been able to achieve in

00:41:14 ◼   ► the way that I wanted. But I've lost a bunch of weight. I've lost 22 pounds this year,

00:41:20 ◼   ► which is 10 kilograms.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Phew, that is a lot to lose.

00:41:23 ◼   ► And I, for maybe the first time in 10 years, feel good when I look in a mirror. And that

00:41:29 ◼   ► is a massive thing for me and it's changed a bunch of stuff for my life, which is actually

00:41:35 ◼   ► enabling my 2020 theme.

00:41:37 ◼   ► There is a bunch of stuff in my 2020 theme

00:41:40 ◼   ► that I would not be able to focus on,

00:41:41 ◼   ► I would not want to focus on,

00:41:43 ◼   ► if the health stuff wasn't better.

00:41:45 ◼   ► So now I'm at a point which I'm happy with to stabilize on,

00:41:50 ◼   ► so it's like 85 kilograms is my goal right now,

00:41:54 ◼   ► and I'm staying around that.

00:41:56 ◼   ► I don't know how many pounds that is.

00:41:58 ◼   ► Let me use Google.

00:42:00 ◼   ► It's 187 pounds.

00:42:02 ◼   ► I feel happy with that weight.

00:42:04 ◼   ► I feel like I could lose a little more,

00:42:06 ◼   ► and that might be something that I do next year,

00:42:08 ◼   ► but I don't consider it as important anymore.

00:42:11 ◼   ► Like for me now, it's like in 2020,

00:42:13 ◼   ► I wanna exercise more, right?

00:42:15 ◼   ► That's just something I wanna do anyway,

00:42:17 ◼   ► 'cause I have to, 'cause I wanted to do it in 2019.

00:42:19 ◼   ► - Oh, Myke, have you heard the good news about Fitbot?

00:42:22 ◼   ► - About Fitbot, yeah, I downloaded it

00:42:24 ◼   ► while you were talking about it.

00:42:25 ◼   ► I'll take a look.

00:42:26 ◼   ► And I'm thinking now that doing the exercise

00:42:29 ◼   ► will also change some of my body weight stuff,

00:42:33 ◼   ► and then I can reassess where I wanna be.

00:42:35 ◼   ► But right now, I feel good, I'm feeling really good.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And talking about fitness, losing a bunch of weight

00:42:42 ◼   ► will inherently make you feel better, which it does.

00:42:44 ◼   ► But I know I need to do more fitness in general.

00:42:48 ◼   ► But I'm very happy with finally stabilizing my weight,

00:42:52 ◼   ► which had been slowly getting more and more out of control

00:42:56 ◼   ► over the last six or seven years.

00:42:59 ◼   ► and now I feel like I understand what I need to do

00:43:04 ◼   ► for my body to keep in shape like that.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And I was like, for years I've been so jealous of people

00:43:11 ◼   ► I look at them and be like, how do you stay at your weight?

00:43:14 ◼   ► You've gotta learn what your body does

00:43:16 ◼   ► and I've learned what my body does for food now

00:43:17 ◼   ► so I know how to kind of keep it in check.

00:43:20 ◼   ► - Do you wanna share any of those details

00:43:22 ◼   ► or do you wanna keep that to yourself?

00:43:24 ◼   ► - Oh, for me, okay, so what I did was,

00:43:26 ◼   ► I mean, the way that I lost the weight

00:43:28 ◼   ► was I cut carbs and sugar out of my life in a serious way.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Like, didn't go crazy with it,

00:43:35 ◼   ► I didn't follow the keto lifestyle,

00:43:38 ◼   ► and I allowed myself cheat days and stuff like that

00:43:40 ◼   ► because I didn't wanna lose my sanity, which I would,

00:43:43 ◼   ► and basically just by eating significantly less carbs

00:43:47 ◼   ► and sugar, I lost the weight.

00:43:50 ◼   ► And at this point, I now just vary,

00:43:53 ◼   ► so some days I'll be like really good,

00:43:56 ◼   ► some days I won't be so good,

00:43:57 ◼   ► and then I see kind of what a day can do to my weight,

00:44:00 ◼   ► but then I also know how long I need to be better behaved

00:44:04 ◼   ► with my eating to get rid of that weight that I lost

00:44:06 ◼   ► 'cause I ate a pizza.

00:44:08 ◼   ► So now I'm able to fluctuate and feel good about that

00:44:11 ◼   ► 'cause I know how to maintain,

00:44:14 ◼   ► but it took a lot of work over like 10 or 11 months

00:44:18 ◼   ► of like cutting the carbs, cutting the sugar,

00:44:20 ◼   ► going through the withdrawal, which was really tough,

00:44:24 ◼   ► but you just gotta go through it.

00:44:26 ◼   ► Some people react to it worse than others.

00:44:28 ◼   ► I reacted to it pretty badly.

00:44:30 ◼   ► And now I'm at a place where I can vary it a lot more

00:44:38 ◼   ► and it takes a lot of,

00:44:39 ◼   ► like you gotta think about your diet,

00:44:40 ◼   ► gotta think about what you're cooking.

00:44:42 ◼   ► It's hard work, but I got there.

00:44:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, cutting any amount of carbohydrates

00:44:48 ◼   ► is not something that your body wants to do

00:44:50 ◼   ► the first time you try to do it.

00:44:51 ◼   ► - No, it was so surprising.

00:44:53 ◼   ► It is really a shocking experience.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I think it makes quite apparent a sort of fight that you're having with your body of

00:45:01 ◼   ► like your body wants this one thing and your brain wants this other thing and you can really

00:45:06 ◼   ► feel that the body has an edge on that fight at the start for sure.

00:45:11 ◼   ► And like talking about the weight stuff, I know that sounds incredibly New Year's resolution-y,

00:45:16 ◼   ► but I had no goal.

00:45:18 ◼   ► I was just like, "I'm gonna try this.

00:45:21 ◼   ► And if it works, it works.

00:45:22 ◼   ► If it doesn't, it doesn't."

00:45:23 ◼   ► But I didn't set myself something I had to achieve.

00:45:28 ◼   ► And for me as well, it was just like,

00:45:33 ◼   ► stabilize your health,

00:45:34 ◼   ► and then that turned out being losing weight.

00:45:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's why we've said,

00:45:39 ◼   ► as a sample year theme for people several times,

00:45:43 ◼   ► year of health is a totally reasonable theme.

00:45:46 ◼   ► And the lack of a specific target is part of that,

00:45:49 ◼   ► because maybe you wanna start out with weight loss,

00:45:52 ◼   ► but that's not really working for you.

00:45:54 ◼   ► And so you just switch to exercise

00:45:56 ◼   ► and you find, "Oh, exercise works better for me."

00:45:59 ◼   ► And then maybe that helps you in other areas.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Or, you know, like I said before,

00:46:03 ◼   ► perhaps over time you realize like the focus is all wrong.

00:46:06 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, the year of health

00:46:07 ◼   ► actually shouldn't be focused on physical health.

00:46:09 ◼   ► It should be focused on mental health.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Like this is the more foundational problem

00:46:12 ◼   ► that I need to focus on."

00:46:14 ◼   ► So, yeah, it's not target dependent.

00:46:18 ◼   ► But that doesn't mean that you can't celebrate

00:46:20 ◼   ► having stabilized your weight.

00:46:22 ◼   ► your weight because that kind of human behavior change is very difficult.

00:46:27 ◼   ► So you really should feel great about that because it is such a hard thing to

00:46:31 ◼   ► do. And you, you do need to do like,

00:46:34 ◼   ► you've done a lot of experimenting and figuring out and trying to see how,

00:46:38 ◼   ► how this works for you in your exact situation.

00:46:42 ◼   ► And it's a world filled with contradictory information because everybody is also

00:46:46 ◼   ► different. So yeah, it's just a,

00:46:48 ◼   ► it's a very hard place to implement long-term behavior change.

00:46:52 ◼   ► But you should feel great about that.

00:46:53 ◼   ► - I'm very proud of myself.

00:46:55 ◼   ► - And you look pretty good, Myke.

00:46:56 ◼   ► - Thank you.

00:46:56 ◼   ► I haven't been so proud of myself

00:46:58 ◼   ► over something I've done in a while.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Because it felt like I got to a point

00:47:02 ◼   ► where it was impossible.

00:47:04 ◼   ► Because I tried so many things

00:47:06 ◼   ► and none of them were working.

00:47:08 ◼   ► But then I just found the thing that worked for me.

00:47:10 ◼   ► But it was really hard

00:47:12 ◼   ► and I didn't want to do it a lot of the time.

00:47:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:47:16 ◼   ► - Yeah. - But I got there.

00:47:20 ◼   ► (chime)

00:47:21 ◼   ► Alright, is it time? 2020 theme time?

00:47:24 ◼   ► Okay. 2020 theme time.

00:47:26 ◼   ► I want to know the name first.

00:47:28 ◼   ► Don't just jump in there.

00:47:29 ◼   ► Alright.

00:47:30 ◼   ► You gotta tell a tale with your themes.

00:47:32 ◼   ► We have fuzzy borders.

00:47:34 ◼   ► One thing blends into another.

00:47:37 ◼   ► So let's sit back and let's rewind

00:47:41 ◼   ► and think about summertime gray.

00:47:44 ◼   ► During the summers, I'm often in America.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Covered in pockets.

00:47:49 ◼   ► Yes, I do have pockets because I'm traveling and you want more things, obviously.

00:47:53 ◼   ► Like a reasonable person would.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Yep.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Yep.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Yep.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Hand sanitizer, aspirin, all sorts of things you want to keep in your pockets.

00:48:00 ◼   ► That little camera you want to have on you all the time.

00:48:02 ◼   ► Little camera, uh, earplugs from loud situations.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Anyway, there's many things, so many pockets.

00:48:09 ◼   ► The things I won't tell Myke about on the podcast cause it makes him nervous, but

00:48:13 ◼   ► whatever, like there's just stuff.

00:48:14 ◼   ► You carry stuff with you.

00:48:14 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:48:15 ◼   ► And don't worry.

00:48:16 ◼   ► Oh God.

00:48:17 ◼   ► Wait, what are you doing?

00:48:19 ◼   ► Now I'm more concerned, I think.

00:48:21 ◼   ► So Grey's out on the road in very isolated areas out in the desert.

00:48:28 ◼   ► As can now be described, part of what I was up to.

00:48:31 ◼   ► Going to Indian reservations.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Spending a lot of time alone thinking about stuff.

00:48:37 ◼   ► You know, sometimes you feel like I have picked a year theme.

00:48:43 ◼   ► But sometimes the year theme picks you.

00:48:48 ◼   ► you. And this is very much a year where the year theme picked me. So, at one point in

00:48:58 ◼   ► this summer, driving across I-80 West, across the great Salt Lake Desert, and it just arrives,

00:49:09 ◼   ► this is the Year of Clarity.

00:49:13 ◼   ► - Whoa.

00:49:13 ◼   ► In a previous episode, the phrase psychedelics was mentioned

00:49:20 ◼   ► and as you described, like being in a desert somewhere

00:49:24 ◼   ► and you finally get clarity.

00:49:26 ◼   ► Were you foraging at all in those deserts or you're all good?

00:49:29 ◼   ► - No, no, no, I'm all good.

00:49:31 ◼   ► Here's the problem, Myke.

00:49:32 ◼   ► Like I am psychedelically curious

00:49:35 ◼   ► but actually a very boring and risk averse person.

00:49:38 ◼   ► So no, there was no ayahuasca involved in this situation.

00:49:42 ◼   ► But spending long periods of time on your own, you end up just thinking about a bunch of stuff.

00:49:47 ◼   ► Like your brain is processing over various things.

00:49:49 ◼   ► And so, yeah, it's a bit of a, like...

00:49:53 ◼   ► I am aware that this is perhaps one of the least actionable themes that I've had so far.

00:50:04 ◼   ► It is much more just like a very strong feeling that I have about

00:50:10 ◼   ► Where am I currently and how do I want to focus my time and attention?

00:50:16 ◼   ► I often use this phrase on the podcast and just in like talking to people in real life that

00:50:22 ◼   ► one of the projects of a human life is that you should be working to build a life that you want

00:50:28 ◼   ► to live. And you know that's a very broad statement but I think it's a good way to think about stuff.

00:50:36 ◼   ► I feel like the year of clarity for me, which 100% started during this summer and I have been living

00:50:44 ◼   ► since then, has a real mental clarity on the various projects in my life. Like, what are these

00:50:52 ◼   ► projects for? What do I want to do? What do I not want to do? And how are the things that I'm working

00:50:59 ◼   ► on improving my life or are they being like the platonic ideals of themselves?

00:51:04 ◼   ► So this is a strange year theme for me because I feel like in the past we've announced the

00:51:12 ◼   ► themes and talked about what's going on whereas now I feel like I'm very much in the middle of

00:51:17 ◼   ► a thing. So this is both here's what the theme is but also what I've been up to.

00:51:21 ◼   ► On a very small scale one of the things I've done is like going through my OmniFocus and looking at

00:51:28 ◼   ► at all of the various projects that I have.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And I've closed down a bunch of those projects

00:51:33 ◼   ► where you just look at things and go, "Am I ever going to do this?"

00:51:36 ◼   ► It's like, no, this isn't going to happen.

00:51:38 ◼   ► You just build up projects over time

00:51:40 ◼   ► and you think, "Let me just get rid of this."

00:51:42 ◼   ► I want my OmniFocus to be clear and purposeful.

00:51:45 ◼   ► Don't build up a bunch of projects that you're never going to do.

00:51:48 ◼   ► I know I have even just things like,

00:51:51 ◼   ► "How many books am I actively reading?"

00:51:54 ◼   ► So I look at my Kindle and I think,

00:51:56 ◼   ► Am I ever going to finish that book?

00:51:58 ◼   ► Let's get real, I'm not going to finish that book.

00:52:00 ◼   ► And so, you know, just remove from downloads, go away.

00:52:04 ◼   ► And that is on the small scale a kind of clarity.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Am I reading this book or am I not reading this book?

00:52:12 ◼   ► Let's make a decision about it. Don't let it linger around in this in-between world.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Is this a project that I'm ever going to finish or is this not a project that I'm ever going to finish?

00:52:22 ◼   ► Don't let it linger around in this in-between world.

00:52:25 ◼   ► So that's just the very small scale of things.

00:52:29 ◼   ► But it goes all the way up to the biggest scale things.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And of all of the projects in my life, the biggest and the most important ones and the

00:52:39 ◼   ► ones that, if anything, have an impact that have the largest impact is making the YouTube

00:52:44 ◼   ► videos.

00:52:45 ◼   ► You know, this is the center of what I do and it reaches the widest audience of anything

00:52:50 ◼   ► that I do.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And so a huge change for me was, and this sort of came out of the year of reorder and

00:52:59 ◼   ► transitioned into this year of clarity, is thinking about how do the videos work?

00:53:05 ◼   ► What is the purpose of these and how should this work going forward?

00:53:09 ◼   ► A huge change that I made this year that was 100% the direct result of Year of Clarity

00:53:18 ◼   ► was changing the way that the business model for the videos work. So I switched to a method where

00:53:26 ◼   ► my videos are now funded by Patreon, and the Patreon switched from an individual thing

00:53:33 ◼   ► to a monthly support project. And let me tell you, boy was that a nervous day when I made that

00:53:41 ◼   ► change. This again is one of those moments as like an independent creator person, like that is

00:53:47 ◼   ► a nerve-wracking time, you never know how it's gonna go. I felt like hugely relieved and hugely

00:53:53 ◼   ► grateful that the overwhelming response was just incredibly positive from the audience.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I think that happened because I was trying to think a lot about the interaction between

00:54:10 ◼   ► the creator and the audience and how that changes over time. Another way to put this is like aligned

00:54:16 ◼   ► incentives. So I was thinking a lot about the video production over the past few years and

00:54:23 ◼   ► realizing that I had slowly started to work myself into a position where things were just unclear.

00:54:30 ◼   ► I'd had a bunch of projects that were becoming bigger and over a longer scope in time. So this

00:54:37 ◼   ► is things like the Billup video and this is things like the Roadtrip video. Now, here's the thing.

00:54:44 ◼   ► advertisers want deadlines and it's totally reasonable if someone is going to advertise

00:54:51 ◼   ► on your video like there's an embedded sponsorship they would like to know

00:54:55 ◼   ► roughly when that's going to happen because they may have things they need to promote there's

00:55:01 ◼   ► spending budgets they're trying to coordinate advertising across a bunch of different media

00:55:06 ◼   ► or maybe different channels like it's totally reasonable for advertisers to want to know

00:55:10 ◼   ► "Hey, if we give you money to mention our product, could you tell us like plus or minus 30 days

00:55:18 ◼   ► when that's going to happen?" And that is a thing that's totally reasonable for very many YouTube

00:55:23 ◼   ► channels, but partly because of a change in focus on some of the things that I was working on,

00:55:30 ◼   ► that was becoming just increasingly untenable for me to be able to actually deliver on any kind of

00:55:35 ◼   ► And it's also the thing that for some people, deadlines really work.

00:55:40 ◼   ► They're really motivating and knowing yourself is such an important skill.

00:55:44 ◼   ► That's harder than I think people think it is, but some people were great under

00:55:47 ◼   ► deadlines and I know that I do not, I find deadlines to be anti-productive.

00:55:53 ◼   ► So I, what I was trying to do is have advertiser deadlines that were way far

00:56:00 ◼   ► in the future with the idea that like, well, I can't possibly miss a deadline.

00:56:04 ◼   ► That's six months.

00:56:04 ◼   ► It's six months from now, right?

00:56:07 ◼   ► But it totally had the reverse effect of,

00:56:10 ◼   ► "Oh, I kind of want to work on every video in the world except that video."

00:56:13 ◼   ► And it was just like, I hated it.

00:56:15 ◼   ► It made me really unhappy.

00:56:17 ◼   ► And particularly with the scope of some videos,

00:56:20 ◼   ► it was just totally impossible to try to do.

00:56:24 ◼   ► But it also fallen into this problem of,

00:56:27 ◼   ► since my Patreon was per video,

00:56:32 ◼   ► And in retrospect, I just didn't catch this soon enough,

00:56:35 ◼   ► but I'd been increasingly thinking about this concept of

00:56:38 ◼   ► "What is a real video?"

00:56:40 ◼   ► So it's like, "Okay, well I'm not going to have this video be advertiser-sponsored,

00:56:46 ◼   ► I'll just have it be Patreon-supported."

00:56:49 ◼   ► But because I would manually press the button for "Does this count as a real video?"

00:56:56 ◼   ► I found myself increasingly thinking about

00:56:59 ◼   ► "Well, is this a real video?"

00:57:01 ◼   ► Or is this not a real video?

00:57:02 ◼   ► Your audience weren't thinking that.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Only you were thinking that.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Because everyone just wants a video.

00:57:07 ◼   ► I don't care what it is.

00:57:08 ◼   ► This again, I completely agree.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And it's one of the things that was...

00:57:12 ◼   ► I came to sort of realize over time,

00:57:16 ◼   ► and my own audience reaffirmed this when I made the change.

00:57:20 ◼   ► That this idea that I had gotten into my head

00:57:24 ◼   ► about what counts as a real video,

00:57:26 ◼   ► the actual Patreon supporters,

00:57:28 ◼   ► this distinction is not relevant.

00:57:31 ◼   ► They're like, "We would like you to make videos."

00:57:33 ◼   ► If you deem it worthy of going on your main channel,

00:57:36 ◼   ► people will happily support it with the Patreon.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:40 ◼   ► And so this ended up becoming a thing that creatively was a problem.

00:57:45 ◼   ► And so I'll give a good example.

00:57:47 ◼   ► So...

00:57:47 ◼   ► Oftentimes it's not even clear what a video is.

00:57:53 ◼   ► And the canonical example of this is the Christopher Billup,

00:57:56 ◼   ► the Race Around Staten Island video that I made,

00:57:58 ◼   ► where that originally started out as, "Oh, this will just be a footnote to the Statue of Liberty video,"

00:58:04 ◼   ► and then it ballooned into a ridiculous-sized project.

00:58:08 ◼   ► In the best possible way, a monstrosity.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's one of the better videos that I've made.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Like, I'm really happy with the way that came out.

00:58:18 ◼   ► But the way it is, a year after I started it, I had no ability to know at the beginning

00:58:24 ◼   ► what is this going to be.

00:58:26 ◼   ► And there are many times where I almost abandoned that project

00:58:31 ◼   ► because it existed for long periods of time in this undefined area

00:58:36 ◼   ► where it's like, "What is this going to be?

00:58:39 ◼   ► Why have I spent six months on this?

00:58:40 ◼   ► I don't even know what this is.

00:58:43 ◼   ► Is this a mystery that will have a great ending?"

00:58:45 ◼   ► Like, I have no idea what this thing is.

00:58:46 ◼   ► Why am I even spending time on it?

00:58:48 ◼   ► Now, of course, a year later when it's done,

00:58:50 ◼   ► I think it's a pretty great video and I love it.

00:58:52 ◼   ► So here's where the clarity comes in.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I shouldn't be thinking about, "Is this a real video?"

00:58:59 ◼   ► I, as the creator on the channel, should be thinking about what is interesting to me to make.

00:59:06 ◼   ► And that is a compass that I feel is relatively clear in my brain.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And the whole reason that I stuck with the Billup thing for a year is because

00:59:15 ◼   ► the compass in my brain kept pointing back to this as like, "This thing is interesting.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Human interest can't be explained. It just exists."

00:59:23 ◼   ► but I've learned to trust this instinct of like, just follow what is interesting.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And so I realized, like I have to change the business model

00:59:33 ◼   ► to align that with the ability to pursue that which I think is interesting.

00:59:39 ◼   ► I'm so grateful to all of the Patreon supporters and I cannot express

00:59:44 ◼   ► how much of a mental increase in clarity and change this has been

00:59:50 ◼   ► for what I was worried about was going to be like a tremendous deal and actually just brought a lot

00:59:57 ◼   ► of really positive support and great messages from people and increased my ability to like work on

01:00:03 ◼   ► the things that I think are interesting. And the way I think about it now is anybody who's thinking

01:00:09 ◼   ► about having a creative career, you are the person who's making things. You're at the center of a

01:00:14 ◼   ► series of circles and you have some sense about what it is that you want to work on

01:00:22 ◼   ► and hopefully you can find an audience that appreciates the stuff that you make.

01:00:27 ◼   ► You will have around you a core group of people who are really interested in what it is that

01:00:35 ◼   ► you're doing.

01:00:36 ◼   ► There's an idea of the thousand true fans.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Familiar with that concept.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that's Kevin Kelly's essay from probably quite a long time ago now.

01:00:44 ◼   ► It would be a very long time ago now, yeah.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it's this idea that if you make something that not just that people like, but that some

01:00:51 ◼   ► people really like, you can make a living at it.

01:00:56 ◼   ► And it's slightly terrifying to me, but I'm realizing like, okay, I've almost been doing

01:01:00 ◼   ► this like a decade now.

01:01:02 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that the gray core audience understands the kinds of things that I make

01:01:09 ◼   ► and really likes them.

01:01:10 ◼   ► Andor shares enough of the taste that you have that even as you move to different things,

01:01:18 ◼   ► they have sensibilities close enough to yours that they will adapt happily.

01:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah, so a creator doesn't stay the same over the time.

01:01:26 ◼   ► But they shouldn't.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and the audience members don't stay the same over the time.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Like this, I think is a sort of fallacy that you see a lot of people like, oh, you know,

01:01:34 ◼   ► ex creator change.

01:01:35 ◼   ► It's like, well, even if they don't change, you change.

01:01:37 ◼   ► You just get older, like you're a different person.

01:01:38 ◼   ► go back to making gaming videos.

01:01:40 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:01:41 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good example.

01:01:43 ◼   ► But there is a core of like, I've always tried to make these videos that I really like.

01:01:49 ◼   ► And I think they have particular characteristics to them, which include things like high rewatchability

01:01:55 ◼   ► and the way things are explained, like a really intense focus on the simplicity, like to not

01:02:02 ◼   ► explain everything, but to try to figure out like, what is the core parts of whatever that

01:02:06 ◼   ► being discussed matter. And over time, you find an audience of people who like the things that you do.

01:02:13 ◼   ► And so I just like, okay, I'm really going to double down on aligning the incentives between

01:02:21 ◼   ► that group and myself. I'm very happy about it because it makes it obvious about how I should

01:02:27 ◼   ► focus on things. And I always really like aligned incentives in that way. And it's immediately

01:02:33 ◼   ► born fruit. So it just says like another example, I was working on a video project, which was

01:02:39 ◼   ► supposed to be the original video for November. And then there was a little there was a little

01:02:44 ◼   ► throwaway part of it, which I thought, oh, that's interesting. Like, let me focus on this for a

01:02:48 ◼   ► little bit, which ended up being the video about Mercury being the most closest planet.

01:02:54 ◼   ► And that is another perfect example of without this focus, I would have regarded the Mercury

01:03:02 ◼   ► as "Oh, that's mildly interesting, but that's not a real video.

01:03:05 ◼   ► That's too short and that's too quick to be a real video."

01:03:09 ◼   ► And I would never have continued to further investigate it.

01:03:14 ◼   ► I would never have reached out to the physicist.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I would never have done any of that because my thought would be like,

01:03:20 ◼   ► "Oh, it's not going to be enough for an actual video."

01:03:24 ◼   ► And I don't think there's anybody in the world who was like,

01:03:26 ◼   ► "I would prefer it if you hadn't have published that video."

01:03:28 ◼   ► Like, that's a perfect, short, fun video.

01:03:31 ◼   ► And then even within that one,

01:03:34 ◼   ► there's the same idea of,

01:03:37 ◼   ► "Oh, this idea is actually quite relatively recent."

01:03:39 ◼   ► And it's a really good example of

01:03:43 ◼   ► how important it is to be able to ask a correct question.

01:03:47 ◼   ► That how you phrase a question

01:03:50 ◼   ► is a really important skill that's often overlooked.

01:03:53 ◼   ► And now, does that idea make sense

01:03:55 ◼   ► to make as a fully animated video?

01:03:58 ◼   ► No, not really, but I think it's interesting

01:04:00 ◼   ► and there's an appropriate format which is the much more casual

01:04:05 ◼   ► I'm gonna walk around, I have some bullet points of things that I want to talk about and sort of

01:04:10 ◼   ► film some stuff and edit it together and just make a little

01:04:14 ◼   ► clearly more casual video

01:04:16 ◼   ► but that still expresses this idea.

01:04:19 ◼   ► And why? Because I as the person who owns the channel am judging that this is interesting.

01:04:25 ◼   ► It might not be interesting to everyone in the world

01:04:27 ◼   ► but I think a sizable portion of the grey core audience is interested in this sort of thing.

01:04:34 ◼   ► It is this ability to follow the compass in this way.

01:04:39 ◼   ► And it's the same thing again with, you know, I made the video about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,

01:04:46 ◼   ► and that's a sort of classic grey video in the sense that it's talking about voting.

01:04:51 ◼   ► But then along with it is the spreadsheet.

01:04:54 ◼   ► It's like, oh, I think here's an example where some of the background research is sort of interesting

01:04:59 ◼   ► and it didn't really make it into the main video and I can

01:05:01 ◼   ► sort of show a little bit of the process.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Like it doesn't always work out that way that there is something interesting to talk about the process,

01:05:08 ◼   ► but here is a case where it is.

01:05:10 ◼   ► Like you said before,

01:05:13 ◼   ► does anyone care whether or not that spreadsheet video is a "real video"?

01:05:19 ◼   ► No, nobody cares.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Like this distinction is meaningless to most people.

01:05:24 ◼   ► And it really just has been a tremendously important

01:05:28 ◼   ► turning point, I feel like, in my career

01:05:31 ◼   ► of aligning incentives,

01:05:34 ◼   ► thinking about this relationship of

01:05:37 ◼   ► people have followed my channel for a long time.

01:05:39 ◼   ► They know what to expect

01:05:42 ◼   ► and it is totally optional for them

01:05:44 ◼   ► to choose to support that.

01:05:46 ◼   ► But I think that I can align my incentives

01:05:49 ◼   ► and count on that part of the audience to support the videos.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And it's enabled me to focus on the things that I think are interesting for the video production process

01:05:59 ◼   ► and simply not have to worry about any other part of it.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Not have to worry, "Oh, is this too small to be interesting? I don't have to care about that anymore."

01:06:08 ◼   ► Or, you know, on the other side, like with the Indians project,

01:06:12 ◼   ► "Is this project too big and is going to take way too long and can't possibly make any sense to focus on?"

01:06:18 ◼   ► I don't have to worry about that anymore.

01:06:19 ◼   ► I can instead sort of stay focused on this idea.

01:06:23 ◼   ► So I wanted to mention all of that

01:06:25 ◼   ► because it is such a big deal for me professionally,

01:06:29 ◼   ► this concept of clarity.

01:06:31 ◼   ► But it is a thing that I'm continuing to have

01:06:34 ◼   ► as the year theme because I'm finding myself

01:06:37 ◼   ► applying it to all sorts of areas in my life of,

01:06:42 ◼   ► I want things to be obvious in what their purpose is.

01:06:47 ◼   ► You know, I want the decisions to make clear sense.

01:06:51 ◼   ► I want to remove ambiguity in situations.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:55 ◼   ► So we'll talk about it again in a year, but this is where I

01:06:58 ◼   ► currently am with my year theme.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Can you give me any examples of things that you want to achieve in 2020 that

01:07:09 ◼   ► aren't currently going on that align to Clarity?

01:07:15 ◼   ► Well, here, here I have the problem of, I don't like to talk about projects that are in development.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I don't like, I don't like to talk about things that are in process until they're done.

01:07:28 ◼   ► So there are things that I'm in particular that I'm thinking about, but I don't want to discuss them now because that's just not the way I work.

01:07:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I will just reiterate that this is a much less actionable theme than other themes.

01:07:45 ◼   ► So it's much harder to say something like,

01:07:47 ◼   ► "Oh, I want to be more healthy at the end of the year than I am at the beginning of the year."

01:07:51 ◼   ► There isn't such directionality, but I can say that for me, this is a fuzzy theme

01:07:59 ◼   ► that is also very sharp in my feelings of it and is really focusing my thoughts on a lot of

01:08:07 ◼   ► the areas of time and attention of how I'm spending my mental efforts.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Like, actually, I have a really dumb little one.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Anything is good.

01:08:14 ◼   ► A tiny area where I've noticed that this is, you know, the way that the themes grow and they sort

01:08:19 ◼   ► of affect your thinking is I'm increasingly finding myself thinking, "Am I watching this

01:08:24 ◼   ► thing on TV or am I not watching this thing on TV?" Right? Like, I find myself increasingly

01:08:30 ◼   ► annoyed by the habit of, like, having something on that you're sort of half paying attention to,

01:08:36 ◼   ► And I feel like watch it or don't like sit down and watch the thing or don't watch the thing,

01:08:43 ◼   ► but don't do this thing where you're sort of half watching it. Like that's a place where I like,

01:08:47 ◼   ► I find the clarity like infecting my thoughts and I think it's in a really good way.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Okay, I feel like this is going to be a theme that we will keep touching on throughout the year

01:08:58 ◼   ► as you can say like, okay, so here's this thing that I've done that I can now tell you about.

01:09:03 ◼   ► This is what the clarity aspect of it was.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what's going to be the situation.

01:09:07 ◼   ► But let's not minimize the thing that you have done, which is the thing that, I mean,

01:09:12 ◼   ► you started a while ago, but obviously is like a big part of carrying on into 2020,

01:09:18 ◼   ► is the Patreon thing. That is a huge deal. You changed a business model. It's pretty big.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very terrifying. I also think that there's a way in which people can directly see

01:09:30 ◼   ► some of that stuff in the videos. So it's just been interesting. Like, I've seen more comments

01:09:35 ◼   ► in the past two or three videos where people say like, "I just, I really like this one."

01:09:39 ◼   ► And people have just left more generic thank you comments of like, "Hey, thanks for making your

01:09:46 ◼   ► videos. I've been watching them for years and, you know, I've really gotten a lot out of them

01:09:51 ◼   ► and I really appreciate them." That's part of this feeling that I have of, there's a big difference

01:09:55 ◼   ► between being a creator who is just starting out and a creator who has what is now a reasonably

01:10:04 ◼   ► long-term relationship with some portion of the audience who've been following the work for a long

01:10:10 ◼   ► time. Like I know I feel that way about other creators who I've followed and you're just like,

01:10:16 ◼   ► "Oh, I've been following your work for a really long time." And like you just you have a sort of

01:10:20 ◼   ► different relationship if you feel like you're a core member of that audience. So yeah, this was me

01:10:27 ◼   ► just trying to think about how do I make this better for everyone. A little word of warning

01:10:33 ◼   ► for creative professionals, which I think is just a thing to be aware of.

01:10:38 ◼   ► More so when you're starting out, but you do have to worry a little bit about making

01:10:43 ◼   ► things FOR the audience.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And you know, when I'm being careful with my words, and I'm thinking about how to express

01:10:51 ◼   ► ideas, is why I often use phrases like "I make something, and I hope the audience likes

01:10:58 ◼   ► it."

01:10:59 ◼   ► It's a very different phrase from saying like, I'm making something for the audience, you

01:11:06 ◼   ► have to keep this distinction.

01:11:09 ◼   ► I think that's much harder to do when you're starting out.

01:11:13 ◼   ► But when you're a more established creator, like you, you just have a clearer sense.

01:11:18 ◼   ► But it can be a danger where a creator can be sort of captured by the audience of like,

01:11:23 ◼   ► you're continuing to try to make things explicitly for a particular group of people.

01:11:31 ◼   ► And that's also part of what I mean by the clarity of this is I am focusing on what I

01:11:39 ◼   ► think is interesting.

01:11:40 ◼   ► I've learned over time that my compass is very well tuned in this direction and there

01:11:47 ◼   ► is an audience who appreciates this kind of thing.

01:11:51 ◼   ► And I'm making the kind of things that I like to watch and there's a, like I've found enough

01:11:55 ◼   ► of an audience that really enjoys those things.

01:11:59 ◼   ► I love stuff that can be watched multiple times and you feel like you get more out of

01:12:03 ◼   ► it.

01:12:04 ◼   ► So I spend a lot of time engineering the videos to be that way.

01:12:09 ◼   ► I like videos that when you watch them they can bring along like the fun context of that

01:12:16 ◼   ► which has come before.

01:12:18 ◼   ► And so I also make those kind of videos.

01:12:21 ◼   ► I'm in a really interesting place and I feel like I'm very happy and satisfied right now

01:12:29 ◼   ► on a personal and professional level.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Like I think that the 2019 year theme led perfectly into the 2020 year theme, which

01:12:40 ◼   ► helped motivate me to make a really important business decision that has affected the work

01:12:46 ◼   ► in a really positive way and I'm incredibly lucky to have an audience that supports me

01:12:52 ◼   ► working on the things that I think are interesting.

01:12:56 ◼   ► This is a year where I really feel like I'm so happy about the themes and I'm so theme

01:13:03 ◼   ► positive.

01:13:04 ◼   ► When this works out it can work out really great as a background process to keep in your

01:13:09 ◼   ► mind.

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01:15:11 ◼   ► So now Myke, what is your theme for 2020?

01:15:15 ◼   ► I'm gonna do a little story like you.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Please do!

01:15:18 ◼   ► It's only a short one.

01:15:19 ◼   ► A few months ago, I found myself at a dinner.

01:15:23 ◼   ► Okay.

01:15:24 ◼   ► And it was with some colleagues of mine, but a wider audience of people that I didn't know.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Okay.

01:15:30 ◼   ► But they were all important people in their own fields.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And as I was sitting around this table at a nice restaurant in London, I was

01:15:38 ◼   ► realizing some of the conversation going to places that I knew nothing about.

01:15:45 ◼   ► So it might be different parts of culture, different conversations around food and

01:15:50 ◼   ► wine, right? Like these individuals were ordering wine for the table and I had no

01:15:55 ◼   ► I just know I know nothing about wine. And so I started thinking about this.

01:16:02 ◼   ► I started thinking about where I am in my life now, personally and professionally, and

01:16:08 ◼   ► decided that my yearly theme for 2020 would be the year of refinement.

01:16:14 ◼   ► So it comes in a bunch of places.

01:16:17 ◼   ► One of the key areas is wanting to better myself in ways that are important to me.

01:16:22 ◼   ► One of them is trying to get a more base understanding

01:16:27 ◼   ► for food, culture, that kind of stuff.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Because I find myself more and more in situations

01:16:37 ◼   ► where I don't want to be the clueless guy.

01:16:40 ◼   ► I wanna have a base idea for some stuff.

01:16:46 ◼   ► So like wine is a very clear example.

01:16:49 ◼   ► I have no interest in wine.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I don't care about wine.

01:16:51 ◼   ► I don't really drink alcohol very much at all, honestly.

01:16:56 ◼   ► It tends to only be when I'm at nice restaurants.

01:16:59 ◼   ► But I wanna have an idea for what I'm looking for

01:17:01 ◼   ► in a way that I now understand coffee a little bit more

01:17:04 ◼   ► 'cause that's something that I care about.

01:17:06 ◼   ► And so now, when I go into a coffee shop,

01:17:09 ◼   ► I can look at the coffees they have on the wall,

01:17:12 ◼   ► can see the tasting notes, right?

01:17:14 ◼   ► So like, it tastes like this, tastes like this.

01:17:17 ◼   ► And I know which one I'm gonna like now

01:17:19 ◼   ► because just from a very simple level,

01:17:21 ◼   ► I understand that I prefer coffees

01:17:24 ◼   ► that have more chocolatey notes than fruity notes.

01:17:27 ◼   ► It's not very complex,

01:17:28 ◼   ► it didn't take me very long to work that out,

01:17:30 ◼   ► but it was just something that I focused on,

01:17:32 ◼   ► tried some stuff, did some reading, and worked that out.

01:17:35 ◼   ► So now, when given a menu,

01:17:37 ◼   ► I have a better understanding of what I wanna look at.

01:17:40 ◼   ► So when it comes to stuff like wine,

01:17:42 ◼   ► I want to understand that a little bit more,

01:17:44 ◼   ► 'cause I have literally no idea.

01:17:46 ◼   ► So I don't even know much of the difference

01:17:50 ◼   ► between red wine and white wine.

01:17:52 ◼   ► Like I just, I don't know.

01:17:54 ◼   ► Like people say this is dry and sweet.

01:17:56 ◼   ► I don't know what that means.

01:17:57 ◼   ► So I've just never cared.

01:17:59 ◼   ► But I want to learn a little bit, right?

01:18:02 ◼   ► And what I have found,

01:18:03 ◼   ► 'cause I assume it's probably pretty similar to coffee,

01:18:05 ◼   ► it doesn't take a lot to get a very base level

01:18:09 ◼   ► of understanding for what you want to achieve in that area.

01:18:13 ◼   ► This is also extending itself into other areas

01:18:16 ◼   ► my life a big one of them is something that I can now so I mentioned like

01:18:20 ◼   ► something that I'm able to focus on more now is fashion. It used to be a very big

01:18:25 ◼   ► thing in my life I really cared about the clothes that I wore and wanted to

01:18:29 ◼   ► look good because it made me feel good but I wasn't able to feel good for a

01:18:33 ◼   ► long time because I wasn't confident. Now I have my self-confidence back I'm

01:18:38 ◼   ► focusing on what I wear more and it's making me happy because it was something

01:18:43 ◼   ► I cared about. I don't think it's something everyone should care about. I

01:18:46 ◼   ► don't think it's something everybody needs to care about. But it was a part of

01:18:50 ◼   ► my life for a long time, but I lost it. But now I found it again and it's making

01:18:55 ◼   ► me happy. And then there's the other part of it of being more open to different

01:19:00 ◼   ► types of experiences. Being a little more adventurous. Taking more risks. Doing

01:19:08 ◼   ► things that I might not have done in the past.

01:19:11 ◼   ► I feel like I am at a point in my life now

01:19:15 ◼   ► where I want to be a little bit more open to those things

01:19:17 ◼   ► before anything else in my life happens

01:19:20 ◼   ► that might shut me off from them.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And so I'm taking this opportunity now

01:19:24 ◼   ► when the year of refinement to allow myself

01:19:28 ◼   ► to try some stuff out.

01:19:31 ◼   ► So that's where I am for personally,

01:19:33 ◼   ► but there's a lot more here.

01:19:35 ◼   ► Oh, one other thing that goes into the personal area

01:19:37 ◼   ► actually, hobbies. So I spoke about this on the show recently because it's been

01:19:41 ◼   ► going on in my mind for a while. I want to have interests that are just my

01:19:45 ◼   ► interests that work isn't attached to and I'm still working on that. I'm not

01:19:53 ◼   ► sure yet of other things like I mentioned photography as one like that

01:19:57 ◼   ► is something that I've really enjoyed. Like taking photos on my smartphone

01:20:01 ◼   ► understanding how to edit them in a way that I like working on that like that is

01:20:06 ◼   ► fun little hobby but I still wanted to be able to have more. I want to have interests that are my

01:20:11 ◼   ► interests that I don't also make into jobbies. I just want some hobbies. And that comes in

01:20:20 ◼   ► refining who I am as a person more into making myself a more well-rounded individual. That's

01:20:29 ◼   ► what I want to be and I feel like that layers into refinement. But there's also

01:20:35 ◼   ► professional aspects to this as well as personal. So again I want to, this is

01:20:43 ◼   ► borrowing a little bit from the year of less but not fully. I want to take the

01:20:48 ◼   ► focus off of some areas in my life to be able to put more focus onto newer

01:20:54 ◼   ► projects again. So Cortex brand is one of them and I have another project that I'm

01:21:01 ◼   ► working on right now that I'm very excited about and I want to make sure

01:21:04 ◼   ► that I'm able to refine other things in my life to allow me to focus on that. But

01:21:12 ◼   ► both of these projects, Cortex brand and new project, which should be something

01:21:20 ◼   ► people know about within the next couple of months, they are also in service

01:21:24 ◼   ► of refining who I am and how I am seen professionally.

01:21:29 ◼   ► So how I am seen to the world, I want to refine.

01:21:37 ◼   ► One of those is, right, one of the guys in charge

01:21:40 ◼   ► of a company that makes these products,

01:21:42 ◼   ► like the theme system, I want that to become part of who I am

01:21:46 ◼   ► and then this other podcast-related project

01:21:49 ◼   ► that I'm working on is in a slightly different area

01:21:52 ◼   ► than what I currently cover,

01:21:54 ◼   ► which I want to change people's perception a little bit

01:21:58 ◼   ► about the type of person that I am with this project.

01:22:01 ◼   ► So that is the year of refinement.

01:22:06 ◼   ► - That's interesting on multiple levels.

01:22:08 ◼   ► I really like that one.

01:22:09 ◼   ► - I will say I'm a little self-conscious of this one

01:22:13 ◼   ► in a few reasons.

01:22:16 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:22:17 ◼   ► - But I wanna share it with the cortexes, right?

01:22:20 ◼   ► Because there is this idea of like, "Ugh, food and wine."

01:22:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's an idea of what a refined individual is,

01:22:29 ◼   ► which is sort of a douchebag.

01:22:31 ◼   ► - Right, and that's what I really wanna try and avoid that,

01:22:36 ◼   ► but I don't know if I can.

01:22:38 ◼   ► But there is just this situation,

01:22:40 ◼   ► I just keep finding myself in these places

01:22:43 ◼   ► where I feel like I need to be quiet

01:22:48 ◼   ► because I'm worried about the things I don't know about.

01:22:51 ◼   ► And I don't want to keep finding myself in those situations.

01:22:55 ◼   ► Because I, and I genuinely have an interest

01:22:57 ◼   ► in wanting to learn a little bit more about this stuff.

01:23:00 ◼   ► And like, it's like with coffee,

01:23:02 ◼   ► I don't spend hundreds of pounds on coffee.

01:23:06 ◼   ► In the same way that I don't want to spend

01:23:08 ◼   ► hundreds of pounds on wine,

01:23:10 ◼   ► but I wanna have an idea of this stuff.

01:23:13 ◼   ► I wanna know about it.

01:23:14 ◼   ► I want to know how to choose something because right now I don't know how to

01:23:20 ◼   ► choose any of these things.

01:23:22 ◼   ► So it's just something that I want to be able to focus a little bit more

01:23:28 ◼   ► closely on for when I find myself in a situation where I need to know something.

01:23:34 ◼   ► I can understand the concerns about the word and I can understand why you feel

01:23:38 ◼   ► a little bit self-conscious about it because there is a way in which an

01:23:43 ◼   ► uncharitable listener would say something like, Ooh, Myke wants to be a fancy man.

01:23:46 ◼   ► Look how fancy that Myke is.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Well, Myke's always wanted to be a fancy man.

01:23:49 ◼   ► I mean, there's no denying that part, I suppose.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Yes.

01:23:53 ◼   ► But the next part of that sentence was going to be, and you already

01:23:57 ◼   ► lean into that a little bit, right?

01:23:58 ◼   ► So like, I understand the sensitivity over this, but this also is where language is

01:24:05 ◼   ► but a limited tool to communicate ideas.

01:24:08 ◼   ► And an important part of thinking about the themes is like, what does

01:24:13 ◼   ► the word mean to you? The word I always use for this is resonate. Like what word resonates

01:24:18 ◼   ► with you? It doesn't really matter what the dictionary definition is, but like what word

01:24:23 ◼   ► triggers something in your mind that provokes a positive reaction?

01:24:27 ◼   ► Yeah, because I had all of these thoughts and they all added on the one word. I was

01:24:32 ◼   ► able to bring everything together, right? Of like taking some more focus off, putting

01:24:37 ◼   ► it into other places, wanting to learn some more things about the world and who I am as

01:24:43 ◼   ► a person.

01:24:44 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, all of these are ideas of refining."

01:24:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I like the refining because it does hit on specific things of, you know, there

01:24:54 ◼   ► are some situations where you might feel like you want to know something.

01:24:58 ◼   ► And it also, like you said, professionally has that other meaning of not a huge change,

01:25:03 ◼   ► but a slight adjustment of like, here's some areas where there are adjustments that you

01:25:07 ◼   ► want to be made. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting one. It's funny because you mentioned

01:25:14 ◼   ► the thing with the hobbies because you mentioned other things with my own year theme like, oh,

01:25:20 ◼   ► what other examples can you think of? And one of the things with Year of Clarity for me is

01:25:25 ◼   ► recognizing that everything is work. There's almost nothing that I do in terms of media consumption or

01:25:32 ◼   ► reading books or taking walks or how I spend my like almost all of it is work with very narrow exceptions and

01:25:39 ◼   ► just

01:25:41 ◼   ► Totally giving up the idea that I will ever have any kind of hobby. It's like no, this is all just this is all just work

01:25:47 ◼   ► You're always working in in some way and that's totally fine when you think about work in this way. So it's like I

01:25:54 ◼   ► That doesn't work for everyone. It has worked for me for a long time

01:26:00 ◼   ► Yeah, but now I just want to have a few other things

01:26:05 ◼   ► Yeah, like you want to carve out a space in your life

01:26:08 ◼   ► that is

01:26:10 ◼   ► Separate from all of this and I will be extraordinarily curious to know how that goes

01:26:16 ◼   ► Because so much of your work is talking about things in your life. I do think you are in a particularly

01:26:24 ◼   ► difficult situation in the same way that I am of not having that creep expand, in the very least of

01:26:32 ◼   ► when you take a painting that it doesn't come into the shows in some way. It's almost impossible for

01:26:37 ◼   ► it not to. There is a line that I have drawn. Okay. I do not mind these things coming up,

01:26:44 ◼   ► but the idea of creating properties around them is the line. So I have no problem talking about

01:26:52 ◼   ► the fact that I am taking photos on my iPhone, editing them in Fisko and uploading them to

01:26:57 ◼   ► Instagram. I have no problem doing an episode of a show talking about that. I do not want to create

01:27:04 ◼   ► a mobile photography podcast. I have no problem in talking about the fact that I like watches,

01:27:12 ◼   ► wearing real watches more than my Apple Watch, and that I have an interest in that and I like

01:27:17 ◼   ► browsing Instagram and looking at pictures of watches and planning out

01:27:20 ◼   ► purchases that I might make in a few years time but I'm not starting a

01:27:25 ◼   ► watch podcast. That's the line that I'm drawing and so that

01:27:31 ◼   ► that's kind of where I am with it but I want to have some more active things

01:27:37 ◼   ► than those because the photography just happens when it happens, watches

01:27:41 ◼   ► is just whenever I browse Instagram but it's not like carving out time to

01:27:46 ◼   ► do a thing. I have an idea of a thing but I'm gonna keep it to myself for now. I'll

01:27:51 ◼   ► probably will cut that out actually.

01:27:53 ◼   ► No no leave it leave it in because you like you have to be mysterious too sometimes.

01:27:57 ◼   ► Do I?

01:27:58 ◼   ► I always feel bad about making references to future projects and like I know that can

01:28:02 ◼   ► be frustrating sometimes but like I have to draw those lines of what am I willing to talk

01:28:07 ◼   ► about when.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Okay I'll throw you a bone on that one.

01:28:09 ◼   ► Yeah you have to you have to leave that in just to help me out so I'm not always the

01:28:13 ◼   ► mysterious guy.

01:28:14 ◼   ► Okay, you can be mysterious guy and I'll be fancy boy and then that's how we're known.

01:28:18 ◼   ► I'm curious, do you have any specific ideas about how to pursue a sort of general increase in

01:28:27 ◼   ► knowledge like with the wine or with other things where you feel like you want to know more about a

01:28:33 ◼   ► topic? Classes. Hmm, okay. So in mentioning this to my wife, Idina was mentioned that like she's

01:28:40 ◼   ► found a thing and she wants to buy it for me for a present. She told me about

01:28:43 ◼   ► this one because it requires scheduling but she just found like introduction to

01:28:47 ◼   ► wine class. So you just go and it's like a tasting but they also teach you

01:28:51 ◼   ► what you're learning about. It's like that's just like and then I can get the

01:28:56 ◼   ► base level that I need and can go from there and I think that will that will

01:29:00 ◼   ► give me the confidence to at least say something because that's all it is

01:29:04 ◼   ► really you know when somebody says to me you want to get wine and I'm like okay

01:29:10 ◼   ► and then they instinctively know based on the food that I'm eating what color wine to get.

01:29:14 ◼   ► I'm like, I don't know. I want to know that, right? Or I want to know like, do you want,

01:29:21 ◼   ► as I mentioned before, like sweet or dry? Sweet sounds nice, I guess? Like, I don't know. I just

01:29:28 ◼   ► want to be able to have an idea of answering those questions and that's kind of the route

01:29:33 ◼   ► that I want to follow, you know? Yeah, or I don't know if this is on your mind but there's a way to

01:29:39 ◼   ► I think of this sometimes as it doesn't take a lot of knowledge to be able to ask a knowledgeable

01:29:47 ◼   ► question in this situation.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:29:49 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:29:50 ◼   ► Because again, so going back to coffee, right?

01:29:53 ◼   ► Once I learned what I needed, I can ask someone if they don't have it written down, like,

01:29:59 ◼   ► what are the tasting notes, I hate that phrase, but I don't know what else to say, of this

01:30:03 ◼   ► coffee and this one?

01:30:05 ◼   ► And they'll tell me, but I want that one then.

01:30:08 ◼   ► Or I can say, "Oh, I tend to prefer chocolatey flavors.

01:30:11 ◼   ► What would you recommend?"

01:30:12 ◼   ► When before, I'd be like, "I wouldn't know what to say.

01:30:15 ◼   ► I would have no idea what to say."

01:30:17 ◼   ► Just be like, "I'll have that one, I guess."

01:30:20 ◼   ► But you just learn.

01:30:22 ◼   ► You say the base piece of information to be able to ask an intelligent or informed question.

01:30:29 ◼   ► That's where I want to get to.

01:30:30 ◼   ► And I've gotten there with a lot of food stuff as well over the last few years.

01:30:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like over the past couple of years, they've been the years of palate expansion

01:30:39 ◼   ► for Myke, for sure.

01:30:40 ◼   ► Definitely.

01:30:41 ◼   ► I've noticed that big change in you.

01:30:43 ◼   ► And so like, you know, if I will pull back the curtains a little bit in the hopes that

01:30:47 ◼   ► it minimizes the taunting, I have had a very complicated relationship with food growing

01:30:53 ◼   ► up.

01:30:54 ◼   ► And like for health issues and stuff like that, I had to have a very focused and strict

01:31:00 ◼   ► diet and couldn't vary from it very much.

01:31:04 ◼   ► And as I've grown up, I've found ways to manage that

01:31:07 ◼   ► and plus the effects have changed, luckily.

01:31:11 ◼   ► So it has allowed me to be more confident with trying food

01:31:15 ◼   ► because at a certain point, it became like a mental block

01:31:19 ◼   ► more than a physical block, like a health-related block.

01:31:22 ◼   ► It was mental because I'd been taught the things

01:31:25 ◼   ► that I could and couldn't eat.

01:31:27 ◼   ► So the idea of trying this or trying that,

01:31:30 ◼   ► having any spice, for example, in my food,

01:31:33 ◼   ► it's like you just can't do that.

01:31:34 ◼   ► But now I can, now I can eat Indian food,

01:31:36 ◼   ► which is like, up until last year,

01:31:40 ◼   ► I'd never eaten Indian food, 'cause I couldn't.

01:31:43 ◼   ► But now I can, right?

01:31:44 ◼   ► So like being able to explore just what I can eat more

01:31:49 ◼   ► has been like a big thing for me over the last few years.

01:31:52 ◼   ► And now I'm at like, I wanna get over

01:31:54 ◼   ► the finish line with it.

01:31:56 ◼   ► And like this is like one of the last things

01:31:58 ◼   ► that I have to do.

01:32:00 ◼   ► And when I talk about being adventurous, that is also with food.

01:32:03 ◼   ► We've been talking about sushi a lot on this show recently, right?

01:32:06 ◼   ► And like, so now like the final part is like fish sushi.

01:32:11 ◼   ► Yes.

01:32:11 ◼   ► Sushi, the scariest of foods.

01:32:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it really is for someone like me.

01:32:16 ◼   ► It's the most beautiful and also the most intimidating.

01:32:19 ◼   ► Right?

01:32:19 ◼   ► It's like, you don't really like fish, do you?

01:32:21 ◼   ► No.

01:32:21 ◼   ► Well, how about a bunch of raw ones?

01:32:23 ◼   ► I don't, I can't, no.

01:32:25 ◼   ► How about the pure essence of fish?

01:32:28 ◼   ► Would you enjoy that?

01:32:29 ◼   ► So these are the ideas of the refining of myself. It's like it is taking away the last

01:32:36 ◼   ► areas of this and so then I can walk into any restaurant and be comfortable and being able to

01:32:45 ◼   ► do that is something I never thought I would be able to do. Like having days of anxiety and nerves

01:32:52 ◼   ► about going to a restaurant picked by a friend because I wasn't sure about the menu. Like this

01:32:57 ◼   ► This was a thing that I lived in for a long time,

01:33:01 ◼   ► like until very recently.

01:33:03 ◼   ► And now I'm like starting to get to a point

01:33:05 ◼   ► where my understanding of food is allowing me

01:33:10 ◼   ► to be much more confident that I can go to any restaurant

01:33:14 ◼   ► and find something on a menu.

01:33:15 ◼   ► And like coming to get to that point

01:33:19 ◼   ► has made such a massive impact on my life

01:33:23 ◼   ► when it comes to traveling as well.

01:33:25 ◼   ► I was hesitant to travel to some places because if I couldn't, like for example, if they couldn't

01:33:30 ◼   ► put the menu in English, like I was worried that like what am I going to order?

01:33:35 ◼   ► And so being able to get to that point has really helped me.

01:33:38 ◼   ► So I want to be able to take those last few areas away.

01:33:42 ◼   ► And it's like being adventurous and being able to order.

01:33:48 ◼   ► And that's so that's what I want to get to this year because I've gotten real close now.

01:33:51 ◼   ► And I just want to finish that off.

01:33:53 ◼   ► I really like that theme.

01:33:54 ◼   ► I really liked that one a lot for two reasons.

01:33:57 ◼   ► It gets, it gets a good example of a different sort of theme than

01:34:01 ◼   ► people might normally think of.

01:34:04 ◼   ► And I like that it's, it's specific.

01:34:08 ◼   ► Like it's, it's, you know, you're, you're trying to achieve some things.

01:34:13 ◼   ► Again, there, there isn't a fail state, but it's just more comfortable, more

01:34:19 ◼   ► knowledgeable in different situations.

01:34:23 ◼   ► I really liked that one.

01:34:24 ◼   ► That's a very interesting one for the year.

01:34:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I got a lot of personal this year,

01:34:27 ◼   ► but there is some professional, and I will,

01:34:31 ◼   ► after the project launches that I'm working on,

01:34:35 ◼   ► I will be able to talk more about

01:34:36 ◼   ► how it relates back to this theme.

01:34:38 ◼   ► I mentioned I have one other little thing.

01:34:42 ◼   ► - Oh, that's right, that's right.

01:34:43 ◼   ► There's two things.

01:34:44 ◼   ► - This is not a theme for me.

01:34:46 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:34:47 ◼   ► - Mega Office 3.0.

01:34:49 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:34:51 ◼   ► The theme is, everything has its place.

01:34:55 ◼   ► Ah, alright.

01:34:56 ◼   ► This office is out of control, and it needs to be organized.

01:35:01 ◼   ► And the goal of the office organization, which will happen at some point this year,

01:35:05 ◼   ► is everything has a place, and it must have a place, and if it doesn't have a place,

01:35:10 ◼   ► you need to create one.

01:35:10 ◼   ► That's good, that's good, I like that, yeah.

01:35:13 ◼   ► And I won't tease you at all, I agree.

01:35:15 ◼   ► That's not really a theme, but that's much more of a like, "I need to get this done this year."

01:35:19 ◼   ► Yeah, but I figured the only way I could do it is by giving it a cool phrase and the phrase is

01:35:24 ◼   ► "everything has its place" that's the theme of the office. Hey look, I'm a fan of project names,

01:35:29 ◼   ► you know me, like giving the things you want to do fun names that is part of the way of tricking

01:35:34 ◼   ► your brain, you know. I'm not cleaning my office, this is Mega Office 3.0, right? You gotta fool

01:35:41 ◼   ► yourself in that way, it's good, I like that. Okay, cortexins, you know what's coming now.

01:35:48 ◼   ► We have been talking for many hours about our themes. Where do you put those themes?

01:35:55 ◼   ► Where do you put them, Gray?

01:35:56 ◼   ► Where are you going to keep track of this sort of thing?

01:35:58 ◼   ► Where are you going to every single day relate back to your theme?

01:36:02 ◼   ► Will you take that time in your day to sit down, reflect on your theme?

01:36:07 ◼   ► Is there something that people who have been professionally thinking about themes for years

01:36:13 ◼   ► have made for you? Well, guess what? There is.

01:36:16 ◼   ► There is. The Theme System Journal. The Theme System Journal. There it is. So, when you

01:36:23 ◼   ► are listening to this show, if you are listening to it on the perfect day, which is December

01:36:28 ◼   ► 31st, The Theme System Journal is back in stock at CortexMerch.com. CortexMerch.com.

01:36:40 ◼   ► We ordered more than last time? Right. I still don't know how long they're going to stick

01:36:45 ◼   ► around for. We're back to the exact same point again that we were last time. They're either

01:36:50 ◼   ► going to be in stock for two days or two months. Nobody knows.

01:36:54 ◼   ► Yeah. If this happens to be your first episode of Cortex, the creation of this journal has

01:37:01 ◼   ► been a very long saga that Myke and I have spent trying to get this thing made as a place

01:37:11 ◼   ► want to have a way to track your themes and to daily remind yourself what it is

01:37:16 ◼   ► that you're trying to do.

01:37:18 ◼   ► Like we've been trying to make this journal for a long time and there have

01:37:22 ◼   ► been highs and there have been lows.

01:37:24 ◼   ► And one of the things that we've been unable to figure out is order sizes,

01:37:29 ◼   ► like how many to buy for how many we can sell without also risking going bankrupt.

01:37:34 ◼   ► This has been an epic journey that the past us would have thought by

01:37:40 ◼   ► have thought by this point in time would be long settled and stable but it is it

01:37:46 ◼   ► is still not. It is far from. It is very far from settled at this point. And if

01:37:52 ◼   ► this is new to you we have a website it's thethemesystem.com that explains

01:37:56 ◼   ► the journal. It's split into three sections. You have the section where you

01:37:59 ◼   ► write down your yearly themes and you outline what you would like to achieve

01:38:03 ◼   ► from them. Then you have daily journaling pages where you can create your own

01:38:08 ◼   ► things that you want to be thinking about every day and you can sit and write them out

01:38:12 ◼   ► and then you have your daily themes where I do this, many people do this, it's kind

01:38:16 ◼   ► of like a habit tracking thing. Here are a bunch of ideas, a bunch of questions, a bunch

01:38:21 ◼   ► of elements that I want to make sure that every single day I am moving ahead a little

01:38:27 ◼   ► bit. In the coming weeks I want to think about, and I haven't been able to really wrap my

01:38:31 ◼   ► head around this, but what are going to be my daily themes for 2020? Will the year of

01:38:35 ◼   ► refinement refine them probably but I don't know yet so I'm gonna be thinking

01:38:39 ◼   ► about that in future episodes but if you want some detail you want to see some

01:38:43 ◼   ► images and when I look see what it looks like go to the theme system calm and

01:38:47 ◼   ► there's a bunch of information there then if you want to buy them there are

01:38:50 ◼   ► links there but you can go to cortex merch calm and you can buy them here's

01:38:54 ◼   ► the thing if these sell out we still don't know when they'll be back in stock

01:38:57 ◼   ► again but we're working on it yeah so if you are listening to this in the far

01:39:04 ◼   ► future. At that point, we will hopefully have stabilized the business and we will have a

01:39:11 ◼   ► journal that you can buy at any time. However, if you are listening to this episode close

01:39:18 ◼   ► to the point of publication, it is extraordinarily likely that we might sell out of these yet

01:39:24 ◼   ► again and be right back to where we started and just have to order more. So if you know

01:39:30 ◼   ► for sure that you want one and you are listening near the date of publication.

01:39:34 ◼   ► You should not be waiting.

01:39:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I would be quick about it, right? That's my suggestion. We're trying to make this more

01:39:41 ◼   ► regular, that is the ultimate goal. We don't want to have these moments of, "Oh, there's

01:39:45 ◼   ► some journals, run!" You know, grab them quick. Like, that's not the ideal situation. But

01:39:50 ◼   ► it's fair warning to say that at time of publication, that may still be the situation.

01:39:55 ◼   ► One thing, I'm about to finish my first theme journal.

01:39:59 ◼   ► I have a couple more weeks left because of the way we've designed our journal, you can

01:40:04 ◼   ► work in it as much as you want.

01:40:06 ◼   ► We decided we were not going to pre-print dates because people work differently.

01:40:10 ◼   ► I only use the theme system journal on days where I am working.

01:40:15 ◼   ► So the weekends I do not do it, if I'm traveling I do not do it.

01:40:18 ◼   ► So I started mine when we got the first stock in in June.

01:40:21 ◼   ► So I go through one about every six months is what I've learned.

01:40:25 ◼   ► I'm just about to finish my first one.

01:40:27 ◼   ► Fun fact, I have a hundred sitting here.

01:40:29 ◼   ► This is a story for another time, which we will get to.

01:40:31 ◼   ► So I have my pick of journals to go through.

01:40:35 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:36 ◼   ► Myke personally doesn't have a shortage of journals to pick, but Myke has the

01:40:40 ◼   ► opposite.

01:40:41 ◼   ► It's too many, but again, that is a story for another time.

01:40:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:45 ◼   ► Cortexmerch.com.

01:40:47 ◼   ► Go check out the theme journal.

01:40:49 ◼   ► If you have come up with a yearly theme and want to share it with us, or if you

01:40:54 ◼   ► have been working on a yearly theme for the last year and want to tell us how you've been

01:40:58 ◼   ► doing, we want to know about that. So you can tweet at the show @CortexPodcast, use

01:41:04 ◼   ► the hashtag #AskCortex, it's just a great way to collect them up so I'll definitely

01:41:08 ◼   ► see them, or comment in the Reddit thread, either on the Cortex subreddit or in the entry

01:41:13 ◼   ► for this episode on Grey's subreddit. I want to know, that was a wonderful thing last year

01:41:17 ◼   ► where people were sharing. I want to know what you've been working on and what you're

01:41:20 ◼   ► working towards.

01:41:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I really enjoy seeing the different themes

01:41:26 ◼   ► that people have and their explanations

01:41:27 ◼   ► and what it means to them.

01:41:29 ◼   ► I really, really enjoy that in the subreddit.

01:41:34 ◼   ► So yeah, I would say if there's something

01:41:38 ◼   ► that you wanna work on,

01:41:39 ◼   ► I think that's a good place to just leave a comment.

01:41:42 ◼   ► I think it's also nice to just have a little record of it.

01:41:46 ◼   ► And I would be doubly curious for anybody

01:41:50 ◼   ► who has commented last year, if they wanted to have a follow-up about how that has worked

01:41:57 ◼   ► out for them, I'd like to see that.

01:42:00 ◼   ► I just find it very interesting to see the different ways that people interpret this

01:42:06 ◼   ► semi-freeform way of trying to make your life better in various ways.

01:42:11 ◼   ► So, yeah, I'd love to see the themes for this year and I'd really love to see follow-up

01:42:15 ◼   ► from previous year if that's something that you as a listener wish to share.

01:42:20 ◼   ► So happy new year everybody. Happy new theme.

01:42:23 ◼   ► Yes.

01:42:24 ◼   ► If you're doing that.

01:42:25 ◼   ► Happy new year, Cortexians. Happy new theme.