Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► So, how are you doing, Myke?

00:00:02 ◼   ► Fine. Everything's fine. It's all fine over here, totally fine.

00:00:06 ◼   ► There's not much time left.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Oh no, it's almost...

00:00:12 ◼   ► T minus seven days now.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Yep, in seven days time, the year of adulting takes a harsh, very steep turn.

00:00:22 ◼   ► As I become Mr. Hurley...

00:00:27 ◼   ► I mean, you're Mr. Hurley now.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Yep.

00:00:30 ◼   ► That's not how this works.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I will be a married man next week, from a week today.

00:00:37 ◼   ► From a project planning perspective, how in place are things?

00:00:41 ◼   ► Because weddings are nothing if not logistical nightmares of 10,000 tiny decisions.

00:00:48 ◼   ► All right, we made a really smart decision about 18 months ago when we hired a wedding planner.

00:00:55 ◼   ► That is a very smart decision.

00:00:57 ◼   ► It's one of the best things I have done in my adult life.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Like it is one of the greatest decisions that I ever made was to hire a wedding planner

00:01:06 ◼   ► because we were talking about this today at lunch.

00:01:10 ◼   ► We wouldn't have gotten to the point that we're at right now without their help.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Like it wouldn't have happened.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Like we would have made so many compromises.

00:01:19 ◼   ► We would be in such a different state to where we are.

00:01:24 ◼   ► So hiring a wedding planner was brilliant to the point now where we had a call

00:01:28 ◼   ► with her this morning.

00:01:29 ◼   ► I feel like I'm good.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Oh, really? Wow.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Basically, everything's taken care of.

00:01:34 ◼   ► There are tiny little details just to work out, but it's like mostly

00:01:37 ◼   ► the movement of things and people, because even today, like we just were like

00:01:42 ◼   ► in passing, mentioning some things that we thought we needed to do.

00:01:44 ◼   ► And she's like, I'll do that.

00:01:46 ◼   ► I feel like I don't have the right to feel as confident as I feel,

00:01:50 ◼   ► because like knowing people that have gotten married, right, like how

00:01:53 ◼   ► They feel like everything's falling apart, but I honestly feel like everything's kind of in hand.

00:02:00 ◼   ► - I mean, that is both quite impressive.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I've never heard anybody a week before their wedding feel this way.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Which then does immediately rouse my suspicions as well.

00:02:10 ◼   ► That maybe you are deep into unknown unknowns territory here.

00:02:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's also highly likely,

00:02:16 ◼   ► but I feel confident in our professionals, you know?

00:02:20 ◼   ► - That's good, that's very good.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I'm glad to hear it.

00:02:23 ◼   ► - I mean, like, don't get me wrong.

00:02:25 ◼   ► I am about as nervous as I've ever been

00:02:27 ◼   ► for anything in my entire life.

00:02:29 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no, no, but Myke, Myke,

00:02:31 ◼   ► that's your personal side.

00:02:33 ◼   ► That's why I was asking from a project management side,

00:02:38 ◼   ► which cares not about your nervousness

00:02:41 ◼   ► and your emotional feelings,

00:02:44 ◼   ► about the upcoming, perhaps most important day

00:02:47 ◼   ► of your adult life, only seven days away now.

00:02:51 ◼   ► So that's I wasn't asking about that side of things.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Definitely feel worse now.

00:02:54 ◼   ► That's the feeling side of things.

00:02:56 ◼   ► I was like, there are lots, there's lots and lots of things to do, right?

00:03:01 ◼   ► But it all feels in hand.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Good.

00:03:05 ◼   ► You know, like we have so much stuff that we have to do over the next seven days,

00:03:09 ◼   ► but it all feels like kind of as it should be.

00:03:12 ◼   ► And I expect a part of this is the way that our wedding planner has set this up for us.

00:03:18 ◼   ► You know, like she has let us know like the kind of things that we need to be doing.

00:03:23 ◼   ► So we're being guided through.

00:03:25 ◼   ► So it feels like we just got this safety net.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Right, like she's just taking care of it for us is like, you've got to be here, you've

00:03:33 ◼   ► got to do this, you've got to take this to this point, this to this point.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Like the wedding day itself is there's a huge Google doc with timings of everything.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Oh, wow. Yeah, it's amazing.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Like everything is timed.

00:03:45 ◼   ► There are every everyone knows what they're doing.

00:03:48 ◼   ► You know, like there is assigned people for every job because we have two people in the

00:03:55 ◼   ► day so like our wedding planner hires someone.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I want to give you an example of how good our planner has been for us.

00:04:02 ◼   ► So at our venue, the place where we're doing the meal and all that kind of stuff, we had

00:04:07 ◼   ► someone that we were working with through the whole period of time.

00:04:11 ◼   ► That person has quit her job and leaves one day before the wedding.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Right?

00:04:17 ◼   ► Perfect.

00:04:18 ◼   ► We told our wedding planner this.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Our wedding planner, without us knowing, hired this woman for one day.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Oh, that's amazing.

00:04:27 ◼   ► How good is that?

00:04:29 ◼   ► She's freelancing one day after her official quitting.

00:04:32 ◼   ► She's going to freelance one day for the company that we're using.

00:04:35 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:04:36 ◼   ► So she can be there to do everything she would have done.

00:04:40 ◼   ► That's perfect.

00:04:41 ◼   ► That's really good.

00:04:42 ◼   ► See what I mean?

00:04:43 ◼   ► This is how good these people are.

00:04:44 ◼   ► So like, when you do things like that...

00:04:46 ◼   ► That is an excellent wedding planner.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Exactly! I'm like, "You've got this!"

00:04:49 ◼   ► Like, "We don't need to worry."

00:04:51 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:04:52 ◼   ► I feel like that story then makes me feel much more confident in your confidence

00:04:56 ◼   ► about everything's under control.

00:04:57 ◼   ► They've just got it.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah, they've got it.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Now all you have to worry about is keeping your emotions under control.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Which I can't and won't, but...

00:05:03 ◼   ► Which, no, you're not.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I've already accepted that about myself.

00:05:06 ◼   ► That is a mic failure point.

00:05:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And I think you know that about yourself.

00:05:11 ◼   ► It's a leak, a literal leak in the system.

00:05:15 ◼   ► It's gonna be, I'm gonna be an emotional wreck,

00:05:17 ◼   ► but we all know this about me, everybody knows this, so.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - Everyone's expecting it, it's a key thing in life,

00:05:24 ◼   ► is to know and understand yourself,

00:05:27 ◼   ► and make decisions about that.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And no one is expecting stoic Myke

00:05:33 ◼   ► to show up on his wedding day.

00:05:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:37 ◼   ► - I think if I don't pass out,

00:05:38 ◼   ► everyone will be really proud of me.

00:05:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I mean like honestly,

00:05:43 ◼   ► if you spend less than 45 minutes on the fainting couch, like I will be quite impressed.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So of course, wedding day is going to be great. It's been a whole thing. But there's also

00:05:55 ◼   ► the after part, which is the honeymoon, right? Right. So I am actually going to be taking

00:06:03 ◼   ► pretty much all of July off of the majority of my work. So it basically starts with pretty

00:06:11 ◼   ► much the publishing of this episode and then this is one of the last things that I will

00:06:17 ◼   ► do kind of in my normal work until all the way at the end of the month. Now, obviously

00:06:26 ◼   ► going through this is a pretty big thing. I've been making like lots of decisions over

00:06:31 ◼   ► the last six months. Been flip-flopping a little bit about what is this actually going

00:06:35 ◼   ► to look like? Will I 100% stop everything?

00:06:39 ◼   ► You mean during your honeymoon time?

00:06:41 ◼   ► During my honeymoon, yeah. Which is pretty much two weeks, two and a bit weeks.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Or will I still be checking in on things?

00:06:49 ◼   ► So I've landed in a place that I feel pretty comfortable in.

00:06:53 ◼   ► And so one, obviously no recording or editing will occur during this period of time.

00:06:58 ◼   ► That's the no-brainer. You're not bringing podcast equipment with you on your honeymoon.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Sit on the beach, with the waves behind me.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Yeah, this would be a loser on every front. It's a bad idea for you.

00:07:08 ◼   ► But for you, it's a bad way to start your new marriage, and the recording would be terrible.

00:07:13 ◼   ► So that's obviously out of the window.

00:07:17 ◼   ► General kind of day-to-day business duties, like invoicing and coordinating with people,

00:07:23 ◼   ► all of that's out of the window too.

00:07:26 ◼   ► We have a great team, right?

00:07:28 ◼   ► And everyone, you know, there's more than enough capability around me that people can

00:07:32 ◼   ► pick this stuff up.

00:07:33 ◼   ► there was one point though that I was uncomfortable with and that was email.

00:07:38 ◼   ► Mhm. The wheel. What do I do about email? Because I cannot touch it, but then there's

00:07:45 ◼   ► a pile of it when I get back. I can set an out of office, but the more I think about

00:07:52 ◼   ► out of offices, I think they create more problems than they solve.

00:07:55 ◼   ► Yeah, out of offices are the worst. Everybody thinks this is a great idea, but it's actually

00:08:02 ◼   ► a terrible idea because you still receive the message,

00:08:07 ◼   ► but the person gets a reply saying you're out of office,

00:08:10 ◼   ► which then leaves that message

00:08:12 ◼   ► in this quantum undetermined state?

00:08:15 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:08:16 ◼   ► - Is this a thing that when the person

00:08:17 ◼   ► saw the out of office message, they thought,

00:08:20 ◼   ► "Oh, whatever, I don't need to worry about this.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Like, Myke's out of the place,

00:08:24 ◼   ► and I'll find someone else to take care of this."

00:08:27 ◼   ► Or is it still in your inbox

00:08:28 ◼   ► because it's something that needs to be resolved?

00:08:30 ◼   ► Like, they're out of office messages could only work

00:08:34 ◼   ► if upon receiving them, the receiver had an option

00:08:38 ◼   ► to then delete or add information to the message

00:08:40 ◼   ► that had just been sent.

00:08:41 ◼   ► But that's not the way email works.

00:08:44 ◼   ► - There are services that exist that can do this,

00:08:48 ◼   ► but I didn't want to employ any of them.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Where like, you would send an email to someone

00:08:51 ◼   ► and say they're out of office,

00:08:52 ◼   ► you can press a button to actually send this to them,

00:08:55 ◼   ► or you can send it to this person instead,

00:08:57 ◼   ► or just not send it at all, right?

00:08:59 ◼   ► So they kind of sit in the middle.

00:09:00 ◼   ► But I didn't want to do this because I know who I am.

00:09:05 ◼   ► And I know how I'm made.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And I know I'm gonna open email and check email.

00:09:13 ◼   ► I'll probably open Slack every now and then

00:09:15 ◼   ► because Slack has all my friends in it as well, right?

00:09:17 ◼   ► - Right, of course.

00:09:18 ◼   ► - I won't be able to completely switch off for two weeks

00:09:22 ◼   ► because I would be thinking, is everything okay, right?

00:09:27 ◼   ► Is probably where I'm gonna be.

00:09:28 ◼   ► So let's say I open my email, right?

00:09:30 ◼   ► And there's an email in there

00:09:33 ◼   ► and I know I can respond to it super quickly.

00:09:35 ◼   ► But that person got an out of office and then I respond.

00:09:39 ◼   ► What does that say about me to this person?

00:09:41 ◼   ► - Right, now you look like a crazy workaholic

00:09:44 ◼   ► if you're replying to a thing.

00:09:45 ◼   ► It just takes two seconds.

00:09:46 ◼   ► And that person is imagining that you're on the beach

00:09:50 ◼   ► right now with your new wife under an umbrella,

00:09:53 ◼   ► coconut drink in one hand and email client in the other

00:09:57 ◼   ► and doing business. It makes you look terrible.

00:10:00 ◼   ► And I don't want to give that impression to people.

00:10:02 ◼   ► Even if it's true, you don't want them to think it.

00:10:04 ◼   ► I don't want people to know that about me.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And then the other problem is, so I would put on my out of office, if it's urgent, to email my assistant.

00:10:13 ◼   ► How do I know what she's gotten?

00:10:15 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:10:16 ◼   ► And then she's dealt with a situation, and then I then deal with the same situation. It's a nightmare.

00:10:21 ◼   ► A lot of the thinking around this was clarified to me after WWDC because we trialed using

00:10:29 ◼   ► an email app called Spark 2.

00:10:31 ◼   ► So we spoke about Spark in the past during my "all email apps are bad" realization

00:10:36 ◼   ► a few months ago.

00:10:38 ◼   ► And Spark 2 came out.

00:10:40 ◼   ► The app was almost unchanged.

00:10:42 ◼   ► All of the things I don't like about Spark are still the same.

00:10:45 ◼   ► There's a bunch of weird decisions that they make about the way stuff works and looks.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Don't need to get into it today.

00:10:50 ◼   ► It's not important.

00:10:51 ◼   ► But what they came out with was a Teams feature. So you could set up a team, you could share email

00:10:57 ◼   ► messages, you could have conversations in email messages, and we used it during WWDC and it changed

00:11:05 ◼   ► everything. Oh okay, so yeah, you showed this to me just briefly one night when we had a few moments

00:11:11 ◼   ► at WWDC and it looked like you and your team can privately have a conversation about the email

00:11:21 ◼   ► before someone responds to that email and I thought that was a very interesting idea. I

00:11:28 ◼   ► didn't quite realize that you were in beta mode for this project for you for WWDC. It was a test.

00:11:34 ◼   ► How does it work? That's very good. That's really good. Because that is a very similar scenario

00:11:41 ◼   ► where like whilst I'm working, I have no time during that week, right?

00:11:45 ◼   ► Like the way that I am interacting with email is very different.

00:11:48 ◼   ► Like I'm not checking it throughout the day,

00:11:50 ◼   ► I'm checking it at just points during the day.

00:11:52 ◼   ► So the way that some of this stuff would work,

00:11:56 ◼   ► so say somebody sends me an email and they need something.

00:11:59 ◼   ► I can assign it to my assistant and she can just reply

00:12:02 ◼   ► as if the email was sent to her.

00:12:05 ◼   ► There's no forwarding information in the email.

00:12:07 ◼   ► It just takes that email and drops it in her inbox and she can deal with it.

00:12:11 ◼   ► it. Another thing I can do is add her to it. I can respond and she will see all the responses.

00:12:17 ◼   ► So if there's things that she needs to do, she can pick them up. And then also in that

00:12:20 ◼   ► chain we can have a conversation. So I can say to her, "Hey, did you see that? Can

00:12:25 ◼   ► you take care of this?" So like I'll say to someone, "Yep, no problem." And then

00:12:29 ◼   ► she will take whatever's in that email and do whatever needs to be done. Or there's

00:12:33 ◼   ► another thing, sometimes people will send me a spreadsheet that needs to be completed,

00:12:36 ◼   ► I can drop her in on the email, say download that,

00:12:40 ◼   ► complete it, and she can upload it to me

00:12:43 ◼   ► in the conversation thread inside of the email,

00:12:46 ◼   ► which I can then take and attach to the email and send back.

00:12:49 ◼   ► This is what I'm gonna do.

00:12:51 ◼   ► - I think that sounds like a really good solution.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Again, in the key of knowing yourself,

00:12:57 ◼   ► like it's important to recognize

00:12:59 ◼   ► that simply not replying to email is not an option for you.

00:13:03 ◼   ► - If I take 20 minutes every day, maximum,

00:13:05 ◼   ► broken into like two, 10 minute stints,

00:13:08 ◼   ► I can probably deal with all of the email that I get.

00:13:11 ◼   ► And I feel like that is perfectly reasonable.

00:13:15 ◼   ► There are going to be times, either late in the evening

00:13:18 ◼   ► or just sitting down at the beach,

00:13:20 ◼   ► where I can just pull out my phone and do it,

00:13:22 ◼   ► and it's not gonna affect anything.

00:13:24 ◼   ► You know, if we're having dinner,

00:13:26 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be responding to email.

00:13:27 ◼   ► If we're snorkeling, I'm not responding to email.

00:13:30 ◼   ► There will be more than enough time during my day

00:13:33 ◼   ► where I can jump in, do a bit of triage,

00:13:36 ◼   ► and just get things taken care of.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Anything big and chunky,

00:13:39 ◼   ► I can either leave for when I return,

00:13:41 ◼   ► or I can send to my assistant,

00:13:44 ◼   ► she could just deal with it, she takes care of it,

00:13:45 ◼   ► and it's done for me.

00:13:47 ◼   ► This feels to me like the optimum way for me

00:13:51 ◼   ► to be able to not feel like I'm completely in the dark,

00:13:55 ◼   ► to not have to worry about what's going on,

00:13:59 ◼   ► and then not have to come back to 200 messages.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Now I understand I'm leaving myself open for things to upset me and annoy me,

00:14:06 ◼   ► but I feel like that that will,

00:14:08 ◼   ► that the overall feeling that I will have will be better.

00:14:11 ◼   ► I feel like I'll be less annoyed about things, right?

00:14:14 ◼   ► Cause I'm sitting on a beach sipping a pina colada, right?

00:14:16 ◼   ► Like it's not going to be so much of a problem,

00:14:19 ◼   ► but I know that I will be happier this way than if I just kind of shut myself

00:14:24 ◼   ► off completely.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean that, that is exactly the key that you're, you're trying to,

00:14:29 ◼   ► especially on a trip like this,

00:14:31 ◼   ► trying to minimize any kind of anxiety and worry.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And it's perfectly legitimate to recognize

00:14:37 ◼   ► that being completely in the dark

00:14:40 ◼   ► would be more of an anxious situation for you

00:14:43 ◼   ► than having some contact with the outside world.

00:14:46 ◼   ► So it seems really great.

00:14:47 ◼   ► It seems like this system arrived just in time

00:14:50 ◼   ► for you to trial it, to make sure that it works perfect.

00:14:53 ◼   ► - The way we were gonna do this was gonna be hell.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Like I said, right, so maybe we set up a Google sheet

00:14:59 ◼   ► and you write in every email you've responded to.

00:15:01 ◼   ► - Oh God, yeah.

00:15:02 ◼   ► - And then I can go in and see,

00:15:04 ◼   ► and then I don't respond, like that's just the worst, right?

00:15:08 ◼   ► Like I can't do that.

00:15:09 ◼   ► I wouldn't want to give like her my email credentials

00:15:12 ◼   ► 'cause that doesn't make any sense.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Like that just doesn't work for me.

00:15:15 ◼   ► Like everything would come through

00:15:17 ◼   ► 'cause she doesn't need everything.

00:15:19 ◼   ► And then you add on top of it,

00:15:21 ◼   ► we're on the other side of the world

00:15:22 ◼   ► for two weeks from each other, right?

00:15:24 ◼   ► Look, the time zone difference is gonna be hellish.

00:15:28 ◼   ► So really I feel like this has ended up being kind of perfect.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Yeah. I did the, uh,

00:15:34 ◼   ► Google docs spreadsheet of email thing for a while years ago.

00:15:38 ◼   ► I don't recommend it.

00:15:39 ◼   ► It was like the best of all the bad possible solutions

00:15:46 ◼   ► that we came up with. Right. And it still was going to suck,

00:15:49 ◼   ► but at least it was something, but this is so much better.

00:15:52 ◼   ► I really like the Spark email team stuff. It's very, it's, it's very,

00:15:57 ◼   ► very good. It's like the only good thing in an email app that I've ever used.

00:16:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

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00:17:45 ◼   ► - Now, Myke, you did a bad thing last episode.

00:17:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, yep.

00:17:49 ◼   ► - You left the previous episode on quite a cliffhanger.

00:17:54 ◼   ► We were together in person,

00:17:59 ◼   ► Always uncomfortable and always a very different sounding episode whenever we listen to those

00:18:06 ◼   ► live ones.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I know they make you upset but it's okay.

00:18:09 ◼   ► They do.

00:18:10 ◼   ► I don't like the live in-person ones.

00:18:12 ◼   ► It's so different.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I have such a hard time listening to it afterwards.

00:18:16 ◼   ► But the people seemed happy.

00:18:17 ◼   ► It's a fun event.

00:18:18 ◼   ► I wouldn't want to do every episode like that but one a year I feel like it works pretty

00:18:22 ◼   ► nicely but I do share with you they never sound as good, right?

00:18:28 ◼   ► I have some ideas actually to make it sound better next year and still be in the same

00:18:31 ◼   ► room but we'll get to them when we need it.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Yeah, so we can set up a glass wall between the two of us and then we have little separate

00:18:37 ◼   ► booths.

00:18:38 ◼   ► That's what I would like.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:40 ◼   ► But only if my side has a little window that I can, like a window shade that I can pull

00:18:44 ◼   ► down so then be like in the same room.

00:18:46 ◼   ► You have to look at my face.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Yeah, because the looking at you is uncomfortable.

00:18:49 ◼   ► We've mentioned it before but I tend to look away a lot when recording a person because

00:18:53 ◼   ► it's like I can't.

00:18:54 ◼   ► You never look directly into somebody's eyes, like that's too much.

00:18:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it's too much in person.

00:19:00 ◼   ► But when we are in person,

00:19:03 ◼   ► sometimes there are things that a person can notice.

00:19:08 ◼   ► I was intentionally trying to provoke you

00:19:11 ◼   ► with a T-shirt that I had that had many pockets on it,

00:19:13 ◼   ► which you were studiously trying to ignore,

00:19:16 ◼   ► which I enjoyed. - Well, pockets.

00:19:18 ◼   ► - Exactly, Myke was like,

00:19:19 ◼   ► I don't see that shirt that you're wearing

00:19:21 ◼   ► that has a pocket zipper that goes from the shoulder

00:19:24 ◼   ► down across the side that's full of stuff.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Like, you know, you were not intentionally not looking,

00:19:29 ◼   ► but also in person.

00:19:31 ◼   ► You were not wearing your Apple Watch.

00:19:34 ◼   ► - No.

00:19:35 ◼   ► - And we wanted to discuss it, but you said, "No,

00:19:38 ◼   ► we could not discuss it on that live episode.

00:19:40 ◼   ► We would have to leave it until later."

00:19:42 ◼   ► And now it's later.

00:19:44 ◼   ► So what's the deal, Myke?

00:19:46 ◼   ► What's going on?

00:19:47 ◼   ► - So I guess the other piece of information

00:19:49 ◼   ► that maybe wasn't abundantly clear

00:19:51 ◼   ► is not only was I not wearing my Apple Watch,

00:19:54 ◼   ► I was wearing a mechanical watch.

00:19:56 ◼   ► - The relevant thing to me is not Apple Watch.

00:19:59 ◼   ► I was like, well, of course you're gonna wear something

00:20:01 ◼   ► on your wrist. - Right.

00:20:02 ◼   ► - You're Myke, you're a very fashionable guy.

00:20:04 ◼   ► - Thank you. - Are you going to leave

00:20:06 ◼   ► that section of your body unadorned?

00:20:09 ◼   ► I think not. - It's an accessory to be had.

00:20:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, obviously there's going to be something there,

00:20:14 ◼   ► but yeah, so I was like, there's no Apple Watch.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And yeah, there's some other mechanical watch on your wrist.

00:20:20 ◼   ► - All right, so two months ago,

00:20:23 ◼   ► I stopped wearing my Apple Watch.

00:20:25 ◼   ► - Two months ago?

00:20:25 ◼   ► - It was two months ago. - Wow.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Okay.

00:20:29 ◼   ► - And the reason that this happened was

00:20:33 ◼   ► as I was building up to the wedding,

00:20:35 ◼   ► I was thinking about photos.

00:20:37 ◼   ► - Ah, mm-hmm, okay.

00:20:39 ◼   ► - Right?

00:20:40 ◼   ► This is about a year ago I started thinking about this.

00:20:43 ◼   ► I was like, I don't wanna wear an Apple Watch

00:20:45 ◼   ► in my wedding photos because it will be like,

00:20:49 ◼   ► I will look like Zach from Saved by the Bell with my huge phone. That's all I could keep

00:20:58 ◼   ► thinking about. I have some huge first ever cell phone, like the ones that are basically

00:21:04 ◼   ► holding a brick up to the side of your head. I figured that's how an Apple Watch would

00:21:08 ◼   ► look in a few years time. Even a couple of months later, the design of the Apple Watch

00:21:16 ◼   ► could change significantly, right? So I thought to myself, I don't want to date the pictures

00:21:20 ◼   ► in such a way that I will laugh at myself every time I see them in like 10 years time.

00:21:24 ◼   ► I can completely agree with that. For example, we were watching on television recently a

00:21:31 ◼   ► very prominent wedding in the UK in which one of the speakers at that wedding was using

00:21:37 ◼   ► an iPad and wearing an Apple watch. And I was thinking the same thing like, it's a historic

00:21:42 ◼   ► And maybe don't, like, maybe print out your speech and maybe wear a more timeless watch.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Yeah, or just take it off.

00:21:49 ◼   ► You be you, man, but I can't help but notice this and also think the exact same thing.

00:21:54 ◼   ► Maybe also don't mention Facebook in your speech, but yeah, like, don't temporarily

00:21:57 ◼   ► date a moment in your life that's a moment like this.

00:22:01 ◼   ► So I can completely agree with your decision to not wear an Apple Watch at your wedding.

00:22:06 ◼   ► I'm behind that 100 percent.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And I'm just realizing we haven't actually used it yet, but my wife for our first year

00:22:15 ◼   ► anniversary bought me a nice mechanical watch.

00:22:19 ◼   ► And when I got the Apple Watch, we intentionally saved that as like a ceremonial watch.

00:22:26 ◼   ► And there hasn't been an occasion where I've actually worn that.

00:22:29 ◼   ► It's somewhere in the house, but it's that same idea that like there may be a moment

00:22:34 ◼   ► where you don't want to be wearing your Apple Watch and you want to have a nicer looking

00:22:38 ◼   ► watch for those moments. So the first thought was maybe I just take

00:22:42 ◼   ► it off, just leave it off, right? And then our mutual friend Marco, he is a big watch

00:22:49 ◼   ► nerd. Ah, I should have known. Of course! Of course

00:22:54 ◼   ► it's Marco! He had sent me to some watches.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Getting his tendrils into everything. Like about two years ago, I think. And one

00:23:05 ◼   ► of them was by a brand called Nomos which is a really cool, more modern brand and he

00:23:10 ◼   ► thought that it really kind of fit with my style and he sent me a link to this one which

00:23:16 ◼   ► is from their metro range and it's called the power reserve. It has this little power

00:23:21 ◼   ► indicator of how much power is left in the spring of the watch, right, because you have

00:23:26 ◼   ► to wind it every day. And I really, really liked the design of this watch. So I decided

00:23:32 ◼   ► about a year ago, I am gonna buy that watch and I decided I would save a little bit of

00:23:38 ◼   ► money every month because it's expensive and I thought this would be a nice thing for me

00:23:43 ◼   ► to save up for and I will buy it just before the wedding and then I'll wear it on my wedding

00:23:48 ◼   ► day and then it will become my special occasion watch, right?

00:23:52 ◼   ► Right.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Then when we were in Austin for my bachelor party, I realized I had the money I needed

00:24:00 ◼   ► together and I thought wouldn't it be nice to buy it with Marco? Like he started me on

00:24:05 ◼   ► this path and plus I was a little intimidated going to a fancy watch store and I thought

00:24:09 ◼   ► it would be a good idea to go with somebody who knew what they were doing, right? Could

00:24:13 ◼   ► talk in the lingo, right? And he even got me a discount because apparently you should

00:24:18 ◼   ► never buy a watch without a discount but I never would have been able to ask for one.

00:24:22 ◼   ► Marco, I have seen firsthand, Marco is the man who knows his way around a fancy watch

00:24:27 ◼   ► store. He does. So I thought I'll buy it with him. He convinced me to get this in the first place

00:24:32 ◼   ► and also I have somebody with me. I put that watch on and my life changed. I have not taken it off

00:24:41 ◼   ► since. It's really nice looking. It's really comfortable and I like to look at it. Right?

00:24:48 ◼   ► So at first it was like I want to wear this because it's new and it's beautiful. Like it's

00:24:52 ◼   ► something I've coveted for a year. Like I don't... This isn't a typical thing for me to like find a

00:24:57 ◼   ► a thing and then save for it? Like it's, I've never, I haven't done something like this

00:25:02 ◼   ► since I have been an adult, right? I either buy it or I don't buy it and then that's it,

00:25:08 ◼   ► right? I either have the money and I buy it or I'm like, well, I haven't got the money

00:25:11 ◼   ► for this, so I just won't buy it. Maybe sometime in the future I'll buy it. But like the idea

00:25:16 ◼   ► of like making a conscious effort to like save money every month to get the money together

00:25:20 ◼   ► to buy this thing.

00:25:21 ◼   ► - That's interesting.

00:25:23 ◼   ► Okay, I can see how this works its way into your mind

00:25:28 ◼   ► because yes, that's a very different experience.

00:25:33 ◼   ► - Every month I take some money and I'm like,

00:25:35 ◼   ► this is my watch money this month and it goes in

00:25:37 ◼   ► and I will see that account build up

00:25:38 ◼   ► and it's like a ticking time, right?

00:25:40 ◼   ► Like it's getting bigger, it's getting bigger

00:25:43 ◼   ► and then once it hit the amount, I could buy it.

00:25:45 ◼   ► So when I bought it, I was like, I say for this so long,

00:25:48 ◼   ► I wanna wear it and plus I'm at a special event,

00:25:51 ◼   ► You know, like I'm with all my friends, we're doing this thing.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Oh, right. Yeah.

00:25:54 ◼   ► You don't, you don't feel like you're abusing the specialness because you're in

00:25:58 ◼   ► Austin at a, at a one time special event, of course.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Yep. We're having nice meals together. We're doing, you know, so I'm like, okay,

00:26:05 ◼   ► I'll put the watch on. So, and plus it's like, uh,

00:26:07 ◼   ► I want to wear it when Marco's here. Cause there's like,

00:26:09 ◼   ► the things you need to think about, right?

00:26:10 ◼   ► So like I want to ask him questions as like questions come up and stuff.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Cause this thing is made of springs and gears, right? Like it is a,

00:26:17 ◼   ► an item which requires some attention.

00:26:20 ◼   ► So I wanted to kind of like understand the foibles of it and have an expert

00:26:24 ◼   ► with me who could help explain to me what I was doing.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So I wore it for the week and I got home and I kept wearing it.

00:26:32 ◼   ► And then two months passed because over that period of time,

00:26:37 ◼   ► I learned that the system that I had, whilst important,

00:26:40 ◼   ► I could change and nothing happened.

00:26:43 ◼   ► So my previous system was all my devices on Do Not Disturb,

00:26:49 ◼   ► all notifications come to my watch.

00:26:51 ◼   ► Well, now my phone is not on do not deserve anymore.

00:26:55 ◼   ► And my phone gets notifications.

00:26:58 ◼   ► And that's kind of how it goes now.

00:27:02 ◼   ► And it's fine.

00:27:05 ◼   ► There are downsides to it.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Having notifications on my phone is more distracting than they were on my watch.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Yes. This is this is my one question, because, well,

00:27:19 ◼   ► I've been thinking about notifications as well.

00:27:20 ◼   ► We can get to that later.

00:27:22 ◼   ► I think if you're switching away,

00:27:23 ◼   ► you perhaps have chosen a good time.

00:27:25 ◼   ► But the thing, and particularly for you again,

00:27:29 ◼   ► because you're much more notification heavy than I am is,

00:27:33 ◼   ► how, like do you find yourself just pulling the phone

00:27:38 ◼   ► out of your pocket way more and just kind of dealing

00:27:41 ◼   ► with that or like also a question,

00:27:45 ◼   ► how much are you able to,

00:27:46 ◼   ► because I presume you're getting vibration alerts.

00:27:49 ◼   ► I just wonder, how much are you able to

00:27:51 ◼   ► distinguish notifications?

00:27:53 ◼   ► Because I think there's ways you can set custom vibrations

00:27:56 ◼   ► for different things for different people.

00:27:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't do anything like that.

00:27:58 ◼   ► - Okay, so you just get a bzzt in your pocket,

00:28:01 ◼   ► and you have no idea is that a text message

00:28:03 ◼   ► or is that an email?

00:28:04 ◼   ► And then you just take a look.

00:28:05 ◼   ► - So it's way more distracting.

00:28:07 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:28:08 ◼   ► - And I do not prefer this in any way to the watch.

00:28:12 ◼   ► - But life is full of trade-offs,

00:28:13 ◼   ► and you can't always get everything that you want.

00:28:15 ◼   ► The vast majority of time when I'm at home, I have a device in front of me that can receive

00:28:20 ◼   ► notifications.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Them being on my watch when I'm at home working is no different than them being on my phone

00:28:28 ◼   ► or my iPad.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Yeah, that is totally true when you're like doing actual work in front of a device.

00:28:35 ◼   ► That is the only time I can actually sometimes kind of find the watch a little bit annoying

00:28:39 ◼   ► where it'll ping out of sync with whatever thing I'm on.

00:28:45 ◼   ► it doesn't realize like, "Oh, I'm talking to this person right now."

00:28:47 ◼   ► And it goes like, "Boop, did you know that this person just sent you a message?"

00:28:49 ◼   ► Like, "Yeah, I'm looking at it on the screen at this very moment, watch.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I did know. Thank you."

00:28:53 ◼   ► So, and then, you know, when I'm out and about,

00:28:56 ◼   ► yeah, it's more, it is more distracting, right? Like it is.

00:28:58 ◼   ► And also, you know,

00:29:01 ◼   ► and this happens a lot, I will have my phone somewhere else

00:29:04 ◼   ► and I'm doing something else and stuff's buzzing, right?

00:29:07 ◼   ► And I don't know about it.

00:29:09 ◼   ► But I'm kind of just, that's just how it is now.

00:29:14 ◼   ► And by and large, nothing's happened.

00:29:18 ◼   ► I still get all the same notifications that I would get before, you know,

00:29:22 ◼   ► so I'm still getting notified about all my email, but most of the time,

00:29:25 ◼   ► like that's in a place where I can just grab it and deal with it.

00:29:27 ◼   ► I don't have an emergency system, right?

00:29:30 ◼   ► Like that was kind of the,

00:29:31 ◼   ► always the idea of if something crazy was going on someone could always get to

00:29:34 ◼   ► me cause where on my watch? Well, I just don't have that anymore. Uh, that's,

00:29:38 ◼   ► that's just gone.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, I'm,

00:29:41 ◼   ► I'm going to say whenever I talk to people about reducing notifications,

00:29:44 ◼   ► people are always worried about the emergency scenario.

00:29:47 ◼   ► And I think people vastly over rate that.

00:29:51 ◼   ► It's like, it's a thing that's on your mind because you,

00:29:55 ◼   ► you can very easily imagine some terrible downside scenario under which, you know,

00:30:00 ◼   ► you like,

00:30:01 ◼   ► you would have wanted to be able to be contactable and not being contactable is a

00:30:04 ◼   ► huge problem. But those events are,

00:30:07 ◼   ► are so rare in life.

00:30:10 ◼   ► I don't think it makes sense to optimize what your life is like on a daily basis

00:30:16 ◼   ► for an event that may occur once every five years. So yeah, I'm with you on this. It can

00:30:24 ◼   ► feel a little unnerving to lose that, but it's not nearly as bad as people think it is.

00:30:30 ◼   ► And so I really stand by the way that I wore my Apple Watch, right? If I was going to wear a

00:30:38 ◼   ► device that notifies me, the decisions that I made about shutting everything else off,

00:30:45 ◼   ► it all goes there, I think is great. But if I'm not going to wear that device, my system

00:30:50 ◼   ► is just different, it's just somewhere else. And the thing is, my Apple Watch never made

00:30:56 ◼   ► me happy. My new watch makes me happy. I like looking at it. I love hearing it tick.

00:31:04 ◼   ► The ticking is, like, that is one thing that I do miss from having a mechanical watch ages ago,

00:31:09 ◼   ► is that the ticking is deeply satisfying.

00:31:12 ◼   ► And it's so interesting to me, like, the way I hold my hand. So if I hold my hand to my head

00:31:18 ◼   ► and it is facing me, kind of like with my palm facing me, I can hear the ticking. But if I turn

00:31:23 ◼   ► my wrist, I can't hear it anymore. And it's just like, so I hear it every now and then. I love the

00:31:28 ◼   ► act of winding it every day. You know, like, I wake up in the morning and I have to turn the crown

00:31:33 ◼   ► and it's got the power in it. I love the little power indicator that I have on it.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Um, I like looking at it. It makes me happy. I like that if I'm not doing anything at the

00:31:44 ◼   ► moment the date turns over, I can feel it because the mechanism is quite powerful. The spring is

00:31:50 ◼   ► quite powerful. So kind of when the date turns over, I feel like, dunk. And I really like that.

00:31:55 ◼   ► I do get phantom taps. Oh, you mean phantom taps on your wrist? Every now and then I think that

00:31:59 ◼   ► that my wrist is notifying me or something and I look at it, but that's not true.

00:32:04 ◼   ► I think there's going to be a long half-life on those Phantom taps.

00:32:08 ◼   ► I can't believe it's still happening.

00:32:10 ◼   ► I remember when I switched to the Apple Watch, the Phantom taps from my pocket, which now

00:32:15 ◼   ► were no longer occurring because I did the same thing that you did, which is like, "Phone,

00:32:18 ◼   ► you're never going to do anything ever again, phone."

00:32:20 ◼   ► But yeah, it took a long time for the Phantom, "Oh, my phone buzzed" to go away.

00:32:26 ◼   ► It's kind of a crazy insight into your brain.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Your brain is expecting a certain kind of stimulus, and if it doesn't get it, it's

00:32:34 ◼   ► just going to manufacture that stimulus on its own.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Well, this hasn't happened for a while, so I guess I'll just pretend it happened?

00:32:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:42 ◼   ► It's like, wow, that's a concerning look into the mind of humans, and perhaps applicable

00:32:47 ◼   ► across very many things, but we'll just put that aside for the moment.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Apple Pay sucks.

00:32:52 ◼   ► I used to love Apple Pay on my watch.

00:32:56 ◼   ► tap that side button twice and I could use it to get in the tube. Apple Pay on the iPhone

00:33:00 ◼   ► 10 is terrible. The requirement for it to see your face and authenticate, I don't like

00:33:05 ◼   ► that. That's nowhere near as good as just like you can tap it and just get it ready

00:33:10 ◼   ► without ever looking at it. Honestly, I actually think that's the biggest frustration that

00:33:14 ◼   ► I have with doing this.

00:33:15 ◼   ► I mean, especially if you're using the underground, like that's where it is just the smoothest.

00:33:19 ◼   ► It's like, you know, don't break your stride, boop boop, tap the watch twice, click on the

00:33:23 ◼   ► way in click on the way out like that that is the smoothest Apple Pay watch

00:33:27 ◼   ► experience that exists. I put my face to it it's like can't recognize I had to put in the

00:33:31 ◼   ► passcode and standing at the turnstile putting in my passcode. Yeah now you're

00:33:36 ◼   ► that guy especially. What am I a tourist? Like it's the worst I hate it I really

00:33:42 ◼   ► hate doing that but look the thing is I have not worn my Apple watch for more

00:33:47 ◼   ► like if I when I swim I put my Apple watch on because like this watch isn't

00:33:51 ◼   ► waterproof really, like not for swimming, and the Apple Watch will track the workout

00:33:56 ◼   ► so I put it on then.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I was going to ask why you even bother. So you're just using it as a "how well did

00:34:01 ◼   ► this exercise go" tracker at that point?

00:34:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just a workout tracker, right? That's what I'm using it for. And it also

00:34:08 ◼   ► lets me, so I can time how long I've been swimming for as well, right? I prefer that

00:34:13 ◼   ► than the big clock, which you can't always see or whatever. I like to just know how long

00:34:17 ◼   ► have I been here, like how long, when am I going to leave, that kind of thing. But I

00:34:21 ◼   ► I have absolutely no desire to go back to the Apple Watch.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Like I don't miss it.

00:34:27 ◼   ► I just don't miss it.

00:34:28 ◼   ► There are trade-offs and I'm dealing with those trade-offs,

00:34:32 ◼   ► but for my current state,

00:34:34 ◼   ► I feel like the trade-offs that I'm having to make,

00:34:36 ◼   ► they're not equivalent to how much I enjoy

00:34:39 ◼   ► wearing this piece of jewelry.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I get more enjoyment out of that

00:34:44 ◼   ► than I do dissatisfaction for having to do with my system.

00:34:48 ◼   ► And again, we're gonna talk about iOS 12 in a bit,

00:34:50 ◼   ► iOS 12 is making it even easier for me to deal with this stuff.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Yeah, like I said, you picked a good time to make this transition if you're going

00:34:57 ◼   ► to make this transition.

00:34:58 ◼   ► Roll back the tape to the last episode.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Why do you think I was focusing on notifications so heavily as what I was interested in, right?

00:35:05 ◼   ► Because my phone's been getting them all for like six weeks or something before that.

00:35:13 ◼   ► I'm not saying I will never go back to the Apple Watch, because I don't want to say

00:35:17 ◼   ► that because I don't know that's the case.

00:35:19 ◼   ► I just know it is very unlikely at this point.

00:35:22 ◼   ► But I could, and what will probably happen,

00:35:25 ◼   ► I might end up flip-flopping.

00:35:28 ◼   ► If the next Apple Watch is really amazing in some way,

00:35:31 ◼   ► maybe I'll drop in on it for a bit and see what's going on.

00:35:35 ◼   ► But there are little things.

00:35:36 ◼   ► I have my hand on the table right now.

00:35:38 ◼   ► I can look down.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Oh, look, there's the time.

00:35:42 ◼   ► I don't have to raise my wrist in front of my face

00:35:45 ◼   ► to see what the time is.

00:35:46 ◼   ► It's stuff like that.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Like the reasons I used to wear watches before the Apple Watch, those reasons are back and

00:35:54 ◼   ► they're back with something that I really love.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I love my watch.

00:36:00 ◼   ► It's beautiful and I'm very happy to wear it.

00:36:04 ◼   ► I'm in total agreement with you when you run through your reasons.

00:36:08 ◼   ► And the number one thing there is if a human is not trying to optimize in some sense for

00:36:14 ◼   ► happiness, right? Either happiness in the long term or happiness in the big picture.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Like, what is the point of what you're doing? So, like, this is this is definitely a thing that I

00:36:26 ◼   ► have I think as I have gotten older, there are things that I used to think of as not real,

00:36:37 ◼   ► which I now, as a more mature person, recognize as real.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And so, like I know a younger version of me

00:36:45 ◼   ► would think about watches in terms of a feature checklist.

00:36:49 ◼   ► And I think this is a thing that you can see

00:36:51 ◼   ► in many conversations about technology,

00:36:53 ◼   ► where people want to argue a feature checklist.

00:36:56 ◼   ► And it's like, well, but it's not,

00:36:58 ◼   ► it's not all about that, or it makes me happy,

00:37:02 ◼   ► is a real feature, right?

00:37:05 ◼   ► It may not be a feature that you can put on a product page,

00:37:08 ◼   ► but it's a feature that really matters.

00:37:10 ◼   ► And something like pleasant ticking sound

00:37:14 ◼   ► is also a feature that really matters.

00:37:16 ◼   ► - And do you see on this watch page, the back of it?

00:37:19 ◼   ► Oh, all the beautiful gears and stuff.

00:37:22 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:37:23 ◼   ► So this is one of the ones where you get to flip over

00:37:25 ◼   ► and take a look at it.

00:37:26 ◼   ► - If you scroll down on the page,

00:37:27 ◼   ► they have an image and you can click front and back.

00:37:30 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, yeah.

00:37:32 ◼   ► - It's so beautiful to just look at.

00:37:35 ◼   ► I mean, Myke, you don't have to sell me on the beauty of well-made gears turning in a

00:37:41 ◼   ► precise manner.

00:37:42 ◼   ► I mean, is there anything more beautiful in the universe?

00:37:45 ◼   ► I think not.

00:37:46 ◼   ► So I am with you 100% on this decision.

00:37:51 ◼   ► It's like if this watch gives you an ineffable happiness, then that is a totally reasonable

00:37:58 ◼   ► thing to optimize for and the trade-offs of not being able to get notifications in a particular

00:38:06 ◼   ► way. It's like that's a completely sensible trade-off and it would almost seem crazy to

00:38:10 ◼   ► try to argue it from the other side like you should have more features but be less happy

00:38:14 ◼   ► isn't that the better solution like well no not really and yeah also I think it's good

00:38:18 ◼   ► to get on the record that this doesn't mean that you're wearing a mechanical watch for

00:38:22 ◼   ► all of time. No. Right like things change and.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Apple could make something that I consider to be truly beautiful, which I don't consider the current Apple watch to be

00:38:34 ◼   ► It's like well

00:38:36 ◼   ► You are now

00:38:38 ◼   ► Beautiful. I want to wear it and I get extra stuff

00:38:41 ◼   ► right

00:38:42 ◼   ► like there is this is like this is why I would never I try as much as I can now to make less like

00:38:50 ◼   ► permanently declarative statements

00:38:53 ◼   ► about the decisions that I make,

00:38:55 ◼   ► and this is definitely one of them.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Right, it's like, right now, this is what I like.

00:39:00 ◼   ► But I completely reserve the right to change.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and, like, thinking about the Apple Watch as a product,

00:39:12 ◼   ► one thing when I do talk to people who are watch people

00:39:17 ◼   ► and I'm discussing the Apple Watch is,

00:39:19 ◼   ► I do just think about the Apple Watch on a longer timeframe

00:39:22 ◼   ► that mechanical watches are beautiful and they can make you happy.

00:39:28 ◼   ► But the Apple Watch is a product where, well, at a certain point, if they do keep adding features,

00:39:34 ◼   ► they can end up with killer features that override the aesthetic pleasures of a mechanical watch.

00:39:40 ◼   ► And they also have the ability to make it more attractive over time.

00:39:44 ◼   ► That's something that they can do, you know?

00:39:47 ◼   ► - That is true.

00:39:48 ◼   ► That is maybe one that I wouldn't be like

00:39:50 ◼   ► holding my hope out for, right?

00:39:52 ◼   ► But at a certain point, like when the Apple Watch

00:39:54 ◼   ► is able to do like continuous glucose and insulin monitoring

00:39:59 ◼   ► in your system and give you like real-time updates on it,

00:40:01 ◼   ► like at that point, you just become crazy to say,

00:40:05 ◼   ► "No, I'm going to accept tremendous negative health

00:40:09 ◼   ► downsides in the future that the Apple Watch

00:40:11 ◼   ► can help me avoid."

00:40:12 ◼   ► Like in that future world,

00:40:14 ◼   ► it becomes a different kind of thing.

00:40:16 ◼   ► But no, for right now, I think if this watch makes you happy,

00:40:20 ◼   ► I think it's a good decision.

00:40:22 ◼   ► It's a very good decision to wear it.

00:40:24 ◼   ► And it also feels, listening to you tell the details

00:40:27 ◼   ► that I was unaware about how this came to be,

00:40:28 ◼   ► that the stars of the universe aligned

00:40:32 ◼   ► to make sure that Myke was wearing this watch.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Everything was perfect.

00:40:37 ◼   ► You were in an environment where you felt okay

00:40:39 ◼   ► wearing it for a little bit.

00:40:40 ◼   ► You had a shepherd leading you, leading the way

00:40:44 ◼   ► to get the exact correct watch and everything seemed like it was just perfect for you. So

00:40:50 ◼   ► I'm very happy for you and your mechanical watch.

00:40:52 ◼   ► I already have my eye on my next one.

00:40:54 ◼   ► That's what happens though, right?

00:40:56 ◼   ► I know what I want next. This was always my concern as being a pen person, right? I know

00:41:04 ◼   ► I like expensive, beautiful things. Because pens, the pens that I buy, are expensive and

00:41:11 ◼   ► beautiful. They're not as expensive as these watches are though, and that's why I was concerned

00:41:16 ◼   ► about myself. Right? Like, where do I go from here? I don't know.

00:41:21 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, that's why you're pushing for more Cortex episodes. I understand now."

00:41:25 ◼   ► I haven't watched a bunch, come on! Or I could just do what I do for the pen addict, right?

00:41:30 ◼   ► Like start a pen podcast and the business buys the pens.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Coming soon to Real AFM. Watch show!

00:41:39 ◼   ► I've enjoyed this section of WatchTech.

00:41:45 ◼   ► There we go.

00:41:46 ◼   ► We talk about watches and Cortex and now there we go.

00:41:49 ◼   ► Watch reviews.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Yeah, by branding it WatchTech it's now officially part of the business.

00:41:54 ◼   ► There you go Myke.

00:41:57 ◼   ► That's my wedding gift to you.

00:41:59 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Squarespace.

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00:43:44 ◼   ► Make your next website.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Great. Where actually where in the world are you right now?

00:43:48 ◼   ► I don't actually think I know.

00:43:50 ◼   ► You still like roaming the desert lands somewhere out in California.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Where are you?

00:43:55 ◼   ► My body is no longer in California.

00:43:58 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:43:59 ◼   ► - But my brain is still in California.

00:44:01 ◼   ► I'm having a hard time placing the timeline,

00:44:06 ◼   ► but I think I just got back from West Coast time

00:44:09 ◼   ► two days ago, and I'm in the midst

00:44:15 ◼   ► of some really bad jet lag.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Sometimes I come back and I feel like,

00:44:19 ◼   ► oh, I luck out and I relatively smoothly

00:44:22 ◼   ► get back into the swing of things,

00:44:23 ◼   ► but this time after a month almost exactly in America,

00:44:28 ◼   ► I'm having a real bad jet lag day.

00:44:32 ◼   ► - I would say I'm not surprised, man.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Like when I came back from WWDC, I was a wreck.

00:44:36 ◼   ► It's the worst jet lag I've ever had.

00:44:38 ◼   ► It lasted like 10 days.

00:44:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, like this is me coming,

00:44:43 ◼   ► returning from the back of VidCon

00:44:45 ◼   ► and returning from a conference is the additional barrier

00:44:49 ◼   ► where like if you had just,

00:44:51 ◼   ► let's say you lived in California, Myke,

00:44:53 ◼   ► and you went to WWDC.

00:44:55 ◼   ► You would still need several days after that

00:44:58 ◼   ► to just recover from what the event was.

00:45:01 ◼   ► I don't know, this is one of those things,

00:45:02 ◼   ► whenever you talk about it on a podcast,

00:45:04 ◼   ► like I just, it's impossible to convey,

00:45:06 ◼   ► and I think it, maybe it comes across a little bit

00:45:09 ◼   ► as like complaining about an awesome thing,

00:45:11 ◼   ► because like the conferences are interesting

00:45:13 ◼   ► and important to go to,

00:45:15 ◼   ► but they are, as someone doing shows,

00:45:17 ◼   ► or like meeting people, or going to events,

00:45:20 ◼   ► like doing all of this stuff,

00:45:22 ◼   ► it is just so draining in a way that is impossible to explain.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Like it's a very different experience from being an attendee at a conference.

00:45:32 ◼   ► And yeah,

00:45:34 ◼   ► so I think when like you've been at WWDC and you've gone through like you in

00:45:39 ◼   ► particular,

00:45:40 ◼   ► like you went through an emotional roller coaster on like it was a,

00:45:44 ◼   ► it was a big WWDC for you as like,

00:45:46 ◼   ► but that just on top of all of your responsibilities as like a person who is

00:45:52 ◼   ► participating in the conference, to then return

00:45:55 ◼   ► and also have to go through, you know, whatever it is,

00:45:58 ◼   ► like nine hours of readjustment.

00:46:01 ◼   ► I think those two things have a dark synergy,

00:46:04 ◼   ► which makes a jet lag way worse.

00:46:08 ◼   ► And this year, for my big summer of traveling,

00:46:12 ◼   ► I was intentionally trying to turn down the dial

00:46:16 ◼   ► on a lot of things to try to make it

00:46:19 ◼   ► a little bit easier this time for me.

00:46:21 ◼   ► And thank God I did because there was like a lot of unexpected things that came up, which

00:46:25 ◼   ► is like, "Oh boy, if I hadn't turned down the dial, I'd be really screwed."

00:46:29 ◼   ► But last year, which was like the roughest one for me, yeah, when I came back from that,

00:46:33 ◼   ► like the jet lag, you know, it was a long time before I felt like a normal person.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And it was just because you're combining all of these various effects.

00:46:40 ◼   ► So I think I'm in a little bit of that right now.

00:46:45 ◼   ► Like we were recording the podcast in the evening, but I woke up like barely two hours

00:46:50 ◼   ► before we were scheduled to record, and I had no idea or no intention. I was just like,

00:46:57 ◼   ► "Ah!" I woke up.

00:46:58 ◼   ► You're going to be closing down the bar next weekend. You're going to be great!

00:47:03 ◼   ► What time is it? And I look at the clock and I'm like, "Jesus, how did this even happen?"

00:47:08 ◼   ► I look at my little sleep tracker and I'm like, "You have been asleep for 13 hours."

00:47:12 ◼   ► Oh dear. Okay, that was unexpected. Thanks, brain.

00:47:16 ◼   ► Morning!

00:47:17 ◼   ► But no, I won't be closing down the bar next week because I'll probably be readjusted just enough,

00:47:24 ◼   ► like just right in time to then have like a wild night of my wedding party to then mess everything up again and throw it all off.

00:47:32 ◼   ► So I can't say that I'm really looking forward to this next 10 days or so of readjustment.

00:47:40 ◼   ► But anyway, that is the long answer to I'm back from conference season.

00:47:46 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:47:47 ◼   ► - Is VidCon more or less tiring for you than WWDC?

00:47:52 ◼   ► - Oh man, that's an interesting question.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Okay, let me put it this way.

00:47:58 ◼   ► I enjoy going to WWDC more,

00:48:03 ◼   ► but it's a totally unfair comparison

00:48:08 ◼   ► because at WWDC, things are much more spread out

00:48:13 ◼   ► because it's a week versus--

00:48:16 ◼   ► I set myself a hard max of three days at VidCon.

00:48:21 ◼   ► Technically, I could spend five days there,

00:48:22 ◼   ► but I've learned it's like three days and I'm out.

00:48:24 ◼   ► I don't care what is happening the day before,

00:48:27 ◼   ► and I don't care what is happening the day after.

00:48:29 ◼   ► I can't--

00:48:30 ◼   ► Right, because the conference is three days,

00:48:31 ◼   ► but there are ancillary events on either side, right?

00:48:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:48:34 ◼   ► There are an enormous--

00:48:36 ◼   ► VidCon unofficial is much more like a five-day conference.

00:48:41 ◼   ► Because anybody who watches vloggers

00:48:43 ◼   ► go to VidCon. Like you see all sorts of companies are throwing ancillary events immediately

00:48:47 ◼   ► before and immediately after and like there's always stuff to do. But I give myself a real

00:48:51 ◼   ► hard limit to like three days and then I'm out of here, right? Like I am on a plane into

00:48:57 ◼   ► the sunset as fast as I can possibly be. So VidCon is way more draining even though it's

00:49:03 ◼   ► the shorter period of time. But that's also just because like at VidCon I have so much

00:49:08 ◼   ► more work-related stuff, right? It's like every day is filled with things that are,

00:49:16 ◼   ► even if it's not like directly business-related, it's much more like my industry. Whereas

00:49:22 ◼   ► at WWDC, I feel almost like an interloper. I mean, like I'm there and we record a podcast

00:49:29 ◼   ► about WWDC and, you know, we do talk about Apple stuff, but it's much more like, "Oh,

00:49:34 ◼   ► I'm here and this is just like an interesting experience

00:49:39 ◼   ► that I get to have as a foreigner.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And I get to see like, oh, here's all the developers.

00:49:46 ◼   ► This is their work conference that they're going for.

00:49:49 ◼   ► And I'm just observing this herd of developers

00:49:53 ◼   ► and their lifestyle.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Whereas like VidCon, it's like, oh,

00:49:56 ◼   ► it's all wrapped up in my industry

00:50:00 ◼   ► and it makes it just a much more complicated experience.

00:50:03 ◼   ► But that is why the VidCon is way more draining.

00:50:05 ◼   ► But the interesting thing though, Myke,

00:50:08 ◼   ► is in terms of getting recognized,

00:50:12 ◼   ► WWDC is ground zero for me getting recognized.

00:50:17 ◼   ► - That's so weird, it's so weird.

00:50:19 ◼   ► - Like no joke, I must get recognized.

00:50:23 ◼   ► I'm like, I don't think I have a reasonable number.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I guess what I can say is, I'll phrase it this way,

00:50:27 ◼   ► at WWDC, if I leave the hotel,

00:50:30 ◼   ► I think I've got something like a 60% chance

00:50:32 ◼   ► getting recognized if I'm just running in errands. And at VidCon that number is way

00:50:40 ◼   ► lower.

00:50:41 ◼   ► Because it's like, with your combined audiences of your two shows, it is a fraction of your

00:50:51 ◼   ► YouTube audience size, right? Like of the people that would see one of your videos.

00:50:58 ◼   ► The only thing I can think of is that, no, do you know what, I have no idea, I have no

00:51:03 ◼   ► idea why.

00:51:04 ◼   ► I can't work it out because, you know, just by the law or averages, there's probably more

00:51:10 ◼   ► people at VidCon that know who you are because combined with the shows and the videos, it's

00:51:17 ◼   ► so weird to me.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I wonder, I can't place why that would be.

00:51:21 ◼   ► Well there's a couple of things.

00:51:24 ◼   ► One of which is, I mean, VidCon, I don't know how many people were there this year, but

00:51:27 ◼   ► last year. I think the number they estimated was something like 50-60,000 people at VidCon

00:51:32 ◼   ► last year. And it is a lot of people and I do get recognized there. But I also think

00:51:38 ◼   ► that VidCon shifts very heavily towards a particular screaming demographic.

00:51:45 ◼   ► Oh, the demos are different. Yeah.

00:51:48 ◼   ► So there's two things that are going on there. I think among the VidCon screamers demographic,

00:51:54 ◼   ► my videos are going to be much underrepresented compared to the general population. And then

00:52:01 ◼   ► on the flip side, while the people who go to WWDC, I think those people are overrepresented

00:52:13 ◼   ► in my demographic. Like the phrase I kept using is like, "Oh, these people are my

00:52:17 ◼   ► kind of nerds," right? And it's like, "Ah ha ha ha." So I think that's partly

00:52:21 ◼   ► what it is. There's a big demographic skew and the number of people who watch my videos or

00:52:29 ◼   ► listen to Cortex in particular is way over-represented in the types of people who go to WWDC.

00:52:35 ◼   ► That is a good point. And there's an interesting thing where even for me,

00:52:40 ◼   ► I think Cortex is over-represented at WWDC.

00:52:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it was quite fascinating to see, like, there were a lot of Cortex shirts around San Jose.

00:52:52 ◼   ► There were, and lots of high fives.

00:52:53 ◼   ► Oh yeah, one-sided high fives.

00:52:55 ◼   ► You know, if you think about all of my shows, even like my Apple-focused shows, I would get

00:52:59 ◼   ► just like, more people tell me they listen to this show and maybe another one of those, right?

00:53:04 ◼   ► Or just tell me this show in like a way that didn't make sense based upon how like, those

00:53:10 ◼   ► shows stack up against each other. It's really weird in a good way. I love it. It's very strange.

00:53:15 ◼   ► It's an interesting comparison against your other Apple-focused shows because like while

00:53:18 ◼   ► we do talk about Apple stuff on here like this isn't an Apple podcast in the same way that like

00:53:24 ◼   ► Connected is a technology podcast but it's way Apple. And it's like I think it's there might be

00:53:31 ◼   ► this thing where you know like Connected is focused on news right and if you don't care

00:53:37 ◼   ► about that, but you are a nerd. You might be more likely to listen to this nerdy show

00:53:45 ◼   ► than the news show. As you say, our kinds of nerds, right? The people that listen to

00:53:51 ◼   ► our show really care about certain specific things that are maybe a little bit more general.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Except for time tracking. No, but see, here's the thing. I got a lot of people saying, "Oh,

00:54:01 ◼   ► they want to hear more about time tracking in person." They took the opportunity to

00:54:04 ◼   ► Those people, they keep themselves private, right?

00:54:07 ◼   ► They won't talk about it on Reddit if they want to hear it, but they'll tell us.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Yeah. Like, I was getting petitions from people where they're like,

00:54:13 ◼   ► "You gotta do more of the time tracking stuff."

00:54:16 ◼   ► Like, I really enjoyed it, but I was just gonna say, it was interesting as well,

00:54:20 ◼   ► just observing you, that it seemed like your recognition at WWDC also went up

00:54:27 ◼   ► quite a lot this year.

00:54:29 ◼   ► This year was incredible.

00:54:31 ◼   ► like it's just the amount of people that would stop their scooters and say hi, right?

00:54:35 ◼   ► Like I had that a few times, right?

00:54:37 ◼   ► And it was very different this year and I never really took selfies before with people.

00:54:43 ◼   ► In previous WWDCs, but this year it was like a lot like where last time it happened but

00:54:49 ◼   ► was infrequent.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Like mostly people just wanted to talk.

00:54:52 ◼   ► This time there were a lot of selfies.

00:54:55 ◼   ► I did want to mention a tip.

00:54:57 ◼   ► I took a picture with someone and afterwards she gave me the phone and it was in markup

00:55:02 ◼   ► mode and said sign the picture.

00:55:04 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I saw this.

00:55:05 ◼   ► This was genius.

00:55:06 ◼   ► This is one of the smartest things that I've ever seen.

00:55:09 ◼   ► So I just want to impart this tip to someone.

00:55:11 ◼   ► If you ever meet anyone and take a selfie with them, ask them to sign it.

00:55:16 ◼   ► Like it's genius.

00:55:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw her do that and I was like, that is a brilliant idea.

00:55:21 ◼   ► I thought that was like, why have I not seen a million people do this before?

00:55:26 ◼   ► such a clever idea.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Like, I think she was using Snapchat.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Yeah, she was using, yeah, she totally was using Snapchat.

00:55:30 ◼   ► But you can do it in the photos app, right?

00:55:32 ◼   ► You just mark up the photo in the, in, or like take a screenshot of it and go into markup

00:55:36 ◼   ► mode and sign.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Genius.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Like, you changed the way that I think about interactions with people.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Like it was so smart.

00:55:43 ◼   ► But yeah, like my, like, yeah, it was way more for me, um, than it had been previously.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Like there, there had been a change.

00:55:50 ◼   ► I don't know what it is, but there's been a change.

00:55:52 ◼   ► Maybe it was old Timmy C on stage talking about me.

00:55:55 ◼   ► It changed everything.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, the other thing,

00:55:59 ◼   ► again, comparing the two conferences in my mind,

00:56:02 ◼   ► I am genuinely glad that it works out this way for me

00:56:06 ◼   ► because it's like,

00:56:08 ◼   ► I was having such a hard way of delicately saying this,

00:56:11 ◼   ► I am fine with being recognized at these conferences

00:56:15 ◼   ► because I think it would be unreasonable to go to them

00:56:19 ◼   ► and expect people to just leave you alone all the time.

00:56:23 ◼   ► stupid. Like you can't, you can't be public in the way that we are and go to an event

00:56:29 ◼   ► with his people and be like, "I don't want to see anyone." Like, why are you there then?

00:56:33 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, you can be there for other reasons. And it's like, I go to the conferences

00:56:38 ◼   ► for other reasons. And this is totally a thing that's like a trade-off in life. It's like,

00:56:44 ◼   ► I accept that this is a thing that's going to happen. And then I'm like, "Okay, I'm

00:56:48 ◼   ► fine." Like I'm going into it and knowing that. But I'm sort of glad that I get recognized

00:56:53 ◼   ► much less at VidCon because that one is already so overwhelming, and it's also the one where

00:56:58 ◼   ► it's like I'm much more pressed for time, like moving between different locations to

00:57:01 ◼   ► do different things. So I'm glad that WWDC happens to be the one where if I'm going

00:57:08 ◼   ► to pick one that I'm more recognised at, that's the one.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Yeah, and I bet the interactions will be way more chill at WWDC.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Yeah, the interactions are much more relaxed. And the other point that I wanted to make,

00:57:20 ◼   ► is I think also why, like when you're trying to mentally puzzle out like you do these Apple

00:57:26 ◼   ► podcasts but then people are mentioning Cortex in particular, I was aware last year but I

00:57:32 ◼   ► was particularly aware this year that lots of people who said hi wanted to say hi and

00:57:41 ◼   ► then also convey some way that this show had an impact on them. And so I think that's partly

00:57:47 ◼   ► why it may be in the front of their minds. And it's just interesting to hear people

00:57:54 ◼   ► talk about, I think particularly with this show, like side projects they have started

00:58:00 ◼   ► or changes they've made in their life or ways they've tried to improve themselves.

00:58:06 ◼   ► WILLIE Yay themes, man. So many people were talking to me about either yearly themes or

00:58:11 ◼   ► the daily questions stuff. And it just made me so happy to hear and like I see it in the

00:58:17 ◼   ► on the Reddit too and people share them

00:58:20 ◼   ► and they share their themes

00:58:21 ◼   ► or they share their daily questions that they do.

00:58:23 ◼   ► And it just makes me so happy to see that.

00:58:27 ◼   ► I love it.

00:58:28 ◼   ► It's really, it warms my heart to see that people

00:58:32 ◼   ► take some of the stuff that we're talking about

00:58:34 ◼   ► and it makes some kind of positive impact,

00:58:36 ◼   ► especially when those two things specifically

00:58:39 ◼   ► I believe in so strongly now

00:58:41 ◼   ► and have made such a big impact on my life

00:58:44 ◼   ► I genuinely believe the power of them. And it's really nice to know that there are other

00:58:50 ◼   ► people in the world that are that are using them to affect. I love it.

00:58:55 ◼   ► You know, those two things I think of stuff that we've done on the show recently, like

00:58:58 ◼   ► those those have had a clear impact on people thinking about it, like bringing that to their

00:59:02 ◼   ► attention. But I also, I think about it in a particular way that I heard reflected back

00:59:10 ◼   ► from people who wanted to say hi, which is that it is often just useful to feel like

00:59:18 ◼   ► you are part of a conversation between two people who are just talking about this stuff.

00:59:24 ◼   ► And even if it's not any particular thing, the idea of being able to listen in to other

00:59:31 ◼   ► people discuss like, "Oh, how do you do this?" or "How do you do that?" that that just puts

00:59:35 ◼   ► your mind in a good spot for thinking about that with yourself.

00:59:40 ◼   ► Like it causes you to be more aware of,

00:59:45 ◼   ► "Oh, is there a way that I can change this in my life to make it better?"

00:59:48 ◼   ► And yeah, so I don't, you know, I don't want to get all mushy or anything,

00:59:53 ◼   ► but it is one way that at WWDC in particular, like it's

00:59:58 ◼   ► a very meaningful kind of feedback to receive

01:00:04 ◼   ► that you've had like a positive impact on a person's life.

01:00:07 ◼   ► So I'm gonna take this emotional conversation as part of a result of your jet lag.

01:00:14 ◼   ► But I think we're perfectly warranted to talk about this as we have just passed

01:00:20 ◼   ► our third anniversary of this show like a couple of weeks ago.

01:00:24 ◼   ► So I feel like, you know, it's perfectly fine to be so introspective.

01:00:30 ◼   ► And talk about the show this time because we're now three years old.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I didn't realize that, Myke. We've been doing this a lot. I still think of this as like a new...

01:00:40 ◼   ► It's my new show. It's my most recent show, even though I have so many shows that have

01:00:44 ◼   ► started since. I think it's because we're three years old but only like 70 episodes in.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe that's what it is.

01:00:52 ◼   ► It breaks my mental model of how shows work, right? This doesn't make any sense.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Because I have shows that are basically as old as this one that are approaching 200 episodes, so

01:01:04 ◼   ► right, you know, it's all broken. But yeah, that's why we can get, we can talk about the show because

01:01:09 ◼   ► we've just passed a milestone. Yeah, yeah, okay, good, yeah, I feel this, I'm like, why am I, why

01:01:15 ◼   ► am I feeling this so strongly? And yes, it's exactly, it's a milestone, which I didn't recognize,

01:01:19 ◼   ► but yeah, it's a milestone and also I'm deeply jet lagged, but you know, I still want to, still

01:01:25 ◼   ► want to just impart that if I do meet someone and say hello and you say a meaningful thing,

01:01:32 ◼   ► I'm still going to put hand sanitizer on my hands after saying hi. So just like, don't

01:01:37 ◼   ► take it personally.

01:01:38 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:01:39 ◼   ► "With a tear rolling down my face and the puerile of my hands."

01:01:43 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:01:44 ◼   ► "It's very nice to meet you. Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub."

01:01:48 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:01:49 ◼   ► "This is the first conference that I have ever considered hand sanitizer. It was like

01:01:54 ◼   ► an important thing and this is because there's a show that I love called Dubai Friday and

01:01:59 ◼   ► whilst I was on my way out to WWDC they did an episode about germs. It's a challenge show.

01:02:05 ◼   ► I love it by the way you should check it out it's a fantastic show and they set challenges

01:02:10 ◼   ► every week and they complete the challenges and the challenge of this one was to swab

01:02:14 ◼   ► things in your house including your hands leave them for a week and see how the bacteria

01:02:18 ◼   ► grows. I was listening to this on a plane which is possibly the worst place to think

01:02:23 ◼   ► about bacteria, locked in this tube. But then when I arrived at WWDC, there was a phrase

01:02:31 ◼   ► that Max on the show was using, "hot hands" was the phrase. Like, you touch anything and

01:02:37 ◼   ► you have hot hands, so don't put them on your face because they're hot hands. So I went

01:02:41 ◼   ► and bought hand sanitizer and hand sanitizing wipes and this is the first time I've ever

01:02:46 ◼   ► come back from WWDC with a clean bill of health. No cold, nothing. And it's because, you know,

01:02:51 ◼   ► meeting people all the time, everyone's got germs all over them, right? And these aren't my germs,

01:02:56 ◼   ► so they can make me sick. And there are people that are sick that are going to be there,

01:03:00 ◼   ► and then I'm talking to people, I'm shaking hands with people, I'm just touching loads of stuff

01:03:04 ◼   ► because I'm out in the world. Yeah, like, I want to back this up because, again, people can think

01:03:11 ◼   ► you're kind of like a nutty germaphobe for this sort of thing, but it is also, again, like,

01:03:17 ◼   ► When you, for example, Myke, like you do a live show and then afterward you stick around and you're saying hi to everybody, you're shaking 100, 200 hands in the space of an hour.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Right? It's, you know, people are like, oh, what a nutty germaphobe for carrying sanitizer.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Like, but this is a different situation, right? The people meeting you are just shaking your hand.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I have multiplied my possibility of getting a cold by 200.

01:03:41 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. And also as people think, oh, people overestimate or they think you're

01:03:46 ◼   ► being ridiculous about it, but a big quality of life improvement from when I left teaching

01:03:51 ◼   ► and became self-employed and interacted with, you know, went from interacting with several

01:03:56 ◼   ► hundred children every day—

01:03:58 ◼   ► No disgusting children anymore.

01:04:00 ◼   ► —to interacting with no one is—this is going to sound like an overstatement, but

01:04:06 ◼   ► It was almost like I forgot what just not being sick was.

01:04:13 ◼   ► I hadn't quite realized that I was very frequently, just constantly at a low level

01:04:20 ◼   ► of sickness, aside from just genuinely being unwell on a very frequent basis.

01:04:28 ◼   ► Whereas now, when I get a cold or something worse, it's like, "How dare this happen

01:04:33 ◼   ► to me?!"

01:04:34 ◼   ► It happens so rarely!

01:04:35 ◼   ► "Get out, you dumb spot! Be gone!"

01:04:38 ◼   ► I used to just accept this as a regular part of life, but then after leaving teaching,

01:04:43 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, of course! The number of times I get sick has gone from always to a rare event."

01:04:50 ◼   ► And yeah, I try to be very conscious at conferences about keeping your hands clean,

01:04:57 ◼   ► touching your face, like you said, is a very clear one.

01:05:00 ◼   ► Like, "Watch the eyes, man! Don't touch your eyes!"

01:05:03 ◼   ► and then also just food. Like you have to be very careful about the food and like don't eat

01:05:11 ◼   ► don't eat stuff that's in the conference hall, you know, have your own supply or go somewhere else.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Yeah, you have to be careful about that stuff because otherwise you're guaranteed to come back

01:05:20 ◼   ► and like fingers crossed many many bottles of hand sanitizer have prevented me from being sick

01:05:28 ◼   ► on top of dealing with jet lag coming back?

01:05:32 ◼   ► I can't guarantee that that was the reason, but I just know it's the only

01:05:36 ◼   ► thing I did differently. Right. Right, and I feel like I've

01:05:41 ◼   ► gotten through and it's not a terrible thing and there we go. And now,

01:05:45 ◼   ► also, I just in general wash my hands a lot more these days and I think it's

01:05:52 ◼   ► helping me. Like just in random points points in a

01:05:55 ◼   ► day I'm like, "I wash my hands now. This could end up being a problem for

01:05:58 ◼   ► me right now. It's good.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Right, I want to be clear. This is not a compulsion, but for you, Myke, this might be how a compulsion

01:06:07 ◼   ► starts.

01:06:08 ◼   ► It's not a compulsion. I just sometimes feel like I want to do it, and then I just do it.

01:06:11 ◼   ► It's not a compulsion. It's fine. It's nothing to worry about.

01:06:14 ◼   ► You could not wash your hands when that thought came into your head of you could wash your

01:06:17 ◼   ► hands. You could just sit there and try to avoid it for the next several hours.

01:06:19 ◼   ► We have nice soaps. I just like to use them. That's all it is.

01:06:23 ◼   ► You do have very nice soap. I can vouch for that.

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01:08:00 ◼   ► Gray, are you running the iOS 12 beta?

01:08:04 ◼   ► Well, if we rewind the clock on a previous episode, I think I said that I wanted to wait

01:08:11 ◼   ► until public beta 2 or public beta 3.

01:08:15 ◼   ► No joke, I had the public beta 1 on my phone within 45 minutes of it being announced.

01:08:22 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

01:08:23 ◼   ► I am on the developer beta because I basically, as soon as beta 2 came out, I was like, "I've

01:08:30 ◼   ► just got to do it."

01:08:31 ◼   ► So I did it, I went for it.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I actually think I saw it before beta 2.

01:08:33 ◼   ► I think I was on the tail end of beta 1.

01:08:36 ◼   ► I mean, I would criticize you for living dangerously by putting the developer beta on your phone.

01:08:43 ◼   ► said I was having some, it doesn't matter, but I was like, you know what I'm gonna

01:08:48 ◼   ► do? I'm gonna put the developer beta on my watch.

01:08:52 ◼   ► That is an absolute do not do. Like Federico put it on his watch and it is not reading

01:08:58 ◼   ► his heart rate correctly anymore.

01:09:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not a recommended.

01:09:03 ◼   ► The watch is a bad idea.

01:09:04 ◼   ► No, it's a terrible idea.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It was such a bad idea for the first week that Apple had to remove it because it was

01:09:10 ◼   ► bricking watches like do not do. Yeah I waited until after that but then then you know put

01:09:17 ◼   ► it on. You actually have the watch better and yeah I have the watch beta running. How's

01:09:21 ◼   ► that going? Is it okay? Ah it's fine it's it's fine I did it because this is how I talked

01:09:31 ◼   ► myself into doing it so obviously the reason that you and I have put the beta on our phone

01:09:36 ◼   ► is the same reason that we want to play around

01:09:39 ◼   ► with the notification stuff.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Like that's the big thing to do right now with the beta,

01:09:44 ◼   ► because the shortcuts app,

01:09:45 ◼   ► which we both discussed last time,

01:09:47 ◼   ► is going to be a huge deal for iOS in general,

01:09:50 ◼   ► is not currently available in the beta.

01:09:52 ◼   ► I don't know if, or when, or how that's ever going to appear,

01:09:56 ◼   ► but at the moment that's not around.

01:09:57 ◼   ► So the main thing to do with the beta

01:09:59 ◼   ► is notification stuff.

01:10:01 ◼   ► And as I said last time,

01:10:05 ◼   ► the details of how they implement the notifications really,

01:10:10 ◼   ► really matter and really affect if this can be a useful thing or not.

01:10:14 ◼   ► And so I was trying some of the notification stuff and recognizing that I was

01:10:20 ◼   ► getting notifications on my watch when I wasn't expecting them based on the

01:10:26 ◼   ► settings on my phone. And it suddenly, it occurred to me, I was like,

01:10:29 ◼   ► wait a minute,

01:10:31 ◼   ► Nothing they ever said at WWDC had anything to do with notifications on the watch. It

01:10:36 ◼   ► was all just notifications on the phone. I was thinking, you know, I wouldn't put it

01:10:41 ◼   ► past Apple to not have this system work in both places. And then I just like, I started

01:10:48 ◼   ► wondering, and I couldn't stop myself from wondering. I'm like, well, the only way

01:10:51 ◼   ► I can find out is if I just install the developer beta on my phone.

01:10:54 ◼   ► I disagree with that.

01:10:55 ◼   ► Which I did.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Because I do have the answer to that question.

01:10:57 ◼   ► No, the only way to know was to install the developer beta.

01:11:01 ◼   ► - For sure. - For sure.

01:11:03 ◼   ► - It's the only, 'cause who can trust Myke?

01:11:05 ◼   ► The only way to truly know. - The only way to know.

01:11:08 ◼   ► And the answer is I still don't quite know

01:11:11 ◼   ► if some behavior is buggy or if it's expected behavior,

01:11:14 ◼   ► but there are group notifications on the watch.

01:11:16 ◼   ► So that's one thing.

01:11:18 ◼   ► - And you can get notification center

01:11:19 ◼   ► anywhere on the watch now.

01:11:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, yeah, the public beta came out.

01:11:24 ◼   ► I could not resist and I immediately threw it on my phone.

01:11:28 ◼   ► And it's been very interesting.

01:11:31 ◼   ► We're talking at the point where, you know,

01:11:35 ◼   ► I guess it's been on my phone for about a week.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Yeah, actually looking at my screen time chart,

01:11:40 ◼   ► it's been seven days exactly

01:11:41 ◼   ► that I've had the beta on my phone.

01:11:43 ◼   ► And I think this is going to be useful for me,

01:11:48 ◼   ► but this is going to be a time of change

01:11:51 ◼   ► and experimentation in how I'm using my phone.

01:11:54 ◼   ► So I'm at a very indeterminate point right now

01:11:57 ◼   ► or I'm just trying to figure out how can this be useful

01:12:00 ◼   ► or how do I need to change the way I work on iOS

01:12:04 ◼   ► to take advantage of the new notification stuff in iOS 12.

01:12:09 ◼   ► - So I mean, I would say it is an improvement for me

01:12:14 ◼   ► in basically every single way.

01:12:16 ◼   ► Grouping is incredible.

01:12:18 ◼   ► I'm so happy that that has come back

01:12:20 ◼   ► because I've bemoaned many times that in iOS 11,

01:12:24 ◼   ► they removed grouping by app,

01:12:26 ◼   ► which was sorting by app and notification center

01:12:28 ◼   ► for seemingly no reason.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Looks like the reason was because they were doing this.

01:12:32 ◼   ► I kind of wished that Apple sometimes did everything

01:12:35 ◼   ► at the same time rather than half here and half there.

01:12:38 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:12:39 ◼   ► - But they did it and now the grouping system is incredible.

01:12:42 ◼   ► So it groups currently by applications.

01:12:46 ◼   ► In future, I believe when developers take advantage

01:12:49 ◼   ► of everything that's going on here,

01:12:51 ◼   ► the phone will actually be able to group

01:12:52 ◼   ► by broad topic area, so like social networking.

01:12:57 ◼   ► And also if you have an application

01:13:00 ◼   ► which is maybe conversation based, something like Slack,

01:13:03 ◼   ► it will be able to in theory group all of your notifications

01:13:07 ◼   ► based upon certain channels that you're talking in

01:13:09 ◼   ► in the same way that iMessage does.

01:13:10 ◼   ► - Oh wow, okay, interesting.

01:13:12 ◼   ► I didn't even realize that.

01:13:13 ◼   ► - So iMessage right now,

01:13:15 ◼   ► it will group all of your individual conversations.

01:13:18 ◼   ► So if you have a thread,

01:13:20 ◼   ► like two different conversations going on,

01:13:22 ◼   ► you get notifications for them, it collapses them by the thread that you're in.

01:13:27 ◼   ► And developers can use that as well, is my understanding. So it can,

01:13:31 ◼   ► it will get even better, but this grouping is, it's perfect for me.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Like I can look at my notifications and I can see what's going on.

01:13:39 ◼   ► The new tools that they have,

01:13:42 ◼   ► I have been managing my notifications more in the past two weeks than I have in

01:13:46 ◼   ► the last two years. I was like, apps come in, you swipe over,

01:13:51 ◼   ► you press the manage button and I'm like turn off completely or deliver quietly,

01:13:55 ◼   ► which I really like.

01:13:56 ◼   ► And that it's finally separated the lock screen and notification center from

01:14:01 ◼   ► each other again, which again, they brought them together in iOS 11,

01:14:03 ◼   ► but it didn't make any sense. But now you look at the lock screen,

01:14:06 ◼   ► you see what's there, you pull up and you see things that are notification center.

01:14:10 ◼   ► And this stuff is either old stuff or it's stuff that you've asked not to buzz

01:14:14 ◼   ► you and not to alert you. And that's what deliver quietly means.

01:14:17 ◼   ► They just go into notification center and you don't find out about them any

01:14:20 ◼   ► other way. The thing with deliver quietly, which I think is kind of genius on

01:14:24 ◼   ► Apple's part, is that's not new. You could in iOS 11 set up

01:14:30 ◼   ► notifications to do that. It's just it was not obvious to people that this was

01:14:35 ◼   ► even a thing that was possible. Well because it's one button that operates

01:14:39 ◼   ► like four different checkboxes. Yeah. Because it turns off sounds, it changes

01:14:43 ◼   ► the alert type, and turns off badges. Yeah I had a million things set up to the

01:14:48 ◼   ► "deliver quietly" feature so that they would only appear in the swipe up thing.

01:14:53 ◼   ► But I think it is a great idea for Apple to bundle that stuff together into a concept.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Nobody's going to remember, "Oh, I've got to flip these four switches if I want this behavior."

01:15:06 ◼   ► The "deliver quietly" button is a great, great addition.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And I think it's a good example of user interface making something easier for people to do.

01:15:17 ◼   ► yeah, this was possible in the past, but essentially nobody did it because

01:15:22 ◼   ► you'd have to be a lunatic about managing your notifications to figure it out

01:15:25 ◼   ► and to also set that up on, you know, a dozen apps or something. So I think it's,

01:15:29 ◼   ► it is a really great addition to have that swipe over and be able to just hit

01:15:32 ◼   ► deliver quietly. It's, it's really nice.

01:15:34 ◼   ► So, I mean, for me, like the notification stuff so far is,

01:15:38 ◼   ► is an absolute win and there's still so much more functionality that can and

01:15:42 ◼   ► will be added. Like it's,

01:15:44 ◼   ► It's considering how I'm moving back to the phone.

01:15:47 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It's perfect for me.

01:15:49 ◼   ► - Like I'm really smiling, being aware

01:15:52 ◼   ► that you've moved back to the phone

01:15:53 ◼   ► because I think the current state of things

01:15:57 ◼   ► is like actually maybe notification management

01:16:00 ◼   ► on the phone particularly for someone like you

01:16:02 ◼   ► is the better way to try to do it

01:16:04 ◼   ► than notifications on the watch.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Because the way you receive notifications,

01:16:10 ◼   ► you're going to want to take advantage of that screen space

01:16:12 ◼   ► in a way that the watch just can't really replicate.

01:16:16 ◼   ► So it really is like perfect season for Myke

01:16:21 ◼   ► with moving back to the phone and having these features

01:16:23 ◼   ► because if you are a heavy notification user on the phone,

01:16:26 ◼   ► like it's a much better way to interact with stuff.

01:16:30 ◼   ► - Do Not Disturb's really good too.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Some of the changes that they've made,

01:16:33 ◼   ► like in Control Center where you can just hold it

01:16:36 ◼   ► and be like for an hour or until this calendar event is done.

01:16:40 ◼   ► I've liked that a lot too, because now my phone will buzz

01:16:45 ◼   ► when I'm recording a show where it didn't before

01:16:47 ◼   ► and that can be distracting or sometimes you can hear it

01:16:51 ◼   ► in the recording, but now I can just,

01:16:53 ◼   ► 'cause I have all my shows in my calendar,

01:16:55 ◼   ► just 3D touch on the little icon in Control Center

01:16:59 ◼   ► and say until Cortex is done or whatever.

01:17:03 ◼   ► And stuff like that is just nice little improvements

01:17:05 ◼   ► that I like a lot.

01:17:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is definitely a nice little change.

01:17:10 ◼   ► The leave this location one is also,

01:17:13 ◼   ► I can definitely see using that for

01:17:15 ◼   ► being at a meeting with someone,

01:17:17 ◼   ► like, oh, I'm at a cafe and we're having a conversation.

01:17:18 ◼   ► It's like, this isn't on the calendar.

01:17:20 ◼   ► I don't know how long this is going to be.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Maybe if it's over in 20 minutes,

01:17:24 ◼   ► then I'm back in the world.

01:17:25 ◼   ► That is for sure a thing I would have used a bunch

01:17:27 ◼   ► at conferences where the tension there is always,

01:17:30 ◼   ► I have the phone much more open to the world.

01:17:33 ◼   ► And until I leave this location is a perfect use

01:17:36 ◼   ► of Do Not Disturb in that situation.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Like I want to pay attention to this meeting

01:17:40 ◼   ► and then when it's over, I want to know what happened.

01:17:43 ◼   ► - Something that I really like,

01:17:44 ◼   ► and it was a reason that I was quite,

01:17:47 ◼   ► I didn't like to turn notification,

01:17:48 ◼   ► Do Not Disturb on and off,

01:17:50 ◼   ► it's like sometimes I never remember if I have it on or not.

01:17:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's very easy to lose track of it.

01:17:54 ◼   ► - Now it shows you on the lock screen,

01:17:56 ◼   ► there is a big banner that says Do Not Disturb is on

01:17:59 ◼   ► and it's telling you what's happening.

01:18:01 ◼   ► It says that calls and notifications are silenced

01:18:03 ◼   ► while your iPhone is locked.

01:18:04 ◼   ► like it's telling you what it's gonna do,

01:18:06 ◼   ► and then you can just turn it off straight from there.

01:18:08 ◼   ► So I can feel comfortable in setting it more often

01:18:11 ◼   ► because I'm not gonna forget that it's on

01:18:12 ◼   ► for two days or whatever.

01:18:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's funny 'cause I wanna talk about

01:18:18 ◼   ► the downtime feature as well,

01:18:19 ◼   ► like that's the one that's most interesting for me.

01:18:22 ◼   ► But the one place that I find myself

01:18:24 ◼   ► that I do kind of want to manage notifications

01:18:26 ◼   ► is I've been getting a lot of notifications

01:18:29 ◼   ► from the notification system,

01:18:30 ◼   ► like from the downtime system, right?

01:18:32 ◼   ► or I'm aware of the do not disturb stuff.

01:18:35 ◼   ► And I'm like, I don't need to see this every,

01:18:37 ◼   ► like you can just put the little moon there and I know,

01:18:40 ◼   ► like I really don't like,

01:18:42 ◼   ► I just don't like excessive verbiage in my user interface.

01:18:48 ◼   ► And a lot of the phone feels super chatty.

01:18:51 ◼   ► And so it's like, if I pick up the phone in the morning,

01:18:53 ◼   ► it's like, oh, I have that bedtime mode on,

01:18:55 ◼   ► so it hides stuff and it's do not disturb.

01:18:57 ◼   ► And also I have downtime enabled.

01:18:59 ◼   ► My phone has like four messages on the screen,

01:19:02 ◼   ► which are all telling me stuff.

01:19:03 ◼   ► I'm like, I know, like I know phone,

01:19:06 ◼   ► I don't need to know what's the weather,

01:19:08 ◼   ► do not disturb is on, downtime is on.

01:19:09 ◼   ► Also, I've gotten this notification from downtime

01:19:11 ◼   ► that a thing has expired.

01:19:12 ◼   ► It's like, why is there no setting

01:19:14 ◼   ► to change the notifications from the notification system?

01:19:19 ◼   ► I'm just so aware of this frustration.

01:19:21 ◼   ► Like don't show me this stuff every time.

01:19:23 ◼   ► I know, I know, man, I know.

01:19:27 ◼   ► I want to talk about downtime with you actually.

01:19:30 ◼   ► It's part of this new system that Apple's made

01:19:32 ◼   ► that we spoke about last time about kind of trying

01:19:36 ◼   ► to tackle smartphone addiction, et cetera, et cetera, right?

01:19:38 ◼   ► Like letting people take control of their devices.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I feel like I missed this feature completely

01:19:45 ◼   ► until I installed the beta.

01:19:48 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, like I remember when we recorded

01:19:49 ◼   ► our live episode last time,

01:19:51 ◼   ► like I had to point it out to you as a little thing

01:19:53 ◼   ► because they did blow past it really quickly.

01:19:57 ◼   ► And it was one of my frustrations when I was trying to find out information from people

01:20:00 ◼   ► is I think a lot of people missed it in the keynote.

01:20:02 ◼   ► I thought it was just the family thing.

01:20:05 ◼   ► Because I knew that what you could do was, for yourself, set what they're calling app

01:20:09 ◼   ► limits.

01:20:10 ◼   ► An individual application, I can use it for this amount of time every day.

01:20:13 ◼   ► And I knew that parents in a family group could set app limits for other people.

01:20:17 ◼   ► Right.

01:20:18 ◼   ► So they call that downtime, right?

01:20:20 ◼   ► They're using the phrase downtime in two different locations.

01:20:23 ◼   ► I thought it was just something for children.

01:20:26 ◼   ► - Right, so that is why last episode I was saying,

01:20:30 ◼   ► oh, I think I may have to set myself up as a child.

01:20:32 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:20:33 ◼   ► - Because there was no indication in the keynote

01:20:36 ◼   ► that downtime is going to be a user level feature

01:20:40 ◼   ► for an individual.

01:20:41 ◼   ► Like that is the thing that I was most curious about.

01:20:44 ◼   ► And that's the thing I've been playing with the most

01:20:46 ◼   ► is like, okay, great.

01:20:47 ◼   ► I don't need to have some crazy cockamamie scheme

01:20:51 ◼   ► where I set myself up as a child from another device.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Like, downtime is just a feature that exists along with notification center

01:20:59 ◼   ► that any user can just do for themselves to limit access to apps.

01:21:06 ◼   ► So what it will do is you can set it on a schedule or you can turn it on manually.

01:21:10 ◼   ► I think there should be a control center toggle for it, but there isn't right now.

01:21:12 ◼   ► Yeah, there totally should be. Yeah, 100%.

01:21:15 ◼   ► So you can set a period of time where only currently,

01:21:19 ◼   ► that a default app you can't turn off is the phone, which makes sense, and then you can

01:21:23 ◼   ► set a list of applications that are white listed, so you can say maybe only let me get

01:21:28 ◼   ► access to messages and overcast, and literally everything else I can't open until the time

01:21:35 ◼   ► is off. Now if you are an adult setting this up for yourself or an individual setting it

01:21:40 ◼   ► up for themselves, you do have to access a little self-restraint because you can press

01:21:45 ◼   ► a button to allow yourself 15 minutes of access or to turn it off for the day. Like if you're

01:21:49 ◼   ► in a family unit, you can say no, right? Like you cannot turn it off. So there is a slight

01:21:56 ◼   ► difference but I did think that for you, I think you're a person that can operate that

01:21:59 ◼   ► kind of self-restraint because you basically have your own weird cockamamie way of doing

01:22:04 ◼   ► this to your own devices, right? Where you turn off Safari and stuff like that. So I

01:22:08 ◼   ► thought this is exactly what you wanted, right?

01:22:12 ◼   ► Yeah, so this is the thing that I'm playing around with the most.

01:22:16 ◼   ► And I am thinking of it in a totally different way from the way that they are intending.

01:22:22 ◼   ► But it's like, how is this thing useful to me?

01:22:24 ◼   ► So I'm going to send you a screenshot of what my home screen looks like at this very moment.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Now, again, users understand this is like a time of experimentation and change.

01:22:35 ◼   ► There's a lot of wacky stuff here, but I just want to focus on one thing.

01:22:39 ◼   ► So you let me know when that comes through to you.

01:22:42 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:22:43 ◼   ► - All right, so what I'm trying here is,

01:22:46 ◼   ► downtime to me is much less useful as a,

01:22:51 ◼   ► I need to limit how much I use various apps,

01:22:54 ◼   ► because that is a thing that I mostly have under control

01:22:59 ◼   ► in different ways, like you said,

01:23:00 ◼   ► of just simply restricting different devices

01:23:03 ◼   ► to have different apps on them and blah, blah, blah.

01:23:07 ◼   ► but downtime can do a thing that I have always wanted,

01:23:12 ◼   ► but there has not been a way to achieve.

01:23:15 ◼   ► So if someone were to go back through the history

01:23:18 ◼   ► of Cortex and collect all of the screenshots

01:23:20 ◼   ► of what my phone looks like,

01:23:22 ◼   ► there have always been a tremendous lack

01:23:26 ◼   ► of communication icons on my home screen,

01:23:29 ◼   ► like messages, Slack, email, any of that kind of stuff.

01:23:33 ◼   ► I don't have that on my home screen.

01:23:35 ◼   ► And one of the reasons for that is, again, this idea that I'm very protective of my mornings,

01:23:43 ◼   ► and what I don't want to be distracted by are the communication apps.

01:23:47 ◼   ► And I also was always frustrated that even if I wasn't having, say, Slack buzz me, and I had

01:23:56 ◼   ► "do not disturb" on in the morning so that the notification wouldn't come through, if I picked

01:24:00 ◼   ► up my phone, I would still see the badge. And it would say, you've received 20 messages

01:24:06 ◼   ► from Slack overnight. And it's like, I don't want to see that. I want my mornings to be

01:24:11 ◼   ► nice and smooth and the same and I don't want to be aware of any notifications. And so what

01:24:17 ◼   ► downtime does is if in the morning I set it, and I say, Slack, for example, is not allowed

01:24:24 ◼   ► in the morning. It's not that I'm trying to restrict myself like, oh, I use Slack and

01:24:29 ◼   ► I wish I didn't.

01:24:30 ◼   ► But downtime dims out the app

01:24:33 ◼   ► and functionally acts like the app is uninstalled.

01:24:37 ◼   ► So you will not see a badge.

01:24:40 ◼   ► And the thing that was really important to me is,

01:24:43 ◼   ► any messages that would be in Notification Center

01:24:48 ◼   ► are removed during downtime.

01:24:51 ◼   ► And when downtime is over,

01:24:53 ◼   ► they will reappear.

01:24:55 ◼   ► - Damn, I haven't played around of it to that extent.

01:24:58 ◼   ► I had no idea that it worked like that.

01:25:00 ◼   ► That is really interesting.

01:25:01 ◼   ► - So what downtime is to me

01:25:05 ◼   ► is a much more strict version of notification control.

01:25:10 ◼   ► All right, that's what I'm interested in.

01:25:12 ◼   ► And so, because before, one of the things,

01:25:16 ◼   ► the way I had to be,

01:25:17 ◼   ► 'cause I had set up almost every app

01:25:19 ◼   ► to "deliver quietly," in quotes, right?

01:25:22 ◼   ► But that meant I had to be careful

01:25:23 ◼   ► about not accidentally swiping up on the home screen

01:25:26 ◼   ► and then seeing like, oh, there's some problem in Slack

01:25:29 ◼   ► that people want you to deal with.

01:25:30 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, but I'm on my way to the office now

01:25:32 ◼   ► to do some writing and like,

01:25:33 ◼   ► I don't even want this in my head,

01:25:35 ◼   ► I don't wanna deal with it.

01:25:36 ◼   ► And so downtime allows me to accomplish this thing

01:25:39 ◼   ► where in the screenshot I sent you,

01:25:41 ◼   ► I now have like messages, Slack and mail on my home screen.

01:25:45 ◼   ► And I also have badges on all of them.

01:25:49 ◼   ► And I'm just experimenting with this idea

01:25:52 ◼   ► that I can have the communications apps back on my phone.

01:25:57 ◼   ► I can also have them have badges,

01:26:01 ◼   ► which will dramatically reduce me missing stuff

01:26:04 ◼   ► that I'm dealing with as important.

01:26:06 ◼   ► But those badges go away every night

01:26:10 ◼   ► and don't reappear until the next morning.

01:26:15 ◼   ► Now, there's a little bit of a problem here,

01:26:17 ◼   ► which is like there are times when I want,

01:26:19 ◼   ► like with messages in particular,

01:26:20 ◼   ► like I want to be able to send a message from my phone,

01:26:23 ◼   ► and like it limits me in this ability,

01:26:25 ◼   ► but that's where the ability to, on a particular app,

01:26:28 ◼   ► break out of downtime by just entering a code,

01:26:31 ◼   ► to me, this is not like a,

01:26:33 ◼   ► "Oh, you have to express restraint

01:26:36 ◼   ► "and not enter that code."

01:26:37 ◼   ► I'm like, "No, no, my ability to enter that code

01:26:38 ◼   ► "is a total feature," because it's like,

01:26:41 ◼   ► "Yes, sometimes I do want to send a message and have it go,

01:26:44 ◼   ► "and I need to do something quickly,

01:26:46 ◼   ► "and I can say, I'm making the decision

01:26:49 ◼   ► that I'll see whatever the badges are, but it's because I need to send this outgoing

01:26:53 ◼   ► message now. So, downtime is very, very interesting to me, but not remotely for the reasons that

01:26:59 ◼   ► I think Apple thinks it is interesting.

01:27:03 ◼   ► But it is cool though, because it is letting you kind of officially do a thing that you

01:27:11 ◼   ► were really trying hard to kind of hack together.

01:27:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, without a doubt, this is making something

01:27:18 ◼   ► much easier to do that was my eternal frustration before.

01:27:23 ◼   ► And like I, in particular, the fact that they hide

01:27:26 ◼   ► the badges and they remove the notifications

01:27:29 ◼   ► from Notification Center, but put them back

01:27:32 ◼   ► when downtime is turned back off,

01:27:35 ◼   ► is like, that's a huge deal that is like, ah, great.

01:27:38 ◼   ► I can have some apps be in this super quarantine.

01:27:41 ◼   ► So my downtime whitelist for the apps that are allowed

01:27:45 ◼   ► is hilarious, right?

01:27:46 ◼   ► Because it's every app that I have,

01:27:48 ◼   ► except for the ones that I want to put

01:27:50 ◼   ► into this quarantine mode, right?

01:27:51 ◼   ► So like, I'm using it in this totally reverse way

01:27:54 ◼   ► of like, oh, I'm not trying to like,

01:27:56 ◼   ► just a couple of good apps are whitelisted

01:27:59 ◼   ► during this period.

01:28:00 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, everything is whitelisted.

01:28:01 ◼   ► There's just a couple of bad apps

01:28:03 ◼   ► that are like disallowed during downtime.

01:28:05 ◼   ► So yeah, it's been really interesting.

01:28:07 ◼   ► As always the thing with Apple though,

01:28:09 ◼   ► that I think all of us worry about

01:28:12 ◼   ► when they improve something that you like,

01:28:14 ◼   ► is I really hope that Apple doesn't think,

01:28:18 ◼   ► "Oh, great, we've done this thing, right?

01:28:21 ◼   ► "We've nailed it."

01:28:22 ◼   ► Because my feeling is like, this is a great start,

01:28:27 ◼   ► but by no means, and that's why when I made my checklist

01:28:32 ◼   ► for what I'm looking for at WWDC,

01:28:34 ◼   ► and I was like, "Significant improvements to X

01:28:37 ◼   ► "and significant improvements to Y,"

01:28:39 ◼   ► I'm not gonna give them significant,

01:28:41 ◼   ► it's like, you have improved it.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Without a doubt, this is better, but this better not be,

01:28:48 ◼   ► like, here's how notifications work for the next five years

01:28:51 ◼   ► until we decide to add some additional stuff.

01:28:53 ◼   ► It's like, please, dear God, Apple,

01:28:55 ◼   ► don't think you've nailed it

01:28:56 ◼   ► because there's a million things which are,

01:29:00 ◼   ► like, we could use a lot.

01:29:01 ◼   ► And the one thing that I'm thinking of is, like,

01:29:04 ◼   ► for their intended use case of downtime,

01:29:06 ◼   ► which seems largely about parents being able

01:29:09 ◼   ► to manage kids' schedules, downtime,

01:29:12 ◼   ► just like "Do Not Disturb," has no concept of,

01:29:15 ◼   ► I don't know, the days of the week.

01:29:18 ◼   ► So if you were a parent trying to limit

01:29:20 ◼   ► how much your kid is on social media,

01:29:24 ◼   ► there's no ability to do the thing

01:29:26 ◼   ► that I think every parent in the world would want to do,

01:29:28 ◼   ► which is stricter restrictions on school nights

01:29:32 ◼   ► and school days, and then looser restrictions on the weekend.

01:29:36 ◼   ► It's like, Apple, come on.

01:29:39 ◼   ► This is not a feature for me.

01:29:40 ◼   ► I don't really care 'cause I'm not using it in that way.

01:29:43 ◼   ► But you gotta give people the option

01:29:45 ◼   ► to be able to set up their kid's device

01:29:47 ◼   ► and say Saturday is perfectly fine

01:29:49 ◼   ► to use your device however you want.

01:29:51 ◼   ► But Wednesday is not a day

01:29:53 ◼   ► where you can use the device however you want.

01:29:55 ◼   ► They don't like options and they don't like schedules.

01:29:58 ◼   ► And it's like this is a great first step,

01:30:01 ◼   ► but I just really, really hope

01:30:03 ◼   ► that Apple doesn't feel like they've nailed it

01:30:05 ◼   ► and they just leave it untouched for another few years.

01:30:08 ◼   ► - So I wanna talk about screen time.

01:30:10 ◼   ► Yeah, what do you want to talk about with screen time?

01:30:12 ◼   ► - Well, I think one thing I want to do

01:30:15 ◼   ► is I want to share my screen time information with you.

01:30:18 ◼   ► And then I kind of, I want you to look at it.

01:30:20 ◼   ► - That's very intimate, Myke.

01:30:22 ◼   ► - I want you to tell me what you think about it.

01:30:25 ◼   ► This feels to me almost like

01:30:27 ◼   ► how we will share our home screens.

01:30:29 ◼   ► There's like some kind of element to me

01:30:31 ◼   ► which is very similar in it.

01:30:33 ◼   ► And also, you know, for our great love of just data

01:30:38 ◼   ► and what it can tell us about each other.

01:30:41 ◼   ► - Were you trying to avoid the word time tracking there,

01:30:43 ◼   ► Myke, did you not want to mention time tracking?

01:30:44 ◼   ► - I had no idea what you're talking about.

01:30:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:30:47 ◼   ► But I just thought that this might be fun

01:30:49 ◼   ► because I feel like I'm kinda learning some things

01:30:52 ◼   ► about myself looking at this.

01:30:54 ◼   ► - Whoa, holy (beep)

01:30:55 ◼   ► I have to send you my screen sharing data after this.

01:30:59 ◼   ► - I just want to let you know,

01:31:00 ◼   ► this is all my devices combined, right?

01:31:03 ◼   ► This is all my iOS devices, right?

01:31:04 ◼   ► - Okay, let me send you, oh my God, this is amazing.

01:31:07 ◼   ► Let me send you, here is the data from all of my iOS devices.

01:31:12 ◼   ► For the record, I don't know if you found this,

01:31:16 ◼   ► but I'm convinced that the pickup number is totally buggy.

01:31:20 ◼   ► That like my pickup, the number of times

01:31:22 ◼   ► I picked up the phone, my number cannot possibly be true.

01:31:26 ◼   ► And if you look at my data, it's like,

01:31:28 ◼   ► there's no way that it's true.

01:31:29 ◼   ► - I don't think your data is as different to mine

01:31:32 ◼   ► as you think it is.

01:31:34 ◼   ► - I wanted to share it 'cause I think

01:31:35 ◼   ► This is a very interesting comparison.

01:31:38 ◼   ► I would not have guessed that Tweetbot

01:31:43 ◼   ► would be your number one use there.

01:31:45 ◼   ► Although I guess, okay, so here's an interesting question.

01:31:49 ◼   ► If you have, I wonder how it counts this, right?

01:31:51 ◼   ► If you have two apps open,

01:31:53 ◼   ► like you have Safari open on one side

01:31:55 ◼   ► and you have Tweetbot open on the other side,

01:31:57 ◼   ► I wonder how it counts that.

01:31:59 ◼   ► Does it count both of those? - It's gonna count both.

01:32:00 ◼   ► - It's gonna count both of them at the same time?

01:32:02 ◼   ► 'Cause I ran into and I filed a radar

01:32:05 ◼   ► with totally bizarre counting of data for background audio,

01:32:08 ◼   ► like things with audio books and overcast,

01:32:11 ◼   ► some incredibly weird buggy stuff going on

01:32:13 ◼   ► with tracking of that that happened on my device.

01:32:16 ◼   ► But yeah, I guess it would have to count them both

01:32:19 ◼   ► as what's going on.

01:32:21 ◼   ► Holy cow, you get a lot of messages.

01:32:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do, don't I?

01:32:26 ◼   ► - Just to pause there before we go into the details

01:32:29 ◼   ► of the data, but that is like another example

01:32:30 ◼   ► where it seems crazy making to me that like,

01:32:32 ◼   ► Apple, you need more features.

01:32:33 ◼   ► It's like the inability to prioritize users and messages and who can send you stuff when

01:32:37 ◼   ► is crazy making to me.

01:32:38 ◼   ► That is an example.

01:32:40 ◼   ► Don't think you've nailed it because there's plenty of room for where you need improvements

01:32:45 ◼   ► here.

01:32:46 ◼   ► So this is over the last seven days, I've got 1,630 iMessages.

01:32:51 ◼   ► Gray's got 115.

01:32:53 ◼   ► Yeah, we're literally an order of magnitude apart.

01:32:58 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:32:59 ◼   ► our notifications in the last seven days I've got 2590 and you've got 345.

01:33:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I think this is total evidence of what we have described on the show many times.

01:33:15 ◼   ► We have very different notification management systems.

01:33:19 ◼   ► We do, but our actual device time is way closer than I would have expected.

01:33:23 ◼   ► You're at 41 hours for the week and I'm at 51.

01:33:28 ◼   ► I think that's partly because my data is a little wacky

01:33:32 ◼   ► because having just returned from America,

01:33:33 ◼   ► I was doing things like driving a car

01:33:36 ◼   ► where I had navigation maps open a lot.

01:33:39 ◼   ► So I think there's some stuff that's in there.

01:33:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I understand that.

01:33:44 ◼   ► But my thinking is like, there's always something.

01:33:46 ◼   ► - I'm with you on that 100%.

01:33:48 ◼   ► I just, for this kind of data, I would love,

01:33:51 ◼   ► like when I look at my time tracking data,

01:33:54 ◼   ► I do like to look at the really long time scale.

01:33:58 ◼   ► So I always like to look at the past 365 days

01:34:01 ◼   ► and then like the past 30 days,

01:34:04 ◼   ► precisely because any particular week

01:34:06 ◼   ► is always a bit wacky for some reason.

01:34:08 ◼   ► And I always much prefer to see data

01:34:11 ◼   ► on the really long trend.

01:34:13 ◼   ► I doubt that something Apple would do,

01:34:14 ◼   ► but I would love it if they had something in here

01:34:17 ◼   ► which is like, show me my data over the last year.

01:34:20 ◼   ► So I have like a real sense of what does my time

01:34:23 ◼   ► actually look like. - Yeah.

01:34:24 ◼   ► another thing where it's like you've done a great job so far but please add more.

01:34:28 ◼   ► But you know, so like okay, so let's look at some of this stuff then, right? So you mentioned

01:34:34 ◼   ► Tweetbot. Tweetbot for me is huge, right? So in the last week, last seven days, eight hours of my

01:34:42 ◼   ► 51 hours has been using Tweetbot. Now you may look at that and be like "Myke spends way too much time

01:34:49 ◼   ► on twitter yeah but but it's not crazy if it's on the side in the way i was just thinking about

01:34:54 ◼   ► well no i i think i mean sometimes it's there but sometimes it's just the app that i'm in

01:34:58 ◼   ► right a lot of the time i bet it's just the app that i'm in but like let me kind of see if i can

01:35:05 ◼   ► qualify this a little bit so yes i use it as a social networky thing but i'm also i don't use

01:35:10 ◼   ► any rss or anything like that like all of my news consumption is going for a tweetbot yeah and i'm

01:35:18 ◼   ► there getting follow up and feedback from my shows and monitoring social media accounts

01:35:24 ◼   ► for the shows that I do like that eight hours. The fact that tweetbot is my most used app

01:35:30 ◼   ► is not a surprise to me at all. Because of the way I use it, it might be more interesting

01:35:36 ◼   ► as an experiment if I use two different Twitter apps. And I use and I might do this at some

01:35:42 ◼   ► point I use one for me personally, just me thinking I use one when I'm considering it

01:35:47 ◼   ► work time. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting kind of seeing how it differs.

01:35:51 ◼   ► And I think it would probably be about half at that point. I reckon it might kind of split

01:35:55 ◼   ► in half. But you know, and then again, right, like, YouTube six and a half hours, not a

01:36:00 ◼   ► surprise to me, because I watch lots of YouTube videos in the day. Like it's kind of what

01:36:04 ◼   ► I do is like when I want to take a little break, I'll watch a YouTube video. And also

01:36:08 ◼   ► at night, like it's kind of the way that I unwind before going to sleep. I'll watch some

01:36:12 ◼   ► YouTube videos or whatever, right? It's not a surprise. Yeah, that's that's a that's a

01:36:15 ◼   ► a good point. And this is also a case where part of the reason why I am less interested

01:36:20 ◼   ► in this as a tracking tool than you are is because this is going to capture much less

01:36:26 ◼   ► of a picture of my life than it does for you. Right. Whereas when, like you said, like you're

01:36:31 ◼   ► watching Netflix and YouTube on your iPad. And that's just not an experience that I do

01:36:36 ◼   ► very often. Like if I'm watching Netflix or YouTube, very often I'm watching it on my

01:36:42 ◼   ► Apple TV at home, right? And then it's like, okay, that data is just totally uncaptured.

01:36:47 ◼   ► And so yeah, that's, that's one way where this is getting like a better picture for

01:36:51 ◼   ► you of your time than it is of what does my time look like.

01:36:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I just sent you one more screenshot, which is the expanded view of the apps just

01:37:00 ◼   ► to give you as kind of a sense of more stuff. Right? So you look at stuff like Spark and

01:37:04 ◼   ► Slack and Docs and Notes and Safari and Sheets. That is all work stuff.

01:37:10 ◼   ► Oh, WWE in there, look at that.

01:37:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I watched a video.

01:37:14 ◼   ► Same as Twitch, right?

01:37:15 ◼   ► I was watching a stream.

01:37:16 ◼   ► I was going to say, what do you do in the WWE app?

01:37:18 ◼   ► Watch videos.

01:37:18 ◼   ► They've got a Netflix-style thing for their content.

01:37:22 ◼   ► Well, Twitches work for you now too, Myke.

01:37:24 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:37:25 ◼   ► So but I was watching a Twitch stream.

01:37:27 ◼   ► So it's like, you can kind of see that it's interesting to me

01:37:30 ◼   ► how it's broken up.

01:37:31 ◼   ► I think three hours of in-email is quite a lot.

01:37:34 ◼   ► But it's not surprising when you look at my notifications

01:37:37 ◼   ► And see, I got 283 emails in the last week.

01:37:42 ◼   ► But I will also say that I'm,

01:37:44 ◼   ► I think due to some bugs in Spark

01:37:46 ◼   ► and maybe some bugs in Apple's notification system,

01:37:49 ◼   ► I'm not getting consistent email notifications now.

01:37:53 ◼   ► I actually know I got more emails than that in the last week.

01:37:58 ◼   ► It was more than 283.

01:38:00 ◼   ► But I'll tell you something,

01:38:03 ◼   ► and then something that really kind of puts it all

01:38:05 ◼   ► into perspective for me is when you look

01:38:06 ◼   ► the categorization. And I am using more of what Apple considers or what is classed as

01:38:13 ◼   ► productivity apps by a significant margin. So it's like six, nearly 17 hours of productivity

01:38:20 ◼   ► compared to 11 hours of entertainment and then 11 hours of social networking. I think

01:38:25 ◼   ► it's quite interesting. I'm liking this data. I want to see more from it, but I like kind

01:38:29 ◼   ► of I like what it's showing me so far, honestly. And like when I look in their productivity

01:38:33 ◼   ► apps so you want to kind of go into it it's like yeah okay everything in here makes a lot of sense

01:38:38 ◼   ► i like that it includes a url so fresh books i spent an hour and seven minutes in fresh books

01:38:46 ◼   ► and it's including that in the productivity section just that url i'm like okay that's

01:38:52 ◼   ► really cool right yeah like yeah they've done some interesting stuff with being able to

01:38:56 ◼   ► tie the websites to the thing i think that that's a really it's a it's a really well done to be able

01:39:03 ◼   ► to link these things to say like, "Oh, if you're on Twitter on the Twitter app or you're on

01:39:09 ◼   ► twitter.com or you're in tweetbot, it's like they're all the same thing. It has an understanding

01:39:14 ◼   ► of the relationship of these things to each other. So, I mean, you know, and then obviously the one

01:39:20 ◼   ► that we haven't mentioned yet but it has to be spoken about is pickups. I pick up my phone once

01:39:25 ◼   ► every five minutes and you pick up your phone once every seven minutes. I thought that was going to

01:39:29 ◼   ► say something like every hour.

01:39:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think that number is correct.

01:39:36 ◼   ► No, you don't.

01:39:38 ◼   ► I genuinely don't because...

01:39:40 ◼   ► I do, man.

01:39:41 ◼   ► I really do.

01:39:42 ◼   ► I think people have, and that's why they made this, I think that we have a very skewed understanding

01:39:51 ◼   ► of how much we use our devices.

01:39:53 ◼   ► There may be an element of incorrect data in here, right?

01:39:57 ◼   ► where it's looking at sensors incorrectly, but I would bet that it is closer to true than not.

01:40:04 ◼   ► B: The thing that would make it closer to true, which I would, this is where I love to note the

01:40:10 ◼   ► details, is because I'm just hearing you talk about it, I'm realizing and I'm watching myself

01:40:16 ◼   ► do a particular behavior that I don't think about until just now, which is I tap the screen of my

01:40:24 ◼   ► phone and I hit the lock button a million times as almost like a fidget device.

01:40:30 ◼   ► I think I actually told you at WWDC when it was, I discovered this habit in myself that

01:40:35 ◼   ► I never knew that I had last year when they introduced the feature where you click the

01:40:40 ◼   ► home button three times and you set off the emergency phone call thing that after that

01:40:45 ◼   ► software update rolled out, like your phantom taps, I was getting actual emergency phone

01:40:51 ◼   ► calls for like two months because I was just click click click clicking the button in my

01:40:56 ◼   ► pocket and it was like "blam" like an enormous alarm.

01:41:01 ◼   ► Even with this tremendous negative feedback of like there's a scary alarm sound and like

01:41:07 ◼   ► someone from 911 who wants to know what the emergency is right now sir, it took me a long

01:41:11 ◼   ► time to get out of that habit of like click click click clicking the lock button on and

01:41:17 ◼   ► off on and off and like while we've been talking here even just in the last few

01:41:20 ◼   ► minutes like I have the phone in my hand and I'm just like I tap the lock screen

01:41:25 ◼   ► and just have it come on and I tap even though I don't have notifications going

01:41:29 ◼   ► to that lock screen it's like a fidget habit thing but I think that there's

01:41:32 ◼   ► something in that though right no no no but like I will agree with you right I'm

01:41:36 ◼   ► not saying to be like this doesn't count and I bet they're 100% counting that

01:41:40 ◼   ► like that that is yeah the if the phone is lit up either by you picking it up

01:41:44 ◼   ► while tapping it, they're counting it as a pickup.

01:41:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, because if that counts,

01:41:48 ◼   ► like I have picked up in quotes the phone,

01:41:51 ◼   ► I don't know, like two dozen times in this conversation,

01:41:54 ◼   ► but it's just like fidgeting with the lock button

01:41:57 ◼   ► and tapping the screen.

01:41:59 ◼   ► And then, yeah, then I can believe that data

01:42:01 ◼   ► because other, like I'm thinking of it in terms of like,

01:42:05 ◼   ► pick up and unlock, and then I'm like, this data's crazy.

01:42:08 ◼   ► Like it can't possibly be true.

01:42:10 ◼   ► But if it's just screen illuminated,

01:42:14 ◼   ► then I can believe that number.

01:42:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and again, I know you're not necessarily

01:42:19 ◼   ► disagreeing with what I'm saying,

01:42:20 ◼   ► but I just kinda wanna say it anyway,

01:42:21 ◼   ► which is I think that that counts

01:42:23 ◼   ► in the idea of phone addiction.

01:42:26 ◼   ► I think something in your brain,

01:42:27 ◼   ► yes, it's a fun thing to play with,

01:42:29 ◼   ► but is just going for the button,

01:42:32 ◼   ► going for it time and time again.

01:42:35 ◼   ► There's so many times where I notice I'm doing this,

01:42:37 ◼   ► where I close Tweetbot and I open it again.

01:42:39 ◼   ► Like, what am I doing?

01:42:40 ◼   ► Why is it open?

01:42:41 ◼   ► I don't need it to be open.

01:42:42 ◼   ► I've just seen everything. And I think this is this this pickup thing I think is meant

01:42:47 ◼   ► to show us that we're touching our phones all the time. And like, I don't necessarily

01:42:54 ◼   ► think that this is a bad thing for society. But I think it is important for people to

01:42:59 ◼   ► understand. And that's why I really like this screen. I like all of this information to

01:43:05 ◼   ► just dip into. I mean, honestly, one of the things that I like about it is it's vindicating

01:43:09 ◼   ► some of the things that I think I know about myself that are good, which is how much time

01:43:13 ◼   ► I'm spending working on these devices, right? I am happy to see that that is one, the predominant

01:43:20 ◼   ► thing and two, it's kind of around equal with my entertainment stuff. It's like, yeah, that

01:43:25 ◼   ► feels like how I believe I'm using my iOS devices, you know? So I'm happy with it.

01:43:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm thinking like I almost wish they called it something like, they wouldn't, but

01:43:35 ◼   ► to be like, "Phone touches," right?

01:43:37 ◼   ► Like, how many times have you touched the phone?

01:43:39 ◼   ► Or at least, like, maybe just when it rolls out,

01:43:40 ◼   ► like, have a little description underneath,

01:43:42 ◼   ► like, what are they counting?

01:43:43 ◼   ► Because I suspect, like, when you look at that number

01:43:45 ◼   ► of, like, every seven minutes,

01:43:47 ◼   ► I think a lot of people would have, like,

01:43:48 ◼   ► "I can't possibly be true."

01:43:49 ◼   ► I was like, "Uh, yeah, but if you're counting

01:43:51 ◼   ► lock button presses and screen taps,

01:43:53 ◼   ► like, it totally is true."

01:43:54 ◼   ► It's how many times have you touched your device?

01:43:58 ◼   ► And then it's like, "Okay, yeah, I can believe that.

01:44:00 ◼   ► I can believe that number."

01:44:03 ◼   ► That's very interesting. That's very interesting.

01:44:05 ◼   ► I gotta say, I like this feature.

01:44:07 ◼   ► - I'm glad that they're rolling it out.

01:44:09 ◼   ► And like, you know, as someone who's into time tracking

01:44:13 ◼   ► and has been into time tracking for a while,

01:44:15 ◼   ► and as you know, like I was your shepherd

01:44:18 ◼   ► into time tracking with like, do it all the time

01:44:20 ◼   ► and like, and see what it looks like.

01:44:22 ◼   ► And like, you'll be horrified.

01:44:23 ◼   ► I am like, I cannot wait until this rolls out

01:44:27 ◼   ► to the rest of the world,

01:44:28 ◼   ► because I think people are gonna be horrified

01:44:30 ◼   ► that first week when it comes out.

01:44:32 ◼   ► And I'm kind of like giggling with delight at that moment.

01:44:36 ◼   ► But like here, here, like look at the data

01:44:39 ◼   ► and see what your life looks like.

01:44:40 ◼   ► And you don't have to do the tremendous effort

01:44:45 ◼   ► of I'm gonna constantly be flipping timers all day long

01:44:49 ◼   ► and keeping a record and looking at reports.

01:44:51 ◼   ► Like normal people aren't going to do that,

01:44:55 ◼   ► but I've always encouraged everyone I know

01:44:59 ◼   ► who does any kind of independent work to do time tracking

01:45:02 ◼   ► because it's so valuable to really know.

01:45:05 ◼   ► So I'm thrilled that Apple is having this as a feature

01:45:10 ◼   ► that's just easy for everyone.

01:45:12 ◼   ► I just, I really think everyone is going to have to go

01:45:14 ◼   ► through that moment that previously,

01:45:16 ◼   ► just like my self-employed friends that I've talked into

01:45:18 ◼   ► have gone through of like,

01:45:19 ◼   ► oh God, I didn't know what my life really was.

01:45:21 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:45:22 ◼   ► What have I become?

01:45:24 ◼   ► Yeah, or it's not even what have you become?

01:45:26 ◼   ► It's just, the reason that data is so valuable,

01:45:31 ◼   ► It forces you to be aware of mindlessness.

01:45:36 ◼   ► And like, mindlessness is this invisible enemy

01:45:40 ◼   ► in everyone's life.

01:45:42 ◼   ► And you can catch yourself being mindless,

01:45:45 ◼   ► but you don't realize how often you act with mindlessness,

01:45:49 ◼   ► or what I think of also as like one of my timers

01:45:51 ◼   ► is like, unintentionally.

01:45:53 ◼   ► How often do you act with unintentionally?

01:45:56 ◼   ► And that the timers help you fight back

01:45:59 ◼   ► against that kind of stuff.