Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Did you ever get that Apple watch mic?

00:00:01 ◼   ► I did. I got it the next day actually.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Because after we finished recording, I called DPD, the delivery company,

00:00:09 ◼   ► and I told them that the delivery driver's a liar.

00:00:12 ◼   ► And I think the lady believed me.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Like she actually, I could tell she believed me.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Cause it was like, here's the thing.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I already had a different delivery driver deliver me a different

00:00:24 ◼   ► DPD package that morning.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I was like, so you know, I was in, right?

00:00:27 ◼   ► Like we can't get around this.

00:00:29 ◼   ► You know, I was in.

00:00:29 ◼   ► And then, you know, they sent me one of the tracking information had like a photo right which is a photo of nothing. Yeah

00:00:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I've gotten those which the photo eventually ended up disappearing from the site

00:00:40 ◼   ► And I was like Santa last like come on. We all know what happened here

00:00:43 ◼   ► And she was like, yeah, okay, and then she ended up putting through some expedited delivery and it came to me the next day

00:00:49 ◼   ► I'm glad you got your Apple watch in the end. Mm-hmm. Yeah, me too. I actually really like it

00:00:53 ◼   ► I'm really happy with it. Like the LTE thing is good

00:00:58 ◼   ► I've been going swimming again and I found the pool which is relatively like in a health club relatively close to me and

00:01:04 ◼   ► I really like that like during my breaks like when I start taking a swim for like 15 minutes or whatever

00:01:11 ◼   ► Take a take a break for a few minutes

00:01:12 ◼   ► I can like check my text messages at the poolside like it's it's like this cool little thing

00:01:18 ◼   ► Like I'm I'm really excited about the LTE watch honestly like it's uh, it's becoming a more and more interesting product

00:01:25 ◼   ► Like I was thinking to myself the other day, like, what is the future of this?

00:01:28 ◼   ► And I was imagining like this watch that you could just take off the band and like

00:01:32 ◼   ► unfold it.

00:01:33 ◼   ► So it becomes a bigger device and then you like fold it and put it back on again.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Like this is like a 20 years in the future. What does these products look like?

00:01:40 ◼   ► And this was this thing that I imagined of like, well,

00:01:44 ◼   ► we just have everything strapped to our wrists and then you just take it off the

00:01:47 ◼   ► band and then it's, that's your little pocket computer.

00:01:49 ◼   ► And then you put it back again. Like it was just making me think about,

00:01:52 ◼   ► It has been making me think about where this stuff is going.

00:01:55 ◼   ► I think at that point it's easier to just install the display in your eyes than to

00:02:00 ◼   ► make a thing that unfolds into something bigger and folds back up.

00:02:02 ◼   ► So I will say that like Samsung already they're like saying that there is a

00:02:07 ◼   ► potential they may have may have a folding phone next year.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Like they are already saying this which I think is very bold from them to say

00:02:16 ◼   ► something like that. But like one of their executives is like oh yeah the note will

00:02:19 ◼   ► fold in half next year." It's like, "Whoa, Samsung, don't say stuff like that." But

00:02:25 ◼   ► the folding screen technology, I think, is closer than we think it is, honestly.

00:02:29 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:02:30 ◼   ► BRIAN: I can just see the executive being pulled off stage as he's saying this thing

00:02:35 ◼   ► by the underlings who have to actually make it happen.

00:02:37 ◼   ► MATT: What did I say? He's called like a "crick," like a shepherd's crook. Is

00:02:39 ◼   ► that what they're called?

00:02:40 ◼   ► BRIAN and MATT [in unison]: I don't know.

00:02:41 ◼   ► MATT [in unison]: Like, one of the, like, the shepherd's crook just comes and just

00:02:42 ◼   ► pulls him off, like, just grabs him by the neck and just, like, slides him off the stage.

00:02:46 ◼   ► He's on a little wheelie chair and then he was never heard from again.

00:02:49 ◼   ► There's a whole bunch of engineers who are pulling on that thing.

00:02:52 ◼   ► We have to actually make that.

00:02:53 ◼   ► You can't just – that's not how technology works.

00:02:55 ◼   ► You can't just promise it.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Like there's that story of when FaceTime was announced and Steve Jobs said on stage

00:03:01 ◼   ► that they were going to be submitting it all to the standards bodies.

00:03:04 ◼   ► Like it was just never true.

00:03:05 ◼   ► It was just something he said.

00:03:07 ◼   ► There are stories of engineers being like, "What?

00:03:11 ◼   ► No we're not.

00:03:12 ◼   ► This isn't a thing we can do."

00:03:13 ◼   ► So did you get yours?

00:03:15 ◼   ► Did you get one?

00:03:16 ◼   ► I know you were like 10 million in the queue or something.

00:03:20 ◼   ► My Apple Watch has not yet arrived, but the dot sticker that is going to cover up the

00:03:27 ◼   ► red dot on my Apple Watch has arrived.

00:03:29 ◼   ► Oh that's good news.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Stick it to something.

00:03:31 ◼   ► I'm 50% of the way there, I guess, is where I currently am.

00:03:39 ◼   ► I don't ever see the red dot.

00:03:41 ◼   ► This is my thing.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I don't see it.

00:03:43 ◼   ► I don't care about it.

00:03:44 ◼   ► if I look at my hand in an odd position, right?

00:03:46 ◼   ► Like, I'm looking at my watch right now

00:03:47 ◼   ► and I would never know.

00:03:49 ◼   ► - The Dot's not about you, Myke.

00:03:52 ◼   ► The Dot is about flashiness,

00:03:55 ◼   ► a certain kind of flashiness that I have zero interest in.

00:03:59 ◼   ► - You don't wanna show everybody the products that you own?

00:04:01 ◼   ► You don't wanna like walk down the street,

00:04:04 ◼   ► big man on campus?

00:04:06 ◼   ► - No, no.

00:04:07 ◼   ► I find I would literally have paid extra money

00:04:13 ◼   ► for a more innocuous version of the watch.

00:04:16 ◼   ► I'm trying to think what the upper limit is,

00:04:20 ◼   ► and it is reasonably high that I would pay

00:04:22 ◼   ► to have a watch that is the incognito version.

00:04:27 ◼   ► I don't want the red dot on my watch.

00:04:30 ◼   ► I personally think it is obnoxious,

00:04:34 ◼   ► and I really think that the whole reason

00:04:36 ◼   ► that red dot was chosen, everyone's saying like,

00:04:39 ◼   ► "Oh, it clashes with the colors of everything.

00:04:41 ◼   ► "It's a terrible choice."

00:04:42 ◼   ► And I was like, "Yes." But that's why it was chosen. It's a monkey signaling option.

00:04:49 ◼   ► That's what it is. It is chosen to clash so that it is visually obvious to people that you have the new thing.

00:04:57 ◼   ► And I have zero interest in that. So that is why Dot Stickers have been ordered to my house.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And I will try a bunch and see which one sticks the best and works.

00:05:09 ◼   ► it is really irritating to me that this is even a thing that I have to consider

00:05:12 ◼   ► and I just don't like it. I feel like just some enamel paint and a steady hand

00:05:16 ◼   ► would probably be the better option than those little stickers like I can't

00:05:19 ◼   ► imagine any sticker lasting more than a couple of days. So it's just rubbing against

00:05:23 ◼   ► your hand all the time like that is gonna come off immediately. That's why I'm

00:05:28 ◼   ► that's why I'm really frustrated about it it's it's just annoying I don't like

00:05:31 ◼   ► it and it's like oh thanks Apple. You're forcing me to show off to the world that

00:05:37 ◼   ► I have the new thing in a way that I really don't want to, that makes me feel like I'm

00:05:41 ◼   ► a marketing shill for you. I just don't like it, I really don't like it. It's the same

00:05:48 ◼   ► way, I've never liked the white earbuds and the white pencil, is there something that

00:05:52 ◼   ► feels like they're designed to be eye-catching to help Apple, not because they're the colors

00:05:57 ◼   ► or the options that I would actually want. Anyway, long story short, no new Apple Watch

00:06:02 ◼   ► in my house yet.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I've had it for like a couple of weeks or whatever. I am a big fan of it.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Like it's really, really great. I like it a lot. I think it's opening up a new world for the device.

00:06:16 ◼   ► I'm really excited for you to get yours actually because I'm very keen to see what you think of it.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Because I think like me, you will see from this device like, "Oh, this is what the Apple Watch

00:06:28 ◼   ► was supposed to be." It really does have more of that feel to it.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Yeah, this is the obvious direction that it's supposed to go in.

00:06:34 ◼   ► I think the curious thing that I will just see is, like with all of these things,

00:06:38 ◼   ► figuring out how does it best fit into your life.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Because your use case of checking text messages at the gym is like my nightmare use case.

00:06:46 ◼   ► I don't actually want it for that.

00:06:48 ◼   ► So it'll just be interesting to see how does this fit into my life

00:06:51 ◼   ► and how many developers decide to take advantage of the fact that the device is now a cellular device.

00:06:57 ◼   ► because I think most of the things that I would probably find the most useful to have a cellular connection on the watch,

00:07:03 ◼   ► like the various apps that I use, might not be updated for cellular connection for a long time, if ever.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Yeah, spoiler alert, not many right now.

00:07:12 ◼   ► [BEEP]

00:07:13 ◼   ► There is a word that I struggle with being an English person talking to Americans,

00:07:18 ◼   ► and that word is the Tex-Mex-style food with the shells that you fill up.

00:07:25 ◼   ► Do you know what that-- can you tell me what they're called?

00:07:27 ◼   ► Do you mean tacos?

00:07:28 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. I can't... there is not a way that I can say that word and it sound accurate or legitimate in any way.

00:07:36 ◼   ► What do you mean? Do you say it like a fraud?

00:07:39 ◼   ► Okay, so there are two different ways to say it, right?

00:07:41 ◼   ► Like there's the way that would make me sound like an American

00:07:44 ◼   ► and there's the way that makes me sound like a British person and neither of them work.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Just say it the way you would normally say it.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Tacos.

00:07:50 ◼   ► No, that's all wrong.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Exactly, right? And then what's so we're gonna say like an American like tacos?

00:07:54 ◼   ► Like it doesn't... see it doesn't work, right?

00:07:56 ◼   ► Right? Like there is no way for me to say that word and it sounds legitimate.

00:08:00 ◼   ► The second one is much better. We're going to tell you right now.

00:08:03 ◼   ► The second one is better.

00:08:04 ◼   ► But it's still like I'm putting on this weird fake American accent for one

00:08:07 ◼   ► word. Like it doesn't work. And then I can't,

00:08:10 ◼   ► I can't straighten it out in my brain when I'm saying it in a sentence.

00:08:13 ◼   ► It's like a nightmare.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Another one of these words is the surname of somebody who we have been seeing a

00:08:19 ◼   ► lot of pictures of recently. Derek Jeter. Jeter?

00:08:22 ◼   ► How do you say that name? Is that right?

00:08:26 ◼   ► I can't help you because I don't know who that person is.

00:08:29 ◼   ► See, I think the way you're supposed to say it is it's got more of like a D sound in it, which is like

00:08:34 ◼   ► like Jeter or something like that.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Jeter?

00:08:38 ◼   ► Yeah, you see, you could say it right, but I can't say it right.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Yeah, the same way I say like water. There's a D in water.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Exactly, right? So, there is this person, his name is Derek Jeter, and all I know is he's something to do with baseball.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I don't really know much more about him. Is it baseball? I don't even know if it's baseball.

00:08:56 ◼   ► I'm assuming it's baseball. But I don't know. Do you know anything about this person?

00:09:01 ◼   ► Okay, background for the confused listener at this point is on Twitter, I don't know,

00:09:07 ◼   ► couple days ago, suddenly it felt like hundreds of people were sending you and me photos of

00:09:13 ◼   ► this man at a desk with two iPads on his desk. And I retweeted one of these because I was

00:09:20 ◼   ► Yeah, #MultipadLifestyle. Great. This is on brand.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Like, retweet this. It's a nice photo of a man at a desk.

00:09:28 ◼   ► But these tweets just kept rolling in all the--

00:09:32 ◼   ► And eventually I finally figured out, "Wait a minute, this is like a real person."

00:09:36 ◼   ► This is someone in-- I just thought it was--

00:09:38 ◼   ► I don't know, I just thought it was just some random photo of some guy at a desk.

00:09:41 ◼   ► But the sheer volume of these things made me eventually realize that this guy is some...

00:09:49 ◼   ► sports guy but I I'm afraid Myke I cannot tell you anything about this

00:09:56 ◼   ► person because I know literally nothing about this person I would have just

00:10:01 ◼   ► thought this was a photo spread of people working at offices in some

00:10:06 ◼   ► magazine that everybody was sending us I didn't realize it was it was like a real

00:10:09 ◼   ► guy Wikipedia tells me that Derek Sanderson Jeter is an American

00:10:15 ◼   ► businessman, a professional baseball executive who is the CEO and part owner of the Miami

00:10:20 ◼   ► Marlins, which is an MLB team, and he used to be a baseballer himself at one point in

00:10:27 ◼   ► his life and apparently was very successful at that, which is why he's so known and I

00:10:32 ◼   ► think he played for the New York Yankees for a long period of time because there are lots

00:10:36 ◼   ► of pictures of him on his Wikipedia page wearing the New York Yankees jerseys.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Yeah, unless he played for the New York Yankees while Larry David owned them. I like I can make no connection to this person

00:10:47 ◼   ► so that's who he is and

00:10:49 ◼   ► He is using he's jewel wielding iPad pros on this desk

00:10:55 ◼   ► Yeah

00:10:55 ◼   ► Which is like twelve point nine inch serious iPad pros and that he is a real proponent of the multi-pad lifestyle to

00:11:03 ◼   ► 12.9. That is that's really serious

00:11:05 ◼   ► the thing that's funny to me about this is a while ago I

00:11:11 ◼   ► I was working in the public lobby of my office building and I had brought down into this sort of public workspace

00:11:19 ◼   ► my two

00:11:22 ◼   ► 12.9 inch iPad Pros and

00:11:24 ◼   ► I had them just in front of me working working side by side on on a thing

00:11:30 ◼   ► So I was like writing a script on one of them and I had some

00:11:32 ◼   ► Research notes probably Evernote open up on the other screen with a little thing to type on

00:11:37 ◼   ► I was kind of going back and forth between the two of them and

00:11:39 ◼   ► I had headphones on but I just happened not to have any music on them and I

00:11:45 ◼   ► Saw the people next to me start pointing and I overheard that they started talking about this real weirdo who's over there using two iPad

00:11:52 ◼   ► No way

00:11:54 ◼   ► I'm pretending that I don't hear you. I'm just gonna keep working away at this thing

00:11:59 ◼   ► but yeah, I think if if

00:12:02 ◼   ► It's notable if somebody is using two really big iPad pros. It just looks it looks weird

00:12:08 ◼   ► I think that's also partly why it's so eye-catching in this photo that this guy has this this huge desk with two

00:12:15 ◼   ► Big iPads on them. I think it's still it still looks visually

00:12:19 ◼   ► Weird to people we haven't yet reached the Picard point where you can just have iPads spread all around you

00:12:26 ◼   ► And it's just a visual indicator of oh yes. This is a person who's very busy and working on a lot of things

00:12:30 ◼   ► But yeah, so we got sent this photo quite a lot, but I felt I felt a kinship with this photograph

00:12:37 ◼   ► Yep, and the and the anonymous man contained within it who he is and what he does we will never know

00:12:41 ◼   ► There are think every now and then something like this happens and it's so fun for me because there's a social media manager

00:12:47 ◼   ► They like can't understand what's going on

00:12:49 ◼   ► Yes, right because you get a bunch of people they're like including me and you in the tweet and like hashtag multi-pad lifestyle

00:12:55 ◼   ► And it's like you can only imagine that there is a person sitting in front of tweet deck and they have no idea what's happening

00:13:01 ◼   ► Yes, of course. Yep. Yeah, they're sitting in front of tweet deck

00:13:04 ◼   ► They have all the columns open and they're saving the multi-pad lifestyle column search

00:13:09 ◼   ► and thinking, "I don't understand what internet lever or button we have stumbled upon here,

00:13:16 ◼   ► but we've stepped on a thing with just this press photo of our CEO doing business at his

00:13:22 ◼   ► desk."

00:13:23 ◼   ► There are obviously a lot of people replying to that tweet and they're all saying whatever

00:13:26 ◼   ► they're saying, but you'll start to see this trend.

00:13:29 ◼   ► in every 10 is referencing these two people and/or this weird hashtag which when you read

00:13:34 ◼   ► it out doesn't make any sense because it's #MULTIPAD. What does this mean? What does

00:13:39 ◼   ► any of this mean? But it's just me and you living our lives. I have to say, multi-pad

00:13:45 ◼   ► lifestyle, the way that it's settled out for me, I'm still a big proponent, I tend not

00:13:49 ◼   ► to use them together very often, but I interchange between them all. That's kind of how the multi-pad

00:13:57 ◼   ► lifestyle has manifested for me. Because you know the multi-pad lifestyle is whatever you

00:14:02 ◼   ► make of it, there must just be more than one iPad. Like if you want to live the kitchen,

00:14:07 ◼   ► you know I have an iPad in the kitchen and an iPad that you use in the front room on

00:14:12 ◼   ► the sofa watching TV, you live the multi-pad lifestyle. We all can.

00:14:17 ◼   ► But I agree it's the same thing for me. That's why it's a rare situation where I'm using

00:14:24 ◼   ► two of them at the same time. It just, I can't even remember why on that particular day it just worked out that it was.

00:14:29 ◼   ► But I'm doing the same multi-pad lifestyle thing that you are in, as I've mentioned before, I really like separating out workspaces and different devices for different kinds of things.

00:14:39 ◼   ► And so that's the way that I still use it, is like, ah, okay, here is couch iPad, which is for goofing off and for nonsense, and here is work iPad.

00:14:51 ◼   ► iPad and these and these devices are different physical sizes they have

00:14:55 ◼   ► different looks and I find that really helpful to reinforce in your mind like

00:15:00 ◼   ► what is this for what are you supposed to be doing right now I have too many

00:15:05 ◼   ► iPads in my house right now though it's like I'm still dealing with like the

00:15:11 ◼   ► movement of the old ones like where did they go who like what family member will

00:15:16 ◼   ► take this one like what room in the house will this one be stationed in like

00:15:20 ◼   ► Like, the bringing in of two new iPads, like earlier this year, I haven't yet shook out

00:15:26 ◼   ► where everything's going yet.

00:15:27 ◼   ► So they were like, "I will just happen upon one," which in a place—it's like, "Oh,

00:15:32 ◼   ► underneath this notebook is my old 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

00:15:35 ◼   ► I didn't know you were under there."

00:15:37 ◼   ► Still trying to filter all that through.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Yeah, the grey household is definitely going through the same thing between myself and

00:15:43 ◼   ► my wife and our old iPads, because the introduction of the iPad Pros with pencils has now made

00:15:49 ◼   ► every non-pencil iPad just dead to us?"

00:15:53 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh, okay.

00:15:55 ◼   ► There's no place to shift these, and yeah, there's a little sad pile of iPads that we

00:16:01 ◼   ► need to figure out something to do with at some point of, 'Oh, these are the pencil-less

00:16:06 ◼   ► iPads.

00:16:07 ◼   ► They exist for us no more.'"

00:16:08 ◼   ► MATT: Did the Gray House hold Eradicate iPad Minis?

00:16:13 ◼   ► Is that something that ended up happening?

00:16:15 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a thing that has ended up happening.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Much to the sadness of an unspecified other member of the household.

00:16:25 ◼   ► The iPad Mini, because it lacks pencil support, which is still a thing I think that it should have,

00:16:31 ◼   ► it just became untenable because of RSI issues and the need to keep using a pencil as input

00:16:40 ◼   ► for someone who may or may not be my wife who uses the iPad on the couch quite a lot.

00:16:44 ◼   ► So yes, there's no more mini use in this household.

00:16:48 ◼   ► And it's funny, I was actually just talking to my parents

00:16:52 ◼   ► and my mom is a big fan of the iPad mini. She's like holding on

00:16:56 ◼   ► to this sad iPad mini that's really dying

00:17:00 ◼   ► and she's just still hoping for this. She's like "Oh sure, any day

00:17:04 ◼   ► they're going to come out with one with Pencil support." I'm like "I don't think so, Mom.

00:17:08 ◼   ► I think you gotta let it go." But that might be

00:17:12 ◼   ► the last iPad mini that exists in the greater extended gray family is that one.

00:17:19 ◼   ► So iPad minis, they're on the way out.

00:17:21 ◼   ► We never fully eradicated the iPad mini from this household.

00:17:25 ◼   ► It's still sitting like in the living room, right? Like it's still there.

00:17:30 ◼   ► And I don't know how much it's getting used, but like it's still there when we've had many

00:17:36 ◼   ► conversations about like why it shouldn't anymore. Because, you know, you've got to try and transition

00:17:41 ◼   ► like you don't want to get too used to it, but like it still exists.

00:17:45 ◼   ► So like I--

00:17:45 ◼   ► Oh wait! I just realized, I realized there's one more.

00:17:48 ◼   ► There's one more iPad mini I forgot about.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And it is the iPad mini that I never see because it is a dedicated sound machine

00:17:58 ◼   ► for white noise in the bedroom.

00:18:01 ◼   ► So we have a speaker that has a button that you can turn on and off

00:18:04 ◼   ► and then it just it just plays white noise to help sleep.

00:18:07 ◼   ► And I forgot that the audio wire that is coming out of that speaker is plugged into an iPad Mini,

00:18:13 ◼   ► which has sat in a drawer untouched for years.

00:18:16 ◼   ► So this is an app that is running constantly, like 24/7?

00:18:21 ◼   ► It's just, yeah, it's just the music player. I have a file that's just a white noise file,

00:18:26 ◼   ► and it's just playing on Repeat 1 in the music app on that iPad.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Because it's easier just to press the physical button on the top of the speaker,

00:18:35 ◼   ► Because when you're waking up it's easier to like you turn off the white noise and again it's like

00:18:39 ◼   ► it's it makes it simple it makes it easier to wake up and then you turn it on when it's bedtime.

00:18:43 ◼   ► So you just press the button instead of fiddling around with the iPad but I totally forgot that

00:18:48 ◼   ► that iPad is even in the drawer somewhere just plugged into the wall doing repeat one forever.

00:18:53 ◼   ► That's iPad retirement.

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00:20:30 ◼   ► You mentioned sitting in a lobby doing some work in an office building, which made me wonder...

00:20:39 ◼   ► We haven't checked in for a while on your office situation, and I had an image of you,

00:20:46 ◼   ► like a gray that sits in a lobby is a gray that's trying to avoid something, you know?

00:20:55 ◼   ► like I can't imagine you wanting to be sitting in a lobby so if it's in a lobby of an office building

00:21:02 ◼   ► I'm assuming the office building that you're in is your office building and if you're in a lobby

00:21:10 ◼   ► some something's pushing you there

00:21:13 ◼   ► uh I guess it has been a long time since we've done an update

00:21:24 ◼   ► Alright. Let's cast our mind back a long time ago.

00:21:28 ◼   ► I feel like this is a story I don't even know where we left off anymore.

00:21:33 ◼   ► I think the last time we spoke about this there were images of whiteboards with motivational words on them

00:21:40 ◼   ► and graphs and "be the best you you can be" that kind of stuff.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Yeah. Inspiration on a wall on whiteboards with my neighbour.

00:21:49 ◼   ► Okay, alright. Let's spool up this story.

00:21:54 ◼   ► As long time listeners of the show may be aware, I was increasingly annoyed by my office neighbor in my office.

00:22:02 ◼   ► Talking on the phone, talking to China, his nonsensical and comic notes to himself on a whiteboard that I would have to see when I passed his office.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Bothering me for no good reason, but they just kind of were.

00:22:16 ◼   ► every single time you were there, no matter the time, day, hour, like none of it mattered.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Didn't matter. But then more genuinely just the inconvenience of his schedule lining up exactly

00:22:29 ◼   ► with my schedule of being there super early in the morning and super late at night. So there's just

00:22:35 ◼   ► the two of us in these offices next to each other. And I want to be able to talk out my scripts out

00:22:39 ◼   ► out loud and just so aware that this person is right next to me, hearing

00:22:44 ◼   ► thunder sounds and repeated sentences over and over again.

00:22:48 ◼   ► So, before the summer rolled around, I realized, you know what, this office is not

00:23:00 ◼   ► exactly working for me. Maybe I found myself in the lobby one too many times

00:23:04 ◼   ► working on iPads instead of in the actual space that was upstairs that was

00:23:09 ◼   ► rented and I was thinking forward about what was going to be happening over the summer and how I was going to be gone a very long time

00:23:15 ◼   ► and I was also thinking about the very high rent on this place and I thought, you know what, the hell with this, I'm out of here.

00:23:22 ◼   ► I'm gonna cancel because I'm going to be gone for a couple of months over the summer anyway and I just, I couldn't abide with

00:23:30 ◼   ► spending the money on a place that I was finding myself not conducive to work anyway,

00:23:36 ◼   ► and then also paying for a couple of months when I wasn't going to be there.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So I thought, "It's over. We're done."

00:23:42 ◼   ► Did you put the room back together as you found it?

00:23:45 ◼   ► No. I picked up my iPad and I walked out.

00:23:49 ◼   ► I took my one piece of equipment with me and I left.

00:23:52 ◼   ► So you left the two desks standing on top of each other, you left the ceiling tiles

00:23:57 ◼   ► in whatever mess you left them in, like everything stayed.

00:24:01 ◼   ► - I didn't mess up the ceiling tiles.

00:24:02 ◼   ► The ceiling tiles were just fine.

00:24:03 ◼   ► - The carpet, you did something, you ripped something up.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - Oh, I put all the electric wires back down

00:24:10 ◼   ► the false floor, yeah, I shoved all the wires down there.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Oh, and I did, oh, I forgot, I did put,

00:24:16 ◼   ► I did put cardboard blockers over most of the ceiling lights

00:24:21 ◼   ► because they were too bright, I didn't like them.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Okay, look, there were some modifications

00:24:26 ◼   ► that were done to that office.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Which I didn't really think about when I left. I took the iPad and I walked away.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Was there a cleaning crew in this office? Like were people coming in to this office?

00:24:35 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, I wonder what it was like when like the administrator came back in there.

00:24:40 ◼   ► It's like what crime was planned in this room?

00:24:45 ◼   ► Nothing. They would come into a room that was just nice and neat and empty. A couple of things would be oddly out of place

00:24:53 ◼   ► But mostly it's fine.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Now you see the thing is though, like the things that you have changed, like those specific things that you did,

00:24:59 ◼   ► they are

00:25:01 ◼   ► They are out of the norm enough that I think it would be more concerning

00:25:06 ◼   ► Right? That there are just like small

00:25:09 ◼   ► Changes that most people wouldn't make that it's like why did they choose to do things this way?

00:25:16 ◼   ► You know, especially if they'd heard the thunder sounds like I think that I

00:25:20 ◼   ► I reckon they were happy to let you go.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Like when you came in that day and you were like,

00:25:23 ◼   ► "I wanna go," they were like, "No problem, Mr. Gray.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Sign here.

00:25:27 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:25:28 ◼   ► It's time to get you out of here."

00:25:30 ◼   ► - Well, yeah.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Like I went to the front office

00:25:33 ◼   ► and told them I wasn't coming back.

00:25:35 ◼   ► - Oh, you just dumped him by text message.

00:25:38 ◼   ► - I took my iPad, I walked away,

00:25:39 ◼   ► and I told my assistant to deal with it.

00:25:41 ◼   ► So she was in touch with them saying,

00:25:44 ◼   ► "Mr. Gray will no longer be returning," right?

00:25:47 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh.

00:25:48 ◼   ► - So I didn't handle that.

00:25:49 ◼   ► I don't know how that went down, but I can't-- it was fine.

00:25:52 ◼   ► Everything was fine. I walked away. That's what mattered. So the summer happened. I was gone for a while. I came back and

00:25:59 ◼   ► we'll say for now that I have a much

00:26:03 ◼   ► longer-term plan

00:26:06 ◼   ► for what I

00:26:08 ◼   ► want to do with my working space.

00:26:11 ◼   ► But

00:26:13 ◼   ► when I came back from the summer, I thought this longer-term plan that I have is going to take a long time.

00:26:17 ◼   ► That's why it's a long-term plan, and I need something

00:26:20 ◼   ► to tide me over for a while. So I thought, now that I'm back in London after the summer has happened,

00:26:28 ◼   ► let me take a look around and see if I can find a place to work temporarily.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And it seems like in the past maybe year or two,

00:26:38 ◼   ► there are a whole bunch more

00:26:42 ◼   ► working

00:26:43 ◼   ► Short term office spaces around than there were when I was looking the last time

00:26:48 ◼   ► It seems like this is a I don't know almost like there's something

00:26:52 ◼   ► Startup II feeling about it

00:26:54 ◼   ► Like there's a whole bunch of companies that are trying to do the same thing about like hey look at us

00:26:59 ◼   ► It is a growth industry. I think okay

00:27:02 ◼   ► So this is not just my perception because it feels a little bit like the food

00:27:06 ◼   ► Company the food delivery companies in London where there's yeah

00:27:09 ◼   ► Oh, there was one and now there are ten all with knives at each other's throats, like

00:27:16 ◼   ► out for your business.

00:27:18 ◼   ► There are a couple of really big companies, like I won't name them because they should

00:27:22 ◼   ► sponsor us before we name them, but like there are a few big companies that are setting up

00:27:30 ◼   ► in London and all over the place that are doing this stuff. And at a huge degree, like

00:27:36 ◼   ► buying multiple floors of brand new office buildings, like really kind of just big, big

00:27:41 ◼   ► business stuff.

00:27:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it's interesting to see this sort of change.

00:27:45 ◼   ► So I think I ended up looking at something like five or six different companies that

00:27:53 ◼   ► were all trying to provide some kind of temporary office services.

00:27:57 ◼   ► Because I just wanted to see what's available.

00:28:00 ◼   ► And also, I find this interesting.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Interesting. I mean you and I have visited office spaces. Like there's something about this that I just I find interesting

00:28:07 ◼   ► I don't exactly know why but it's just

00:28:09 ◼   ► Hi, I don't I don't mind. I don't mind a little tour of a workspace

00:28:14 ◼   ► See how things are set up. See how different people do things. So

00:28:18 ◼   ► There was a certain

00:28:21 ◼   ► commonality to these places Myke. I would say hey, I

00:28:25 ◼   ► am

00:28:28 ◼   ► looking for an office to rent.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Like I know that you are primarily a company that's a co-working space.

00:28:35 ◼   ► So you have an open

00:28:38 ◼   ► bullpen in which there are people.

00:28:41 ◼   ► They want to sell you the opportunity of a chair.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Right. Yes, that is

00:28:47 ◼   ► the perfect way to put it. Yes. There are lots

00:28:50 ◼   ► of companies that are in the opportunity of a chair

00:28:53 ◼   ► business now. It's like,

00:28:56 ◼   ► Okay, how interesting this is.

00:28:58 ◼   ► I feel like this is some kind of signal about changes in the economy that I don't fully understand.

00:29:04 ◼   ► But, like, why is this a thing that you're selling? Why is it a thing that so many people are buying?

00:29:09 ◼   ► Including me, but presumably not all of these people are YouTubers.

00:29:12 ◼   ► I don't understand who these people all are.

00:29:14 ◼   ► But whatever.

00:29:15 ◼   ► So many of these places will then also try to upsell some of their chair opportunities as offices.

00:29:24 ◼   ► So there's going to have they're going to have some dedicated office space

00:29:27 ◼   ► But typically they are for six people right like I think in most instances

00:29:34 ◼   ► They are expecting a company of multiple people to to be the people that like that take those

00:29:40 ◼   ► Even though they're really on the offices for one person, but like you shove seven people in them

00:29:44 ◼   ► Yeah, so this is this is the this is the trend is oh yes. We have offices

00:29:50 ◼   ► Will there be eight of you? And then I show up and it's a space in which I think it would be cruel to put

00:29:56 ◼   ► three people. But they're like, no, no, it's fine.

00:30:00 ◼   ► This chicken cage meets the minimum regulations and we can put eight people inside of there.

00:30:05 ◼   ► It's like, oh, all right. One of the first places that I went to really typified for me the thing that I find baffling,

00:30:10 ◼   ► which is, okay, do you have offices for...

00:30:12 ◼   ► I would usually just ask for two people because the one person space was just comical, right?

00:30:19 ◼   ► It was it was like no, I will not be in this one person space

00:30:21 ◼   ► So do you have an office space for two people? Oh, yes, come right in

00:30:24 ◼   ► We have a couple come take a look

00:30:26 ◼   ► so the first place I went to is this big open bullpen and

00:30:30 ◼   ► In the middle of the bullpen there are glass cubes

00:30:38 ◼   ► Yeah, this is exactly what it was Zuckerberg's

00:30:43 ◼   ► Office setup. So if you think of big

00:30:48 ◼   ► Open office workspace, and then in the middle, cubes.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Pure glass cubes.

00:30:57 ◼   ► That, my favorite detail, the glass did not go all the way up to the ceiling.

00:31:05 ◼   ► The glass stopped maybe two feet short of the ceiling.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Just high enough that if you weren't paying attention, you might not notice.

00:31:16 ◼   ► But if you're me, you notice immediately.

00:31:19 ◼   ► That's silly.

00:31:19 ◼   ► This was the worst version of this, but I saw so many of these things.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And I was looking at this place to work, and I'm just trying to understand the world.

00:31:35 ◼   ► This office space, it provides 0% privacy over the open bullpen, because it's just glass.

00:31:45 ◼   ► There's no privacy here at all.

00:31:47 ◼   ► It's not soundproof.

00:31:48 ◼   ► It's not soundproofed because the glass doesn't go up to the top.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And it's only glass, right? So it's never gonna be that soundproofed anyway.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it's never gonna be that soundproofed anyway.

00:32:02 ◼   ► I don't know. In these situations, I don't say things, but the girl who's giving me the tour,

00:32:11 ◼   ► I almost want to just really ask some honest questions like why was this designed this way?

00:32:18 ◼   ► Who is this for and what advantage is this cube supposed to provide?

00:32:24 ◼   ► I just I don't get it. I don't understand it at all. But it was interesting to me that this was a

00:32:31 ◼   ► recurring theme of a bunch of these places that I went to.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And these are different company types, right? Like you're not just going to

00:32:39 ◼   ► all with like company provider A.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's what I want to be clear here, and that's the thing that I found was interesting, was

00:32:46 ◼   ► I think I would have been a lot more baffled by this had we not done our tours of the big

00:32:53 ◼   ► campuses out in Silicon Valley.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Because it's like if I if this is the first time I had seen this I would have been genuinely horrified, right?

00:33:03 ◼   ► But having walked through the Facebook campus, it's like, "Oh, okay, I have a frame of reference for this now."

00:33:09 ◼   ► Like this is a pattern that it feels like is being stamped across the world.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Is this open space, this space where there is very little privacy,

00:33:27 ◼   ► And now it is taking over office space where it's not even like,

00:33:34 ◼   ► "Oh, this is a company and we want everybody who is in the same company to be able to talk to each other

00:33:39 ◼   ► and work with each other in this open area."

00:33:42 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, this is now what different private companies competing with each other

00:33:48 ◼   ► are offering to people who are small businesses, you know, anywhere from like one to ten people in size.

00:33:55 ◼   ► The central glass office thing makes no sense, right? Like, there is a metaphor for Mark Zuckerberg's office

00:34:04 ◼   ► that, like it or not, makes sense, right? Like, look, he's the CEO of one of the biggest companies

00:34:11 ◼   ► in the world. He has to have an office because every now and then he's gonna bring somebody in.

00:34:17 ◼   ► Because, like, they even said to us when we were there, most of the time he's working outside the

00:34:21 ◼   ► the office. And there are like the picture of him with the tape over the computer camera.

00:34:26 ◼   ► He is at a desk outside of the office, which is where he tends to work with everybody else.

00:34:31 ◼   ► But every now and then he needs to take a meeting, so he goes into the glass room. But

00:34:35 ◼   ► he doesn't want it to be like, "I'm hiding away from you people so everybody can see

00:34:39 ◼   ► him when he's in there." There is a metaphor to that which has some sense to it.

00:34:46 ◼   ► It is a statement about his view of his position here.

00:34:52 ◼   ► Which I actually kind of liked when they explained it to us, because it's kind of like, if you're

00:34:57 ◼   ► going to make everybody work this way, right, everybody's going to work in these huge, vast

00:35:01 ◼   ► aircraft hangars with cables hanging from the ceiling, the CEO of the company should

00:35:07 ◼   ► do this too.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Like, if he's making everybody do this, he should do it.

00:35:12 ◼   ► So like, you know, I kind of liked it that they were like, he has his desk here, he has

00:35:15 ◼   ► as this office, but he only uses it for this and this,

00:35:17 ◼   ► and it's like, okay, I actually kinda like this.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Like if I was working at Facebook,

00:35:20 ◼   ► I would be like, okay, right,

00:35:22 ◼   ► like this is the situation that we're all in,

00:35:24 ◼   ► because let's be frank about this,

00:35:26 ◼   ► the amount of people we have,

00:35:27 ◼   ► there's no other way to do it, right?

00:35:29 ◼   ► Like you just gotta cram all those people

00:35:31 ◼   ► in those insanely large buildings.

00:35:33 ◼   ► But if I'm going to see an office space,

00:35:37 ◼   ► and hiring an office space, I don't need that metaphor.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Like the metaphor is not required, right?

00:35:42 ◼   ► Like, I don't need to feel a sense of camaraderie with these other 25 companies.

00:35:46 ◼   ► Like, there's no that this isn't required.

00:35:49 ◼   ► This is not needed.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Oh, well, I mean, OK, so this is another thing. So.

00:35:54 ◼   ► I like I said, I think I saw five or six of these companies.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Would you said right there camaraderie?

00:36:00 ◼   ► Every one of these companies was not like they didn't just want me to rent an office.

00:36:04 ◼   ► They wanted me to be part of their community.

00:36:10 ◼   ► The community. Oh, God.

00:36:12 ◼   ► And this is a case where I've always had a little bit of an annoyance with the word "community"

00:36:22 ◼   ► because I feel like my familiarity from this has been the YouTube world where

00:36:27 ◼   ► YouTubers who have enormous audiences want to just talk about being a part of their own communities

00:36:35 ◼   ► in a way that I find weird and deflecting of what they are.

00:36:41 ◼   ► But now it's like I feel like this word has spread everywhere and it has now become...

00:36:48 ◼   ► It's not just a word that I feel uncomfortable with, it's a word that essentially makes me flinch.

00:36:53 ◼   ► So now when an office manager is telling me about how like,

00:36:58 ◼   ► "I'm here to rent an office because I want to just work quietly on my own."

00:37:03 ◼   ► and they say, "We have an excellent community."

00:37:08 ◼   ► (sighs)

00:37:10 ◼   ► Look, I'm not like the world's most extroverted guy,

00:37:13 ◼   ► but there's something that feels almost like weirdly

00:37:17 ◼   ► like threatening about if you're not part of our community.

00:37:22 ◼   ► It's like everybody here is part of the community

00:37:25 ◼   ► because we're all pod people.

00:37:26 ◼   ► And as like, you're gonna be a pod person too

00:37:29 ◼   ► by coming here.

00:37:30 ◼   ► I just, I find myself flinching away from this word because it's so forced.

00:37:37 ◼   ► And I also find it so, it's so strange to go from different company to different company

00:37:44 ◼   ► but hear the same thing each time.

00:37:47 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, in our open office space, you will be part of the community of all the

00:37:50 ◼   ► other people who work in this open office space."

00:37:52 ◼   ► Because it has become part of the corporate jargon for this industry.

00:37:58 ◼   ► That's what it is. It's weird.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - I don't disagree with the phrase community

00:38:06 ◼   ► in the way that you do.

00:38:07 ◼   ► I don't have the distaste for it

00:38:10 ◼   ► in regards to YouTube or podcasting or whatever,

00:38:13 ◼   ► even people that listen to this show,

00:38:15 ◼   ► people that listen to other shows.

00:38:17 ◼   ► The idea of the community makes sense to me,

00:38:19 ◼   ► but for me, it is a thing that you join voluntarily

00:38:22 ◼   ► or you're a part of because you enjoy something

00:38:25 ◼   ► or you have an affinity for something.

00:38:27 ◼   ► I don't join a community when I'm giving you money, right?

00:38:30 ◼   ► It's not a community, right?

00:38:32 ◼   ► Like I'm not buying into this community.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Like this is an organization that I'm a part of, right?

00:38:37 ◼   ► Like that is the difference.

00:38:39 ◼   ► It's like I pay my dues for this organization.

00:38:42 ◼   ► Like I'm not adapting to your worldview

00:38:45 ◼   ► because I pay you 400 pounds a month, right?

00:38:48 ◼   ► Like this isn't what this is.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:38:51 ◼   ► My flinchingness is the when someone tells you

00:38:56 ◼   ► you a thing as a community. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Communities are things that exist. It's a human

00:39:04 ◼   ► function, but it's the uncomfortableness of the top-down-ness of it, right? Like this is our

00:39:11 ◼   ► community that we're going to. We are building this community in this anonymous floor of an

00:39:16 ◼   ► office building, right? Like that's what we're doing here. It's like, "Errrr." Like you can do

00:39:22 ◼   ► things to encourage a community, but it's just weird when it feels like it's a mandatory

00:39:29 ◼   ► part of the thing.

00:39:30 ◼   ► Like, guess what?

00:39:31 ◼   ► You're gonna be part of this thing as part of the thing.

00:39:33 ◼   ► I'm just here to rent an office, man.

00:39:35 ◼   ► Like I'm not here to make friends.

00:39:39 ◼   ► That's not what's happening here.

00:39:42 ◼   ► So it was just a strange experience.

00:39:46 ◼   ► And it was also just weird seeing how much this pattern has spread.

00:39:54 ◼   ► Which makes me assume that it partly must be because it's just incredibly cost effective.

00:39:59 ◼   ► I also think there's a way that it looks good at a glance if you're not really thinking

00:40:05 ◼   ► about things.

00:40:06 ◼   ► But so anyway, there's like a whole bunch of these different companies around.

00:40:10 ◼   ► I made a decision to try to suck it up a little bit because what I was, what I wanted was

00:40:17 ◼   ► a space outside of the house where I could work and I wanted it quickly and I also specifically

00:40:26 ◼   ► wanted a place that I just, I could just get started with and I'll work on my long term

00:40:33 ◼   ► problem later.

00:40:34 ◼   ► So, after having toured a bunch of these companies, I eventually found one that to me was the

00:40:39 ◼   ► least offensive of these things, and I have an office workspace now that is-- it is not

00:40:49 ◼   ► a glass cube in the middle of a gigantic bullpen, but it is a glass cube among a bunch of other

00:40:55 ◼   ► glass cubes, and it's really weird. It's a really weird thing to be a part of.

00:41:01 ◼   ► So you can just, like, see through all of them?

00:41:03 ◼   ► Yeah, so you can see through all of these glass cubes.

00:41:07 ◼   ► It's it's like a coworking space that I used to be a part of.

00:41:11 ◼   ► But if you just put glass dividers between all of the chair opportunities

00:41:15 ◼   ► that that people have, I don't think I like that.

00:41:18 ◼   ► Like, I don't think I would feel very comfortable.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Like, I feel like I would always be on some kind of performance.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Yeah, so this is

00:41:27 ◼   ► I feel like I'm having an experience by doing this right.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Like I just want to say, right, like I've worked in big buildings, like I've worked in

00:41:36 ◼   ► co-working spaces, like I'm cool with that.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Right. Like I actually think that co-working spaces are pretty good and I used one for

00:41:42 ◼   ► quite a while.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:43 ◼   ► But if I if I am paying for an office, I want some seclusion.

00:41:49 ◼   ► Otherwise, I'm just going to sit in the bullpen like and pay probably half the money.

00:41:54 ◼   ► Right. Like if I'm in an office, I want some walls.

00:41:57 ◼   ► I don't want it to just be glass.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Like, I kinda, personally I don't, I don't,

00:42:02 ◼   ► I don't like it and I'm surprised

00:42:05 ◼   ► that you've settled for it, honestly.

00:42:06 ◼   ► Like, it just doesn't really feel like something

00:42:08 ◼   ► that I would have expected you would go for.

00:42:12 ◼   ► - Okay, well there's a few things

00:42:14 ◼   ► that I think you need to understand

00:42:15 ◼   ► about the situation here.

00:42:17 ◼   ► So one of the things that happened

00:42:19 ◼   ► essentially by accident,

00:42:22 ◼   ► but has worked really well with this is,

00:42:27 ◼   ► We were talking last time about like me changing my sleeping schedule.

00:42:30 ◼   ► I basically have that sorted out now and it's great.

00:42:33 ◼   ► I'm getting up nice and early and I'm back into the routine.

00:42:35 ◼   ► I haven't actually changed, it just took a lot more effort to click myself back into the way that things used to be.

00:42:40 ◼   ► But so the way things are working is I'm not actually using

00:42:46 ◼   ► the glass office space

00:42:48 ◼   ► for

00:42:50 ◼   ► the writing and the video work in the same way that my old office used to be.

00:42:54 ◼   ► What I'm doing is I'm up early enough that when I go into the building, there's nobody there.

00:43:01 ◼   ► So I have just

00:43:04 ◼   ► access to essentially the whole building and

00:43:07 ◼   ► there are a couple of spots where it's like, "Great! I can just take my iPad and I can work here and I can

00:43:12 ◼   ► write and talk out loud and

00:43:15 ◼   ► there's nobody else here because it's

00:43:18 ◼   ► 630 in the morning, and and there's not going to be anybody in this building for at least another two hours really

00:43:24 ◼   ► so

00:43:26 ◼   ► it's having access to a certain amount of space and

00:43:29 ◼   ► That's really great and the thing the thing that I have ended up doing with

00:43:35 ◼   ► this weird glass cube that I'm in is I have set it up as

00:43:40 ◼   ► I've set it up as it like an administration

00:43:43 ◼   ► center for all of what I regard as

00:43:47 ◼   ► light work stuff. So this is email, this is

00:43:52 ◼   ► communicating with people that I work with, this is editing the podcasts,

00:43:56 ◼   ► this is editing videos or vlogs or just a whole bunch of other stuff. Like I have set up that space to do

00:44:04 ◼   ► this kind of work and

00:44:07 ◼   ► I've partly done it because for a very very long time

00:44:11 ◼   ► I've done all of that work in the place where I am speaking to you right now

00:44:16 ◼   ► which is the home office in my house, which is like the podcast recording studio.

00:44:20 ◼   ► But it has been on my mind ever since the summer that I want to push this idea of separating workspaces

00:44:29 ◼   ► further and harder than I have before, and so what I am trying to do as much as possible now is

00:44:37 ◼   ► have it be the case that if I am home,

00:44:42 ◼   ► I am doing no work.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Right now the podcast recording is the one exception to that, but if I'm not recording a podcast and I am home,

00:44:52 ◼   ► I am not working.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And I've been doing this for, I guess it's about a

00:44:59 ◼   ► probably about a month now, and I have to say I really like it. I really like having that additional

00:45:07 ◼   ► physical separation, and I think it's working really great that like my wife knows if I am home for the most part that I like

00:45:14 ◼   ► there isn't a thing that I'm going to disappear and do.

00:45:17 ◼   ► I've essentially recreated for myself this idea of like,

00:45:20 ◼   ► I am going to the office because I have a whole bunch

00:45:23 ◼   ► of stuff that I need to do.

00:45:25 ◼   ► And I'm gonna go there and I'm going to work

00:45:27 ◼   ► and then when I am done, I am going to come back home.

00:45:30 ◼   ► So that is the overarching idea for what is going on.

00:45:35 ◼   ► It's like I wanted a place to be able to move a bunch

00:45:40 ◼   ► of the light work out of the house to this second location.

00:45:47 ◼   ► And that is the reason why the glass cube is tolerable,

00:45:52 ◼   ► because what I'm not doing in there

00:45:55 ◼   ► is walking back and forth talking out loud

00:45:58 ◼   ► while 600 people in the neighboring glass cubes

00:46:02 ◼   ► are all looking at me, right?

00:46:03 ◼   ► That is not what is occurring in that space.

00:46:06 ◼   ► - Why do you record the audio of your videos?

00:46:10 ◼   ► For now, I'm still going to be doing that in the house.

00:46:12 ◼   ► That it's not gonna be in the office.

00:46:15 ◼   ► I'm gonna record it at home in the same place

00:46:17 ◼   ► that I am recording the podcast, which is at home.

00:46:20 ◼   ► - So the home office is the audio studio.

00:46:24 ◼   ► And then all of the work is performed

00:46:27 ◼   ► in the administration glass cube.

00:46:30 ◼   ► - Yes, that's the idea.

00:46:31 ◼   ► - Do you know what I'm really keen on though?

00:46:35 ◼   ► - What?

00:46:35 ◼   ► - Finding out what this long-term plan is.

00:46:38 ◼   ► - I know you are.

00:46:39 ◼   ► Because in my mind you're building an office building.

00:46:42 ◼   ► That's the great hours.

00:46:44 ◼   ► This is what I imagine is happening.

00:46:46 ◼   ► - Well look, let's not get distracted by the future.

00:46:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:51 ◼   ► In the meantime though, I do have to say

00:46:55 ◼   ► that the thing about the glass cube is

00:46:57 ◼   ► I'm with you on, there is a strange element to it

00:47:04 ◼   ► and I'm able to do this I think partly because

00:47:08 ◼   ► I'm viewing it as not necessarily a long-term solution.

00:47:14 ◼   ► And I'm also viewing it as almost as an anthropological experiment.

00:47:21 ◼   ► I am coming into this office environment.

00:47:24 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh yes, hello fellow office workers."

00:47:28 ◼   ► Like, "I'm just going to my desk and yes, I am one of you too.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Yes, we are here all on the computers working together."

00:47:36 ◼   ► I'm treating it very much in this mental mode of I am apart from this.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Like this is, I'm just passing through on this thing and there are so many details about this that I find

00:47:49 ◼   ► interesting and/or horrifying that, but I'm viewing them from a distance or from a bit of a separation.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And that is why this thing is working.

00:48:03 ◼   ► [BEEP]

00:48:04 ◼   ► Hello Cortex listeners. It's your friend, CGP Grey, recording now, late at night, from my glass cube.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Do you hear that? [knocking]

00:48:14 ◼   ► That's the sound of me knocking on the wall of my cube.

00:48:18 ◼   ► Because I'm a nosy sort, during the day I like to walk around and look in all the cubes, then see what everybody's up to.

00:48:24 ◼   ► See what they're doing.

00:48:26 ◼   ► You know what I see a lot of? Little companies with a few people building a website.

00:48:33 ◼   ► A website that looks terrible. You know what they need?

00:48:36 ◼   ► They need to listen to Cortex so that they know

00:48:39 ◼   ► about Squarespace. If you're an eight-person company in a smallish glass cube

00:48:44 ◼   ► and you just need a website to let the world know what your business is

00:48:48 ◼   ► you probably shouldn't have one of those people spending all of their time making

00:48:53 ◼   ► a website.

00:48:54 ◼   ► That's what Squarespace is for. With Squarespace

00:48:57 ◼   ► you can have a website up and running in no time flat.

00:49:01 ◼   ► Squarespace is the place that lets you easily create a website for your next idea.

00:49:07 ◼   ► If you want to sell something because you're a company, you can do an online store with Squarespace.

00:49:13 ◼   ► If you're a design agency and you need to show off your portfolio, guess what? Squarespace does that.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Maybe you just need to have a blog where you can let everybody know what your company is up to.

00:49:24 ◼   ► You know the answer. The answer is Squarespace.

00:49:27 ◼   ► because Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that lets you do everything you want to do.

00:49:33 ◼   ► And there's nothing to install, no patches to worry about, no upgrades needed.

00:49:39 ◼   ► And guess what? Squarespace is way cheaper than hiring someone to work on a website all the time.

00:49:45 ◼   ► Squarespace is just $12 a month.

00:49:49 ◼   ► That gives you access to all of their beautiful templates, their 24/7 customer support, everything they offer.

00:49:56 ◼   ► That's why my company in a glass cube uses Squarespace, because there's no room in here for somebody else to maintain a website all the time.

00:50:03 ◼   ► So right now you can start a trial by going to squarespace.com,

00:50:09 ◼   ► and when you decide to sign up, use the offer code "CORTEX" to get 10% off your purchase and show your support for the show.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Squarespace. Make your next move, make your next website.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Thanks to Squarespace for supporting Cortex and all of Relay FM.

00:50:25 ◼   ► How's that Nintendo Switch treating you?

00:50:29 ◼   ► It's good.

00:50:30 ◼   ► I'm trying to get up my 200cc Mario Kart skills.

00:50:34 ◼   ► That's difficult.

00:50:35 ◼   ► You've got a break on 200cc, you can't just smash into the corners anymore.

00:50:39 ◼   ► No way around that.

00:50:42 ◼   ► Yes, that's what I have learned.

00:50:45 ◼   ► I need to break.

00:50:47 ◼   ► A lot.

00:50:48 ◼   ► And I'm not very good at it.

00:50:49 ◼   ► But it's still 95, actually no probably 99% Mario Kart around these parts.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Not so much Zelda.

00:50:59 ◼   ► It's good.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Got a little bored with Zelda.

00:51:01 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:51:02 ◼   ► I want to tell you about a game that I've been playing for a couple of days but I've

00:51:08 ◼   ► been waiting for for a long time.

00:51:10 ◼   ► And I think you would like it.

00:51:13 ◼   ► It's called Stardew Valley.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Have you heard of Stardew Valley before?

00:51:17 ◼   ► I have because you have pitched it to me before.

00:51:20 ◼   ► I think on this very show you mentioned Stardew Valley as a possibility.

00:51:23 ◼   ► I mentioned it to you as a game that was upcoming when you first got your Switch a couple of

00:51:28 ◼   ► months ago.

00:51:29 ◼   ► My memory is it's a farming simulator?

00:51:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it is.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Sounds terribly boring.

00:51:33 ◼   ► Who wants to simulate that kind of thing?

00:51:34 ◼   ► Who would play farming simulators, right?

00:51:36 ◼   ► This is why I am offering this game to you as an option.

00:51:40 ◼   ► It is part farming simulator, part RPG.

00:51:43 ◼   ► Have you ever played Animal Crossing?

00:51:45 ◼   ► No, I haven't.

00:51:47 ◼   ► The only thing I know about Animal Crossing is the video review of it that Yahtzee did,

00:51:52 ◼   ► which is like a work of genius. But no, I don't, I don't, I'm unfamiliar with these

00:51:57 ◼   ► things.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Okay, so I guess the way for me to try and describe this game to you is that there is

00:52:04 ◼   ► like a very light RPG mechanic in that you're in a town and there are people that you can

00:52:09 ◼   ► talk to and sometimes they'll give you quests but you can also build your relationships

00:52:12 ◼   ► with them.

00:52:13 ◼   ► Oh, you have to do errands for the people?

00:52:14 ◼   ► It's way less that the errands that you perform for people are purely as a way to

00:52:20 ◼   ► get your money quicker.

00:52:22 ◼   ► There isn't a story that is forced in that way, like you have to progress through this

00:52:28 ◼   ► by doing errands.

00:52:29 ◼   ► So I don't need to find chickens for a guy to get the boomerang?

00:52:32 ◼   ► That's not what this is?

00:52:33 ◼   ► Yeah, you don't need to do that sort of stuff because the result of doing these things

00:52:37 ◼   ► is to get money from them and then the money helps you push forward.

00:52:41 ◼   ► And really the main focus that you have is building your farm. Right? Like it starts

00:52:47 ◼   ► off great actually. Like I don't want to say too much because I find it kind of surprising

00:52:50 ◼   ► but like basically you're a person who decides that you want to go start a farm. Right? Like

00:52:55 ◼   ► this is this is kind of what you are. And there are there is some surprises in it for

00:52:59 ◼   ► me in that there are intriguing little things that happen which build into a story which

00:53:07 ◼   ► exists in the game but you don't really have to pay a ton of attention to it if

00:53:11 ◼   ► you don't want to like I feel like it's kind of got this like addition of a

00:53:14 ◼   ► story that I wasn't expecting which is kind of surprising but a lot of this

00:53:19 ◼   ► game is resource and time management hmm which is why I think you would like it

00:53:24 ◼   ► like you are farming you are creating a farmland like you're clearing out the

00:53:29 ◼   ► farmland you're planting the stuff you're watering the plants you're

00:53:33 ◼   ► harvesting them and you're selling them and as a way to build up more and more

00:53:37 ◼   ► money to plant more and more things and then to get animals as a way to

00:53:41 ◼   ► continually make your farm bigger and bigger and bigger like you have this

00:53:44 ◼   ► huge plot of land that you can work with and you can build up the farm and then

00:53:49 ◼   ► you can build up your house and you can decorate if you want to it's like as a

00:53:53 ◼   ► something else you can spend your money on.

00:53:55 ◼   ► Can I automate this or hire people to do some of this work for me?

00:53:59 ◼   ► That is a question that I don't have an answer for because I'm not that far in.

00:54:04 ◼   ► Like I'm still a relatively small farm, like I don't know if it's a thing that you can do.

00:54:07 ◼   ► See, that's where the sweet spot comes from.

00:54:10 ◼   ► In the world of imaginary work, when you start thinking, "Hmm, how can I automate this imaginary work?"

00:54:14 ◼   ► Well, so there's like, I've seen some elements of this in that like,

00:54:17 ◼   ► so one of the things that I'm doing now, every morning, I have to water my plants, right?

00:54:21 ◼   ► Like I have to go through and individually water every plant.

00:54:24 ◼   ► That's like one of the things I have to do every day.

00:54:27 ◼   ► But I know it's possible to buy sprinklers,

00:54:31 ◼   ► like to make sprinklers.

00:54:33 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:54:34 ◼   ► - Which then take that job away from me, right?

00:54:36 ◼   ► So like that's the thing that I'll be able to do.

00:54:39 ◼   ► - So the reason I ask, just to be clear here,

00:54:42 ◼   ► is because what I'm cautious of is the Farmville

00:54:47 ◼   ► type gameplay where the game is just playing

00:54:52 ◼   ► on your loss aversion.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Like, oh, you need to harvest your pumpkins today,

00:54:55 ◼   ► otherwise you're going to lose them, right?

00:54:57 ◼   ► which is just solely their mechanism

00:54:59 ◼   ► to make you keep coming back.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, this game has elements of that,

00:55:02 ◼   ► but it's not real world time.

00:55:05 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:55:06 ◼   ► - So things are only growing when you're playing.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - Okay, all right.

00:55:10 ◼   ► - Right, so if you left the game for a week,

00:55:12 ◼   ► your crops don't die,

00:55:14 ◼   ► because you haven't been playing the game.

00:55:17 ◼   ► But there is an element of going through and harvesting.

00:55:20 ◼   ► You will do the harvesting.

00:55:22 ◼   ► But I've been enjoying,

00:55:24 ◼   ► even though it's like it's beginning more work, right?

00:55:27 ◼   ► Like to make my farm bigger and bigger,

00:55:28 ◼   ► like there was a moment where I was like,

00:55:30 ◼   ► "Oh, that's how I make more money, I plant more stuff."

00:55:33 ◼   ► Right, like it's just kind of this,

00:55:35 ◼   ► it's a very simple thing, but like it took me a moment.

00:55:37 ◼   ► I was like, "I'm making a lot of money on this game."

00:55:39 ◼   ► 'Cause I just kind of was keeping the plot that I made

00:55:42 ◼   ► the same size and was just refilling it.

00:55:44 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh no, I should spend all of the money

00:55:46 ◼   ► that I have to buy more seeds."

00:55:49 ◼   ► As opposed to like trying to slowly save up

00:55:52 ◼   ► to buy something that I needed.

00:55:54 ◼   ► So, but there are like, you know, there's also like, um, there's mining that you can

00:55:59 ◼   ► do, right?

00:56:00 ◼   ► So you go in and like, there is like a most spelunky like mine that you go into and there

00:56:05 ◼   ► are like, uh, simple enemies that you kind of hack and slash at.

00:56:09 ◼   ► And that's the way do you build up resources.

00:56:11 ◼   ► And the deeper that you go into this mine, the better resources you need.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Like I need iron to build the sprinklers and I'm confident-

00:56:17 ◼   ► Okay, so this sounds very Minecrafty in a way.

00:56:20 ◼   ► Um, in a way, yes.

00:56:24 ◼   ► Like Stardew Valley, I think the reason that it has become so popular, because it's been

00:56:28 ◼   ► a very popular PC game for quite a while, I think one of the reasons that it became

00:56:33 ◼   ► so popular is it borrows a lot of very interesting mechanics from a bunch of different types

00:56:37 ◼   ► of games.

00:56:38 ◼   ► So like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Spelunky and Minecraft.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Like it's got all of this type of aspect in it, but it's all presented in a 16-bit

00:56:45 ◼   ► art style, right?

00:56:46 ◼   ► Like it's very simple.

00:56:49 ◼   ► The controls are pretty simple.

00:56:52 ◼   ► It is a good game, but it is one of those games that like, another reason I think you'll

00:56:58 ◼   ► like it is I accidentally spent seven hours playing it yesterday because it's just one

00:57:04 ◼   ► more day.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Because everything's done in days.

00:57:10 ◼   ► So like you wake up, you do your stuff, and then you go to sleep.

00:57:14 ◼   ► And like different things happen.

00:57:15 ◼   ► So like you might do a thing and it's like you get like a little message like, "oh tomorrow

00:57:19 ◼   ► this thing's gonna be on sale in the store."

00:57:21 ◼   ► like well I could that would be good so I'll get that and then I'll stop playing after that but

00:57:26 ◼   ► then there's this other thing that happens and then there's another day and another day and

00:57:29 ◼   ► another day and you know you have limited energy as an individual so you plan around how much energy

00:57:36 ◼   ► you spend in a day right like if you spend the whole day trying to clear out the farm you'll get

00:57:42 ◼   ► tired but you can eat to build the energy back up but you might want to save those ingredients to

00:57:46 ◼   ► sell them instead. Like, I think this is a game you would enjoy.

00:57:52 ◼   ► You're selling it very hard here, Myke. Because I think it's great. I think it's

00:57:59 ◼   ► really great. I love it.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Yeah, five stars from Myke.

00:58:02 ◼   ► I think so. I've waited for a long time for this game and it's paid off. Like, I am enjoying

00:58:07 ◼   ► it immensely. In a way that No Man's Sky, right, like, people always laugh when they

00:58:12 ◼   ► hear the episode a long time ago where I talk about, "Oh, I can't wait for No Man's Sky

00:58:15 ◼   ► had to come out and then it kind of ended up being overwhelming. Stardew Valley already

00:58:21 ◼   ► had a track record beforehand, where it's considered to be a great game. I have a bunch

00:58:25 ◼   ► of flights coming up and I'm very excited about the prospect of being able to spend

00:58:29 ◼   ► six hours just tending to my crops.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Alright, alright, you've been pushing it so hard, I'll give it a try.

00:58:35 ◼   ► I want you to try this one and you can report back, but I think that you would like this

00:58:39 ◼   ► game. It's one of those games that's perfect for the Switch because you can take it with

00:58:44 ◼   ► you.

00:58:45 ◼   ► I don't know about this idea about bringing a whole other...

00:58:49 ◼   ► I know everybody that's a selling feature for the Switch is "oh boy you can bring it

00:58:52 ◼   ► with you" and I was like "I got another thing to bring" and now I need to bring my USB-C

00:58:56 ◼   ► cable to charge the thing as well.

00:58:59 ◼   ► I'm not sure I'm ever going to be a guy who travels with a Switch.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Yeah but you should already do that because you have a MacBook Pro.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Oh god yes that's right of course never mind.

00:59:07 ◼   ► You know?

00:59:08 ◼   ► It's all the same charger.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Universal USB-C, the universal plug that I love so much.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Externally symmetrical, internally in the wire, not the same everywhere.

00:59:19 ◼   ► It's great. I love you USB-C.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to be someone who brings the Switch with me.

00:59:23 ◼   ► Here's the thing, Myke.

00:59:25 ◼   ► It's not that I wouldn't enjoy bringing the Switch with me,

00:59:29 ◼   ► but I think there is something

00:59:31 ◼   ► there's something that I resist about the idea of

00:59:35 ◼   ► acknowledging in advance that when I am traveling, I'm going to be playing a bunch of video games.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I feel like I have a little bit of psychological resistance to that,

00:59:45 ◼   ► because normally when I'm traveling it's the idea that I'm doing--

00:59:48 ◼   ► I'm traveling because there's a good reason. There's a thing that I want to do.

00:59:52 ◼   ► What are you doing on the plane?

00:59:53 ◼   ► No, I-- like, yes, but see, in Fantasyland, what I'm doing on the plane is

00:59:59 ◼   ► amazing work in an isolated environment.

01:00:02 ◼   ► That doesn't happen.

01:00:03 ◼   ► which...

01:00:04 ◼   ► Here's the problem.

01:00:06 ◼   ► It's like a slot machine, right?

01:00:07 ◼   ► Every once in a while it does, and it's fantastic,

01:00:10 ◼   ► and I'm always hoping for that.

01:00:13 ◼   ► But yes, most of the time,

01:00:14 ◼   ► the idea of what I'm going to do on the plane

01:00:17 ◼   ► versus the reality of what actually happens on the plane

01:00:19 ◼   ► is not one and the same.

01:00:21 ◼   ► And of course, the plane would be an absolutely perfect time to bring a switch.

01:00:25 ◼   ► But I'm resistant to...

01:00:28 ◼   ► bringing the switch feels like giving in and acknowledging

01:00:31 ◼   ► that the amazing work times on a plane will just never happen because I'm just going to

01:00:35 ◼   ► take out my Switch.

01:00:36 ◼   ► You're missing out.

01:00:37 ◼   ► You're missing out.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Like, you could be playing Mario Kart instead of watching a dumb movie, right?

01:00:42 ◼   ► Like just, you need to do two things.

01:00:44 ◼   ► One, you need to buy Stardew Valley and then the next time you get on a plane you have

01:00:48 ◼   ► to take this thing with you.

01:00:49 ◼   ► I'm telling you, man, it's so good.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Like some of these trips that me and you take…

01:00:53 ◼   ► I've got to bring the little card with me.

01:00:55 ◼   ► The little card?

01:00:56 ◼   ► What little card?

01:00:58 ◼   ► I need to bring the little, I need to remember which memory cards to bring with me for which

01:01:02 ◼   ► games on my Switch. Why are you buying the game? Download them.

01:01:04 ◼   ► What? Oh, I didn't even know this was a thing you could do. I thought you had to buy the

01:01:08 ◼   ► card. No, the eShop. You need to have an SD card,

01:01:10 ◼   ► like a micro SD card, but they're super cheap and super easy to deal with. You just buy

01:01:15 ◼   ► like a big micro SD card, pop it in the back, and then you can just download games from

01:01:20 ◼   ► the eShop. Oh. I didn't even know this was a thing.

01:01:24 ◼   ► I only own one cart, which is Zelda.

01:01:27 ◼   ► And the Zelda cartridge stays in the Nintendo Switch.

01:01:30 ◼   ► It's never been taken out from the day I got the Switch.

01:01:33 ◼   ► So it's always there.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Everything else I download.

01:01:35 ◼   ► - I've been thinking Nintendo really needs

01:01:39 ◼   ► to get on this idea of an app store

01:01:40 ◼   ► so I can just download games to my Switch.

01:01:42 ◼   ► - There's like a dedicated button on the menu.

01:01:43 ◼   ► It's like a shopping bag.

01:01:45 ◼   ► It's where you go to buy the games.

01:01:47 ◼   ► - Never even noticed.

01:01:49 ◼   ► - So go to the eShop.

01:01:51 ◼   ► Get the Stardew Valley.

01:01:53 ◼   ► Do you know what I'm looking at on my screen literally right now, Myke?

01:01:57 ◼   ► I'm looking at amazon.co.uk where I typed in "Stardew Valley Switch"

01:02:01 ◼   ► to try to find the thing where I buy the card, and I didn't see it.

01:02:04 ◼   ► I was like, "How am I supposed to get this game?"

01:02:06 ◼   ► Yeah, because they haven't got a physical release of it yet.

01:02:08 ◼   ► It's just a digital release.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Oh, see? I learned something today.

01:02:12 ◼   ► [DING]

01:02:13 ◼   ► I see you've put the thing in the show notes, Myke.

01:02:17 ◼   ► The thing that you have been bothering me about for...

01:02:21 ◼   ► six months? Maybe more?

01:02:23 ◼   ► It's probably longer than that.

01:02:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it is really longer than that.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - I actually think this is the thing that I've had

01:02:28 ◼   ► since my original notes document

01:02:30 ◼   ► from before Cortex existed.

01:02:33 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:02:36 ◼   ► - So I wanna do a Cortex Book Club episode on the next show.

01:02:40 ◼   ► So that means in advance,

01:02:42 ◼   ► me and you are gonna read a book

01:02:43 ◼   ► and we're gonna talk about it

01:02:44 ◼   ► and we want to tell people about it now

01:02:46 ◼   ► so they can read along with the book if they so choose.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - Right.

01:02:51 ◼   ► going to be discussing Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, which

01:02:59 ◼   ► is a book that you've probably heard of. I feel like in the pantheon of business books,

01:03:07 ◼   ► this is one of the big ones.

01:03:09 ◼   ► Yeah, there's this one and there's that book about moving cheese.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Where is my cheese? Who Moved My Cheese? That one.

01:03:16 ◼   ► Who Moved My Cheese, yeah.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I saw an animated video version of that about five or six years ago, one time.

01:03:25 ◼   ► I cannot get the song out of my head every time I hear it.

01:03:31 ◼   ► It's so bad.

01:03:33 ◼   ► It was like an animation done in the 80s, and they have this little song,

01:03:37 ◼   ► Who Moved My Cheese song, and it's just horrific.

01:03:40 ◼   ► I see if I can find a link.

01:03:41 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes if I can find a link to this on YouTube or something.

01:03:44 ◼   ► Don't do that. You're going to confuse the people, Myke.

01:03:46 ◼   ► You just look, okay, so we got off on a bit of a tangent straightaway because my brain just resists and slides off seven habits of highly effective people.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Because, okay, so here's my backstory. Here's why it's been in the show notes for forever.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Is because I know I already read this book a long time ago.

01:04:04 ◼   ► And I just, I have had a great deal of resistance to the idea of reading it again.

01:04:11 ◼   ► But Myke has been bothering me about it for so long and I don't know why but I finally caved and so

01:04:18 ◼   ► We're going to do this

01:04:20 ◼   ► so if you if you want to

01:04:22 ◼   ► Be all caught up on the book club before the next episode of the show you two

01:04:27 ◼   ► can read seven habits of highly effective people and

01:04:30 ◼   ► We're going to talk about it next time

01:04:33 ◼   ► But the thing that is always worth remembering

01:04:35 ◼   ► with the book club is we're gonna do our very best to give you all of the important information

01:04:41 ◼   ► in the episode. So if you want to read along then do it but we're gonna do our best to try and

01:04:48 ◼   ► digest it and give you the important stuff. So seven habits of highly effective people. I can't

01:04:54 ◼   ► wait to be highly effective. You can read it but you can also listen to the tone of my voice and

01:05:01 ◼   ► And think about me having put this off for so very long.

01:05:06 ◼   ► So it's there, it's like an option on the table.

01:05:09 ◼   ► It's an option at the book buffet that you can pick up

01:05:14 ◼   ► or you can pass right by.

01:05:16 ◼   ► It's just there, but we'll be talking about it next time.

01:05:19 ◼   ► - Gray, it is time for some #AskCortex questions.

01:05:25 ◼   ► So listeners, you can send these into us.

01:05:27 ◼   ► You just tweet with the #AskCortex,

01:05:29 ◼   ► they go into a document.

01:05:31 ◼   ► And I want to try and do these more often.

01:05:32 ◼   ► So we're going to start today with some questions

01:05:34 ◼   ► that I've picked out from our listeners.

01:05:36 ◼   ► And the first one comes from Nathan and Nathan asks,

01:05:40 ◼   ► how do you two deal with tasks that you despise

01:05:43 ◼   ► but have to do yourself a must complete in a timely manner?

01:05:47 ◼   ► - Okay, Myke, I think you should go first on this one.

01:05:55 ◼   ► - So the way that I handle this

01:05:59 ◼   ► is knowing when I need to do the task,

01:06:01 ◼   ► so knowing what the deadline is,

01:06:03 ◼   ► and then setting the to-do item

01:06:05 ◼   ► like three weeks before the due time.

01:06:09 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:06:10 ◼   ► - Because it is the constant badgering

01:06:13 ◼   ► that I may end up doing it.

01:06:15 ◼   ► Right, so say for example it's a tax-related thing, right,

01:06:19 ◼   ► because nobody ever wants to do that stuff, right,

01:06:21 ◼   ► like I guess unless you're an accountant, I guess.

01:06:25 ◼   ► I wonder if accountants like doing their own taxes.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Anyway, so I would set something like three weeks in advance and know that it needs to

01:06:35 ◼   ► be done.

01:06:36 ◼   ► And one of the reasons – I do this for two reasons, right?

01:06:38 ◼   ► One of the reasons is if it was to pop up on that final day, I wouldn't be so annoyed

01:06:43 ◼   ► at the universe, right?

01:06:45 ◼   ► Because it's like, "Ugh, why do I have to do this thing today?"

01:06:47 ◼   ► You feel like you were given fair notice.

01:06:49 ◼   ► Exactly, yeah.

01:06:51 ◼   ► It's not a surprise.

01:06:52 ◼   ► The boss didn't barge in and be like, "You've got to get me this TPS report by five."

01:06:57 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

01:06:58 ◼   ► And the other is for the benefit of work procrastination, which I believe is a thing

01:07:06 ◼   ► that I've spoken about before, in where I procrastinate from work that I need to do on a

01:07:11 ◼   ► day by doing work that I don't need to do. Which is a great use of time, actually.

01:07:16 ◼   ► That I feel like I can be like, "Oh, it's okay. I didn't do that thing I had to do today,

01:07:20 ◼   ► but I did other stuff." So I have these tasks, which are like these menial... because

01:07:24 ◼   ► These things, they tend to be like admin or like menial tasks that like only I can do.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I don't really think anybody likes tasks like this, right? Which is just like,

01:07:33 ◼   ► there is this thing which is an administrative thing that you don't want to have to deal with,

01:07:37 ◼   ► right? Like it's entering some data into a spreadsheet, finding some receipts in a folder,

01:07:41 ◼   ► scanning stuff, right? Like just this boring tasks which don't really have a result to them,

01:07:47 ◼   ► which you are comfortable, which you are excited about. So, but these are perfect time fillers.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Yeah. So that's how I do it. Like I set the task really early in the hopes that I will be slacking

01:08:02 ◼   ► off one day and decide that I'll just take care of that scanning now. That's how I do it.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Okay, so you're hoping that it'll be an opportunity for work procrastination in the future.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Like I'm tricking myself basically into doing these things.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Yeah, but you know what? That's what all of this stuff is, right? It's all about tricking yourself.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I'm a big believer in the method of tricking yourself because it's just like your brain is lazy and

01:08:25 ◼   ► You got it. You got to have a whole bunch of tricks up your sleeve to get anything done

01:08:29 ◼   ► So

01:08:34 ◼   ► Here's the thing when I look at this question, right so

01:08:38 ◼   ► At first I thought I was going to get a little bit out of it because

01:08:42 ◼   ► I

01:08:45 ◼   ► thought well

01:08:47 ◼   ► Just like I didn't want to

01:08:49 ◼   ► be the person who actually cancels my old office, like I will hand this off to my assistant to do.

01:08:55 ◼   ► I try to hand many things off to my assistant to do.

01:08:59 ◼   ► But when the question then specifies that you have to do,

01:09:02 ◼   ► it becomes a slightly different thing.

01:09:05 ◼   ► So here is a thing that I think is both good and sometimes bad.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Which is that I cannot help but always think about like the return on investment of time or like the upside or downside of doing various things.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:09:20 ◼   ► You know where this is going, don't you, Myke?

01:09:22 ◼   ► And so...

01:09:24 ◼   ► I know the kind of question that this person is asking, and...

01:09:29 ◼   ► Look.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Everyone can't do this because civilization will fall apart,

01:09:36 ◼   ► but I often find my brain whispers to itself,

01:09:40 ◼   ► "What really happens if we don't do this?"

01:09:43 ◼   ► Oh, God!

01:09:44 ◼   ► Right? Like...

01:09:46 ◼   ► Like, what's the...

01:09:48 ◼   ► But like what's the real downside of not doing this?

01:09:52 ◼   ► How big will the fine be?

01:09:55 ◼   ► Well yeah so this is...

01:09:58 ◼   ► How long will I have to go to prison for?

01:10:00 ◼   ► How big is the fine and what is my hourly rate?

01:10:04 ◼   ► Right and it's like okay well so like I really like basically I need a lot of motivation

01:10:11 ◼   ► if a task falls into the category of something that I despise

01:10:17 ◼   ► that also has a deadline that I need to do myself,

01:10:23 ◼   ► it's like I need a hell of a lot of motivation to do that kind of thing.

01:10:28 ◼   ► So it's like if this task is not the kind of thing that can be done by somebody else,

01:10:36 ◼   ► it's... there needs to be a real big downside to motivate me.

01:10:40 ◼   ► So that is the honest answer to this is

01:10:44 ◼   ► I'm just not very good at doing tasks

01:10:46 ◼   ► that my brain doesn't see a real upside for.

01:10:50 ◼   ► I'm terrible at that.

01:10:52 ◼   ► And it's a thing that I have definitely gotten way worse at

01:10:57 ◼   ► as I have gotten older.

01:10:58 ◼   ► Like my tolerance for doing that kind of stuff

01:11:01 ◼   ► has gone way down.

01:11:03 ◼   ► So don't take my advice on this thing.

01:11:05 ◼   ► - This is bad advice.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Alright, this is straight up bad advice.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Well, it is bad advice because, again, civilization would fall apart because once you do this

01:11:17 ◼   ► once and you realize, "Hey, wait a minute.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Nothing really that bad happened."

01:11:23 ◼   ► You realize, "Oh, I could do this more."

01:11:24 ◼   ► But everybody can't do that.

01:11:26 ◼   ► If everybody does that, it's bad for civilization.

01:11:29 ◼   ► So I shouldn't even be saying it out loud on the show.

01:11:33 ◼   ► This is why finds exist.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Yeah, this is why finds exist.

01:11:37 ◼   ► didn't do it at first, right? That they had to start finding people to make them do it.

01:11:42 ◼   ► B: Yeah, but so uh, so that's my answer is I break civilization.

01:11:48 ◼   ► [Music]

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01:13:29 ◼   ► We have been well known to like to try out email apps and to-do apps. That is a thing that me and

01:13:36 ◼   ► you both enjoy greatly. And Adrian wants to know if either of us have tried the app on iOS and on

01:13:42 ◼   ► the Mac, Things 3. Have you spent any time with Things 3? Oh yeah, of course. I try everything.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Oh yeah? Yeah, I'm always interested. I haven't tried this one. I mean, I've tried Things 3,

01:13:54 ◼   ► Even though I've, you know, I bought Things 2. I'm pretty sure I bought the original Things.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I know I had the original and Things 2, because Things 2 was around for like 100 years.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe I didn't have the original. Yeah, maybe it was just Things 2. But yeah,

01:14:07 ◼   ► that one was around for a very long time. I've tried it. I have to, I like,

01:14:15 ◼   ► I like the aesthetics of Things. I think that app has a good look to the way it

01:14:23 ◼   ► organizes stuff. Wonderful looking. Yeah as opposed to I'll say to Daoist which is

01:14:32 ◼   ► very ugly I find in in the way it arranges stuff it's hard to pin down

01:14:38 ◼   ► what it is I just think it's ugly. I wouldn't call it ugly I would it is an

01:14:42 ◼   ► application that is cross-platform in design. Yeah maybe that's what it is. And apps that are that way they don't

01:14:50 ◼   ► necessarily have the beauty of any of the platforms that they're on. It's stripped back

01:14:55 ◼   ► in a non-minimalistic way, it's like stripped back in a functional way, which makes it unattractive.

01:15:02 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe that's what it is. But so yeah, Thing 3 looks great. I played around with it because

01:15:09 ◼   ► I like to keep my mind on what are the uses of these various apps because I do use more than one

01:15:18 ◼   ► to-do manager for different purposes.

01:15:20 ◼   ► And Things 3 just falls to me in an uncomfortable category of...

01:15:25 ◼   ► it's complicated enough that it doesn't fulfill the needs for my very simple to-do managers,

01:15:34 ◼   ► where I just want like a little list of things.

01:15:37 ◼   ► But it's not complicated enough to even come close to replacing something like OmniFocus.

01:15:43 ◼   ► So for me personally, I find Things 3 fits in a weird middle ground.

01:15:49 ◼   ► For me to use it, it would either need to be much simpler or much more complicated.

01:15:56 ◼   ► So I can't see myself personally using it at any point.

01:15:59 ◼   ► The reason I haven't tried it is like a similar answer, right?

01:16:03 ◼   ► Like, I know it's bigger and is more complex than the basic stuff that I have, something like Dew.

01:16:10 ◼   ► I know that this is an app that is bigger than Take Out the Garbage, right?

01:16:17 ◼   ► But I know that it doesn't have any automation aspects, so that makes it not enough.

01:16:23 ◼   ► I'm only ever going to move to a to-do application that has a web API now, because that is what

01:16:30 ◼   ► I've gotten used to in Todoist.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Even though I don't have a lot of things that use it, I don't want to move away from it,

01:16:36 ◼   ► Because I like to have that if I have an idea, that I can fulfill that idea.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Because that is my favorite thing about using Web Automation is that I might have an idea

01:16:50 ◼   ► and then I want to fulfill it.

01:16:51 ◼   ► So for example, me and Adina are getting married next year and we sent out RSVPs.

01:16:58 ◼   ► RSVPs were firing off a form that landed results in a Google Sheet.

01:17:03 ◼   ► So I set up a task with Zapier to give me a push notification when something was filled

01:17:11 ◼   ► out because I just wanted to know so I didn't have to keep checking.

01:17:15 ◼   ► So like that is how I kind of see automation is like I have a new thing that's come up.

01:17:20 ◼   ► Oh how can I make this better for me?

01:17:22 ◼   ► So I'd like to have all of the services that I have have some kind of automation in them

01:17:27 ◼   ► if it's possible and it is possible to have automation in a task manager.

01:17:30 ◼   ► So I want automation in my task manager.

01:17:33 ◼   ► Doug wrote in, and Doug says, "Myke, how do you decide between making content that

01:17:37 ◼   ► will be easily received by an audience and therefore more popular and content that you

01:17:42 ◼   ► want to make?"

01:17:43 ◼   ► And Doug goes into a bit more context here.

01:17:45 ◼   ► So he says, "I've noticed on your YouTube channel that your most popular video is your

01:17:49 ◼   ► review of the Nintendo Switch, which has around 30,000 views.

01:17:53 ◼   ► Meanwhile, your vlogs tend to hover between 10,000 to 15,000 views.

01:17:58 ◼   ► I also noticed that despite the greater success of this technology review video, that your

01:18:03 ◼   ► you're still making vlogs mostly.

01:18:05 ◼   ► I'm personally facing this issue with my own channel

01:18:07 ◼   ► and I'd love to hear what you and Gray

01:18:08 ◼   ► have to say about this.

01:18:10 ◼   ► So, it's a very good question because the logic,

01:18:15 ◼   ► like the logical route with the YouTube channel

01:18:19 ◼   ► is that I would keep making technology product review videos

01:18:23 ◼   ► because they are about two times more successful

01:18:27 ◼   ► than the vlog videos that I've made.

01:18:29 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, I'll put a little asterisk here in that.

01:18:32 ◼   ► I don't think you, you don't really have enough data points

01:18:36 ◼   ► to say that with confidence.

01:18:37 ◼   ► - No.

01:18:38 ◼   ► - But you do have an indication of it.

01:18:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:18:41 ◼   ► You know, it's like I made one of them

01:18:42 ◼   ► and it was more successful, right?

01:18:45 ◼   ► So it's like, that's still an interesting data point

01:18:48 ◼   ► because it was like, I didn't have a channel

01:18:50 ◼   ► that was known for this stuff,

01:18:51 ◼   ► but yet it's still either amongst my existing audience

01:18:55 ◼   ► or people that were tangentially aware of me,

01:18:57 ◼   ► they still wanted to watch this video.

01:18:58 ◼   ► And or it probably got chewed up by the algorithm more,

01:19:01 ◼   ► which it would, right?

01:19:02 ◼   ► Like, a video about a product is going to go into the algorithm easier than my trip

01:19:07 ◼   ► to Disneyland.

01:19:08 ◼   ► You know, like, that sort of stuff is going to get…

01:19:12 ◼   ► There isn't actually a trip to Disneyland, but just in case people were like, "Hey,

01:19:15 ◼   ► where's your Disneyland vlog?"

01:19:16 ◼   ► There wasn't one.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Hey, where is your Disneyland vlog?

01:19:18 ◼   ► I haven't been to Disneyland, because I didn't go to VidCon.

01:19:23 ◼   ► So why do I do this?

01:19:25 ◼   ► It's purely a case of the YouTube channel just being whatever it is that I want to make.

01:19:30 ◼   ► I don't have grand plans when it comes to the YouTube video.

01:19:37 ◼   ► If I was following just data, then sure, I would make videos about technology and hardware

01:19:42 ◼   ► constantly.

01:19:43 ◼   ► But I made the video about the Switch because it was a video that I really wanted to make.

01:19:47 ◼   ► And I have an idea for another video at some point this year which is also about technology

01:19:52 ◼   ► hardware because it's a video, it's an idea that I really want to make.

01:19:57 ◼   ► And so the reason that I tend to make non technology videos is because that's just where

01:20:01 ◼   ► I'm being pulled to.

01:20:03 ◼   ► If I had made the decision at any point that like YouTube is where I want to be, that's

01:20:09 ◼   ► what I want to do.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Like rather than it just being a flight of fancy, like I want to push into that, then

01:20:16 ◼   ► I would target the things that have been the most successful.

01:20:19 ◼   ► But because this is kind of just like a side creative project, I'm cool with just doing

01:20:26 ◼   ► whatever it is that I'm most interested in because at the same time I'm like playing

01:20:30 ◼   ► around with different things and different ideas until I find the thing that I really

01:20:33 ◼   ► want to make or not.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Yeah, and I remember you at the time also just talking about that you partly wanted

01:20:39 ◼   ► to do that Switch review to just try doing something different.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Like doing the different thing was part of the motivation behind it.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Yep, and the Switch video was vastly more complicated to put together than any of the

01:20:55 ◼   ► of vlog videos have been.

01:20:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, you seemed real exhausted that weekend.

01:20:58 ◼   ► - It was horrible.

01:21:00 ◼   ► It was fun, but it was really, really hard.

01:21:02 ◼   ► I mean, and I will say this, having, like, right now,

01:21:05 ◼   ► I have like a Final Cut project of a vlog video

01:21:10 ◼   ► that like, I don't know if it's ever gonna get done.

01:21:13 ◼   ► It's just sitting there,

01:21:14 ◼   ► and it's been sitting there for ages, like, so yeah, but.

01:21:18 ◼   ► - I know the feeling, Myke.

01:21:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do feel, I feel like you a little bit with this,

01:21:24 ◼   ► Like I have this Final Cut project which is just like, it's got a chip taken out of it and I got too much stuff going on.

01:21:32 ◼   ► Poor Myke.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, as a side comment to Doug here, when he says he's facing this with his own channel,

01:21:43 ◼   ► there's a thing I think that you can see people doing on YouTube in particular,

01:21:49 ◼   ► which is channels that are trying a whole bunch of stuff,

01:21:54 ◼   ► waiting to see what hits,

01:21:57 ◼   ► and then trying to replicate those hits.

01:22:01 ◼   ► I think that's a totally reasonable strategy to do.

01:22:05 ◼   ► It's just a question of what are you--

01:22:06 ◼   ► - It's a path to success.

01:22:07 ◼   ► That is a path.

01:22:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, what are you trying to do

01:22:13 ◼   ► with a YouTube channel or anything like this

01:22:16 ◼   ► that you're trying to do in the public?

01:22:17 ◼   ► in the public and like, well, one of the most

01:22:19 ◼   ► data-driven ways to do that is like,

01:22:21 ◼   ► just try a whole bunch of stuff,

01:22:23 ◼   ► see what works,

01:22:24 ◼   ► and keep building on the thing that works.

01:22:28 ◼   ► That is a way, over time,

01:22:30 ◼   ► to try and build an audience.

01:22:32 ◼   ► But I say like, what do you want to do with the thing?

01:22:36 ◼   ► And it's like, well, if you want to grow a thing as big as possible, that is definitely what you should do.

01:22:41 ◼   ► But

01:22:43 ◼   ► that strategy also doesn't

01:22:45 ◼   ► take into account what you as the creator want to do.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Like that's a trade-off here.

01:22:52 ◼   ► And like, that's definitely a thing, like I know with videos sometimes,

01:22:54 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, I'm making this thing because I'm interested in this thing,"

01:22:56 ◼   ► and it's not necessarily going to be as popular as other stuff.

01:23:02 ◼   ► But you just have to know, like, what is the goal here?

01:23:04 ◼   ► If your goal is, "I want this channel to get as big and grow as fast as possible,"

01:23:10 ◼   ► then you need to follow what the audience wants more.

01:23:15 ◼   ► I will always point out that my few list videos that I have ever done were done when I was pushing the channel as hard and as fast as I could

01:23:23 ◼   ► because I had a deadline by which I needed to quit my job.

01:23:26 ◼   ► It was like list video time, right? But I haven't done list videos in forever since then

01:23:32 ◼   ► because that's where I was like, I'm pushing more on people love lists, so I'm going to go with the data on this.

01:23:39 ◼   ► But I haven't done that in a while.

01:23:42 ◼   ► So if you follow the data, you may end up running a YouTube channel that you don't like very much,

01:23:49 ◼   ► but is very popular, and I've met those people and they are very professionally successful.

01:23:57 ◼   ► We can say that.

01:23:59 ◼   ► So yeah, it's just a question about what is the goal?

01:24:02 ◼   ► What are you trying to achieve?

01:24:04 ◼   ► And I think, Myke, you have answered in particular, for your channel,

01:24:08 ◼   ► you're not trying to make the YouTube channel the main thing

01:24:12 ◼   ► and so you're just experimenting and playing around with it and

01:24:16 ◼   ► seeing what happens over there out of interest.

01:24:19 ◼   ► I'm lucky in the sense that my job

01:24:24 ◼   ► is a creative outlet and all the shows that I have about things that I enjoy

01:24:29 ◼   ► so I personally don't

01:24:32 ◼   ► see a value in chasing something just for the sake of chasing it because I don't

01:24:37 ◼   ► I don't have to do that in my day job.

01:24:40 ◼   ► For me to feel creatively fulfilled in podcasting,

01:24:44 ◼   ► I don't have to chase the list version of a podcast.

01:24:49 ◼   ► I can just make the stuff that I wanna make.

01:24:51 ◼   ► So I can't imagine, with a side project,

01:24:54 ◼   ► wanting to do the opposite.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I just make the things that I wanna make.

01:24:58 ◼   ► And if there is something that ever comes along one day

01:25:00 ◼   ► where I'm like, I think I can do this,

01:25:02 ◼   ► but I gotta build a base first,

01:25:04 ◼   ► then sure, maybe I'll chase off the data-driven approach.

01:25:07 ◼   ► But with the YouTube channel, I don't feel that.

01:25:10 ◼   ► The YouTube channel for me is just a thing.

01:25:14 ◼   ► And sometimes I'll have a video that I wanna put together

01:25:16 ◼   ► because I think it might be interesting, so I'll do it.

01:25:18 ◼   ► And if I don't do one, then I'm gonna beat myself up

01:25:20 ◼   ► about it, this is a change that I made

01:25:22 ◼   ► in the last few months, we spoke about it, right?

01:25:24 ◼   ► Ideally I would like to have a video a month,

01:25:26 ◼   ► but if I don't, I'm cool with that.

01:25:28 ◼   ► I miss September, I'm fine with that.

01:25:29 ◼   ► I'm not gonna beat myself up over it, I'm good.

01:25:32 ◼   ► I have enough stuff to do that is more important,

01:25:36 ◼   ► that is my actual job, I'm not gonna take time away

01:25:39 ◼   ► from that to put the video together.

01:25:41 ◼   ► Like, I spent seven hours playing Stardew Valley yesterday.

01:25:44 ◼   ► I should have maybe edited the vlog, but do you know what?

01:25:46 ◼   ► I wanted to play Stardew Valley instead, so I did that.

01:25:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and if you spent the whole day grinding away

01:25:52 ◼   ► at a vlog that you didn't feel like doing,

01:25:54 ◼   ► it's like, well, guess what?

01:25:55 ◼   ► You've just turned your YouTube channel into a job now.

01:25:58 ◼   ► Right, that's what you've done.

01:25:59 ◼   ► - Yep, this question comes from Samuel.

01:26:01 ◼   ► Samuel wants to know if we use fidget spinners.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Oh, this is a very on zeitgeist question, I guess.

01:26:08 ◼   ► No, I don't use a fidget spinner.

01:26:12 ◼   ► I've played with them.

01:26:14 ◼   ► I don't really get it.

01:26:16 ◼   ► OK. Do you?

01:26:18 ◼   ► There's not been a podcast recorded in maybe the last two or three months

01:26:22 ◼   ► where I haven't been using one constantly.

01:26:24 ◼   ► I'm spinning a fidget spinner right now.

01:26:26 ◼   ► I didn't know that.

01:26:28 ◼   ► I first got a fidget spinner a few months ago.

01:26:30 ◼   ► I think even the Wirecutter put out their recommendations

01:26:33 ◼   ► 'cause I was like, what is this thing?

01:26:36 ◼   ► Why do people do this?

01:26:37 ◼   ► So I went to Amazon, this was months ago,

01:26:39 ◼   ► when it was just starting to take off.

01:26:41 ◼   ► And Amazon is just a sea of fidget spinners

01:26:45 ◼   ► at vastly varying prices, and they all kinda look the same.

01:26:48 ◼   ► So I kinda closed the tab, 'cause I was like,

01:26:50 ◼   ► this is too much, I need the wire cutter to tell me.

01:26:53 ◼   ► And then a few months later, they did.

01:26:55 ◼   ► The wire cutter published an article

01:26:57 ◼   ► with their fidget spinner recommendations.

01:26:59 ◼   ► So I bought one of the plastic ones,

01:27:01 ◼   ► the ones that you see everywhere,

01:27:03 ◼   ► one that they recommended and it came and I didn't understand it. Like it was, it arrived,

01:27:07 ◼   ► I span it and I was like, I don't get it. Then I put it on my desk and then I realized,

01:27:12 ◼   ► oh, this is something for my hands to do when I'm recording, which is a thing that I tend

01:27:17 ◼   ► to desperately need, right? Like just another way to help me keep focused to what I'm actually

01:27:21 ◼   ► doing, which is talking into a computer whilst looking at a screen that doesn't move, right?

01:27:26 ◼   ► Like, and so spinning the fidget spinners is a way to help me keep focus. So I have

01:27:31 ◼   ► a plastic one which was their recommendation and then I also bought their metal one like

01:27:35 ◼   ► that they recommended as well which is the one that I'm spinning right now and it's a

01:27:40 ◼   ► thing that I'm able to do and keep quiet like I have one of those fidget cube things but

01:27:45 ◼   ► that's just all about making noise right like I backed the Kickstarter for the fidget cube

01:27:49 ◼   ► which came before the fidget spinner and that thing just makes sound all the time and I

01:27:53 ◼   ► can't be making sound so I get to spin my fidget spinner in silence unless I drop it

01:27:59 ◼   ► especially the metal one, and it crashes into the table and then I have to edit around it.

01:28:04 ◼   ► But for the majority of the time that you hear me recording today, including this and

01:28:07 ◼   ► maybe the last five or six Cortex episodes, you can feel happy in knowing that Millennial

01:28:12 ◼   ► Hipster Myke has been spinning a fidget spinner the whole time.

01:28:16 ◼   ► So this is your new coloring?

01:28:18 ◼   ► Yeah, this is the new coloring. Although I will say on this show as well, and I've always

01:28:23 ◼   ► done this, I have a pad in front of me and a bunch of pens and I doodle. And I always

01:28:30 ◼   ► have done that.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Carano noticed something. In episode 39, Gray compares YouTube processing to rolling 100

01:28:36 ◼   ► D20s. Has Gray ever played anything like Dungeons and Dragons?

01:28:42 ◼   ► I have never played real official Dungeons and Dragons. I'm familiar enough with it,

01:28:49 ◼   ► that I know the mechanics of it.

01:28:51 ◼   ► I've never played real Dungeons & Dragons.

01:28:53 ◼   ► I've played, uh...

01:28:55 ◼   ► I might not be remembering the name correctly,

01:28:58 ◼   ► but I used to play...

01:29:00 ◼   ► Let me just look. Was it called Hero Quest?

01:29:03 ◼   ► Oh no, yeah, Hero Quest. That's what it was.

01:29:06 ◼   ► I played Hero Quest as a kid.

01:29:08 ◼   ► Wow, this Google image search really brings back memories.

01:29:13 ◼   ► I played that a ton as a kid, which,

01:29:16 ◼   ► which as far as I can tell is Dungeons and Dragons for babies.

01:29:20 ◼   ► But I was the Dungeon Master for Heroes Quest

01:29:24 ◼   ► in my local neighborhood for forever.

01:29:28 ◼   ► So that is a thing that I had very many fond

01:29:32 ◼   ► memories for a long time of playing. But it's the same idea.

01:29:36 ◼   ► Like you're doing the dice rolls, the Dungeon Master is creating a story

01:29:40 ◼   ► and people are barbarians and wizards and all the rest of it. It's just, it's a simpler

01:29:44 ◼   ► version of Dungeons & Dragons, but so no I have never played the full on Dungeons & Dragons.

01:29:53 ◼   ► Were you only ever the DM? You never played?

01:29:55 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I don't want to be the player. I was the Dungeon Master. That's the only way to roll, Myke.

01:30:02 ◼   ► Interesting. Okay, I'll file that away for future use.

01:30:05 ◼   ► Okay.

01:30:07 ◼   ► Zachary asked, "I recently heard of going to working cafes without your device charger to

01:30:13 ◼   ► motivate yourself to get work done? What do you think?

01:30:16 ◼   ► I actually think it's a kind of genius idea and I definitely know that on the cases when I have forgotten or I don't have access to a charger, I'm way more focused on the work.

01:30:30 ◼   ► I do wonder though if this is just a Hawthorne effect where it's like, "Oh, something has changed."

01:30:36 ◼   ► And so because of the change you're more focused and it's not the absolute state that if you started doing it on a regular basis

01:30:45 ◼   ► maybe it wouldn't be as effective.

01:30:47 ◼   ► But yeah, it has definitely been a thing that causes me to focus a great deal more.

01:30:51 ◼   ► I think I made a very quick reference to it on

01:30:53 ◼   ► the vlog that I actually put up where I was on a plane without power in the seats and

01:30:59 ◼   ► It's like man was I really focused on trying to get as much done as I could

01:31:03 ◼   ► while that laptop battery was was draining down. So I'm not exactly

01:31:08 ◼   ► sure if I feel like I would ever want to do it on purpose

01:31:13 ◼   ► but there is a noticeable effect when it happens by accident.

01:31:15 ◼   ► My concern is that I would use this as an excuse.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Hmm, I could see that.

01:31:21 ◼   ► I would get to a certain point in the day and I have like 20% left and I'm like

01:31:25 ◼   ► Might as well pack it up and go home because I might run out of battery at any moment

01:31:29 ◼   ► That would be my concern about me

01:31:31 ◼   ► I can see how it may motivate people but I think I would use it as an excuse to pack up and go home

01:31:37 ◼   ► Yeah, you never know when the battery runs out