Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm just waiting for you man, anytime you want to start, I'm perfectly ready to start.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Always ready to go.

00:00:06 ◼   ► 100% of the time.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Something we didn't talk about last time was that you snuck into WWDC.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I guess that happened.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Yeah it did happen.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I feel like I have been so busy, I have lost all sense of time.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Yeah we're both back in London now.

00:00:25 ◼   ► You arrived significantly lighter than me because you went to VidCon as well.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Yeah. I'm freshly in London, and so still, freshly jet-lagged, actually.

00:00:35 ◼   ► But I'm back. Back for, I think, three weeks before I turn right back around and go back to America.

00:00:44 ◼   ► But for the moment, I am here.

00:00:46 ◼   ► You're doing this to yourself.

00:00:48 ◼   ► I know. It's the summer of lots of travel and not fun hashtag.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Yeah, see I've at least given myself five weeks before I go back.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Oh yeah? What are you going back for? I don't even remember.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I'm going to Memphis.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Oh right.

00:01:02 ◼   ► For Relay FM's two year anniversary.

00:01:04 ◼   ► That should be fun.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Yeah, that's gonna be good. I'm looking forward to it. Although Memphis in August seems like

00:01:08 ◼   ► a really bad idea.

00:01:09 ◼   ► I'm sure it's fine.

00:01:11 ◼   ► I think I'm gonna melt.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Look I think unlike London, Memphis should be built for the fact that it gets to be 100

00:01:18 ◼   ► degrees. So you should be fine as long as you stay indoors.

00:01:20 ◼   ► I just go there to stay in my hotel for the whole time. It's like it's too hot to go outside.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I'll just stay here.

00:01:24 ◼   ► It's a great approach, right?

00:01:25 ◼   ► To vacations, just staying in the hotel.

00:01:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's great.

00:01:30 ◼   ► I see literally no problem with this.

00:01:32 ◼   ► So you should have a great time in Memphis.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Just pick a good hotel.

00:01:36 ◼   ► - When you were in WWDC,

00:01:38 ◼   ► people know that you were in San Francisco,

00:01:40 ◼   ► but you actually went into Moscone

00:01:43 ◼   ► where they hold the developer conference.

00:01:44 ◼   ► You found a way in,

00:01:45 ◼   ► I think you broke through like an open window

00:01:47 ◼   ► or something like that,

00:01:48 ◼   ► is the word that on the street.

00:01:50 ◼   ► What did you actually do there?

00:01:54 ◼   ► What did I do? Yeah. Uh I snuck around. That that's what I

00:02:00 ◼   ► did. What is sneaking around in there? Did you go and see some

00:02:03 ◼   ► like talks or like sessions? Yeah, so sneaking around means

00:02:09 ◼   ► being super sneaky and also tweeting about the fact that I

00:02:13 ◼   ► was in WWDC. You were sneaky for about 6 minutes I think

00:02:16 ◼   ► before you started incessantly tweeting about the fact that

00:02:20 ◼   ► you'd broken in. Well what actually occurred was I got in there there were a

00:02:25 ◼   ► few things that I did really want to do and then once I felt like okay great I

00:02:29 ◼   ► have had minimum viable WWDC experience and if I get caught now I won't mind so

00:02:35 ◼   ► much then I started tweeting so I was I was quiet and mute I think for the first

00:02:39 ◼   ► few hours and then afterward I was like oh the hell with this I'm just gonna

00:02:44 ◼   ► tweet about the fact that I'm here because it's funny to do. I mean the

00:02:47 ◼   ► The answer to your question, "What did I do there?"

00:02:51 ◼   ► I mean, primarily I was really just a tourist at WWDC.

00:02:56 ◼   ► I am not a developer. I have no real reason to be there whatsoever.

00:03:02 ◼   ► But I am interested in Apple. I'm interested in development in an abstract kind of way.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I'm curious to see a little bit of, not exactly behind the scenes, but a little bit more of

00:03:17 ◼   ► the business side of Apple.

00:03:20 ◼   ► What is it that Apple does with this conference?

00:03:21 ◼   ► What are the kinds of people who are going there?

00:03:24 ◼   ► How do these talks go?

00:03:25 ◼   ► I was just curious to see all of this stuff in person.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And so I went in and actually I attended a few of the sessions.

00:03:34 ◼   ► I was just trying to pick titles that seemed at least vaguely relevant to my interests.

00:03:41 ◼   ► You sound surprised by that, Myke.

00:03:43 ◼   ► I mean, I know that you have a better base understanding than I do for some of this stuff,

00:03:50 ◼   ► but any session that I've ever seen kind of really bores me because they start doing code

00:03:55 ◼   ► on stage and I just can't understand it, no matter how much I try.

00:04:00 ◼   ► Yeah, this is a case where I have no experience with Swift, and I have no experience with

00:04:09 ◼   ► C, Swift's predecessor language.

00:04:13 ◼   ► I mean, the language I am most familiar with is actually Lisp from years ago, which is

00:04:18 ◼   ► a bizarre language.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I don't even know what that one is.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Yeah, if you just look at what Lisp looks like, it is like no other programming language

00:04:27 ◼   ► because the whole thing is based on parentheses. It doesn't even have... it is just missing

00:04:35 ◼   ► many of the features that you would expect a normal computer programming language to

00:04:38 ◼   ► have.

00:04:39 ◼   ► Mhmm, yeah, all those good features, they're all missed.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Yes, that's right, Myke, you know which ones.

00:04:43 ◼   ► The good ones.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Yes, all of the good ones.

00:04:45 ◼   ► It has all the bad ones, though.

00:04:47 ◼   ► No, it's simple and beautiful and impractical for very many situations. But nonetheless,

00:04:54 ◼   ► it's the one that I have the most experience with.

00:04:56 ◼   ► What did she use it for?

00:04:57 ◼   ► This is the one that's used for some of the stuff now that's being done in artificial intelligence research.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Uh oh.

00:05:04 ◼   ► So at the time it was used for genetic algorithms and genetic programming.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I have no idea if the language is still in use today for those purposes.

00:05:14 ◼   ► But, you know, ten years ago this was the language that, because of some of its strange features,

00:05:20 ◼   ► was very, very useful for doing the kind of thing where you are writing a program to program itself,

00:05:26 ◼   ► as opposed to writing it to explicitly solve a problem.

00:05:30 ◼   ► So LISP, very very weird, and probably not a language you would want to use under most circumstances,

00:05:35 ◼   ► but the thing that I was familiar with years ago, and while I could not program my way out of a paper bag today,

00:05:43 ◼   ► even with LISP, if I'm sitting in a session at WWDC and they do the throwing code on the screen thing,

00:05:52 ◼   ► While I will agree with you, it does--the level of boringness, personally, does go up quite a lot during those moments,

00:05:59 ◼   ► I can still at least follow the gist of what is going on.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Like, I have a sense of what they're talking about or what this code is doing, even though I can't follow the details.

00:06:12 ◼   ► So, that's why sitting in a session, it was an interesting thing to do during this experience.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Now like I said, I just tried to pick ones that were relevant to my interest.

00:06:23 ◼   ► So the first one I went to was on ResearchKit.

00:06:27 ◼   ► So they were doing a little session about some of the changes with ResearchKit,

00:06:32 ◼   ► which is their system that allows scientists and medical researchers

00:06:37 ◼   ► to try to collect data from patients and try to give feedback to patients.

00:06:41 ◼   ► And that was interesting to see, like, what they're up to there.

00:06:45 ◼   ► And then I also just sat in on another one which was about developing games for the Apple Watch.

00:06:50 ◼   ► And like the whole notion of that I thought was really funny because there's so little space here.

00:06:55 ◼   ► I was just kind of curious to see, you know, like what do they think is a viable option for a game.

00:07:02 ◼   ► And I mean to date the only thing I have ever seen which I thought was kind of an interesting game for Apple Watch

00:07:08 ◼   ► was something called, I think it was called Lifeline?

00:07:12 ◼   ► Yes, there we go. It's the astronaut and you have to kind of talk to the astronaut.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Right, yeah. That I thought was interesting.

00:07:19 ◼   ► And it's essentially like a little text adventure is kind of what's occurring.

00:07:23 ◼   ► But I thought the whole idea of a wrist communicator and you're sending messages back and forth,

00:07:27 ◼   ► like it really worked on the Apple Watch.

00:07:29 ◼   ► But I was curious to see like, what are they developing for games in general?

00:07:33 ◼   ► Like if they're having a session here,

00:07:34 ◼   ► they clearly think that there is something to the idea of gaming on the Apple Watch.

00:07:38 ◼   ► So I went in and I watched that and I thought it was interesting.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And I also like to try to look out for the things that Apple isn't saying.

00:07:46 ◼   ► So I couldn't help but notice during the entire time I was sitting in that Apple Watch session

00:07:51 ◼   ► that they were never ever mentioning force pressing on the Apple Watch.

00:07:56 ◼   ► And then I cashed my mind back to the WWDC announcement and I thought,

00:08:00 ◼   ► "Huh, I don't think they mentioned anything about force pressing there either."

00:08:04 ◼   ► And so just little things like that, I just get curious and I think,

00:08:07 ◼   ► "I wonder what's up with that?"

00:08:09 ◼   ► There are many situations here where it would seem to make sense that you'd want to have force pressing on the screen,

00:08:13 ◼   ► especially for games, but it seems notably absent.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So, yeah, I just like being in those sessions and trying to read between the lines of what Apple's up to,

00:08:23 ◼   ► which is, you know, always fun doing the kind of Kremlinology of Apple discussions and events.

00:08:30 ◼   ► So yeah, that was primarily what I was doing in the morning.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I'm pleased that you did it. There was a conversation where I admitted that I was way too chicken to do this

00:08:40 ◼   ► To sneak in I would be too scared that I'd get caught

00:08:45 ◼   ► See the trick with so many of these things is to just

00:08:50 ◼   ► Try to act very confidently when you walk through the door, right?

00:08:54 ◼   ► But this is why I know that I couldn't because I would be too scared of getting caught right? I couldn't act that way

00:09:00 ◼   ► You just gotta walk through the door with your forged and/or stolen ticket and/or gifted ticket, who knows?

00:09:07 ◼   ► And just, you know, the trick is like you look past the guy at the door like you're already in.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Like you're not concerned what he's thinking about when you're walking in the door.

00:09:17 ◼   ► If you look nervously at the security guard and tremblingly hand over your ticket, as I'm sure you would have done,

00:09:23 ◼   ► then they're going to know. They're going to know something's up.

00:09:25 ◼   ► but you act like you're already in the event as you're walking in the event and you're just being

00:09:30 ◼   ► minorly inconvenienced by having two hand over the ticket that's what you do so that's what I did and

00:09:35 ◼   ► it worked it worked just fine good and the fact that I had a valid ticket probably helped yeah it

00:09:39 ◼   ► was valid right like the biggest air quotes the ticket existed yeah that's true that's true the

00:09:46 ◼   ► ticket existed uh might not have been valid for me I think they're not transferable so what about

00:09:51 ◼   ► the people? Like, do you speak to anyone? Were you staying completely incognito because of

00:09:57 ◼   ► not only the fact that you like to be incognito, you were also there sneaking?

00:10:01 ◼   ► Yeah, so the people is an interesting thing. Once people knew that I was at WWDC, I did

00:10:08 ◼   ► start getting recognized by a few people who were there, and that was fine. And also I was able to

00:10:17 ◼   ► Actually end up speaking to a few people who make apps that I use which was an interesting

00:10:24 ◼   ► Experience to be able to do that. I feel so sorry for those people

00:10:27 ◼   ► Why do you say that Myke why do you say that?

00:10:31 ◼   ► Because I imagine like oh, hey, I really love your app. Here is 65 features. I would like you to implement

00:10:37 ◼   ► The only I need

00:10:40 ◼   ► See I try to take the entire

00:10:45 ◼   ► opposite tack in those moments. You might think that I would harass the developers,

00:10:50 ◼   ► but mostly I feel like people do things for their own reasons. If someone asks,

00:10:55 ◼   ► then maybe I'm ready to offer a bunch of things that I would like. But even then, I know full well

00:11:01 ◼   ► which features are just for me.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And so I will preface that in the conversation of "this is a feature that you should not implement because it is just for me."

00:11:09 ◼   ► But I'm still going to mention it if you ask, right? I'll do that kind of thing.

00:11:13 ◼   ► But no, I don't feel the need to harass any of the developers I am fortunate enough to speak to.

00:11:20 ◼   ► And really, I just like being able to talk to people and get some sense of

00:11:26 ◼   ► why have they structured the app this way?

00:11:29 ◼   ► Or like, what interesting directions are they maybe going to take it in the future?

00:11:33 ◼   ► Like, I think that's a-- it's just an interesting thing to be able to do.

00:11:38 ◼   ► and something like being on the inside of WWDC has an unusually high density of people who work on a thing which I directly use.

00:11:51 ◼   ► So after the sessions were over I was kind of running around and meeting a few different people for a few different things

00:11:58 ◼   ► and that's partly why I was saying on Twitter that I was at WWDC

00:12:03 ◼   ► because I was able to kind of catch a few people that way.

00:12:07 ◼   ► And in particular, I was actually lucky enough that a guy named Harlan was able to give me a demo of the thing that I was most interested in

00:12:17 ◼   ► from the WWDC announcement, which was Playgrounds for Swift for the iPad.

00:12:24 ◼   ► So I felt very fortunate that at one point I was able to wander down to this big ground area at WWDC where you could work with Apple employees

00:12:35 ◼   ► and he was able to show me the thing that had been demoed earlier in the week of Apple's attempt to

00:12:42 ◼   ► put a program on their iPads which can be used to

00:12:47 ◼   ► learn how to code in Swift. So that was very exciting.

00:12:52 ◼   ► That was probably the highlight of the day being able to play around with that thing, which I am

00:12:57 ◼   ► super interested in. It looks very, very

00:13:02 ◼   ► powerful. It is very impressive to see it in person and to discuss some of the ways

00:13:09 ◼   ► this might be implemented in the future or where it might be going and yeah I was very

00:13:14 ◼   ► very impressed with it and I felt quite lucky to be able to do that.

00:13:18 ◼   ► If you installed iOS 10 on any of your iPads? No, I haven't installed anything yet. I will

00:13:24 ◼   ► probably wait for one of the public betas and then I will install it on my iPad.

00:13:31 ◼   ► it on one of my least used iPads, primarily so that I can play around with the Swift Playground

00:13:38 ◼   ► thing.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I have it on one of my older iPads. I only have one old iPad, the iPad Air 2, and I have

00:13:44 ◼   ► it on there and I've been enjoying the stickers and all of the emoji stuff, texting with Federico,

00:13:50 ◼   ► so that's been really good.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Of course, of course, you're going straight for the stickers.

00:13:55 ◼   ► It's the most exciting thing.

00:13:57 ◼   ► I don't agree, I think Swift Playground is the most exciting thing. I think you are wrong.

00:14:01 ◼   ► I keep meaning to play with it, but I haven't yet. It's installed.

00:14:03 ◼   ► I just haven't done anything with it because I'm too busy sending heart stickers

00:14:07 ◼   ► to everybody.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Yeah, of course. Of course, Myke. I don't know, man. I was thinking,

00:14:13 ◼   ► maybe we could do a spinoff podcast where you and I could learn Swift together

00:14:17 ◼   ► called core tech. I think that's, that was going to happen.

00:14:22 ◼   ► But it seems like since you're just distracted by the stickers,

00:14:25 ◼   ► I'll probably need to find another cohost, another developer cohost for core tech.

00:14:29 ◼   ► I can do it only if we spell it with a K.

00:14:32 ◼   ► - Maybe, maybe that could work.

00:14:37 ◼   ► - C-O-R-T-E-K.

00:14:39 ◼   ► - Cortex?

00:14:40 ◼   ► - Cortex.

00:14:42 ◼   ► - Perfect, I think this will cause no confusion at all

00:14:45 ◼   ► on the relay page.

00:14:47 ◼   ► - Not at all, I don't know why you'd have an issue.

00:14:50 ◼   ► The brain would just be made out of metal

00:14:52 ◼   ► and we're good to go.

00:14:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, see, you can envision it already.

00:14:55 ◼   ► The logo would be green instead, like computer green.

00:14:59 ◼   ► Perfect.

00:15:00 ◼   ► - Cortex.

00:15:01 ◼   ► - Episode one, UI views.

00:15:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:15:06 ◼   ► - What are they?

00:15:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:08 ◼   ► - That's every episode.

00:15:10 ◼   ► Just go, what is it?

00:15:11 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:15:12 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:15:14 ◼   ► All I know is that I am making a little guy move around

00:15:17 ◼   ► on a playground.

00:15:18 ◼   ► This is my level of coding skill.

00:15:20 ◼   ► - Today's episode of Cortex is brought to you

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00:16:47 ◼   ► So straight after WWDC, instead of going home, which I would have wanted to do, which you

00:16:54 ◼   ► maybe should have done, you headed to LA instead to seek the bright lights of Hollywood and

00:17:03 ◼   ► to attend VidCon.

00:17:07 ◼   ► What is VidCon?

00:17:08 ◼   ► Can you explain VidCon like in a one-liner?

00:17:11 ◼   ► What is it?

00:17:12 ◼   ► Because it feels like the YouTube conference.

00:17:14 ◼   ► No, Myke.

00:17:15 ◼   ► It is not the YouTube conference.

00:17:16 ◼   ► It is the online video conference.

00:17:18 ◼   ► Oh, I forget about all the other online video services that are probably rolled into there

00:17:23 ◼   ► and make up a big part of VidCon.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Yes, they, VidCon is not the YouTube conference.

00:17:30 ◼   ► They're very clear on that.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Despite that YouTube announces new features and their CEO speaks on the main stage several

00:17:39 ◼   ► times and that they bring in all the big YouTube stars, it is the online video conference and

00:17:45 ◼   ► We also have scores of Vimeo producers, I guess, somewhere at VidCon.

00:17:53 ◼   ► They had five people and they had all of them.

00:17:57 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:17:58 ◼   ► Oh, poor Vimeo.

00:17:59 ◼   ► They're in a different business.

00:18:01 ◼   ► They have a different business, Model Vimeo.

00:18:03 ◼   ► But it's still fun to just make fun of them sometimes.

00:18:05 ◼   ► Or maybe the Amazon service that was announced a few months ago that I haven't heard anything

00:18:11 ◼   ► about.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Oh yeah!

00:18:13 ◼   ► Oh yeah!

00:18:14 ◼   ► I just remembered it the other day and I was like, what happened with that? I think I signed up for it and then I just totally forgot about it.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Oh well. But yeah, so Amazon strongly represented at VidCon too.

00:18:28 ◼   ► So just to be clear, it is not the YouTube conference. YouTube does not run it.

00:18:32 ◼   ► It is the online video conference and it is run by the vlogbrothers.

00:18:38 ◼   ► I think this is the sixth year it's been going and it has turned very rapidly into just this enormous, enormous industry event

00:18:56 ◼   ► event that this year had I think 26,000 people. It's an absolutely, absolutely enormous thing.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And for comparisons sake, WWDC has 5,000 people. So it's five times larger than WWDC.

00:19:12 ◼   ► No, don't want it.

00:19:16 ◼   ► No? Doesn't sound good? It's absolutely enormous. And because of its enormity, it's a little

00:19:25 ◼   ► bit hard to try to describe what the experience is like being there, but I guess you could

00:19:32 ◼   ► say there's three main groups of people who are showing up. There are people who work

00:19:38 ◼   ► in the industry of online video, and this can mean all kinds of stuff. This can mean

00:19:44 ◼   ► advertisers, this can mean production companies, this can mean agents, like this is all the

00:19:50 ◼   ► industry stuff, there are creators, so people like myself, people who produce online video,

00:19:57 ◼   ► and then there are an enormous number of fans who are showing up to scream when their favorite

00:20:04 ◼   ► YouTube person comes on stage.

00:20:07 ◼   ► It's just an enormous, enormous gathering that is difficult to put into words and that

00:20:13 ◼   ► I had avoided for very many years, but because of RelayCon/WWDC week being the week directly

00:20:23 ◼   ► before VidCon, I decided to basically have a two week period of "I'm gonna knuckle down

00:20:35 ◼   ► and I'm gonna meet a lot of people.

00:20:37 ◼   ► This is what I'm gonna do.

00:20:39 ◼   ► I'm just gonna set aside these two weeks.

00:20:41 ◼   ► I might as well.

00:20:42 ◼   ► both in California. If I'm flying out there for one, I might as well fly out there for

00:20:48 ◼   ► the other, and then it becomes kind of an interesting way to spend a bunch of time during

00:20:52 ◼   ► the summer. So that's what I did. I spent two weeks at each event meeting an enormous

00:20:58 ◼   ► number of people and then being tremendously exhausted afterward.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Do you consider this networking? Would you say that that's what you're doing here?

00:21:10 ◼   ► That's an interesting question. I want to say no because the word networking is like

00:21:16 ◼   ► a sleazy word. Doesn't it feel that way?

00:21:19 ◼   ► It's become a dirty word. But I actually think that the core of what it is is a good

00:21:25 ◼   ► thing. And when I'm saying networking here, I'm not talking about like going to the

00:21:31 ◼   ► bar and doing like a corporate speed dating thing. Something I have seen and avoided.

00:21:38 ◼   ► so you can get to know the people in your adjacent teams.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Oh, I'm busy this evening.

00:21:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, many years ago, I did one of those kind of

00:21:46 ◼   ► businessy speed dating things.

00:21:48 ◼   ► - Oh, you did?

00:21:49 ◼   ► Oof.

00:21:50 ◼   ► - I was like, I don't like this.

00:21:51 ◼   ► That was, that was a different me in a different industry

00:21:56 ◼   ► many, many years ago, but even then I was like,

00:21:59 ◼   ► nope, do not want.

00:22:02 ◼   ► In no small part just because of how many hands

00:22:03 ◼   ► you're shaking in a short period of time.

00:22:06 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:22:07 ◼   ► But I mean it more in the sense of meeting new people

00:22:11 ◼   ► who are in your industry that you're getting to know

00:22:14 ◼   ► to maybe strike up some kind of working relationship

00:22:17 ◼   ► or maybe even for like for friendship or for business

00:22:20 ◼   ► or just so you have more contacts

00:22:23 ◼   ► that if something ever pops up one day,

00:22:25 ◼   ► you can be like, I know someone for this.

00:22:27 ◼   ► - It's interesting because I have also been thinking

00:22:31 ◼   ► a bunch about why did I do this?

00:22:36 ◼   ► Because this thing, I think almost everybody I have ever mentioned it to that I was going

00:22:43 ◼   ► to go to WWDC and VidCon one the week after the other was quite surprised that I would

00:22:51 ◼   ► do such a thing.

00:22:53 ◼   ► And I myself was a little bit surprised that it has even crossed my radar as a thing to

00:22:57 ◼   ► do.

00:22:58 ◼   ► But part of it was, I've just been thinking about how I did this and I'm doing this Year

00:23:07 ◼   ► of Less as part of my theme for the year.

00:23:11 ◼   ► And it's been crossing my mind about what do I do after the Year of Less.

00:23:18 ◼   ► And one of the things I was toying around with was the idea of a year of new, of maybe

00:23:22 ◼   ► doing new things.

00:23:24 ◼   ► And this certainly fell into the category of something that was new to do.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And in addition to just being a new thing to do, it was also just a ton of new people

00:23:38 ◼   ► to meet and a bunch of new people to interact with.

00:23:43 ◼   ► And my feeling is not so much that I'm going there and I'm sort of networking with the

00:23:53 ◼   ► idea that these people are business contacts. I think my primary feeling from this was just

00:24:02 ◼   ► one of there are very few people in the world who do the kind of work that I do. Especially

00:24:10 ◼   ► when you start talking about the online video side of it and doubly so when you start talking

00:24:16 ◼   ► about the online video side of it where my face is not visible on camera. That starts

00:24:22 ◼   ► That's getting into being the very very small numbers of people who do that.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And so part of going on this trip was being able to meet some new people in that field

00:24:37 ◼   ► in particular, which was a thing that I was able to do and I was very glad to be able

00:24:41 ◼   ► to do it.

00:24:42 ◼   ► But even more broadly, I find that people who make their living in a public way, and

00:24:53 ◼   ► so this can include people like developers, right?

00:24:56 ◼   ► They are making a thing and they are putting it out in public.

00:25:00 ◼   ► Or this can include lots of people in the periphery of the whole YouTube world.

00:25:04 ◼   ► They make a thing and they put it out in public.

00:25:09 ◼   ► just knowing more people like that is it's just nice to have contacts with

00:25:15 ◼   ► people who do similar things because even if you work in in different areas

00:25:20 ◼   ► there are a lot of comparisons and similar experiences so I can have

00:25:25 ◼   ► conversations with developers where I you know I don't know how to write code

00:25:31 ◼   ► but we can have a conversation that is sort of about like the creative process

00:25:37 ◼   ► because there are similarities between writing code and writing a script.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Like, they require a similar kind of work, and then there's also similar kind of responses to putting your work out in public.

00:25:48 ◼   ► So I just found it valuable to interact with people who, I mean, aside from you, Myke,

00:25:57 ◼   ► I know nobody in London in my social circle who does work like this.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And so it can always just be kind of weird that when you do work in public on the internet,

00:26:12 ◼   ► you feel like sort of connected to a bunch of people, but they're all always going to

00:26:16 ◼   ► be geographically distant because the frequency of anyone doing this work is so rare.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So I guess like in that sense it's networking because my feeling was a bit like, "I am going

00:26:33 ◼   ► to meet up with colleagues. They might not do the exact same thing that I do, but there

00:26:38 ◼   ► is a colleague-like relationship with a whole bunch of people. And also I can go meet with

00:26:46 ◼   ► people who are new colleagues to me, people I have never interacted before, but we have

00:26:52 ◼   ► this kind of commonality of doing work in public.

00:26:59 ◼   ► I don't know. That is my very long, probably overly detailed response to, was I networking?

00:27:05 ◼   ► I guess yes, but it depends slightly on what you mean by networking. But there was certainly

00:27:14 ◼   ► no speed dating business networking though.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Based on the type of networking that I think of and do, you were networking. This is how

00:27:24 ◼   ► I think of it. Just meeting people in your industry. I recommend to people always, if

00:27:29 ◼   ► you do something like software development or you're a designer or something like that,

00:27:32 ◼   ► there are probably meetups in your area. You don't have to go to California. There are

00:27:38 ◼   ► likely meetups that you can go to that will have like-minded people doing this kind of

00:27:44 ◼   ► thing so you can make these contacts yourself. I think that even though you're kind of maybe

00:27:49 ◼   ► approaching this from the sense of I just want to know people you know. For

00:27:53 ◼   ► kind of camaraderie and you know a sense of not kind of feeling alone in this

00:27:59 ◼   ► which you can at times especially when you work at home and in solitary ways

00:28:03 ◼   ► like we both do. It's nice to know that there are people out there that you can

00:28:07 ◼   ► talk to that you are aware of doing the same kind of thing that you are. But

00:28:13 ◼   ► there really is a business side of it that you potentially don't see right now.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Like look at me and you, right?

00:28:20 ◼   ► You reached out to me when I started Relay FM and it was a similar kind of thing and

00:28:26 ◼   ► we went for lunch and then we ended up working together like many months down the line.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And this is the same for me for me going to WWDC.

00:28:35 ◼   ► WWDC is one of the most important things on my calendar.

00:28:39 ◼   ► It is one of the most vital things that I do as part of my business in the year and

00:28:43 ◼   ► it has been the most vital thing that I have done in business over the last four years

00:28:47 ◼   ► as I've attended there because I get to meet people and put faces to names and kind of

00:28:53 ◼   ► get in front of people that I think are doing interesting work or that I enjoy their work

00:28:59 ◼   ► and then they get to learn a little bit about me they get to see how I interact and it's

00:29:04 ◼   ► kind of led to what relay FM is now you know all of the people that we work with are people

00:29:09 ◼   ► that I've met and that Stevens met at these types of events and over time we've struck

00:29:15 ◼   ► up friendships and working relationships which have eventually built to the thing that I'm

00:29:19 ◼   ► doing now.

00:29:20 ◼   ► I think it's really important to have these kind of in-person meetings and conversations

00:29:24 ◼   ► for people because it helps strengthen bonds.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Even if you know somebody online and you talk to them every single day over multiple messaging

00:29:32 ◼   ► services it can be really important to just see how they talk and look at their body language

00:29:38 ◼   ► and see their face when they talk to you in these in-person scenarios because it really

00:29:43 ◼   ► kind of just helps fill out the picture of that person because then when you're apart

00:29:47 ◼   ► again and you're talking as you were before, you then have a different kind of feeling

00:29:52 ◼   ► and sense for that individual and that can be so important for building the relationships

00:29:57 ◼   ► that you want to build, whether they're for friendship or for business.

00:29:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I definitely agree that no matter how much online contact you have with people,

00:30:08 ◼   ► It is fundamentally different to talk to people in person.

00:30:13 ◼   ► And that a relationship is always different after some amount of in-person time.

00:30:20 ◼   ► No matter how small has been spent.

00:30:23 ◼   ► And there's just no way around that.

00:30:26 ◼   ► I think this is just a side effect of, you know, humans being the monkeys that we are.

00:30:33 ◼   ► that there's something different that happens in your brain

00:30:39 ◼   ► after you meet someone in real life.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I think your monkey brain does a better job of

00:30:45 ◼   ► modeling the other person in your mind

00:30:48 ◼   ► when you are then talking to them online later.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Or it makes the person more real

00:30:55 ◼   ► in this way which is undefinable.

00:30:59 ◼   ► There were a number of people that I met this summer

00:31:01 ◼   ► who I had had a bunch of text interchanges with over the internet.

00:31:07 ◼   ► But it's still fundamentally different than when you actually see them in person

00:31:12 ◼   ► and spend some time together in person.

00:31:14 ◼   ► It's just like there's some part of your brain that kind of needs this

00:31:19 ◼   ► or that treats things differently when the person is more embodied for you.

00:31:27 ◼   ► you. And I do think that this is, it's like the next level of, I wrote this article a

00:31:33 ◼   ► while back called "faceless voices" talking about radio voices or narration voices and

00:31:40 ◼   ► how something in your brain changes if you ever see a picture of that person. Like if

00:31:45 ◼   ► you just hear someone's voice and then you see what they look like, your brain treats

00:31:49 ◼   ► it differently. And I really do, I really do think that that's something going on in

00:31:53 ◼   ► the mind. That if you hear a voice unconnected from a face, your brain experiences it in

00:31:59 ◼   ► a different way than once you know what the face looks like. And I think there's another

00:32:03 ◼   ► level past that, which is you've heard the person, you know what their face looks like,

00:32:10 ◼   ► but now they are sitting in front of you. And the two of you are exchanging non-verbal

00:32:18 ◼   ► communication in the form of body language or the way you're looking. I really do think

00:32:23 ◼   ► that that matters a lot for human interaction.

00:32:26 ◼   ► The internet can't replace that yet.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Maybe when VR gets good enough, but not at the moment.

00:32:33 ◼   ► I will just reiterate what you were saying earlier though,

00:32:37 ◼   ► that even if it is not my intention

00:32:40 ◼   ► to make business connections,

00:32:41 ◼   ► that doing this kind of stuff in the past

00:32:44 ◼   ► has definitely resulted in business opportunities.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Like the very first conference of this that I ever went to

00:32:52 ◼   ► was this conference organized by Henry of MinutePhysics called BrainSTEM at the Perimeter

00:32:57 ◼   ► Institute in Canada. And for various reasons I was trying to leave my teaching job at the

00:33:06 ◼   ► exact same time that that conference was happening. It was just like this horrible, horrible disaster

00:33:11 ◼   ► of like a difficult time to get to Canada for that conference. It was an incredible

00:33:17 ◼   ► nightmare. But I was determined to get there and I still really think that that might be

00:33:26 ◼   ► one of the most defining conferences I ever go to because it was the first time that I

00:33:32 ◼   ► met a bunch of people who are now professional colleagues and friends. And like, I'm absolutely

00:33:38 ◼   ► sure that if I had never gone to that Brainstem conference, I would never have started the

00:33:43 ◼   ► the Hello Internet podcast with Brady,

00:33:45 ◼   ► because that was the first time that I met him.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And because I met him then, when I met him again

00:33:52 ◼   ► at later conferences that YouTube put on,

00:33:54 ◼   ► now we weren't meeting for the first time,

00:33:56 ◼   ► we were already meeting as friends, right?

00:33:59 ◼   ► And starting a little bit earlier makes a difference.

00:34:02 ◼   ► And I also think that like the random acts

00:34:04 ◼   ► of intelligence show that happened a couple years ago now,

00:34:09 ◼   ► that would have never been put on

00:34:11 ◼   ► if the five of us hadn't met at Brainstem.

00:34:14 ◼   ► So, and those are definitely cases of getting to know people

00:34:18 ◼   ► and then thinking, hey,

00:34:19 ◼   ► maybe we could work together on a podcast.

00:34:21 ◼   ► Or, hey, the five of us really get along together,

00:34:24 ◼   ► maybe we could do some kind of fun one-off show.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Like you never know where it's going to go.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And like you said, our own podcast was just a side effect

00:34:33 ◼   ► of me reaching out to you mainly because it's like,

00:34:37 ◼   ► oh, look, it's another creator who lives in London.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Like let me send him a message

00:34:41 ◼   ► because I don't know anybody else who lives in the city.

00:34:43 ◼   ► You know, and then like, oh, surprise, surprise,

00:34:46 ◼   ► like we do similar work and so we get along

00:34:50 ◼   ► and then eventually, you know,

00:34:51 ◼   ► you pitch me on a podcast and here we are.

00:34:54 ◼   ► - So whilst it may have been exhausting and crazy

00:34:57 ◼   ► and huge and unwieldy,

00:35:00 ◼   ► you probably have made some connections at VidCon

00:35:04 ◼   ► which will prove fruitful in the long term.

00:35:07 ◼   ► - You never know.

00:35:09 ◼   ► you know, just, just with all these things,

00:35:13 ◼   ► it's impossible to know what the future holds.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And right now, all I can say is,

00:35:19 ◼   ► I was able to meet a bunch of new people

00:35:22 ◼   ► who I'd never met before.

00:35:23 ◼   ► That was kind of the purpose of doing this.

00:35:26 ◼   ► And I'm very glad that I went,

00:35:28 ◼   ► even though I'm still in like week two of recovery.

00:35:33 ◼   ► - Let me take a moment to thank Squarespace,

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00:35:59 ◼   ► worth sharing with the world.

00:36:01 ◼   ► There have been so many times in my life where I've needed a website for something, I have

00:36:06 ◼   ► a new idea or project that I want to start. Squarespace is the first place that I go because

00:36:10 ◼   ► you don't have to worry about anything, you don't have to worry about hosting, you don't

00:36:13 ◼   ► have to worry about scaling, you don't have to be someone like me, you would then have

00:36:15 ◼   ► to worry about learning how to develop and code a website. I have no idea how to do any

00:36:20 ◼   ► of this stuff. I don't know how to scale a site, I don't know how to do CSS, I don't

00:36:24 ◼   ► know any of this. Squarespace take care of it. They have professionally designed templates

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00:36:37 ◼   ► of people around the world.

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00:36:43 ◼   ► The ability to sell things for Squarespace's commerce platform which allows anyone to add

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00:37:07 ◼   ► This will get you 10% off your first purchase

00:37:09 ◼   ► and show your support for this show.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Thank you to Squarespace for continuing

00:37:12 ◼   ► to support Cortex and Real AFM.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Would you like to talk about our old friend Evernote?

00:37:19 ◼   ► Now I don't know if and when Evernote

00:37:22 ◼   ► has ever come up on the show,

00:37:25 ◼   ► but I know that we have both been Evernote users

00:37:27 ◼   ► for a long time.

00:37:30 ◼   ► Like I'm gonna hazard a guess to say that seriously I think I may have had an Evernote account for about ten years

00:37:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and I know that sounds like it sounds like an incredibly long time, but I

00:37:40 ◼   ► Think I really have it's getting if not then it's about eight, you know

00:37:46 ◼   ► It's getting close to ten years if not already ten years because I got in

00:37:49 ◼   ► Pretty much immediately from when they launched. Mm-hmm

00:37:53 ◼   ► the reason that you're bringing this up right now is because in the document for quite a while and

00:38:00 ◼   ► I have had a little bullet point which was simply called "F*ck Evernote"

00:38:05 ◼   ► Mhmm, yup.

00:38:07 ◼   ► As an item to talk about.

00:38:10 ◼   ► So many people that I know that use Evernote have in some way that feeling.

00:38:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And that probably comes with the fact that it's a 10 year old product.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I think there's many complicated things that are wrapped up here.

00:38:28 ◼   ► But I have just heard incidentally that Evernote has done some pricing changes

00:38:34 ◼   ► and so I feel like if we were ever going to get to this bullet point maybe this

00:38:39 ◼   ► week is the week. So the first thing is I would actually like it if you could

00:38:45 ◼   ► summarize for me in a clear and concise way what changes have just occurred at

00:38:50 ◼   ► Evernote because I cannot figure out for the life of me what's happening.

00:38:54 ◼   ► "Oh, I think you've asked the wrong person."

00:38:56 ◼   ► I can't work it out either.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Basically, they've increased their pricing plans,

00:39:02 ◼   ► so they're more expensive than they were before.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And the free plan, I think, only works with two devices now.

00:39:11 ◼   ► And if you want to use more than two devices,

00:39:15 ◼   ► you have to go to now one of the two paid plans,

00:39:18 ◼   ► plus and premium.

00:39:20 ◼   ► And I think it's very confusing.

00:39:25 ◼   ► And I know as a current Evernote premium customer,

00:39:30 ◼   ► they have not contacted me to tell me what's happening

00:39:32 ◼   ► to my account if I'm gonna be paying more.

00:39:34 ◼   ► It seems like I probably will be paying more.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And then they just have two kind of accounts

00:39:38 ◼   ► that have some different features

00:39:41 ◼   ► and different storage space.

00:39:43 ◼   ► - So clear, so simple, Myke.

00:39:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I try, honestly, that's as clear and simple

00:39:48 ◼   ► as I can make it.

00:39:49 ◼   ► Basically Evernote's more expensive and for free accounts they're restricting the amount

00:39:53 ◼   ► of devices you can use.

00:39:55 ◼   ► That's like in a nutshell.

00:39:56 ◼   ► But there is a lot of nuance to it which is making the whole thing a bit of a nightmare.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Yeah it's a bit confusing even just reading through the description of what they've changed

00:40:06 ◼   ► on the website.

00:40:08 ◼   ► It's like oh okay you've raised the prices but with only one of the plans can you search

00:40:13 ◼   ► inside of documents?

00:40:15 ◼   ► Isn't this the whole thing of which your service is?

00:40:17 ◼   ► "Okay, but now I need to have the most expensive one

00:40:20 ◼   ► to do that."

00:40:21 ◼   ► It just seems like I've seen a lot of people

00:40:22 ◼   ► who are super angry at Evernote about this.

00:40:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the OCR is only on premium now,

00:40:29 ◼   ► but like the expensive one,

00:40:32 ◼   ► and if you wanna download notes,

00:40:34 ◼   ► you have to have one of the paid ones.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Basically, they had a feature set

00:40:40 ◼   ► that was available to everyone,

00:40:41 ◼   ► and then they split it, and then they split it again,

00:40:44 ◼   ► and then they put the prices up.

00:40:45 ◼   ► - Right.

00:40:46 ◼   ► 10 year old product.

00:40:51 ◼   ► And sometimes it feels 10 years old.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Now, this pricing thing is interesting because

00:41:01 ◼   ► I think many people have had a feeling from the outside of

00:41:06 ◼   ► "What's going on Evernote?"

00:41:10 ◼   ► The company has gone through some weird announcements over the past year, if I remember correctly.

00:41:17 ◼   ► The CEO changed, then they laid off a bunch of people. I feel like I've just been hearing odd news about Evernote for a year.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Yeah, which makes you feel not super secure about a product that is supposed to be

00:41:33 ◼   ► keeping your off-board brain

00:41:35 ◼   ► Safe and synchronized and and searchable everywhere, you know, it doesn't it doesn't make you feel good

00:41:43 ◼   ► And it's also a company that seems to have been very very

00:41:48 ◼   ► Slow at making any kind of significant changes that people want

00:41:55 ◼   ► Actually, when we were in San Francisco, we ended up driving past the headquarters of

00:42:00 ◼   ► Evernote at one point.

00:42:01 ◼   ► We were looking at the building.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And asking them if they needed work chat.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:42:07 ◼   ► I believe someone might have suggested to write "Do you know about work chat on a brick?"

00:42:13 ◼   ► and throw it through the window.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Which is kind of the feeling about how intrusive Evernote is about letting you know if they

00:42:20 ◼   ► have work chat.

00:42:21 ◼   ► It's like, how many times do I have to close this notification?

00:42:24 ◼   ► Why don't you just throw a brick through my window at this point?

00:42:28 ◼   ► But when we drove past it, as with other companies, but particularly with Evernote, I looked at

00:42:34 ◼   ► this huge building and again had the feeling of, "What do all of the people in there do?"

00:42:43 ◼   ► I have no ability to understand how a building full of people equals the product that is

00:42:51 ◼   ► Evernote.

00:42:53 ◼   ► And I will now tell you the reason why I originally had that bullet point listed as it is in the

00:42:59 ◼   ► show notes.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Because okay, here is the selling point of Evernote.

00:43:04 ◼   ► Save everything in this digital brain.

00:43:08 ◼   ► This little app can just serve as your memory.

00:43:12 ◼   ► This is what all of their branding and marketing is about.

00:43:14 ◼   ► The elephant never forgets.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Right, their icon is an elephant, elephants never forget.

00:43:20 ◼   ► This is fantastic.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Okay, great.

00:43:22 ◼   ► I've been using Evernote for a very, very long time, as you have.

00:43:27 ◼   ► And you saw a little while ago for one of our Book Club episodes that I have a system

00:43:36 ◼   ► that I use with Evernote to make a record of all of the books that I read.

00:43:43 ◼   ► So here's this little workflow that I've had for quite a while.

00:43:46 ◼   ► I read a book.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Now I'm reading it on iBooks, formerly on Kindle, but it's the same idea.

00:43:51 ◼   ► And so I make a bunch of highlights as I go through the book.

00:43:55 ◼   ► And sometimes I type little notes to myself.

00:43:57 ◼   ► It's active reading and just pulling out the parts that I think are important or that are

00:44:03 ◼   ► interesting.

00:44:04 ◼   ► At the end of reading any particular book, I take screenshots of all of the pages with

00:44:10 ◼   ► highlights or notes on them.

00:44:13 ◼   ► And then I would make in Evernote a folder with the name of the book and I would dump

00:44:17 ◼   ► all of those pages in there.

00:44:18 ◼   ► I would go through again and make further annotations to future me.

00:44:23 ◼   ► And this is an extremely useful thing to do because when we do the book shows, for example,

00:44:29 ◼   ► I'm able to just pull up, "Oh, here's all the pages from the book," so I'm looking at

00:44:33 ◼   ► only the relevant sections and the notes to myself.

00:44:36 ◼   ► And also super valuable is because Evernote does all this optical character recognition,

00:44:42 ◼   ► I can search through all of that stuff.

00:44:45 ◼   ► And what's really useful is that you can't possibly remember everything from every book

00:44:51 ◼   ► that you've ever read, but if I'm doing a video on some topic, I can search for a couple

00:44:57 ◼   ► of keywords related to that video topic.

00:45:00 ◼   ► And sometimes I would find a page of text from a book I read a while ago that had something

00:45:05 ◼   ► interesting that was related to the topic that I'm working on now.

00:45:08 ◼   ► So it has been this way for me for years to keep books that I have read in active memory.

00:45:18 ◼   ► And this is along with all of the other various notes and things that I'm just collecting

00:45:23 ◼   ► regularly for videos and stuff.

00:45:27 ◼   ► So this is the process that I've been doing for quite a while.

00:45:29 ◼   ► And I'm really deep into Evernote with this, as you can quite imagine.

00:45:34 ◼   ► Now, about two months ago, which is when I first put this bullet point in the document,

00:45:39 ◼   ► I went to go follow my little process as normal, and I had finished a book, I had taken all

00:45:46 ◼   ► the screenshots, and I thought, "Okay, great, here we go. Time to make a new notebook and

00:45:50 ◼   ► time to save these pages into it." And I pressed the "Press the New Notebook" button. Huh,

00:45:56 ◼   ► that's funny. Nothing happens. Nothing happens when I press the New Notebook button. So I

00:46:01 ◼   ► So I try it on a different device, press the new notebook button, hmm, nothing happens.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Huh, how interesting. I open up AlterNote, which is that lovely

00:46:09 ◼   ► additional interface to Evernote, and the new notebook button is grayed out.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I can't even click it. Well gee, that's strange.

00:46:17 ◼   ► And then it dawns on me. I do a Google search for

00:46:21 ◼   ► Evernote notebook limit.

00:46:25 ◼   ► And sure enough, sure enough,

00:46:29 ◼   ► allow you to have 250 notebooks. Why? That is what I want to know! Why? Why, Evernote?

00:46:40 ◼   ► Isn't this your whole f*cking business? Is to remember all the things? Why? Why on earth

00:46:48 ◼   ► would you ever limit the number of notebooks that a person can have? Why

00:46:53 ◼   ► Why would you do this? You have a whole building filled with people. You have servers, you have monthly revenue.

00:47:01 ◼   ► Why on earth would you ever limit this? This is what your business does.

00:47:07 ◼   ► This is your selling point. But no, somewhere in some array some dude was like, "Eh, 250. That's enough.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Hard-coded limit." Right? And it's not even like

00:47:19 ◼   ► 256 or something so like oh, maybe I'm running into a bug that nobody just considered right they ran out of space in their integer

00:47:25 ◼   ► No, someone just decided there's 250 and even better. Okay, even better Myke

00:47:30 ◼   ► I'm googling around this is like I cannot believe this but then I find oh there is a solution. Don't worry

00:47:35 ◼   ► Don't worry, you can archive some of your notebooks to get back

00:47:41 ◼   ► Space so it's like oh you can take a whole section you can archive a bunch of notebooks. Oh, that sounds great

00:47:46 ◼   ► What happens when I archive a notebook? Oh, don't worry. It's still there.

00:47:51 ◼   ► It just won't show up in search and it won't sync on anything. Great. Thanks.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Well, how do you get it?

00:47:56 ◼   ► You can manually go to like an archive section to manually go look through everything,

00:48:01 ◼   ► but I will remind you the whole purpose of the way you store things in Evernote is to be able to search for things,

00:48:08 ◼   ► not to be able to categorize everything in an absolutely perfect way. And it's just like...

00:48:14 ◼   ► I've been feeling vaguely irritated with a whole bunch of minor things in Evernote for a very long time,

00:48:24 ◼   ► not least of which is how awful their app is to use on iPad, but I've been living with it forever because,

00:48:30 ◼   ► "Okay, well there's just this debt that I have."

00:48:33 ◼   ► But Evernote is one of the only remaining programs where I will prefer to use it on the computer

00:48:38 ◼   ► simply because using it on the iPad is so awful.

00:48:40 ◼   ► awful, but again it's like you have a building full of people like why haven't

00:48:45 ◼   ► you been able to update your iPad app to be usable on I don't know an iPad for

00:48:49 ◼   ► anyone who's ever used this for 10 seconds like has anybody ever used this

00:48:53 ◼   ► program on an iPad at Evernote? What are you doing with those hundreds of people

00:48:56 ◼   ► or whatever? It's so infuriating but so I've been living with all of this stuff

00:49:01 ◼   ► for a while just kind of like grrrr right whatever Evernote but you got me because

00:49:05 ◼   ► I have literally over 3,000 individual notes in Evernote and there really is

00:49:09 ◼   ► nobody else that does what they do in the way that they ever do it.

00:49:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been living with it for ages. Like, you have a hard-coded limit that I have just

00:49:18 ◼   ► run up against and there is nothing that I can do. Thanks a lot. It feels like just a

00:49:24 ◼   ► gigantic middle finger for being a user over a long period of time. Like, that's just what

00:49:31 ◼   ► it feels like. Guess what? When your technical debt is too high, like when you're into this

00:49:38 ◼   ► far far too much and there's no turning back we're going to show you that we

00:49:42 ◼   ► have an arbitrary limit for no good reason. Like great thanks thanks Evernote

00:49:46 ◼   ► really appreciate that one. So frustrating. So what are you gonna do? I

00:49:51 ◼   ► don't know what I'm gonna do I mean the answer is for the past couple months

00:49:56 ◼   ► I've been just kind of like not saving notes because I don't I don't have a

00:50:01 ◼   ► good solution right but this is not a good solution either. I have I have tried

00:50:06 ◼   ► to look into some of the alternatives and the only one which even comes

00:50:12 ◼   ► remotely close to being able to replace Evernote is Microsoft's OneNote. This

00:50:17 ◼   ► is the only program out there that is sort of close to being able to do what

00:50:22 ◼   ► Evernote does. Right, yeah, because they do OCR as well, don't they? That was my main

00:50:26 ◼   ► thing. It's like, do they do OCR? Because the OCR is a totally killer feature. OCR

00:50:32 ◼   ► OCR is the optical character recognition.

00:50:36 ◼   ► So I can save an image, like for example a screenshot of a bunch of text from a book,

00:50:41 ◼   ► or I have tons of infographics and just a huge number of images that I can save.

00:50:47 ◼   ► And when I search for stuff, OCR, the optical character recognition, will recognize those as actual words.

00:50:53 ◼   ► And I have to say, Evernote's OCR is very impressive.

00:50:57 ◼   ► stuff in the back of photos that I would never notice with like there's a little

00:51:00 ◼   ► thing written on a sign or something. Like it's it's very very good. It's also

00:51:05 ◼   ► why okay great I can rely on this. And so for a while I don't think Microsoft

00:51:10 ◼   ► OneNote had image OCR but they have added it since I checked last. But the

00:51:17 ◼   ► problem with OneNote is their whole structure, right, their whole layout is

00:51:26 ◼   ► is not just like their hierarchy is basically you can have a notebook

00:51:31 ◼   ► and that notebook can have a bunch of tabs in it

00:51:34 ◼   ► as opposed to Evernote which allows you to have like an arbitrary

00:51:39 ◼   ► number of hierarchical notebooks so you can have a notebook

00:51:42 ◼   ► that contains a hundred notebooks and so for example like I have a notebook which

00:51:47 ◼   ► is just called

00:51:48 ◼   ► book notes and within that are a bunch of other notebooks

00:51:51 ◼   ► each for each individual book. But the OneNote metaphor is much more like you

00:51:57 ◼   ► you have a notebook

00:51:58 ◼   ► and that notebook has a bunch of tabs on the top

00:52:01 ◼   ► kind of like you're going to have browser windows. And let me tell you

00:52:05 ◼   ► tabs on the top does not scale when you want to have a hundred of them.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Like clearly in OneNote's design conception

00:52:15 ◼   ► they were kinda thinking that no notebook will ever have more than a

00:52:18 ◼   ► you know, maybe half a dozen tabs in it. It's just not designed to work like that.

00:52:25 ◼   ► So OneNote is just structurally unacceptable, plus their icon is so Microsoft-y and purple.

00:52:33 ◼   ► It's really hideous. Sorry OneNote team, it's really ugly.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Yeah, they have an interesting design language. Do you think some of the structural stuff

00:52:41 ◼   ► is just because you're too baked in in your mind to the way that OneNote works?

00:52:46 ◼   ► I have been trying to think about how to make this work, and I am not in any way devoted

00:52:57 ◼   ► to the way Evernote lays stuff out.

00:53:00 ◼   ► It's simply a question of how can I have a way that sorts things like I want to corral

00:53:06 ◼   ► all of my book notes into a separate section, but also be able to access any of them at

00:53:11 ◼   ► any point in time.

00:53:13 ◼   ► And I want to be able to group all of my projects in process together, like in one little place.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And I want to group together all of my future projects together all in one place.

00:53:24 ◼   ► When you have a large number of notebooks, and I don't see any way around that, you need

00:53:30 ◼   ► some structure that is on top of the notebook level.

00:53:34 ◼   ► You need to be able to group them together in a reasonable way.

00:53:37 ◼   ► But the thing is, I think what is going to have to happen is that I'm just going to have

00:53:44 ◼   ► to move over to OneNote and just deal with it as best I can.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Because my current situation of resenting Evernote but still being a premium user is

00:53:55 ◼   ► the worst of everything.

00:53:57 ◼   ► It's like shaking my fist at Evernote, not using it, but I'm still paying for their service

00:54:03 ◼   ► and now they've done a price increase so potentially paying more.

00:54:07 ◼   ► like well this is dumb like one of these things has to give and so my actual plan

00:54:13 ◼   ► is Microsoft does have a little program that will let you import an Evernote

00:54:21 ◼   ► database but of course it only runs on a Windows computer they didn't make one

00:54:25 ◼   ► for Mac thanks guys so I was thinking well I guess I don't know how I'm going

00:54:31 ◼   ► to use this and then I remembered oh my father has a Windows computer so I think

00:54:35 ◼   ► I think when I visit my family for part two this summer,

00:54:39 ◼   ► I'm just gonna go onto my dad's computer,

00:54:42 ◼   ► install my Evernote, let it download all 3000 notes,

00:54:45 ◼   ► install OneNote, and then on my dad's Windows laptop

00:54:49 ◼   ► run this program which should be able to import everything

00:54:53 ◼   ► from Evernote into OneNote.

00:54:54 ◼   ► I think that's just what's going to have to happen

00:54:58 ◼   ► because I can't think of any other tool

00:55:02 ◼   ► or solution for this.

00:55:05 ◼   ► So this doesn't necessarily help with this problem,

00:55:08 ◼   ► but it is just worth noting,

00:55:09 ◼   ► Apple's Notes app on the Mac

00:55:14 ◼   ► will import an Evernote database.

00:55:17 ◼   ► - Oh, will it?

00:55:17 ◼   ► Interesting. - Yeah.

00:55:18 ◼   ► I'm too scared to do this,

00:55:20 ◼   ► because I have literally no idea what will happen,

00:55:24 ◼   ► but it does do it.

00:55:27 ◼   ► - It's also interesting because

00:55:28 ◼   ► Notes has a flat hierarchy of folders.

00:55:31 ◼   ► It doesn't like folders in folders.

00:55:32 ◼   ► So it's just like, what are you gonna do

00:55:34 ◼   ► with the notebooks in notebooks importer.

00:55:37 ◼   ► It's interesting, interesting thing to find out.

00:55:38 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:55:40 ◼   ► I don't want any part of it, but it will do it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► I'm feeling like I wanna move away from Evernote now as well.

00:55:45 ◼   ► This has just been like a wake up for me,

00:55:47 ◼   ► where it's like I use it for just one thing

00:55:49 ◼   ► and I don't even really need to do that anymore.

00:55:51 ◼   ► Basically, I use Evernote now for travel stuff,

00:55:54 ◼   ► so when I get emails of confirmation things,

00:55:58 ◼   ► I send them to Evernote.

00:55:59 ◼   ► And I know that there are a bunch of apps

00:56:01 ◼   ► that are specifically built for this purpose,

00:56:03 ◼   ► stuff like TripIt and things like that.

00:56:05 ◼   ► But Evernote has just been always what I use

00:56:07 ◼   ► because it's so simple and I know I can have

00:56:09 ◼   ► everything downloaded and it's there

00:56:10 ◼   ► and I've used it forever.

00:56:11 ◼   ► But for my next upcoming trip to Memphis,

00:56:15 ◼   ► I'm trying out something different

00:56:17 ◼   ► and hoping that it will be a better solution for me.

00:56:22 ◼   ► I'm basically just using Apple Notes.

00:56:25 ◼   ► So I have been previously, more recently,

00:56:28 ◼   ► writing out just a simple text note

00:56:31 ◼   ► with some information in it,

00:56:32 ◼   ► like basic flight information and confirmation numbers,

00:56:35 ◼   ► hotel addresses and stuff like that.

00:56:36 ◼   ► So that's just there when I need it.

00:56:38 ◼   ► But what I've realized I can do,

00:56:42 ◼   ► from Steven on Connected recommending this to me,

00:56:44 ◼   ► I completely forgot you could do this,

00:56:47 ◼   ► is save PDFs into Apple Notes.

00:56:50 ◼   ► So now when I get confirmation emails of trips

00:56:53 ◼   ► and hotel bookings and stuff like that,

00:56:55 ◼   ► I use my email application Air Mail,

00:56:57 ◼   ► which can take an email and turn it into a PDF,

00:57:00 ◼   ► and then I just open it up in Apple Notes

00:57:02 ◼   ► and append it to the travel note that I started.

00:57:04 ◼   ► So now I have a note which has all of the basic text

00:57:07 ◼   ► information and then a bunch of PDFs down at the bottom.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And I think this is probably going to be the solution

00:57:13 ◼   ► for me going forward.

00:57:14 ◼   ► I'm gonna try it out on one trip.

00:57:16 ◼   ► If it works as flawlessly as I pretty much expect it will,

00:57:19 ◼   ► I think I might just download my Evernote information

00:57:23 ◼   ► and then kind of cancel my premium plan.

00:57:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, that sounds like that's probably

00:57:28 ◼   ► the reasonable thing for you to do.

00:57:30 ◼   ► - For what I'm using it for,

00:57:31 ◼   ► I think it makes the most sense because it's literally all I do with Evernote now is just

00:57:36 ◼   ► email and travel stuff and there are a bunch of specifically purposed tools that do this

00:57:40 ◼   ► better I've been told but also I just want to use notes because notes has kind of become

00:57:46 ◼   ► my brain now.

00:57:49 ◼   ► That is now my off-board brain not Evernote anymore.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and I wonder how many people are in a similar situation to you where the price

00:58:01 ◼   ► raise in Evernote reminds them that they basically don't use Evernote anymore and it is time

00:58:06 ◼   ► to cancel it.

00:58:07 ◼   ► I think I'm paying something like five or six pounds a month for Evernote and it's not

00:58:12 ◼   ► a lot of money but I guess it is if I'm not using it.

00:58:16 ◼   ► Yeah, you might as well cancel it if you're essentially using it to just keep track of

00:58:20 ◼   ► a single thing.

00:58:21 ◼   ► At this point, the only reason I'm paying for it is because they're limiting the free

00:58:25 ◼   ► account to two devices.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Because I don't use any of the other features.

00:58:29 ◼   ► Right.

00:58:30 ◼   ► So I just, when a company does something like raise the prices, I think the presumption

00:58:36 ◼   ► is they need more money.

00:58:39 ◼   ► That's probably why they're raising the prices.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And that to me just seems to be adding to the Evernote tale of woe with shrinking the

00:58:51 ◼   ► company and then also still needing more money and with a somewhat confusing upgrade structure,

00:59:02 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if Evernote finds itself with fewer paying customers and fewer

00:59:10 ◼   ► revenue after this price change.

00:59:12 ◼   ► I just keep wondering what's going to happen on iOS because it's the same thing.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I haven't heard anything about this price change, but sooner or later something's going

00:59:21 ◼   ► to have to happen.

00:59:22 ◼   ► And I'd be willing to bet that with all of the improvements that Apple has made to Notes,

00:59:27 ◼   ► which everybody seems to love, and even though I use Notes in a very minimal way, I can tell

00:59:33 ◼   ► it it's way better.

00:59:35 ◼   ► I have a hard time imagining who is the Evernote user that couldn't get away with using Notes.

00:59:44 ◼   ► I think that's very, very few people.

00:59:47 ◼   ► And when facing the option of "do you want to pay more for Evernote in this complicated

00:59:53 ◼   ► structure or do you just want to use Notes for free?"

00:59:59 ◼   ► I think at this point, this year, Notes is good enough for almost everybody who probably

01:00:06 ◼   ► uses Evernote.

01:00:08 ◼   ► And so that to me adds to this feeling of this is an elephant standing on a sinking

01:00:14 ◼   ► ship from which all of the rats are fleeing.

01:00:17 ◼   ► That's Evernote.

01:00:18 ◼   ► At least that's what it feels like.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Sorry if you listen to this and you work at Evernote, but that's the impression from the

01:00:22 ◼   ► outside.

01:00:23 ◼   ► One of the great things about Evernote is the fact that it's everywhere.

01:00:28 ◼   ► That is one of its great things. It is on all devices, it is on all platforms, so you

01:00:31 ◼   ► know you're going to get it wherever you are. That is like one of its best features. So

01:00:36 ◼   ► like you know if I open my Android phone, Evernote is there and all my notes are there.

01:00:40 ◼   ► There are very few applications that are in as many places as Evernote, but in the same

01:00:46 ◼   ► vein I think that's been part of their undoing because they've wasted time and effort on

01:00:50 ◼   ► making things like a Pebble app.

01:00:52 ◼   ► That doesn't seem like a good use of developer time.

01:00:55 ◼   ► I mean, and look, fundamentally one of the things that is really upsetting about this

01:00:59 ◼   ► is this two-device limit is not friendly to those who have come around to live the multi-pad

01:01:03 ◼   ► lifestyle, right?

01:01:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sure that is, that's the real sticking point for the Cortex audience.

01:01:12 ◼   ► There's no way that me and you could use the free account because the multi-pad lifestyle

01:01:17 ◼   ► dictates at least two iOS devices unacceptable.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Well these two, if you're doing iOS devices, it's going to be three because everybody needs

01:01:24 ◼   ► phone. Then you have two iPads. So for all the cortexians who are living the righteous

01:01:34 ◼   ► multi-iPad lifestyle, the Evernote free account is totally unacceptable. And oh look, there's

01:01:40 ◼   ► Notes just sitting there getting better every year waiting for you to check it out. I think

01:01:48 ◼   ► that's what's going to happen. So I mean my feeling is boy I sure would love it if Evernote

01:01:53 ◼   ► raised the 250 limit, but the feeling is really one of slow development plus weirdness about

01:02:04 ◼   ► the company plus increasing prices that I suspect won't actually help. All of this equals

01:02:12 ◼   ► it's time to go. I guess it's time to find another way to do this.

01:02:17 ◼   ► this.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Gotta get that in there.

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01:04:17 ◼   ► [beep]

01:04:18 ◼   ► Grey, I would like to do one Ask Cortex today.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:23 ◼   ► But it's a long one.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Oh.

01:04:25 ◼   ► But it's a good one.

01:04:26 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:04:27 ◼   ► So you will have to bear with me for a moment because I think it is important to paint the

01:04:32 ◼   ► picture of GuideGhost on the Reddit.

01:04:34 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:35 ◼   ► Alright.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Alright.

01:04:37 ◼   ► I'm gonna give you a little leeway here.

01:04:38 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:39 ◼   ► But this better be good.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Okay, so this is from GuideGhost and they say, "I've been working on my side project

01:04:44 ◼   ► for long enough that I feel that my primary job is just taking too much of my time. I

01:04:49 ◼   ► often wake up, put in a solid pomodoro or two of progress on my side project, but then

01:04:55 ◼   ► just as I'm feeling great and like I'm feeling like I'm right on track with it, I have to

01:04:59 ◼   ► completely derail my progress and go to work. My side project is not yet making money and

01:05:04 ◼   ► I feel like it's going to be hard to get it to that point without a stretch of a few months

01:05:08 ◼   ► of uninterrupted full time work. I lucked out in the career that I chose in the given

01:05:14 ◼   ► city that I work in that there's a ton of demand for my services at all times, so I

01:05:18 ◼   ► can kind of do my own teaching holiday schedule thing, work for a stretch, quit for a few

01:05:23 ◼   ► months then find a new job. The obvious consequence is having a bunch of one year stints on your

01:05:29 ◼   ► resume which could make future employers wary and it's difficult to explain to somebody

01:05:33 ◼   ► why you've done this. I guess I might as well continue burning my career to the ground

01:05:38 ◼   ► anyway right it's useless when I want to make it as a self-employed person later right?

01:05:43 ◼   ► The TL;DR of this is how many times can one quit their job and get a new one before rendering

01:05:50 ◼   ► themselves outwardly unemployable? This is super tricky.

01:05:57 ◼   ► So when I left my employment I had no solid backup plan. I was not allowing myself to

01:06:06 ◼   ► to think this isn't gonna work,

01:06:09 ◼   ► you're gonna need to go get a job

01:06:10 ◼   ► or you're gonna need to go back, right?

01:06:12 ◼   ► Like when I left it was just like that's it.

01:06:14 ◼   ► I never left with the idea of like put a few months in,

01:06:17 ◼   ► get a new job.

01:06:18 ◼   ► And before that as well, people knew what I did outside,

01:06:24 ◼   ► but I got on with my own job like it wasn't an issue.

01:06:26 ◼   ► It's like people knew what I was doing on the side, right,

01:06:28 ◼   ► when I worked for the bank.

01:06:29 ◼   ► They were just like you do that thing,

01:06:31 ◼   ► but I was already there so it wasn't a problem.

01:06:33 ◼   ► I just made sure I just got on with my job, right,

01:06:35 ◼   ► it wasn't an issue. But I can imagine this scenario being tough on an employer, coming

01:06:41 ◼   ► in and saying like, I do this thing on the outside. I've been spending some time away

01:06:47 ◼   ► doing this thing. Like, how would you know if this person is going to bother sticking

01:06:50 ◼   ► around, especially if like you saw a CV that was like one year and then like a four month

01:06:55 ◼   ► gap, then another place for a year, then a four month gap, you would look at it and probably

01:06:59 ◼   ► think this person is going to leave me after a year.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Like I know if I was employing someone and saw that CV, I think that's how I would look

01:07:08 ◼   ► at it.

01:07:09 ◼   ► And then once you're inside a company it's fine because as long as you're doing your

01:07:13 ◼   ► work, most companies don't care what you do on the side.

01:07:15 ◼   ► But trying to get employed by someone with a CV like that I think might be a bit difficult.

01:07:23 ◼   ► That is very tricky.

01:07:28 ◼   ► also interesting because... so I basically did this when I was trying to do

01:07:37 ◼   ► anything other than teaching on the side. So I mean I've you know I worked as a

01:07:46 ◼   ► teacher depending on how you want to count it like six or seven years but I

01:07:51 ◼   ► had a year gap essentially in the middle-ish end-ish part of that so I

01:07:57 ◼   ► So I worked at one of my first schools for about four years and then I quit teaching

01:08:04 ◼   ► for a year and then came back to teaching at the end of that year.

01:08:10 ◼   ► I think that's a little more palatable, right?

01:08:13 ◼   ► Like I left to do a thing, the thing didn't work out, I'm now coming back.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Like that one time that you do that, I think that's okay.

01:08:21 ◼   ► But a string of that I think is difficult.

01:08:25 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the problem. And also, just to be clear, I was not forthcoming about the fact that I had left to go do a thing.

01:08:36 ◼   ► I was real vague on what I've been doing for that year in between teaching.

01:08:42 ◼   ► Why? That feels like a bad idea.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Well, I mean this is, to go to the questioner's thing here, this goes to the point of the

01:08:51 ◼   ► riskiness of doing something like this is directly proportional to just how in demand

01:08:56 ◼   ► is your job, right? Just how in demand is your particular set of skills. And my view

01:09:03 ◼   ► on this, I mean I know we sort of took different tacks, but no one at any of the schools that

01:09:09 ◼   ► that I worked at ever had any idea

01:09:12 ◼   ► that I was doing anything on the side ever.

01:09:14 ◼   ► And that was very intentional.

01:09:17 ◼   ► I thought no good can come of this.

01:09:19 ◼   ► And I just kept my mouth shut

01:09:20 ◼   ► about everything that I was doing on the side.

01:09:23 ◼   ► People were like, oh, what are you doing this weekend?

01:09:24 ◼   ► Oh, nothing.

01:09:25 ◼   ► - Like as I said, I think I said this

01:09:26 ◼   ► in a show in the past, my mouth would have been shut,

01:09:29 ◼   ► but I got the job in marketing because I proved

01:09:31 ◼   ► that I was able to do something creative.

01:09:33 ◼   ► Like I had no choice.

01:09:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, you were leveraging it.

01:09:35 ◼   ► It was a different situation, right?

01:09:37 ◼   ► you were leveraging it to advance your career.

01:09:41 ◼   ► That's different, whereas,

01:09:42 ◼   ► I think to most employers, like side projects,

01:09:48 ◼   ► unless like in your situation,

01:09:50 ◼   ► they can see how it would directly benefit them,

01:09:54 ◼   ► they're not gonna wanna hear about this.

01:09:55 ◼   ► - Because it's splitting up your working brain.

01:09:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's splitting up your working brain.

01:10:00 ◼   ► They're not going to like it.

01:10:01 ◼   ► And like GuideGhost is doing as well,

01:10:05 ◼   ► if you're really serious about it,

01:10:07 ◼   ► the only way to make real progress is to do it before you go to your actual job.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Which again is what I did.

01:10:14 ◼   ► It was like putting in a couple hours of work on the thing that I really cared

01:10:18 ◼   ► about. And then like, Oh, I guess I'm off to work now.

01:10:21 ◼   ► After I've given up the best part of my brain.

01:10:24 ◼   ► That's why I never understood the morning part. It doesn't make the,

01:10:28 ◼   ► like working on this stuff in the morning has never made sense to me why you did

01:10:32 ◼   ► it, why guide ghost did it. Because you have a hard stop time.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Like the way that I did it,

01:10:37 ◼   ► I would just work until my body shut down

01:10:39 ◼   ► and that could be many hours.

01:10:42 ◼   ► I don't know, work for me.

01:10:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is again the difference between people

01:10:47 ◼   ► and when their optimal work times are, right?

01:10:49 ◼   ► And figuring that out.

01:10:51 ◼   ► But so to get back to the main point,

01:10:53 ◼   ► I think that I was able to be a bit more vague

01:10:58 ◼   ► about precisely what I had been doing during that time.

01:11:03 ◼   ► I mean, and I also like the story happened to work out very well,

01:11:07 ◼   ► which was I was spending time with family in Hawaii.

01:11:10 ◼   ► It was like, guess what? People don't really question that. Right.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Because everybody's like, Oh man, if I could live in Hawaii for a long time,

01:11:16 ◼   ► I totally would.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Lucky you dude.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Right. Like what were you doing then? Oh,

01:11:21 ◼   ► spending time with family,

01:11:23 ◼   ► like not working really hard to make sure I wasn't in this exact position now

01:11:26 ◼   ► where I'm re-interviewing for a job.

01:11:27 ◼   ► But here I am a failure.

01:11:30 ◼   ► - Exactly, totally exactly.

01:11:32 ◼   ► But I failed in my endeavors and so this is why

01:11:35 ◼   ► we're having this conversation.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Like you don't put that on the resume.

01:11:38 ◼   ► It's not a good thing to do.

01:11:40 ◼   ► But I again, I think people were not super inquisitive

01:11:45 ◼   ► because my job was a physics teacher.

01:11:50 ◼   ► And if there's one thing that's great about being

01:11:53 ◼   ► a physics teacher is that the job is in incredible demand.

01:12:00 ◼   ► And so at any interview,

01:12:04 ◼   ► I was essentially able to get a job

01:12:06 ◼   ► as long as I did a pretty good job

01:12:08 ◼   ► on the actual interview itself.

01:12:10 ◼   ► So it was just like, it was just kind of a no brainer.

01:12:13 ◼   ► - Unless you walk out on a completely vague and shady

01:12:15 ◼   ► about wanting to work in a place, right?

01:12:17 ◼   ► That's the only time that it would come back to bite you.

01:12:20 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, when you're being an idiot

01:12:22 ◼   ► who doesn't know what's happening, yeah.

01:12:24 ◼   ► So this is like, I gotta think about it.

01:12:27 ◼   ► Ah, you moron past me.

01:12:29 ◼   ► But anyway, so like I think this is, my feeling with GuideGhost here is, there's two things

01:12:41 ◼   ► here.

01:12:42 ◼   ► One of which is, we don't know the details about what the side project is, but I find

01:12:47 ◼   ► it's a little concerning to me that whatever it is is not already earning money.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Yeah, if it's not making money but you think it can after a few months of work,

01:12:58 ◼   ► before making a decision like this I would recommend that you burn the candle

01:13:04 ◼   ► at both ends and make a little bit of money first because if you can't make a

01:13:09 ◼   ► little bit of money when you're completely overworking yourself

01:13:12 ◼   ► unfortunately, I would be surprised that you would make any money if you put all

01:13:18 ◼   ► your time into it. Like what is this thing that you believe will take a

01:13:22 ◼   ► couple of months and then you'll be golden. I don't know about that.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Yeah, no idea. I mean it's possible that it's a thing, let's just say it's possible

01:13:32 ◼   ► it's a thing like developing an app for example, right? That you can't put it up on the store

01:13:36 ◼   ► until it is done. However, if it's something like that, I really do think that the business

01:13:44 ◼   ► idea of a minimum viable product is something to seriously consider here. And it's like,

01:13:52 ◼   ► What is the smallest version of this thing that someone might give you some money for?

01:13:59 ◼   ► And if there's no version of that, ultimately this to me feels like a hell of a gamble.

01:14:08 ◼   ► And so when I left teaching the first time to attempt to spin up one of my older projects,

01:14:15 ◼   ► which didn't work, I was already making a decent amount of money from the project before

01:14:22 ◼   ► I quit teaching the first time.

01:14:24 ◼   ► And the only question was

01:14:26 ◼   ► can I spin this up into a full time living

01:14:31 ◼   ► over the next many months?

01:14:34 ◼   ► The answer to that turned out to be no.

01:14:36 ◼   ► It was just very, very frustrating,

01:14:38 ◼   ► perhaps one of the most frustrating periods in my life.

01:14:41 ◼   ► But at the very least I had an indication

01:14:44 ◼   ► that there is some level of market demand

01:14:46 ◼   ► for the thing that I'm doing.

01:14:48 ◼   ► And the only question is

01:14:49 ◼   ► can I just triple this in size?

01:14:52 ◼   ► Which I think is a very, very different question from

01:14:56 ◼   ► I have no income from this thing now,

01:15:00 ◼   ► can I make it into a full-time living

01:15:02 ◼   ► in the space of several months?

01:15:04 ◼   ► The other thing that is a little bit concerning

01:15:09 ◼   ► is I don't know what the intended schedule here is,

01:15:12 ◼   ► but if,

01:15:17 ◼   ► I mean, my gut feeling here is it would be better to take a

01:15:21 ◼   ► longer break than to take a series of long-ish, but inconvenient breaks to employers.

01:15:30 ◼   ► Like, I don't know if it is practical to try to save up enough to say have a

01:15:37 ◼   ► six month break instead of doing two

01:15:41 ◼   ► three month breaks. I don't know if that is

01:15:45 ◼   ► given the situation, but I think that to the main question about how many times can you do this before employers start to worry,

01:15:53 ◼   ► the best way to mitigate that to me would seem to be try to take a longer break and

01:16:01 ◼   ► then come back to a job that is in high demand instead of

01:16:06 ◼   ► switching employers more frequently for

01:16:09 ◼   ► shorter breaks.

01:16:11 ◼   ► Again, it's a little difficult to provide advice without specifics about what is the

01:16:17 ◼   ► job because I could see some jobs where it wouldn't matter so much, but I'm presuming

01:16:22 ◼   ► that employers would, like you say, not like a series of breaks after quitting jobs after

01:16:30 ◼   ► eight months to then not work three months or something along those lines.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Because one of the things if you're working in a team and the person who runs that team

01:16:39 ◼   ► that manages you, they don't care if you're loyal to the company, right? In most instances

01:16:44 ◼   ► if it's a big company you're going to work for, but they just don't want to have to go

01:16:48 ◼   ► through this hiring process again in seven or eight months time.

01:16:52 ◼   ► Exactly. Speaking as someone going through the hiring process.

01:16:56 ◼   ► Of course you are.

01:16:56 ◼   ► I would like to do it as little as possible.

01:16:59 ◼   ► So the idea of loyalty is sometimes just loyal to the team, right? And you know that you're

01:17:04 ◼   ► not going to leave the manager in the lurch after six or seven months because you've really

01:17:09 ◼   ► got to go out and work on your passion project for a while. Which leads me to ask the question

01:17:15 ◼   ► of GuideGhost, wouldn't it be better to just try and do contract work rather than getting

01:17:19 ◼   ► full-time positions in companies?

01:17:21 ◼   ► Yeah, that's an excellent point. If there is a version of this work which is contractable,

01:17:27 ◼   ► that seems like the way better option as well.

01:17:29 ◼   ► So like my advice would be, pause the passion project, spin up a contracting business, find

01:17:36 ◼   ► some contracting work, and then you will be ready to set your own schedule for as long

01:17:40 ◼   ► as you want.

01:17:42 ◼   ► That's what I think this person should do.

01:17:44 ◼   ► I would say that my primary feeling still is try to make any amount of money, even if

01:17:53 ◼   ► it is small, with the side project before doing anything else.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you've got to do that before you do anything else.

01:18:00 ◼   ► You need to know that what you're doing is something other people want.

01:18:04 ◼   ► Like I'm sure you believe it's a good idea, I'm sure it is a good idea, but it doesn't

01:18:09 ◼   ► mean people want it or need it.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Yeah, and there is an interesting feeling which is earning some money from a thing that

01:18:19 ◼   ► you have done for the first time, even if it is a trivial amount of money.

01:18:26 ◼   ► that simple barrier to get over that a person somewhere has handed you dollars

01:18:33 ◼   ► for a thing. Like that is a bigger barrier than you might think it is and

01:18:40 ◼   ► it's also just such a great confirmation for you that yes like somewhere in the

01:18:46 ◼   ► market a person has value for this because as much as you you might want to

01:18:53 ◼   ► just ask people you can't really trust people's answers if you're just asking

01:18:58 ◼   ► them if you say what do you think about this thing people just want to be polite

01:19:02 ◼   ► and nice and they'll say oh yeah that sounds like a great idea or if you ask

01:19:06 ◼   ► them would you buy this thing people will say sure of course I'll buy that

01:19:09 ◼   ► thing but if you followed up with immediately with will you give me five

01:19:13 ◼   ► dollars for this thing right now you'd be surprised like people will just

01:19:17 ◼   ► change immediately like oh no I won't actually give you money for it now I

01:19:20 ◼   ► I was just saying that to be nice. And so I think that's partly why it's very important to earn

01:19:27 ◼   ► something from the side project first as a test and as a confirmation that you are

01:19:35 ◼   ► on the right path. The absolute amount doesn't matter, but just getting something from someone

01:19:43 ◼   ► who doesn't know you really does.

01:19:46 ◼   ► But good luck to you.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Good luck, Ghost Guide. Good luck.

01:19:51 ◼   ► And I have to say, Myke,

01:19:54 ◼   ► that was a good question.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Oh, you were happy to have that one. It was, wasn't it? It was long.

01:19:59 ◼   ► There was a lot to it, but I think it was worth it in its length.

01:20:01 ◼   ► I think so as well. I was a little,

01:20:04 ◼   ► a little worried when you were pitching this as a question.

01:20:07 ◼   ► I thought I'm gonna be, oh, here's Myke with a long thing.

01:20:10 ◼   ► thing. But someone was laying out their situation and it was a good question so it was worth

01:20:18 ◼   ► it. So I give you thumbs up on that Myke. I give you thumbs up on that.

01:20:23 ◼   ► My collaborator guide ghost. On this one. If you have any Ask Cortex's, especially maybe

01:20:30 ◼   ► if they're of this kind of nature, you know, I would hope that we might be able to help

01:20:34 ◼   ► with some advice. I would suggest write it up, tweet it at me with the hashtag #askcortex

01:20:39 ◼   ► and we'll see them, they go into a document.

01:20:41 ◼   ► Or if you wanna put them in the Reddit,

01:20:42 ◼   ► you can do that, tag me in it, and hopefully I'll see it.

01:20:44 ◼   ► I don't know if tag me in it is correct vernacular

01:20:47 ◼   ► for Reddit, but that's what I'm gonna say anyway.

01:20:50 ◼   ► - They're gonna mention your username.

01:20:51 ◼   ► - There you go, mention my username on the Reddit,

01:20:53 ◼   ► and maybe you get your question on the show.

01:20:56 ◼   ► We're helping people here, Gray.

01:20:58 ◼   ► - Oh yeah?

01:20:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe it's time for our second spinoff show.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Care Techs.

01:21:07 ◼   ► helping people. GATEX. Isn't it... no I do not approve of that name. Kortek GATEX. No.

01:21:19 ◼   ► Building an empire. An empire with limits I think. The limits are Myke can't name

01:21:28 ◼   ► stuff.