Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► a one hour vlog two years after the event. Only CGP Grey could make that work.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Well, Myke, Myke, you're already messing with the timeline.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:00:14 ◼   ► First of all, we don't even know if it works because, once again,

00:00:20 ◼   ► Cortex recording schedule is always somehow slightly off from video release schedule.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, so I've seen it and I really enjoyed it, so it worked for me.

00:00:33 ◼   ► But in the real world, what has just occurred is for apparently no reason, there was a driving

00:00:42 ◼   ► trip streamed on the CGP Grey YouTube channel.

00:00:45 ◼   ► American Grey Simulator, as I called it.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Yeah, in the actual timeline, that's what's happened.

00:00:50 ◼   ► It's like you're jinxing the release of the video.

00:00:52 ◼   ► It's not successful yet, it hasn't come out, who knows if it's actually going to work,

00:00:56 ◼   ► But that will be up in a couple days from recording time.

00:00:59 ◼   ► So.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Yeah, but you see, this is where we get into the time paradox that is this show, right?

00:01:05 ◼   ► So I'm trying to deal with it as like it's already out there.

00:01:08 ◼   ► But now we're going back again.

00:01:10 ◼   ► This is a thing I've thought about a bunch of times ever since I've started podcasting.

00:01:15 ◼   ► But then additionally, when I decided like, oh, I'm gonna play around with the vlog format

00:01:19 ◼   ► is I'm living this nonlinear life of like recording times going forward and back in

00:01:26 ◼   ► time, like there's Cortex episodes that are out of time, and then I'm looking at

00:01:30 ◼   ► footage which is from years ago, but I can combine it with footage that's from yesterday,

00:01:35 ◼   ► and even if you look at the, depending on how you want to count them, three or three

00:01:41 ◼   ► and a half vlogs that I've put up on YouTube, the time gaps between them are enormous, and

00:01:47 ◼   ► things are out of order, and it's like, "Oh, I've released this vlog about wanting

00:01:52 ◼   ► to pay attention more. And then now I'm going to release something that happened years before

00:01:57 ◼   ► that ever occurred. So yeah, I have this totally non-linear life.

00:02:01 ◼   ► This is Summer of Grey part 2. Parts 1 and 3 were posted a year ago.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Oh god, I forgot. That's right, that's the other time linear part. People have already

00:02:11 ◼   ► seen the end. They saw the end a year ago.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Because that's the funny thing of like, there's so much drama in this video, but we all know

00:02:18 ◼   ► you're alive. But like there is this like I'm watching it so it's a video about a road

00:02:24 ◼   ► trip that Grey took a couple of years ago like that's in a nutshell you should watch

00:02:27 ◼   ► it I really I thought it was very very very good but it you you totally succeeded in I'm

00:02:36 ◼   ► watching the video and I'm worried but like one I know about the trip because you were

00:02:44 ◼   ► telling me while it was happening, and two, I know it was two years ago, right? And you

00:02:50 ◼   ► sent me the link, so I know you're okay, but I was still worried about you.

00:02:54 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I guess it works then. I guess it worked on an emotional level, at least

00:02:59 ◼   ► on a mic. But yeah, so, this is a thing that I'm very glad in the current timeline will

00:03:07 ◼   ► soon be released. Slash has already been released.

00:03:11 ◼   ► has already been released in my horrifically nonlinear life. I'll be very, very, very glad

00:03:17 ◼   ► to be done with this project. I've been telling my wife the past two weeks as I've been really

00:03:24 ◼   ► making the final push on this thing, like constantly I've been telling her like, I think

00:03:27 ◼   ► there is literally no project that I will complete that I will feel better about having it just

00:03:34 ◼   ► finally done because this is this is one of the projects that's been with me the longest in

00:03:41 ◼   ► in an active or semi-active state where like you know I've been tinkering with it so I'm

00:03:46 ◼   ► very relieved it's over soon.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I remember you sending me like clips of the driving a long time ago.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Like a long time ago.

00:03:57 ◼   ► I mean like oh what do you think of this?

00:03:58 ◼   ► Like you know like when there's like a couple of shots where you have what is effectively

00:04:02 ◼   ► like a rear view mirror in the corner while you're driving and like it's wild like that

00:04:08 ◼   ► was such a long time ago why okay what what happens that it takes that this is a project

00:04:17 ◼   ► which is in the works for two years like what what happens that results in that okay we

00:04:24 ◼   ► I'm going to dramatically simplify things, but listeners of Cortex, they will know that

00:04:31 ◼   ► I have occasionally made reference to a behemoth project, which has been a tremendous pain

00:04:39 ◼   ► in the ass a bunch of times over the past two years.

00:04:44 ◼   ► This is that project.

00:04:45 ◼   ► I looked this morning because I wanted to get the exact number for you.

00:04:50 ◼   ► If you combine the road trip dash cam footage with the footage that I shot on the actual

00:05:00 ◼   ► trip, the total amount of generated footage is just over one terabyte of data.

00:05:11 ◼   ► amount of data for me constantly caused huge technical problems, huge dispiriting technical

00:05:23 ◼   ► problems that would cause me to abandon the project for a couple months and be like, I

00:05:28 ◼   ► can't even think about this.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Here is one of the first major delays that that is one of the most dispiriting things

00:05:35 ◼   ► that's happened to me in a long time.

00:05:37 ◼   ► So the first summer I had a like I had a very rough cut of parts one, two, and three.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Not not any here's the thing, not anything close to a final product, but just like an

00:05:55 ◼   ► incredibly broad overview of like, here's all the shots.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Is this a year later, you're saying or is this this is not too long after?

00:06:04 ◼   ► This is like, I'm gonna say it took three or four months after shooting, right? So this

00:06:09 ◼   ► is like tail end of 2017. Like in the winter of that year. Yeah, it's the winter of that

00:06:14 ◼   ► year. I had this like rough compendium of here's the thing I think it's going to be

00:06:20 ◼   ► here. Here's where I think the natural parts are realizing immediately that part two had

00:06:26 ◼   ► to be just a totally separate thing,

00:06:28 ◼   ► pulling that, like I had all of this stuff.

00:06:30 ◼   ► And to skip a huge amount of difficulty,

00:06:35 ◼   ► I was using Dropbox for the project,

00:06:39 ◼   ► and I'm syncing the project back and forth

00:06:41 ◼   ► between different machines.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And this is also the first major, major project

00:06:47 ◼   ► that I'm doing in Final Cut.

00:06:50 ◼   ► You know, again, this amount of data is absurd.

00:06:52 ◼   ► - You've never handled so many terabytes of data and footage

00:06:57 ◼   ► and even just pure time before,

00:07:01 ◼   ► 'cause you've never done something like this.

00:07:02 ◼   ► - I'm way out of my depth.

00:07:03 ◼   ► I'm totally out of my depth.

00:07:05 ◼   ► - Again, just to provide a little bit more context

00:07:07 ◼   ► for the discussion.

00:07:08 ◼   ► So Gray takes a long road trip and is basically filming,

00:07:13 ◼   ► you have dash cams that are filming

00:07:16 ◼   ► the entire driving period,

00:07:18 ◼   ► as well as a bunch of clips that you're taking yourself

00:07:21 ◼   ► of places that you're visiting,

00:07:23 ◼   ► you know, like you would normally see in a vlog, right?

00:07:25 ◼   ► Like here I am and I'm kind of this thing

00:07:26 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff.

00:07:28 ◼   ► But it was, you know, I'm assuming the many, many, many,

00:07:31 ◼   ► many tens of hours of multiple cameras shooting the road

00:07:35 ◼   ► that caused a lot of the issues that we're talking about.

00:07:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then plus I had with me four different cameras

00:07:43 ◼   ► that I was using to shoot other stuff.

00:07:45 ◼   ► So my phone, I had a GoPro,

00:07:47 ◼   ► and I had two other like pocket cameras.

00:07:50 ◼   ► So in the depth of winter, a combination of factors occurred.

00:07:55 ◼   ► There was an interaction between the way Dropbox works

00:07:59 ◼   ► and the way Final Cut works

00:08:01 ◼   ► and the way I had organized my files

00:08:03 ◼   ► that caused about a third of the video

00:08:08 ◼   ► in the rough cut of part two

00:08:12 ◼   ► to be randomly swapped with the wrong clips.

00:08:17 ◼   ► And so I ended up with a timeline where about every third clip was incorrect and from a

00:08:26 ◼   ► different location across the trip.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And I cannot tell you how dispiriting that was.

00:08:36 ◼   ► There was no way to roll this back because of just like how large each of the individual

00:08:43 ◼   ► backups were.

00:08:44 ◼   ► there was no way to reverse it.

00:08:47 ◼   ► And that right there, I don't think I touched part two

00:08:52 ◼   ► for maybe six months, maybe eight months after that,

00:08:57 ◼   ► because it was so psychologically dispiriting,

00:09:01 ◼   ► I couldn't even bring myself to open the project.

00:09:04 ◼   ► I was like, I have to wait until I can really be

00:09:09 ◼   ► emotionally removed from how much labor

00:09:13 ◼   ► has been completely destroyed by a computer error.

00:09:17 ◼   ► That's not even my fault, it wasn't even really the fault

00:09:19 ◼   ► of any of the products I was using,

00:09:21 ◼   ► it's just like here's a super edge case that just happened

00:09:25 ◼   ► and sometimes life sucks.

00:09:27 ◼   ► - On a very basic level, do you know what happened?

00:09:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would describe it as a name space conflict.

00:09:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I would assume,

00:09:35 ◼   ► 'cause I know the way, I think Final Cut and Logic

00:09:37 ◼   ► are similar in this way that if you use them

00:09:39 ◼   ► where they're pulling files from a location,

00:09:41 ◼   ► you're not actually storing the files

00:09:43 ◼   ► in the project itself.

00:09:44 ◼   ► If you change the name, it will just bring that in instead.

00:09:49 ◼   ► And yeah, it can be a bit of a nightmare.

00:09:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a little like, that's the basic idea of it.

00:09:54 ◼   ► It was a kind of namespace conflict,

00:09:57 ◼   ► but it was a thing that was partly my fault

00:09:59 ◼   ► for the way I was doing stuff.

00:10:00 ◼   ► But this was also like, I had no experience with,

00:10:04 ◼   ► how do you even try to organize

00:10:07 ◼   ► and catalog this much footage?

00:10:10 ◼   ► There's also, talking about technical difficulties,

00:10:14 ◼   ► the live stream that went up,

00:10:17 ◼   ► people will notice that at,

00:10:19 ◼   ► if you look through the whole thing,

00:10:22 ◼   ► at some points there's a rear view camera that you can see,

00:10:26 ◼   ► and at some points there aren't.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And that's because one of the technical problems

00:10:31 ◼   ► I ran into during the filming,

00:10:34 ◼   ► was I did not have enough hard drive space

00:10:36 ◼   ► to store all of the footage that I was capturing.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And I was going through these really remote areas

00:10:44 ◼   ► where there was just nowhere to buy a hard drive.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And the technical error that I ran into,

00:10:50 ◼   ► which was incredibly frustrating is,

00:10:52 ◼   ► before I left the last major metropolitan area,

00:10:54 ◼   ► I had gone into a store and I bought a bunch of hard drives

00:10:57 ◼   ► and half of them didn't work,

00:10:59 ◼   ► but I didn't discover that until I was out in the desert.

00:11:02 ◼   ► So there's a few places where footage is missing

00:11:07 ◼   ► and I had to make some strategic decisions

00:11:09 ◼   ► about like, well, rear dash cam footage just gonna go,

00:11:12 ◼   ► like, goodbye, like, I'm not gonna keep it.

00:11:14 ◼   ► So there were so many technical problems

00:11:18 ◼   ► over the course of this.

00:11:19 ◼   ► - It was quite a mammoth undertaking, really.

00:11:21 ◼   ► It's not surprising, especially when you're not used to it.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Like, you went from zero to a million in terms of vlogging.

00:11:28 ◼   ► - I did, I did, and the thing is,

00:11:30 ◼   ► I didn't have any idea what I was getting into.

00:11:33 ◼   ► - No. - I just,

00:11:34 ◼   ► I had no concept of how much of a problem

00:11:36 ◼   ► I was causing for myself.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And yeah, I didn't have any idea

00:11:42 ◼   ► of what was this going to look like in the end.

00:11:43 ◼   ► I thought like, oh, let me just go

00:11:45 ◼   ► and capture a bunch of stuff.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Let this be a lesson in don't overshoot.

00:11:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, in this situation,

00:11:52 ◼   ► you significantly bit off more than you could chew.

00:11:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was a real disaster.

00:11:57 ◼   ► Many a times I was wondering like,

00:11:58 ◼   ► how do people deal with organizing and cataloging

00:12:03 ◼   ► an enormous amount of footage?

00:12:07 ◼   ► And I was even looking around and it's like,

00:12:10 ◼   ► everybody's got their own squirrely method

00:12:12 ◼   ► seemed to be the answer that just works for them.

00:12:14 ◼   ► And there's not really a good industry standard for,

00:12:18 ◼   ► you're gonna have terabytes and terabytes of data.

00:12:20 ◼   ► What are you gonna manage it?

00:12:21 ◼   ► It's like, well, at that point, every project is unique.

00:12:24 ◼   ► And so there, you don't have a lot of general advice

00:12:26 ◼   ► that you can try to follow.

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00:14:21 ◼   ► But yeah so there was you know the better part of a year where I didn't even touch

00:14:27 ◼   ► or think about the project because I was just too dispirited to even try to pick it up.

00:14:33 ◼   ► That's also partly why the original like part one and part two were really delayed because I had some technical problems with that one as well

00:14:38 ◼   ► But they were much more minor compared to part two part two was the real disaster. You were dealing with way less

00:14:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I was dealing with much less. It was also

00:14:46 ◼   ► There's also a lot clearer like what is that?

00:14:50 ◼   ► Whereas with the part two stuff I'd shot so much footage and like I don't even know like what is this thing?

00:14:56 ◼   ► What is I can't I can't just show someone

00:15:00 ◼   ► whatever it was, hundreds of hours of like, "Hey, let's go on a trip together!"

00:15:04 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, it's horrifically boring to do that.

00:15:06 ◼   ► So it's also trying to select the interesting parts.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I know this probably...

00:15:11 ◼   ► I kind of feel probably may feel a little bit dumb in saying it,

00:15:14 ◼   ► but I'm just gonna say it anyway.

00:15:16 ◼   ► It kind of doesn't really feel like you have a vlog here, it's more like a short movie.

00:15:20 ◼   ► Because you had to treat it differently, because when you have so much stuff,

00:15:27 ◼   ► you can't actually really make a one hour vlog. There has to be a story otherwise it won't work.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Typically you just couldn't make an hour version of parts one and two because they were very vloggy.

00:15:45 ◼   ► If this was an hour long of you just doing a little catalogue of every single day,

00:15:52 ◼   ► it would be too much but instead there is like a story there is foreshadowing and like you know

00:15:59 ◼   ► there's a bunch of interesting things going on that make it something you can sit through and

00:16:04 ◼   ► enjoy without like constantly checking how far along you are in the video right and and so like

00:16:11 ◼   ► it is vlog style but the work that you clearly went through to make it an entertaining hour

00:16:20 ◼   ► is more like I'm telling a different kind of story with this.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:16:25 ◼   ► I know you won't say it, because I'm saying it, but it is different. And you clearly decided

00:16:32 ◼   ► to tell a story with it, because you set it up that way, right? And I'm not saying that

00:16:38 ◼   ► you set out to make your Oscar movie, but it has a slightly different feel to it than parts one

00:16:47 ◼   ► and 3do which were more vloggy. Like here is this day, here's what happened on this day,

00:16:54 ◼   ► here is this day. It's like it's chunked up that way. But this is like a much bigger story and you

00:17:00 ◼   ► set it up in the beginning and we follow it through and there's lots of little things where

00:17:03 ◼   ► it's like oh god he actually doesn't know how to manage a battery on a car and everyone's terrified.

00:17:07 ◼   ► I was watching it with Vadina and she was just like oh he keeps talking about the car being warm

00:17:13 ◼   ► that's going to kill the battery and like when you're charging with a laptop. Because everyone

00:17:17 ◼   ► we're following along with your range anxiety. And we it's like when you set up Oh, I'm not

00:17:21 ◼   ► going to go on the supercharger network and then the next shot all the cars so warm. It's like, no,

00:17:25 ◼   ► you're ruining everything. So that, you know, it had a different feel to it. And I think

00:17:32 ◼   ► that that's also probably what happens when you spend like a year working on it.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it's it's funny to hear you describe it that way. Like I just don't think about

00:17:41 ◼   ► it in this way at all. I think this is this is entirely about

00:17:46 ◼   ► mostly trying to select clips that also relate to other clips.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Right, but that's building like a narrative throughline, right?

00:17:53 ◼   ► Like I know you're not... I understand that you didn't think of it in these terms,

00:17:57 ◼   ► but you are more of a person who tells stories than you are a person who is used to vlogging,

00:18:07 ◼   ► right? Like you understand way more the beginning, middle, and an end of a video because

00:18:12 ◼   ► that's what all of your other videos are. Like they have to start in a place and end in a place

00:18:16 ◼   ► and then you have to guide people through it, right? That is what you're used to doing.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And it feels like you maybe applied a little bit more of that thinking to this video than some of

00:18:26 ◼   ► the other vlogs purely because of the fact that you were dealing with so much stuff. Like it's

00:18:31 ◼   ► kind of a little bit more like a typical video for you where you're taking in a bunch of data sources

00:18:36 ◼   ► and research and turning it into a thing. It feels like it might have been a little bit more

00:18:41 ◼   ► like that process than some of the other stuff

00:18:44 ◼   ► that you've done, which is more vlog-like.

00:18:47 ◼   ► - Okay, well, it has a beginning and a middle and an end

00:18:50 ◼   ► because it's a literal journey.

00:18:52 ◼   ► There's a start point, there's a place I'm trying to go to,

00:18:55 ◼   ► and then there's the end of it, which is now this is done.

00:18:58 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:18:59 ◼   ► - So I think that's the case, but I would love to know

00:19:02 ◼   ► people who do this kind of stuff, what their workflow is,

00:19:06 ◼   ► because it's so interesting.

00:19:10 ◼   ► After I had finally fixed all the footage,

00:19:13 ◼   ► I ended up having, you know,

00:19:15 ◼   ► God, I don't even know what it was.

00:19:17 ◼   ► Many, many hours of just,

00:19:22 ◼   ► here's the whole trip chronological from start to finish.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Everything I shot that was not a road trip camera,

00:19:27 ◼   ► not one of the dash cams.

00:19:30 ◼   ► And a thing that I noticed working on all of the vlogs,

00:19:33 ◼   ► but particularly this one, is like,

00:19:34 ◼   ► oh, this is actually in some way the same way

00:19:37 ◼   ► that I work on my regular videos,

00:19:42 ◼   ► which is I'm just gonna watch this through hundreds of times

00:19:47 ◼   ► and every time I go through,

00:19:49 ◼   ► I'm gonna try to take out the parts that are boring.

00:19:52 ◼   ► And so that's why I think there are clips

00:19:55 ◼   ► that relate to other clips,

00:19:57 ◼   ► because each time you go through, you're like,

00:19:58 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, I guess this one kind of connects

00:20:00 ◼   ► "to something that I say later."

00:20:02 ◼   ► And so I can leave these in.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And over the past year, there were just a bunch of sections where I'm like,

00:20:08 ◼   ► "This doesn't matter. This doesn't connect to anything."

00:20:11 ◼   ► There's a pointless side quest, like, "Oh, it was interesting for me to do this particular thing,

00:20:16 ◼   ► but it doesn't matter. It doesn't connect to anything, so I'll just take it out."

00:20:20 ◼   ► But the thing that I do like much better working on a vlog than working on a script is,

00:20:28 ◼   ► except for the couple shots of Future Me, which I thought I could stylistically allow

00:20:32 ◼   ► to try to have some continuity.

00:20:35 ◼   ► There's nothing else to add.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I guess like, well, I've got the shots that I've got

00:20:39 ◼   ► and I've got the things that I've said

00:20:42 ◼   ► and there's no adding to this.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And I don't know, there's something about that

00:20:47 ◼   ► which is really kind of, it's really nice compared

00:20:51 ◼   ► to trying to write a script for a regular video

00:20:54 ◼   ► because that process is like, oh, there's a world

00:20:57 ◼   ► of things to include and it can go in any direction.

00:21:00 ◼   ► And working on this was just a very different experience because it's like, well, I just have these pieces.

00:21:06 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of places where I'm, even in the final version, where I'm really annoyed that like, I didn't make something clear at the time, or I didn't explain something very well.

00:21:16 ◼   ► It's like, but you know, I can't reshoot this stuff. So I just need to figure out a way in editing to either skip over it, or to, you know, make make an interesting cut here.

00:21:28 ◼   ► There is one little joke in the video which is 100% just a joke for me.

00:21:35 ◼   ► I'm leaving it in there only because it makes me smile.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And it's the shot where I start describing how I'm having a bunch of technical problems with the cameras.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And then I cut to future me yelling like, "Nobody cares. Nobody cares about your technical problems."

00:21:52 ◼   ► That doesn't really need to be in the video, but I'm leaving it in there because it makes me happy.

00:21:56 ◼   ► because I cannot tell you how many dozens of hours

00:22:01 ◼   ► of me complaining about stuff isn't working,

00:22:04 ◼   ► or this hard drive's broken, or, oh man, Myke,

00:22:08 ◼   ► that was the summer of USBC,

00:22:10 ◼   ► like how many USBC dongle problems I had.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And it's like, all of that is God,

00:22:16 ◼   ► goodbye all of this, it doesn't matter,

00:22:18 ◼   ► nobody cares, it's really boring.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And so I feel like that's the process.

00:22:23 ◼   ► I'm just gonna go through this a bunch of times

00:22:25 ◼   ► bunch of times and each time I'm going to try to take out whatever is the least interesting

00:22:30 ◼   ► part of this and hopefully what I'm left with is sort of interesting and has some kind

00:22:35 ◼   ► of through line. So I'm very relieved to know that you liked it.

00:22:38 ◼   ► I really did. I was nervous when I saw the runtime. But I was genuinely surprised how

00:22:46 ◼   ► entertaining I found it. It was also funny to me, I also had some real visceral reactions

00:22:52 ◼   ► to some points of this video. Can you guess which part of the video caused the most major

00:23:01 ◼   ► flashbacks for me?

00:23:02 ◼   ► You're horrified by the ghost town that I visited.

00:23:05 ◼   ► Yeah, well that's like one whole thing where, one, I can't believe that you went there.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Listeners, listeners, here's the thing. I went to this ghost town at the very end of

00:23:16 ◼   ► the video, which even as we're talking right now, I'm still debating cutting that part.

00:23:22 ◼   ► No, it's got to be in there. It's really good. It's terrifying.

00:23:26 ◼   ► I don't know. It feels like a bit of a side quest.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Worthy though.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Okay. So I went to this ghost town, but even when I was on the trip, I took some pictures specifically to send to Myke,

00:23:36 ◼   ► because I thought, rifling through my mental Rolodex, I was like, "You know who's going to be the most horrified by this? Myke.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I have to send him pictures of this." I think you may be the only person I sent photos of that ghost town to,

00:23:45 ◼   ► because they're like, "Myke will be appalled. I've got to send him these photos."

00:23:49 ◼   ► photos. I was really worried about you and it was I cannot believe that you were walking

00:23:57 ◼   ► in to the buildings. I just cannot. Everything I know I feel like I know about you. Like

00:24:06 ◼   ► why did you touch anything in the outhouse? I just can't fathom it. Like it just makes

00:24:11 ◼   ► no sense to me. I mean I did have to go to the bathroom. But like walking into those

00:24:15 ◼   ► houses, and like, you sent me pictures of the underground death bunker, which that surely

00:24:22 ◼   ► was, right? You were sending me pictures of it. I remember all of this. Any time you came

00:24:28 ◼   ► across any abandoned building on that trip, you would send me a picture of it, I think.

00:24:33 ◼   ► But the thing that I have the most visceral feelings towards is when you said, "Oh, I

00:24:39 ◼   ► have some Wi-Fi, so I'm going to download some work files."

00:24:42 ◼   ► Oh, of course. Of course, yes.

00:24:46 ◼   ► I remember greatly that week.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Why did you have such a visceral reaction to that, Myke?

00:24:51 ◼   ► Because we had recorded a very timely episode of our show, the WWDC episode. It's very

00:24:56 ◼   ► timely, because every day after that, that it is not released, it is getting older and

00:25:01 ◼   ► older, and my co-host was in the West. Like, I don't know where he is. He's just missing.

00:25:09 ◼   ► he's like, "Oh, I have no reception. I can't even send you text messages. And I'm waiting

00:25:15 ◼   ► for you to download a multiple gigabyte project, listen to it all." And again, it was funny

00:25:21 ◼   ► to me, you're listening to it in the car, which I knew you were, I remember you telling

00:25:26 ◼   ► me you were going to do that. So it's just funny because I can imagine it's just a laptop

00:25:30 ◼   ► strapped into the car playing the show.

00:25:34 ◼   ► That whole trip I had a laptop with the seat belt around it, so it's snugly secure doing

00:25:39 ◼   ► various things, either trying to like offload footage or play the podcast or do a whole

00:25:44 ◼   ► bunch of stuff. But I had a laptop as a co-pilot that whole trip.

00:25:47 ◼   ► But I just remember the logistical nightmare that was caused by you being on that trip

00:25:55 ◼   ► of us trying to get the episode out. This is one of the things that I was kind

00:25:58 ◼   ► of frustrated afterwards because I just never had any shots of me explaining it clearly

00:26:04 ◼   ► or really talking about it. And I think particularly, let's say for European viewers, there's no

00:26:12 ◼   ► concept of how many stretches in America you can go on where you have no connection, no

00:26:19 ◼   ► cell phone connection, let alone an internet connection. And I wish I had some spots where

00:26:25 ◼   ► that was just made more clear to the viewer that for huge portions of this trip, it's

00:26:32 ◼   ► "Well, if I broke down on the side of the road,

00:26:34 ◼   ► "the answer is, well, I'm just gonna have to wait

00:26:36 ◼   ► "for someone, there's nothing else to do."

00:26:40 ◼   ► And that's not even some of the most remote areas

00:26:43 ◼   ► I've ever been in America.

00:26:44 ◼   ► I remember when we recorded that episode,

00:26:46 ◼   ► I was trying to prepare you for,

00:26:49 ◼   ► 'cause I think we recorded the Cortex episode

00:26:52 ◼   ► on the second to last day of WWDC,

00:26:54 ◼   ► and I went on this trip before you had finished editing it.

00:26:59 ◼   ► And I was telling you, "Well, listen,

00:27:01 ◼   ► I hope I'm going to be able to download this episode somewhere, but I can't guarantee.

00:27:08 ◼   ► And I just happened to find this one casino that I stopped at that had decent enough Wi-Fi

00:27:13 ◼   ► that I could stay there for several hours and the files downloaded to be able to listen

00:27:17 ◼   ► to it.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And then I still think I didn't have internet for like another day to get back to you with

00:27:22 ◼   ► your results or anything.

00:27:23 ◼   ► It was a long time.

00:27:24 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:27:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, so I have memories of like being in my kitchen.

00:27:29 ◼   ► This is before we moved.

00:27:31 ◼   ► is like in my family home, you would send me a picture and be like "this is where I

00:27:36 ◼   ► am, still can't get it" and I have memories of me being like "uhhhhhh"

00:27:42 ◼   ► It's funny to hear this Myke because all of your anxiety had completely slipped out

00:27:50 ◼   ► of my mind a lot. Like I'd forgotten all of this and to me the entirety of that time

00:27:56 ◼   ► was just reduced now to this one funny clip that I had of me listening to the show while

00:28:01 ◼   ► we're in the car. Oh, I was gonna say here's the thing. I don't know if most viewers will

00:28:05 ◼   ► ever notice this kind of thing, but this is one advantage of living the non-linear life

00:28:12 ◼   ► is by having the parts one and three and then part two be very separated in time from their

00:28:20 ◼   ► production. I don't think anyone will notice, but the clip that I am listening to of the

00:28:26 ◼   ► the podcast in the car, I intentionally made that the clip that I play of us in part one

00:28:34 ◼   ► recording the show.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Ooh, continuity.

00:28:37 ◼   ► I don't think people ever pick up on that stuff, but I just I love to try to do that

00:28:40 ◼   ► if I can.

00:28:43 ◼   ► I had this one clip where you could hear the podcast in the background.

00:28:46 ◼   ► And so when I was doing part one, I was like, I have to use this clip, because this clip

00:28:52 ◼   ► is going to be the one that shows up in part two.

00:28:54 ◼   ► It's an easter egg.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Yeah, it totally is an Easter egg and it is like, I don't recommend that people do vlogs

00:29:01 ◼   ► over like, I don't recommend the nonlinear life because you start going crazy.

00:29:05 ◼   ► But this is one fun thing that you can do in editing is have a connection like that

00:29:12 ◼   ► that otherwise would be impossible.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Because if I was just doing part one and I pick some clip of us on the podcast, I'm not

00:29:19 ◼   ► going to happen to have that same clip in part two.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Yes, it had to go the other way around.

00:29:24 ◼   ► I have to already know that I'm working on part two to be able to go back to part one

00:29:29 ◼   ► to put it in there.

00:29:30 ◼   ► So anyway, it's just a little touch, a little Easter egg for the really intense viewers.

00:29:36 ◼   ► This did look like a really amazing trip.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Like I feel like at the time, I didn't really understand why you were doing this, but seeing

00:29:44 ◼   ► it like this, I understand why you did it.

00:29:47 ◼   ► Because it looked like a beautiful and kind of incredible thing to witness like all of

00:29:54 ◼   ► these different landscapes and stuff.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Maybe don't vlog it next time.

00:29:57 ◼   ► Myke, do you know why I thought let me let me experiment with vlogs on my YouTube channel

00:30:06 ◼   ► with many things.

00:30:07 ◼   ► I have a couple reasons.

00:30:09 ◼   ► One of the reasons is I like to be able to do things on my channel that are that are

00:30:14 ◼   ► different even though it always makes people angry and you get like unsubscribe i didn't

00:30:19 ◼   ► sign up for this okay but i thought vlogs this will be fun and easy it's gotta be easier

00:30:30 ◼   ► than an animated video surely right surely in in fairness because of the thing that i

00:30:38 ◼   ► talked about earlier with the nature of filming i actually do think it's easier i i would

00:30:43 ◼   ► regard the vlogs as easier to make.

00:30:47 ◼   ► This happened to be like a tremendous mammoth,

00:30:49 ◼   ► like I ran into these things,

00:30:51 ◼   ► but a lot of this was like one-time errors

00:30:52 ◼   ► and like I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

00:30:54 ◼   ► But the actual process of editing and making a video,

00:30:59 ◼   ► like I can just do that in the afternoon

00:31:00 ◼   ► and sit down for a few hours in a more relaxed way,

00:31:04 ◼   ► in a way that I simply cannot do while writing a script.

00:31:07 ◼   ► So I will say that it's easier,

00:31:10 ◼   ► But it has not been quick and each one of these things ended up,

00:31:16 ◼   ► I ended up just making it much more involved than it needed to be.

00:31:20 ◼   ► I've ended up overshooting on all of these things.

00:31:24 ◼   ► And this is, that vlog that I did on Attention on my second channel,

00:31:31 ◼   ► that was shot as me walking in the woods specifically as a reaction to the nightmare of all of the other projects that I did.

00:31:39 ◼   ► I was like, okay, listen, listen, you wanna say a thing.

00:31:41 ◼   ► This is the perfect thing

00:31:43 ◼   ► that you would wanna say in a vlog.

00:31:45 ◼   ► And then I set myself the creative restraint,

00:31:47 ◼   ► like you can do nothing but walk in the woods

00:31:50 ◼   ► because if you start thinking about

00:31:52 ◼   ► all of the interesting things

00:31:53 ◼   ► that you could do with this project,

00:31:55 ◼   ► it will become another summer of gray.

00:31:57 ◼   ► Like don't, like you have to--

00:31:59 ◼   ► - You will have been off the internet for three years

00:32:01 ◼   ► before you even tell people.

00:32:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:05 ◼   ► - I know, I know.

00:32:06 ◼   ► And so another behind the scenes thing that,

00:32:11 ◼   ► I don't know what the reaction is going to be to this vlog.

00:32:15 ◼   ► I don't expect these things to be remotely as popular

00:32:17 ◼   ► as the main videos on the channel.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Like that's not their purpose.

00:32:20 ◼   ► - They don't have the real ability to go viral, right?

00:32:24 ◼   ► To be shared.

00:32:25 ◼   ► It is more like you have to already be interested

00:32:28 ◼   ► to be interested.

00:32:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think of like expanding circles

00:32:33 ◼   ► of audience attention.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And if you look at some of my videos

00:32:38 ◼   ► that have a lot of views on it,

00:32:41 ◼   ► I'm always aware, many of those views come from people

00:32:43 ◼   ► who don't even conceptualize that there is a channel

00:32:45 ◼   ► that produces these things.

00:32:47 ◼   ► They're just like watching random videos.

00:32:49 ◼   ► And so then you orbit in to like,

00:32:52 ◼   ► oh, there's people who know that the CGP great channel

00:32:56 ◼   ► is a thing and like videos from it.

00:32:58 ◼   ► And then like a subset of that are the people

00:33:00 ◼   ► who like want notifications.

00:33:02 ◼   ► And then you drill down into like,

00:33:04 ◼   ► oh, the people who are listening to this podcast right now

00:33:07 ◼   ► and also like you have these various levels of intensity.

00:33:11 ◼   ► And I actually kind of think that the people listening

00:33:14 ◼   ► to Cortex right now are at the interest level of,

00:33:19 ◼   ► you might like this vlog,

00:33:21 ◼   ► but it's not remotely meant

00:33:23 ◼   ► for the further orbits of this thing.

00:33:26 ◼   ► I just wanted to mention something

00:33:27 ◼   ► that I think is useful for,

00:33:30 ◼   ► just to be aware of for anybody who's working on a project

00:33:33 ◼   ► and trying to make something.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Like when I first uploaded my UK Explained video

00:33:39 ◼   ► to the YouTube channel, that thing, you know,

00:33:43 ◼   ► by the standards of the time is pretty well,

00:33:45 ◼   ► like a pretty well polished YouTube video.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And I always wanna emphasize that people don't see

00:33:53 ◼   ► the like practice that went into making something like that,

00:33:58 ◼   ► which was being a teacher and giving talks

00:34:01 ◼   ► in front of people multiple times every day

00:34:04 ◼   ► and getting a sense for how do you make something

00:34:06 ◼   ► that's interesting?

00:34:08 ◼   ► Like that doesn't just pop out of nowhere.

00:34:11 ◼   ► And so like, if you're trying to make something,

00:34:16 ◼   ► you should totally expect that your first few attempts

00:34:18 ◼   ► are not gonna be great.

00:34:20 ◼   ► They're not gonna be good at all.

00:34:22 ◼   ► And it can be dispiriting to look at something like that

00:34:25 ◼   ► that sort of pops out of existence and think,

00:34:27 ◼   ► oh, this thing just started good.

00:34:29 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, but there's a lot you're not seeing.

00:34:32 ◼   ► And if you watch the vlogs and you think,

00:34:34 ◼   ► oh, these are pretty good as far as vlog goes,

00:34:37 ◼   ► like I hope people like them.

00:34:38 ◼   ► But if you think that,

00:34:40 ◼   ► I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.

00:34:42 ◼   ► So because of the massive amount of time

00:34:48 ◼   ► that we're talking about here between,

00:34:51 ◼   ► for all of the vlogs, when they were shot

00:34:53 ◼   ► and when they went up, I think the Las Vegas one,

00:34:56 ◼   ► The very first one I did is also very close to a year between the filming of that and

00:35:00 ◼   ► the actual upload of it.

00:35:01 ◼   ► I have at this point now shot and edited something close to like a dozen vlogs and almost all

00:35:13 ◼   ► of them I've just decided like they're no good or they're boring and the whole thing

00:35:15 ◼   ► has been scrapped.

00:35:17 ◼   ► So this this is again like I've been practicing in a way that doesn't that doesn't necessarily

00:35:24 ◼   ► seem obvious to the viewer.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Because you can't so easily practice in public anymore.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I can't easily practice in public anymore.

00:35:33 ◼   ► And I have to make a judgment call about what is going to go up on the channel and what's

00:35:37 ◼   ► not going to go up on the channel.

00:35:40 ◼   ► And when I did that first vlog, I already mentioned that prior to that point, I'd

00:35:44 ◼   ► already shot and edited a bunch of stuff and I just thought it was garbage and it was boring.

00:35:49 ◼   ► And sometimes you can see little remnants of these.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Like in my shots of Final Cut Pro,

00:35:55 ◼   ► there's like these dead vlogs past

00:35:58 ◼   ► that are sometimes visible in some of those shots.

00:36:00 ◼   ► But I just think it's useful for someone

00:36:03 ◼   ► to be aware of that.

00:36:05 ◼   ► And one of the reasons why,

00:36:07 ◼   ► like why did I stick with this ridiculous project?

00:36:12 ◼   ► And also why did I name the first one Parts One and Three?

00:36:18 ◼   ► is because I thought I could make something

00:36:21 ◼   ► really interesting out of this.

00:36:24 ◼   ► And I really did wanna kind of put myself on the hook

00:36:26 ◼   ► for like, I know I'm really dispirited

00:36:29 ◼   ► with the shape that this project is in,

00:36:31 ◼   ► but I don't wanna forget this one.

00:36:34 ◼   ► Like I think this one is more interesting

00:36:36 ◼   ► than most of the stuff that I've shot in the past.

00:36:40 ◼   ► So like, I've been practicing a bunch with other stuff,

00:36:45 ◼   ► but I do, I swear to God though,

00:36:47 ◼   ► If I continue doing vlogs on the channel, I can't make them as interesting as this.

00:36:56 ◼   ► I swear, I want to upload something that's much more of a boring vlog.

00:37:01 ◼   ► And that attention video, I wanted to put it on the main channel specifically because it was kind of boring.

00:37:08 ◼   ► And it was only because it had been such a long time since I'd uploaded a real video.

00:37:14 ◼   ► I didn't put it there because I thought people would just freak out too much.

00:37:18 ◼   ► So I shunted it off to the second channel, but I've got to put something that's genuinely less of an enormous vlog project up on the channel at some point, just so I feel like I can.

00:37:31 ◼   ► But yeah, my long nightmare is very soon to be completed and done, and it'll be up.

00:37:40 ◼   ► and then I hope people like it. I'm pleased with what I got in the end and I'll be curious

00:37:47 ◼   ► to see how it goes with everyone. I'm looking forward to 2018's vlog.

00:37:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah? Can't wait. Any day now, right? No wait. Next year.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I do have a giant. I know you do.

00:38:06 ◼   ► - I know you do.

00:38:07 ◼   ► I watched you, I saw you doing it.

00:38:12 ◼   ► - God damn you Myke, you make me so angry.

00:38:17 ◼   ► You make me so angry.

00:38:19 ◼   ► 'Cause I've got that one

00:38:21 ◼   ► and I was so close to scrapping it and I thought,

00:38:23 ◼   ► oh, I think I might have an interesting creative constraint

00:38:25 ◼   ► to make this much more possible.

00:38:27 ◼   ► But yeah, now this is the horrible burden

00:38:32 ◼   ► of the nonlinear life.

00:38:34 ◼   ► like oh great I'm done with 2017 now now I can catch up to 2018 that summer.

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00:40:33 ◼   ► So Grey, in our last episode, it was an Ask Cortex episode, and Ask Cortex episodes, because they are so...

00:40:39 ◼   ► They are full of so many things, they tend to generate a lot of different discussions.

00:40:44 ◼   ► There are always with these types of episodes, at least one thing that I hear about a lot after the episode.

00:40:50 ◼   ► Can you guess at the things that we spoke about last episode, the thing that people spoke about most?

00:40:57 ◼   ► Could it have been our hate of lunch?

00:40:59 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:41:01 ◼   ► What do you think it was?

00:41:02 ◼   ► I mean, who could disagree that lunch is the worst? No one.

00:41:05 ◼   ► I was honestly thinking it would be this, was not this. We definitely had some people

00:41:10 ◼   ► say that lunch is great, but there are lots of people that don't like it. And there were

00:41:13 ◼   ► lots of people that were mostly ambivalent to our hate for food.

00:41:17 ◼   ► But here's the thing. After having done this for years now, I know there is there's no point

00:41:25 ◼   ► in even trying to guess what is the thing that people latch onto? Because it's just,

00:41:30 ◼   ► It's random. It's the random capricious interests of the internet.

00:41:35 ◼   ► So I have no idea. What did people latch onto from last time?

00:41:39 ◼   ► What day does the week begin on?

00:41:41 ◼   ► Monday is the correct answer, Myke. I don't understand how there could be any discussion.

00:41:44 ◼   ► But Gray, did you not know that the weekend is because they're at different ends of the week,

00:41:50 ◼   ► like a rope? It has two ends. Did you not know that? It's like a bookend, Gray. Did you not know

00:41:55 ◼   ► this? I have no time for this argument.

00:41:58 ◼   ► That's stupid.

00:42:00 ◼   ► - This is the argument that has been thrown at me a lot

00:42:02 ◼   ► over the last couple of weeks,

00:42:04 ◼   ► that the reason it's called the week ends

00:42:06 ◼   ► is because there's two ends to the week.

00:42:08 ◼   ► And it's like, okay,

00:42:10 ◼   ► we're not having an etymology discussion here.

00:42:12 ◼   ► We're not talking about where the word came from, right?

00:42:15 ◼   ► Nobody thinks of this.

00:42:17 ◼   ► When you say to somebody, how was your weekend?

00:42:19 ◼   ► Like, do you only care about Saturday?

00:42:20 ◼   ► Do you not care what happened on Sunday

00:42:22 ◼   ► 'cause Sunday was the beginning of the, like, no one.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Nobody thinks of the weekend as two separate days

00:42:27 ◼   ► either side of the week. Like that's not this is not how we do it. Like you're not like, Oh,

00:42:32 ◼   ► Saturday, that's the end of the week Sunday beginning of the new week. This is the beginning.

00:42:35 ◼   ► This is the first bookend. No one thinks this way. You can tell me a million times why the

00:42:41 ◼   ► weekend is like a bookend. Sure, fine. That makes some sense. But that's not how people live. Nobody

00:42:47 ◼   ► lives that way. This this is a kind of I'm sure there's a term for this. But it's a sort of

00:42:53 ◼   ► backwards reasoning from the way things are to why it makes sense that they are this way.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Right? Like, oh, they're like bookends. I think there are many things in the world that are like

00:43:04 ◼   ► this cough, the entire education system cough of like, oh, it is this way. And now we can reason

00:43:13 ◼   ► our way into why it should be this way and why this way is great. But if we could somehow live

00:43:19 ◼   ► in a parallel universe where the order of our society was still the same, but nobody had ever

00:43:25 ◼   ► thought of calendars. That people would think, "Well, there's five days where I work, and then

00:43:32 ◼   ► there's two days where I don't, and then it's five days where I work again, and two days when I don't,

00:43:37 ◼   ► and this is the pattern of life." That if they were like, "How could we represent this on paper?"

00:43:42 ◼   ► and you're just starting from fresh, you never thought of it before, I don't think anybody's

00:43:46 ◼   ► natural inclination would be to divide up the weekend and put it on either side of the page.

00:43:51 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, that makes perfect sense."

00:43:53 ◼   ► No one would do that, and everyone who would saw that for the first time,

00:43:58 ◼   ► without ever having conceived of a calendar, would immediately say,

00:44:02 ◼   ► "That's dumb. Why did you split up my time off?" Right?

00:44:05 ◼   ► Yep. Because cortexes are wonderful people, I have seen something that I've enjoyed a lot,

00:44:12 ◼   ► which is people decided, like they go into their calendar app when they hear about this,

00:44:16 ◼   ► there's lots of people I've seen that have decided to finally throw off the shackles of Sunday

00:44:21 ◼   ► and have moved to Monday as the one true day to begin the week on. I've been enjoying that,

00:44:25 ◼   ► lots of people are like "I never thought about this before, but now I can do it." But then you've

00:44:30 ◼   ► got the wonderful fringe cortexes who decide "I'm gonna set it as Wednesday because I can and I want

00:44:36 ◼   ► I want to see what happens and I can only applaud those people because why not, right?

00:44:42 ◼   ► Like there's an option. Let's just see what happens. So there are a lot of people out

00:44:46 ◼   ► there, Gray, now that are deciding to just start their week on a random day in their

00:44:50 ◼   ► calendar and just see what effect it has. And I have a lot of respect for that. I could

00:44:53 ◼   ► never do it, but I respect it.

00:44:55 ◼   ► I mean, look, we need pioneers to try different things. They'll settle on Monday as the correct

00:45:01 ◼   ► day, but still.

00:45:02 ◼   ► Because it's the only day.

00:45:03 ◼   ► try. I do have a lot of sympathy for the Americans who are going to still be living in a world

00:45:08 ◼   ► where all the calendars start on Sunday. That's why I could never make the transition fully

00:45:12 ◼   ► until I moved to the UK. I remember trying in college the Monday calendar and it just

00:45:18 ◼   ► it would too often cause problems where you have to look at somebody else's calendar.

00:45:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I get it right but like throw off their shackles. At the same time, if you have some

00:45:27 ◼   ► kind of abnormal work schedule where your weekend is Thursday and Friday, then go crazy.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Set your first day as Saturday, just go for it. But if you have a traditional work schedule

00:45:40 ◼   ► of five days of work and two days off, not one day off, five days of work, one day off

00:45:45 ◼   ► because nobody lives that way, then Monday is the only day.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Yeah, but the problem as always is communications with other humans. It makes me think there's

00:45:53 ◼   ► science fiction author I quite like, Greg Egan, and in one of his books there's just like,

00:46:00 ◼   ► passing reference to people have a piece of software that acts as a translator between

00:46:08 ◼   ► them and the outside world, and that you can set parameters exactly like this, where you say like,

00:46:13 ◼   ► "Look, for me the days start on Monday." And so when anyone is talking to you, even if they start

00:46:18 ◼   ► the week on Sunday, like, you perceive it in a Monday time reference. This sounds like the only

00:46:22 ◼   ► thing I really want in my life now.

00:46:24 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:46:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I think of that a bunch.

00:46:28 ◼   ► I don't really need the whole world to change its standards.

00:46:33 ◼   ► I just need to only perceive the standards

00:46:36 ◼   ► in gray standard way.

00:46:38 ◼   ► - God, God, can you imagine how beautiful that'd be?

00:46:40 ◼   ► All of the little things that annoy me would go away.

00:46:44 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:46:45 ◼   ► - Wouldn't that be wonderful?

00:46:46 ◼   ► - It comes up as two characters decide

00:46:47 ◼   ► they like a name for a thing better this other way,

00:46:49 ◼   ► and they're like, "We agree that in our filter,

00:46:51 ◼   ► we're going to set it this way.

00:46:52 ◼   ► And so forever onward we're always going to hear like, "This thing that the rest

00:46:55 ◼   ► of the world calls X, we're going to hear it as Y."

00:46:57 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh."

00:46:58 ◼   ► Oh, I love that.

00:46:59 ◼   ► I think about that a bunch.

00:47:00 ◼   ► So I feel like all my training has paid off when it comes to this show.

00:47:04 ◼   ► Oh yeah, Grasshopper?

00:47:05 ◼   ► Thank you, Sensei.

00:47:06 ◼   ► I've been able to apply the things that I have learned here in direct one-on-one

00:47:12 ◼   ► training with my wife about being productive and setting up systems.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So my wife Idina is currently on a semi-indefinite sabbatical from her job in advertising.

00:47:26 ◼   ► And she's going to be taking some time to work on personal projects and we're going

00:47:30 ◼   ► to be doing some stuff together and there's like a lot of things that she's working

00:47:33 ◼   ► on and she's got a lot of stuff that she wants to achieve so she's taking some time

00:47:38 ◼   ► to do that.

00:47:39 ◼   ► But both me and you know and anybody that's self-employed will definitely come to face

00:47:44 ◼   ► at some point is typically about two to three days into it, you realize, "Hang on a second,

00:47:53 ◼   ► I can do whatever I want." And that's a problem. Because what happens when you realize you

00:47:59 ◼   ► can do whatever you want is you don't know what to do. What to prioritize. You have no

00:48:07 ◼   ► structure around you because nobody is telling you what to do anymore. Now, many people approach

00:48:15 ◼   ► these types of things differently. For me, I built a schedule. That is what I needed,

00:48:21 ◼   ► right? It is way more useful for me to know that I will do this show on this day and this

00:48:26 ◼   ► show on this day and I have it built out. That is what keeps me motivated and moving

00:48:31 ◼   ► along. And it's not like this for everyone. It's not like this for you, right? That is

00:48:34 ◼   ► not a thing that works for you.

00:48:36 ◼   ► But you have a real schedule train like that. That train does a lot of work in keeping Myke

00:48:44 ◼   ► chugging along. Yeah, there are things that happen on a certain day at a certain time,

00:48:48 ◼   ► and they have to be released a certain day in a certain time. So that means tasks need to occur

00:48:51 ◼   ► before, right? Like, I can't prepare for upgrade on Tuesday, because upgrade records on Monday.

00:48:56 ◼   ► So I have to prepare for upgrade on Monday morning, right? So like, my week and again,

00:49:01 ◼   ► There are times when I hate it. I get in these periods of time where I'm like,

00:49:06 ◼   ► "I hate that I live my life this way," but that doesn't bother me because this is normal, right?

00:49:11 ◼   ► You eventually will rebel and maybe shake things up a bit and reshape it, but I know I need that.

00:49:17 ◼   ► For me to be able to do my work effectively and to ensure that I do all of the things that I need to

00:49:21 ◼   ► do, I need to have some kind of inbuilt schedule into my time. It keeps me going.

00:49:27 ◼   ► But that was what works for me.

00:49:29 ◼   ► For you, I think, if I can speak for you,

00:49:31 ◼   ► it's much more your to-do system guides you more.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Because you set your own deadlines when you need them,

00:49:39 ◼   ► and you set them out the way that you want to,

00:49:41 ◼   ► but putting big chunks of time into your diary

00:49:44 ◼   ► on a consistent basis can restrict your creativity

00:49:47 ◼   ► a little bit, so you're a bit more free-flowing with that.

00:49:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think this is genuinely a big

00:49:52 ◼   ► and interesting difference between the two of us.

00:49:54 ◼   ► And I do just want to say,

00:49:58 ◼   ► just to put a little side note here,

00:50:01 ◼   ► because I often talk to people

00:50:02 ◼   ► and they're interested in the idea of being self-employed.

00:50:06 ◼   ► And I really think it is important to realize

00:50:11 ◼   ► this is not for everyone.

00:50:13 ◼   ► And this is an aspect of the job

00:50:15 ◼   ► that is really hard to understand until you're in it.

00:50:20 ◼   ► the you need to create your own constraints.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And I know people who have become self-employed

00:50:30 ◼   ► and left because they realize it's a total nightmare

00:50:34 ◼   ► that doesn't work for their personality.

00:50:35 ◼   ► And they're just, they're hugely depressed.

00:50:38 ◼   ► And it's such a strange thing to talk about

00:50:41 ◼   ► and it can be really hard to talk about

00:50:43 ◼   ► because for me, it is the best part of being self-employed.

00:50:48 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:50:49 ◼   ► particularly the kind of self-employed that I do,

00:50:52 ◼   ► which is I wanna be self-employed

00:50:54 ◼   ► and I also want to try to have as few deadlines as possible.

00:50:58 ◼   ► But it is also simultaneously

00:51:00 ◼   ► one of the hardest parts of the job

00:51:03 ◼   ► and the part of the job that even talking about it now

00:51:06 ◼   ► I'm hesitant to talk about

00:51:07 ◼   ► because people have no sympathy in hearing about it.

00:51:11 ◼   ► They're like, "Oh, your lack of constraints is difficult.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Oh, boo-hoo, like Cry Me a River,

00:51:15 ◼   ► play your violin a little bit more."

00:51:17 ◼   ► But it really is the truth.

00:51:20 ◼   ► It's a hard thing to be able to manage in a way that works.

00:51:25 ◼   ► And it's one of the reasons why you and I

00:51:28 ◼   ► like to talk about work a lot,

00:51:31 ◼   ► because it's helpful to reinforce some of the ideas

00:51:36 ◼   ► that are important.

00:51:38 ◼   ► And one of those ideas for me

00:51:40 ◼   ► that I've definitely learned over the years

00:51:42 ◼   ► is that deadlines are anti-productive.

00:51:45 ◼   ► that I know that if I, when I have real deadlines,

00:51:50 ◼   ► like real external constraint deadlines,

00:51:53 ◼   ► that is often when I will procrastinate.

00:51:56 ◼   ► As like, I'm not a procrastinator kind of person,

00:51:59 ◼   ► but deadlines make me procrastinate,

00:52:01 ◼   ► which is the opposite of what it is for most people.

00:52:03 ◼   ► And so that's why I try to arrange my work in this way.

00:52:07 ◼   ► - So when people think about being self-employed,

00:52:10 ◼   ► one of the things that people talk about,

00:52:13 ◼   ► which is one of the perceived joys

00:52:15 ◼   ► and is one of the joys if you can do this,

00:52:18 ◼   ► you're happy with this, is I get to be my own boss, right?

00:52:21 ◼   ► - Yeah. - But here's the thing,

00:52:23 ◼   ► you have to be your own boss.

00:52:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, think about that sentence really deep for a minute.

00:52:29 ◼   ► - Yes, think about it from the other side.

00:52:32 ◼   ► - Right. - Not the idea of freedom,

00:52:34 ◼   ► think about it as you are the person

00:52:37 ◼   ► who must ensure the work is done.

00:52:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have to whip my own back.

00:52:42 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:52:44 ◼   ► - That's an interesting way to put it,

00:52:45 ◼   ► but yes, that is exactly it.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Somebody has to make sure it's done,

00:52:49 ◼   ► and that becomes you.

00:52:50 ◼   ► So, going back to why we were talking about this,

00:52:53 ◼   ► like, Edina has always been a person

00:52:55 ◼   ► who writes huge to-do lists, just massive to-do lists,

00:52:58 ◼   ► and this was fine before,

00:52:59 ◼   ► because she would just have this list of things

00:53:01 ◼   ► that she wanted to do,

00:53:02 ◼   ► and she would knock them off when she needed to,

00:53:04 ◼   ► but then, like, one of the reasons

00:53:06 ◼   ► that she decided to go down this path

00:53:08 ◼   ► is because those lists were just getting longer and longer,

00:53:11 ◼   ► and it felt like she wasn't able

00:53:12 ◼   ► to actually accomplish the things she wanted to accomplish in her life.

00:53:15 ◼   ► So now she is the master of her own destiny.

00:53:19 ◼   ► The list started getting bigger because now there's all these things

00:53:24 ◼   ► and it was starting to get out of hand.

00:53:26 ◼   ► So there were just these massive lists on pieces of paper that were turning

00:53:32 ◼   ► into post-it notes and index cards.

00:53:35 ◼   ► They were just kept growing.

00:53:36 ◼   ► The paper continued to grow.

00:53:39 ◼   ► So it was, I, we sat down and I said,

00:53:42 ◼   ► "It is time for a system."

00:53:44 ◼   ► So she was doing a good job of taking a bunch of index cards

00:53:51 ◼   ► and writing her tasks on the index cards

00:53:54 ◼   ► and like drawing them together.

00:53:56 ◼   ► It was like, well, these are all one thing

00:53:57 ◼   ► and these are another thing.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And as I was saying to her, I was like, that's really great.

00:54:02 ◼   ► But those index cards,

00:54:04 ◼   ► that's not gonna help you, in my opinion.

00:54:07 ◼   ► Index cards are a great way to like get everything down

00:54:09 ◼   ► if that's what you wanna do.

00:54:11 ◼   ► But that is in my opinion, not an ongoing system

00:54:14 ◼   ► because you can't carry those index cards around with you.

00:54:18 ◼   ► It's once you've written, if you filled an index card

00:54:20 ◼   ► with a bunch of tasks, how do you add more to it?

00:54:24 ◼   ► So it needed to go into an app

00:54:27 ◼   ► because that's where I believe this,

00:54:29 ◼   ► I am a pen and paper guy,

00:54:30 ◼   ► but I believe that these types of things

00:54:32 ◼   ► should be going into a digital system

00:54:34 ◼   ► because of its flexibility and its portability.

00:54:37 ◼   ► It can be with you all the time

00:54:38 ◼   ► and you can do a million different things with it

00:54:40 ◼   ► and things can exist in different places.

00:54:42 ◼   ► You can move them around, you can tag them,

00:54:43 ◼   ► you can put them into projects.

00:54:44 ◼   ► It's much more malleable.

00:54:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, and index cards are great

00:54:48 ◼   ► for a kind of brainstorming.

00:54:50 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:54:51 ◼   ► - I've done that a bunch where it's like,

00:54:53 ◼   ► I'm feeling anxious, what am I working on?

00:54:56 ◼   ► Let me write down stuff.

00:54:57 ◼   ► You can move it around on the table.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Oh, all these things kind of go together.

00:55:01 ◼   ► I completely agree.

00:55:02 ◼   ► that is great for thinking and anxiety reduction.

00:55:07 ◼   ► But I'm with you 100% that ultimately you have to have

00:55:12 ◼   ► some kind of system that it all goes into

00:55:13 ◼   ► where it becomes actionable items.

00:55:17 ◼   ► - Yes, so we were looking at the slate of to-do apps

00:55:20 ◼   ► that were available and we chose Things for Adina.

00:55:24 ◼   ► - Good choice.

00:55:25 ◼   ► - It is the app that I would like to be able to use.

00:55:28 ◼   ► There are a bunch of things about that app that work great,

00:55:31 ◼   ► but there is some stuff that doesn't work so great for me.

00:55:33 ◼   ► So like some of the support that it has for repeating tasks

00:55:36 ◼   ► has been weird and continues to be weird.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Like for example, if you have a repeating task

00:55:41 ◼   ► and it repeats every Wednesday,

00:55:43 ◼   ► you can't complete the task until Wednesday,

00:55:45 ◼   ► that does not work for me because that's not how I work.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Sometimes I like to do things

00:55:50 ◼   ► sooner than they should be done.

00:55:51 ◼   ► My understanding is they are trying to fix this.

00:55:53 ◼   ► This feels like, like with most to-do apps,

00:55:56 ◼   ► if they've been around for long enough,

00:55:57 ◼   ► you can tell that there are some just real,

00:56:01 ◼   ► They made some decisions, right?

00:56:04 ◼   ► Like we have this a lot with OmniFocus, right?

00:56:06 ◼   ► The company made decisions 10 years ago,

00:56:09 ◼   ► but now they're gonna start to be a problem, right?

00:56:13 ◼   ► And like, this is like the time zone thing.

00:56:14 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm in Fextia, do you want me to?

00:56:16 ◼   ► - I wasn't gonna bring it up, Myke.

00:56:19 ◼   ► I wasn't gonna bring it up.

00:56:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, but the stuff like that.

00:56:23 ◼   ► - I wasn't gonna bring it up,

00:56:24 ◼   ► especially because the summer is coming up.

00:56:26 ◼   ► - Oh God, oh, I feel for you.

00:56:28 ◼   ► I'll be fine when I land and Todoist tells me,

00:56:31 ◼   ► "Would you want to change time zone?"

00:56:32 ◼   ► And I say, "Yes, Todoist," and it's done.

00:56:33 ◼   ► So I'm like, you know, I'll enjoy that.

00:56:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, you enjoy your little smug moment in the sunshine.

00:56:37 ◼   ► - Oh, I will.

00:56:38 ◼   ► I think about you every time.

00:56:40 ◼   ► Every time I land, I think about you as I press the button

00:56:43 ◼   ► when Todoist helpfully asks me

00:56:44 ◼   ► if I want to change to the local time zone.

00:56:47 ◼   ► - (beep) you, Myke.

00:56:48 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, I know.

00:56:48 ◼   ► Things is brilliant.

00:56:50 ◼   ► One of the reasons I like it, and I use it,

00:56:52 ◼   ► 'cause I use things for my Cortex to-do list,

00:56:55 ◼   ► like I have a little shortcut that I run,

00:56:57 ◼   ► is because within a project, you can put in these headings.

00:57:00 ◼   ► And there is a way to do this in Todoist,

00:57:03 ◼   ► but it does not work with the way that my brain works

00:57:05 ◼   ► because it just looks like a task.

00:57:08 ◼   ► But in Things, it is laid out, they look like headings

00:57:11 ◼   ► and it's much more visual in a way that I enjoy.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Otherwise I don't need it.

00:57:17 ◼   ► I would like it, but I don't need it,

00:57:18 ◼   ► which is why I don't feel the requirement

00:57:20 ◼   ► to do it the way that Todoist does it.

00:57:22 ◼   ► But I like the way that it works in Things.

00:57:24 ◼   ► Plus just from a visual perspective,

00:57:26 ◼   ► Things is my favorite of all of the to-do apps.

00:57:28 ◼   ► It is beautiful, it is designed very well,

00:57:32 ◼   ► and a lot of the interactions are really nice with it.

00:57:34 ◼   ► So.

00:57:35 ◼   ► - I'll back you up 100% on that.

00:57:37 ◼   ► Things is the best looking to do app by far.

00:57:40 ◼   ► - I think honestly it's the only good looking one.

00:57:43 ◼   ► It's not that it's the best one,

00:57:44 ◼   ► I think it's the only good looking one.

00:57:46 ◼   ► And it's because this stuff is really difficult to do.

00:57:48 ◼   ► I mean like they're perfectly fine,

00:57:50 ◼   ► but the design of them does not excite me in any way.

00:57:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, Things has a nice feel to it.

00:57:55 ◼   ► And I busted out every once in a while.

00:57:58 ◼   ► I actually have been using it the past couple of weeks

00:58:01 ◼   ► 'cause I've been particularly busy.

00:58:03 ◼   ► And I was like, sometimes it's nice to have,

00:58:06 ◼   ► like here's a separate list of like the absolute

00:58:08 ◼   ► has to happen stuff that I just want separate.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Like, so it's easier to think about,

00:58:13 ◼   ► like here's five things and that's it.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Like, I don't wanna open up the major stuff.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Like I can let everything just fall by the wayside.

00:58:21 ◼   ► I do that, Myke's laughing 'cause he knows what's going on.

00:58:23 ◼   ► - No, it's like, we're like terrible people though

00:58:26 ◼   ► in that way of like, I have to have,

00:58:29 ◼   ► something's going on right now.

00:58:31 ◼   ► I can't even use my regular to-do app.

00:58:34 ◼   ► I need a whole new to-do app.

00:58:36 ◼   ► It's the only way I can function right now

00:58:38 ◼   ► is I need a whole separate list for my usual list.

00:58:42 ◼   ► But I do it too.

00:58:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know this sounds ridiculous to people,

00:58:46 ◼   ► but you do run into these situations where it's like,

00:58:49 ◼   ► look, there's mission critical stuff that has to happen.

00:58:53 ◼   ► and literally everything else in my life

00:58:56 ◼   ► can fall by the wayside

00:58:57 ◼   ► and I will just reap the consequences later.

00:58:59 ◼   ► - This is one of the great uses of pen and paper

00:59:01 ◼   ► when it comes to to-do lists, by the way.

00:59:03 ◼   ► If you look at your reminders list, your things list,

00:59:07 ◼   ► your OmniFocus list, and you're like, there's too much here.

00:59:10 ◼   ► If you sit down and like you write down

00:59:13 ◼   ► what are actually the most important things from that list,

00:59:15 ◼   ► it can really help you understand

00:59:17 ◼   ► what you actually need to do.

00:59:19 ◼   ► And so really all we're doing is for the same reason

00:59:22 ◼   ► that I put all of my stuff into a digital system.

00:59:24 ◼   ► I'm using a separate digital system for things

00:59:26 ◼   ► that are like, I don't want this to clutter everything else.

00:59:30 ◼   ► - That's why I do really like things.

00:59:32 ◼   ► And it's the reason why I use it every once in a while

00:59:34 ◼   ► in that situation, because it's beautiful looking,

00:59:36 ◼   ► which is de-stressing.

00:59:39 ◼   ► OmniFocus, it is the most powerful,

00:59:41 ◼   ► but I always think it suffers from what I'm coining

00:59:45 ◼   ► as redundant RIS syndrome,

00:59:48 ◼   ► which stands for redundant information syndrome,

00:59:51 ◼   ► where it's like you look at a list

00:59:52 ◼   ► and it'll tell you in two places on the same screen

00:59:55 ◼   ► what project it is, or it'll show you all the tags,

00:59:57 ◼   ► like I don't really need to see all this stuff.

00:59:59 ◼   ► And sometimes it can feel a little overwhelming.

01:00:02 ◼   ► So things is really nice.

01:00:04 ◼   ► And I would say for anybody out there

01:00:07 ◼   ► who still is looking for a to-do system,

01:00:11 ◼   ► probably things would be my default recommendation

01:00:15 ◼   ► if I don't know anything about you.

01:00:16 ◼   ► If you just need to pick something, go with things.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It looks nice, it's easy to use,

01:00:23 ◼   ► it's obvious what everything is for,

01:00:25 ◼   ► and you will know soon enough

01:00:27 ◼   ► if you need something more powerful like OmniFocus.

01:00:30 ◼   ► You'll discover that on your own,

01:00:32 ◼   ► that there are limitations there.

01:00:33 ◼   ► But I'm also with you.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I thought it was dumb at first,

01:00:37 ◼   ► things' ability to have headers,

01:00:40 ◼   ► but I think that is a unique defining feature of that app,

01:00:45 ◼   ► which I find myself missing everywhere else.

01:00:48 ◼   ► The way things lets you separate tasks

01:00:51 ◼   ► in this non-actionable way to just group them,

01:00:55 ◼   ► it's a killer feature of that app.

01:00:57 ◼   ► - It has this wonderful interaction

01:00:59 ◼   ► that I saw Adina do, and I'm like, "What did you just do?"

01:01:02 ◼   ► So the app has a little plus button and a circle, right?

01:01:06 ◼   ► And you tap that plus button to add a new task, right?

01:01:09 ◼   ► I think all to-do apps have something that's like this,

01:01:11 ◼   ► right, you're in any view, you can tap it,

01:01:13 ◼   ► or you can tap and hold it and create a project or whatever.

01:01:17 ◼   ► But if you're looking at a list of tasks,

01:01:19 ◼   ► you can tap and drag that button anywhere you want

01:01:23 ◼   ► and it will create a task wherever you let go.

01:01:26 ◼   ► - I mean, so you can like drag it onto a project

01:01:28 ◼   ► and then it creates a new task in that project?

01:01:30 ◼   ► - Or where in a list?

01:01:32 ◼   ► So if you have like a list of 10 things

01:01:34 ◼   ► and you wanna put something in the middle

01:01:35 ◼   ► because that's just where you want it,

01:01:36 ◼   ► you just drag it there and it just pops

01:01:39 ◼   ► the new task thing open and that's where it saves it.

01:01:42 ◼   ► It's like, oh, I like that.

01:01:43 ◼   ► It just looked good.

01:01:45 ◼   ► - Let's see, that's interesting.

01:01:45 ◼   ► is a great new user just getting used to something feature,

01:01:49 ◼   ► like just drag it where you want it.

01:01:51 ◼   ► As opposed to, you know, like if you find you need

01:01:53 ◼   ► something more complicated, I have a whole bunch

01:01:55 ◼   ► of shortcuts that are my like, where do things need to go?

01:01:58 ◼   ► So I run the shortcuts app, which then like takes my input

01:02:01 ◼   ► and then properly formats it and sticks it exactly

01:02:03 ◼   ► where it needs to go in OmniFocus.

01:02:04 ◼   ► It was like, but that is an impossible sell

01:02:07 ◼   ► to anyone who's starting something.

01:02:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:02:10 ◼   ► - One of the most valuable parts of the whole thing

01:02:12 ◼   ► was like the moment before the data entry, right?

01:02:17 ◼   ► Because she has to get all the index cards out

01:02:20 ◼   ► and then the data entry needs to begin.

01:02:22 ◼   ► And before, you know, I was kind of like trying to help her

01:02:26 ◼   ► through this process, right?

01:02:27 ◼   ► 'Cause I've been through it and there is probably nothing

01:02:30 ◼   ► I think about more than these things, right?

01:02:33 ◼   ► Hence why we are here every few weeks.

01:02:36 ◼   ► It was at this point where she needed to look at everything,

01:02:39 ◼   ► work out what was actually worth keeping

01:02:42 ◼   ► and then the categorizations.

01:02:44 ◼   ► So it was like really good because I got to see everything

01:02:47 ◼   ► and we got to like debate it all.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Like she had two separate columns.

01:02:51 ◼   ► One was like important admin and not important admin.

01:02:55 ◼   ► I was like, well, no, that's admin, right?

01:02:58 ◼   ► Like the importance is created through due dates, right?

01:03:03 ◼   ► So like we got to talk through that kind of stuff.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Like if something's important, put a date on it.

01:03:06 ◼   ► If it's not important, just leave it in the admin project

01:03:09 ◼   ► and you can just get to it when you want it.

01:03:11 ◼   ► And we got to look at like, you know,

01:03:13 ◼   ► let's build a system of projects and tasks and tags

01:03:15 ◼   ► and how is that gonna work for you?

01:03:18 ◼   ► And like, you know, things is good for that kind of stuff.

01:03:20 ◼   ► So she has a bunch of projects now

01:03:21 ◼   ► and she's starting to tag some of them

01:03:23 ◼   ► because in looking at some of this stuff before,

01:03:26 ◼   ► I didn't like the contexts idea, you know,

01:03:30 ◼   ► of like, well, if I wanna deal with phone stuff right now,

01:03:33 ◼   ► then I wanna do that.

01:03:34 ◼   ► So it was like, well, things don't have contacts as such,

01:03:37 ◼   ► but you could put tags to things

01:03:39 ◼   ► and you can search the tags and that kind of stuff.

01:03:40 ◼   ► So like finding a way to have all of the tasks and categorize them, but also have some like

01:03:44 ◼   ► cross categorization of stuff.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And it seems to have helped her a lot so far.

01:03:51 ◼   ► She has everything where she needs it to be and has been able to, well, I've really liked

01:03:57 ◼   ► to see is like, I think we're into like the fourth week now.

01:04:01 ◼   ► This is the week where she was clearly able to start tackling a lot of the creative projects

01:04:06 ◼   ► that she wanted to work on, where previously she was just getting lost in the admin.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And the other thing though, the thing I'm more proud of than anything else, she's time

01:04:18 ◼   ► tracking.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Oh wow, wow she's like an advanced student doing that so early.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Usually that's the kind of thing you have to pitch to someone when their self-employment

01:04:29 ◼   ► is falling apart.

01:04:30 ◼   ► You're like listen, let me tell you something, you have no idea how you're spending your

01:04:34 ◼   ► time.

01:04:35 ◼   ► You think you do.

01:04:36 ◼   ► wait until someone's at the nadir to be able to convince them to do that. So she's that's great.

01:04:39 ◼   ► The problem that she has here is that she lives with me. So I kept talking about it to her. And

01:04:44 ◼   ► I said to her, because I genuinely believe, I said everything we have done here with things is useless

01:04:50 ◼   ► unless you know how you're spending your time. It is useless. Because once it started, she was having

01:04:55 ◼   ► some problems of like, all right, she went Monday to be her admin day. It wasn't working. Things

01:05:00 ◼   ► were coming up. I was like, well, there you go, right? Like, you didn't do any admin on Monday.

01:05:05 ◼   ► but you did something, what was it?

01:05:08 ◼   ► - What did you do, what was it?

01:05:10 ◼   ► - And she didn't know, so it's like,

01:05:11 ◼   ► well, let's start time tracking, shall we?

01:05:14 ◼   ► So she's been doing that now,

01:05:15 ◼   ► and I recommend that people do this,

01:05:18 ◼   ► if you have projects in your to-do system,

01:05:21 ◼   ► make them projects or tags in your time tracking system.

01:05:25 ◼   ► So if I have sponsor stuff and show stuff

01:05:30 ◼   ► and I can link them together,

01:05:31 ◼   ► so it makes sense to me as an overarching system.

01:05:35 ◼   ► And so it's like, you know, and again, it's like,

01:05:38 ◼   ► I really believe it's important to do this at the beginning

01:05:40 ◼   ► because even though it's a big thing to do,

01:05:44 ◼   ► if you do it at the beginning,

01:05:45 ◼   ► you have a real understanding

01:05:46 ◼   ► of how you're spending your time

01:05:48 ◼   ► and what is taking you the time that it actually takes.

01:05:52 ◼   ► You know, like if you think to yourself,

01:05:54 ◼   ► oh, admin takes me all day,

01:05:55 ◼   ► but it actually takes you like two hours on a Wednesday,

01:05:58 ◼   ► then fine.

01:05:59 ◼   ► And it's like I was saying to her, I was like, well,

01:06:01 ◼   ► if you wanna do it on Monday,

01:06:02 ◼   ► but it's not happening on Monday,

01:06:03 ◼   ► Maybe it is a better day to do admin tasks.

01:06:06 ◼   ► Maybe Monday is a day where you want to do different types of things.

01:06:09 ◼   ► So just live your life and track it.

01:06:12 ◼   ► And then we can make decisions based on that.

01:06:15 ◼   ► And so I feel very happy that I've been able to put my accumulated

01:06:20 ◼   ► knowledge into all of this. And it's, I mean,

01:06:22 ◼   ► I'm pleased because it's nice to see that the stuff that we talk about is

01:06:27 ◼   ► actually making a difference to someone like who I can see it

01:06:32 ◼   ► making a difference too, right?

01:06:34 ◼   ► Like that is like a really valuable thing for me

01:06:36 ◼   ► because this is stuff that I wholeheartedly believe in,

01:06:39 ◼   ► but I'm actually seeing it work in front of me,

01:06:42 ◼   ► which is kind of wonderful.

01:06:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the really important meta work

01:06:48 ◼   ► that helps the main work happen.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And you have to get it right.

01:06:54 ◼   ► And it's really helpful to have someone else

01:06:59 ◼   ► walk you through it or kind of guide you through it

01:07:01 ◼   ► at the beginning stages like that.

01:07:03 ◼   ► So it does sound like you really put her

01:07:05 ◼   ► on a great starting track because--

01:07:08 ◼   ► - She did the Cortex instructional course,

01:07:11 ◼   ► the intense course that I've created.

01:07:14 ◼   ► You only have to marry me to get it, that's the price.

01:07:17 ◼   ► - Whoa.

01:07:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:20 ◼   ► - It's very limited in its scope, this project.

01:07:23 ◼   ► - I was gonna say that that sounds like potential

01:07:25 ◼   ► for Cortex brand, but if you have to marry Myke,

01:07:28 ◼   ► that's a little too much.

01:07:30 ◼   ► Let's walk that one back for a bit.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Let's put a pin in that one for now.

01:07:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:34 ◼   ► - But you know, that's really good,

01:07:36 ◼   ► and I'm glad to hear that it's going well.

01:07:39 ◼   ► And I really do mean it because very often,

01:07:41 ◼   ► I think a lot of people come to this stuff

01:07:45 ◼   ► just when they're at a bad time in their life.

01:07:48 ◼   ► I always think, for me as well,

01:07:50 ◼   ► it was when I was doing the teacher training

01:07:52 ◼   ► and recognized immediately.

01:07:53 ◼   ► I was overwhelmed and disorganized,

01:07:56 ◼   ► and I was going to fail in a way

01:07:58 ◼   ► that I just never had before if I didn't start figuring out

01:08:01 ◼   ► how to get my life together.

01:08:04 ◼   ► So it's much better to have this kind of stuff

01:08:07 ◼   ► right at the start than to have to wait

01:08:09 ◼   ► for your dark period and then go searching for,

01:08:12 ◼   ► how do you know, time tracking.

01:08:14 ◼   ► What is this thing that I've heard rumors of?

01:08:16 ◼   ► - I guess she's just lucky that her husband

01:08:19 ◼   ► cannot stop thinking about these things.

01:08:21 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:08:23 ◼   ► - This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Hover.

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01:08:47 ◼   ► and hover is the company I have been using for I don't even know how long now at this

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01:09:29 ◼   ► That's hover.com/cortex.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Thanks so much to Hover for supporting the show and all of Relay FM.

01:09:34 ◼   ► But let me tell you though, I've learned some stuff about myself over the last month

01:09:38 ◼   ► that I didn't know before.

01:09:41 ◼   ► So now that Adina is at home, I am very self-conscious of working on the sofa.

01:09:49 ◼   ► Oh god, of course.

01:09:51 ◼   ► Yes, this is a big physical change.

01:09:55 ◼   ► - Because it's for a few things.

01:09:57 ◼   ► One, I feel like it looks like I am just being lazy

01:10:00 ◼   ► if I am laying on the sofa,

01:10:02 ◼   ► no matter what it is that I'm doing.

01:10:04 ◼   ► And as well, because of the nature of my work,

01:10:07 ◼   ► a lot of the stuff that I am doing from the outside

01:10:10 ◼   ► can look like I am merely just watching YouTube videos

01:10:14 ◼   ► and reading websites.

01:10:15 ◼   ► But a lot of the time, not all of the time,

01:10:17 ◼   ► there is obviously an amount of slacking off,

01:10:20 ◼   ► But a lot of the time I'm researching things, right?

01:10:24 ◼   ► But when it's stuff that you are so interested in

01:10:27 ◼   ► because you enjoy them,

01:10:29 ◼   ► it also just looks like you're being lazy.

01:10:31 ◼   ► - I have an amazing example for this in my own life

01:10:35 ◼   ► where I have a great deal of sympathy for my wife,

01:10:39 ◼   ► which is when I am doing edits of podcasts,

01:10:43 ◼   ► I'm almost always playing a video game at the same time.

01:10:46 ◼   ► So I'm listening to the podcast and I'm playing a game

01:10:49 ◼   ► And part of that is this trick that I've learned from myself

01:10:54 ◼   ► that if I just watch the podcast,

01:10:57 ◼   ► I will actually over edit it.

01:10:59 ◼   ► I'll spend way more time than is really necessary

01:11:02 ◼   ► making little changes or doing,

01:11:04 ◼   ► like it doesn't, I'll make a thousand changes

01:11:06 ◼   ► that don't matter.

01:11:07 ◼   ► And so playing the game helps give that little,

01:11:10 ◼   ► just the tiny bit of friction of,

01:11:13 ◼   ► do I wanna Alt + Tab out of this to change that?

01:11:15 ◼   ► Or is it okay to just let it slide?

01:11:18 ◼   ► But from the outside perspective, how does one tell

01:11:22 ◼   ► if a partner is just playing video games

01:11:25 ◼   ► or playing video games and also listening intently

01:11:29 ◼   ► to a podcast?

01:11:31 ◼   ► It's very hard to tell.

01:11:32 ◼   ► - It's very hard to tell.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Well, it's like the other thing is,

01:11:34 ◼   ► how do you tell if the podcast that they're listening to

01:11:37 ◼   ► is just something that they're listening to enjoy

01:11:40 ◼   ► or are they actually listening

01:11:41 ◼   ► because it's something they need to listen to

01:11:43 ◼   ► for their work?

01:11:44 ◼   ► - Yes, that would be an even harder situation

01:11:46 ◼   ► if you had someone who had to do that.

01:11:47 ◼   ► It's--

01:11:48 ◼   ► - Oh, by the way, my recent thing is,

01:11:50 ◼   ► you remember I used to do coloring?

01:11:52 ◼   ► I used to color a lot, and it's like,

01:11:53 ◼   ► I always continue to while we record.

01:11:56 ◼   ► - I was gonna say, have you stopped coloring?

01:11:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I haven't been doing the coloring for a while.

01:12:00 ◼   ► - I always like to think of you coloring as we're chatting,

01:12:02 ◼   ► but it's not.

01:12:03 ◼   ► - Well, no, but this is, like I said,

01:12:04 ◼   ► one thing that I do a lot, and I continue to do it

01:12:07 ◼   ► while we record is I doodle.

01:12:08 ◼   ► So I have a bunch of pens in front of me,

01:12:10 ◼   ► and I just sit and doodle while we record.

01:12:12 ◼   ► But one thing that I've been getting into now,

01:12:14 ◼   ► especially when editing, if I'm editing a project like Cortex

01:12:18 ◼   ► where it's very involved and lots of hours,

01:12:21 ◼   ► I've been doodling in Procreate on my iPad.

01:12:26 ◼   ► - Oh, interesting.

01:12:26 ◼   ► - Procreate is incredible.

01:12:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a hell of a program.

01:12:30 ◼   ► - It is not as complicated to learn

01:12:32 ◼   ► as I thought it would be.

01:12:34 ◼   ► 'Cause I've played with a lot

01:12:36 ◼   ► of these types of applications.

01:12:38 ◼   ► Like for example, I cannot for the life of me,

01:12:41 ◼   ► fathom how to use applications like Illustrator?

01:12:46 ◼   ► - I've made several runs at Illustrator and always give up.

01:12:52 ◼   ► - Any vector graphic stuff, I cannot,

01:12:55 ◼   ► my brain cannot fathom how to get to make shapes

01:12:58 ◼   ► in vector formats, right?

01:12:59 ◼   ► With the little anchors and the things and the points.

01:13:03 ◼   ► - Bezier curves, no, there's nothing wrong with Bezier.

01:13:05 ◼   ► - Can't do it, like I can't, I just can't understand it.

01:13:08 ◼   ► It doesn't matter how much I try.

01:13:10 ◼   ► infinite resolution, it's so nice.

01:13:12 ◼   ► - I hate it.

01:13:12 ◼   ► But Procreate has been wonderful

01:13:15 ◼   ► and I've just been working on little doodles and drawings

01:13:18 ◼   ► and just like, it's nothing, but it's something for me.

01:13:21 ◼   ► And I really love doing it.

01:13:23 ◼   ► But I'm not sitting and drawing mugs or vases and stuff.

01:13:28 ◼   ► It's not drawings.

01:13:31 ◼   ► Like I don't really know how to describe them.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Just think of it more like various complicated doodles.

01:13:37 ◼   ► But that's just been a thing that I've been doing recently.

01:13:39 ◼   ► but I also do that sometimes just to relax,

01:13:42 ◼   ► so how does it look any different?

01:13:44 ◼   ► So anyway. - Right, of course.

01:13:45 ◼   ► - I have fallen back in love with Mega Office.

01:13:48 ◼   ► - Oh yeah?

01:13:48 ◼   ► No more couch mic?

01:13:49 ◼   ► I think this is better.

01:13:51 ◼   ► - This is much better.

01:13:52 ◼   ► So basically, over time,

01:13:55 ◼   ► I had only really started to spend time in my office

01:13:58 ◼   ► when I was recording or editing,

01:14:00 ◼   ► and all of my other work was happening

01:14:02 ◼   ► in other places at the house,

01:14:03 ◼   ► like at the dining table or on my sofa

01:14:05 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff,

01:14:06 ◼   ► 'cause I wanted a change in scenery.

01:14:08 ◼   ► But I have also become incredibly more productive this month.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Because I am sitting in the office.

01:14:17 ◼   ► So I'm doing more work.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Which is so dumb.

01:14:21 ◼   ► It makes me feel like a caveman.

01:14:25 ◼   ► But I like it.

01:14:28 ◼   ► I feel more productive and I have noticed something about myself which I didn't know

01:14:33 ◼   ► before or at least I couldn't pinpoint it.

01:14:35 ◼   ► If I have a day where I do not really have anything to do, I become very lethargic and

01:14:44 ◼   ► sad, to be honest, because I'm just doing nothing.

01:14:50 ◼   ► So I didn't notice about myself.

01:14:51 ◼   ► I knew I had those feelings sometimes, but couldn't pinpoint where they were coming

01:14:57 ◼   ► from and I think I've worked it out.

01:14:59 ◼   ► And it is like, if I'm not busy, if I don't have stuff to do, it's not good for me.

01:15:06 ◼   ► I need to be busy in some regards.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And now it's a case of like, I don't want to fill up my time more, but I need to work

01:15:15 ◼   ► out what I do on non-busy days.

01:15:20 ◼   ► So that might mean Myke finally gets out of the house sometimes, which could be an interesting

01:15:25 ◼   ► endeavor.

01:15:26 ◼   ► There's a whole wide world out there to experience.

01:15:28 ◼   ► So I've heard.

01:15:29 ◼   ► They tell me.

01:15:30 ◼   ► I'm not so sure about it, but they tell me.

01:15:33 ◼   ► So yeah, it's just been real.

01:15:34 ◼   ► And you know what?

01:15:36 ◼   ► I have been very much enjoying using my iPad and my iMac simultaneously.

01:15:42 ◼   ► You've seen my corner desk, right?

01:15:45 ◼   ► What is the setup here when you're seeing them simultaneously?

01:15:49 ◼   ► What's the exact deal of what's on what?

01:15:51 ◼   ► MegaOffice has two desks, right?

01:15:53 ◼   ► And desk number two is my game streaming setup.

01:15:58 ◼   ► So it's just dedicated itself for that.

01:16:00 ◼   ► But desk number one, the original desk, is a corner desk.

01:16:04 ◼   ► So on the large side of the desk, I have my iMac,

01:16:08 ◼   ► and on the smaller side of the desk, I put whatever.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Like it's just where things go.

01:16:12 ◼   ► But when I'm using my iPad at a desk, I have a great stand.

01:16:17 ◼   ► It's called the ClearLook stand.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I will put it in the show notes.

01:16:21 ◼   ► It can elevate my iPad to high height,

01:16:24 ◼   ► and I use Apple Magic Keyboard and my Apple Pencil,

01:16:27 ◼   ► and that is perfect for me because it gives me

01:16:30 ◼   ► some kind of consistency in ergonomics

01:16:32 ◼   ► and that's been great for me.

01:16:34 ◼   ► So I put that on the smaller side of the desk

01:16:37 ◼   ► and I'm doing a lot of my work here,

01:16:39 ◼   ► but then I also have my iMac to the side

01:16:41 ◼   ► and there might be certain things I'm like,

01:16:42 ◼   ► oh, I'll just swivel my chair over to the iMac

01:16:46 ◼   ► and do that here and I can have all sorts happening now.

01:16:50 ◼   ► So I'm living the multi-device lifestyle

01:16:53 ◼   ► and I really like it.

01:16:54 ◼   ► - So are you using the corner desk as two desks

01:16:57 ◼   ► in a way or that's what that sounds like.

01:17:00 ◼   ► - The smaller side is the iPad part of the desk

01:17:03 ◼   ► and the longer side is the,

01:17:06 ◼   ► 'cause it's not an, like the corner does not,

01:17:09 ◼   ► it's not like two desks put together, right?

01:17:12 ◼   ► It's like I have a large part of the desk

01:17:14 ◼   ► and then a small side.

01:17:15 ◼   ► - You have a literal L-shaped desk.

01:17:17 ◼   ► - It's an L-shaped desk, thank you so much.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Yes, so the smaller part of the L is where the iPad goes.

01:17:21 ◼   ► - I believe that's what they call it in the industry.

01:17:23 ◼   ► - Yes, and the larger part of the L

01:17:26 ◼   ► is where the iMac is.

01:17:27 ◼   ► - If you've seen a letter L, think of that,

01:17:29 ◼   ► but now think of it like a desk.

01:17:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, so I like it.

01:17:34 ◼   ► And I'm still doing, the iPad is where I prefer to be,

01:17:37 ◼   ► it's like what works for me,

01:17:40 ◼   ► but I also like having the iMac here

01:17:43 ◼   ► to just pick up some other stuff if I need it.

01:17:45 ◼   ► And it's been really nice actually

01:17:49 ◼   ► to have a renewed focus.

01:17:53 ◼   ► I think it was probably time after nearly doing being self-employed for five years this

01:18:00 ◼   ► year.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Wow.

01:18:02 ◼   ► It's, I think it's in like November is my fifth anniversary of being self-employed.

01:18:07 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:18:08 ◼   ► It's probably about time for me to have re-evaluated some stuff about the way that I work.

01:18:15 ◼   ► And at least where I am in my life right now, I am feeling much more comfortable with entering

01:18:22 ◼   ► my office and being here for long stretches of time, getting a bunch of stuff done and

01:18:27 ◼   ► then leaving the office. And this is something that, you know, I get it, but like I'm trying

01:18:32 ◼   ► now to be a little bit more conscious of breaking up the work time. That's kind of where I am

01:18:39 ◼   ► right now. And I'm finding that for whatever reason, at this time, I am able to be more

01:18:47 ◼   ► productive than I have in the past by being in this environment where

01:18:52 ◼   ► previously and it's definitely the case previously my productivity was enhanced

01:18:56 ◼   ► by a change in scenery so being able to move to different parts of the house was

01:19:01 ◼   ► really nice for me but like people change over time and sometimes you just

01:19:08 ◼   ► get used to something and then when you get used to something you get into bad

01:19:11 ◼   ► habits and so being more in my office is enabling me to reevaluate those habits

01:19:19 ◼   ► and I have genuinely been very impressed with myself and my productivity

01:19:25 ◼   ► levels over the last few weeks because I feel like I'm in a bit more control of

01:19:30 ◼   ► things than I have been maybe in the last year or so. That's great to hear and

01:19:34 ◼   ► and not only do people change but the situation that you're in changes. Yes

01:19:39 ◼   ► That's what forced this, right?

01:19:41 ◼   ► - That's the catalyst in this situation.

01:19:43 ◼   ► - I do not want to be setting the precedent

01:19:48 ◼   ► that the living room is also an office

01:19:52 ◼   ► now that there are more people here all the time, right?

01:19:56 ◼   ► Like, I don't want Adina to have to walk

01:19:58 ◼   ► into the living room and feel like she can't be

01:20:01 ◼   ► in that space because I'm working in it, right?

01:20:04 ◼   ► And so like, and she has, you know, we are,

01:20:08 ◼   ► we unfortunately are not in a position

01:20:10 ◼   ► where she can have her own office at home,

01:20:13 ◼   ► but she has a desk area in the bedroom.

01:20:15 ◼   ► So we're never in the bedroom in the daytime,

01:20:19 ◼   ► so if she wants to go and work, she will go in there,

01:20:21 ◼   ► she'll close the door, and now she is in her office, right?

01:20:23 ◼   ► Like that is what that becomes in the day.

01:20:25 ◼   ► So, and we're both able to be in these rooms

01:20:28 ◼   ► when we need to work, and then we can use the shared space

01:20:33 ◼   ► as a shared space in the living room in the kitchen.

01:20:36 ◼   ► And I think, at least for me,

01:20:38 ◼   ► that has been something that is very important

01:20:41 ◼   ► as we are going through this life change together.

01:20:44 ◼   ► - It's really important to have these clear boundaries.

01:20:49 ◼   ► I honestly think this is one of the most important lessons

01:20:53 ◼   ► about just, it's really important for your brain

01:20:58 ◼   ► to know that certain areas are for certain activities.

01:21:02 ◼   ► And it's like, you know, even if you're a student in school,

01:21:06 ◼   ► it's like, why do you go to the university library?

01:21:09 ◼   ► Because that's where you study.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Do you need to be at the library to study?

01:21:13 ◼   ► No, not really.

01:21:14 ◼   ► In theory, you could do anywhere,

01:21:16 ◼   ► but it's greatly advantageous to have a place that you go

01:21:20 ◼   ► and this is where you do the thing.

01:21:23 ◼   ► To have all of these signals set up for your brain,

01:21:25 ◼   ► it's like, okay, you're in mega office now.

01:21:27 ◼   ► Now you're doing a whole bunch of work in mega office.

01:21:30 ◼   ► And I think having spaces, particularly joint spaces,

01:21:35 ◼   ► like the common living area,

01:21:40 ◼   ► where their purpose is a little bit unclear,

01:21:43 ◼   ► is always a danger.

01:21:44 ◼   ► I'm like, what happens in this room?

01:21:47 ◼   ► Do we work in this room?

01:21:48 ◼   ► Do we relax in this room?

01:21:49 ◼   ► I just, I think that's a kind of bad life hygiene.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Like you want to try to separate out the spaces

01:21:56 ◼   ► as much as you possibly can.

01:21:59 ◼   ► And I always find that, like, if I'm not feeling great

01:22:03 ◼   ► about stuff, that it's a kind of contamination

01:22:08 ◼   ► of the space of like, oh, this space is used,

01:22:11 ◼   ► like its purpose is unclear, like what happens in this space

01:22:14 ◼   ► and you need to reevaluate it.

01:22:17 ◼   ► So I'm not surprised to hear that like the renewed interest

01:22:19 ◼   ► in MegaOffice has also led to an increase

01:22:22 ◼   ► in mic productivity.

01:22:23 ◼   ► And I think it's equally as important,

01:22:25 ◼   ► especially as a couple to define an area of the house

01:22:27 ◼   ► where it's like, this is where we relax.

01:22:30 ◼   ► We're not doing work here, this is where we relax.

01:22:33 ◼   ► This is the relaxed space.

01:22:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I feel like it wasn't so important before

01:22:37 ◼   ► because when I was working in there,

01:22:39 ◼   ► she was never there, right?

01:22:40 ◼   ► She was out of the house.

01:22:41 ◼   ► - It's doubly important now that she's on a sabbatical.

01:22:43 ◼   ► Like then it matters way more.

01:22:46 ◼   ► - But it is making me look around this office

01:22:49 ◼   ► and I wanna rip it apart.

01:22:51 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, are you gonna redo the office?

01:22:53 ◼   ► - It needs that anyway.

01:22:54 ◼   ► Like it has done for a while,

01:22:56 ◼   ► because there are certain parts of this room

01:22:58 ◼   ► that are set up for a two-year-old version

01:23:02 ◼   ► of what this room was for.

01:23:04 ◼   ► - Right. - And like--

01:23:05 ◼   ► - Are you gonna get rid of that couch?

01:23:06 ◼   ► Is that couch gonna go? - Well, that couch

01:23:07 ◼   ► was gone a long time ago.

01:23:09 ◼   ► - The couch? - Yeah, yeah,

01:23:10 ◼   ► that's where I put the second desk in.

01:23:13 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, 'cause I'm thinking like,

01:23:14 ◼   ► have I even seen that second desk?

01:23:16 ◼   ► I guess I have, but it's,

01:23:17 ◼   ► I think I still think of your office

01:23:19 ◼   ► the first time I saw it.

01:23:20 ◼   ► Like, that's when it'd make an impression on me.

01:23:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause you've seen the PC.

01:23:24 ◼   ► The PC is on the second desk, right?

01:23:25 ◼   ► So that was what that was for.

01:23:27 ◼   ► But there's stuff like, I have a part of the room

01:23:30 ◼   ► which is set up for like,

01:23:31 ◼   ► oh, this is where the video game console will go,

01:23:33 ◼   ► but there's no video game console in this room anymore.

01:23:35 ◼   ► So, and I have a lot of unused storage

01:23:39 ◼   ► and lots of stuff to put into storage.

01:23:41 ◼   ► So like I need, and I have a drawer of cables

01:23:45 ◼   ► that can't, shouldn't,

01:23:46 ◼   ► guess a certain point where a drawer of cables

01:23:48 ◼   ► becomes one big bowl of cables,

01:23:50 ◼   ► that all needs to be,

01:23:51 ◼   ► I have a lot of that stuff that I wanna do.

01:23:54 ◼   ► I need to deal with it, but it's just a thing.

01:23:56 ◼   ► I just have stuff just piling up in here now.

01:23:59 ◼   ► - You gotta konmari those cables.

01:24:00 ◼   ► - I really want to, and it's, you know,

01:24:03 ◼   ► I need to work out which USB-C donkle sparks joy,

01:24:06 ◼   ► 'cause right now I'm not 100% sure.

01:24:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:11 ◼   ► - This podcast is brought to you by the letter L.

01:24:18 ◼   ► L for desk.