Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► There is a non-zero chance that someone's gonna write our names on the US ballot.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. You don't understand, Myke. That is going to happen. I guarantee you that.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Yeah. And so someone somewhere is gonna have to read out how many votes we got. Right?

00:00:18 ◼   ► Like someone is gonna read it out somewhere, and then me and you have been- we've got a vote or two. It's gonna be great.

00:00:27 ◼   ► it seems inevitable that someone's gonna write

00:00:28 ◼   ► prayer holy 2016 on their write-in vote.

00:00:31 ◼   ► I would be shocked if it doesn't happen.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - I'm very excited about that thought.

00:00:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, but then this can also act as a check on voter fraud

00:00:38 ◼   ► 'cause you always get these stories come out

00:00:39 ◼   ► where someone does a write-in vote that's a name

00:00:43 ◼   ► so that they can intentionally check later

00:00:44 ◼   ► when the votes are counted

00:00:45 ◼   ► to see if that one write-in vote was counted.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Very often it's not,

00:00:49 ◼   ► which doesn't make you feel super secure in democracy.

00:00:51 ◼   ► - So we're gonna have to check everywhere, aren't we?

00:00:54 ◼   ► or I will, to find where we've been voted.

00:00:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can.

00:00:59 ◼   ► Or, or, (laughs)

00:01:01 ◼   ► Great Early 2016 can be a check on the integrity

00:01:06 ◼   ► of your local polling station.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Yeah. - It's the canary.

00:01:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like a warring canary, right?

00:01:10 ◼   ► Great 2016 on your ballot,

00:01:11 ◼   ► and then you see if you got any votes.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Remember people on top of the ticket.

00:01:16 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:01:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I think this is perfect.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what people can do.

00:01:20 ◼   ► - I'm looking forward to election season.

00:01:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, we're gonna win.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I was like trying to remember our own platform.

00:01:28 ◼   ► It was an iPad in every house and automation in every app.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Yeah. Perfect. Make iPad great again. Make iPad great again.

00:01:37 ◼   ► So you went ahead and did it. You've

00:01:40 ◼   ► put your application out that we were talking about last time for

00:01:44 ◼   ► the freelance animation work.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Yes. Oh dear. How's it going so far?

00:01:51 ◼   ► I don't know. I said in the application that I wasn't going to look at entries until tomorrow.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And I haven't. So I have no idea how it's going.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Do you know if any are coming in?

00:02:01 ◼   ► I do know that a bunch have come in.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Because I have arranged a system with my assistant, my, I guess like,

00:02:12 ◼   ► now slight member of HR department assistant surprise promotion.

00:02:16 ◼   ► She has been receiving all of the various applications.

00:02:20 ◼   ► She has been putting the information into a spreadsheet

00:02:24 ◼   ► with some secret checks behind the scenes that I also want some information that's put in a little spreadsheet

00:02:31 ◼   ► And then she is also taking the videos and she is giving them all a number

00:02:37 ◼   ► and putting them all into a Dropbox folder for me to view

00:02:42 ◼   ► So I'm not exactly sure how many videos are in that Dropbox folder right now

00:02:47 ◼   ► But I know there's a bunch and I'm going to take a look through them and this is the way that I want to do it.

00:02:52 ◼   ► I just want to have a number. I don't want to know anything about the person. I just want to see the video.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:57 ◼   ► And so this way I can say, oh yes, ID number 1245. This person was good.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Come forward and collect your papers.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Exactly, right?

00:03:08 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:03:09 ◼   ► I can say, "Oh, these three are good, and then let's move on from here and see, okay,

00:03:15 ◼   ► like, you know, did this person send a portfolio? Did they do a bunch of other stuff?"

00:03:19 ◼   ► That's the way I'm doing it. So I will not be looking at the applications first,

00:03:24 ◼   ► because the most relevant thing to me is how well can it be animated.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And I'm just going to look at those. I'm going to look at them clean with just a file number,

00:03:33 ◼   ► and that's how it's going to start.

00:03:35 ◼   ► So I know people have sent in applications, but I haven't actually looked at any yet

00:03:39 ◼   ► So I don't know if they're any good

00:03:41 ◼   ► You're not gonna know this but I'm just gonna mention it for the listeners who will all know this

00:03:45 ◼   ► I just realized that the video that you created with your voiceover that people will take

00:03:50 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, the gradient the colors that you have look just like the new Instagram logo. Oh

00:03:56 ◼   ► Okay, I know that was gonna be your answer but now people can go and look at that and be like, oh wow

00:04:02 ◼   ► They they took the idea from you. So if you hate the Instagram logo, you can you can blame gray for that one

00:04:08 ◼   ► I don't have an Instagram of all the people in my life to assume would not have Instagram. It would be you

00:04:15 ◼   ► What are you gonna post their pictures of your food? It's a protein bars and bolts things like that. Yeah, that's perfect

00:04:24 ◼   ► Perfect plates of nuts and bolts that you just chow down on for your robot power

00:04:29 ◼   ► I like the system of just randomly looking at videos rather than you looking at the applications themselves

00:04:35 ◼   ► Because the thing that you want to be judging people on is the work not anything about them as a human

00:04:40 ◼   ► Yeah, the work is the thing that is the most relevant and I also figure that this is the way I mean

00:04:47 ◼   ► I don't know how many of these I'm going to be looking at hopefully lots

00:04:50 ◼   ► but I figure this is the fastest way to be able to go through something because I

00:04:59 ◼   ► I mean, just, you know, obviously I've been thinking a lot about hiring and I've been having some interesting conversations with people.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And this is one of these cases where

00:05:06 ◼   ► in my attempt to work with someone in this particular situation,

00:05:10 ◼   ► their resume is not really relevant.

00:05:16 ◼   ► The only thing that is relevant is how well they can do this.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And so if someone sends me a resume and says,

00:05:23 ◼   ► "Oh, I went to this design school and I went to this design school and I'm certified in Adobe Illustrator and I'm certified..."

00:05:28 ◼   ► I was like, OK, man, like that's great.

00:05:30 ◼   ► But I don't I don't really care.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Like I only care if if this thing can be done.

00:05:37 ◼   ► You know, and if this is if this is your first attempt

00:05:42 ◼   ► at ever doing any kind of animation and you do it well, the flip side,

00:05:46 ◼   ► like I don't care either.

00:05:48 ◼   ► You know, if you're if you're brand new, but you just learned Adobe Illustrator

00:05:51 ◼   ► and you gave it a go and you did a good job, like fantastic.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Welcome aboard. Like this is yeah, this is the thing.

00:05:57 ◼   ► This is the thing that is relevant to me.

00:05:59 ◼   ► So that's why I don't, I figure I'll watch the videos first

00:06:02 ◼   ► and then I'll look at what has come through

00:06:05 ◼   ► on email secondarily.

00:06:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause something else I hadn't thought

00:06:10 ◼   ► but I saw you reply to a Reddit comment about this.

00:06:13 ◼   ► There was not necessarily one person who's gonna,

00:06:16 ◼   ► you know, you have like multiple golden tickets

00:06:18 ◼   ► to come and look inside the CGP Grey factory.

00:06:21 ◼   ► - Golden tickets, huh?

00:06:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:27 ◼   ► I just considered how much this is like Willy Wonka.

00:06:31 ◼   ► - I don't see the connection.

00:06:32 ◼   ► - Nobody's seen you in many years.

00:06:35 ◼   ► There is a factory in which amazing things

00:06:40 ◼   ► are put together for the enjoyment of millions.

00:06:43 ◼   ► It's just like Willy Wonka and now you've opened up

00:06:47 ◼   ► to the world for somebody to come in,

00:06:49 ◼   ► and they're gonna be put through a set of trials

00:06:52 ◼   ► to see if they will be the true and pure person

00:06:55 ◼   ► who can help you out at the end.

00:06:57 ◼   ► - Well, as long as I'm Gene Wilder Willy Wonka

00:07:00 ◼   ► and I'm not Johnny Depp Willy Wonka.

00:07:02 ◼   ► - That is the only one.

00:07:03 ◼   ► The Gene Wilder movie is a far superior movie.

00:07:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay.

00:07:06 ◼   ► So I just wanna make it clear.

00:07:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, crystal.

00:07:09 ◼   ► - In this analogy.

00:07:10 ◼   ► - In this analogy, I'm Gene Wilder.

00:07:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do not wanna be Johnny Depp in this analogy.

00:07:16 ◼   ► - Am I like an Oompa Loompa then?

00:07:18 ◼   ► I guess I am, right?

00:07:19 ◼   ► - If you wanna do that to yourself,

00:07:21 ◼   ► go right ahead. I guess it's the only thing I can be in this

00:07:25 ◼   ► scenario, right? Because I work with you already and they're the only people that work with

00:07:29 ◼   ► him already. Right, yeah.

00:07:30 ◼   ► That's a shame. Like I can see the photoshops already, Myke.

00:07:35 ◼   ► It's gonna be great, I can't wait for it. But yes, so moving right along from the inevitable

00:07:42 ◼   ► bearded photoshops of Myke as an Oompa Loompa. Doompa Dee Doo.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Yes. In this scenario, yeah, having put out this

00:07:50 ◼   ► job application, it's interesting to see a challenge of clarity sometimes, where there

00:07:57 ◼   ► are things which are sort of clear in my mind and then you look at what you've done and

00:08:01 ◼   ► you go like, "Oh, obviously there's no reason this would be clear to anybody." And yes,

00:08:06 ◼   ► one of those things is, when I said I was looking for freelance help, I've always been

00:08:11 ◼   ► thinking that in my absolute perfect, perfect world, I would love to find at least two people

00:08:18 ◼   ► find at least two people that I could work with.

00:08:23 ◼   ► And it's precisely because, since I know this is going to be at least from the start freelance

00:08:28 ◼   ► work, I would want to because the primary person that I might want to work with might

00:08:33 ◼   ► not always be available.

00:08:35 ◼   ► And so I have had this experience with music where there are several people who I can have

00:08:40 ◼   ► on tap to help with music, but that's partly because each of them isn't always available

00:08:46 ◼   ► precisely when I need them to be available.

00:08:48 ◼   ► So, yeah, it's not that there's just going to be, "Oh, there is a single person."

00:08:53 ◼   ► I am going to be making a list of however many people I think that it is possible to work with.

00:08:59 ◼   ► And at least at the start, try to move forward in that way.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Now again, I'm still a little worried because I am looking for a kind of perfect person

00:09:09 ◼   ► that I will not find what I'm looking for on this round one.

00:09:13 ◼   ► and that I will have to do a round two or a second approach for this.

00:09:18 ◼   ► So again, this is my theoretically perfect scenario,

00:09:21 ◼   ► is that I would find two or more people that I could work with.

00:09:24 ◼   ► But I don't know, I'm trying to put like betting odds on it.

00:09:29 ◼   ► I'm going to say there's a 25% chance that I get what I want in the first round.

00:09:35 ◼   ► I don't know, we'll have to see.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I actually think that finding someone in the first round

00:09:40 ◼   ► or two people in the first round that are perfect is actually not the best thing that could happen.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I think the genuinely I think the better thing is to find people that are kind of there

00:09:49 ◼   ► and that you can help develop. Yeah, this again, let me let me try to clarify what I mean by

00:09:53 ◼   ► perfect here, because what I'm looking for is someone who has talent, right? Someone who's

00:10:04 ◼   ► able to do this thing well.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And again, thinking back to my experience of being a teacher,

00:10:12 ◼   ► it was interesting always to see that there were kids

00:10:16 ◼   ► who I could immediately say like, oh, this kid is talented.

00:10:21 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that they're doing everything exactly right

00:10:25 ◼   ► the first time around, but it does mean

00:10:28 ◼   ► that compared to the majority of their untalented peers,

00:10:32 ◼   ► "This would be the kid you would want to work on project X."

00:10:37 ◼   ► And so that is my feeling in this round of applications.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Is when I say perfect, I really mean that there's someone

00:10:46 ◼   ► who they've done a competent enough job the first time

00:10:50 ◼   ► around, but what I'm really looking for is this difficult

00:10:54 ◼   ► to define talent of some sort.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And I think one of the things I will be looking for

00:11:01 ◼   ► when I'm watching the videos, for example, is...

00:11:04 ◼   ► because I...

00:11:05 ◼   ► We could talk about this now, because of course this episode of Cortex is going to go up after, in theory, I actually look at things.

00:11:11 ◼   ► So I can kind of reveal the secrets here.

00:11:13 ◼   ► One of the things I'm going to be looking for is...

00:11:17 ◼   ► Did the person do something interesting or unexpected with the way they chose to animate a particular section?

00:11:25 ◼   ► And I think that that kind of thing is a marker of talent.

00:11:30 ◼   ► because I have in my mind, okay, if I had to animate this script,

00:11:36 ◼   ► I know roughly what I would put on the screen in each of these sections,

00:11:39 ◼   ► but what I would actually want to see is someone who did a little section differently than I would have done it,

00:11:46 ◼   ► and that either provokes like a smile or a laugh from me in this unexpected manner.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And that's very difficult to define, and that's not something I'm going to write out in the job application,

00:11:59 ◼   ► because I think that people who are talented would just naturally do that

00:12:05 ◼   ► but they wouldn't be able to not do that

00:12:08 ◼   ► so that's one of the things when I'm looking through this that I'm going to be kind of keeping an eye out for

00:12:13 ◼   ► was I surprised? Did you do this in an interesting and unexpected way?

00:12:18 ◼   ► but that's not the same thing as literally expecting that somebody is going to create a video that looks exactly like I made it

00:12:26 ◼   ► That's what you should sort of be aiming for, but that's not necessarily the thing that I am explicitly and only looking for

00:12:33 ◼   ► when I'm actually reviewing the videos.

00:12:36 ◼   ► I think of it like a tribute band. Okay. Like they do it in the style of CGP Grey, right?

00:12:44 ◼   ► But it has its own flair in some way. I think that that's the key. Yeah, maybe. I know nothing of your music analogies

00:12:51 ◼   ► So I'm going to assume that that's spot-on

00:12:56 ◼   ► Right?

00:12:58 ◼   ► But this is, again, this is one of these things where you realize, like,

00:13:01 ◼   ► "Oh, when I was writing this out, I was thinking, 'Oh, there's two things that I'm looking for.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I'm looking for an animator and an illustrator.

00:13:08 ◼   ► But there's really three things that I'm looking for.

00:13:10 ◼   ► I'm looking for an animator and illustrator and someone who has this undefinable little spark of talent."

00:13:18 ◼   ► And that's one of those 'you know it when you see it' kind of things.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And so we will know, I guess the next time we record Cortex, because by then I'm looking at it on Friday,

00:13:28 ◼   ► which as we are recording right now is tomorrow, and I will be continuing to look at it as stuff comes in,

00:13:34 ◼   ► because that was not a finalized deadline, but by the time we record the next Cortex,

00:13:39 ◼   ► I think there will be some information about whether or not I'm going forward,

00:13:42 ◼   ► or whether I am thinking about how to approach a round two of hiring.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Well, I will look forward to it.

00:13:51 ◼   ► I... I wish I was future me right now and already knew what had happened.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Did you intend Friday the 13th such as a happy accident?

00:14:03 ◼   ► It was just a pleasant accident. Do you want to know why?

00:14:06 ◼   ► Because it roots out pointlessly suspicious people.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Oh Friday the 13th is unlucky. I don't know if I want to... already it's over.

00:14:17 ◼   ► The conversation's over.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Done.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Right. I'm sorry next.

00:14:20 ◼   ► [Music]

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00:15:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess they'll email you if that contact form on your website is working, but maybe that's broken too.

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00:16:40 ◼   ► For as long as I've known you, there has been something that I've been interested in asking you.

00:16:45 ◼   ► What is Dvorak and why do you use it?

00:16:49 ◼   ► You know what Dvorak is, Myke.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Oh, I know what it is.

00:16:54 ◼   ► It's a weird way to arrange a keyboard, but I want you to explain Dvorak to people that don't know what it is and then say like, what is it?

00:17:04 ◼   ► It's not a weird way to arrange a keyboard.

00:17:07 ◼   ► Abnormal?

00:17:08 ◼   ► Abnormal would be correct because of course the normal way to arrange a keyboard is the so-called QWERTY layout

00:17:14 ◼   ► Where QWERTY is the word on the top left of your keyboard if you can look at a keyboard right now listener

00:17:19 ◼   ► That's what you will see

00:17:20 ◼   ► Dvorak is named after a person I think? I don't even know

00:17:24 ◼   ► But Dvorak is an alternate keyboard layout that I have used for a long time

00:17:32 ◼   ► And the primary selling feature of Dvorak is that in a QWERTY keyboard, the letters are arranged in such a way

00:17:46 ◼   ► I think so one of the things that's happening very often is like your alternating hands

00:17:51 ◼   ► Now there's a whole lot of, I think, urban legends around the QWERTY keyboard layout

00:17:56 ◼   ► layout that every time I have attempted to investigate mostly seem like just BS or just

00:18:03 ◼   ► so stories that get repeated over and over again like I think the actual origin of this stuff is a

00:18:07 ◼   ► bit lost in in time. Yeah the generally accepted reason for the Qwerty being as it is is it was

00:18:16 ◼   ► created so it would stop typewriters from jamming up because in theory the letters would be far away

00:18:23 ◼   ► from each other so they would like the little arms whatever they're called wouldn't be hitting

00:18:27 ◼   ► each other that's like the generally accepted reason that's usually the thing that you you

00:18:31 ◼   ► hear from people i remember looking into it a while ago and when i was thinking about doing

00:18:35 ◼   ► a video on this and just not coming to a satisfactory resolution and that to me i don't know

00:18:43 ◼   ► it may be true it may not be true but there are some things that my brain always followed

00:18:46 ◼   ► files away as "suspiciously just so stories".

00:18:50 ◼   ► Because if that is true, if they're close together they jam up,

00:18:54 ◼   ► if your name is Terry you'd hate to use a typewriter.

00:18:57 ◼   ► I actually have typed on a mechanical typewriter like that and it is a real pain in the butt when

00:19:03 ◼   ► it jams. I've very briefly spent some time in a teaching course where they actually use mechanical

00:19:08 ◼   ► typewriters. I was like you've got to be kidding me.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Ye olde CGP Grey.

00:19:11 ◼   ► I mean mainly just ye olde school equipment is what it actually was.

00:19:15 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:19:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:19:17 ◼   ► - I used to typewriter as a kid just for fun.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Like there was one in my house,

00:19:24 ◼   ► it was an electric typewriter that I think my granddad had.

00:19:27 ◼   ► And I used to write our little stories on it.

00:19:29 ◼   ► But it was before we had a computer.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Like this was in I guess the very early 90s

00:19:33 ◼   ► when we didn't have a computer at home.

00:19:35 ◼   ► So I used to, you know, as a kid,

00:19:37 ◼   ► instead of writing out my stories

00:19:38 ◼   ► in like Microsoft Word or whatever,

00:19:40 ◼   ► which my younger brother did,

00:19:42 ◼   ► I wrote them out on an electric typewriter.

00:19:44 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. It was fun, but typewriters suck because if you make a mistake, which you do a lot when you're like four years old

00:19:52 ◼   ► You've ruined everything. Yeah, you ruin everything

00:19:55 ◼   ► X-x-x-x-x-x everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, right or you backspace over it with whiteout

00:20:01 ◼   ► Which never looks right like that paper that it slams down is typewriters are terrible technology

00:20:07 ◼   ► so yeah, I I don't know if that's true or not and

00:20:09 ◼   ► Frankly, it's like of no interest to me whether it's true or not. Like I don't really care

00:20:13 ◼   ► This is also one of those things where it may just be a network effect where there was a keyboard layout

00:20:18 ◼   ► It happened to gain a little bit of popularity and that popularity feeds on itself and it becomes a standardized thing and there's not actually

00:20:26 ◼   ► Any explanation for this, right?

00:20:29 ◼   ► It's just like okay one of them was going to succeed and this happens to be the one that succeeded end of story

00:20:34 ◼   ► There there isn't anything to say about it

00:20:36 ◼   ► but the Dvorak keyboard is

00:20:41 ◼   ► designed to minimize finger travel.

00:20:46 ◼   ► And perhaps one of the best examples of this is

00:20:50 ◼   ► if you think on a normal QWERTY keyboard, and you look where you put your hands on the home row

00:20:54 ◼   ► assuming that you can touch type, probably the most egregious thing on the QWERTY keyboard

00:20:59 ◼   ► is that underneath your right hand pinky

00:21:03 ◼   ► you have the colon and semicolon key, which are probably not super frequently used.

00:21:10 ◼   ► whereas on the Dvorak keyboard that is the letter S underneath your right hand

00:21:16 ◼   ► pinky. And underneath your left hand on the Dvorak keyboard are a whole bunch of

00:21:21 ◼   ► vowels. It's A O E U and I are right there on the home row for your left hand

00:21:27 ◼   ► whereas on the QWERTY keyboard you have just A and then vowels are kind of

00:21:33 ◼   ► spread all over the place. So the fundamental idea is that when you are

00:21:38 ◼   ► typing words with the Dvorak keyboard, the amount that your hands need to move is less

00:21:46 ◼   ► than with a QWERTY keyboard.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Now again, many people who promote Dvorak, they use all kinds of reasons.

00:21:53 ◼   ► They talk about, "Oh, you can type faster on a Dvorak keyboard," and I always feel like,

00:21:57 ◼   ► again, this is not really relevant to me.

00:21:59 ◼   ► The speed of my typing is not the limiting factor in my life.

00:22:03 ◼   ► That is not the reason I use a Dvorak keyboard.

00:22:06 ◼   ► I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak many, many years ago now, back when I was, I believe,

00:22:15 ◼   ► a young sophomore in college.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Here is, as best I can remember, the gist of what happened.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I was always, as you can imagine, quite a nerdy child.

00:22:26 ◼   ► I loved computers and would spend all the free time that I could in high school on the

00:22:30 ◼   ► computer that the family had in the house.

00:22:32 ◼   ► But when I went off to college, I was now free of all constraints, right?

00:22:37 ◼   ► There were no parents telling me to get off a computer.

00:22:40 ◼   ► Once you go to college, the amount of time that you actually have to spend in classes is much, much less, which is fantastic.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And I was on the computer just all the time.

00:22:54 ◼   ► And then when you add on to this, I also, as people do in college, experimented with Linux on my computer.

00:23:05 ◼   ► And so I was using Linux as my main system, and I really got into the terminal and like typing all commands on the computer

00:23:11 ◼   ► and doing everything with a non-graphical interface.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I even at one point was running a system that just had Node GUI installed at all, like it was everything was just command line

00:23:21 ◼   ► and I totally loved it, and I was using Emacs, and I just...

00:23:24 ◼   ► I was typing on the computer all of the time, all of my free time.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And over the course of probably about a year and a half, that,

00:23:35 ◼   ► just like recently happened with animation, that caught up with me,

00:23:39 ◼   ► and I had a sudden very bad onset of pain in my hands that just put a screeching halt to my typing.

00:23:49 ◼   ► and I went to the school nurse and they're like,

00:23:51 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, your forearms are horrifically inflamed.

00:23:53 ◼   ► "Have you been typing on a computer a lot?"

00:23:55 ◼   ► And of course my answer was,

00:23:57 ◼   ► "Well, does every single moment of my free time

00:24:00 ◼   ► "count as a lot?"

00:24:01 ◼   ► And they're like, "Yeah."

00:24:02 ◼   ► And so of course I still wanted to type on a computer.

00:24:04 ◼   ► I wasn't going to stop typing on a computer.

00:24:06 ◼   ► And it just so happened, it just lucked out

00:24:10 ◼   ► that when I had this bout of real pain in my hands,

00:24:14 ◼   ► it came exactly at a semester break in university.

00:24:18 ◼   ► and I had about two or three weeks off from school.

00:24:22 ◼   ► What I decided to do was I took a break from typing on the computer at all

00:24:27 ◼   ► for those couple of weeks to try to relax, get my hands back in normal condition.

00:24:32 ◼   ► So I remember spending what seemed like an incredibly long time without a computer

00:24:37 ◼   ► just reading books and watching TV and thinking like,

00:24:40 ◼   ► "Oh man, I really wish I could be on the computer now, but I can't."

00:24:42 ◼   ► After that break, when I didn't need to type anything,

00:24:45 ◼   ► When I came back to school, I decided I was going to switch keyboard layouts.

00:24:51 ◼   ► I was going to learn Dvorak because I had read that for some people with RSI, they find this beneficial.

00:24:59 ◼   ► And I thought, "Well, I have to try something because I'm certainly not going to type less,

00:25:04 ◼   ► so I need to try to fix this system-wise."

00:25:07 ◼   ► And I switched to a Dvorak layout.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And if anyone has ever tried to do this, to try to learn a different keyboard layout,

00:25:19 ◼   ► the thing that you will experience is this feeling like your brain is broken when you try to type.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Because when you are good at typing on the computer, you feel like you're just expressing

00:25:29 ◼   ► your thoughts right from your mind and you're feeding it into the computer.

00:25:32 ◼   ► And then when you switch layouts, it's like you've had a stroke and you need to relearn how to walk.

00:25:39 ◼   ► It's so frustrating. You feel like,

00:25:41 ◼   ► "I used to just do this thing without thinking,

00:25:45 ◼   ► and now suddenly I'm incapable of doing this."

00:25:48 ◼   ► And because the act of typing is the act of thinking,

00:25:50 ◼   ► it's just this feedback loop of like, "My brain is broken."

00:25:55 ◼   ► It's a very, very frustrating thing to do.

00:26:00 ◼   ► It's very frustrating to switch.

00:26:01 ◼   ► That alone, though, especially for someone like you,

00:26:05 ◼   ► feels like a reason not to use Dvorak.

00:26:08 ◼   ► Right, like that's switching because it's not available everywhere.

00:26:12 ◼   ► It's actually not available on the iPad at all in software. Right.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Unless you install something external.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you talking about like switching costs here.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Is that what you mean by this question?

00:26:23 ◼   ► Yeah, because you're switching constantly.

00:26:25 ◼   ► Well, OK, first of all, I mean, you're talking about a time

00:26:31 ◼   ► long before iPads were even a glint in Steve Jobs eyes at this point.

00:26:36 ◼   ► I was working with my own personal computers and essentially nothing else.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Like I didn't have to use anybody else's computer.

00:26:45 ◼   ► And so switching over on my computer that I was using all the time was not a big deal.

00:26:49 ◼   ► I didn't, I did not, I was in an environment where I didn't have to move back and forth

00:26:55 ◼   ► between QWERTY and Dvorak.

00:26:57 ◼   ► I could focus just on my one computer and just relearning it there and doing everything there.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And my tip, my tip, if anybody does want to switch to Dvorak,

00:27:08 ◼   ► I don't know if this is the best way to do it, but at least is the way I did it at the time.

00:27:12 ◼   ► Because I was so frustrated with this feeling of like, I can't type.

00:27:15 ◼   ► And I also found trying to do typing programs again was super frustrating.

00:27:22 ◼   ► You know, you can just run any typing program and you change over your keyboard

00:27:27 ◼   ► and you like relearn how to type, just like you learn to touch type the first time.

00:27:30 ◼   ► I hated that as well.

00:27:32 ◼   ► I felt like, "Oh, God, this is just so slow. It's taking forever. I don't have time for this."

00:27:35 ◼   ► The trick that I found that worked beautifully was I printed out a Dvorak layout on a piece of paper,

00:27:43 ◼   ► and I taped it to the top of my computer monitor.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And so what I did was I would look at that piece of paper when I wanted to type,

00:27:51 ◼   ► and then type on the keyboard that was in front of me.

00:27:55 ◼   ► And when I did that, it took me only about two weeks to get back to basically where I was.

00:28:02 ◼   ► And it also allowed me to type very slowly, but it allowed me to, quote, "touch type"

00:28:08 ◼   ► on a Dvorak keyboard, but just at a really slow pace.

00:28:12 ◼   ► So I found that that was the only way I was able to switch.

00:28:15 ◼   ► I'm not sure if I had if I tried to do it a different way, I would have been able to stick with it.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Do you prefer Dvorak to QWERTY?

00:28:23 ◼   ► Or do you just switch back and forth for the same reasons that you switch back and forth between mice and trackpads and etc.?

00:28:33 ◼   ► Okay, well I don't really switch back and forth between QWERTY and Dvorak because on all of my devices I have it set up to be a Dvorak keyboard.

00:28:43 ◼   ► So like on my laptop, on my computer it's a Dvorak keyboard.

00:28:47 ◼   ► When I worked in schools, I was able to have the computers there.

00:28:52 ◼   ► They were able to just switch over to Dvorak keyboards,

00:28:55 ◼   ► which is, by the way, also an excellent great way to stop having kids messing with your computer

00:28:59 ◼   ► if you leave it for a few seconds, if the keyboard is totally messed up from their perspective,

00:29:02 ◼   ► they can't type anything. It's like a security feature.

00:29:05 ◼   ► I assume when you say that, you're changing it in software, but the hardware keyboard is still quirky.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Yeah. Like, I am talking to you right now, and I am recording on my laptop today.

00:29:16 ◼   ► and my laptop has a regular QWERTY keyboard in it.

00:29:19 ◼   ► You know, it's just a regular 15 inch power book.

00:29:21 ◼   ► And you can't change the keyboard on there.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Power book?

00:29:24 ◼   ► Oh, whatever.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Your power book running OS X?

00:29:28 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:29:29 ◼   ► Who cares about this?

00:29:30 ◼   ► It doesn't matter anymore.

00:29:31 ◼   ► iPads are the future.

00:29:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I know that.

00:29:34 ◼   ► I'm on board with that train.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Not me, I don't care.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:29:39 ◼   ► With your iBooks or something, I don't know.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:29:42 ◼   ► See, you can't change it in hardware.

00:29:44 ◼   ► You can just change it in software.

00:29:46 ◼   ► And this is where you have to know how to touch type.

00:29:49 ◼   ► So if you're looking at the keyboard, well, you're just out of luck.

00:29:53 ◼   ► You can't move around the physical keys on most modern computers.

00:29:57 ◼   ► So it is just changed in software.

00:30:00 ◼   ► So when I worked at a school and I would log on to the computer,

00:30:04 ◼   ► their Windows computers were smart enough that one of the saved preferences for me as a user

00:30:10 ◼   ► was to swap around the keyboard layout so that it was Dvorak while I was typing.

00:30:14 ◼   ► but it did mean that if anybody else tried to type my computer they could type nothing

00:30:17 ◼   ► which was fantastic from my perspective, I really enjoyed that

00:30:20 ◼   ► So what do you do on iOS devices?

00:30:23 ◼   ► Do you use QWERTY keyboards there?

00:30:26 ◼   ► Or do you install third party keyboards?

00:30:29 ◼   ► Okay, so I guess this is the closest it comes to switching

00:30:32 ◼   ► which is

00:30:35 ◼   ► for the history of iOS

00:30:38 ◼   ► you have had to use the inbuilt system keyboard

00:30:42 ◼   ► and whatever it was last year, two years ago, they did add custom keyboards,

00:30:47 ◼   ► but they did it in the most half-hearted way ever, and so they just don't really work.

00:30:51 ◼   ► You can't really rely on them. There are some situations where I will happen to use them,

00:30:56 ◼   ► but it is extraordinarily rare. It's like, "Oh, thanks. Thanks, Apple. Thanks for that

00:31:02 ◼   ► checkbox feature that just totally doesn't work at all."

00:31:04 ◼   ► Third-party keyboards? Yeah, we have them. You never want to use them, but we have them.

00:31:08 ◼   ► But I actually never really found this a problem.

00:31:11 ◼   ► And even when I got an iPhone, it didn't really cross my mind about that it was a QWERTY layout

00:31:17 ◼   ► versus a Dvorak layout, because when you're typing on your phone, you're typing with your

00:31:24 ◼   ► thumb.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And especially when I first got my iPhone 4, which was the first iPhone I had, I was

00:31:30 ◼   ► just typing with one thumb, because the screen is so small.

00:31:33 ◼   ► And so my brain treated this as just a totally different method of input.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Like this is unrelated to touch typing, this is a completely separate skill.

00:31:44 ◼   ► And so learning how to type on an iPhone was, for me, I think the same experience that many

00:31:51 ◼   ► people had when they got their first iPhone of, "Oh, okay, this is a different way of

00:31:56 ◼   ► typing.

00:31:57 ◼   ► I have to just learn how to type on this tiny screen."

00:32:02 ◼   ► And then as time has progressed, this is one of the reasons why I use almost exclusively

00:32:08 ◼   ► the split keyboard on my smaller iPads, on the not 12-inch iPads, because I am really

00:32:16 ◼   ► used to typing with my thumbs on an iOS device.

00:32:21 ◼   ► My brain just says, "This is the way to type on iOS."

00:32:25 ◼   ► There is no other way, and there's no conflict here in my brain with Dvorak or this.

00:32:29 ◼   ► just a totally, totally different system.

00:32:33 ◼   ► However, my big iPad Pro has brought

00:32:37 ◼   ► something interesting to light in my

00:32:39 ◼   ► brain, which is that my knowledge of how

00:32:43 ◼   ► to touch type with QWERTY is still there.

00:32:46 ◼   ► It's still deeply buried in my

00:32:49 ◼   ► brain in a way that is surprising to me,

00:32:52 ◼   ► because as we complained about when the

00:32:55 ◼   ► iPad Pro first came out, there is no

00:32:57 ◼   ► split keyboard on the iPad Pro. You can't do the thing where it goes into just thumb typing. You

00:33:02 ◼   ► have to type with a big full keyboard across the bottom, and you can't change around the letters.

00:33:09 ◼   ► You have to type with a QWERTY keyboard on there. And there are various situations where,

00:33:14 ◼   ► for whatever reason, I do end up typing on the glass instead of flipping around the

00:33:18 ◼   ► keyboard cover that I do always have attached. So sometimes I type on the glass, and what I have

00:33:23 ◼   ► discovered is if I don't think about it, I can totally touch type QWERTY, but for about

00:33:32 ◼   ► one sentence of length. And after one sentence, this thing happens where my brain goes,

00:33:37 ◼   ► "Hey, you touch typing on a QWERTY keyboard!" and then

00:33:40 ◼   ► you start overthinking it.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Yeah, right? Like my brain just totally crashes and then for a moment I cannot type.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And what I have to do is going back to looking at the keyboard and typing like how I used to when I was a little kid before I learned how to touch type,

00:33:58 ◼   ► which was like this funny thing that I did with three fingers instead of like a regular one.

00:34:02 ◼   ► But this happens every time that if I don't think about it, I can type for just a little bit, but I will totally notice it.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And then it's just, oh, I can't type. I just broke me doing this thing.

00:34:13 ◼   ► But I find it really funny. It's like there's some part of my brain which never forgot how to do this.

00:34:18 ◼   ► and was just waiting dormant for apparently an iPad Pro to come around

00:34:23 ◼   ► where I had to type with a QWERTY keyboard.

00:34:25 ◼   ► There's another one of those things that people say in which like if birds could comprehend

00:34:30 ◼   ► the way that they fly they wouldn't be able to fly.

00:34:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:33 ◼   ► You're like that but with keyboards.

00:34:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:35 ◼   ► If you can comprehend QWERTY you can't type anymore.

00:34:38 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:34:39 ◼   ► It's just a funny thing and it makes me laugh every time and it's one of those

00:34:44 ◼   ► moments where you just realize how strange brains are.

00:34:47 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. But this is this is just unexpected behavior like one it is unexpected that after having not typed on a QWERTY keyboard in

00:34:56 ◼   ► Like

00:35:01 ◼   ► 13 to 15 years I can still do it, but then if I realize I'm doing it now, it doesn't work

00:35:08 ◼   ► How like how does this work brain? How does this make any sense?

00:35:11 ◼   ► Like oh the answer is it doesn't make any sense because brains are weird. That's the that's the answer

00:35:16 ◼   ► - I think I've told you this,

00:35:17 ◼   ► but I never learned to touch type.

00:35:19 ◼   ► - Oh yeah?

00:35:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, so like I can do a bunch of typing

00:35:22 ◼   ► without looking at the keyboard,

00:35:24 ◼   ► but I will make mistakes,

00:35:26 ◼   ► and most of the time I will just glance down every now

00:35:28 ◼   ► and then to make sure I'm where I need to be.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Like I don't, you know, I don't have the placement idea,

00:35:34 ◼   ► you know, like where you're supposed to put your hands

00:35:35 ◼   ► to rest and see, I don't know any of that.

00:35:38 ◼   ► I was never taught, I think I was coming into like

00:35:41 ◼   ► the first generation school where they didn't teach typing.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:35:46 ◼   ► I think nobody, like nobody that I know knows how to do this.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Which is so weird, because now it's more important.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Okay, do you mean that you were like the last generation to not be taught typing?

00:35:58 ◼   ► Is that what you mean?

00:35:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Okay.

00:36:01 ◼   ► You know, I'm not sure I know what that sentence is saying, but I think that sounds legit.

00:36:06 ◼   ► I am a generation who knew nothing.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Something, something, typing.

00:36:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:11 ◼   ► surprising given the age difference between us since you are younger than me I would have

00:36:16 ◼   ► assumed that someone your age would just learn touch typing as part of going through school

00:36:20 ◼   ► because when I did it it was an elective that my parents just signed me up for.

00:36:24 ◼   ► They decided this is a skill you're going to learn you're just you're just signed up for the typing

00:36:28 ◼   ► class and I definitely at the time rejected the idea that I needed to go to typing class because

00:36:34 ◼   ► I was very fast at typing already with this three finger method that I that I used like looking at

00:36:38 ◼   ► the keyboard and just typing very fast.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I was like, "I don't need to learn how to touch type, I can totally do this thing!"

00:36:43 ◼   ► But I'm very glad that I did learn how to touch type against my will as a younger person.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Yeah, see, I stuck to the fast three-finger method, which I still use today.

00:36:53 ◼   ► So you still do that.

00:36:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:55 ◼   ► And like a bunch of people, like Federico is the same, like he's a hunt and pecker.

00:36:59 ◼   ► Oh really?

00:37:00 ◼   ► Yep.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:37:02 ◼   ► I think we're just part of like a weird generation where it stopped.

00:37:05 ◼   ► My understanding is that typing doesn't exist in schools now.

00:37:09 ◼   ► I don't know if we have many listeners who are in high school or secondary level, but

00:37:17 ◼   ► if you are in high school and you listen to the show, I would be very curious if, in the

00:37:21 ◼   ► Reddit you said, "Do you do typing in schools?" or for parents who have kids in school now,

00:37:28 ◼   ► "Is typing an official skill that your kids learn, like touch typing?"

00:37:32 ◼   ► I'd be curious to know.

00:37:34 ◼   ► or do you care?

00:37:36 ◼   ► Yeah!

00:37:37 ◼   ► That's what I'm more interested about, like, do you care if you know how to touch type?

00:37:41 ◼   ► One of the things that I was quite struck by when I was teaching and towards the later

00:37:51 ◼   ► years of my limited teaching career, all of the kids had either iPhones or iPod Touches

00:38:00 ◼   ► that they were using as proxy iPhones that were just connected to the local school network

00:38:03 ◼   ► and it was a way for parents to get in touch and all the rest of this.

00:38:06 ◼   ► And I noticed that tons of the kids could do this thing that I would not have believed was possible if I didn't see it,

00:38:15 ◼   ► which was typing on the screen without looking.

00:38:18 ◼   ► I can do that.

00:38:19 ◼   ► See, this is younger person magic to me.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Well, but the thing is, though, it's not accurate. You are helped by autocorrect, right?

00:38:27 ◼   ► But it doesn't matter, right? It's just like, if autocorrect is helping or not, it doesn't make any difference to me.

00:38:33 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, sure, what?

00:38:34 ◼   ► - I mean, but it's slightly,

00:38:35 ◼   ► I know exactly what you're saying,

00:38:37 ◼   ► but it's different to touch typing

00:38:38 ◼   ► in that there is an assistant which is helping you with it.

00:38:41 ◼   ► But yeah, there's still an element of knowing the area

00:38:44 ◼   ► in which you have to hit your thumbs.

00:38:47 ◼   ► I tell you what I'm gonna do.

00:38:48 ◼   ► Well, I'm gonna set up a Google form

00:38:51 ◼   ► to try and find out this information.

00:38:53 ◼   ► 'Cause this is interesting to me now.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Like, do you know how to touch type?

00:38:56 ◼   ► Do you care?

00:38:58 ◼   ► Like kind of what age bracket are you

00:39:00 ◼   ► and can you type on screens of out looking?

00:39:03 ◼   ► "Do you have any plans to learn?"

00:39:04 ◼   ► So I'm gonna set that up, I'll put that in the show notes,

00:39:06 ◼   ► and we can assess the results of that next time.

00:39:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'll be very curious to see it.

00:39:11 ◼   ► But where I was going with this though is that,

00:39:15 ◼   ► so I saw the kids doing this, and I still remember,

00:39:19 ◼   ► I was asking this one girl like,

00:39:20 ◼   ► "Are you typing without looking at the screen?"

00:39:23 ◼   ► And she was like, "Oh yeah, I can totally."

00:39:24 ◼   ► They're like, "No, prove it to me,

00:39:25 ◼   ► like come up here right now, like I need to."

00:39:27 ◼   ► Like, "I know we're supposed to be doing physics,

00:39:29 ◼   ► but this is way more interesting to me."

00:39:30 ◼   ► And so she demonstrated like,

00:39:31 ◼   ► Yes, she could totally do it. She could look at me and type a coherent sentence. It's like that's magic

00:39:36 ◼   ► I don't understand how you can do that

00:39:38 ◼   ► Only CGP Grey the teacher would discover a child in class texting then bring her to the front to find out something

00:39:45 ◼   ► He's interested in

00:39:47 ◼   ► Whatever, torque can wait. They must have loved you man

00:39:51 ◼   ► But I went home to tell my wife this astounding piece of information to me and

00:40:01 ◼   ► discovered that she was surprised that I was surprised that people could do this because this is just what she did and she never

00:40:07 ◼   ► Even thought about it, right? It just never even crossed her mind that this was a skill of any note whatsoever and

00:40:12 ◼   ► as

00:40:15 ◼   ► iOS has become

00:40:17 ◼   ► increasingly important in my life. I went through a long time of

00:40:21 ◼   ► trying to learn how to type this way of

00:40:26 ◼   ► very consciously like, "No, I will master this skill that children can do. I will

00:40:32 ◼   ► type and I will not look at the keyboard and I will look at what I am typing." But

00:40:37 ◼   ► I just failed repeatedly. I even went so far as I bought a program called, it's

00:40:44 ◼   ► like called Tap Typing, I think. It's a pretty good typing tutor on iOS and I

00:40:50 ◼   ► I blocked out a part of my schedule every day

00:40:54 ◼   ► to do touch typing lessons with a thumb keyboard

00:40:57 ◼   ► on the iPhone and with a split keyboard on the iPad.

00:41:01 ◼   ► And I just could never ever get that skill.

00:41:06 ◼   ► It was just totally lost to me.

00:41:10 ◼   ► It was totally unavailable.

00:41:12 ◼   ► It's like trying to learn a language as an older person.

00:41:15 ◼   ► For some reason, my brain just was not able

00:41:19 ◼   ► to pick that up.

00:41:20 ◼   ► - See what I just sent to you?

00:41:22 ◼   ► I just sent you an iMessage that I typed out about looking.

00:41:25 ◼   ► - Oh, is that what you did?

00:41:26 ◼   ► - Uh-huh.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - Well, aren't you clever?

00:41:30 ◼   ► - I'm very clever.

00:41:31 ◼   ► - This is not nearly as much proof

00:41:34 ◼   ► as the girl who did it in front of me in class.

00:41:37 ◼   ► Like you just sent me an iMessage.

00:41:39 ◼   ► This is proof of nothing.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - All you need to do is give me the address of your office

00:41:43 ◼   ► and I'll come and show you.

00:41:44 ◼   ► - No, no, it's not gonna happen.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Nice try, nice try, Myke.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Just quick aside, how is the office going?

00:41:51 ◼   ► Do you still have it?

00:41:52 ◼   ► - This is an interesting point to ask me about this office.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Because, so this is my writing monastery

00:42:00 ◼   ► that I've set up for myself

00:42:02 ◼   ► that we talked about a few episodes ago.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Through entirely my own fault and dumb mistakes,

00:42:09 ◼   ► there was a period of a week

00:42:12 ◼   ► where I was locked out of my own office

00:42:14 ◼   ► because I thought that a bill had been automatically paid

00:42:17 ◼   ► when it had not been paid, and it took a while to get this sorted out.

00:42:22 ◼   ► But I was locked out of my office for a week.

00:42:26 ◼   ► And I thought, "Well, okay, I just have to work around this.

00:42:30 ◼   ► I'm gonna try to do what I normally do and go to different places to work."

00:42:36 ◼   ► And just like, "I'll just get on with this."

00:42:38 ◼   ► And I noticed that, man, my writing ability just plummeted.

00:42:44 ◼   ► that this, compared to having this regular routine,

00:42:49 ◼   ► the regular routine increased the amount

00:42:52 ◼   ► that I write every day,

00:42:54 ◼   ► and then not having access to this area

00:42:56 ◼   ► and trying to go back to do it the old way.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Granted, it's like disruptive,

00:43:00 ◼   ► but it was still really interesting to see like,

00:43:03 ◼   ► okay, this unintentional experiment has revealed to me

00:43:06 ◼   ► that unambiguously, this writing office is totally worth it.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Without a doubt, 100% worth it.

00:43:15 ◼   ► So yeah, I am able to declare it a success at this point.

00:43:20 ◼   ► - Good.

00:43:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's a success because it's just me.

00:43:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:43:26 ◼   ► - Just me, nobody else, no chairs for Myke.

00:43:30 ◼   ► - You haven't tried out the other way of doing it though.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Like me and you, it could be so much better.

00:43:34 ◼   ► - I mean, that is true.

00:43:38 ◼   ► I have not tried out having a mic in my office, but I think the data suggests that that is

00:43:47 ◼   ► probably not a fruitful area of exploration.

00:43:51 ◼   ► Well, you should check my data, because I have the opposite result.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I'm sure you do, Myke.

00:43:58 ◼   ► I'm sure you do.

00:44:00 ◼   ► On this show, we're always talking about side projects and ideas and things that we want

00:44:04 ◼   ► to try.

00:44:05 ◼   ► All of these things need a website and when you have a website you need a great domain name and finding that perfect domain is

00:44:12 ◼   ► ridiculously easy with hover

00:44:15 ◼   ► When all you're looking to do is get a great domain name for that website or email address

00:44:19 ◼   ► You shouldn't be forced with page after page of things that you want to opt out of because the company's trying to upsell you stuff

00:44:24 ◼   ► That's why hover only offers domain and email services

00:44:27 ◼   ► So you're able to focus on finding that great domain name to get back to working on your great idea

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00:45:04 ◼   ► Find the perfect domain name for your idea. Go to hover.com and use the promo code Dvorak

00:45:09 ◼   ► D-V-O-R-A-K at checkout to save 10% off your first purchase.

00:45:14 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Hover for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:45:18 ◼   ► So you know the wheel that never stops turning that we can never get off of Myke? What is

00:45:24 ◼   ► the name of that wheel? It's the wheel of email.

00:45:27 ◼   ► It's the wheel of email and email apps. Yes, that's where the wheel has stopped today

00:45:33 ◼   ► on the apps section of the wheel.

00:45:35 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:45:36 ◼   ► [

00:45:36 ◼   ► So, I have been using a new email app for a while and I wanted to talk about it for

00:45:48 ◼   ► two reasons.

00:45:50 ◼   ► One is that it's an email app that I have hardly ever seen recommended by anybody and

00:46:00 ◼   ► And two, I am totally loving it, so I want to give it a little bit of Cortex love.

00:46:09 ◼   ► I would like to promote it and tell people about it so that if it sounds like it's for

00:46:14 ◼   ► them, they can go try it out because aside from the Apple Mail app, I have never used

00:46:22 ◼   ► an email app that I am just so immediately happy with and really like.

00:46:28 ◼   ► And that email app is called UniBox.

00:46:33 ◼   ► Have you heard of UniBox, Myke?

00:46:35 ◼   ► I think someone has sent it to me, like as a suggestion, and I looked at the screenshots

00:46:41 ◼   ► and decided I didn't want anything to do with it.

00:46:43 ◼   ► So I'm interested to see what you say, because the reason I don't like it is it kind of tries

00:46:52 ◼   ► to me to look like it's making email look like iMessage, and I don't want that.

00:46:58 ◼   ► Okay, making email look like iMessage is not necessarily a bad description.

00:47:05 ◼   ► But here is the way I would sell Unibox.

00:47:09 ◼   ► And I think there is some portion of our audience, when they hear how this works, they will think,

00:47:15 ◼   ► "Yes, I did not know that I wanted this, or I did know that I want this, but I just didn't

00:47:20 ◼   ► know it was possible, and here's the solution."

00:47:22 ◼   ► So Unibox's selling feature is that it groups all of the messages from a single person together.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Ooh, listen to that!

00:47:36 ◼   ► Listen to that intake of breath from Myke.

00:47:39 ◼   ► Listen to that!

00:47:40 ◼   ► Listen to that!

00:47:41 ◼   ► Merville in it!

00:47:42 ◼   ► I eat these moments for breakfast!

00:47:47 ◼   ► Myke doesn't like this for his email.

00:47:49 ◼   ► Tell me why you don't like this, Myke.

00:47:51 ◼   ► No, that was a good intake of breath. Oh was it? Yeah, I can't read you. I don't need you at all

00:47:57 ◼   ► You're like a Sphinx. I'm an enigma. Yeah, exactly

00:48:00 ◼   ► It's good as in this is interesting. I've never really considered this before but I kind of like the sound of it. Okay

00:48:09 ◼   ► so this came up because

00:48:12 ◼   ► When I used to do email like so many things on my iMac

00:48:19 ◼   ► Very often I found it was just helpful to sort by sender.

00:48:22 ◼   ► There's some times where you just want to find like,

00:48:25 ◼   ► "Oh, I know I have a bunch of messages from one person. Let me just deal with them all together."

00:48:29 ◼   ► And I thought that that was always useful, like this was great, but then on

00:48:34 ◼   ► iOS there's nothing that really reproduces this. This seems like it is not an option in very many email apps.

00:48:42 ◼   ► It's just you can't tell mail.app to sort by sender.

00:48:47 ◼   ► You can't do this. It's just not a thing that is practical.

00:48:51 ◼   ► But what I really like is that Unibox...

00:48:55 ◼   ► It's not that they allow you to sort by sender.

00:49:00 ◼   ► It's that sort by sender is the only thing it does

00:49:04 ◼   ► and they have built the entire app around this idea.

00:49:09 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, this is fantastic. This is really well done."

00:49:16 ◼   ► So here, conceptually, is why you might want to do this.

00:49:21 ◼   ► One of the things that we talk about in this show is mode shifting.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Right, like what kind of work am I doing right now?

00:49:28 ◼   ► What kind of work am I doing later?

00:49:30 ◼   ► You know, what mental frame are you in when you're performing a particular task?

00:49:35 ◼   ► And it is helpful to consolidate mental frames into larger and larger chunks.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Like this is just a more effective way to work.

00:49:45 ◼   ► And within email, one of the things that is often so frustrating about email

00:49:52 ◼   ► is that it's this slew of who knows what.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, okay. Here is a message from my parents. Here is a message from my lawyer.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Here is a newsletter from some place that I signed up to a long time ago.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Here's an automated message from my bank."

00:50:10 ◼   ► Like, there's just these very, very different levels of things.

00:50:14 ◼   ► You never know what's coming through.

00:50:17 ◼   ► But when it's all grouped together by sender,

00:50:21 ◼   ► it's like there's less mode shifting that can occur.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And so for me in particular, one of the things that I love is I can open up Unibox

00:50:30 ◼   ► and when you say it makes email look like iMessage,

00:50:35 ◼   ► it's because on the side of the screen it does look quite like iMessage.

00:50:41 ◼   ► It looks like there's a list of people,

00:50:44 ◼   ► like you have an iMessage,

00:50:45 ◼   ► and at the top is the person

00:50:47 ◼   ► who has contacted you the most recently,

00:50:49 ◼   ► and then as you go down the list,

00:50:51 ◼   ► it's less and less recent.

00:50:54 ◼   ► But the thing is, if you click on the person at the top,

00:50:57 ◼   ► it will show you all of the messages

00:51:00 ◼   ► from that person in one place.

00:51:03 ◼   ► And so I find it super helpful to say like,

00:51:07 ◼   ► oh, okay, my lawyer has sent me something,

00:51:09 ◼   ► but when I click on that,

00:51:11 ◼   ► I want to be able to see all of the messages

00:51:14 ◼   ► from my lawyer that I have to deal with right now.

00:51:17 ◼   ► And then it's like, okay, I am in the mode

00:51:20 ◼   ► of dealing with the kinds of questions

00:51:22 ◼   ► this person is going to ask.

00:51:24 ◼   ► And then I can just go, okay, reply, reply, reply.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Or for example, like my assistant sends me a bunch of stuff,

00:51:30 ◼   ► I click on her name and it's okay, great.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Here are the seven messages that she has sent me

00:51:35 ◼   ► since the last time I looked at email.

00:51:37 ◼   ► And I can just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

00:51:40 ◼   ► go through all of these being in the mindset of,

00:51:43 ◼   ► I'm replying to her with answers to things

00:51:46 ◼   ► about questions that she needs, right?

00:51:47 ◼   ► So it's like, we're just gonna go through this.

00:51:49 ◼   ► And then what's great is I really love it

00:51:51 ◼   ► for things like Amazon notifications, right?

00:51:55 ◼   ► Where like Amazon sends you messages

00:51:58 ◼   ► about like stuff that you bought or whatever.

00:52:01 ◼   ► Here's where the building the app

00:52:03 ◼   ► around the idea of sender is fantastic.

00:52:06 ◼   ► Because there are little gestures that you can do

00:52:09 ◼   ► where you can say something like,

00:52:10 ◼   ► just archive all of these messages from Amazon,

00:52:15 ◼   ► just all of them at once.

00:52:16 ◼   ► And so what you're not doing is, say,

00:52:19 ◼   ► answering a message from your lawyer

00:52:20 ◼   ► and then seeing a receipt from Amazon

00:52:22 ◼   ► and then archiving that one message from Amazon

00:52:24 ◼   ► and then replying to a message from someone else

00:52:27 ◼   ► and then, oh, again, pops up Amazon.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Oh yes, just archive this one too.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Like, no, no, no, you just deal with all of them at once.

00:52:35 ◼   ► And it is fantastic.

00:52:37 ◼   ► I think it is a really, really interestingly designed app.

00:52:42 ◼   ► And I have to say,

00:52:44 ◼   ► it's gotta be one of the most effective ways

00:52:47 ◼   ► to get through email,

00:52:48 ◼   ► especially with these little gestures

00:52:50 ◼   ► where you can just deal with senders all at once.

00:52:54 ◼   ► I'm a huge fan of this.

00:52:57 ◼   ► - All right, so let's say that I've sent you

00:53:00 ◼   ► an email on Monday and an email on Wednesday

00:53:02 ◼   ► and an email on Sunday,

00:53:04 ◼   ► and then you come to this on Sunday

00:53:06 ◼   ► and you deal with the Sunday message.

00:53:08 ◼   ► What happens to the Monday and Wednesday messages?

00:53:11 ◼   ► 'Cause if they're grouped together by sender,

00:53:13 ◼   ► isn't it easy to just miss things

00:53:16 ◼   ► because they're not in a thread?

00:53:17 ◼   ► - Okay, there's a weird little feature

00:53:24 ◼   ► that it took me a while to figure out,

00:53:26 ◼   ► what the hell do you want me to do application?

00:53:28 ◼   ► And then once I understood it, I was like, oh, okay,

00:53:31 ◼   ► fantastic.

00:53:33 ◼   ► So there's an iMessage list on the left-hand side

00:53:38 ◼   ► of the screen where, like I said before,

00:53:40 ◼   ► you can do archive all of these messages.

00:53:43 ◼   ► You can swipe to the left and you can set

00:53:45 ◼   ► whatever the gesture is, like just send it all to archive.

00:53:48 ◼   ► But if Myke has sent me a bunch of messages,

00:53:52 ◼   ► on the screen where I'm looking,

00:53:55 ◼   ► the message that you sent me most recently,

00:53:59 ◼   ► let's say you sent me a message yesterday,

00:54:01 ◼   ► that's up at the top.

00:54:03 ◼   ► The app has this hidden feature

00:54:05 ◼   ► that was tricky to figure out,

00:54:07 ◼   ► but if I reply to your message,

00:54:10 ◼   ► I can then swipe just on the subject of your message

00:54:15 ◼   ► and perform whatever actions I want to from there.

00:54:19 ◼   ► So what I can do is swipe on the subject,

00:54:22 ◼   ► and I've set it up so if I just swipe right,

00:54:24 ◼   ► it'll archive the message I have just replied to,

00:54:27 ◼   ► and then it immediately pulls up

00:54:29 ◼   ► the next most recent message that you sent me.

00:54:32 ◼   ► So does it collapse the threads together?

00:54:34 ◼   ► So like if we're talking about one thing

00:54:37 ◼   ► and we've got five emails going back and forth,

00:54:39 ◼   ► does it keep those together in like one smaller window

00:54:42 ◼   ► so you can still see that there's other stuff

00:54:44 ◼   ► hiding in the background?

00:54:46 ◼   ► - All right, so now if we have had a threaded message,

00:54:49 ◼   ► right, so we're replying and it has the same subject line,

00:54:52 ◼   ► it keeps all of those together

00:54:55 ◼   ► and it collapses it visually on screen

00:54:58 ◼   ► and there's like a little arrow button on the bottom

00:55:01 ◼   ► that you can click to expand the entire thread

00:55:04 ◼   ► if you need to, but you can see the most recent thing

00:55:08 ◼   ► for the thread at the top,

00:55:09 ◼   ► and if you just start scrolling down,

00:55:11 ◼   ► you can work your way backwards through the thread.

00:55:13 ◼   ► So it keeps threaded conversations together,

00:55:16 ◼   ► and then you can perform these swipe gestures

00:55:18 ◼   ► on a thread as a bunch if you want to.

00:55:21 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:55:25 ◼   ► (sighs)

00:55:26 ◼   ► - You're gonna make me do that thing now

00:55:28 ◼   ► where I have to enter in five email accounts.

00:55:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:55:35 ◼   ► All right, this sounds interesting.

00:55:36 ◼   ► This is a different take on email

00:55:40 ◼   ► that intrigues me enough that I wanna try it.

00:55:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, what this reminds me of

00:55:45 ◼   ► is when we had our conversation

00:55:47 ◼   ► about email apps a while ago,

00:55:49 ◼   ► I mentioned, I believe it was MailPilot 2,

00:55:52 ◼   ► was one of these apps where I don't remember the details now

00:55:56 ◼   ► what my feeling was, oh, they have designed this

00:55:59 ◼   ► around doing email in a different way.

00:56:02 ◼   ► And if your mind is lined up with this way

00:56:06 ◼   ► of dealing with email, you're totally going to love this.

00:56:09 ◼   ► But it wasn't for me, but it was one of those apps

00:56:13 ◼   ► where I could see like, you're doing email differently.

00:56:15 ◼   ► And I think Unibox might not be that extreme,

00:56:20 ◼   ► but it's along those lines of you're thinking about this

00:56:25 ◼   ► a little bit differently.

00:56:26 ◼   ► You're thinking about it in terms of senders

00:56:29 ◼   ► and dealing with senders very quickly

00:56:32 ◼   ► and having this customizable swiping gestures

00:56:36 ◼   ► that are different for like everything

00:56:40 ◼   ► that this person has sent or just this current message

00:56:42 ◼   ► and or thread that you're dealing with.

00:56:44 ◼   ► But if you can get your mind wrapped around that,

00:56:47 ◼   ► it's, I really, really recommend it.

00:56:51 ◼   ► I have to say it's a very interesting take on it,

00:56:55 ◼   ► and it is very well done.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And yes, I think that it is worth it for you

00:57:01 ◼   ► to put in all of your email apps.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Can I also mention, I have to mention,

00:57:06 ◼   ► they have one of the cleverest monetization things

00:57:10 ◼   ► I have ever seen in terms of in-app purchases.

00:57:13 ◼   ► So the app itself is free to try.

00:57:16 ◼   ► You can use it.

00:57:18 ◼   ► But if you want to remove the signature

00:57:22 ◼   ► that says sent with uni box.

00:57:24 ◼   ► Genius.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Then you have to buy the in-app purchase

00:57:29 ◼   ► to remove that signature.

00:57:30 ◼   ► That's a pro feature.

00:57:31 ◼   ► I thought that was so clever when I saw that.

00:57:35 ◼   ► I thought this is just, it made me smile.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Like yes, this is the exact perfect place

00:57:41 ◼   ► for an in-app purchase to go.

00:57:44 ◼   ► That if I wanna use this thing for free,

00:57:46 ◼   ► I need to give you free promotion on every email that I send.

00:57:49 ◼   ► If I don't want to, I can pay you money,

00:57:51 ◼   ► and this unlocks this feature.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Like that, I,

00:57:54 ◼   ► that gets the CGP Grey Award

00:57:58 ◼   ► for cleverest in-app purchase of 2016 so far.

00:58:02 ◼   ► It thought it was just fantastic.

00:58:04 ◼   ► - Does this app do anything where it like

00:58:06 ◼   ► (beep) up your email for everywhere else?

00:58:08 ◼   ► - No, it does not. - Okay.

00:58:10 ◼   ► - Right?

00:58:10 ◼   ► This is one of, this is also a thing that I like.

00:58:12 ◼   ► It doesn't have crazy custom folders.

00:58:14 ◼   ► - Good.

00:58:15 ◼   ► doing custom IMAP crap, it's just straight up, you have an inbox and you have an archive

00:58:22 ◼   ► and you have a spam folder and that's the only thing it cares about, is not doing any

00:58:25 ◼   ► custom stuff.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Alright, so I've just loaded up my Relay FM email address into Unibox and it's doing something

00:58:32 ◼   ► that I consider to be horrific.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:58:35 ◼   ► What is it doing?

00:58:36 ◼   ► Every email sent in a long list.

00:58:40 ◼   ► So I'll have like everybody.

00:58:42 ◼   ► I don't want to see everybody, I want to just see what I haven't dealt with.

00:58:44 ◼   ► that is uncomfortable to me.

00:58:46 ◼   ► [Music]

00:58:52 ◼   ► Okay listener, what you just missed, Myke might have,

00:58:55 ◼   ► I'm going to assume that Myke put in like a little, a little transition sound or something,

00:58:58 ◼   ► but what you just missed was a fascinating moment of Myke and I trying to debug

00:59:06 ◼   ► some setting that I must have changed that I didn't remember,

00:59:09 ◼   ► that Myke didn't have when he set up his Unibox email for the first time.

00:59:14 ◼   ► And so we've saved you listening to all of that horror.

00:59:17 ◼   ► And here is the setting that I changed,

00:59:20 ◼   ► which I didn't even remember that I did.

00:59:22 ◼   ► But in settings for Unibox,

00:59:26 ◼   ► there's a thing that is called Groups,

00:59:28 ◼   ► and they have some kind of magic Unibox,

00:59:32 ◼   ► and I disabled their magic Unibox.

00:59:35 ◼   ► Exactly what that does, I don't know, I don't remember.

00:59:38 ◼   ► I must have turned that off because I didn't like it.

00:59:40 ◼   ► And now Myke is using this the way I want him to use this.

00:59:44 ◼   ► So if you, dear listener, load up Unibox

00:59:48 ◼   ► and you're seeing emails from everybody in the whole world

00:59:51 ◼   ► that you have ever contacted,

00:59:53 ◼   ► you want to turn off Unibox

00:59:56 ◼   ► and then you will just have messages

00:59:58 ◼   ► from people who have contacted you

01:00:00 ◼   ► that are also in your inbox.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Okay, Myke, now that we're here, how's it going?

01:00:06 ◼   ► This is really weird.

01:00:08 ◼   ► It is super weird.

01:00:10 ◼   ► It's so super weird that I don't know

01:00:13 ◼   ► how when I first downloaded this, I stuck with it at first, because you can see there's

01:00:19 ◼   ► a lot of very strange things right off the bat.

01:00:22 ◼   ► But I love it.

01:00:24 ◼   ► It is weird that you stuck with this, because it is strange and I'm surprised you had the

01:00:30 ◼   ► tolerance for it.

01:00:32 ◼   ► There's one thing that I don't like about it.

01:00:37 ◼   ► It seems that you can't swipe on the group of the person to mark a message as read or

01:00:42 ◼   ► run red and I don't like that.

01:00:44 ◼   ► OK.

01:00:46 ◼   ► You have to go into the individual

01:00:48 ◼   ► message to do that,

01:00:49 ◼   ► which is a really weird choice.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And I'm looking in their swipe settings.

01:00:54 ◼   ► This is probably also going

01:00:55 ◼   ► to come out, by the way.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Another example of a thing that was weird

01:01:01 ◼   ► that I remember being

01:01:03 ◼   ► my deepest frustration with it

01:01:05 ◼   ► when I was trying to use it was

01:01:07 ◼   ► in the settings.

01:01:08 ◼   ► There's a level that is called swipes.

01:01:12 ◼   ► And this is what I was talking about before with gestures, where you can swipe to archive all of the message from a particular sender.

01:01:18 ◼   ► So when you tap on the swipes option, it gives you two sub-options, one of which is contacts and one of which is messages.

01:01:30 ◼   ► And this is what you have to understand to make this work, and what I was so confused with, is that

01:01:37 ◼   ► you can set different swipe gestures for the list of people that you see on the left hand side.

01:01:45 ◼   ► That is what they're calling the "contacts swipes".

01:01:50 ◼   ► And then you can set a separate list of gestures for swiping on the title, the subject of a message that you are currently looking at.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And you can arrange those however you want.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And so the way I have it is so that I can just swipe on the name of a person on the left hand side and say archive all of the messages from them.

01:02:18 ◼   ► But I've also set it up so that I can swipe on the subject of a message that I am looking at

01:02:25 ◼   ► to immediately reply to that message.

01:02:29 ◼   ► But it's weird and it takes a while to get set up, and

01:02:33 ◼   ► talking through Myke for all of the stuff that you, dear listener, have been spared,

01:02:38 ◼   ► it's reminding me that, like, yes, it took a while for me to figure out what this app wanted.

01:02:43 ◼   ► And now it seems so natural, I totally forgot all of the painful playing around part with it.

01:02:48 ◼   ► and I've been trying to accelerate Myke past that.

01:02:52 ◼   ► - So like one of the things that I'm really struggling with

01:02:54 ◼   ► is the choices that they make in the swipes.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Like on contacts, you can choose to mark a message as read

01:03:01 ◼   ► with a swipe, but it won't let you mark it again as unread.

01:03:06 ◼   ► You have to do that on the message.

01:03:08 ◼   ► - I do see that, that you cannot add a mark as unread message.

01:03:12 ◼   ► - And then it's like, why?

01:03:14 ◼   ► But like they have their own specific way of doing it

01:03:17 ◼   ► is what I'm getting from this,

01:03:19 ◼   ► is that this app just likes to do things

01:03:23 ◼   ► in a strange and kind of weird way.

01:03:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:03:28 ◼   ► - And this is what I'm looking at and seeing,

01:03:31 ◼   ► that this is a different way of doing email.

01:03:33 ◼   ► Like, do you do all of your email in this app now?

01:03:37 ◼   ► - All right, I have a funny workflow.

01:03:39 ◼   ► - You have a funny workflow?

01:03:41 ◼   ► - I was gonna try to avoid this,

01:03:43 ◼   ► but since you have brought this up,

01:03:44 ◼   ► I guess I have to talk through this.

01:03:47 ◼   ► So what I always regard as the absolute killer feature of mail that is no way to get around

01:03:56 ◼   ► it for me is really two things.

01:03:58 ◼   ► It's VIPs and alerts from particular threads.

01:04:02 ◼   ► No other email app seems to have this, and if they have it, it doesn't work in the way

01:04:06 ◼   ► that I need it to.

01:04:07 ◼   ► The ability to mark a contact as a VIP and have that person be pulled out into a separate

01:04:16 ◼   ► inbox from everybody else is invaluable to me. So I have a ton of people marked as VIPs,

01:04:21 ◼   ► and it is also really valuable that if I change their email and their contact card,

01:04:26 ◼   ► like Apple just knows it's the same person, they're still a VIP.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I really wish they would add VIP domains that I could say everybody who sent a message from

01:04:36 ◼   ► this domain is a VIP, but that's a small feature, right? The VIP thing is valuable,

01:04:42 ◼   ► I cannot possibly leave it.

01:04:43 ◼   ► So this is my current workflow when I am triaging my email.

01:04:48 ◼   ► Step one.

01:04:48 ◼   ► I go to Unibox and I look for my assistant.

01:04:52 ◼   ► I tap on her name and I can answer all of her messages

01:04:56 ◼   ► because she is top of the triage priority list.

01:04:59 ◼   ► Once I have cleared her messages, then I go over to mail.app

01:05:04 ◼   ► and I start working my way through the VIPs

01:05:07 ◼   ► because these are the people I have marked

01:05:10 ◼   ► that I want them pulled above the masses of emails that I get,

01:05:14 ◼   ► largely from people that I don't know, or just newsletters, or all kinds of other stuff.

01:05:19 ◼   ► And so I do spend a lot of time in mail because VIP messages, almost by definition,

01:05:23 ◼   ► require a lot of time and attention to reply to, because they're important things.

01:05:28 ◼   ► So I'll work through the VIPs.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And then this is where Unibox really shines,

01:05:34 ◼   ► because after I've gone through the VIPs and I switch back to Unibox,

01:05:38 ◼   ► Now, a huge portion of the emails that are left over are automated messages of some kinds,

01:05:48 ◼   ► like things that I need to see but that I don't necessarily want to have mixed in with

01:05:53 ◼   ► the regular messages when I'm going through them.

01:05:56 ◼   ► And so this second time of going to UniBox is a very different mental framework.

01:06:02 ◼   ► It's like, well, all I want to do is I want to clear and archive most of this stuff because

01:06:06 ◼   ► the chance that I'm going to reply to almost any of these messages is very, very low.

01:06:11 ◼   ► And anything that I am going to reply to, there's a pretty good chance that what it is,

01:06:16 ◼   ► is that person should really be a VIP in my system.

01:06:20 ◼   ► And so, like when I get my messages from Hover about,

01:06:24 ◼   ► there's a domain that's going to be renewing sometime soon,

01:06:27 ◼   ► it's great because I see like, "Oh, Hover sent me a bunch of messages."

01:06:30 ◼   ► Like I can click on it, I can just quickly scroll through and see,

01:06:32 ◼   ► "Yep, everything looked great with all of the various domains that they're talking about."

01:06:36 ◼   ► archive these 10 messages done, right, and just move on to the next thing.

01:06:40 ◼   ► Oh, here's everything I bought from Amazon, like quick swipe through, yeah, it all looks great,

01:06:44 ◼   ► fine, no problem, archive done. And so that is my flow. It's Unibox to pull out my assistant,

01:06:50 ◼   ► then go to mail.appclearvips, then go to Unibox and try to just get through the rest of it as

01:06:57 ◼   ► soon as possible. But Unibox is a fantastic tool for that. Fantastic.

01:07:02 ◼   ► You have given me two things today.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Uh huh.

01:07:05 ◼   ► You have given me an app that I now need to play around with and potentially waste some time in.

01:07:12 ◼   ► And you've also given me a lot of work to do in the edit.

01:07:16 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:07:18 ◼   ► From me to you, Myke. It's a gift. I hope you enjoy them.

01:07:22 ◼   ► [Bing!]

01:07:23 ◼   ► Today's episode is brought to you very kindly by the fine folk over at FreshBooks

01:07:27 ◼   ► FreshBooks who are on a mission to help small business owners save time and avoid the stress

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01:08:39 ◼   ► believe in this product, I think that you're going to love it. If you use any type of invoicing

01:08:43 ◼   ► software take advantage of FreshBooks' 30 day free trial to listeners of this show,

01:08:48 ◼   ► no credit card required and you'll see just how great FreshBooks is. To claim your 30

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01:09:02 ◼   ► to FreshBooks for their support of Cortex and Relay FM.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Alright great let's do some Ask Cortex. Don't forget if you want to send us any questions

01:09:11 ◼   ► in for the show it's very easy you just tweet with the hashtag #AskCortex it goes into a

01:09:15 ◼   ► lovely spreadsheet and then we pick them out whenever we want to talk about them on the

01:09:19 ◼   ► show.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Okay, Linus wanted to know how much time is there between waking up and starting work

01:09:26 ◼   ► for us? I find this really interesting because I'm going to go first on this one. Immediately.

01:09:34 ◼   ► So the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is get my iPhone and look at notification

01:09:38 ◼   ► center and see what's happened, then I open Slack, then I open email, and I begin the

01:09:43 ◼   ► day.

01:09:44 ◼   ► B: I mean, I always have to remember that you do a fundamentally different job than

01:09:50 ◼   ► me.

01:09:51 ◼   ► You do a job where that totally makes sense.

01:09:53 ◼   ► But I know that that would be the fastest way to ruin my whole day, would be doing that.

01:09:59 ◼   ► S; Yep.

01:10:00 ◼   ► The difference is between me and you, the fundamental difference is you work on your

01:10:04 ◼   ► own and I work with other people.

01:10:06 ◼   ► At least I mostly work on my own. Maybe not so much in the future, but for the time being...

01:10:10 ◼   ► Yeah, that's gonna change. Let me tell you, my friend, that's gonna start

01:10:14 ◼   ► to change for you soon. For the time being, I mostly work on my own.

01:10:18 ◼   ► So yeah, it's that your job is knowing while you

01:10:22 ◼   ► were sleeping in London, did any of the people in the wrong time zone

01:10:26 ◼   ► message you about things that they needed done.

01:10:30 ◼   ► That's what you need to do. That is your work. And so waking up, checking

01:10:34 ◼   ► notifications make sense. Do you even get out of bed for that or do you just reach over

01:10:40 ◼   ► and grab the phone and look right at messages?

01:10:42 ◼   ► Just reach over, man.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Wow. Okay. I mean, that's polluting the sanctity of the bedroom is what you're doing there.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Well, sure. But what happens is I do this, I see if there's anything urgent, I respond

01:10:57 ◼   ► to anything that I want to respond to, and then I will take a break for a while. I'll

01:11:02 ◼   ► read Twitter, I might watch a YouTube video or two.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Like I would then, it's immediately the first thing

01:11:07 ◼   ► that I do when I wake up, but then there's a break

01:11:10 ◼   ► of a time period, however it might be,

01:11:13 ◼   ► like an hour or two before I then get on

01:11:16 ◼   ► with like show prep for the day.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Right, so like it's, I just basically,

01:11:21 ◼   ► I just wanna know that nothing went crazy

01:11:24 ◼   ► when I was sleeping.

01:11:25 ◼   ► - Right, you are performing an emergency triage.

01:11:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:11:29 ◼   ► that's an emergency, if not, then I can just get on with my day. Like that's what you're doing.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Yeah, because there will be a bunch of things that basically I wake up in the morning and then

01:11:39 ◼   ► I add some stuff to OmniFocus because they're things that I need to look at. But if there is

01:11:43 ◼   ► something crazy's happened, I do want to get on that as soon as possible.

01:11:46 ◼   ► Okay, all right, yeah. That works for you. That works for you. I think, you know,

01:11:53 ◼   ► I don't know about looking at them literally in bed, but you know, whatever. Whatever you want to

01:11:56 ◼   ► do. I'm very accepting of the way other people work now.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I'm trying to be more relaxed about this kind of stuff. This is like my personal arc, my

01:12:12 ◼   ► personal journey. To be more chill about the way other people work. And it's fine for them.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Where did you learn more chill? Because you keep saying this. Who taught you more chill?

01:12:24 ◼   ► Do I keep saying this?

01:12:25 ◼   ► I don't think I do. - You keep saying it to me.

01:12:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:12:29 ◼   ► All right, so how does it go for you?

01:12:30 ◼   ► You wake up, you kinda smell the roses a little bit,

01:12:34 ◼   ► you walk around with your tiny phone, by the way.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Why did this never come up?

01:12:37 ◼   ► You go and buy a tiny phone, I know nothing about it.

01:12:40 ◼   ► I find out about it listening to your other show.

01:12:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:12:43 ◼   ► So you pick up your tiny phone

01:12:45 ◼   ► which hasn't got any apps on it,

01:12:46 ◼   ► and then you just go and take your lovely run

01:12:49 ◼   ► through the canals of Amsterdam or something.

01:12:51 ◼   ► - No, that's not what it is.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Okay, so there...

01:12:55 ◼   ► This question is tying into a bigger thing about routines

01:13:00 ◼   ► that I think we should revisit at some point.

01:13:04 ◼   ► But I happen to know that at least right now,

01:13:09 ◼   ► it is about 30 minutes,

01:13:13 ◼   ► maybe 45 minutes,

01:13:16 ◼   ► between the time when I wake up and I start to work.

01:13:20 ◼   ► I spend a bunch of time,

01:13:22 ◼   ► in no small part because of having this writing office,

01:13:25 ◼   ► over the last many weeks rethinking what is my morning routine like, what is my normal schedule like.

01:13:30 ◼   ► And what I do, and I've been very successful at doing, is trying as much as is possible

01:13:38 ◼   ► to be prepared the night before for anything I need to do in the day

01:13:45 ◼   ► so that when I wake up I can just head right out the door

01:13:49 ◼   ► and head straight to my writing monastery

01:13:52 ◼   ► and get to work as immediately as possible.

01:13:55 ◼   ► And what I want to do is I want to

01:13:58 ◼   ► eliminate any possible roadblocks for that.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Because I'm just trying to like smooth landing into the writing office.

01:14:06 ◼   ► That's what I want.

01:14:07 ◼   ► And so the idea of waking up,

01:14:11 ◼   ► I'm going to grab my backpack that has been prepared the day before.

01:14:16 ◼   ► I'm going to dress in clothes that I know are available, like everything's already been set, like there's an outfit, there's a bag.

01:14:23 ◼   ► I can just put that stuff right on, head right out the door, walk to the office.

01:14:28 ◼   ► I've even eliminated - I used to get food on the way into the office, but I've eliminated that step of the process.

01:14:34 ◼   ► And I just have some tea that's in the office, able to be prepared really easily.

01:14:41 ◼   ► So I can just head right in, make the tea, it's on the desk, and just immediately start getting to work.

01:14:48 ◼   ► And that has been very successful for me.

01:14:51 ◼   ► So I guess 30 minutes, 45 minutes, that's the answer? That's really what they wanted to know.

01:14:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not necessarily envious of that. Like, it sounds nice, but I like my morning routine.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:15:02 ◼   ► You know, because it is the idea of, like, I check those things immediately,

01:15:05 ◼   ► but then I take a nice break. Like, I'll have breakfast, I'll go down and watch a YouTube video while I eat breakfast.

01:15:11 ◼   ► You know and I get into my day that way. Mm-hmm. So, you know that that that works well for me. I just

01:15:17 ◼   ► With the way that I work and this is gonna change for you man. I'm telling you like even six months time

01:15:23 ◼   ► One of the first thing first things you'll need to do in the morning is to just make sure that everybody's okay

01:15:28 ◼   ► No, no, it's never gonna happen. You think that mark this point dear listener. No, that's never gonna happen. It's not gonna happen

01:15:36 ◼   ► Autumn Space asked, "How do you calculate publicity in your magical spreadsheets when

01:15:43 ◼   ► thinking about paid gigs like talks and keynotes and events and things like that?"

01:15:48 ◼   ► Since they're asking about spreadsheets, I assume that they're not really asking you.

01:15:51 ◼   ► You don't have spreadsheets to track things, do you, Myke?

01:15:53 ◼   ► No.

01:15:54 ◼   ► I was even just, just for linking purposes, I was going to link to our episode on the

01:16:01 ◼   ► E-Myth Revisited, which you just recently put up on YouTube, and I was going to send that out in

01:16:05 ◼   ► in a tweet. And when I loaded it up, I happened to hear that there was a section in there

01:16:10 ◼   ► where we were discussing how you had it on your project list to make some spreadsheets

01:16:16 ◼   ► so that you could evaluate what your hourly time per project was. And you said, "Oh, I'm

01:16:21 ◼   ► going to get to that soon. I'm going to get to that soon." But this is now approaching

01:16:25 ◼   ► almost half a year ago.

01:16:26 ◼   ► I never defined soon.

01:16:28 ◼   ► I know you never defined soon. But I want you to know, has there been any motion on

01:16:32 ◼   ► this?

01:16:33 ◼   ► What actually I think needs to happen is you just need to help me.

01:16:37 ◼   ► So whenever that will happen is when that will get done.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Because I don't even know where to begin.

01:16:41 ◼   ► Okay, deal.

01:16:42 ◼   ► That's total deal.

01:16:44 ◼   ► I will help you with that, Myke.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:16:47 ◼   ► We will meet up at some point and we can talk about how to do that in a practical way.

01:16:52 ◼   ► So I'll help you through that.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Is this even a thing you worry about anymore?

01:16:57 ◼   ► Well, the thing is, it's not something I ever really worried about.

01:17:04 ◼   ► My experience has always been that any notion of publicity is overrated unless you are trying to achieve something very specific.

01:17:18 ◼   ► So, if you are, let's say, you have made a new app that is going to be a new platform,

01:17:26 ◼   ► You want all of the publicity in the world.

01:17:29 ◼   ► Because what you're trying to do is attract an enormous number of users

01:17:33 ◼   ► and, as we mentioned before, there are things like network effects

01:17:37 ◼   ► if you can get even just a little bit ahead, it can matter a huge amount later on.

01:17:40 ◼   ► There are narrow sections of the world where publicity genuinely matters.

01:17:47 ◼   ► But even though I have found myself this reluctant, public-ish figure on the internet,

01:17:57 ◼   ► I just have never thought that this kind of publicity matters for the kind of career that I want to have.

01:18:04 ◼   ► And so my feeling has always been like, well, my very first video, the UK video,

01:18:11 ◼   ► I was a nobody when I uploaded it, and lots of people watched it because they liked it

01:18:16 ◼   ► and it was good and it was shareable.

01:18:18 ◼   ► And so...

01:18:20 ◼   ► I don't think if I went out and

01:18:23 ◼   ► took all of the gigs that people offer me for publicity,

01:18:27 ◼   ► I don't think that would affect my YouTube business hardly at all.

01:18:31 ◼   ► I think people think there's a relationship between those two,

01:18:34 ◼   ► but the relationship is very small.

01:18:36 ◼   ► Just like actually, just like we discussed before,

01:18:41 ◼   ► people overvalue followers on social media

01:18:44 ◼   ► where they think like, "Oh wow, look at all those Twitter followers.

01:18:47 ◼   ► When that person tweets out a link, so many people must click it."

01:18:49 ◼   ► No. No, they don't.

01:18:51 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't have nearly as much of an effect as people think it does.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And I imagine publicity, for me, would be the same kind of thing.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Like, would it have some effect?

01:19:02 ◼   ► Would it have a non-zero effect?

01:19:04 ◼   ► Yes.

01:19:05 ◼   ► But is it worth my time pursuing publicity,

01:19:09 ◼   ► which I don't want for me personally anyway,

01:19:11 ◼   ► Would the time spent pursuing that or working on any publicity gigs on a spreadsheet

01:19:18 ◼   ► pay off in terms of greater numbers of subscribers or larger numbers of views?

01:19:23 ◼   ► I really don't think so.

01:19:26 ◼   ► And I have some anecdotal data from, let's say, people I know who have done extremely high-profile publicity things

01:19:35 ◼   ► and it affects their YouTube channel none.

01:19:38 ◼   ► Like, you would never know. It doesn't seem to make any real difference.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I don't have anything that factors in publicity.

01:19:44 ◼   ► I think it's overvalued.

01:19:46 ◼   ► What I do have is what I've just discussed before, is that I have a

01:19:49 ◼   ► a crystal clear idea of what my time is worth on various projects.

01:19:56 ◼   ► And so, when anybody comes to me with the idea, like,

01:19:59 ◼   ► "Oh, we would like you to work on this project,"

01:20:02 ◼   ► or like, "Here's a talk that you could give somewhere,"

01:20:04 ◼   ► or, "Here's another thing you could do,"

01:20:06 ◼   ► I'm evaluating it purely in terms of

01:20:10 ◼   ► how much would my time be worth?

01:20:13 ◼   ► Like, what is the opportunity cost of going to this event?

01:20:16 ◼   ► And are they covering more than the opportunity cost

01:20:20 ◼   ► of working on another YouTube video?

01:20:23 ◼   ► And so I don't do a lot of public events

01:20:26 ◼   ► because the amounts offered usually don't cover

01:20:29 ◼   ► the opportunity cost.

01:20:31 ◼   ► That is, it's almost always better

01:20:34 ◼   ► to spend my time working on a video that people will like

01:20:37 ◼   ► than it is to spend my time preparing for a talk

01:20:42 ◼   ► at a public event.

01:20:43 ◼   ► - Anything publicity related for me,

01:20:47 ◼   ► the main kind of barometer is do I want to do it?

01:20:51 ◼   ► Is this something I want to do?

01:20:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:20:54 ◼   ► - Like conference talk, right?

01:20:55 ◼   ► It's not actually gonna make a massive difference

01:20:57 ◼   ► to my bottom line, but do I want to do this?

01:21:01 ◼   ► Like I've turned down, same as you have,

01:21:03 ◼   ► I've turned down paid speaking gigs

01:21:05 ◼   ► because they just, it didn't excite me enough

01:21:07 ◼   ► and wasn't worth the amount of time it would take.

01:21:09 ◼   ► But I also accept them, and I like to do them when a bunch of things align for me.

01:21:15 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. To be clear, there is a difference for things that are fun or interesting or have some kind of other opportunity.

01:21:26 ◼   ► But that is very different from a just straight up publicity kind of move.

01:21:31 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Like, I am with you on that.

01:21:33 ◼   ► Like, there are events that I have gone to,

01:21:35 ◼   ► there are events that I will go to that I am doing,

01:21:38 ◼   ► not because like, oh, I am desirous of publicity,

01:21:41 ◼   ► but because it is an interesting event to go

01:21:44 ◼   ► and like, I personally want to go, right?

01:21:46 ◼   ► Or there are interesting people there,

01:21:49 ◼   ► or it could just be a fun thing to do.

01:21:51 ◼   ► But that's a very different kind of calculation

01:21:54 ◼   ► than like a publicity calculation.

01:21:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that that's important

01:21:59 ◼   ► important with these types of things, in all honesty.

01:22:02 ◼   ► 'Cause if you, there are always gonna be things

01:22:05 ◼   ► that you will want to just attend

01:22:07 ◼   ► because it's gonna be fun.

01:22:08 ◼   ► And my feeling is with stuff like that,

01:22:11 ◼   ► as long as I'm not losing money,

01:22:13 ◼   ► as long as there's a way for me to like make the money back

01:22:15 ◼   ► or make it work financially, then I'm gonna go for it.

01:22:19 ◼   ► And Bahij asked, "What is your protein bar of choice?"

01:22:25 ◼   ► - Ooh, asking the hard-hitting questions.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Protein bar of choice.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Within arm's reach I can lean back in my chair and I can grab several boxes of protein bars.

01:22:40 ◼   ► In fact, within arm's reach I have something like 60 protein bars in little boxes.

01:22:47 ◼   ► So that's more than you need.

01:22:49 ◼   ► You don't need that amount at one time.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Okay no but it's only because these are within hand's reach, they happen to be on the counter.

01:22:58 ◼   ► In my kitchen there is one cabinet which is filled entirely with protein bars.

01:23:03 ◼   ► I don't know, there's gotta be like 100, 150 protein bars in there.

01:23:08 ◼   ► How long do these things last?

01:23:10 ◼   ► They last forever.

01:23:11 ◼   ► Okay.

01:23:12 ◼   ► But still you don't need that many at one time.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Well here's the thing, Quest is the brand that I like.

01:23:17 ◼   ► And they make a ton of different flavors.

01:23:21 ◼   ► And there happens to be a little bit of an oversupply right now because they've changed

01:23:25 ◼   ► a bunch of the recipes and I am trying out a bunch of the different flavors and I am

01:23:32 ◼   ► also I'm also getting ready for some summer travels I have a lot of summer traveling ahead

01:23:39 ◼   ► of me I have a bunch of family stuff that I'm going to go to.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Summer Cortexmas.

01:23:43 ◼   ► There's summer Cortexmas where we will not be recording a show because yes Cortexmas

01:23:50 ◼   ► is the holiday that comes four times a year.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Twice a year.

01:23:53 ◼   ► It's coming up this summer.

01:23:56 ◼   ► And whenever I go traveling, I want to make sure that I have enough protein bars to cover the length of my travel.

01:24:07 ◼   ► So I can get by with two protein bars in a day if I have to, if there are no acceptable food options.

01:24:16 ◼   ► Or if I just don't want to eat like a regular meal.

01:24:20 ◼   ► So for example, when a couple years ago now I did that random acts of intelligence show down in Alabama

01:24:26 ◼   ► A big part of my suitcase was loaded up with protein bars because I wanted to be able to have a meal covered

01:24:34 ◼   ► For every meal for the duration of the week or so that I was down there

01:24:39 ◼   ► I had this suitcase filled with various protein bars so that I would always know there was food available

01:24:44 ◼   ► Why would you consider to have one for every meal available?

01:24:49 ◼   ► Because I like to plan for the worst case scenario. Who knows what the food situation is going to be like, not me.

01:24:55 ◼   ► You never know.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I thought that's over planning. I feel like that is over. You don't...

01:25:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Well, here's the thing. Turns out in Alabama, everything is delicious.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Absolutely everything is fantastically delicious in Alabama.

01:25:09 ◼   ► And I wanted to eat six meals a day in Alabama of everything. It's like, "Mmm, yummy breakfast food.

01:25:16 ◼   ► I'm gonna have a breakfast, I'm gonna have second breakfast, it's gonna be 11sies,

01:25:20 ◼   ► and you roll around like, "Oh, lunchtime! This is fantastic, too!"

01:25:23 ◼   ► So, uh, I did not need all the protein bars that were there.

01:25:26 ◼   ► But because I am often traveling on standby trips, for example,

01:25:32 ◼   ► I don't always know precisely when my leaving date is going to be.

01:25:36 ◼   ► This is part of the reason why I really like to overpack.

01:25:39 ◼   ► And it totally worked out for my last trip to Amsterdam,

01:25:44 ◼   ► when I overpacked protein bars, but I ended up staying much longer.

01:25:48 ◼   ► And really, one of the prime reasons that I left Amsterdam when I did was I was finally out of protein bars for lunch.

01:25:54 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh, okay. Well, I guess I have to go now.

01:25:57 ◼   ► I'm not gonna find a substitute lunch. Like, this is just what I'm going to eat."

01:26:01 ◼   ► So I left.

01:26:03 ◼   ► But yes, Quest protein bars.

01:26:05 ◼   ► I highly recommend them.

01:26:07 ◼   ► And they are perhaps the only protein bar that I have ever eaten

01:26:13 ◼   ► that is genuinely a replacement meal.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Like I've come across a lot of these protein bars

01:26:20 ◼   ► where like, "Oh, you can eat one of these

01:26:21 ◼   ► and you won't be hungry again."

01:26:22 ◼   ► Lies, total lies.

01:26:25 ◼   ► But these really work.

01:26:26 ◼   ► I like them a lot.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Have I ever made you try one, Myke?

01:26:28 ◼   ► I can't remember.

01:26:29 ◼   ► - We had a conversation on the phone

01:26:31 ◼   ► after an episode of Cortex.

01:26:33 ◼   ► I think it was the episode where I was dying.

01:26:36 ◼   ► You remember when I ate the bagel and went really loopy?

01:26:39 ◼   ► - Not really, no.

01:26:40 ◼   ► - Okay. - This doesn't even

01:26:41 ◼   ► sound familiar.

01:26:42 ◼   ► - Well, that happened.

01:26:43 ◼   ► And then we were talking about quest protein bars, we were talking about the fact that

01:26:47 ◼   ► different people like different flavors and some people might eat one and think it's great

01:26:52 ◼   ► and somebody else will think it's disgusting.

01:26:55 ◼   ► And then you said you would bring me some to try and you never did.

01:26:58 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:26:59 ◼   ► I must have just forgotten about it.

01:27:02 ◼   ► But yes, that has definitely been my case with the quest bars.

01:27:07 ◼   ► If you can get your hands on a variety pack, you should try the variety pack.

01:27:11 ◼   ► my universal experience is that people have really strong reactions to the various flavors.

01:27:17 ◼   ► That they either like them or they think they are like poison.

01:27:20 ◼   ► And so if you try one and you think "this Quest Protein bar, it tastes like poison",

01:27:23 ◼   ► you need to just try a different one.

01:27:25 ◼   ► It's something about the way they're made, people have these very very strong reactions

01:27:30 ◼   ► to them.

01:27:31 ◼   ► But I guess... did I promise you that thing?

01:27:34 ◼   ► It doesn't sound like a thing I would promise.

01:27:36 ◼   ► You did.

01:27:37 ◼   ► You said the next time we meet I will bring a selection of them so you can try them.

01:27:41 ◼   ► And I said, "Okay, I'll look forward to it."

01:27:42 ◼   ► And that day never came.

01:27:44 ◼   ► - Okay, well, the next time we meet,

01:27:46 ◼   ► I will bring a selection of them so you can try them.

01:27:48 ◼   ► - I have literally no faith in you.

01:27:50 ◼   ► - I don't see why you wouldn't.