Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello Myke. Hi Gray. I feel like last show we really clarified something. Mm-hmm

00:00:05 ◼   ► You know what's about to begin?

00:00:07 ◼   ► season two of Cortex

00:00:09 ◼   ► We did our

00:00:12 ◼   ► clip show stroke looking back on Cortex last time and we talked about a bunch of things

00:00:18 ◼   ► And one of them was talking about this idea that we you and I are sort of meeting for lunch and we're discussing

00:00:24 ◼   ► our working lives and talking things through and

00:00:28 ◼   ► and how for both of us, this is a beneficial process.

00:00:33 ◼   ► It's like talking about the thing that you're doing

00:00:38 ◼   ► helps you do things better,

00:00:39 ◼   ► even if you're not explicitly talking about

00:00:43 ◼   ► how to make your working life better.

00:00:45 ◼   ► And this is one of these things,

00:00:48 ◼   ► I have this kind of conversation

00:00:50 ◼   ► with lots of people in my life,

00:00:52 ◼   ► and I feel like this is a learned kind of skill,

00:00:56 ◼   ► But it's something that almost sounds so banal that people don't recognize it as a skill.

00:01:04 ◼   ► The little just thinking in the background about how you work and running it over every once in a while and thinking about how things go.

00:01:14 ◼   ► And there was a particular comment from the Reddit that I really like that I felt like summed this up and also pointed out the learned nature of this skill.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And it was a comment from Logic42, who said, "The thing I've learned from Cortex is introspection.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Before Cortex, I just did things. I didn't think about the process of getting things done.

00:01:36 ◼   ► By simply considering the meta problem, I began to see ways to improve."

00:01:42 ◼   ► And I feel like that's what we're doing here, Myke.

00:01:45 ◼   ► You and I, we're engaged in the meta process, and hopefully we're bringing listeners along with us.

00:01:53 ◼   ► with us on this ride and from this comment in the Reddit I feel like it is

00:01:58 ◼   ► evidence that we are accomplishing this thing. So you mentioned, you mentioned it

00:02:03 ◼   ► last time, you mentioned it this time, the idea of me and you just basically having our

00:02:08 ◼   ► lunches but with Skype in the middle, you know, where we just sit down and

00:02:12 ◼   ► talk about the way that we work and that has been rattling around in my brain

00:02:18 ◼   ► Quite a lot and I'm thinking about trying to find ways to incorporate that that kind of process into the show even more than before

00:02:25 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. And one of the reasons is not everybody in their lives has this person that they're able to talk to

00:02:32 ◼   ► So we actually help fulfill that for a lot of people I think right like as as it pointed out by logic 42

00:02:39 ◼   ► It's just sometimes he's just hearing these conversations helps people

00:02:44 ◼   ► Yeah

00:02:46 ◼   ► That's a real

00:02:48 ◼   ► That's a real. I don't know how to explain this very well

00:02:52 ◼   ► but like I'm not a big believer in like the abstract notion of like

00:02:55 ◼   ► Like the self-help section of a bookstore right which I think is mostly garbage and

00:03:01 ◼   ► Frodery.

00:03:04 ◼   ► Why don't you say what you really think?

00:03:05 ◼   ► Uxterism right, but I think there is

00:03:13 ◼   ► Like I have found in my own life there was there was real value

00:03:18 ◼   ► to

00:03:20 ◼   ► hearing people

00:03:22 ◼   ► explaining their thought process about why they do a thing. And I'm aware of like when I listen to podcasts

00:03:29 ◼   ► that is something I am always really interested in. It's like oh, I want to hear somebody explain their reasons for doing a thing

00:03:38 ◼   ► Even if it's like, oh you have no interest in doing that thing or you have no interest in that person directly, like it's there's

00:03:45 ◼   ► I think there is

00:03:48 ◼   ► benefit to being just like exposed to this person who's just explaining something and

00:03:54 ◼   ► I have found that there is

00:03:57 ◼   ► advantage in

00:04:00 ◼   ► hearing someone just like talk through their working process

00:04:04 ◼   ► which then just ends up making me think about the way that I do things.

00:04:08 ◼   ► The other thing that I have found is like it is

00:04:15 ◼   ► a somewhat rarer skill than I might have first imagined in the world.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Like it was a thing I was really aware of in my working life

00:04:26 ◼   ► that I found a lot of my

00:04:29 ◼   ► colleagues just didn't fall into that category of like

00:04:33 ◼   ► doing that meta problem analysis, like thinking about why things happen as opposed to giving an answer like

00:04:41 ◼   ► "Oh, we just always do things this way" or like, or just sticking with the first way that a thing is being done.

00:04:47 ◼   ► So that's why I find it useful to talk to somebody else, like yourself, and I think that it is useful to

00:04:55 ◼   ► listen to other people doing the same thing even if you're not a part of that conversation

00:05:00 ◼   ► because that's something that I have been doing for years myself with podcasts.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Yeah, about a year ago I read this article on Motherboard about

00:05:10 ◼   ► professional wrestling podcasts and the idea is that, and the headline says it all really,

00:05:15 ◼   ► podcasts are group therapy sessions for pro wrestling fans.

00:05:19 ◼   ► With the idea being that most people that like professional wrestling tend not to have somebody else in their life that also likes it.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Right, right. So professional wrestling podcasts are so popular and they are massively popular

00:05:32 ◼   ► Because these people don't get to talk to anybody else about it

00:05:37 ◼   ► So they get to listen to the podcast that other people make about this stuff

00:05:41 ◼   ► and I expect that there is a kind of

00:05:44 ◼   ► weird similarity between those shows and this show in

00:05:47 ◼   ► That I don't know how many people that listen to this show really have somebody else in their life that they can talk to about

00:05:54 ◼   ► their to-do system

00:05:56 ◼   ► Right. Right, but if people get that enjoyment out of listening to me and you chat about

00:06:02 ◼   ► it. We have to, I think we have to do a very similar thing with the pen addict as well.

00:06:06 ◼   ► You know, how many people do you know in your life that really love pens like at a very,

00:06:10 ◼   ► very deep level? Well, me and Brad do, you know, it's like, you know, it's a similar

00:06:15 ◼   ► kind of thing. Yeah, it, I think that's definitely the case

00:06:19 ◼   ► and like I know sometimes when we're recording this channel I have a real feeling of I know

00:06:25 ◼   ► I know that a much younger version of myself would listen to this show.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Right? Like, I'm aware of that as a thing.

00:06:34 ◼   ► That I feel like, particularly with the boom of podcasts like in the last five years,

00:06:39 ◼   ► I feel like this was not a thing that was around, particularly like when I was a kid,

00:06:45 ◼   ► was being able to hear people just kind of like talk through a bunch of stuff.

00:06:48 ◼   ► And I know that is definitely something I would have listened to when I was younger.

00:06:53 ◼   ► And so that's what's happening here.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Because I feel like sometimes when people describe what the show is, they'll sometimes say, "Oh, it's a productivity show."

00:07:02 ◼   ► And even right from the start, I've always felt like that has never quite sat right with me for what this show is.

00:07:10 ◼   ► But I've never been able to figure out a better way to describe it quickly.

00:07:17 ◼   ► And we still may not have a good way to describe the show quickly.

00:07:21 ◼   ► But I think something about this idea of like this open

00:07:26 ◼   ► lunch conversation that is

00:07:29 ◼   ► around the topic of our working lives like that that is a more accurate description of

00:07:35 ◼   ► what the show is and it's really it's really like gelled something in my mind about what we're doing here.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And it only took 50 episodes to work it out, so that's pretty good.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Yeah, like yeah, that's the thing like hey listen if you're out there, and you're starting a podcast

00:07:50 ◼   ► Let this be a lesson to you. You may go for quite a while before you feel like oh, I really know what I'm doing here

00:07:55 ◼   ► This episode of cortex is brought to you by our friends over at fresh books

00:08:00 ◼   ► We spend so much time on this show talking about what it's like to work independently

00:08:04 ◼   ► This can be a very freelancer whether you run your own company. It doesn't matter what it is

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00:09:34 ◼   ► Why don't we talk about productivity a little bit, just the idea of that phrase and what

00:09:40 ◼   ► it means. Because in the same way that people refer to this show as being a productivity

00:09:47 ◼   ► show, I think it's useful for me and you to try and explain what we actually think that

00:09:52 ◼   ► term even really means and how it applies to us. Because productivity I think is very

00:10:02 ◼   ► frequently mixed up with the term of being a workaholic. And I don't think that that

00:10:12 ◼   ► works very well. I've never considered myself a workaholic because I actually don't know

00:10:18 ◼   ► if that is being productive. You know, like the idea of getting in to the office at 8

00:10:25 ◼   ► and leaving at seven because you're just so busy.

00:10:30 ◼   ► That never sat with me.

00:10:31 ◼   ► For me it was always about like,

00:10:34 ◼   ► how can I get out of here at five?

00:10:36 ◼   ► And that was me being productive.

00:10:40 ◼   ► It's like, I need to get out of this office

00:10:42 ◼   ► as close to five o'clock as possible.

00:10:44 ◼   ► How do I get from here at nine a.m. to there at five?

00:10:49 ◼   ► That was productivity for me.

00:10:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was my exact same thing

00:10:55 ◼   ► when I was being a teacher was that like,

00:10:58 ◼   ► when the kids go home, I wanna be going home

00:11:01 ◼   ► in like 20 minutes after that happens tops.

00:11:04 ◼   ► - It's a sprint.

00:11:05 ◼   ► - And it's like, I really do,

00:11:10 ◼   ► like there are some elements of my personality,

00:11:16 ◼   ► which obviously like you just have,

00:11:18 ◼   ► like they've just been with me for forever.

00:11:20 ◼   ► But I think that that part of being in the working world

00:11:23 ◼   ► really honed for me, like, and forged a particular idea of

00:11:30 ◼   ► of like, how I think about a lot of things related to work. It's like, what I'm looking for here

00:11:35 ◼   ► is maximum effectiveness

00:11:38 ◼   ► in minimum amount of time

00:11:40 ◼   ► toward a goal.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And the goal is to go home, right, as fast as possible.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And yeah, like, spent so much time

00:11:48 ◼   ► thinking about all of these various ways to save

00:11:52 ◼   ► seconds on a thing, right, that would add up overall.

00:11:56 ◼   ► But that's a very different question from

00:12:00 ◼   ► like raw output.

00:12:04 ◼   ► I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but one of my favorite examples of

00:12:07 ◼   ► trying to save time was, like, thinking about the meta thing

00:12:11 ◼   ► is, my least favorite part of the job was writing reports for the kids, which is a whole, like, long complicated thing.

00:12:17 ◼   ► And there was so many things I did to try to streamline this process.

00:12:21 ◼   ► But the best bang for the buck ever was I had to sign every one of these profiles for the kids.

00:12:28 ◼   ► And I thought one day, "Will anybody notice and/or care if when I print them off of the printer, I just put my signature directly on there so it's just printed off?"

00:12:38 ◼   ► - Part of the template. - Yeah, on a template.

00:12:41 ◼   ► And I played around with it a little bit so that the signature printing ink looked as real as I could make a signature look

00:12:49 ◼   ► by also lightening the whole rest of the document so it looks like I'm signing with a slightly darker pen than is being printed.

00:12:55 ◼   ► And it's like, you laugh, but it matters, because what am I doing here? I'm trying to see if anyone will care about this thing.

00:13:02 ◼   ► Which doesn't make any difference, right? Is the profile any better if I personally sign it?

00:13:06 ◼   ► No, because I've been working, like I'm working on this thing anyway.

00:13:10 ◼   ► And that was the thing I did

00:13:13 ◼   ► and it's like man I don't know how many hours of time that saved me but the

00:13:16 ◼   ► answer was a lot.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Where like things would come back and be like oh you haven't signed this or I don't have to sit

00:13:21 ◼   ► down and do it.

00:13:22 ◼   ► That to me is like a pure example of a productivity win.

00:13:25 ◼   ► It doesn't affect the output at all and

00:13:29 ◼   ► decreases the amount that I have to do to actually get this thing done.

00:13:32 ◼   ► So when I was managing a bank branch, I had to sign probably more things than you, right?

00:13:38 ◼   ► Because I'm gonna guess so.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I don't know if you know, but basically the branch manager basically puts their signature

00:13:44 ◼   ► on everything.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Right, you're a signature machine.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Isn't that what they've actually hired?

00:13:48 ◼   ► So I changed my signature.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah.

00:13:52 ◼   ► So I just made it this like little squiggle as opposed to anything that would even slightly

00:13:57 ◼   ► resemble my name because I was unhappy with the amount of time that it would take for

00:14:01 ◼   ► me to sign everything. Kids, that is productivity right there. That is what we think productivity

00:14:08 ◼   ► is.

00:14:09 ◼   ► And you will not be surprised to hear that I did the exact same thing upon becoming a

00:14:12 ◼   ► teacher. I very quickly realized that writing out "g-r-e-y" in a legible way is not worth

00:14:18 ◼   ► my time.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Unacceptable.

00:14:20 ◼   ► Yeah, and my signature became a recognizable "g" with a line that dipped briefly to

00:14:25 ◼   ► like vaguely indicate that maybe there's a "y" here and then continued onward and

00:14:29 ◼   ► and it's like, yep, that's it, good enough.

00:14:31 ◼   ► It's identifiable enough when we need to go

00:14:33 ◼   ► through the paperwork so we know who signed what,

00:14:35 ◼   ► but it's like the minimum amount of time

00:14:37 ◼   ► it can possibly take.

00:14:38 ◼   ► It's like, I'm not precious about my signature.

00:14:40 ◼   ► I'm like, the hell with you. (laughs)

00:14:43 ◼   ► - Do you have a different signature

00:14:44 ◼   ► when you sign autographs?

00:14:45 ◼   ► You might not wanna answer that question, I don't know.

00:14:50 ◼   ► - Well, okay, so the tricky thing with the autographs

00:14:53 ◼   ► is I feel compelled to include my initials

00:14:56 ◼   ► when I do the autograph.

00:14:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:14:58 ◼   ► So it takes long, but the gray is very similar to my teacher signature. It's perhaps a little less

00:15:05 ◼   ► stylized because I feel like there's

00:15:08 ◼   ► there's a moment of

00:15:11 ◼   ► There's a moment of importance like when someone has asked you to sign a thing like that's a moment

00:15:15 ◼   ► You want to take a bit of time on that?

00:15:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's like a it's also like a strange amount of pressure

00:15:21 ◼   ► and so while I

00:15:23 ◼   ► I just pay more attention, right?

00:15:25 ◼   ► Whereas when I had to sign stuff professionally, it's like, "Ah, whatever."

00:15:29 ◼   ► You just need an indication that I've seen this piece of paper.

00:15:31 ◼   ► It doesn't need to actually look good.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Whereas I feel like signing a thing is a slightly different domain area.

00:15:37 ◼   ► That it has to look better.

00:15:40 ◼   ► So me and you talking about work is not necessarily the same as talking about productivity.

00:15:47 ◼   ► And it's one of the reasons that every now and then we talk about video games.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Because the productivity enables the video games, right? So it's the whole thing, it's the whole piece.

00:16:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like, just like you were saying, you know, you want to get out at five, I wanted to leave as soon after the children leave as possible.

00:16:08 ◼   ► It's like the thing that has carried through from that is this idea that the work is in service of some other goal.

00:16:19 ◼   ► And my feeling has always been like the goal that I am aiming for is to build a life that I want to live.

00:16:27 ◼   ► And a life that I want to live is not the same thing as producing the maximum number of videos that is possible.

00:16:39 ◼   ► Like these things are in conflict.

00:16:42 ◼   ► It's like I want to make videos, but I feel like all of my thoughts around work and gradations and the tools we talk about and everything we've ever done is a question about effectively making videos in a sustainable way in the long term.

00:17:01 ◼   ► And that's not the same thing necessarily as being productive in the way that you talk about, like, an economy is productive.

00:17:11 ◼   ► Which means like every year the amount of copper forged goes up. Like that's a very different way.

00:17:18 ◼   ► I do think it's interesting that people sometimes conflate these things.

00:17:22 ◼   ► And I feel like it's an interesting thing that is sometimes hard to convey.

00:17:28 ◼   ► this idea of like, yes, I'm very concerned with the effectiveness of work, but that question

00:17:36 ◼   ► is not necessarily related to the volume of work.

00:17:42 ◼   ► When you see me talking about video games, you can feel very assured that I have been

00:17:47 ◼   ► productive. Right? And I feel like that statement could be written with either our names underneath

00:17:55 ◼   ► it. Because it's like, if I am able to do this, it means I've taken care of the rest.

00:18:02 ◼   ► And it's like the productivity, the idea of getting the work done, what that is, like

00:18:07 ◼   ► it is in service of that. And it's, that's what Year of Less was. And it's what, you

00:18:13 ◼   ► know, I'm six months into my Year of Less and haven't really paid much attention to

00:18:18 ◼   ► it.

00:18:19 ◼   ► I was going to ask about how that was going.

00:18:21 ◼   ► But I am again. It popped up in my head the other day, because I realised that I have

00:18:28 ◼   ► a much smaller appetite for being a part of new projects. Like, Relay FM can be and is,

00:18:42 ◼   ► but my involvement, my like day-to-day direct involvement, i.e. as a host, that appetite

00:18:50 ◼   ► is going down over time.

00:18:52 ◼   ► - So you're talking about your desire to do new shows.

00:18:55 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:18:56 ◼   ► My problem is

00:18:59 ◼   ► my appetite

00:19:06 ◼   ► for new ideas

00:19:07 ◼   ► can never be filled.

00:19:10 ◼   ► And so I have been paying attention to this

00:19:14 ◼   ► and doing a couple of different things.

00:19:17 ◼   ► One is,

00:19:20 ◼   ► I'm trying my best to not start new things, right?

00:19:25 ◼   ► That like things pop up in my head,

00:19:27 ◼   ► opportunities come my way,

00:19:29 ◼   ► and I think about them a lot more deeply

00:19:31 ◼   ► than I would have in the past.

00:19:33 ◼   ► And if something doesn't feel like a complete no-brainer,

00:19:38 ◼   ► then I spend more time thinking about it.

00:19:40 ◼   ► Like I have spent too much time in my career

00:19:45 ◼   ► over the last seven years

00:19:49 ◼   ► of allowing myself to be completely taken by a whim.

00:19:54 ◼   ► And some of those things have turned out to be great

00:19:59 ◼   ► and some of them haven't been.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And I need to do a better job and I am doing a better job

00:20:05 ◼   ► of trying to quantify these decisions of a scale

00:20:08 ◼   ► that is better than just excitement level.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Because what I am trying to avoid is an inevitable burnout.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And then a slashing of projects.

00:20:19 ◼   ► 'cause I enjoy all of my current projects,

00:20:21 ◼   ► that's why I do them.

00:20:22 ◼   ► But if I add much more on top of that,

00:20:26 ◼   ► that's gonna be a problem.

00:20:28 ◼   ► So one of the other things that I've done

00:20:30 ◼   ► to prepare myself for this

00:20:31 ◼   ► is what I've been speaking about for months,

00:20:32 ◼   ► is like getting help.

00:20:34 ◼   ► Having an assistant now who helps me

00:20:37 ◼   ► has been a great way to help with this

00:20:43 ◼   ► because what I'm doing is staving off the burnout

00:20:47 ◼   ► with my current project level.

00:20:48 ◼   ► That's what I've done, I've secured that.

00:20:50 ◼   ► So all of the stuff that I'm currently doing,

00:20:53 ◼   ► I now feel less pressure than I did maybe three or four months ago

00:20:58 ◼   ► about my current workload.

00:21:00 ◼   ► This is exactly the thing that I was going through last year with Year of Less.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Is this exact thing a feeling like

00:21:08 ◼   ► needing to have more specific reasons

00:21:13 ◼   ► to pick up a side project, for example, right?

00:21:17 ◼   ► or needing to be able to take parts of the job and try to hand them to somebody else.

00:21:26 ◼   ► Like what I was saying before about this idea of trying to build a life that you want to live,

00:21:31 ◼   ► I find it really effective when thinking about my working life,

00:21:38 ◼   ► and this has always been the case right from the start,

00:21:40 ◼   ► is the most effective thing is to try to eliminate or reduce the thing that you dislike

00:21:45 ◼   ► As opposed to what is often the more compelling part, which is to add a new, more exciting

00:21:55 ◼   ► thing.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And I have found that that is definitely held true for me.

00:22:00 ◼   ► That's like time is better invested recognizing and eliminating or outsourcing parts of the

00:22:10 ◼   ► business that I don't like or that are causing me stress.

00:22:13 ◼   ► That is way better for building a life that I want to live than adding a new thing that

00:22:19 ◼   ► I'm super excited about.

00:22:22 ◼   ► I think excitement is almost... it's good to have about a project, but I think at a

00:22:29 ◼   ► certain point when you have a bunch of things that are successful, it can quickly become

00:22:37 ◼   ► a kind of...

00:22:38 ◼   ► I don't know, like a red herring that you're always chasing is like excitement alone at a certain point does not become enough to justify working on a thing when you're already working on a whole bunch of things.

00:22:52 ◼   ► Like you have to start thinking about stuff in a much more ruthless way.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I actually have a related Ask Cortex question. So Jason wrote in about side projects to say,

00:23:03 ◼   ► "Do they get really bored or distracted and find themselves moving on to something

00:23:08 ◼   ► new very constantly before finishing current projects, leaving behind like a trail of unfinished

00:23:14 ◼   ► things?" So Jason asked, "Do you have any tips for getting over the slump that comes

00:23:19 ◼   ► after the initial excitement?" Now the reason I find these two things to be connected is

00:23:25 ◼   ► in just what you were saying, right? Like, it's way too easy to be attracted by that

00:23:33 ◼   ► bright light, that new shiny thing and go to it. So something that I have been doing

00:23:38 ◼   ► over the last six months or so, one of the things that I've been thinking about with

00:23:43 ◼   ► my balance is to find excitement in existing projects. So to like manufacture for myself

00:23:55 ◼   ► new things to do and to find things within those projects to make exciting, to find new

00:24:04 ◼   ► experiences or new ways of thinking about something that I'm currently doing or shaking

00:24:09 ◼   ► something up. Like I have been a real proponent over the stuff that I've done in my podcasting

00:24:15 ◼   ► career of rebranding shows and repackaging shows. If I have gotten tired of a show format

00:24:22 ◼   ► to like shake it up, give it a new name, give it a new coat of paint and give myself the

00:24:28 ◼   ► ability to kind of jump in and reboot it before it gets too samey for me.

00:24:37 ◼   ► So like I've in the past like I used to do this interview show every week right? I think

00:24:41 ◼   ► it had four different names over its like three or four year career because it was like

00:24:46 ◼   ► a way for me to give something a kickstart again and to kind of push forward, right?

00:24:55 ◼   ► And so it's really difficult to find these things, but it's just something that I've

00:25:00 ◼   ► been trying to pay more and more attention to, to like take the projects that work really

00:25:05 ◼   ► well and add new stuff to it as a way to try and keep me interested and invested.

00:25:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean related to the other part of the question about, you know, how do you not have a graveyard of unfinished things?

00:25:21 ◼   ► Well, we all have graveyards of unfinished things. I have a graveyard of unfinished things.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Vast.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Yours is bigger than most, I think.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Vast. Vast Arlington Cemetery of unfinished things. It's enormous.

00:25:37 ◼   ► But one of the things I measure is thinking about, you know, changes that I made last year,

00:25:44 ◼   ► about being more ruthless with the kind of projects that I take on,

00:25:47 ◼   ► and what I feel really good about is in the last, you know, since starting the Year of Less,

00:25:54 ◼   ► I have gotten way better at what ends up in that graveyard.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Like, I feel better about those projects, as opposed to taking on a bunch of stuff that

00:26:06 ◼   ► even if it worked out, would have just continued to add to my workflow.

00:26:13 ◼   ► So, I think one of the biggest things that has made a huge difference for me is thinking about new projects.

00:26:20 ◼   ► They have to be in the category of things that can be completed, so that they are finished at a particular date.

00:26:29 ◼   ► things that can be handed off largely to somebody else,

00:26:35 ◼   ► or things that add an extremely minimal amount of work for a very good payoff.

00:26:43 ◼   ► And it's like when I look at my graveyard of unfinished things,

00:26:47 ◼   ► those projects are much more in that domain than they are like,

00:26:53 ◼   ► "Oh, let me start up a whole brand new thing, which would give me a whole brand new job to do if it turns out to be successful."

00:26:58 ◼   ► So, there is a way to think about the quality of the things going into the graveyard, not just the number of tombstones that are there.

00:27:07 ◼   ► It's like, what is buried matters? As opposed to just the fact that a thing was buried happened.

00:27:13 ◼   ► I think it's crazy to try to avoid that.

00:27:17 ◼   ► And there's also the side effect of, like, you just don't know where things are gonna go sometimes.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And thinking about my current year, the year of redirection,

00:27:28 ◼   ► I am really happy with a bunch of the decisions that I have made about how to run my business this year,

00:27:36 ◼   ► have directly led to having a bunch of free time to be able to noodle around with projects that may or may not turn into anything.

00:27:46 ◼   ► But I feel like I have a better ability to dedicate a bunch of time to a thing that seems interesting.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Even if I'm not exactly sure where it's going to go and to just evaluate it a little bit before thinking about it really seriously.

00:28:02 ◼   ► So it's a hard thing to answer, but I do think the graveyard of unfinished things is important to keep growing.

00:28:14 ◼   ► you just need to be mindful about how it is growing.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Like what kinds of things are going in there.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Like are things going in there that like,

00:28:23 ◼   ► let's be honest, you were never really going to do.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Or like, oh, like that Mandarin course, right?

00:28:29 ◼   ► You got Rosetta Mandarin and you were going to learn that.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Like was that really going to happen?

00:28:33 ◼   ► Probably not, like that doesn't seem like a good project.

00:28:36 ◼   ► - So how much value are you extracting

00:28:39 ◼   ► from live streaming your truck?

00:28:41 ◼   ► Because you know, you talk about minimal work, I know you spent a significant amount of time

00:28:48 ◼   ► attempting to troubleshoot that thing.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Okay, okay, alright.

00:28:53 ◼   ► I think this is actually...

00:28:55 ◼   ► I'm being mean.

00:28:56 ◼   ► No, no, no, you're not being mean, you're not being mean.

00:28:57 ◼   ► I think this is a great example, because, like let me take a moment to explain something

00:29:03 ◼   ► that is probably not obvious to the people who are watching the streaming.

00:29:08 ◼   ► So, the streaming that has been happening in the last couple of weeks is totally 100%

00:29:17 ◼   ► an example of me changing things to have more free time to be able to dump a bunch of time

00:29:24 ◼   ► in a very narrow window into a single project.

00:29:30 ◼   ► Which is like, I'm gonna figure out how to stream.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Which turned out to be more of a technical challenge than I expected it would be, right?

00:29:38 ◼   ► But the whole way this started is I can actually point to the exact video, which is Hank Green of Vlogbrothers and VidCon and Crash Course and a million things

00:29:54 ◼   ► Very productive man

00:29:55 ◼   ► Yeah, he's like the Richard Branson of the internet. He just can't stop creating new things

00:30:01 ◼   ► Hank did a video on his personal channel, Hank's channel, where he was just going through some of the statistics for the YouTube channels that he runs.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And he was just like talking through this.

00:30:14 ◼   ► And I thought, "Oh, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm really interested in to see a little bit of the data behind somebody else's business."

00:30:19 ◼   ► And I went to go watch it.

00:30:21 ◼   ► And the thing that kicked off my whole streaming was watching him in the very first few minutes

00:30:28 ◼   ► just simply setting up what he was going to do as a live stream.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Because he didn't pre-record that video, he was just going to go through it live and take questions from people in the comments and talk about some stuff.

00:30:39 ◼   ► And as dumb as this sounds, because I am a person who has not watched streams, I'm not really into streaming, I feel like I never really got it.

00:30:46 ◼   ► really got it, but I was watching him do the pre-setup and something about that

00:30:52 ◼   ► suddenly clicked where I could see before the show was "ready" he was

00:30:57 ◼   ► obviously using some kind of software to arrange all the windows just the way he

00:31:02 ◼   ► wanted to put a little overlay on it so that it looked nice and it's the

00:31:05 ◼   ► simplest thing in the world but it was a thing that suddenly clicked in my head

00:31:09 ◼   ► of like "ah okay." I had somehow always thought that streaming was simply

00:31:14 ◼   ► recording the computer screen as you're looking at it, which always seemed like a

00:31:18 ◼   ► huge hassle from my perspective. But seeing that like, oh there's a tool to

00:31:22 ◼   ► set this up,

00:31:24 ◼   ► what I found about that was like, I don't know when, I don't know where, I don't

00:31:31 ◼   ► know how, but something about this feels like a skill that I should add to my

00:31:38 ◼   ► repertoire of things that I can do on the internet.

00:31:41 ◼   ► And this is like, I feel like my whole career is based on trusting some instincts in my brain,

00:31:51 ◼   ► like recognizing a certain kind of interest.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And this was definitely one of those things of realizing like, I don't know where or when this might be useful,

00:32:00 ◼   ► but I think it would be good to know how to stream.

00:32:04 ◼   ► So that if I ever want to do it, I don't have to, at that moment,

00:32:08 ◼   ► invest several days in messing around with the software and figuring out how to make everything look right and getting it all done.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And so, the truck streaming project, while it's partly just fun and interesting to try to do the truck streaming,

00:32:24 ◼   ► one of the main purposes of that project is I want to have another tool in my tool belt.

00:32:31 ◼   ► I don't necessarily have a purpose for it now, but I have a gut feeling that maybe at some point

00:32:38 ◼   ► I will want to know how to do this and and be able to do it immediately and I'm like I'm investing that time

00:32:45 ◼   ► now. This is so funny to me. Why? Because

00:32:49 ◼   ► what you had watching Hank is what I had watching you. So when I saw you doing it and

00:32:57 ◼   ► realized like you were talking about the tools that you were using.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I then realized, oh, this isn't what I thought it was.

00:33:05 ◼   ► Right. I could do that.

00:33:07 ◼   ► That's hilarious. I can't.

00:33:10 ◼   ► That's so funny because like it's been in my head.

00:33:12 ◼   ► I can't get out of my head.

00:33:13 ◼   ► Like I keep I keep looking at these like streaming boxes and stuff.

00:33:17 ◼   ► And I just want to show everybody how I play Zelda. Right.

00:33:22 ◼   ► But this is this is a perfect example of, you know, last year,

00:33:26 ◼   ► wouldn't really have had the time to guilt-free just do this.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And I know I'm always mentioning side projects and there's a bunch of stuff that people just don't see.

00:33:36 ◼   ► Like, there's two other things I'm working on where it's like, people just don't see.

00:33:39 ◼   ► But this is an example of a thing that people can see, but I just don't think it's...

00:33:45 ◼   ► I think a lot of people watching it aren't aware of like, what is it that I'm doing here?

00:33:50 ◼   ► And this is what I'm doing. I'm intentionally trying to add a skill

00:33:54 ◼   ► to the list of things that I can do on the internet.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And as a self-employed person who like cobbles together a bunch of skills to make it work together in a productive way,

00:34:06 ◼   ► like this just seems to me like a skill that I should definitely have ready to go.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Even if I'm not using it intensely at any particular moment.

00:34:17 ◼   ► moment.

00:34:18 ◼   ► I think anybody that is self-employed should or does have this about them, especially if

00:34:25 ◼   ► you work in a creative space.

00:34:29 ◼   ► Because at any point, the thing that you do could go away.

00:34:34 ◼   ► And having a vast skill set which you can apply to other things is very important.

00:34:41 ◼   ► It is the reason that I started making YouTube videos.

00:34:44 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, that's a great comparison, right, is you just...

00:34:48 ◼   ► you want to be aware of other things.

00:34:51 ◼   ► And the other thing as well is like aside from just trying to figure out technically how to do a thing,

00:34:57 ◼   ► there was a real part of my brain which just felt like I don't understand

00:35:02 ◼   ► streaming on the internet. As in I don't really understand why people watch streams,

00:35:08 ◼   ► I don't understand really what's going on on the streams. It's just, it was just outside of my

00:35:13 ◼   ► domain of expertise

00:35:15 ◼   ► but I also think like this is an important meta skill to cultivate is

00:35:21 ◼   ► curiosity over dismissal

00:35:24 ◼   ► it's really easy to dismiss things as like "oh whatever those people are doing"

00:35:32 ◼   ► they're watching people play video games live, like isn't that dumb

00:35:35 ◼   ► but it's like, is it dumb?

00:35:37 ◼   ► or do you just not understand what they're doing?

00:35:40 ◼   ► And I feel like that was also part of this process, is like, I want to have an intuitive understanding of what this is.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And I think I have a much better understanding of it now than I did before I started.

00:35:52 ◼   ► It's very difficult to articulate.

00:35:55 ◼   ► I feel like in the same way that like, I've always said, like with teacher training,

00:36:00 ◼   ► there's just so much stuff you just have to do in a classroom, like that no amount of learning ahead of time will actually prepare you for it.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Like you just have to be in charge of a bunch of kids before you really get what teachers mean when they say like

00:36:12 ◼   ► consistency is really important. It's like, but you don't understand until you're there.

00:36:15 ◼   ► And I feel like there was something similar about that with the streaming. Like I don't feel like I get it 100% yet,

00:36:20 ◼   ► but I feel like I'm

00:36:22 ◼   ► 75% of the way there, but it's very difficult to articulate because it's just a thing that you have to do.

00:36:28 ◼   ► And that is what's going on in in this side project of mine is skill acquisition,

00:36:36 ◼   ► and feeding curiosity about new things that are coming along instead of just

00:36:43 ◼   ► ignoring them potentially to the detriment of my business in the future.

00:36:48 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you in part by Audible. Audible has an

00:36:53 ◼   ► unmatched selection of audio content from thrilling novels to fascinating

00:36:58 ◼   ► nonfiction to content from newspapers and magazines. If you want it, Audible has

00:37:03 ◼   ► Whether you're looking to add a little more excitement to your commute or you're finding a way to make laundry more bearable,

00:37:09 ◼   ► which I certainly listen to Audible while doing the laundry, they're the place to go.

00:37:14 ◼   ► You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it, and you can turn your chores into something more with a free trial at Audible.

00:37:22 ◼   ► If you're looking for a book to listen to and the conversations from a few episodes ago about me looking into Scrum sound interesting to you,

00:37:31 ◼   ► Then one of the main books about Scrum, called The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland, is available on Audible.

00:37:40 ◼   ► You can check it out with your free trial, just go to audible.com/cortex to get started today.

00:37:47 ◼   ► That's audible.com/cortex, C-O-R-T-E-X, to find out more and start your free Audible trial today.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Thanks to Audible for their support of this show.

00:37:58 ◼   ► [BEEP]

00:37:59 ◼   ► The people have spoken grey.

00:38:00 ◼   ► I don't think it's legitimate, Myke, because you riled them up.

00:38:03 ◼   ► It doesn't matter. They needed to know first, and once I let them know, they felt the need to request

00:38:11 ◼   ► in droves, in waves of Cortex listeners want to know why you left the iPhone SE

00:38:20 ◼   ► and went back to the iPhone 7.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I just want to again get it on record here that I feel like you fomented a mob,

00:38:27 ◼   ► right? That's what you did last time.

00:38:29 ◼   ► I think that that's really unfair for you to refer to our listeners that way.

00:38:32 ◼   ► Oh, don't you turn this around.

00:38:35 ◼   ► All I'm doing, I'm just trying to provide them with some information to let them choose, you know.

00:38:42 ◼   ► We didn't hear from anyone that specifically said they didn't want to hear about this.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, no that's right. Because that's who you hear tons from,

00:38:50 ◼   ► is the people who don't want to hear about a thing.

00:38:51 ◼   ► If they really don't want to, they'll tell you, you know.

00:38:55 ◼   ► That's the thing, no they don't. You never get the people who say no.

00:38:58 ◼   ► I feel like the silent majority, they're not being represented here.

00:39:02 ◼   ► I don't know Myke, I feel like

00:39:06 ◼   ► I feel so hesitant to tell this story because I feel like it's a tale of woe.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Right, a tale of woe, and there have been many tales of woe

00:39:14 ◼   ► about Apple stuff, and that's partly why I just, I sort of haven't wanted to talk

00:39:18 ◼   ► about it, so I don't know where to begin.

00:39:22 ◼   ► How long ago did you move away from the iPhone SE?

00:39:26 ◼   ► Okay, so it was actually days before you spotted me using the iPhone 7.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Caught you.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Okay, if you want to use the word caught, if you want to frame this in a particular way, you go right ahead.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Well, all I remember is the look on your face when I asked you what that was, and then you just looked at me and you said you didn't want to talk about it.

00:39:52 ◼   ► And then you put it back in your pocket.

00:39:54 ◼   ► No, no, don't you try to do this.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And then you got up and walked away.

00:39:58 ◼   ► And then we didn't see you again for the rest of the weekend.

00:40:01 ◼   ► No, just to be clear, Myke is full of lies about what happened at the OOL conference there.

00:40:06 ◼   ► What actually happened is I was just using it in front of him, and he asked me about it, and I was like, "Oh, I don't want to get into it now."

00:40:12 ◼   ► And then, whatever this is, six months later, I still haven't wanted to get into it.

00:40:17 ◼   ► I just want to let our listeners know that this has been something that I have been trying

00:40:21 ◼   ► to get Gray to talk about for six months now.

00:40:26 ◼   ► Every now and then, it's just sat in our show document and I move it in and then Gray adds

00:40:30 ◼   ► a little line that says, "I'm not ready to talk about this yet."

00:40:34 ◼   ► But clearly, time has healed all wounds.

00:40:38 ◼   ► Well, no, I mean, mostly it's just that we're getting up to new iPhone seasons, so if we

00:40:44 ◼   ► we don't talk about it.

00:40:45 ◼   ► We'll have wasted a topic.

00:40:47 ◼   ► That's what's happening here.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And also, there'll be a confusion gap

00:40:51 ◼   ► when you talk about moving from one phone to the other.

00:40:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:40:54 ◼   ► There'll be a confusion gap.

00:40:56 ◼   ► OK, so I guess the place to start is, what did I do?

00:41:03 ◼   ► What was my initial reasoning here?

00:41:07 ◼   ► This is partly connected to what I was thinking

00:41:10 ◼   ► about for year of redirection, which

00:41:13 ◼   ► I can't even remember what the hell the original idea whatever was gonna call it was year of new

00:41:17 ◼   ► I think maybe was that what it was seems like a year of new yeah, which was the wrong name in every sense

00:41:22 ◼   ► Yeah, the exact opposite of what I was actually intending to do you may as well call it year of more

00:41:26 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah exactly year of more by which I will actually be doing less. I mean more less right yeah in the year of less

00:41:34 ◼   ► What did I do more? I did more more than I've ever done

00:41:36 ◼   ► But you have to understand the way I mean these words people

00:41:39 ◼   ► but so anyway

00:41:42 ◼   ► Looking forward to what I was thinking about doing towards the end of 2016 and throughout 2017

00:41:49 ◼   ► One of the things that was on my list

00:41:53 ◼   ► was

00:41:55 ◼   ► More traveling in a bunch of different ways more traveling both for personal reasons and more traveling for business reasons and

00:42:03 ◼   ► That is definitely something that has happened

00:42:07 ◼   ► As I anticipated like I've been on way more flights in the last six to eight months than I've been on in the past

00:42:15 ◼   ► many years in the last six months

00:42:17 ◼   ► Maybe in the last year. I have seen you more overseas

00:42:22 ◼   ► Than in London. I think yeah, you know what? I think you're right. I think I think you are totally right about that

00:42:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I do not think that is an exaggeration

00:42:35 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't always mention it on on podcast but it's like I've done more traveling than I make reference to

00:42:40 ◼   ► and I was thinking about this and

00:42:43 ◼   ► Part of my

00:42:48 ◼   ► like one of the big things that's

00:42:50 ◼   ► Frustrating about traveling for me is a kind of range anxiety about the batteries in the devices that I use

00:42:56 ◼   ► I feel like so much of my life is just spent around managing batteries

00:43:01 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's getting like it is really getting worse like I feel like I've crossed some kind of threshold

00:43:05 ◼   ► Where there's just so many batteries to worry about it drives me crazy

00:43:10 ◼   ► It is by far and away one of my biggest complaints about technology in the modern world. Yeah is battery management

00:43:17 ◼   ► and like

00:43:19 ◼   ► Like laying out all my gear and obsessively trying to figure out what's the minimum number of wires that I can take that will cover

00:43:25 ◼   ► all of these devices

00:43:27 ◼   ► and it's it's it's frustrating and it's it's

00:43:30 ◼   ► It's annoying, and in particular, the device that you do not want to die on you while you're traveling is the phone.

00:43:39 ◼   ► That is the most important thing that you want to keep alive.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And basically what I was thinking of is like, I wanted to try the iPhone 7 with the battery pack.

00:43:55 ◼   ► because ever since the iPhone, the first iPhone, was it the 6 or the 6s? I don't remember where they came out with the battery pack.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Which I think you actually showed me first on this podcast, I think that was you.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Yeah, you hadn't seen it.

00:44:10 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what it was, I hadn't seen it.

00:44:13 ◼   ► And I was expecting abject horror from you, but you were very interested in it.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I was very interested in it, and I was super annoyed they didn't make it for the 6 Plus or the 6s Plus, whatever it was at the time.

00:44:24 ◼   ► time. So ever since that came out when my wife and I go traveling she uses her

00:44:32 ◼   ► phone with the battery pack and I've always been hugely impressed by how long

00:44:36 ◼   ► her phone lasts even when she's doing some intensive pokey hunting as we're

00:44:41 ◼   ► traveling around the world. Right it's like look look you got to catch them all

00:44:44 ◼   ► Myke. That was also my fault I think. I was always very interested in that and I

00:44:51 ◼   ► I feel like I have terrible luck with iPhone batteries. Like my iPhone, it just, it feels like it never lasts as long as it should.

00:44:59 ◼   ► I feel like I barely use my phone and it makes it through half the day.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And if I'm traveling, and I've mentioned this to you, you know, numerous times, like if I'm going to Amsterdam, right?

00:45:09 ◼   ► Or if I'm flying, I swear to God, it's like the battery just drops like a rock.

00:45:12 ◼   ► I feel like I'm not touching you. Like I put you in low power mode straight away.

00:45:16 ◼   ► I've just left you in my pocket.

00:45:18 ◼   ► Like I'm specifically not touching you phone and it's like it just just drops the battery just drops so fast. It's a huge frustration. I

00:45:25 ◼   ► have a suspicion that it's related to

00:45:27 ◼   ► Low signal that that's what the phone is. That's what's causing the problem is

00:45:31 ◼   ► There's lots of situation where the signal is low and the battery just drops

00:45:33 ◼   ► Yeah, that that is like the most surefire way to destroy a phone battery is when it's searching for a network

00:45:39 ◼   ► Yeah, like I'm sitting on a train and I can feel it warm in my pocket and it's like what are you doing phone?

00:45:44 ◼   ► It's like oh you're you're switching cell carriers every every five minutes

00:45:48 ◼   ► You know, it's like just even around London like even just today

00:45:51 ◼   ► I had a like a very normal morning where I barely use the phone and I got home at noon and the battery was down

00:45:57 ◼   ► To 50% and I was like, oh right, but I spent some time in some low signal areas. Like it's just an endless frustration

00:46:01 ◼   ► And it's particularly bad on traveling. So I thought you know what I'm gonna do

00:46:05 ◼   ► I'm gonna try to use the iPhone 7 with the battery pack because if I'm if I'm traveling a bunch

00:46:12 ◼   ► This is really important to me to not lose the battery.

00:46:17 ◼   ► This doesn't feel like enough.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Well, let me just say like the thing I've been interested to see is like because I've been going to some conferences

00:46:23 ◼   ► I'm aware of

00:46:26 ◼   ► Like how much more the phone really matters at conferences in ways that I wouldn't have expected like it's interesting just to go

00:46:33 ◼   ► Now you're totally right. Is this enough? There's a few other things that have happened. One of the primary things that's happened

00:46:39 ◼   ► Which I really don't want to get into like I feel like there's so many stories here

00:46:42 ◼   ► but I just don't want to get into all of them, so we're gonna try to move past some things.

00:46:45 ◼   ► But one of them is one of the big reasons why I moved down to

00:46:49 ◼   ► the iPhone SE was also, if you remember, I had taken up running around that time and

00:46:55 ◼   ► running with a plus-size phone is like a total deal-breaker.

00:47:00 ◼   ► It's a real pain in the butt to have a plus-size phone.

00:47:04 ◼   ► Can literally be a pain in the butt.

00:47:06 ◼   ► It can literally be a pain in the butt.

00:47:07 ◼   ► Like, on my running gear, the only pocket, like the least uncomfortable pocket is like a pocket on the back

00:47:13 ◼   ► and then it is literally a pain in the butt.

00:47:15 ◼   ► You can't deal with that, that's no way to live.

00:47:17 ◼   ► No, it is no way to live.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So I switched down to the SE because there's like a huge advantage while running, like an enormous advantage while running.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And I was running three times a week.

00:47:26 ◼   ► But again, like, story I don't want to get into, I eventually decided, like, I had give running enough of a try and realized

00:47:32 ◼   ► I hate you running. This is not for me.

00:47:34 ◼   ► is not for me. This is no story you need to explain to me. There is, of all physical exertion,

00:47:41 ◼   ► running is my least favorite. Like, I hate running of a passion. There is, I don t understand

00:47:47 ◼   ► how anybody enjoys it. My brother just ran the London marathon. Oh, wow. And enjoyed

00:47:53 ◼   ► it. Yeah. And I don t understand how that is a thing that is possible for a human to

00:48:01 ◼   ► to experience. I just can't. I just can't.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. So it's like

00:48:05 ◼   ► I wanted to give it a fair try, I felt like I gave it a fair try

00:48:07 ◼   ► and could reasonably

00:48:09 ◼   ► come to the conclusion that like

00:48:11 ◼   ► this is not for me. I don't like this. I'm so happy

00:48:13 ◼   ► because I really was annoyed

00:48:15 ◼   ► that you were running.

00:48:17 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:48:19 ◼   ► I never mentioned it, but I hated it.

00:48:21 ◼   ► Why did you hate it?

00:48:23 ◼   ► I just felt like of everyone that I know, you would

00:48:25 ◼   ► be the person that would also not like

00:48:27 ◼   ► running. Well, guess what? You're right.

00:48:29 ◼   ► I'm so happy to hear this.

00:48:34 ◼   ► So I switched running for the exercise that I

00:48:38 ◼   ► vastly prefer, which is cycling.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And so it's like, okay.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Cycling, like, you're on a bike, it's a whole different equipment setup, right?

00:48:47 ◼   ► You have, like, baskets to hold things,

00:48:49 ◼   ► like you're bringing equipment with you, you have a... like, it's just a totally

00:48:52 ◼   ► different setup.

00:48:52 ◼   ► I just don't like cycling.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Well, you know, it can't win every time with you, Myke.

00:48:59 ◼   ► So that was a case where like the SE, it didn't matter so much.

00:49:03 ◼   ► And I thought like, I'm gonna give the 7 a try.

00:49:06 ◼   ► And what I was, what I wanted to also try was,

00:49:09 ◼   ► if I just use this with the battery pack all the time, right, not just for traveling,

00:49:16 ◼   ► if I just use it with the battery pack,

00:49:18 ◼   ► can I get used to the physical size that I don't like?

00:49:22 ◼   ► Does the battery pack make it big enough in my hands that it's not uncomfortable to use?

00:49:28 ◼   ► And so like that that's what I wanted. That's what I wanted to try.

00:49:31 ◼   ► I still feel like there is an important part of this though.

00:49:34 ◼   ► Oh, oh, yeah, there is. Oh, sorry. There is there is one more thing.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Okay.

00:49:37 ◼   ► There is one more thing.

00:49:38 ◼   ► Which I will straight-up acknowledge is a

00:49:42 ◼   ► kind of personality flaw with me, but is a thing that like I recognize about myself.

00:49:48 ◼   ► The thing that I recognize is

00:49:54 ◼   ► If I am using something and I feel like that thing has no future, I have a very hard time

00:50:02 ◼   ► continuing to use it.

00:50:04 ◼   ► And I became more and more convinced that I was just using a dead phone.

00:50:11 ◼   ► What about it being old?

00:50:12 ◼   ► Did that play into it?

00:50:14 ◼   ► You were using an old product?

00:50:17 ◼   ► The oldness, like I know you will think that that is the factor, but that is very minor

00:50:24 ◼   ► factor.

00:50:25 ◼   ► It's much more that I just kept being convinced, like I don't think Apple is ever going to

00:50:28 ◼   ► make a phone in this size again.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Okay.

00:50:32 ◼   ► So you didn't want to get too used to it again.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that was kind of it.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Like I love that phone, but it just kept niggling in the back of my mind that it's like, well,

00:50:44 ◼   ► Like this phone is already dead, right? In my hands. Like I'm just, I'm like a sucker

00:50:51 ◼   ► holding on to a bygone era. And this is a part of my personality, which again, sometimes

00:50:59 ◼   ► I will recognize that it can be a flaw and sometimes it is amazing, but it's like I just

00:51:03 ◼   ► I cannot look backward. Like I have a really hard time with that. And even if something

00:51:09 ◼   ► in the present feels like in the future it will be backward?" I'm like, "No, this is--

00:51:13 ◼   ► I can't-- I can't deal with this."

00:51:15 ◼   ► Cuz, you know, the whole time I'm sitting here thinking, like, there is a myriad of

00:51:19 ◼   ► battery cases that would fit the iPhone SE.

00:51:22 ◼   ► Okay, so, slight other thing. I had already tried doing a whole bunch of battery cases

00:51:26 ◼   ► with the SE, and all of them had various frustrations. And, uh, long story short, none of them worked

00:51:34 ◼   ► as well as the battery case on the 7.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Not even close.

00:51:38 ◼   ► So I used battery cases, I had used battery cases on the SE while traveling, and they were better than nothing.

00:51:45 ◼   ► But so the conclusion of this is like, okay, so I tried these various reasons. I got the 7, I got the battery case,

00:51:50 ◼   ► and my experience of it was

00:51:53 ◼   ► this battery case is

00:51:56 ◼   ► glorious,

00:51:58 ◼   ► because it finally takes the phone

00:52:01 ◼   ► into like what the what the Apple watch is where it's like I don't ever have to really think about this as

00:52:06 ◼   ► long as I plug it in for some amount of time once in the day I

00:52:10 ◼   ► Never have to think about what the battery is on this phone and over time that case for me like now

00:52:17 ◼   ► I am used to it the way it looks when I see it because initially it was like one of the ugliest things

00:52:22 ◼   ► I've ever seen Apple make because it's like this hump on the back of the phone. Mm-hmm. I have also since held one

00:52:29 ◼   ► And it is really a tale of function over form.

00:52:34 ◼   ► Like it is stupid to have this just like hump

00:52:38 ◼   ► on the back of the phone for many reasons.

00:52:40 ◼   ► I think it looks really weird and like you put it down

00:52:42 ◼   ► on the table and you press something

00:52:44 ◼   ► and then the phone then it flips over.

00:52:46 ◼   ► But when you're holding it in your hand,

00:52:48 ◼   ► like you rest your hand kind of around the bump

00:52:53 ◼   ► and it actually is really nice to hold

00:52:55 ◼   ► and it doesn't feel like how a lot

00:52:58 ◼   ► these battery cases feel where you feel like you've doubled the thickness of

00:53:01 ◼   ► your phone

00:53:02 ◼   ► yeah yeah that's the other problem is like Apple's using a lot of their own

00:53:06 ◼   ► integration and they're able to pull a bunch of tricks part of which is that

00:53:11 ◼   ► they're using the female lightning connector on the bottom which is a huge

00:53:14 ◼   ► win again because of talking about battery management like the number of

00:53:17 ◼   ► cable if I can make the number of cables less is a win

00:53:20 ◼   ► like if I can avoid a micro USB that's fantastic like I don't want to have to

00:53:23 ◼   ► have one of these

00:53:24 ◼   ► Yeah, that sucks.

00:53:25 ◼   ► It's a real annoyance.

00:53:26 ◼   ► But I have just nothing but tremendous praise for the battery case for the 7.

00:53:32 ◼   ► And to me it feels like what the battery of a phone should be.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Which is, I can, even with reasonably heavy use on a travel day, expect that this phone will make it till the end of the day without being plugged in.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Which, I just, I don't feel like that's a lot to ask, but I know that with modern phone design it apparently is.

00:53:55 ◼   ► Yeah, they would do it if they could.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Everyone wants this. Everybody knows this.

00:54:00 ◼   ► But they're just, whatever, all funds seem to not really be able to provide it.

00:54:05 ◼   ► Yeah. Now, the other thing, which again, this is for my personality in particular, is

00:54:11 ◼   ► I...

00:54:13 ◼   ► I might overvalue

00:54:16 ◼   ► wins

00:54:18 ◼   ► that take something off my mental plate.

00:54:20 ◼   ► And so feeling like I never have to think about the battery of this phone is such an outsized win in my mind

00:54:27 ◼   ► it's hard to explain. It's the same way like with the, you know, with the Apple Watch.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It's like the fact that I never have to think about this, that sometimes

00:54:34 ◼   ► I have worn a watch for two days in a row without even charging it,

00:54:38 ◼   ► it's like it's such a win that I don't have to think about it.

00:54:40 ◼   ► I love that and especially with battery management, I totally love it.

00:54:45 ◼   ► So, on a number of different traveling occasions, all of which happened in very rapid succession after you saw me in Ireland with 7,

00:54:56 ◼   ► I was using the 7 and I was like, "This battery case is amazing. This is fantastic, this is really great."

00:55:05 ◼   ► But here's the thing, Myke.

00:55:07 ◼   ► I tried so hard.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I tried so hard

00:55:13 ◼   ► to like the size of the 7

00:55:15 ◼   ► with the battery case making it a little bigger.

00:55:19 ◼   ► But I just couldn't.

00:55:22 ◼   ► I just couldn't. I find that size

00:55:24 ◼   ► for me,

00:55:26 ◼   ► it is the physically wrong size.

00:55:29 ◼   ► It's uncomfortable to use

00:55:31 ◼   ► over a long period of time.

00:55:33 ◼   ► It's not small enough to use one-handed, it's too small to use two-handed, it doesn't turn

00:55:38 ◼   ► sideways so that I can use it two-handed, it just slowly, slowly drove me crazy.

00:55:45 ◼   ► Are you doing what I think you're doing right now?

00:55:48 ◼   ► And I had to let it go.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And so, you don't know what I'm doing, but I'm using this 7+ now.

00:55:58 ◼   ► Yes!

00:55:59 ◼   ► Because that was the only place to go.

00:56:01 ◼   ► I know you're happy about this.

00:56:03 ◼   ► He's back to me.

00:56:05 ◼   ► I didn't expect it to go this way.

00:56:08 ◼   ► No wonder you haven't wanted to talk to me about it.

00:56:10 ◼   ► You know what's really funny, Myke?

00:56:12 ◼   ► I have used the 7+ in front of you

00:56:14 ◼   ► and you've never noticed.

00:56:15 ◼   ► Because it's the correct natural human being phone.

00:56:18 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:56:19 ◼   ► It's like, I have hidden nothing from you.

00:56:22 ◼   ► There was a couple of times

00:56:23 ◼   ► where I was using the 7 in front of you

00:56:24 ◼   ► and you just didn't pick up on it.

00:56:27 ◼   ► So I thought that was funny.

00:56:28 ◼   ► But yeah, it's like I tried, like I have never tried as hard as I tried to really like the 7 with the battery case.

00:56:35 ◼   ► Like I just, I desperately wanted to really like it.

00:56:39 ◼   ► But I just, I just couldn't get over the physical uncomfortableness of that size for me.

00:56:43 ◼   ► And that, but this is why like I feel like this is this this tale of woe, right? Of like,

00:56:48 ◼   ► where am I going in this product line? Their, their main product line is like

00:56:54 ◼   ► physically uncomfortable for me, like I just don't like it.

00:56:57 ◼   ► they have two other sizes, both of which I do like, like I still really like the small size, right?

00:57:03 ◼   ► I still really like the Plus, but each of these have other disadvantages that their main line of phone

00:57:10 ◼   ► doesn't have. So it's just frustrating. I feel like I don't have a really good home in this line because

00:57:16 ◼   ► I'm using the 7 Plus,

00:57:20 ◼   ► but that actually doesn't get very much better battery life than the SE did. Like if you look on the battery life tests,

00:57:27 ◼   ► There are many times that the SE actually outperforms the 7 Plus because even though the battery is way bigger,

00:57:32 ◼   ► the screen is also way bigger, right? Which drains the battery itself. And it's like I'm back in the same position of

00:57:37 ◼   ► when I'm traveling, having to do the mental management of

00:57:41 ◼   ► battery on this phone. And it's just frustrating. Like I was on a trip recently and I was just aware like I was out,

00:57:48 ◼   ► I was taking a walk like in a city and I was having a really nice time.

00:57:51 ◼   ► But I was also aware like, oh my phone is down at 5% on low battery mode

00:57:55 ◼   ► and I've thrown it into airplane mode and I need to make sure that I have enough battery to get me back

00:58:01 ◼   ► when I'm done with walking around. Right? And it's like I hate that. I hate having to pay attention to it.

00:58:07 ◼   ► I hate the way that Apple does the low power mode where you have to manually turn it on

00:58:12 ◼   ► so if you miss it, like you can burn through the last bit of your battery. Like I just I find it very very frustrating.

00:58:17 ◼   ► It's like I wish I wish they would make a battery case for the bigger phone, but they don't and

00:58:22 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's that's why Myke I feel like it's a big tale of woe is connected to everything in my life and

00:58:29 ◼   ► That's and that's where we are. But I know that at least you're gonna be happy that I'm using the seven plus

00:58:36 ◼   ► There is a lesson to be learned here gray. What is that lesson Myke that when Myke was right?

00:58:42 ◼   ► He remains that way. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is that the lesson to be learned here? Yep. I don't know if that's lesson Myke

00:58:50 ◼   ► I think it is

00:58:52 ◼   ► Ugh.

00:58:52 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:58:55 ◼   ► I was just like--

00:58:57 ◼   ► I'm sure listeners can hear my voice.

00:59:00 ◼   ► I'm genuinely frustrated.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And this is all-- the other big thing this is connected to,

00:59:04 ◼   ► which I feel like I barely even want to mention,

00:59:06 ◼   ► but is these rumors that the next iPhone, their flagship phone

00:59:11 ◼   ► is going to be the same size as the current 7.

00:59:14 ◼   ► And maybe there's another generation of 7S that's similar.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I just feel frustrated with maybe the way

00:59:18 ◼   ► that this is going to go.

00:59:19 ◼   ► I'm worried about what their next phone is gonna be

00:59:22 ◼   ► if it's the same size as the 7.

00:59:23 ◼   ► So that's also why I feel like I might even here

00:59:26 ◼   ► just have some kind of stay of execution

00:59:28 ◼   ► with the plus size phone.

00:59:30 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:59:31 ◼   ► - I really, I struggle to understand why you find

00:59:36 ◼   ► that 7 size so uncomfortable though.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Like I just think it's not worth it.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I just figure you may as well go to the top, right?

00:59:47 ◼   ► Because I just think it makes the most sense

00:59:48 ◼   ► to go with the plus phone over the regular size one.

00:59:51 ◼   ► I just think that you get a lot,

00:59:53 ◼   ► everything that you get, you get more of, right?

00:59:55 ◼   ► Like I just think that it makes,

00:59:57 ◼   ► to me just makes so much more sense.

00:59:59 ◼   ► But like you seem to have this like real anti,

01:00:03 ◼   ► like visceral anti-reaction to the size of that phone

01:00:08 ◼   ► in a way that I don't think I fully understand.

01:00:12 ◼   ► - I mean, one of the places I feel that the most intensely

01:00:15 ◼   ► is with the keyboard.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Like I'm really just aware the keyboard, when I'm typing,

01:00:21 ◼   ► it's just a little too big to comfortably type

01:00:23 ◼   ► with one hand.

01:00:24 ◼   ► - Right.

01:00:25 ◼   ► - And then when I bring my other hand over,

01:00:27 ◼   ► it's now too small.

01:00:29 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, you know, the solace that you may get

01:00:30 ◼   ► from this new phone is apparently the screen

01:00:33 ◼   ► will be a similar size to the Plush just in a smaller body.

01:00:36 ◼   ► So stuff like that, it might not feel too bad.

01:00:38 ◼   ► You'll have more screen real estate

01:00:40 ◼   ► to actually use both hands with.

01:00:42 ◼   ► I feel like I need to see a 7+ overlaid on a 7 to understand the relative size of these

01:00:48 ◼   ► things.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Because I've been reading all of the articles about what the new size might be and I just

01:00:53 ◼   ► feel like, "Isn't it just a taller screen?

01:00:55 ◼   ► It's not actually a whole lot wider?"

01:00:57 ◼   ► And it's like, "Well, that doesn't help anything."

01:00:59 ◼   ► You can actually get this experience now.

01:01:01 ◼   ► You can go to a phone store and try the Galaxy S8.

01:01:05 ◼   ► Similar dimensions.

01:01:07 ◼   ► I might actually do that just to let my mind rest a little bit about this.

01:01:11 ◼   ► Like there's the two sizes, they're both like smaller than the iPhones, but they have bigger

01:01:16 ◼   ► screens than both of them.

01:01:19 ◼   ► I might literally do that.

01:01:20 ◼   ► You should.

01:01:21 ◼   ► There's a whole bunch of like Galaxy pop-up stores all around London.

01:01:25 ◼   ► They're everywhere.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Yeah, they're everywhere.

01:01:27 ◼   ► They are everywhere to get you to go in and try out the phone.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Like you can't walk around without them.

01:01:32 ◼   ► I get scared every time I leave the house that I'm going to return home with one.

01:01:40 ◼   ► It's a real fear that I have whenever I go into central London, I do my very best to

01:01:45 ◼   ► avoid the car phone warehouse.

01:01:48 ◼   ► I just can't go near it because I see it.

01:01:50 ◼   ► I get sucked in.

01:01:51 ◼   ► The only time I went to look at one and have held one was when they weren't for sale, but

01:01:56 ◼   ► they had them in the stores.

01:01:57 ◼   ► I'm like, well, I can't buy one right now.

01:02:00 ◼   ► So this is safe.

01:02:03 ◼   ► I love that design, man.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it looks good.

01:02:06 ◼   ► It looks good.

01:02:07 ◼   ► I just, I'm just concerned.

01:02:09 ◼   ► I'm concerned about where this is going in the future.

01:02:12 ◼   ► And it's just because I feel like I'm sensitive to that size.

01:02:15 ◼   ► So I'm like extra worried.

01:02:17 ◼   ► I'm extra worried that I've just again,

01:02:18 ◼   ► like bought myself this day of execution.

01:02:20 ◼   ► I hope you're happy now, listeners.

01:02:22 ◼   ► You have the story.

01:02:23 ◼   ► - Today's show is brought to you by DICE.

01:02:26 ◼   ► DICE has been helping tech professionals

01:02:28 ◼   ► advance their careers for over 20 years.

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01:03:27 ◼   ► So now you've been on this like vision quest of device to device to device.

01:03:32 ◼   ► A trail of sadness.

01:03:33 ◼   ► There is like, you know, we were talking earlier about this graveyard of ideas.

01:03:39 ◼   ► There must be like at some graveyard of iPhones somewhere, like what what even

01:03:44 ◼   ► happened to all these phones? They're like in use in various ways, playing

01:03:49 ◼   ► different sound effects as you move around your house or something.

01:03:53 ◼   ► That's ridiculous, Myke. Who would have who would have use for three phones?

01:03:58 ◼   ► Nobody. Nobody would have use for three phones.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Four on the other hand.

01:04:02 ◼   ► The iPhone 7 went on to someone who could use it, so that is gone.

01:04:09 ◼   ► But, the SE...

01:04:15 ◼   ► The multi-phone lifestyle.

01:04:17 ◼   ► The SE has ended up filling a very interesting role in my life.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Now several shows ago people were asking, "Why the hell don't you just use two phones,

01:04:32 ◼   ► idiot. Right? If there's things you like about one and you don't like about the other, just use two.

01:04:37 ◼   ► And my frustration is, there's no way, software-wise, to use two phones if you're

01:04:45 ◼   ► all in on the Apple ecosystem. Health data is locked to a single phone, and Apple watches are

01:04:53 ◼   ► locked to a single phone. So if you want to try to use two phones, and you're also tracking your

01:04:58 ◼   ► and use an Apple Watch. It's just a total non-starter, because data and notifications are not going to

01:05:05 ◼   ► seamlessly move back and forth between the two of them.

01:05:09 ◼   ► But, I found an interesting sort of case that has worked out quite nicely.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Because, while I've been using the Plus, and I do like a lot of the advantages of the Plus,

01:05:23 ◼   ► Like the bigger screen is nice, particularly for reading ebooks.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Like it is nice to have that out and about.

01:05:28 ◼   ► But the place I didn't like the Plus very much is in the house.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Because if I have a phone in my pocket, like it's still a big phone.

01:05:37 ◼   ► Whenever you sit down, I'm always really aware of it physically, like in my pocket.

01:05:41 ◼   ► And if I would take it out, I would sort of lose it around the house,

01:05:44 ◼   ► because I didn't remember where I was putting it down.

01:05:46 ◼   ► And so, I don't have a day phone and a night phone.

01:05:52 ◼   ► phone, but I have ended up with a house phone and an outdoor phone. Because

01:05:59 ◼   ► here's the thing. When I'm in the house, the 7 Plus sits on a little charger and

01:06:07 ◼   ► all of the notifications that I would get from the 7 Plus through my Apple

01:06:11 ◼   ► Watch, all of that stuff still works. Like all of the fussy way that I have set up

01:06:15 ◼   ► the phone to notify me when I want with a particular watch

01:06:20 ◼   ► all of that still works because the phone is in the house on the Wi-Fi connected to the watch.

01:06:25 ◼   ► And then I can just use the SE as a little pocket phone, right? For in the house.

01:06:32 ◼   ► And this is fantastic because now it doesn't take up a whole bunch of space.

01:06:36 ◼   ► I can still use it to control all the lights in my house, I can use it to send back a quick text message to someone if I need to.

01:06:42 ◼   ► Like all of the useful stuff that you would use a phone for in your house, I can use little SE for.

01:06:47 ◼   ► Which I totally love a little SE for it. It's perfect for that.

01:06:50 ◼   ► So now the routine is when I come home, I simply just swap the phones.

01:06:56 ◼   ► The 7 Plus goes on the charger and I take off the SE and the SE is the house phone and the 7 Plus is the outdoor phone.

01:07:03 ◼   ► So I'm still using both of them and I still really like both of them.

01:07:07 ◼   ► Each is adapted to a perfect ecological niche.

01:07:10 ◼   ► Now you gave only two use cases there.

01:07:14 ◼   ► So I mean might need to dig into this a little bit more you said if I need to send back a quick reply to

01:07:18 ◼   ► A message or I need to control my lights

01:07:20 ◼   ► You can do both of these

01:07:24 ◼   ► Extremely adequately with your watch you can use the home app or the home complication to control the lights or you can ask

01:07:31 ◼   ► Siri and you can also send canned responses speak into the watch or draw on the watch to say yeah

01:07:38 ◼   ► You can send canned responses

01:07:39 ◼   ► But there's tons of like I have OmniFocus to set up on the little phone like I have I have a whole bunch of the

01:07:44 ◼   ► Normal stuff that I would use that works on the watch

01:07:46 ◼   ► But not for entering have you ever tried to actually enter something complicated on the watch with OmniFocus like good luck with that

01:07:51 ◼   ► Right also the notes app which I use all the time to just capture some thoughts like there's a tons of stuff that the phone

01:07:57 ◼   ► Does yeah, but like that's useful with a little keyboard like the watch is not replacing that from what you've mentioned

01:08:02 ◼   ► Me and then the show in the past you don't like live in a manor house

01:08:07 ◼   ► No, we have three rooms.

01:08:09 ◼   ► With the amount of iPads that I know that you own, surely there is never a device out of reach.

01:08:15 ◼   ► There are times when there is a device out of reach.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Like if I'm in the kitchen is particularly the case where like there's not an iPad within reach in the kitchen.

01:08:23 ◼   ► That is by far and away the time that is most useful to have the phone there.

01:08:27 ◼   ► You need a kitchen iPad.

01:08:29 ◼   ► No, we don't need a kitchen iPad. That's crazy talk, Myke.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Oh, okay. I'm so sorry.

01:08:33 ◼   ► That's crazy talk.

01:08:34 ◼   ► I've clearly pushed it too far.

01:08:35 ◼   ► Yeah, you have pushed it too far. I find it is just more convenient sometimes to have a device in the pocket to respond to certain kinds of things or to make notes of certain kinds of things.

01:08:45 ◼   ► So I find it really useful. I like it for that. There's also a way in which that little phone I have just set up to be default connected to some of the speakers in our house.

01:08:57 ◼   ► that I then also just use as like a little podcast machine for when I'm playing podcasts around the house.

01:09:02 ◼   ► I really like it as this smaller device to just have with me to do a few minor things.

01:09:09 ◼   ► And then I don't have to have the big bulky 7+ in my pocket when I'm walking around the house all the time.

01:09:16 ◼   ► So I'm telling you, Myke, you're thinking I'm ridiculous now,

01:09:19 ◼   ► but I'm just gonna wait. I'm just gonna wait until you have a house phone and an outdoor phone.

01:09:25 ◼   ► followed you down the multi-pad lifestyle. Yeah you thought that was

01:09:30 ◼   ► crazy. Look who's laughing now. No there is no realm in which... No I really don't

01:09:35 ◼   ► think this is gonna happen either. I would just love it if it did. I like really don't like any

01:09:40 ◼   ► iPhone size other than the plus. Yeah and that's so... So then I would have to... that

01:09:44 ◼   ► doesn't make... I mean I wouldn't have to... there's no point right? Right yeah.

01:09:48 ◼   ► This one... this is a bridge too far for me this one I'm afraid. This is a bridge

01:09:54 ◼   ► far for just about anyone. I think it should be as well. Yeah this is basically me solving the

01:10:00 ◼   ► problem of I don't like having the big phone in my pocket but I also still want a phone in my pocket

01:10:05 ◼   ► when I'm in the house. I don't know about this one Gray. I'm not sold on this. I am genuinely

01:10:13 ◼   ► not trying to sell you on this. I know you're not. I am not trying to sell anyone on this just to be

01:10:19 ◼   ► be clear. I can really see why you didn't want to talk about all of this now

01:10:22 ◼   ► because you've had to let me win again with with the superior phone size. I'm

01:10:29 ◼   ► actually totally fine having you win on this one with the with the big

01:10:34 ◼   ► plus size. It's just like I feel like this is connected to everything in my

01:10:39 ◼   ► like there's so much we haven't even discussed here that I felt like mentally

01:10:42 ◼   ► exhausted discussing this at all. It's like so many so many rabbit holes we

01:10:46 ◼   ► could go down to. Great we can come back to this another time then. No no we don't

01:10:51 ◼   ► need to go down this again. Okay. That's I mean maybe we will when the next phone

01:10:58 ◼   ► comes out. Oh I'm sure there'll be a lot there'll be a lot of that come September.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Will there be anything to discuss with a new phone? Surely not. There never is.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Surely not. Let's end our productivity show talking a little bit about

01:11:12 ◼   ► about American Truck Simulator again.

01:11:14 ◼   ► - Ooh.

01:11:14 ◼   ► - It's everyone's favorite segment.

01:11:17 ◼   ► It's truck time.

01:11:17 ◼   ► - The point of all work is to drive a pretend truck,

01:11:20 ◼   ► ultimately.

01:11:20 ◼   ► - So it makes sense that at the end of the show,

01:11:22 ◼   ► we get there, right?

01:11:23 ◼   ► Like that's it.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Listen to the show Steven wrote in to let me know,

01:11:28 ◼   ► I didn't know this, that apparently there is beta support

01:11:31 ◼   ► for VR in American Truck Simulator.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Did you know about this?

01:11:34 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, of course I know about this.

01:11:35 ◼   ► - I didn't know about this.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Apparently it's been around for a while

01:11:38 ◼   ► and it's pretty buggy, but it does work.

01:11:41 ◼   ► that is a it's just an increasingly more intriguing aspect of this game to be

01:11:49 ◼   ► completely immersed in it you know it feels like it's just an added level yeah

01:11:54 ◼   ► look I don't know when I don't know how but at some point in some way I'm gonna

01:12:01 ◼   ► be driving an imaginary truck in VR like this is like this is coming this is in

01:12:06 ◼   ► my future. I sent this to you today, I saw this on the verge, this gaming PC called the

01:12:12 ◼   ► Corsair One, which is very intriguing to me. I didn't get a chance to look at this super

01:12:19 ◼   ► properly, I'm guessing that it's essentially a Windows PC that's set up to be like a game

01:12:24 ◼   ► console, is that what it is? That's exactly what it is. So it is small and it has everything

01:12:29 ◼   ► in it, and you buy it all in one package. So again, I apologise to all the PC gamers

01:12:35 ◼   ► in the audience because I cannot imagine how hard they're rolling their eyes to the idea

01:12:41 ◼   ► that this is the PC that intrigues us like the one that is created to be not that right

01:12:48 ◼   ► like that it is made to be like a games console but this is finally like the PC that makes

01:12:55 ◼   ► I think the most sense for me if I was gonna go down this route like it is a PC that is

01:13:02 ◼   ► designed in part to be put on a desk. Like it is I think a little bit taller but similar-ish

01:13:10 ◼   ► dimensions to the Mac Pro. And I'm very intrigued by this because like as I said like one of the

01:13:16 ◼   ► things that I really didn't want was to have a big box for this stuff and this is not going to be the

01:13:23 ◼   ► most powerful PC I get that but like I think that this looks to me like I did a little bit of reading

01:13:29 ◼   ► about it. It looks to me like the best middle ground

01:13:33 ◼   ► for a lot of this stuff. Yeah, I haven't had a chance to look

01:13:37 ◼   ► at it super fully. I'm just glancing at the website now and going through

01:13:41 ◼   ► some of this stuff. I can say I have not been more tempted by

01:13:45 ◼   ► any PC in the last 15 years than this one.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Right, like this looks like, well well

01:13:53 ◼   ► well, hello Corsair One. Yeah, because it looks

01:13:57 ◼   ► The styling is not too much.

01:13:59 ◼   ► It looks like a games console in styling.

01:14:03 ◼   ► But it's just the idea that it is...

01:14:05 ◼   ► We've both done this, right?

01:14:07 ◼   ► Me and you have spent quite a bit of time just looking at what is available in the PC

01:14:12 ◼   ► gaming market.

01:14:14 ◼   ► And my biggest problem is I just don't know what I'm looking for.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Building a PC, there's no way to cut it.

01:14:23 ◼   ► It's just a bigger deal than buying a Mac.

01:14:27 ◼   ► It's like guess what you've got a couple options and you know what just to get but like I remember when I used to

01:14:33 ◼   ► build PCs and buy PCs like you need to know a bunch of stuff

01:14:37 ◼   ► and

01:14:40 ◼   ► This feels like exactly what I'm looking for. It's like look. I just you just make it for me put it in a cylinder

01:14:45 ◼   ► I want to think about this thing as little as possible

01:14:48 ◼   ► All right

01:14:48 ◼   ► Like what I want to do is be able to turn this on and boot into steam as fast as possible

01:14:55 ◼   ► That is my goal here.

01:14:58 ◼   ► And I don't want to have to have an entire room in my house set up with a whole other setup.

01:15:05 ◼   ► This looks really, really tempting.

01:15:10 ◼   ► And if it can run VR, it's like, well, maybe trucking VR with Corsair One could be a possibility.

01:15:20 ◼   ► And I saw that they're making double trailers.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Are you excited about this? Like you can have two trailers attached to a truck.

01:15:28 ◼   ► I love that you're following the trucking news, Myke.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I pay more attention to the trucking news than I do play it.

01:15:36 ◼   ► I started following the SCS software Twitter account.

01:15:40 ◼   ► I think because they tweeted about you and I thought that was really funny.

01:15:44 ◼   ► So I followed the account. Yeah, they tweeted something about like, "I got my pizza" or whatever

01:15:48 ◼   ► I was playing the game. Yeah I think you retweeted it or something

01:15:51 ◼   ► and then I saw it and was like "Oh I like these people, that's cool." What I really

01:15:55 ◼   ► want them to do though is to make an actual multiplayer experience. There are mods, like

01:16:05 ◼   ► it looks like there's this server or something that you can use. There are mods for multiplayer

01:16:11 ◼   ► games and the reason this interests me is that Nal on Twitter sent us a tweet

01:16:18 ◼   ► that intrigues me greatly about the idea of me and you driving down the road

01:16:25 ◼   ► together as a Cortex episode like talking over CB radio. I feel like this

01:16:31 ◼   ► is you just trying to get into my office in a different way Myke. That's what this feels like.

01:16:35 ◼   ► The multiplayer is not local. It's online.

01:16:39 ◼   ► I know it's not local, but something about this feels like the thin end of the wedge.

01:16:43 ◼   ► Right? That's what this feels like.

01:16:47 ◼   ► We need to LAN party this thing. I have great internet.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Yeah, see, that's exactly it, right? We'll start remotely, like, "Oh, it'll be a LAN party,"

01:16:55 ◼   ► and then it'll be like, "So where are you during the day?" That's what's gonna happen here.

01:16:59 ◼   ► I think that you are taking my innocent,

01:17:03 ◼   ► very innocent idea of just wanting to play a video game, you know, and you're turning

01:17:08 ◼   ► it into this thing, which is unfair.

01:17:11 ◼   ► I don't think it is unfair. I think I know how your mic mind works.

01:17:15 ◼   ► All I want to do is just drive a truck with you. I don't think that that's too much to

01:17:19 ◼   ► ask.

01:17:19 ◼   ► I like driving my truck alone. That's what I like.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Well, we're not going to be in the same truck.

01:17:27 ◼   ► It's a solitary experience, Myke, driving a truck across the desert.

01:17:30 ◼   ► solitary experience that you share with thousands on the internet?

01:17:33 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's different. They're not driving trucks. I mean some of them are.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Right, that's actually not true. Some of them are but you know, it's look I'm just I'm trying to just say it's it's like an experience

01:17:43 ◼   ► It's a solitary

01:17:45 ◼   ► desert experience that's sometimes shared with a couple thousand passengers, but mostly solitary experience

01:17:51 ◼   ► That's truck driving