Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► It's over. Did you enjoy Cortex Miss Grey? I did.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Do you know what? I did too. It was a welcome thing at that time in my life over the last

00:00:08 ◼   ► couple of months. I've been very busy. Yeah, see it's good to have breaks

00:00:12 ◼   ► throughout the year. One time in the year.

00:00:14 ◼   ► You don't need an endless ceaseless grind that pulverises your soul into tiny little shards

00:00:23 ◼   ► that never ends. No, breaks breaks throughout the year. It makes life, it makes life better, Myke.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And you agree. You agree now. No one's forcing you to be here.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I feel like you're forcing me to be here. Am I?

00:00:37 ◼   ► No, I'm happy to be here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not every week.

00:00:43 ◼   ► I'm in the cottage. Hey!

00:00:45 ◼   ► I'm in mega office. All set up now. All finished?

00:00:49 ◼   ► 100% well

00:00:51 ◼   ► It says a hundred percent as it can be, you know, will it ever be a hundred percent? No, it's like that bridge

00:00:57 ◼   ► You know the bridge that people paint forever. I don't know what you're talking about. Really?

00:01:02 ◼   ► I feel like we've had this exact conversation before so I'm not gonna redo it

00:01:06 ◼   ► I have been I have been alerted to the fact recently that

00:01:10 ◼   ► The way did I say the name of my office?

00:01:14 ◼   ► Makes it sound like it's spelt M e GG AR which I enjoy quite a lot the idea of it being mega our office

00:01:21 ◼   ► So that is it. That's the thing. So mega office is fully taking shape. I have a couch my thinking couch

00:01:28 ◼   ► Thinking couch. I have a sit-stand desk, which I have stood at once

00:01:33 ◼   ► But I can do it if I need to oh and I have a drone now

00:01:41 ◼   ► That's a whole thing that I've been playing around with Adina bought me a drone for Christmas

00:01:46 ◼   ► Wow

00:01:48 ◼   ► Merry Christmas Casey Neistat. What are you gonna do with that drone?

00:01:50 ◼   ► I like Casey jr. Thank you very much. Okay Casey jr. Casey jr. Yeah, I

00:01:59 ◼   ► I'm I'm really enjoying the drone. What drone did you get? What drones you get? I got a Parrot Bebop 2 and

00:02:07 ◼   ► We have basically come to the idea that this is my practice drone

00:02:11 ◼   ► You know like the really good drones they're like a thousand pounds or something

00:02:19 ◼   ► This is my drone where I learn how to fly a drone. So this is your entry-level drone

00:02:25 ◼   ► This is my entry-level drone where like it does it. It does it does a pretty good job

00:02:29 ◼   ► And it's also that the controls are easy to use

00:02:33 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, so I'm getting used to it. It's a whole big process, you know flying a drone. I

00:02:38 ◼   ► Don't think it looks easy. I come home. I'm always impressed by people flying the drones

00:02:44 ◼   ► It looks quite hard. I only lost control of it once. Uh-huh

00:02:50 ◼   ► I was kind of making it hurt all around me in a circle

00:02:53 ◼   ► And this I actually put this in my youtube video like a video that I just put up about my tattoo

00:02:58 ◼   ► I put some drone footage at the end of it and the last clip is like the drone flying around me and then like just it

00:03:05 ◼   ► Just carries on now

00:03:07 ◼   ► In real time that was when I lost control of the drone. It was supposed to just keep going around me and

00:03:13 ◼   ► I didn't know where it went. It was behind me and it just went off and nearly hit a tree

00:03:20 ◼   ► But the footage looked really good, right and through the magic of editing you can cut it the frame before it would be obvious

00:03:27 ◼   ► It's something exactly so it looks like you're a pro. It's the frame before it snaps back

00:03:33 ◼   ► We're in like the opposite direction as I try and take control of the thing again

00:03:37 ◼   ► That is a fantastic a fantastic Christmas present and I look forward to seeing more drone footage in your future vlogs

00:03:44 ◼   ► Yeah, somebody somebody said to me in in the YouTube comments. Why why haven't you taken the drone higher?

00:03:50 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, and it's through complete fear of the drone

00:03:54 ◼   ► Like it can go a lot higher than I've taken it, but I'm like some so scared of it

00:03:59 ◼   ► Like it's it's a really weird feeling to have this thing that I'm both excited about and terrified of it's it's it's like owning a lion

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's like you trained it and it's just like a little lion cub but like at some point it's gonna scratch your face off

00:04:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a wild creature. Yeah

00:04:16 ◼   ► But that's kind of what makes it so exciting at the same time

00:04:20 ◼   ► I don't have many, I'm not a risk-taking person in that way,

00:04:24 ◼   ► you know, like an adrenaline risk-taker.

00:04:26 ◼   ► But the drone is a weird kind of bridge for that.

00:04:30 ◼   ► But I love it, I love it.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I wish I could have seen my face when I opened it.

00:04:35 ◼   ► It was a surprise.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh my god, you bought me a drone!"

00:04:38 ◼   ► I think that was what I did.

00:04:40 ◼   ► But I'm enjoying it a lot.

00:04:42 ◼   ► I wish I had more time to go and just fly around parks.

00:04:46 ◼   ► - It's very cool looking, and I feel like this is,

00:04:49 ◼   ► This is another stage down the path of now being like a professional amateur level vlogger.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Prime League.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Right?

00:05:00 ◼   ► You're no longer just a beginner.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Once you have a drone and you start learning how to make it follow you around one handed

00:05:06 ◼   ► or whatever you're going to do with it, then you're moving up there in the vlogging world.

00:05:11 ◼   ► That's exciting.

00:05:12 ◼   ► It's very exciting.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Will you let me fly your drone?

00:05:14 ◼   ► Yeah, if you want to.

00:05:15 ◼   ► That's a terrible decision.

00:05:18 ◼   ► But yes.

00:05:19 ◼   ► fly it? Yeah I would totally love it. I've never flown a drone. I think it would be

00:05:22 ◼   ► interested to try to fly it. See how high it can go. Yeah so you gotta go. Go high

00:05:26 ◼   ► and go far. Like don't see the drone anymore. That's the goal. That's that's

00:05:30 ◼   ► what I would want. I can't see it and then there's just a button I press and

00:05:34 ◼   ► it comes back right? That's the way it should work. Yeah actually yes. Awesome. See perfect

00:05:38 ◼   ► there's nothing to worry about then. I'll fly it real high for you Myke.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Oh you? Yeah that's what you're good at. Yeah you go for that.

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00:07:31 ◼   ► and relay FM. I've also taken some steps professionally. I've,

00:07:35 ◼   ► I've been doing some more serious things as well over Cortexmas.

00:07:40 ◼   ► One of them is I have started time tracking.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Finally.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Yep. I have started time tracking. Um, the,

00:07:51 ◼   ► the kind of the reason for this, which I'm, uh,

00:07:53 ◼   ► I think we're going to get into a little bit later on,

00:07:55 ◼   ► but the kind of the basic reason is because we are, uh,

00:07:59 ◼   ► Relay FM is looking to get like a part-time assistant for me to help with

00:08:06 ◼   ► some of the work that I do. But before we can kind of go down that road, we

00:08:12 ◼   ► need to understand what tasks this person is going to take. And because

00:08:16 ◼   ► they're gonna be, you know, the kind of the idea is to kind of do contractable

00:08:20 ◼   ► billable hours of this person, I need to work out how long these things actually

00:08:24 ◼   ► do take me to do. There's some of the tasks we're handing over. So I have

00:08:28 ◼   ► started time tracking everything that I do work related just also because I

00:08:33 ◼   ► figure if I'm gonna go down this route maybe it's time to start realizing just

00:08:37 ◼   ► how much time I spend on things. Now I am using a service called Toggl.

00:08:42 ◼   ► T-O-G-G-L. Toggl is I think primarily a web service. They have apps but they're

00:08:52 ◼   ► not great. Like they have an OK iPhone app, nothing for the iPad. I spoke to

00:08:57 ◼   ► their customer service over Twitter and it looks like they have absolutely no plans for

00:09:01 ◼   ► an iPad app either. It's like, "We'll let you know if things change means never gonna happen."

00:09:07 ◼   ► P: Yeah, we've added it to the support queue for feature requests. Like, okay, goodbye.

00:09:12 ◼   ► S: But I have been using a friend of the show Federico Vittucci of MacStories

00:09:18 ◼   ► workflows that he made for the iOS workflow app as a way to do this. And I was talking

00:09:25 ◼   ► to Federico about this and he said "Have you been speaking to Gray?" and I said no

00:09:30 ◼   ► and he said "Oh because you both started asking me about this at exactly the same

00:09:34 ◼   ► time." Yeah so you you mentioned toggle as recommended to you by Federico a couple

00:09:41 ◼   ► episodes ago yeah at around the time I was saying like I'm looking to switch my

00:09:46 ◼   ► time tracking systems because I had outgrown my hobbled together Rube Goldberg

00:09:52 ◼   ► machine that I was using to track my time previously, which was great, but past its

00:09:57 ◼   ► prime. And so, yeah, one of the big things I did over Cortexmas was I had a period of

00:10:04 ◼   ► about ten days where I was really rethinking and reworking a lot of things related to my

00:10:14 ◼   ► business and one of them was involved in setting up time tracking. And I was really, really

00:10:21 ◼   ► Because you recommended this, I tried it out, I found that same article that Federico had written about writing this little workflow to interact with toggle.

00:10:29 ◼   ► Because they have an API.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Yeah, so you can write these little scripts that it sort of talks directly to the web server so you don't have to use the apps that are on your phone.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Which is nice for a bunch of reasons.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And I was playing around with it very seriously for a few days and then essentially I harassed Vitigi about this because I started messaging him like

00:10:48 ◼   ► messaging him like, "Hey, do you think someone could write a script to do these additional

00:10:55 ◼   ► features?"

00:10:56 ◼   ► I kind of said this to him, and this is when he said, "I'm working on one for Gray."

00:10:59 ◼   ► He's like, "I'm gonna make it a bit easier and then I'll send it to you."

00:11:03 ◼   ► He understands my level.

00:11:05 ◼   ► "I'll put some instructions in and then you can have it."

00:11:08 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:11:09 ◼   ► I feel much better then that his effort was doubly well spent then, because I was harassing

00:11:14 ◼   ► I'm like, what I would like is to be able to control everything in the API that toggle

00:11:20 ◼   ► makes available, right?

00:11:21 ◼   ► Like everything I can write to the server, I want to write to the server.

00:11:25 ◼   ► And so he was very nice and wrote another custom version of it that could do more, because

00:11:30 ◼   ► Web API stuff is a bit beyond my skill level.

00:11:34 ◼   ► I was like looking through it and I'm like, I have no idea what any of this is doing.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Yeah, the Web API stuff gets really complicated and really program-free very fast.

00:11:43 ◼   ► But once he did that, I then took the thing that he gave to me and I modified it really

00:11:50 ◼   ► extensively to work with the way I want my own system to work.

00:11:55 ◼   ► And I have come up with - we can talk about it more in detail later, like I'm still playing

00:12:00 ◼   ► around with it - but just as you have moved from the step of no time tracking at all to

00:12:08 ◼   ► work time tracking, I am experimenting with this season doing time tracking for my whole life.

00:12:16 ◼   ► So what I'm trying to do is actually just have a timer running if I am conscious about like,

00:12:25 ◼   ► I want to have an overview now, not just of my hardcore work, but now that I have a stronger,

00:12:34 ◼   ► better, more flexible in many ways system.

00:12:37 ◼   ► It's like, let me push this to the absolute max, at least for a little while,

00:12:42 ◼   ► and see what that tells me about myself, because

00:12:46 ◼   ► I found that the first time I started doing time tracking,

00:12:49 ◼   ► you learn a lot about yourself that you don't necessarily realize.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Oh boy, do you.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Yeah. And so I'm taking that, I'm taking that like, I've done the first stage of this,

00:12:58 ◼   ► I'm doing the second stage of this, but this is what, this is,

00:13:01 ◼   ► This is what I am dying to hear from you, Myke, because I always push people to do time tracking,

00:13:07 ◼   ► and what I'm always trying to do is I'm mentioning like one key case, right?

00:13:12 ◼   ► I'm always telling you like, "Oh, you need to know the value of your time in terms of dollars," right?

00:13:17 ◼   ► That's always the thing that I'm harping on.

00:13:19 ◼   ► But if you can get someone down that path, now we can have the conversation about like,

00:13:24 ◼   ► "What does your workday really look like, Myke?" [laughs]

00:13:28 ◼   ► So I'll say before before we dig into this and and before I have to go to the corner and cry for a little while

00:13:33 ◼   ► Having only been doing this for a couple of weeks

00:13:37 ◼   ► I've already started to have the thought of should I track everything like I've had that thought i'm like should I

00:13:42 ◼   ► Track the time that i'm reading twitter like so I can see how you've gone down that route

00:13:47 ◼   ► Like I can see the value in knowing

00:13:49 ◼   ► What i'm doing at all times i'm not going to start doing that yet

00:13:53 ◼   ► But I can see that if I continue to keep doing this like I think that I will I can see myself getting to that

00:13:58 ◼   ► Point quite quite easily actually it seems like a logical step. Yeah, I would seriously recommend not doing that at the start

00:14:05 ◼   ► I don't want to do it right now. It's too much

00:14:07 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly

00:14:07 ◼   ► like I would honestly wait something like six months of just tracking your work time before you even think about trying to track everything because

00:14:14 ◼   ► It's it's enough to do just the work time like I'm constantly forgetting time as it is, right?

00:14:19 ◼   ► Like just constantly forget. I have been looking forward to this conversation and dreading it in equal measure

00:14:25 ◼   ► Because one like I think it's like a really good thing for us to get into

00:14:29 ◼   ► But the other is like I know where it's going

00:14:31 ◼   ► I know that you're gonna push me to do the how much is my time worth thing?

00:14:38 ◼   ► And I really don't want to do that. Yeah, like I

00:14:41 ◼   ► Viscerally do not want to start doing those calculations

00:14:46 ◼   ► But here we are so let me tell you what I have learned so far having only done this for about two weeks

00:14:52 ◼   ► Basically I've learned some key things and I don't know how I feel about them

00:14:58 ◼   ► There are times in the week where the sheer amount of my time that is podcast editing is concerning

00:15:04 ◼   ► Mm-hmm the recording time the amount of time that I spend recording is about what I expected

00:15:11 ◼   ► But editing time is way out of whack.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Okay, so what way out of whack as in you're spending way more time editing than you thought that you were done.

00:15:20 ◼   ► Than I thought, yeah.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Okay, that's not too surprising. I mean because the shows are the shows are scheduled, right?

00:15:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Like this is this is the whole the whole lesson to learn from all of these things is you can't trust your brain for anything.

00:15:31 ◼   ► No.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Your brain's terrible at everything it ever does, right?

00:15:35 ◼   ► Yes.

00:15:35 ◼   ► So I like your brain is an adversary like or it's an incompetent.

00:15:39 ◼   ► It's one of the two all the time like hey brain. How much time do I spend on editing? Uh, 20 minutes?

00:15:44 ◼   ► Like there's no idea whereas where's that you can look at a calendar and see that you have booked in recording slots

00:15:50 ◼   ► Yeah, so I'm not surprised that you have a better sense of that

00:15:53 ◼   ► But yeah, so the editing is taking longer than you think how I'm like, so there are a couple of shows that throw out whack

00:15:59 ◼   ► So like there's this show and there's another show that I edit when I edit very differently

00:16:05 ◼   ► Like I'd listen to the entire thing and spend a lot of time on it

00:16:09 ◼   ► So when when I do those shows it pushes the numbers up

00:16:14 ◼   ► Significantly quickly in the week because I tend to do this at the start of the week

00:16:18 ◼   ► So that like throws it out of whack for like three quarters of the week, right?

00:16:22 ◼   ► Because I'm aware of those I know how long they take me like so that's that the problem that I have is all of my other

00:16:30 ◼   ► shows

00:16:30 ◼   ► Shows that I thought took me 20 minutes to edit are taking me about 45.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And I am not happy about that.

00:16:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's what can kill you, right?

00:16:42 ◼   ► Because you have a bunch of shows that probably fall into that category.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Oh, it's like everything.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:48 ◼   ► Right?

00:16:49 ◼   ► Yeah, you're losing half as much time as you thought you actually had.

00:16:51 ◼   ► It takes me two to three times the amount of time that I thought it took.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And this has been a really harsh realization.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, like I was talking to a dinner about this and I was like and I explained it to her

00:17:04 ◼   ► She's like, yeah, it takes you about 45 minutes. She's like I know this. Mm-hmm

00:17:08 ◼   ► Like I say I'll be back in about 20 minutes

00:17:09 ◼   ► I'm gonna go edit upgrade and she knows I'm gone for 45 right like in my mind. It only takes 20 minutes. Mm-hmm and

00:17:15 ◼   ► I'm very uncomfortable about this

00:17:18 ◼   ► Because I have now opened my idea to the fact that my brain has no idea what it's doing like right

00:17:25 ◼   ► I was convinced that that was how long it took me to edit a show like that

00:17:29 ◼   ► But I'm not just off by a little bit. It's like a factor of two at minimum.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:17:34 ◼   ► This is why it is so,

00:17:36 ◼   ► so important to do, because you just cannot trust yourself

00:17:41 ◼   ► to have any sense of how long it really takes you to do things. This is why for anybody listening,

00:17:48 ◼   ► if you work for yourself, if you're working for a company, if you care at all about how you are spending your time,

00:17:57 ◼   ► Just do some time tracking on the things that are like most important to you

00:18:02 ◼   ► And you like you will see it revealed how your time is really being spent like whatever you think you're doing

00:18:08 ◼   ► You're going to discover where you are surprisingly wrong about yourself

00:18:14 ◼   ► So one thing that I was wrong about that

00:18:17 ◼   ► I'm happy with is the amount of time it takes me to prepare

00:18:20 ◼   ► So I spend more time preparing for shows than I thought I did hmm

00:18:24 ◼   ► That's something I'm happy to know. So why is that? Why is that? What do you mean?

00:18:29 ◼   ► So like I spend more time putting our documents together and doing research

00:18:33 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, and that is the type of time that I'm pleased that I put in

00:18:39 ◼   ► Okay

00:18:39 ◼   ► Because I thought that I wasn't spending enough time preparing

00:18:42 ◼   ► Like I spend about as much time as I thought I should be to make a good show, right? Okay. Okay

00:18:48 ◼   ► I see I see what you're saying. All right, that's good

00:18:50 ◼   ► Like I was maybe self-conscious of it. Mm-hmm, but I was wrong to be it kind of felt like if I'm not doing adequate preparation

00:18:56 ◼   ► I'm kind of like a fraud

00:18:58 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, right that like I should be prepared for the shows to make the best show that I can make and

00:19:03 ◼   ► There were times where I was like, I'm not doing enough of this. So it's like I'm kind of just like winging it. Mm-hmm

00:19:10 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, but that's not the case

00:19:11 ◼   ► Like when I look at the actual numbers like I'm spending about as much if not more time than I thought that I should be

00:19:18 ◼   ► So I'm happy about that

00:19:20 ◼   ► Like and the thing is like the edit is the same side of it, right?

00:19:23 ◼   ► which is like making the show better by doing the editing like I agree with that, but it's

00:19:27 ◼   ► It's because I had a real idea in my mind of how long that took me

00:19:33 ◼   ► like I didn't have a time for the preparing because I I tend to do show prep for

00:19:38 ◼   ► Seven days for each show like I'm always doing it

00:19:41 ◼   ► You know as an idea comes to me or as a story comes to me like I'll pick it up as I go

00:19:46 ◼   ► So like I'm not sitting down for like a block of time and doing it

00:19:49 ◼   ► That's how I do the edits. I sit down for a block of time

00:19:53 ◼   ► So I thought it took me this amount of time, but I'm really wrong about that and that is

00:19:58 ◼   ► That's what's concerning to me the preparing stuff. I don't feel like it's a real suck of time

00:20:03 ◼   ► Mm-hmm because it's happening in these little bits and it's also just time really well spent

00:20:10 ◼   ► Like this show exists because you put a bunch of time into the show notes, right?

00:20:15 ◼   ► All of your shows are better if you put time into the show notes ahead of time.

00:20:19 ◼   ► So that's great to find out that, you know,

00:20:23 ◼   ► perhaps you had the feeling like you're doing it less because, of course, in any conversation,

00:20:28 ◼   ► like conversations evolve as they go on and they're never going to follow the show notes entirely.

00:20:33 ◼   ► So there is an element of, even for the most prepared conversation,

00:20:37 ◼   ► I mean, both parties are still sort of winging it throughout that conversation.

00:20:42 ◼   ► But it's the right kind of winging.

00:20:43 ◼   ► It's like informed winging.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly.

00:20:47 ◼   ► So maybe that's why you were feeling that way a little bit.

00:20:50 ◼   ► But yeah, the editing time, you know, that's something else that's maybe, maybe something

00:20:55 ◼   ► can be done about that, Myke.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:20:58 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:20:59 ◼   ► Not yet.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Not yet.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Okay.

00:21:02 ◼   ► So I've been thinking about it.

00:21:03 ◼   ► I've been talking about it and it is a clear thing that I could do something about, but

00:21:08 ◼   ► I'm not ready.

00:21:10 ◼   ► I am not ready to let go of what I consider to be an important part of the creation of

00:21:14 ◼   ► the shows that I do.

00:21:16 ◼   ► I feel like many of the shows that I do are as good as they are because of the edit that

00:21:20 ◼   ► I put in.

00:21:21 ◼   ► So, the difference, I think I've explained this, but a show like this, I go back and

00:21:25 ◼   ► listen to the whole thing.

00:21:27 ◼   ► For most of my other weekly shows, I don't do that, but what I do is I take notes as

00:21:31 ◼   ► the shows going on and then I go in and fix those points. So like I'm editing whilst we're

00:21:35 ◼   ► recording because I'm noting the things that need to be fixed and then I go in and just

00:21:40 ◼   ► fix it to each one of those points. So what that does is it means that I can get the shows

00:21:44 ◼   ► out especially the topic based shows the weekly kind of news focused shows they can come out

00:21:50 ◼   ► in a timely fashion which is important to me. But I also feel like I can put a lot of

00:21:54 ◼   ► edit time into them because of the way that I do it. But unfortunately it's taking longer

00:21:58 ◼   ► And I thought but I don't want to let it go yet because I feel like I would be kind of losing part of my voice

00:22:04 ◼   ► of the shows

00:22:05 ◼   ► Now there might be you know, I'm starting to think about okay, which shows are most important for that

00:22:11 ◼   ► Which shows Matt at least like I'm trying to start like roll these things around in my brain. Mm-hmm, but like I'm not like

00:22:18 ◼   ► Mentally ready to let go of anything like that. Yeah, it's understandable understandable

00:22:25 ◼   ► You know, it's like how I would never pass the edit of this show to anybody because this is like the most of all of them

00:22:31 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, but like it's like with the other shows

00:22:33 ◼   ► I mean, you know why that is right just because of the type of edit that we do on this show. It needs our

00:22:40 ◼   ► opinion

00:22:42 ◼   ► Yeah, but like all of my shows have that to a degree, but it's not as strong, right?

00:22:47 ◼   ► It's yeah

00:22:48 ◼   ► It's more you're sliding up and down the spectrum of this and cortex is a show which is at the most extreme end

00:22:55 ◼   ► of that. And I only have this opinion about my other shows because I do this one because

00:22:59 ◼   ► it's changed the way that I edit. So like I more now than like two years ago I feel

00:23:05 ◼   ► like my editing is part of the voice and tone of voice and like character of the show than

00:23:13 ◼   ► it was before. I've gotten into your mind Myke. You've destroyed me so if you want to

00:23:18 ◼   ► take over in editing for me that would be awesome. I do not I do not my job is simply

00:23:23 ◼   ► just to keep infecting you with ideas and watch them take root.

00:23:30 ◼   ► So we're going to talk about Year of Less again, but this is part...

00:23:34 ◼   ► When I was originally thinking about what my Year of Less might look like, it might

00:23:38 ◼   ► be handing over some editing work, but now I don't think that's going to be how it is

00:23:42 ◼   ► going to be in 2017.

00:23:45 ◼   ► There is a silver lining to all of this.

00:23:48 ◼   ► I do not work for intense periods of time for as long as I thought I did.

00:23:55 ◼   ► This is the other thing I have universally found that people discover.

00:24:00 ◼   ► If they're serious, if they're doing the time tracking right, you almost always realise

00:24:05 ◼   ► you're way overestimating how much time you're really working.

00:24:10 ◼   ► So I, again, I've maybe done this on one quiet week and one busy week, right?

00:24:16 ◼   ► Yeah, it's still very preliminary.

00:24:18 ◼   ► still very early however I am working out that I maybe work between 20 to 30

00:24:26 ◼   ► hours a week in intense time so this includes like recording shows editing

00:24:32 ◼   ► shows preparing for shows and dealing with sponsors like and maybe having

00:24:37 ◼   ► calls about things it's like that is like solid working time and I'm pleased

00:24:41 ◼   ► with these numbers but what's not trackable or a couple of things really

00:24:46 ◼   ► is thinking about work and also dealing with the little things that pop up. So like someone

00:24:55 ◼   ► might ask me a question, someone might send me a quick email that takes a two second reply,

00:25:01 ◼   ► but these things happen for as long as I am awake. So I may only work for five hours on

00:25:09 ◼   ► on that Wednesday, but I could do a half an hour's work

00:25:13 ◼   ► at nine, an hour's work at 10, one hour's work at 12,

00:25:18 ◼   ► and one hour's work at 6 p.m.

00:25:20 ◼   ► And it is the, what I've realized is that the fact

00:25:26 ◼   ► that this work can happen for as long as I am awake

00:25:30 ◼   ► is what makes it feel like I am always working.

00:25:34 ◼   ► So I don't want to do anything about this, right?

00:25:39 ◼   ► There are ways that I can make this better.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I could not look at my email other than a specific time of the day.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I could not open Slack other than a specific time of the day.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Like I know I can do all of that, but I don't want to do that.

00:25:50 ◼   ► That's not how I want to work. Like I currently,

00:25:53 ◼   ► I like to work the way that I do, which is to always be working. Right.

00:25:58 ◼   ► I will interject here and just say that while for many people,

00:26:03 ◼   ► I would recommend exactly the things that you just mentioned.

00:26:07 ◼   ► I would not recommend them to you.

00:26:09 ◼   ► I still think that your business and your involvement in it

00:26:15 ◼   ► really benefits from you being around and available

00:26:18 ◼   ► to a lot of different people at a lot of different hours.

00:26:22 ◼   ► I really think that your availability

00:26:25 ◼   ► makes a big difference to how well Relay is doing.

00:26:28 ◼   ► So even if you wanted to crank it down,

00:26:31 ◼   ► I think you are in a very difficult position to even do that.

00:26:35 ◼   ► So the thing that it is doing though,

00:26:38 ◼   ► it is making me feel better knowing this.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Good, good, good.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Because I am realizing like,

00:26:46 ◼   ► I feel like I'm really busy all the time,

00:26:50 ◼   ► but it turns out I'm not as busy as I thought I was.

00:26:54 ◼   ► Like I am not working. Like my, my,

00:26:59 ◼   ► The thing I used to say was I'm working for as much as I'm awake.

00:27:02 ◼   ► That's how I felt.

00:27:04 ◼   ► And now I understand where that feeling is coming from and now I'm able to fight it.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Like I'm able to answer back to my brain when it gets in that mode.

00:27:14 ◼   ► I'll be like, "Okay then, smart guy, open toggle and look at your report of the day."

00:27:19 ◼   ► Oh, three hours.

00:27:23 ◼   ► So like, this is not a, "Ha, look at me.

00:27:26 ◼   ► "Like I only work 20 hours a week."

00:27:29 ◼   ► Because if I would have tracked my time

00:27:32 ◼   ► when I worked at the bank,

00:27:34 ◼   ► I would be really keen on seeing what that looked like.

00:27:38 ◼   ► 'Cause I think it would probably be less.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Because like, as I said, this is not like,

00:27:43 ◼   ► Myke is chatting with someone, you know.

00:27:45 ◼   ► That's not billable.

00:27:46 ◼   ► I was like, when I'm chatting to somebody at work,

00:27:48 ◼   ► or like I'm going for lunch, or like,

00:27:50 ◼   ► this is like pure time where I'm like,

00:27:53 ◼   ► this is 100% work, I am doing this, I'm doing that.

00:27:57 ◼   ► This is what I genuinely feel like a 40 hour work week

00:28:01 ◼   ► actually is for most people, not everyone, but most people.

00:28:05 ◼   ► People are not in consistent, constant, intense work

00:28:09 ◼   ► from nine to five.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Humans do not work like that.

00:28:12 ◼   ► - No, humans can't work like that.

00:28:14 ◼   ► And I think this is the really clear distinction to draw is,

00:28:20 ◼   ► in my old time tracking system, I was only tracking the really valuable hours.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Like, did I just spend the previous 40 minutes really writing yes or no?

00:28:33 ◼   ► Right, and if the answer was no, I wouldn't track it.

00:28:35 ◼   ► And it's like, nobody does eight hours a day of that kind of work.

00:28:41 ◼   ► Right, where you are really focused, value generating work.

00:28:46 ◼   ► But everybody can be kind of like at work for a really long time and doing a bunch of

00:28:53 ◼   ► Low level stuff that makes you feel like I've been working all day. Yep, right, but like but how much real

00:29:00 ◼   ► Value creation has occurred here. I have a weird job

00:29:04 ◼   ► So my numbers I reckon are higher than most people

00:29:08 ◼   ► Like for example this week

00:29:11 ◼   ► Monday Tuesday, Wednesday have all been over six hours

00:29:14 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, but that is like because the type of stuff that I do is incredibly time intensive

00:29:19 ◼   ► It's like speaking to somebody for two hours and then working on it for what turns out to be an hour

00:29:23 ◼   ► Like those things can add up quite a lot. Mm-hmm. And what I have really noticed is like so last Friday I

00:29:32 ◼   ► Had seven hours of work that I logged. Mm-hmm. I felt like crap last Friday

00:29:38 ◼   ► Right and this week like I've been doing a consistent like six hours a day

00:29:43 ◼   ► But I feel okay because I knew it was busy week.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And it's like this is confirming that feeling and I'm yeah I'm more tired and you know what's

00:29:52 ◼   ► been really strange?

00:29:53 ◼   ► I've noticed that I've been sleeping in more this week than last week.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Like I've been waking up a little bit later.

00:29:58 ◼   ► Like it is really opening my eyes to how I work in a really interesting way.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Yeah if you pay attention to that you'll see that those those overwork times are like you're

00:30:10 ◼   ► gonna pay for it one way or another.

00:30:12 ◼   ► I still love and am envious of your busy week and not busy week because you have a bit of

00:30:18 ◼   ► that averaging out effect occurring there, which I still think is fantastic.

00:30:24 ◼   ► But I'm really glad to hear that you are able to push back against your own brain a little

00:30:30 ◼   ► bit when your brain says like, "Oh, I've been working all day."

00:30:34 ◼   ► It's like, "Okay, but how much really?"

00:30:37 ◼   ► And just the knowledge of that, the ability to push back on that a little bit, I think,

00:30:42 ◼   ► can really help reduce the feelings of busyness and stress and overwhelmingness.

00:30:50 ◼   ► But you are totally right that the main thing that is untrackable by even the best system

00:30:57 ◼   ► is the thinking about work time.

00:30:59 ◼   ► That is a futile thing to try to track and that is something that is outside the system

00:31:05 ◼   ► and kind of around it all the time and that is again one thing when you're like running

00:31:12 ◼   ► your own company or doing your own thing. It's very hard to get away from that, but

00:31:16 ◼   ► just trying to be mindful of it I think is very helpful. Like am I thinking about work

00:31:23 ◼   ► and doing anything about it now or is it just something that's on the back of my mind which

00:31:30 ◼   ► which is causing me stress.

00:31:31 ◼   ► Like even just trying to be aware of that sort of stuff

00:31:35 ◼   ► within the context of a time tracking system

00:31:37 ◼   ► is very helpful.

00:31:38 ◼   ► - So it's been a very strange couple of weeks,

00:31:41 ◼   ► but good I think overall.

00:31:43 ◼   ► Like I've learned some valuable things

00:31:45 ◼   ► and it's already made me kind of rethink

00:31:48 ◼   ► what I thought 2017 was gonna be like for me.

00:31:52 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:31:53 ◼   ► - I know, right?

00:31:54 ◼   ► Because I was moving down a road

00:31:57 ◼   ► and all that's done is just make me take,

00:31:59 ◼   ► I'm taking a sooner junction, right?

00:32:02 ◼   ► Like, the goal is still the same,

00:32:05 ◼   ► but the way that I'm planning on achieving that goal is different.

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00:33:29 ◼   ► We had spoken about Year of Less a lot last year, right?

00:33:33 ◼   ► That was your theme of 2016 was the year of less, comma me.

00:33:36 ◼   ► And as we were approaching the end of the year,

00:33:39 ◼   ► I kind of said that that was my plan for 2017.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Like my plan for 2016 was make a business work.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Like make it really work.

00:33:49 ◼   ► That is your plan. Like just do it.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Get this machine off the ground and just make it go.

00:33:55 ◼   ► So my and also like buy a house like become an adult like but

00:33:59 ◼   ► 2017 for me like I want to look at what year of less looks like

00:34:03 ◼   ► mm-hmm and

00:34:05 ◼   ► My I had originally considered that year of less would be

00:34:09 ◼   ► less

00:34:11 ◼   ► content

00:34:13 ◼   ► creation

00:34:14 ◼   ► hmm, so

00:34:15 ◼   ► less shows

00:34:17 ◼   ► less editing

00:34:19 ◼   ► because

00:34:20 ◼   ► Fundamentally, they are the most time intensive things that I do is making the shows. Mm-hmm

00:34:25 ◼   ► but then I was like

00:34:28 ◼   ► But I like that

00:34:30 ◼   ► Right, it's like the reason that I can sit with like six or seven hours of tracked time

00:34:38 ◼   ► Is because it didn't really feel like work like it is my job, but I really love doing it. Mm-hmm

00:34:46 ◼   ► So is that the right stuff to do less of?

00:34:51 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Like I'm not sure that I would be happy

00:34:55 ◼   ► with the balance after that, right?

00:34:57 ◼   ► Like making less or like turning down.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Like my thought was like, okay,

00:35:02 ◼   ► maybe stop one or two shows that you're doing right now

00:35:04 ◼   ► and stop taking on any new projects.

00:35:07 ◼   ► But I love new projects.

00:35:08 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:35:09 ◼   ► - You do.

00:35:10 ◼   ► - It's my favorite thing.

00:35:11 ◼   ► - You always get very excited

00:35:13 ◼   ► when you have a new podcast in the works.

00:35:15 ◼   ► Or like anything right like the vlog

00:35:17 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. I shouldn't be doing that. No every number

00:35:22 ◼   ► Everything says you should not be doing this

00:35:25 ◼   ► But I love it like it is it is like a hobby now like it is just this little creative thing that I get to do

00:35:33 ◼   ► and

00:35:35 ◼   ► I've kind of come to the realization that that is not what I should be cutting down on I should not be

00:35:40 ◼   ► taken away or

00:35:43 ◼   ► slimming the reason I'm doing this.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Like the primary reason that I wanted this business to exist is so I could support

00:35:53 ◼   ► myself to do these things.

00:35:54 ◼   ► I don't have a business so I can run a business.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Right. Right. Because that's what I would end up doing.

00:36:01 ◼   ► My business would exist so I could enjoy being Mr.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Business person. Right.

00:36:06 ◼   ► And some people do like that.

00:36:07 ◼   ► But that's not what I do.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's that's that's their thing.

00:36:10 ◼   ► But that's not your thing.

00:36:12 ◼   ► You know, it was like, I think I mentioned this on the show a long time ago,

00:36:15 ◼   ► which was like when I would talk to people in my old job and tell them that I was

00:36:18 ◼   ► leaving to start my own thing.

00:36:19 ◼   ► And people used to say to me, I've always dreamed of running my own business.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Like that's not a dream.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Right?

00:36:27 ◼   ► Like what is the thing?

00:36:28 ◼   ► And then they'll be like, I don't know.

00:36:29 ◼   ► I just want to have my own business.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Like, I think that's the type of person that like will run a business because they

00:36:35 ◼   ► like the business, which is totally valid, but it's not where I come from.

00:36:40 ◼   ► Like for me, it's like, and I think this is the same for you.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Like I think your goals are slightly different to mine, but it's the business

00:36:47 ◼   ► is a means to the end and the end is like whatever it is.

00:36:51 ◼   ► And for me, it's to just make the stuff that I love.

00:36:55 ◼   ► And I think for you, it's maybe more to like to have control of your life.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:00 ◼   ► And they are like what is caused by the business.

00:37:03 ◼   ► And so maybe what I need to do is remove some of the business.

00:37:08 ◼   ► So that's where you're going to try to cut down on things.

00:37:10 ◼   ► Assistant, not editor.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Ah, OK. All right.

00:37:15 ◼   ► This is good. This is good.

00:37:17 ◼   ► So what we are currently like, the reason I am time tracking

00:37:21 ◼   ► is so we can work out how many hours

00:37:25 ◼   ► could I give away to someone else?

00:37:28 ◼   ► Hmm. Right.

00:37:30 ◼   ► Because we know if we want to if we really want to bring somebody on,

00:37:34 ◼   ► we have to give them a significant amount of time.

00:37:36 ◼   ► so it's worth it for everyone.

00:37:38 ◼   ► So we are looking at hiring somebody

00:37:42 ◼   ► on a part-time contract basis.

00:37:44 ◼   ► I will just take a very slight break right now

00:37:46 ◼   ► to say please do not send me any applications.

00:37:49 ◼   ► This is gonna be a formal process thing.

00:37:54 ◼   ► - Your comment in the Reddit is not an application.

00:37:57 ◼   ► - An email is not an application.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Until there is a, I will talk about it,

00:38:02 ◼   ► I will tell the world when it is there,

00:38:05 ◼   ► we are gonna create a real job posting

00:38:08 ◼   ► that outlines what we need from someone,

00:38:11 ◼   ► what they need, and what they can expect, right?

00:38:13 ◼   ► Like it's gonna be a real thing.

00:38:16 ◼   ► So please, if you are interested,

00:38:19 ◼   ► do not send me anything, because it's not the way, right?

00:38:23 ◼   ► Like we're gonna have a real way.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Now if you've been listening to this show,

00:38:26 ◼   ► you know like we spent a lot of time

00:38:29 ◼   ► talking about grey hiring someone and like the process,

00:38:32 ◼   ► and we don't have that process in place.

00:38:35 ◼   ► There will be one, but we're early in this, right?

00:38:38 ◼   ► Like right now we're like still working out

00:38:40 ◼   ► what will this person do, like that kind of thing.

00:38:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, right now you're even feeling out

00:38:44 ◼   ► what are the areas of responsibility

00:38:47 ◼   ► that this person could even have.

00:38:48 ◼   ► - Yep, we don't even know how many hours it's gonna be.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, you have no idea.

00:38:51 ◼   ► You need to do more time tracking to find that out.

00:38:53 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:38:54 ◼   ► But primarily right now, what this person will be doing

00:38:57 ◼   ► is helping me with coordinating

00:38:58 ◼   ► and management of our sponsorship process.

00:39:01 ◼   ► The most businessy part of our business.

00:39:04 ◼   ► It is like talking to people over emails,

00:39:06 ◼   ► arranging and having telephone calls,

00:39:09 ◼   ► booking inventory into our system.

00:39:12 ◼   ► So like when somebody buys a spot

00:39:13 ◼   ► and putting it into spreadsheets and systems that we have.

00:39:16 ◼   ► And then ideally as well,

00:39:18 ◼   ► this person would kind of help with some copywriting.

00:39:20 ◼   ► So helping us put together the bullet points

00:39:22 ◼   ► that we give to our hosts

00:39:23 ◼   ► so they can talk about the companies that are sponsoring.

00:39:26 ◼   ► That is what this person will probably be doing.

00:39:30 ◼   ► And I, in a weird way,

00:39:33 ◼   ► and I think it's a weird way, I enjoy running our business.

00:39:36 ◼   ► But it's not the thing I enjoy the most.

00:39:40 ◼   ► And this is the thing that I could conceivably give

00:39:44 ◼   ► to somebody else to help me with.

00:39:47 ◼   ► If I think of my work as art,

00:39:50 ◼   ► then it's harder for me to give some of that stuff

00:39:52 ◼   ► away to someone.

00:39:53 ◼   ► Like, if somebody filled in for me on Cortex, right,

00:39:58 ◼   ► like that would be great for my graphs, you know?

00:40:01 ◼   ► But that's not gonna happen,

00:40:02 ◼   ► 'cause we're in the show, right?

00:40:04 ◼   ► It's me and you.

00:40:05 ◼   ► So I can't give these things, exactly.

00:40:07 ◼   ► And it would never happen.

00:40:09 ◼   ► I could maybe get like an impersonator,

00:40:10 ◼   ► but great, great, great.

00:40:12 ◼   ► - Need a gray impersonator on the show.

00:40:14 ◼   ► - Maybe I should look into that.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Or maybe I could just like try and do your voice.

00:40:18 ◼   ► Or like, you know, just cut together clips

00:40:21 ◼   ► from your YouTube videos and, you know?

00:40:24 ◼   ► - I'm like, yeah, I'm liking the sound of this.

00:40:26 ◼   ► - All right, I'm gonna start getting a lot more stuff

00:40:29 ◼   ► right on this show, I think is what's going on.

00:40:32 ◼   ► So like I'm just thinking that maybe what I can do is like start to pass off a lot of

00:40:38 ◼   ► the things that don't need to need my input.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Spreadsheets do not need me.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Right?

00:40:48 ◼   ► And so this is kind of where I'm coming from.

00:40:50 ◼   ► So yeah, so year of less I think is gonna happen, but it is significantly different

00:40:57 ◼   ► to what I expected it was gonna be.

00:40:59 ◼   ► This is the whole value of doing the time tracking and thinking about what you're doing

00:41:05 ◼   ► and just being more aware of your work and instead of having in your mind like a big

00:41:12 ◼   ► blob that's just labeled work.

00:41:15 ◼   ► If you're doing time tracking, you're pulling out the different pieces, you are thinking

00:41:20 ◼   ► about them more intentionally, and then this allows you to kind of siphon it off in your

00:41:26 ◼   ► mind into different categories.

00:41:28 ◼   ► And this is exactly how I started.

00:41:31 ◼   ► Like, you know, the one not super valuable category

00:41:36 ◼   ► that I did track, because I just wanted to be aware of it,

00:41:38 ◼   ► was what I've--

00:41:39 ◼   ► I've threw everything else under the category

00:41:43 ◼   ► of administration.

00:41:44 ◼   ► So when I was tracking time, I was like, am I doing email?

00:41:47 ◼   ► OK, this is administration.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Am I doing stuff related to taxes?

00:41:50 ◼   ► This is administration.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Am I fixing a typo on the website?

00:41:54 ◼   ► This is administration.

00:41:55 ◼   ► It's like essentially anything that needs to get done, but is not related to

00:42:00 ◼   ► Revenue production or product production like all of this just is filed under administration

00:42:07 ◼   ► Do you wanna know what one of mine is called? What?

00:42:10 ◼   ► sponsor aftercare

00:42:13 ◼   ► Sponsor aftercare. Yeah, that is like such and such person has an email that they need but like the deal is already done

00:42:21 ◼   ► Now it's just like little bits and bobs.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Right, right. There's aftercare that needs to happen.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Like fixing a URL or like delivering a contract.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Like it's things that are just, they happen afterwards.

00:42:33 ◼   ► They're not, you know, they are not directly revenue generating but they need to occur.

00:42:37 ◼   ► Right, they're things that need to happen.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:42:39 ◼   ► And it was being aware of...

00:42:43 ◼   ► Not even the sheer amount of hours that I was spending on administration stuff,

00:42:48 ◼   ► but simply becoming aware of, okay, which subcategories in this administration land

00:42:53 ◼   ► can I get someone to help me with?

00:42:57 ◼   ► And that was what started it off for me,

00:43:00 ◼   ► you know, getting an assistant in the first place was, was like you said, does this

00:43:05 ◼   ► spreadsheet that I'm just putting some data into, does it need to be my fingers putting in this data?

00:43:10 ◼   ► No, it doesn't. And so like, just start building things up from there and, you know, it's

00:43:17 ◼   ► It's been nothing but great, and you know I've also had

00:43:20 ◼   ► the same experience that you did where you talked about how

00:43:24 ◼   ► Adina was aware that like oh you think something's going to take 20 minutes, but it actually takes you 45 minutes

00:43:30 ◼   ► I was really aware with a lot of the administration stuff

00:43:33 ◼   ► related to

00:43:35 ◼   ► posting the podcasts I

00:43:37 ◼   ► Realized through time tracking the same kind of thing like I thought this was a 45 minute job

00:43:43 ◼   ► tops, but turns out all of the steps took me a whole afternoon and

00:43:48 ◼   ► I didn't know this, but my wife always did. When I said like, "Oh, I'm just gonna post the show. I'll be right back."

00:43:54 ◼   ► She's like, "He's gone for the whole, like for the next three hours."

00:43:59 ◼   ► You emerged from the cave two days later.

00:44:01 ◼   ► Bleary-eyed.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like, he thinks he's gonna be right back,

00:44:07 ◼   ► But he never is! Like this takes a long time to flip all of the switches and like do all of the things to make

00:44:12 ◼   ► a thing go live. And so that was one of these cases of like, okay, these steps, does it have to be me doing this?

00:44:18 ◼   ► No, it doesn't have to be me doing this.

00:44:20 ◼   ► Also, the time tracking is showing me like I'm losing a whole afternoon every week to this when I mentally think I'm not losing that time.

00:44:28 ◼   ► It's like, okay, this one is gonna get passed off to somebody else. And for me, the year of last year,

00:44:36 ◼   ► Letting go of a lot of the reigns to that kind of stuff was a big deal.

00:44:42 ◼   ► But the end of it was just great. It was fantastic to do.

00:44:46 ◼   ► So right now my time tracking is quite basic.

00:44:49 ◼   ► So I'm interested to kind of see a little bit how you're doing it.

00:44:54 ◼   ► Because all I'm doing right now is I have got some projects and tags.

00:44:58 ◼   ► And that's all I'm doing. So a project might be show recording, a tag might be cortex.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And that's it. So like I'm just keeping it like super basic because you can add all these like descriptions of the tasks and stuff like that

00:45:09 ◼   ► I'm not really doing any of that right now

00:45:11 ◼   ► I'm trying to make it as simple as I can for myself to just be adding it in

00:45:14 ◼   ► But does that sound like a reasonable system to you?

00:45:18 ◼   ► I mean, here's the thing. It's it's so

00:45:21 ◼   ► personal doing something like this

00:45:25 ◼   ► it entirely comes down to what are you trying to get out of it and

00:45:32 ◼   ► You know when I talk people into this I always suggest like just start with the simplest thing possible

00:45:37 ◼   ► It's like I've decided to go really high level with it

00:45:41 ◼   ► You know yeah, and I think that's that's perfectly fine like event if anybody's starting time tracking against like just track

00:45:48 ◼   ► Your your best high value hours and like leave it at that right. That's totally fine

00:45:53 ◼   ► Because I think what what happens is you either?

00:45:56 ◼   ► discover that this is like a

00:46:00 ◼   ► Basically, there's a feedback loop that happens with some people, right? So some people they'll do time tracking and then they'll stop and

00:46:07 ◼   ► they'll realize like, "Okay, I have some insights. I have some idea about how my time is being spent,

00:46:12 ◼   ► but I don't feel the need to keep doing this all the time."

00:46:14 ◼   ► But for some people it ends up becoming a positive feedback loop where you feel, "Okay, I've started this.

00:46:21 ◼   ► I'm getting value out of this." And then it can make more sense to try to

00:46:25 ◼   ► more fine-grain down

00:46:29 ◼   ► what is actually occurring.

00:46:31 ◼   ► And so,

00:46:33 ◼   ► obviously I'm in that second camp and now, you know, it's been a long time since I've been time tracking.

00:46:38 ◼   ► I've been spending a lot of time with toggle and this is why I was harassing

00:46:43 ◼   ► Federico to give me every option because I'm going to use them all

00:46:47 ◼   ► to do this what I would say as fine-grain as I think is reasonable,

00:46:53 ◼   ► but probably most people would think is an unreasonable amount of detail.

00:46:58 ◼   ► But the high-level picture for me is I want to be able to see

00:47:03 ◼   ► how much time just in total do I spend on Cortex, right? How much time do I spend on Hello Internet?

00:47:09 ◼   ► How much time do I spend on the YouTube videos?

00:47:12 ◼   ► And I do have breakdowns in there. Like it's going to be interesting to me to see

00:47:18 ◼   ► like how much time is spent editing versus recording or how much time is spent

00:47:23 ◼   ► writing versus working with the animator. Those things are interesting

00:47:27 ◼   ► But ultimately it really is that high level stuff is where most of the value can come out of.

00:47:35 ◼   ► So I think as long as you have a reasonable high level breakdown that makes sense to you about what you want to be keeping track of and what is important to you, I think that's fine.

00:47:47 ◼   ► fine. But you know, you can get really crazy with this. I'm just thinking that this is slightly

00:47:53 ◼   ► crazy, but I set up a little system with toggle using Zapier, the other if this then that service.

00:48:00 ◼   ► I set up a timer that starts automatically when I should be awake. And the timer is called

00:48:08 ◼   ► sleeping in.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Oh, right.

00:48:11 ◼   ► So what? That's amazing.

00:48:13 ◼   ► So at the minute my alarm goes off,

00:48:16 ◼   ► a timer starts, which is called sleeping in.

00:48:19 ◼   ► I like that.

00:48:20 ◼   ► And I'll tell you, that is really effective

00:48:22 ◼   ► to getting you out of bed, because, you know, you're sort of like half awake.

00:48:27 ◼   ► And when you're self-employed, there's a bit of like,

00:48:29 ◼   ► does it matter if I get up now or five minutes from now?

00:48:33 ◼   ► No, it doesn't.

00:48:34 ◼   ► It's like, but now it does because someone's watching.

00:48:38 ◼   ► Exactly, I have a black colored top level category in my system called sleeping in

00:48:45 ◼   ► and I want to see that bar be as small as possible and

00:48:48 ◼   ► So that's that's that's an example of like one of these things that like maybe a little bit far

00:48:54 ◼   ► But I like I actually want to know like how much time do I end up spending

00:48:59 ◼   ► Sleeping past when I think I should be up and then this also acts as like a little motivator

00:49:05 ◼   ► And so it's like, you know, as long as it's like a few minutes, that's fine

00:49:08 ◼   ► But I just want to see and knowing that it's there is really helpful

00:49:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm close to like setting up the Zapier stuff to just do some automatic things

00:49:17 ◼   ► like I just I don't really need to be pressing buttons to track when I

00:49:21 ◼   ► Record shows because I know how long I'm doing that for

00:49:24 ◼   ► And so this would just be that like Zapier is like another web service

00:49:28 ◼   ► It's like if there's if this than that

00:49:30 ◼   ► It's a little bit more advanced with some of the stuff that it can do and it's a paid service as well, right?

00:49:35 ◼   ► I think this there is a paid component. Yeah, it's free to a certain level and paid after that

00:49:40 ◼   ► So there would be things that I could do that could watch my Google Calendar and it is automatically log time based on an entry

00:49:47 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, and I find that kind of thing really interesting

00:49:50 ◼   ► This is if I was gonna set like another theme of my year. I'm really interested in making

00:49:57 ◼   ► My computers and my technology work for me. Mmm

00:50:01 ◼   ► So one of them is and I'm gonna spend some time talking about switching my to-do system at some point

00:50:08 ◼   ► Soon on this show as I'm looking at moving to todoist

00:50:12 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, because it also has a web API

00:50:15 ◼   ► So you can get all of these systems talking to each other. Yeah, and that is becoming an

00:50:22 ◼   ► increasingly

00:50:25 ◼   ► Interesting idea or proposition to me. Mm-hmm

00:50:28 ◼   ► I am putting input into these systems and all it does is just sit there. Mm-hmm

00:50:34 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, there is no reason why these things can't be taking the input and turning them into something of use to me

00:50:40 ◼   ► And so that's what I'm starting to look at

00:50:43 ◼   ► Anything with an automation is it is a total win right? Like it just it pays dividends for forever

00:50:49 ◼   ► So I actually, just because I'm curious to see, I do have a top-level project which is called automation

00:50:56 ◼   ► because I do want to see like how much time does it take me to actually

00:51:01 ◼   ► implement these systems, right, and to actually get these things working and to think about like what is what is the payoff in these?

00:51:08 ◼   ► And this is also the case of like, "Oh, okay, we talked about it a bunch on the podcast

00:51:12 ◼   ► I end up feeling like I'm working on this stuff a bunch," but the actual time tracking data

00:51:17 ◼   ► reveals like this is the time you spend on automating

00:51:20 ◼   ► the time tracking thing itself or like I spend a bunch of time reworking my email system to do some stuff automatically. It's like this is a

00:51:28 ◼   ► trivial portion of

00:51:31 ◼   ► the time you spend working and I'm also tracking it in a time when it is going to be

00:51:38 ◼   ► ludicrously lots, right? It's like between the start of December until now I have spent

00:51:46 ◼   ► 10 hours and 53 minutes working on various forms of like setting up my systems and

00:51:53 ◼   ► this is this is a time when I'm

00:51:56 ◼   ► redoing my entire time tracking, I redid my entire email, and I'm also

00:52:03 ◼   ► redoing a whole bunch of stuff related to my own task management.

00:52:06 ◼   ► And this is the kind of thing that like this level happens maybe once every two years on average.

00:52:12 ◼   ► And so like it's just it's really interesting just to see in the data. It's like

00:52:16 ◼   ► Like this is a trivial amount of time that will dramatically decrease as we go forward,

00:52:22 ◼   ► but that just keeps paying dividends forever out into the future.

00:52:25 ◼   ► So I'm not even really thinking about doing these types of automation things to save time.

00:52:30 ◼   ► It is to have these systems doing something that I cannot guarantee, which is remembering.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:52:39 ◼   ► It is like computers won't get this stuff wrong.

00:52:43 ◼   ► My brain does.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And so I want these types of like redundant systems to be occurring, things to be triggering,

00:52:52 ◼   ► things to be firing.

00:52:53 ◼   ► And like, I'm really like, you know, there are two people in my life that I'm taking

00:52:57 ◼   ► this inspiration from greatly, which is you and Federico.

00:53:00 ◼   ► And the way that you two work is something of great interest to me, clearly, right?

00:53:07 ◼   ► And I want to be like you both, the way that you work.

00:53:11 ◼   ► You know, I've seen some of the things that Federico is able to do with these automation

00:53:15 ◼   ► systems and they are frankly mind-blowing and I really want to be able to start relying on this

00:53:22 ◼   ► stuff more especially as there is a chance that I am about to start working with another person

00:53:29 ◼   ► closely. You know, I work with quite a few people in my life on a very close basis but the way that

00:53:37 ◼   ► I would potentially be working with an assistant is very different and I feel like that's going

00:53:42 ◼   ► going to start to change the way that I work significantly. So yeah, that's going to be

00:53:47 ◼   ► quite an interesting change. And so I figure whilst I'm going through all of this, how

00:53:53 ◼   ► about I start putting some systems in place to get a virtual cloud assistant as well.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Yeah, having stuff work automatically for you is fantastic. I was playing around with

00:54:08 ◼   ► some of the same things of, you know, the way my, like, essentially the way my flights

00:54:14 ◼   ► end up in my system, it's like, "Oh, okay, I can have this information pulled out and

00:54:18 ◼   ► then just auto-added into the time tracker."

00:54:20 ◼   ► It's like, "Great!

00:54:21 ◼   ► So I don't need to be running a timer or anything that says, like, 'Oh, I'm on a plane right

00:54:24 ◼   ► now.'"

00:54:25 ◼   ► It's like, "Nope!

00:54:26 ◼   ► This just fires off automatically.

00:54:28 ◼   ► I never have to think about it."

00:54:30 ◼   ► And it's just there.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It's just there as part of the data.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And anything that can happen automatically is a big win.

00:54:36 ◼   ► I was actually really annoyed because I was digging around in workflow and I wanted to write a little workflow that could pull out like the exercise and mindfulness data automatically.

00:54:49 ◼   ► But it seems like I can't quite do that. But it's like, "Ah, here's the thing. There's data right there. I just want to automate it and pull it out. Eventually that'll happen, but not right now.

00:54:57 ◼   ► Right now I still need to be flipping switches manually, but anytime you can set something

00:55:02 ◼   ► up automatically and then just never think about it again, I feel like it's such a huge

00:55:06 ◼   ► win.

00:55:07 ◼   ► It really is.

00:55:08 ◼   ► One last thing with the time tracking, though, is I think you've been doing it for two weeks

00:55:14 ◼   ► and that's great, but you really can't trust the data until you've been doing it for a

00:55:20 ◼   ► little while.

00:55:21 ◼   ► Sure.

00:55:22 ◼   ► you do always have this... in the beginning there's two things that are happening.

00:55:27 ◼   ► One is you're setting up and getting used to the system in the first place,

00:55:32 ◼   ► which can be quite a mental shift.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Like you were saying as well, you're kind of forgetting about timers sometimes

00:55:40 ◼   ► and you just have to think about it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► You're even thinking about how do you categorize stuff.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And then this can also end up causing a bit of an observer effect

00:55:50 ◼   ► where you can end up feeling like you're kind of performing for the clock because you're much more aware of like,

00:55:56 ◼   ► "I am time tracking now. I should really be doing something."

00:56:00 ◼   ► Like this is like the Hawthorne Effect, like any kind of observance will increase productivity on a temporary basis.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Like there's an observer effect here, it's just that the observer is you.

00:56:12 ◼   ► And so I think it's useful just to be aware that if you can establish this as a habit,

00:56:21 ◼   ► you end up with truer data later on, when this is just something that's just part of what you're

00:56:27 ◼   ► doing every single day. Yeah, like what I'm seeing right now are just like early trends.

00:56:32 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, yeah exactly. But it's not data that I can build upon because I mean I've had like two weeks,

00:56:41 ◼   ► Especially with the way that my calendar flows, the way that I structure it, I need like multiple multiple weeks

00:56:46 ◼   ► to get a really good idea of what of even if like a quiet week, busy week is even a thing.

00:56:52 ◼   ► Right. Yeah, that's an excellent point, right? This might be entirely in your mind.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Right? You're just thinking like, oh my week with Grey, it's so relaxing

00:57:00 ◼   ► there's only one one show to do like it's quiet week, very little work, but it might not be the case.

00:57:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I've renamed it to like Stroll in a Meadow week, you know?

00:57:09 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that's right. That sounds about right

00:57:11 ◼   ► But yeah, so that's just a thing to be aware of and and yeah

00:57:16 ◼   ► It's a good point you if you can establish it as a habit

00:57:19 ◼   ► it's it's fantastic and again the thing that I'm attempting to do which I find is

00:57:25 ◼   ► So much harder than I would have guessed at the start is with all my crazy workflows adapted from Federico stuff

00:57:34 ◼   ► In toggle what I love is if you start a new timer it automatically stops the old one

00:57:40 ◼   ► So you don't need to be like stop the old timer start the new one

00:57:43 ◼   ► I've been setting it up so that I can just on my phone like press a bunch of buttons and it will

00:57:48 ◼   ► Automatically start like a very specific new timer and what I want my goal to be is that

00:57:54 ◼   ► For this season essentially like I wake up, and I'm always just starting a new timer right that like throughout the day

00:58:02 ◼   ► there's no point that I ever like stop a timer. I'm always just starting something new until the end of the day, and then I stop it.

00:58:08 ◼   ► But when you're doing very intensive time tracking, and what I am finding absolutely fascinating is

00:58:14 ◼   ► how

00:58:18 ◼   ► intentional it forces you to be about the whole day.

00:58:21 ◼   ► And like the first few days that I was doing this, like I'm having a hard time

00:58:25 ◼   ► logging eight hours of what I'm doing. Like there's there's so much like

00:58:30 ◼   ► Intentional time where you think like what exactly am I doing in this moment? Like what is what is this thing? Like I have found that

00:58:37 ◼   ► absolutely

00:58:39 ◼   ► fascinating to observe like not just not just the work hours, but like all the hours, what are you doing and

00:58:46 ◼   ► being aware of how often your brain kind of

00:58:49 ◼   ► Slips into like I'm not really thinking about what I'm doing mode and and trying to fight that

00:58:55 ◼   ► existential time tracking

00:58:57 ◼   ► It totally is it totally is but I have I have two categories

00:59:02 ◼   ► That I've put in my system which are like unintentional video games and unintentional media consumption

00:59:11 ◼   ► Like here is the thing

00:59:21 ◼   ► That is a like if you pay attention to it. That is like a subjective experience that can happen

00:59:27 ◼   ► And I think it happens to a lot of people where it's like did you mean to watch a bunch of YouTube videos?

00:59:33 ◼   ► Or did it just sort of happen and it's an hour later. I will notice that I have been like

00:59:39 ◼   ► accidentally playing Super Mario run

00:59:42 ◼   ► Mm-hmm this week. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it's like I need to go and do that thing

00:59:47 ◼   ► Just after two games, right exactly, right, but that but that's that's how your brain gets you, right?

00:59:53 ◼   ► That's how your brain tricks you. It's like oh, we're just gonna get one more, you know pink coin

00:59:57 ◼   ► That's all it's gonna be. We just got to finish that one, right? And then like two hours later.

01:00:00 ◼   ► So like, but I think that is a perfect example of a like a category that I'm just being aware of as a thing.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Because I also think it's important to to divide it into

01:00:12 ◼   ► intentional versus unintentional. Like what I don't want to do is be tracking a category like video games.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Because video games are a form of enjoyable recreation for me.

01:00:24 ◼   ► But what I'm trying to see this season with the time tracking is like I want to shift

01:00:28 ◼   ► more of my video game and media consumption time

01:00:33 ◼   ► from the unintentional category to the intentional category.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Like that's that's one of these things that I'm trying to see with like my leisure time,

01:00:42 ◼   ► how am I spending it, and and just how to be more intentional about the things that I'm doing.

01:00:47 ◼   ► You keep saying season?

01:00:50 ◼   ► The great TV show this season of Grey's life. Oh

01:00:54 ◼   ► Yeah, okay

01:01:00 ◼   ► He's been cool out I didn't realize I didn't realize I was doing it

01:01:06 ◼   ► Okay, so

01:01:10 ◼   ► Sometimes I I will realize that I don't like a word and

01:01:14 ◼   ► I'll end up trying to find a better word to describe what it is that I'm thinking about and

01:01:20 ◼   ► And for me, one of these things that has just happened, I will try to fix it in the future,

01:01:24 ◼   ► but I don't know how much I can do it, is I've always thought in terms of quarters,

01:01:28 ◼   ► but I've just never liked that. And so in a bunch of my documents and other things,

01:01:34 ◼   ► essentially anywhere that I had the word like quarter, I've switched this over to think about

01:01:39 ◼   ► seasons. Like seasons make way more sense to me. So it's season as in like fall and summer,

01:01:46 ◼   ► not season as in this season on The Grey Show.

01:01:49 ◼   ► But you don't really mean fall on some other dude, you mean Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4?

01:01:54 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you know, yes, but not really. You know, because I'm not actually...

01:02:05 ◼   ► The reason I can... Here's the thing. The reason why I kind of didn't like Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 is when

01:02:11 ◼   ► I'm thinking about my own... Basically, like, I have just come out of... Look, you asked me the

01:02:16 ◼   ► question like you're pulling on a little thread it's really fun to watch you scramble well no i'm

01:02:22 ◼   ► not scrambling what i'm trying to do is thinking about like how much do i have to explain to give

01:02:27 ◼   ► you a satisfactory answer no i get i tell you i let me see if i can help you like you don't work

01:02:34 ◼   ► january to march like april it's not like that exactly yeah but it is still cut into four but

01:02:41 ◼   ► But it's not four by three.

01:02:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's about right.

01:02:45 ◼   ► And really, I'm also using season because in some ways,

01:02:50 ◼   ► my business intentionally really slows down over the summer.

01:02:56 ◼   ► And so the summer season is almost like not even,

01:02:58 ◼   ► like it's very different from all of the other ones.

01:03:02 ◼   ► And so it almost feels like I actually kind of have

01:03:04 ◼   ► three seasons that I really need to think about work,

01:03:07 ◼   ► which is spring, fall, and winter.

01:03:11 ◼   ► So basically, like, talking about the quarters was just overly precise.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And I was aware, like, it kind of bothered me when I talked about my quarterly reviews.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Because if I look back on, like, documents and little notes to myself that I create,

01:03:24 ◼   ► I realize it's actually, well, I tend to do three of these a year.

01:03:30 ◼   ► And there are times where it feels like, okay, just like now, I just came out of a really big

01:03:35 ◼   ► "I'm doing a huge review" session.

01:03:38 ◼   ► And it's like, and this was very much like, it is winter. I'm thinking about what is coming up.

01:03:42 ◼   ► I tend to do one in April, and then I tend to do another really big one when I come back after the summer in

01:03:49 ◼   ► in the autumn, in like September. And that's why I was just thinking like, these quarters don't mean anything.

01:03:54 ◼   ► I don't like this word. It's not an accurate description for what I'm doing. And I'm always,

01:03:59 ◼   ► I always hate things that are overly precise.

01:04:02 ◼   ► I'm just always aware of that. And so I thought like, I'm gonna stop using this word in

01:04:06 ◼   ► in my own documents and in my own little planning things.

01:04:09 ◼   ► So that's the answer to why I'm using the word season,

01:04:12 ◼   ► is that's sort of mentally how I'm thinking about things

01:04:16 ◼   ► instead of talking about quarters.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Does that answer your question, Myke?

01:04:19 ◼   ► - It does, it does.

01:04:20 ◼   ► - I'm glad that amuses you.

01:04:22 ◼   ► - You don't do quality reviews anymore,

01:04:24 ◼   ► you do season recaps.

01:04:26 ◼   ► - No, it's seasonal reviews.

01:04:28 ◼   ► It's season recaps, there's no show, there's no show.

01:04:31 ◼   ► - Are you sure?

01:04:32 ◼   ► - Although I could be recapping the previous season,

01:04:34 ◼   ► I essentially do that.

01:04:35 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:04:36 ◼   ► - Okay, maybe that can be part of the process.

01:04:39 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:04:42 ◼   ► - This episode is brought to you by our friends

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01:04:55 ◼   ► to race against the clock,

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01:06:56 ◼   ► Is there a 2017 theme for CGB Grey?

01:07:01 ◼   ► You mean year of less was like, you know, that was a thing.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Do you have do you have a 2017 theme?

01:07:07 ◼   ► Is it year of more?

01:07:09 ◼   ► I know why you're asking this, Myke.

01:07:11 ◼   ► Because you want to know ahead of time what your theme for next year is going to be.

01:07:18 ◼   ► We're done.

01:07:19 ◼   ► We're done.

01:07:20 ◼   ► I'm listening everyone.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I do have a theme. This year it's going to be a little bit more vague and it's not going to be a surprise for close listeners to the show.

01:07:35 ◼   ► But I'm saying that this year is going to be the year of new,

01:07:41 ◼   ► which is a thing I had kind of trialed and started thinking about in my previous season review in September,

01:07:49 ◼   ► when I came back after that summer and I mentioned it on the show at some point.

01:07:52 ◼   ► But I've been toying around with this idea for the upcoming year.

01:07:57 ◼   ► And in some ways I don't like it because it doesn't quite strike at the heart of what I'm doing,

01:08:04 ◼   ► what I'm doing, but I can't come up with a better way to

01:08:08 ◼   ► summarize in my own mind, like, what is it that I'm aiming for?

01:08:13 ◼   ► In the same way that the Year of Less was also like a kind of a terrible description of what was actually occurring,

01:08:18 ◼   ► but in my mind seemed like the right label.

01:08:20 ◼   ► So this year is going to be the Year of New. That's the theme.

01:08:26 ◼   ► "New what?"

01:08:27 ◼   ► I don't know, Myke. This has come about because...

01:08:32 ◼   ► Like I was aware that when I was doing the Year of Less, like one of the things I was trying to do is

01:08:37 ◼   ► pull myself out of the business to

01:08:42 ◼   ► try and free up some of my time for possibly other things and

01:08:47 ◼   ► the Year of Less was incredibly successful

01:08:52 ◼   ► and I feel like the Year of Less is now just going to be the life of less.

01:08:55 ◼   ► This is a thing that I feel like I have internalized and is now part of my decision-making process.

01:09:02 ◼   ► Like I'm really aware when I'm thinking about projects,

01:09:04 ◼   ► I think of them all in terms of the year of less and about ability to hand them off or when would they finish

01:09:10 ◼   ► in a way that I just

01:09:12 ◼   ► didn't a year and a half ago before I really started this. So that has been very much internalized.

01:09:18 ◼   ► But

01:09:20 ◼   ► 2016 for me,

01:09:22 ◼   ► it was a funny year because it was a really

01:09:27 ◼   ► successful year for me.

01:09:30 ◼   ► But it also felt like even though I was removing myself from the business and gaining back some time,

01:09:38 ◼   ► I didn't feel like I was

01:09:41 ◼   ► amalgamating that additional time into

01:09:44 ◼   ► anything new. Like I wasn't necessarily doing anything with that time. That wasn't just like more

01:09:53 ◼   ► administration work or something else.

01:09:59 ◼   ► And so I'm aware with the Year of New that what I'm trying to do, and what I actually spent a bunch of

01:10:05 ◼   ► my seasonal review planning for and setting up, is

01:10:10 ◼   ► trying to amalgamate a bunch of that time into more useful batches

01:10:16 ◼   ► that give me the opportunity to do other stuff in any form. And so

01:10:24 ◼   ► Some of these, like, I don't have a very clear plan here. It's just like I have a list of

01:10:29 ◼   ► personal projects and some side projects that I have wanted to work on for a long time, but in

01:10:35 ◼   ► 2016 essentially made very little progress on because I wasn't really using the additional time gained in

01:10:43 ◼   ► blocks in a useful way.

01:10:46 ◼   ► So that's something that's on my mind. I'm also just aware of

01:10:52 ◼   ► with the year of new, part of what I'm trying to do is

01:10:55 ◼   ► align my working calendar with my wife's working calendar so that when she is not working I can also be

01:11:03 ◼   ► there more and so we can have the possibility of doing something new, like maybe traveling somewhere.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Which usually when she has off, unless it's the summer, I would always find myself just too busy to really go

01:11:17 ◼   ► away somewhere else. So there's a lot of things

01:11:21 ◼   ► for me that are in this label, but it's related to just trying out new things and

01:11:27 ◼   ► some novel experiences

01:11:30 ◼   ► Like this is this is all for me. What I'm thinking of is like the year of new year of new stuff

01:11:36 ◼   ► Does year of new mean year of more?

01:11:40 ◼   ► I think the time tracking will have to show that right because there's I'm just realizing there's like a bias effect when you do things

01:11:47 ◼   ► that are

01:11:49 ◼   ► different than what you normally do, your brain tends to think of these things as taking up more time or like you're being really busy.

01:11:56 ◼   ► And I was just, I'm aware of like wanting to a little bit

01:12:01 ◼   ► break out of

01:12:04 ◼   ► like the

01:12:05 ◼   ► 2016 routine that I was in. Like there were just, there were like a lot of

01:12:09 ◼   ► scheduled times and

01:12:12 ◼   ► like one project right after another and so it's just, it's trying to give me more additional

01:12:18 ◼   ► time by rearranging, like when is my free time, when is my work time.

01:12:23 ◼   ► In terms of more, like I don't know if there will be any more public facing projects.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Like I'm not sure if anybody who follows me would feel like, "Oh wow, look at this cornucopia of things that Grey is producing."

01:12:39 ◼   ► Like this one feels much less business related and it's much more personal.

01:12:47 ◼   ► And this is...

01:12:48 ◼   ► That makes sense.

01:12:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:49 ◼   ► This is why like there's...

01:12:51 ◼   ► You know, there's always trade-offs in life. And this is like it took a lot of

01:12:55 ◼   ► thinking about and planning for and setting this up. So this is one of these cases where it's like, well,

01:13:02 ◼   ► I am going to have to take some

01:13:04 ◼   ► work and energy out of the business and redirect it to the personal if this is going to happen.

01:13:11 ◼   ► So yeah, I would say this is much more of a personal one than it is like a...

01:13:16 ◼   ► It's not like the year of starting a whole bunch of new businesses all of which are going to be public.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Like that is not what the year of new is.

01:13:25 ◼   ► That makes more sense.

01:13:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it's one of these things like it's interesting talking out loud to someone about it because I'm realizing how hard it is

01:13:34 ◼   ► is for me to articulate what in my head seems like a clear path and idea. But it, when the

01:13:44 ◼   ► words come out it is not as sharp as something like the year of less. Where there's a very

01:13:48 ◼   ► clear goal and this is what I am aiming for. But, so the year of new, it's a bit more vague

01:13:54 ◼   ► than last year, but that's what my theme is.

01:13:57 ◼   ► We gotta talk about Evernote.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Why? Why Myke?

01:14:01 ◼   ► whilst Cortexmas is usually a time of relaxation, a time of winding down for

01:14:08 ◼   ► all, Evernote decided to take Cortexmas and go in the exact opposite direction.

01:14:14 ◼   ► They had a very very busy Cortexmas period.

01:14:17 ◼   ► A very successful Cortexmas period, I'm sure.

01:14:19 ◼   ► It depends on your metrics. So in kind of mid-December there was a big brouhaha

01:14:29 ◼   ► with Evernote and privacy.

01:14:33 ◼   ► So they changed their privacy policy

01:14:35 ◼   ► to cater for some new features.

01:14:37 ◼   ► And the idea was that Evernote would start using

01:14:40 ◼   ► the one that is machine learning

01:14:42 ◼   ► as a way to help them create kind of new features

01:14:47 ◼   ► and new technology.

01:14:48 ◼   ► So that they would be kind of using the information

01:14:50 ◼   ► that you put into your notes to make suggestions to you

01:14:53 ◼   ► and to kind of make your experience better.

01:14:55 ◼   ► - Machine learning.

01:14:56 ◼   ► - Machine learning.

01:14:57 ◼   ► - You have to add it to every project.

01:14:58 ◼   ► everything, neural networks.

01:15:01 ◼   ► If you haven't got a neural network, there's no point.

01:15:03 ◼   ► - Take your product, whatever it is,

01:15:05 ◼   ► sprinkle a little AI on it, it'll be much better.

01:15:08 ◼   ► - That's how those investment monies come in.

01:15:11 ◼   ► However, the policy that Evernote revised and created

01:15:15 ◼   ► stated that employees, Evernote employees,

01:15:18 ◼   ► would be periodically checking people's notes

01:15:21 ◼   ► to ensure that the machine was doing the right thing,

01:15:24 ◼   ► that it was categorizing them correctly.

01:15:28 ◼   ► That's bad enough because it was automatically opting everybody in.

01:15:33 ◼   ► But the worst part was it explicitly stated in the privacy policy, "You cannot opt out

01:15:40 ◼   ► of our employees looking at your content."

01:15:45 ◼   ► The internet basically set itself on fire over this.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Which I don't blame people about.

01:15:51 ◼   ► Rightly so.

01:15:52 ◼   ► Again your service is marketed as essentially like a brain like here is your digital brain just put everything you ever want to remember into this thing.

01:16:05 ◼   ► And it is very rare that a privacy policy is so explicit in telling you what it's gonna do.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Usually they're a bit more vague about what's going to happen they're just like no we're doing this.

01:16:20 ◼   ► So, Evernote then went kind of on a tumble, as at first they kind of said, "Don't worry,

01:16:27 ◼   ► everything's anonymized, so they're not going to know who the note belongs to."

01:16:31 ◼   ► This didn't change people's anger, right?

01:16:33 ◼   ► Which I guess is not the point.

01:16:35 ◼   ► It's not the point that they can say, "Oh, this note belongs to Myke."

01:16:39 ◼   ► It's like, these are my things.

01:16:42 ◼   ► You shouldn't be reading them.

01:16:44 ◼   ► And also, whenever a company talks about their data being anonymized, I've seen enough examples

01:16:50 ◼   ► of how trivial it is to de-anonymize the data.

01:16:53 ◼   ► And then, and also it's like,

01:16:55 ◼   ► do you have your own name in your own note?

01:16:57 ◼   ► Right, like, are you anonymizing that?

01:17:00 ◼   ► Like, so did somebody read the note

01:17:03 ◼   ► to make sure it was adequately anonymous

01:17:05 ◼   ► before redacting it?

01:17:07 ◼   ► - 'Cause I could literally have a note in my Evernote

01:17:10 ◼   ► which had your personal information in.

01:17:13 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:17:14 ◼   ► - I could have saved your address, your phone number,

01:17:17 ◼   ► and your name into an Evernote note.

01:17:19 ◼   ► because of their business card app that they had,

01:17:23 ◼   ► which saved notes.

01:17:25 ◼   ► - Right. - Anywho,

01:17:27 ◼   ► eventually, after a few days of just a torrent of feedback,

01:17:32 ◼   ► Evernote backtracked on all of this.

01:17:37 ◼   ► They published a blog post saying that they would stop

01:17:40 ◼   ► this initiative and spoke about how privacy is at the center

01:17:44 ◼   ► of what they do and that they would be further revising

01:17:47 ◼   ► their privacy policy to strengthen this in the future.

01:17:51 ◼   ► They are now going to push ahead

01:17:52 ◼   ► with their machine learning program,

01:17:55 ◼   ► but without employees looking at notes

01:17:58 ◼   ► unless you explicitly opt in.

01:18:00 ◼   ► Now--

01:18:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'll be sure to do that.

01:18:03 ◼   ► - I still am not completely confident

01:18:07 ◼   ► and comfortable with this because my expectation

01:18:09 ◼   ► is this opt in will be a little box that pops up

01:18:11 ◼   ► and it's like, "Hey, would you like machine learning?"

01:18:16 ◼   ► And then you go, "Hell yeah, I would!"

01:18:17 ◼   ► But then it's like tick to say you accept the privacy policy.

01:18:21 ◼   ► And that privacy policy is that you can let people look at it.

01:18:27 ◼   ► No company should ever automatically opt in

01:18:30 ◼   ► anybody for anything.

01:18:32 ◼   ► Never, good or bad.

01:18:33 ◼   ► You should always, because any automatic opt-in

01:18:36 ◼   ► feels like there's something bad behind it.

01:18:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it does.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Because that's why it's an auto opt-in, right?

01:18:43 ◼   ► It's like, we just want to move right past this

01:18:45 ◼   ► quickly as possible.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Then Evernote released Evernote 8.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Evernote 8 is a full overhaul of the iOS app.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Is it though?

01:18:53 ◼   ► Is it though Myke?

01:18:54 ◼   ► This is what they're saying!

01:18:56 ◼   ► Because here's my review of Evernote 8.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Evernote 8, it's less green.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah it's the Evernote you always knew and now there are colours to make your text.

01:19:08 ◼   ► I mean, I saw that there was a, you know, because you know how like when a company gets acquired now, your response is like, "Oh no."

01:19:18 ◼   ► I saw Evernote 8 in the developer notes in the update on my phone, and they're like, "All new version of Evernote!"

01:19:26 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh, here we go again." Right? Like, it's another all new update, and updated it, opened it, took a look,

01:19:34 ◼   ► took a look, and I have to say was actually quite relieved that it was not another just like

01:19:41 ◼   ► tremendous radical redesign of the whole thing.

01:19:44 ◼   ► But then I was baffled by this huge like press campaign about how different it is.

01:19:50 ◼   ► It's like this thing seems essentially exactly the same.

01:19:54 ◼   ► You just took out all the green.

01:19:55 ◼   ► Right now there's just a little green buttons.

01:19:58 ◼   ► But if I want to file a note, if I want to categorize anything,

01:20:04 ◼   ► It's just as much of a pain in the ass as it always was.

01:20:07 ◼   ► It's like, okay, well, you're the same app, Evernote.

01:20:10 ◼   ► You know, whatever, that's my review.

01:20:12 ◼   ► - I will say it does feel a little bit quicker.

01:20:15 ◼   ► Like one of my main problems with Evernote

01:20:17 ◼   ► is it took so long to do anything.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Like you'd press on a button and it felt like

01:20:22 ◼   ► it took longer than it should to open the note.

01:20:25 ◼   ► And I've played around with it a little

01:20:27 ◼   ► because like I've completely moved on from Evernote.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Like I use it for nothing now.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And just pressing the plus button to open a new note does feel quicker.

01:20:37 ◼   ► Now there's a really interesting Wired article about all of this and they spend an incredible

01:20:43 ◼   ► amount of time in this article talking about their machine learning.

01:20:47 ◼   ► But it does it in a way that all companies talk about machine learning which drives me

01:20:52 ◼   ► bonkers.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Everything is what machine learning could do for you in the future.

01:21:00 ◼   ► Google will drive me mad at this right now.

01:21:02 ◼   ► presentation they have, they talk about Google Assistant and they show these videos which

01:21:06 ◼   ► are amazing but it doesn't do any of this stuff. It's like this is what Google Assistant

01:21:12 ◼   ► could do in the future.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

01:21:16 ◼   ► So like this article talks about how like soon you might be able to take a photo of

01:21:20 ◼   ► a whiteboard after a meeting, stick it in Evernote and the app will automatically pull

01:21:23 ◼   ► out action items and add them to your to-do list. That would be amazing.

01:21:27 ◼   ► When it does it, if ever.

01:21:29 ◼   ► But I could say that, just so you know, in the future, machine learning will be applied

01:21:34 ◼   ► to cortex and we'll do all of your thinking for you.

01:21:37 ◼   ► That's how it's gonna happen.

01:21:40 ◼   ► I just love that a big part of their redesign wasn't the redesign.

01:21:47 ◼   ► Like Evernote 8 was gonna be about laying the foundations of machine learning, but like

01:21:51 ◼   ► three weeks before, they burned that bridge with everyone.

01:21:57 ◼   ► And they're saying like, oh, in this like big piece, like it was a big like kind of

01:22:00 ◼   ► like a big editorial piece with Wired.

01:22:03 ◼   ► And they're talking about how like they need access to our data and they promise to be

01:22:07 ◼   ► transparent.

01:22:08 ◼   ► You ruined it.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Like we've spent a lot of time talking about Evernote because I think it is one of the

01:22:13 ◼   ► products that like I would say maybe of all of the apps that we use, a large portion of

01:22:18 ◼   ► our listener base uses just because they've been around for so long.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:22:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:22:24 ◼   ► Evernote has been around for forever.

01:22:26 ◼   ► like 10 years or something. You know like I remember using Evernote very early on in my bank

01:22:33 ◼   ► career. Like you know it was like a good like 10-12 years ago something like that now. So like

01:22:40 ◼   ► there is a chance that like you've either used it or you're using it but like at this point they are

01:22:46 ◼   ► just they are like the old elephant. Yeah well I mean this the other reason the company is sort of

01:22:52 ◼   ► interesting is this discussion around it being like the first dead unicorn.

01:22:57 ◼   ► You know this idea of like this is a company that a ton of venture money has been poured into that did incredible

01:23:05 ◼   ► expanding and that's had this very long period of seeming like it had no idea what it was doing.

01:23:12 ◼   ► I know as the joke goes busy selling socks right when nobody cared

01:23:16 ◼   ► that they've the company has like

01:23:19 ◼   ► downsized. So I think it's an interesting thing to

01:23:23 ◼   ► especially because like Evernote seems

01:23:26 ◼   ► fundamentally like such a simple thing. I know we've discussed it before but I'm just like baffled

01:23:31 ◼   ► why they have all of these offices and so many employees and all of this this other stuff.

01:23:35 ◼   ► So I think it's it's an interesting company

01:23:38 ◼   ► to discuss. It's obviously like it's a thing that I want to succeed because I'm tied to it.

01:23:43 ◼   ► I have nowhere else to go so it has to.

01:23:45 ◼   ► But it is it's

01:23:48 ◼   ► frustrating and sort of weird to see like the privacy policy thing was obviously very upsetting and it's like okay

01:23:54 ◼   ► I'm glad you backtracked but it's concerning that this was a this was your idea in the first place. Yeah, and

01:24:01 ◼   ► Like brand new Evernote 8 which is exactly the same but with promises of machine learning

01:24:08 ◼   ► It feels like are these the new socks?

01:24:10 ◼   ► like are I have a hard time imagining that like the

01:24:15 ◼   ► the best machine learning people in the world when they think of where they're going to work.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Evernote is the first place on their list of where they might want to work.

01:24:24 ◼   ► Like it's a very... it just feels weird. It feels weird. It feels like you're making a bunch of promises.

01:24:32 ◼   ► And it's like, "What I don't want to see Evernote are promises. Like I want to see this thing like work really well.

01:24:38 ◼   ► I'd like to be able to file notes in a convenient way on my iPad."

01:24:43 ◼   ► It was just still just infuriating.

01:24:47 ◼   ► It's like, again, this is my own particular use of Evernote, but I never open up Evernote and add a note that way.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I'm always using the share sheet and sending something to Evernote and then dealing with it later.

01:24:58 ◼   ► But Evernote is one of the like the very few apps where I feel like I have to go to my Mac to do a

01:25:03 ◼   ► bunch of stuff in any kind of timely fashion because I don't want to tap 10,000 times to sort my notes.

01:25:08 ◼   ► But that was the first thing I checked when I opened that app like, "Oh, can I categorize stuff more easily?"

01:25:13 ◼   ► Nope. I will be curious though to see if in this update it finally does the thing which

01:25:19 ◼   ► supposedly is a feature of the pro service, which is the ability to download all of your notes onto your device and

01:25:28 ◼   ► I've had that toggled like download everything please. I've had that toggled on all of my devices

01:25:34 ◼   ► Never works. Never works. Not ever. Which is a great thing to discover like when you're flying on an airplane

01:25:42 ◼   ► You want to look through a bunch of notes for a project that you're working on. It's like, oh they're not here.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Or, the notebooks that it does download, my absolute favorite thing is, by download it means downloads the text, but no attachments.

01:25:54 ◼   ► Like, oh, okay, great, thanks, thanks.

01:25:57 ◼   ► So, I'll be curious to see if that actually works this time around, but I haven't had the time to test that out.

01:26:02 ◼   ► Let alone give it time to actually download the thousands and thousands of notes that I have.

01:26:07 ◼   ► I feel sorry for you.

01:26:09 ◼   ► I feel sorry for me too, Myke.

01:26:11 ◼   ► like you just stuck now like you've tried everything you just stuck with you stuck with them

01:26:16 ◼   ► yeah Microsoft OneNote people please don't recommend it to me again

01:26:20 ◼   ► if I haven't been able to explain to you yet why it's not useful for me I'm not going to achieve that

01:26:26 ◼   ► just please don't recommend it anymore I'm fully aware it doesn't work for me but thanks

01:26:30 ◼   ► oh I have a recommendation for you

01:26:32 ◼   ► oh what is it Myke?

01:26:34 ◼   ► Microsoft make this app it's called OneNote

01:26:37 ◼   ► oh thank you

01:26:38 ◼   ► it does what you need

01:26:40 ◼   ► I'm sure it does except for the parts that I need you're not using it, right? Yeah

01:26:44 ◼   ► I'm holding it wrong use one note better

01:26:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a great solution

01:26:50 ◼   ► So during cortex miss the cortex subreddit were keeping themselves entertained

01:26:57 ◼   ► Whilst the show was was having its seasonal break and

01:27:02 ◼   ► I I there are a couple of things that popped out to me that I really enjoyed. Mm-hmm. One of them is a

01:27:10 ◼   ► a Google doc, which was created by the Reddit user, DoctorOpenMind, where they are going

01:27:17 ◼   ► through the show, and they're up to episode 37, and they're going through and writing

01:27:22 ◼   ► out the things that they have learned from the show. But they're not like completely

01:27:30 ◼   ► as you would expect them to be. So like there are lessons in there, but there are also like

01:27:37 ◼   ► pieces of information about us. Like for example, how to be more productive. Gray feels more

01:27:43 ◼   ► productive if he works while the dishwasher or the laundry machine are working.

01:27:47 ◼   ► It's true. It's true things, but they're like weird things. It's kind of like a,

01:27:53 ◼   ► it's an interesting thing to like look through this document and see like what did this person

01:27:57 ◼   ► pick out. Yeah, no, this is really fun to see. It's like somebody's personal trip through Cortex

01:28:04 ◼   ► and making notes as they go along about various things.

01:28:07 ◼   ► So yeah, I think this is definitely something to just take a little look through.

01:28:12 ◼   ► It's very interesting to see what somebody else gets out of the show.

01:28:16 ◼   ► And it's a lot of work to compile it all together into this big document.

01:28:20 ◼   ► But I definitely was interested to flip through the pages

01:28:24 ◼   ► and see what they were getting out of the various episodes.

01:28:26 ◼   ► And also, there is something which I have wished for for a long time.

01:28:32 ◼   ► And it's finally happened.

01:28:36 ◼   ► Somebody has taken a part of our show and created an animation.

01:28:43 ◼   ► And they picked a great moment which was actually in episode 37 where we're talking about stickers

01:28:49 ◼   ► in iOS 10.

01:28:51 ◼   ► And I have watched this video three times and I find new hilarious things in it every

01:28:57 ◼   ► time.

01:28:58 ◼   ► So I'm going to put it in the show notes.

01:29:00 ◼   ► I really recommend people watch it. The animation style is like super weird in like a great way.

01:29:08 ◼   ► It really reminds me of grade A under A. I could see that. I could see that. Yeah.

01:29:14 ◼   ► Because it's like super bare bones but full of inside jokes and everything is written in comic

01:29:19 ◼   ► sans. Which I love. Yeah it's a fun little animation to look at. It's very Microsoft

01:29:27 ◼   ► paint style looking and the thing that I'm aware of is the person who put it together,

01:29:32 ◼   ► they spent a ton of time on it because as someone who's done animation, like I'm always

01:29:38 ◼   ► just so aware of all of the cuts and all of the changes that have to happen on the screen

01:29:42 ◼   ► and the video is so fast in some places so this is a huge amount of work but I have to

01:29:48 ◼   ► say I really enjoyed it and it was very funny to hear that little segment of you and me

01:29:55 ◼   ► talking about you sending me stickers with like dopey music playing underneath

01:30:00 ◼   ► it the whole time right just it made the thing very entertaining so it looked

01:30:04 ◼   ► like a fun Cortexmas project for someone and listeners should check it out