Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Do I sound okay today, Myke?

00:00:01 ◼   ► - There are thereabouts.

00:00:02 ◼   ► - I'm in a different location today, that's why.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - Oh, where are you?

00:00:05 ◼   ► - I'm recording in my coworking space.

00:00:08 ◼   ► - Okay, this is not the secret office.

00:00:11 ◼   ► - There's nothing secret about,

00:00:12 ◼   ► you mean the secret office that I showed a photo of

00:00:13 ◼   ► last time, there was nothing secret about that.

00:00:15 ◼   ► - Well, the secret was you wouldn't tell me where it is.

00:00:18 ◼   ► That makes a secret enough.

00:00:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, a secret from you, Myke,

00:00:21 ◼   ► because I don't want you showing up,

00:00:22 ◼   ► moving in to my office, bringing your own desk.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Like it's small enough as it is.

00:00:27 ◼   ► I don't need a mic in there.

00:00:28 ◼   ► - I'm not that big.

00:00:29 ◼   ► The bigness is not the issue.

00:00:32 ◼   ► It's the eunice being there-ness that's the problem.

00:00:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:37 ◼   ► - I think in this, you're the problem, not me.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - I'm not the problem.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Look, all I wanted to do was I wanted to set up

00:00:44 ◼   ► a nice office that was just for me to do some work

00:00:47 ◼   ► and I don't want you to show up.

00:00:49 ◼   ► But that doesn't make it a secret office.

00:00:51 ◼   ► It's not a secret.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - It's kind of a secret.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Do you still have it?

00:00:55 ◼   ► - So yes, I do still have the office.

00:00:58 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:00:59 ◼   ► I have been using it so far.

00:01:02 ◼   ► In the past few days I have been doing animating because we are recording shortly after the

00:01:07 ◼   ► release of my Q&A video, which is now up so people can stop tweeting me and leaving comments

00:01:12 ◼   ► everywhere about when the heck is the Q&A video going to show up and that I'm already

00:01:16 ◼   ► 10% of the way towards 3 million.

00:01:18 ◼   ► It's like it's done now.

00:01:20 ◼   ► For this one I understand the complaints.

00:01:23 ◼   ► You put up like I'm gonna do a Q&A video when I hit 2 million.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Hit 2 million.

00:01:27 ◼   ► No.

00:01:28 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

00:01:58 ◼   ► though, right? Like an implication like that?

00:02:01 ◼   ► I don't think so. I don't think you can connect those dots.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Okay, sure.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Those are unconnectable dots.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Wasn't the first one though because you hit a million?

00:02:08 ◼   ► Yeah, but even the million one was well after the a million mark and I think, if I remember

00:02:15 ◼   ► the timeline correctly, I released the How to Become a Pope video. That video ended up

00:02:19 ◼   ► delaying the one million subscriber video for quite a while.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Yeah, that's correct. That is correct.

00:02:24 ◼   ► How do you remember that? That's a little creepy.

00:02:26 ◼   ► No, I'm looking at your page.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Okay. You're just there remembering.

00:02:32 ◼   ► I wasn't watching your videos then. I didn't even know who you were three years ago.

00:02:36 ◼   ► So, but like, so I'm looking at this for you set a precedent. Q&A with Grey, four or

00:02:42 ◼   ► five hundred thousand subscribers. Q&A with Grey, one million subscribers. You set like

00:02:47 ◼   ► a precedent in people's minds. That's why they think it's for two million. And plus

00:02:51 ◼   ► you mentioned two million in the video, right?

00:02:54 ◼   ► But I just think there's no precedent for it's going to happen on the day.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I think that's pretty clear.

00:02:59 ◼   ► I think anybody who follows me should know it's probably not going to happen on the day.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Maybe not on the day, but like you posted a video where like, "send me questions!"

00:03:06 ◼   ► And like, "here's another video, here's another video!"

00:03:08 ◼   ► Two months later, here's the Q&A.

00:03:11 ◼   ► This to me is just like, "oh, you can't win, you can't win."

00:03:15 ◼   ► You make people a nice main video, all they do is complain that the Q&A video isn't up yet.

00:03:18 ◼   ► There's no winning here.

00:03:19 ◼   ► No, there is no winning.

00:03:21 ◼   ► You can never win.

00:03:23 ◼   ► You can never win.

00:03:24 ◼   ► It's just how badly do you want to lose?

00:03:26 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:03:27 ◼   ► That's what it is.

00:03:28 ◼   ► There was an interesting thing that came out in that Q&A video though.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Uh, yeah?

00:03:34 ◼   ► You finally answered a question that I get every week.

00:03:37 ◼   ► What question do you get every week?

00:03:39 ◼   ► Why did you move to the UK?

00:03:41 ◼   ► I get it constantly.

00:03:44 ◼   ► I don't understand this.

00:03:45 ◼   ► Why?

00:03:46 ◼   ► But I don't understand this and I even said in the Q&A video like

00:03:49 ◼   ► I swear I've talked about this before in various places.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Maybe because the whole story isn't together in one place, but yeah, I don't understand why people keep asking that.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I feel like, "Oh, I answered this everywhere."

00:03:59 ◼   ► But now it's in the video so people can see, like, there's the answer.

00:04:02 ◼   ► So you moved to London about how long ago? Ten years ago?

00:04:07 ◼   ► Oh god, do I want to do the math on how long ago it was?

00:04:10 ◼   ► You can estimate.

00:04:12 ◼   ► So I moved to London 13 years ago now.

00:04:17 ◼   ► That's the time frame.

00:04:20 ◼   ► The other question that I get though related to this very frequently, which you glossed over in the video, which means you probably won't answer it now, is why do you have an Irish passport?

00:04:31 ◼   ► I glossed over it because I think the details are not actually that interesting. Like people always want to know these things, but like, oh it's, the answer is it's like an administrative detail.

00:04:42 ◼   ► But, I mean, I guess the short version of this is just that I had a grandparent who was born in Ireland

00:04:49 ◼   ► My grandmother on my father's side

00:04:53 ◼   ► And at the time when I was a kid, Ireland had a law that my understanding of it is that this is now no longer the case

00:05:04 ◼   ► But when I was a kid, my father could apply on my behalf for me to become an Irish citizen.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And he could also do so for himself as well.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And so there was a deadline, because my father told me this, but he said there was a deadline

00:05:22 ◼   ► where he basically kind of on a whim like handed in the paperwork on the final day for

00:05:29 ◼   ► himself and for me for this Irish citizenship.

00:05:34 ◼   ► So it was like the last day you could get the paperwork in and have it still count.

00:05:37 ◼   ► And this happened when I was a little kid and it just never came up throughout the whole

00:05:41 ◼   ► of my childhood.

00:05:43 ◼   ► I say in the video it's like through a series of random events I found out because it really

00:05:46 ◼   ► was like some conversation with my father like he mentioned incidentally this thing

00:05:50 ◼   ► about like "Oh you happen to have Irish citizenship."

00:05:52 ◼   ► I was like "Oh that's interesting, I did not know this."

00:05:57 ◼   ► I cannot tell you how much I wish I had dual citizenship with the US.

00:06:02 ◼   ► I have a friend who is British but his mum is American and he has two passports.

00:06:07 ◼   ► And I'm so jealous.

00:06:09 ◼   ► It's nice to have options. It's very nice to have options.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Like he does this thing and I wonder if you do it where he just shows each passport control the passport they want to see.

00:06:18 ◼   ► That is officially the way you're supposed to do it.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Right, okay.

00:06:22 ◼   ► That is...

00:06:23 ◼   ► The US government is really frustrating about this. It's actually not super fun to...

00:06:28 ◼   ► Okay, the way your friend has it is the best way, which is that if you are a European who happens to be able to get American citizenship and therefore a US passport, that works out kind of great because you can kind of slide under the radar with a lot of the American paperwork and things.

00:06:44 ◼   ► If you're an American citizen who grew up in America who has a second passport, that's

00:06:49 ◼   ► a real pain in the butt in a lot of ways.

00:06:51 ◼   ► And it causes huge paperwork and frustration because basically the US diplomatic department's

00:06:57 ◼   ► opinion on this is that for Americans born in America, second citizenship don't exist.

00:07:05 ◼   ► The United States government just doesn't acknowledge that you have this other citizenship.

00:07:09 ◼   ► You're an American citizen.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Why would you want to be a citizen of anywhere else?

00:07:13 ◼   ► USA!

00:07:14 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:07:15 ◼   ► >> [LAUGH]

00:07:16 ◼   ► >> And once you understand that that is the way that the government treats it, like you

00:07:22 ◼   ► are an American citizen who is living abroad, that makes just a ton of the frustration make

00:07:28 ◼   ► way more sense.

00:07:29 ◼   ► It's like, I still have to fill out all of this paperwork for American taxes.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Like there's all of these pain in the butt loopholes.

00:07:37 ◼   ► And actually the mayor of London who has UK and American citizenship got caught on one

00:07:44 ◼   ► of these things because he sold his house and the IRS is like, "Oh, you have to pay

00:07:48 ◼   ► American estate taxes on house ownership if you are an American living abroad."

00:07:53 ◼   ► Like there's just so many ways that you get caught out on this stuff where America just

00:07:59 ◼   ► pretends like, "Other passports, other countries don't exist."

00:08:02 ◼   ► Like you are an American and wherever you are standing is American soil abroad.

00:08:05 ◼   ► That's just the way it works.

00:08:07 ◼   ► - You just take a piece of it with you.

00:08:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it's always under your feet

00:08:11 ◼   ► no matter where you go.

00:08:12 ◼   ► But yes, that is what I do when I travel

00:08:14 ◼   ► because that is the way the US government

00:08:17 ◼   ► kind of wants it to be done on their end

00:08:19 ◼   ► and the way foreign countries want it to be done

00:08:21 ◼   ► on their end of like, okay, which passport do you show?

00:08:24 ◼   ► It does end up in some super weird border conversations

00:08:27 ◼   ► that get slightly awkward sometimes.

00:08:29 ◼   ► It's like, oh, you have no stamps in your passport.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Like, no, I don't ever have stamps on my,

00:08:32 ◼   ► where have you been?

00:08:33 ◼   ► Where have you just come from?

00:08:35 ◼   ► And then you get to be taken into the special room and have a long conversation with someone

00:08:41 ◼   ► about why you're a dual citizenship.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Which actually hasn't happened to me recently.

00:08:45 ◼   ► It used to happen a lot more, but maybe they're finally letting go of that.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I've been getting real grumpy about passable control recently.

00:08:55 ◼   ► I feel like I'm now getting more questions coming into the UK than coming into the US.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:09:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, recently somebody, I was going through

00:09:07 ◼   ► UK passport control and it wouldn't accept me

00:09:09 ◼   ► to go through the gate, I had to go and see the person.

00:09:12 ◼   ► I couldn't use my biometric passport.

00:09:14 ◼   ► She was asking me all these questions about what I do

00:09:17 ◼   ► and why I'm coming home and all this stuff.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And I was kinda just like the whole time,

00:09:22 ◼   ► being like, I live here, what is your problem?

00:09:26 ◼   ► You're not gonna let me go home?

00:09:28 ◼   ► What's happening here?

00:09:30 ◼   ► My passport, look at the front of it.

00:09:33 ◼   ► This is my country.

00:09:35 ◼   ► This should be the end of the conversation.

00:09:37 ◼   ► It's like I've given you the purple passport.

00:09:39 ◼   ► Like, what do you need from me?

00:09:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:43 ◼   ► The more I travel,

00:09:45 ◼   ► the less appreciation I have for passport control.

00:09:49 ◼   ► I know when it's attempting to do,

00:09:51 ◼   ► but I feel like it's

00:09:53 ◼   ► just the worst of bureaucracy.

00:09:57 ◼   ► It's pointlessly frustrating and

00:09:59 ◼   ► my wife just had the best experience with passport control recently,

00:10:01 ◼   ► control recently which was she went traveling to France. Now my wife is an American, she

00:10:06 ◼   ► only has US citizenship, but because I am Irish and because we are married, she's allowed

00:10:12 ◼   ► to live in the UK. Like she's allowed to live here like through the right that I have to

00:10:17 ◼   ► have my spouse in the country. But it does mean that she has to travel with paperwork

00:10:22 ◼   ► whenever she leaves and comes back into the UK, like she has to travel with our marriage

00:10:27 ◼   ► certificate and a few other things. But every time we ever come back through, it's a totally

00:10:32 ◼   ► different story from the passport people about what she needs or what she doesn't need.

00:10:38 ◼   ► When we come back, if we travel through the line together as non-UK passports, then they

00:10:45 ◼   ► yell at us and they say, "Oh, I am supposed to go through the UK one and just let her

00:10:48 ◼   ► go through the non-UK one." But if we do that, then they yell at her for not having

00:10:52 ◼   ► her husband with her when she travels. And just in the last time, someone told her like,

00:10:56 ◼   ► "Oh, you need to add to this document that you keep with you your husband's passport."

00:11:01 ◼   ► Like if you're traveling out and back into the country, we want photo ID for your husband as well.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Like this marriage certificate doesn't work.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And then this most recent time when she did that, the person at Passport Control told her,

00:11:12 ◼   ► "Don't ever come with the passport again because we can put you in prison for traveling with someone else's passport."

00:11:17 ◼   ► It's like, "Yeah, can anyone like are there ever consistent rules here?"

00:11:20 ◼   ► Like this doesn't make, it's always frustrating. It's always different.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Passport control, not a superfan.

00:11:26 ◼   ► But yeah, I do quite like having the Irish passport.

00:11:28 ◼   ► I do quite like being able to live in the European Union.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And I do complain about the problems with America

00:11:35 ◼   ► and her strange notion of what people living abroad are like

00:11:40 ◼   ► and what they should do.

00:11:41 ◼   ► But overall, it's worked out very well for me.

00:11:44 ◼   ► I'm very happy that I did it.

00:11:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think one day I would like to do the opposite.

00:11:51 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, you wanna go live in America?

00:11:53 ◼   ► dollar man I lose so much money yes well yes yeah yeah we're all we're all

00:12:00 ◼   ► victims of the strong pound here you don't need to tell me about that it's so

00:12:05 ◼   ► bad it's like oh here's ten dollars now you have five right you know like after

00:12:12 ◼   ► the conversion and then after taxes it's like oh god in some ways you and I are

00:12:17 ◼   ► in the same position of doing perhaps the craziest thing in the world which is

00:12:22 ◼   ► earning our income in dollars.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Like my YouTube income is earned through dollars,

00:12:27 ◼   ► the podcast income is earned through dollars.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And then we decide to live not only in the UK,

00:12:34 ◼   ► where the exchange rate bites us,

00:12:35 ◼   ► but also in London, the most expensive part of the UK.

00:12:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:12:40 ◼   ► 'Cause what makes it all worse is

00:12:42 ◼   ► the economies are the same, right?

00:12:45 ◼   ► In the US and the UK.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Like pretty much what's worth $10 is worth 10 pounds.

00:12:51 ◼   ► - Right.

00:12:51 ◼   ► What is the hard part about it? It's not the conversion rate, it's that after the

00:12:56 ◼   ► conversion rate everything is just as expensive if not more. It's heartbreaking.

00:13:02 ◼   ► Whereas when I used to work as a teacher and I used to earn money in pounds, I loved it

00:13:08 ◼   ► going back to America. It was always like, "This is a 50% off everything sale!" My

00:13:14 ◼   ► wife and I used to buy everything in America.

00:13:17 ◼   ► When I went on all my podcasting related trips previously, I was getting a UK income from

00:13:23 ◼   ► the bank and it was like, "Roll in! I can fly for free!" And now it's like, "Oh, scraping

00:13:31 ◼   ► together the money!" Yeah, it hurts, man.

00:13:35 ◼   ► It does hurt and it is sort of extra ridiculous because neither of us have jobs that depend

00:13:39 ◼   ► on where we are. We could do this from anywhere in the world and I have to just not think

00:13:44 ◼   ► about the cost of living in other places because I really like living in London.

00:13:49 ◼   ► This has been a great experience.

00:13:51 ◼   ► I totally love being in London.

00:13:52 ◼   ► I found an area of London that I really like.

00:13:56 ◼   ► I think it's great but I cannot let my mind wander to what the cost of living in other

00:14:01 ◼   ► places is.

00:14:03 ◼   ► There's no happy thoughts that way.

00:14:05 ◼   ► I just went through that heartbreak so we just came back from Romania.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Oh man, yeah.

00:14:10 ◼   ► We could buy a flat in Bucharest for the amount of money we've saved currently for a deposit

00:14:13 ◼   ► for a house in London.

00:14:14 ◼   ► We could just flat out buy a flat.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And it's like, why do we do this to ourselves?

00:14:24 ◼   ► - So where in America are you gonna go live

00:14:26 ◼   ► if you move in America?

00:14:27 ◼   ► - My current list of places that I would like to be,

00:14:32 ◼   ► the top of that list is Portland and New York City.

00:14:35 ◼   ► 'Cause they both kind of remind me of places in London.

00:14:43 ◼   ► I just count me as zero percent surprised that Portland is at the top of your list.

00:14:47 ◼   ► It's such a great place.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Hipster Myke wants to go live in Portland.

00:14:51 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Not surprised.

00:14:53 ◼   ► New York is where kind of my brain belongs and Portland is where my heart belongs.

00:14:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Good luck with the immigration process to the United States.

00:15:03 ◼   ► I don't even want to think about it.

00:15:04 ◼   ► I like to think that my part ownership of an American company might help but I feel like

00:15:09 ◼   ► that might actually be worse.

00:15:11 ◼   ► I have known people who have attempted to immigrate to the United States

00:15:15 ◼   ► and even when you have everything in your favor, it is not easy.

00:15:19 ◼   ► It is a very, very long process.

00:15:22 ◼   ► So I think you're going to be in London for a while, Myke,

00:15:25 ◼   ► or at least on the outer rim of London.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Well, the fact that we're going to buy a house here

00:15:29 ◼   ► tells you that this isn't a thing that we're going to do anytime soon.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Buy a house in London or buy two in Bucharest?

00:15:36 ◼   ► Four.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Four.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Oh, God, don't think about it, Myke.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Don't think about it.

00:15:41 ◼   ► I'm very excited today to talk to you about FreshBooks and this is because I

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00:17:46 ◼   ► It's time to revisit our home screens.

00:17:48 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you want to revisit home screens, Myke?

00:17:51 ◼   ► Yes, it's that time.

00:17:53 ◼   ► I feel like we should try and set this on some kind of schedule.

00:17:57 ◼   ► So we talked about this on the first episode, right?

00:18:01 ◼   ► I feel like, yeah, it was the first episode.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Yeah, of course, because I made fun of you for your ugly clown car.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Yeah, clown vomit.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what it was.

00:18:09 ◼   ► It was terrible.

00:18:10 ◼   ► I mean, we did that in June.

00:18:11 ◼   ► This is now April.

00:18:12 ◼   ► It's pretty much a year.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Yeah, it's almost like a year.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Yeah, give or take.

00:18:16 ◼   ► It's a year if you're converting from dollars to pounds.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Exactly, and then you cut the taxes.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:23 ◼   ► So do you want me to send you mine again to start,

00:18:27 ◼   ► so you can feel horrific and then tell me

00:18:30 ◼   ► the optimum way of doing things?

00:18:32 ◼   ► - I feel like, just to clear the air here,

00:18:35 ◼   ► I feel like I have become much less judgmental

00:18:38 ◼   ► over the past year, and you have probably improved

00:18:43 ◼   ► with your iPhone screen.

00:18:44 ◼   ► So you can show me, but I don't think I'm going to be

00:18:46 ◼   ► really upset or anything.

00:18:47 ◼   ► As I grow older, Myke, I'm just more chill

00:18:51 ◼   ► and just more accepting of things.

00:18:52 ◼   ► - No, that's how I think of you,

00:18:55 ◼   ► becoming more chill as you get older, definitely.

00:18:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is true.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Also you've, you know, bullied me into changing it.

00:19:03 ◼   ► So I think the mix of you being more chill

00:19:07 ◼   ► and me being more pressured will mean

00:19:09 ◼   ► that this is a better scenario.

00:19:11 ◼   ► So take a look, what's going on here?

00:19:13 ◼   ► - This is, I mean, it's much better.

00:19:18 ◼   ► It's much better, Myke.

00:19:20 ◼   ► - It is much better.

00:19:21 ◼   ► - Is this how your iPhone screen looks right now?

00:19:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, this morning.

00:19:24 ◼   ► - What's that second page though?

00:19:25 ◼   ► You're hiding a second page.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I wanted to send you the first one.

00:19:28 ◼   ► OK, I've got the first page here.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Here's the second page.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Oh!

00:19:34 ◼   ► This is just the second screen, right?

00:19:36 ◼   ► This is just where second screen things go to die.

00:19:38 ◼   ► OK, alright.

00:19:40 ◼   ► So for the listener,

00:19:42 ◼   ► these will be in the show notes.

00:19:44 ◼   ► Myke is much improved from his first iPhone screen.

00:19:46 ◼   ► I think you should put your first iPhone screen as well in the show notes.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll do that.

00:19:51 ◼   ► First of all, we have a nice calm background.

00:19:54 ◼   ► A nice relaxing, just sort of

00:19:56 ◼   ► A muted, very dark grey blue kind of background with a logo.

00:20:02 ◼   ► What's the logo on that?

00:20:03 ◼   ► I can't quite tell what that is.

00:20:04 ◼   ► That is the secret print from the inside of the upgrade hoodies.

00:20:07 ◼   ► Oh, of course.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Of course.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Okay, so you have your own secret society logo on the background of your iPhone.

00:20:13 ◼   ► I like that.

00:20:15 ◼   ► I still have not sold you on the superiority of the three icons in the dock.

00:20:21 ◼   ► You're still going with four?

00:20:23 ◼   ► I don't understand why.

00:20:24 ◼   ► I mean that's probably still my biggest complaint.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Three is clearly disappearing your way.

00:20:31 ◼   ► But overall this is much better.

00:20:33 ◼   ► I don't recoil in horror at this one.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I think this sort of...

00:20:38 ◼   ► I'm looking at it well, you have Messages, Slack and OmniFocus, each of which have badges

00:20:43 ◼   ► on them.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And this just makes me think again of like there's such a conflict with notifications

00:20:51 ◼   ► and how you receive them on your phone, especially when, like us, you do work and personal notifications

00:20:58 ◼   ► like through instant message or through Slack.

00:21:00 ◼   ► It gets so complicated, it's so hard to appropriately deal with.

00:21:04 ◼   ► One of the problems that I have these days is, you're saying about the work and personal,

00:21:08 ◼   ► is the majority of people that are in my personal life, I also work with them.

00:21:14 ◼   ► So it's difficult.

00:21:16 ◼   ► It's difficult.

00:21:17 ◼   ► It's very difficult and I think this is one thing that you and I, I think, have both kind

00:21:24 ◼   ► of very naturally slipped into a thing, which is that we do work chat through Slack and

00:21:30 ◼   ► we do personal chat through instant message.

00:21:34 ◼   ► I think it is genuinely useful to split that.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Like I wish I could do that with everybody that I worked with.

00:21:41 ◼   ► It's not always practical.

00:21:43 ◼   ► - That's actually one of my favorite things

00:21:45 ◼   ► about our relationship.

00:21:47 ◼   ► Because yesterday we were having a very intense

00:21:50 ◼   ► work chat in Slack whilst at the same time

00:21:52 ◼   ► talking about iPads and iMessages.

00:21:54 ◼   ► - Right.

00:21:55 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:21:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and just to be maximum crazy about this

00:22:00 ◼   ► so people can understand,

00:22:01 ◼   ► we were having two separate work chats

00:22:04 ◼   ► in two separate Slack channels with each other

00:22:07 ◼   ► while having the instant message conversation.

00:22:09 ◼   ► But it genuinely does change the feeling of things.

00:22:13 ◼   ► of like, "Oh, okay, we're just talking about

00:22:14 ◼   ► "whatever in iMessage."

00:22:15 ◼   ► And then, as we've discussed on the previous show,

00:22:17 ◼   ► you can have the CEO of Grey Incorporated

00:22:21 ◼   ► is talking to an owner of Relay

00:22:23 ◼   ► like in a conversation on Slack.

00:22:27 ◼   ► And the feeling is just very different

00:22:28 ◼   ► and it works even though you're having

00:22:31 ◼   ► these conversations in parallel.

00:22:33 ◼   ► - What makes it really good is that

00:22:36 ◼   ► I don't get any personal feeling

00:22:42 ◼   ► mixed in with the world feeling.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Like if you're making things difficult

00:22:46 ◼   ► or I'm making things difficult

00:22:47 ◼   ► and what could usually be like,

00:22:49 ◼   ► ah, he's being such an idiot,

00:22:50 ◼   ► it doesn't mix.

00:22:54 ◼   ► - Right.

00:22:55 ◼   ► - And I think that is a really healthy thing

00:22:57 ◼   ► and I'm gonna try and do more of it.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Like it's very useful, I think.

00:23:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, this is a bit of a tangent here

00:23:05 ◼   ► but it definitely has been something on my mind

00:23:06 ◼   ► about trying to manage notifications about work and personal

00:23:11 ◼   ► and where do you receive them all and as you will see I'm mentioning this now because as you will see when I share some of my own home screens like I am really trying to figure out a way to separate these things as much as possible

00:23:24 ◼   ► and my own iPhone as long time listeners of the show will know I have had many conflicts over like where do I want to do certain kinds of work how do I want to receive things

00:23:34 ◼   ► And I've been experimenting over the past few months and once again I have come to the very clear conclusion that I do not want work stuff easily accessible on my phone.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Like I just don't think that that is good for my own productivity, I don't think that it is good for my own separation of personal life and relaxing time from focus and work time.

00:24:00 ◼   ► So when I see your home screen here, the number one thing that I want to avoid on my phone is any kind of anxiety

00:24:06 ◼   ► And so those badges there are the thing that just like, those red badges, they scream anxiety to me

00:24:12 ◼   ► Like there's stuff to do, there's something that needs to happen here

00:24:15 ◼   ► So I would turn off all badges and things

00:24:20 ◼   ► I don't even have the badge for iMessages on my phone

00:24:23 ◼   ► I leave the badge off with that and handle it through the watch instead

00:24:26 ◼   ► like somehow I find it's more acceptable on the watch of like, "Oh, the watch will

00:24:29 ◼   ► let me know if there's a message. I don't need to see a red badge on my phone."

00:24:33 ◼   ► But…

00:24:34 ◼   ► My kind of way of working with that is I have a lot of badges turned off. I have very few

00:24:39 ◼   ► apps that actually allow badges. The apps that you can see that have badges are pretty

00:24:43 ◼   ► much the only ones that can.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I figure that. I figure that. But even still, it's like, it's stress. It's

00:24:50 ◼   ► stress-blagging.

00:24:51 ◼   ► My phone is permanently on Do Not Disturb

00:24:55 ◼   ► and I manage everything through notifications to the watch, which are more tightly controlled.

00:24:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I do the same thing as well, which is

00:25:03 ◼   ► my phone never makes any noise under any circumstances ever.

00:25:07 ◼   ► It never vibrates, it never beeps, it never does anything. And all of the notifications

00:25:11 ◼   ► come through the watch. And then the watch is like super locked down.

00:25:15 ◼   ► And I wish Apple would make some changes so that you could lock it down even further.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I think there's a lot of room to be done with notifications on iOS.

00:25:23 ◼   ► But that is the same decision that I have made.

00:25:26 ◼   ► And so even though I've gone back and forth about this, I feel like going back and forth about,

00:25:31 ◼   ► "Ooh, do I want to do email on the phone? Do I want to try to have Slack notifications on the phone so that I can respond to people quickly?"

00:25:38 ◼   ► I have found that what it ends up actually happening is creating this intense feeling of avoidance.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, I just never want to deal with Slack when it's on my phone and it's always there to be dealt with."

00:25:49 ◼   ► So, it's a difficult thing to juggle.

00:25:54 ◼   ► But this is just where you have to know yourself and you have to know how you work.

00:25:59 ◼   ► So I would not want those badges.

00:26:01 ◼   ► But overall, I have to give you a much improvement award on your iPhone.

00:26:07 ◼   ► Would you like to see my iPad?

00:26:09 ◼   ► See, this is where I'm a little bit more worried.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Okay. Show me your iPad.

00:26:13 ◼   ► The other funny thing about those badges, the badges in those screenshots, two of those

00:26:20 ◼   ► badges are related to you.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Oh yeah, are they?

00:26:24 ◼   ► Yeah, the slack one and the only focus one.

00:26:27 ◼   ► They're my fault huh?

00:26:28 ◼   ► They're you, they're grey badges.

00:26:33 ◼   ► I just think that's kind of funny right, because the time that I took the pictures and it's

00:26:36 ◼   ► just like they're grey related.

00:26:38 ◼   ► I have lots of badges that relate to you.

00:26:41 ◼   ► As it should be.

00:26:42 ◼   ► As it should be.

00:26:43 ◼   ► should have badges that relate to me.

00:26:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wish I could color code them, you know?

00:26:47 ◼   ► Little grey badges everywhere. - YouTube notifications,

00:26:48 ◼   ► Twitter notifications, everyone should have a badge

00:26:51 ◼   ► somewhere that relates to me.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - I like the pictures that people send us

00:26:54 ◼   ► of whenever you post something,

00:26:56 ◼   ► and they get like Reddit notification, email,

00:27:00 ◼   ► podcast notification, tweet or something,

00:27:02 ◼   ► like I think it's fantastic.

00:27:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, those are pretty funny.

00:27:05 ◼   ► It's like that's the person who wants to make sure

00:27:06 ◼   ► they don't miss anything.

00:27:07 ◼   ► Good on you. - They are locked in.

00:27:09 ◼   ► All right, so you got my iPad now.

00:27:11 ◼   ► - I have your iPad.

00:27:13 ◼   ► It looks basically exactly the same as your phone, which I think is not a bad decision here.

00:27:17 ◼   ► You have the same wallpaper, same number of badges.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I don't free up the bottom row on the iPad, especially the Pro, because there's so much space,

00:27:26 ◼   ► I don't think it's necessary.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Okay, so I don't have a lot of comment on this, but I think

00:27:33 ◼   ► this is the time, Myke, where I think you now need to see what my iPad looks like.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Because I have just set up a new iPad.

00:27:47 ◼   ► Another one? Interesting.

00:27:48 ◼   ► 9.7 inch iPad Pro.

00:27:50 ◼   ► That's what you needed, another iPad.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Well, we have to tell you, there's been a huge iPad consolidation.

00:27:55 ◼   ► So, like, don't you get started down your big, "Oh, CGP Grey is crazy with iPads" path.

00:28:00 ◼   ► There's been a huge consolidation. I'm down to three now.

00:28:03 ◼   ► Oh, look at you!

00:28:07 ◼   ► Is that one of each?

00:28:09 ◼   ► Yes, I have the big pro, the baby pro, and then there's a mini, which I'm barely counting as an iPad, because the mini is used as a Kindle.

00:28:18 ◼   ► No, don't. We'll get into this.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Why just use a kindle? I know why you don't, but why just use a kindle? I use an iPad as a Kindle, not a Kindle as a Kindle. Let's not be ridiculous about this.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Okay, I'm going to send you a screenshot. Now, one thing you just need to know before you see it, just so I can prepare you a little bit,

00:28:34 ◼   ► is I have gone slightly crazy with the wallpaper, but that is only because I always do this if I get a new device

00:28:40 ◼   ► I tend to go for like a crazy wallpaper that I will eventually pull back to something more refined

00:28:45 ◼   ► I haven't seen this yet, but like I imagine you're crazy being like "It's two different types of grey!"

00:28:51 ◼   ► You're gonna be blown away by this, but I just, this is just a little habit, I don't know

00:28:57 ◼   ► when you have a new device I think it's kind of nice to make it different for a little while

00:29:00 ◼   ► before settling back down into business mode.

00:29:03 ◼   ► So this is my new iPad, this is the background.

00:29:07 ◼   ► I just wanted to prepare you, like this background will probably not stay.

00:29:10 ◼   ► So I'm sending this along, here is the setup for my current iPad,

00:29:14 ◼   ► which I use for a lot of different things.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Alright, I got it. Alright, okay. Well...

00:29:20 ◼   ► Alright then.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Yeah, what do you think of this?

00:29:25 ◼   ► So...

00:29:30 ◼   ► Ahhh.

00:29:32 ◼   ► Okay, what do you want to talk about?

00:29:34 ◼   ► Oh, it just came through an iMessage.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Great.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Alright, so...

00:29:40 ◼   ► The background is a little crazy, but like, I can...

00:29:44 ◼   ► It's a nice background, like I can let that one go.

00:29:46 ◼   ► It's basically the one that you had before, just in a different color, effectively.

00:29:50 ◼   ► You know, there are many similarities.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a blue, low-poly artwork wallpaper.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I won't stick with the blue forever, but I just like having something different at the beginning.

00:29:59 ◼   ► - So I will admit that the first time

00:30:01 ◼   ► that we went through this process,

00:30:02 ◼   ► I was the crazy one, right?

00:30:06 ◼   ► Like there were so many things weird about what I was doing.

00:30:09 ◼   ► It switched, man.

00:30:13 ◼   ► Okay. - What do you mean?

00:30:14 ◼   ► - So there are three icons in your doc.

00:30:19 ◼   ► There is a folder.

00:30:22 ◼   ► The title of the folder is a dot.

00:30:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a bullet point.

00:30:27 ◼   ► That folder has just settings in it.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Mhm.

00:30:32 ◼   ► So, I have a few questions.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Where is everything else?

00:30:37 ◼   ► Like there is other stuff, where is it?

00:30:39 ◼   ► Where's it gone?

00:30:40 ◼   ► Where'd you put it?

00:30:43 ◼   ► Uh, well, this is a little trick that I stumbled across just sort of accidentally a while back

00:30:53 ◼   ► that I absolutely love which is I'm sending you right now my phone home screen as well

00:30:58 ◼   ► so you can take a look in Slack so you can see what I've done here with the phone.

00:31:01 ◼   ► It might make more sense on the phone what I've done but you can in a folder push the

00:31:07 ◼   ► icons to the second page so that you don't see them.

00:31:11 ◼   ► So that you can have a folder that ends up looking like there is only a single icon in

00:31:16 ◼   ► there but there are actually a whole bunch of icons in there.

00:31:21 ◼   ► So on my iPad what I have done is I have just taken all of the applications and I put them

00:31:27 ◼   ► in a folder and then I put them all to the second and third and fourth pages so that

00:31:31 ◼   ► I have the least items being shown in the folder that is possible.

00:31:38 ◼   ► So it's nice and clean.

00:31:40 ◼   ► You're saying crazy, I'm saying clean.

00:31:43 ◼   ► So I've sent you the phone and you can see that I've done the same thing on the phone.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I have four different folders for a variety of reasons, but it's a similar kind of thing.

00:31:51 ◼   ► I want all of the apps on the second page, I don't want them on the first page.

00:31:56 ◼   ► So it's nice and clean.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Clean, you know, relaxing, Zen-like, one might almost say.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Why do these four folders not have titles anymore?

00:32:09 ◼   ► They don't have titles because it's not necessary, because the little icon that is visible in

00:32:15 ◼   ► in each of those folders on my phone indicates to me what that folder is for.

00:32:19 ◼   ► So the one on the top left you can see that I have the health icon in there.

00:32:24 ◼   ► The health book, Apple calls it I think, and that is the folder that has a whole bunch

00:32:27 ◼   ► of health related apps.

00:32:29 ◼   ► The second folder has wonderlist as the visible icon and that has a bunch of work related

00:32:34 ◼   ► apps.

00:32:35 ◼   ► No it's not wunderlist, it's wonderlist.

00:32:36 ◼   ► The third one has a little map in it which is all of my London/traveling related stuff.

00:32:44 ◼   ► And then the settings one is the one for all the miscellaneous other stuff.

00:32:47 ◼   ► That's what's going on there.

00:32:48 ◼   ► I think the one icon in a folder thing is genius, if I say so myself.

00:32:55 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:32:56 ◼   ► Genius.

00:32:57 ◼   ► That's a…

00:32:58 ◼   ► Genius.

00:32:59 ◼   ► That's not a bold claim to make or anything.

00:33:01 ◼   ► You know you'd love Android, right?

00:33:02 ◼   ► Because this is how folders are actually shown on Android.

00:33:05 ◼   ► It's a stack of icons.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:33:08 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So you seem to be thinking this is madness,

00:33:13 ◼   ► but I think this makes a whole lot of sense.

00:33:15 ◼   ► - It's better on your iPhone.

00:33:18 ◼   ► Like the idea that you've had here,

00:33:22 ◼   ► I can see it in action on the iPhone.

00:33:25 ◼   ► It makes a bit more sense to me, right?

00:33:28 ◼   ► The way you explained it,

00:33:28 ◼   ► like having everything in the folder,

00:33:30 ◼   ► the icon denotes what's in the folders.

00:33:32 ◼   ► But the iPad is just barren.

00:33:35 ◼   ► There's nothing there at all.

00:33:37 ◼   ► That's what's more interesting about the iPad, I think.

00:33:41 ◼   ► So how does the big pro look?

00:33:43 ◼   ► - Okay, so let's talk about the whole system here, right?

00:33:48 ◼   ► I'm gonna send you the final screenshots.

00:33:51 ◼   ► So you can see the completed thing

00:33:53 ◼   ► and the method of what I'm accomplishing.

00:33:56 ◼   ► - When I finally see the complete

00:33:58 ◼   ► is when like the veil falls from my eyes

00:34:01 ◼   ► and I can finally see the truth.

00:34:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:34:04 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:34:05 ◼   ► As we have discussed on the show previously, I have been very much of this mindset of trying to train your brain for working in different contexts.

00:34:17 ◼   ► And I find that this has been useful. So far my initial experiments with my office have turned out very well, of this idea of going to a place just to write.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And the problem with computers and devices in general is that they can just be everything all the time.

00:34:35 ◼   ► And this is what we were discussing before with the notifications.

00:34:38 ◼   ► Like, what are the notifications that you can theoretically receive on your phone?

00:34:42 ◼   ► They can be everything. They can be from your parents, from your friends, from your boss, from your coworkers.

00:34:48 ◼   ► You have so much different stuff that is mixing in constantly.

00:34:55 ◼   ► And so what I'm trying to do here is for my own sanity and productivity

00:35:00 ◼   ► is I'm trying to define clear zones of work and zones of responsibility.

00:35:08 ◼   ► So the clearest example of this is what I am doing with my iPad Mini.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Now I have this very old iPad Mini, it was whatever the first one was that had Retina that I got ages ago.

00:35:19 ◼   ► And if you look, you will see there is a screenshot for the Mini which has the same three icons in the dock,

00:35:27 ◼   ► because I just always use those no matter where I am and I want everything consistent.

00:35:30 ◼   ► But at the top, there's just the icon for iBooks, and then I've shoved everything that you can't get rid of on that iPad into this other miscellaneous folder.

00:35:40 ◼   ► And so with my iPad Mini, what I'm doing there is I'm trying to make it as close to a book as possible.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Because I think many people will have the similar experience that reading on any kind of device can actually be quite difficult because of your own dumb, easily distracted brain.

00:36:05 ◼   ► that if you load up a book, it's very easy to be reading the book and then to think like,

00:36:10 ◼   ► "Oh, I want to do this other thing. Oh, I want to do this other thing."

00:36:12 ◼   ► And then suddenly you're not reading a book.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Like, I read far fewer books than I would want because of my own distractedness in the course of a year,

00:36:20 ◼   ► just anyway.

00:36:21 ◼   ► But so the way I have set up this iPad is it is totally locked down.

00:36:25 ◼   ► There's no web browser on it.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I've turned off installing apps, like I put a restriction password on here

00:36:31 ◼   ► so that you know what this thing can do?

00:36:33 ◼   ► can open an iBook and that's it. Like that's the only thing that it does. And I find that

00:36:39 ◼   ► extraordinarily useful because it means that this normally just lives in the bedroom so

00:36:44 ◼   ► it's like okay, at night is normally when I'll read like a fiction book or I'll grab

00:36:48 ◼   ► it during the day after lunch and I'll read a non-fiction book is my usual routine here.

00:36:54 ◼   ► But it means that my brain knows like when I'm on this device, distraction isn't an option.

00:37:00 ◼   ► Like if you're going to get distracted you have to get up and you have to go do something.

00:37:03 ◼   ► You can't just double tap the home button and flip over to Reddit or something.

00:37:08 ◼   ► And so this one is the clearest version of what I am trying to accomplish.

00:37:14 ◼   ► One device that does one thing that stays in one or two locations and the brain just

00:37:20 ◼   ► learns like you're holding this thing and you're just reading.

00:37:23 ◼   ► And I find it is very, very helpful in a distracted world to do that.

00:37:28 ◼   ► So now, the next step up from that is what I am doing with the iPad Pro.

00:37:35 ◼   ► Now at the time that we are recording this, what has--I didn't intend for this to happen,

00:37:39 ◼   ► but it just sort of worked out that what I am using my iPad Pro is that it has this nice

00:37:44 ◼   ► big screen, and it is living in the office where I do my writing.

00:37:51 ◼   ► And so if you look at the screenshot for the iPad Pro, what I have on there are the apps

00:37:56 ◼   ► that I use for writing, and just like with my iPad Mini that I use for reading, I have

00:38:03 ◼   ► locked down that iPad Pro so that writing is the only thing that I'm going to be doing

00:38:09 ◼   ► on here.

00:38:10 ◼   ► Again, I've like disabled the Safari browser, it's not on there.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I put on a restriction code to that as well, so it's like, "Oh, if I'm going to try to

00:38:19 ◼   ► change anything, there's just a little bit of resistance there to slow me down."

00:38:23 ◼   ► And so this device, when I look at it, when I look at the screen, I want the screen to

00:38:27 ◼   ► tell me, like, what is it that I'm supposed to be doing right now?

00:38:30 ◼   ► I'm supposed to be writing.

00:38:32 ◼   ► And again, this so far has worked out tremendously well.

00:38:38 ◼   ► I have done a lot of very high quality writing over the past couple weeks now with this office,

00:38:45 ◼   ► with this iPad, like with this dedicated setup that is just here for this one thing.

00:38:50 ◼   ► As a very quick aside I'm very happy to hear that.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Yeah well I'm happy to hear it as well except as I posted on Twitter one of the things that

00:38:58 ◼   ► I was trying to write about became rapidly irrelevant so I was like oh there goes two

00:39:02 ◼   ► weeks of work like crumple crumple throw away.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Sorry about that that was the FBI thing right?

00:39:07 ◼   ► Yeah we might talk about that at another point but I did a lot of marvelous writing on it

00:39:11 ◼   ► that is now all worthless but so that like that is now what I've done with this iPad

00:39:19 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, great. Here are these two devices

00:39:22 ◼   ► where it's like super clear what is this for.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Now, moving on to the iPhone.

00:39:28 ◼   ► The iPhone, I think of this as like the

00:39:31 ◼   ► aspirational iPhone screen because

00:39:34 ◼   ► what this is here, if you look, there's a bunch of stuff that's related to health.

00:39:37 ◼   ► And I was trying to think about like, okay, what am I using my iPhone for?

00:39:41 ◼   ► And again, the answer to me was really clear, like,

00:39:44 ◼   ► I don't want work stuff,

00:39:47 ◼   ► I don't want notifications on my phone. I just want my iPhone to be like this thing that is just in my pocket

00:39:53 ◼   ► that is useful for writing down thoughts as they occur to me.

00:39:57 ◼   ► So you'll see on there I have a bunch of notes-related apps.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Quip, iA Writer, One Writer, that I use for podcasts, for notes, and for the scripts that I work on.

00:40:08 ◼   ► So very often like a little thought just pops into my head and I want to be able to quickly write it down

00:40:12 ◼   ► and have it in the right place.

00:40:14 ◼   ► "Oh poor pages huh, where's old trusty pages gone gray? See he's missing."

00:40:22 ◼   ► "Yeah Quip has replaced pages."

00:40:25 ◼   ► "Good old pages."

00:40:27 ◼   ► "You were right Myke."

00:40:29 ◼   ► "Myke was right, yeah."

00:40:30 ◼   ► "I know that's all you want me to say and I'll say it."

00:40:33 ◼   ► And then so I was thinking about with the iPhone like what else do I do on the iPhone and the

00:40:38 ◼   ► actual answer was a lot of just health related stuff. Like I was trying to think of

00:40:44 ◼   ► which buttons do I press the most?

00:40:46 ◼   ► And one of those is Lifesum, which is this thing that I'm using to track the food that I'm eating.

00:40:51 ◼   ► And then I'm alternating going to the gym and going running, so it's like, "Okay, I use these other two apps."

00:40:55 ◼   ► And then every night I use this Sleep Cycle app to track my sleep.

00:40:59 ◼   ► And I realize, like, okay, in terms of buttons that I frequently press, I can actually make a nice little row of health stuff.

00:41:06 ◼   ► And then this might sound dumb, but that health row being present there is also just kind of like a reminder constantly to myself

00:41:12 ◼   ► that health is this thing that I have decided about.

00:41:15 ◼   ► That is very smart I think.

00:41:16 ◼   ► It's kind of like a guilt thing.

00:41:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know if it's a guilt thing or so much as like with that iPhone it's like

00:41:25 ◼   ► this is the purpose of this device.

00:41:29 ◼   ► It helps you be healthier.

00:41:31 ◼   ► It captures your thoughts.

00:41:33 ◼   ► It's not here for phone conversations.

00:41:36 ◼   ► It's not here for work.

00:41:38 ◼   ► It's not here for other stuff.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Like I've taken off just a ton of apps on my phone.

00:41:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:43 ◼   ► - And it is really very fundamentally changing

00:41:47 ◼   ► the very nature of how I use my phone.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Like I'm just remarkably aware of how little I use it

00:41:51 ◼   ► except for just a couple things now.

00:41:54 ◼   ► So--

00:41:55 ◼   ► - I've noticed this in myself recently.

00:41:57 ◼   ► And I don't think I need to,

00:41:59 ◼   ► or will make changes like the way that you do.

00:42:00 ◼   ► But as the devices that I'm using to get my work done

00:42:03 ◼   ► is changing, my phone is becoming less and less important.

00:42:06 ◼   ► So my iPhone now basically serves

00:42:09 ◼   ► a couple of different functions.

00:42:10 ◼   ► It is the device I check in the morning and at night.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Like it's just the last device 'cause it's the smallest.

00:42:18 ◼   ► It is a capture device for tasks

00:42:20 ◼   ► and things like that and notes.

00:42:22 ◼   ► It's the device I use when I'm out and about

00:42:26 ◼   ► and it's the device I play games on.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Which is so fundamentally different to me

00:42:30 ◼   ► because for a long time,

00:42:31 ◼   ► my iPhone was my most important computer

00:42:35 ◼   ► and it's becoming less and less so

00:42:37 ◼   ► as my iPad is becoming increasingly important.

00:42:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, when we first met and got to know each other,

00:42:45 ◼   ► I remember how you were basically running

00:42:48 ◼   ► all of what would become Relay off of your phone.

00:42:51 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:42:52 ◼   ► - It was remarkable how much business work

00:42:55 ◼   ► and everything you were doing on your phone.

00:42:57 ◼   ► And that's one of the reasons why you were

00:42:59 ◼   ► the biggest and strongest proponent of the 6 Plus

00:43:02 ◼   ► when it first came out.

00:43:04 ◼   ► because for you that made just a huge, huge difference.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And I eventually converted to that because I also had this idea of like,

00:43:12 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm going to be doing a lot of work on my phone.

00:43:14 ◼   ► This exercise is big and it's nice."

00:43:16 ◼   ► But I am also aware that since I have made this transition much more strongly into iOS,

00:43:22 ◼   ► that interestingly my phone is becoming less important

00:43:26 ◼   ► as the iPad is becoming my primary computer.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And I think I can fairly say that my iPad is my primary computer at this point.

00:43:33 ◼   ► Do you think that something like the iPhone SE would be better for you?

00:43:38 ◼   ► I am hugely tempted by the SE precisely because of this

00:43:41 ◼   ► Because if it's just a device that you need to track stuff and maybe capture some thoughts

00:43:47 ◼   ► it makes sense for it to be as small as possible I think

00:43:50 ◼   ► Yeah Especially if you're running with it, do

00:43:51 ◼   ► you run with your phone? Yeah I do run with the phone

00:43:53 ◼   ► Oh you need the SE man I know I know

00:43:59 ◼   ► It's really interesting the calculus of how this has changed, that as I have radically

00:44:04 ◼   ► decreased use of my phone, the size of it has become more and more annoying.

00:44:08 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:44:09 ◼   ► I mean, look, see, I am a big, I'm the proponent of the 6+, right?

00:44:14 ◼   ► And I still am, because whenever I want to do something on my phone, I want it to be

00:44:19 ◼   ► as big as possible, because I'm still doing those types of work on it, but I just use

00:44:23 ◼   ► it less and less.

00:44:24 ◼   ► For what you're using your phone for, it makes less and less sense for it to be the size that it is.

00:44:30 ◼   ► It actually would make it cumbersome in that regard, I think.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Which is why, for example, I would never recommend the 6 Plus for Adina, because it doesn't make any sense for her, because it's like the size of her head.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Right, right. It's an interesting transition, and I am totally aware of this.

00:44:46 ◼   ► The size is becoming more of an annoyance as I'm not getting the rewards for having the larger size.

00:44:51 ◼   ► So all of this, this whole big like, "here is the context for these three devices"

00:44:58 ◼   ► is my trying to lead up to the first image that I showed you, which is of the Baby Pro.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And now I have nothing on the screen there.

00:45:08 ◼   ► Because the Baby Pro is this funny device for me now that has to serve multiple purposes.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Yeah, so here's where I'm thinking about from listening to what you've just said

00:45:21 ◼   ► and see if I can follow along from it.

00:45:23 ◼   ► Those devices all seem to have a purpose and they're built for that.

00:45:27 ◼   ► When I look at this Smallpro, it has no purpose right now.

00:45:31 ◼   ► It's not that it has no purpose, but it's that it needs to serve a variety of purposes.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Which means if I sit down – I don't know.

00:45:42 ◼   ► This might sound a little weird, but I did sit down and I wrote out by hand.

00:45:46 ◼   ► hand trying to think about what do I want to use each of the devices in my life for.

00:45:52 ◼   ► What is the purpose of the Mac in my life?

00:45:55 ◼   ► What is the purpose of the phone in my life?

00:45:58 ◼   ► And it's always been a guiding principle for me that clear boundaries really help with

00:46:06 ◼   ► productivity and efficiency.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Laser sharp boundaries of what is this for and what is that for are, I find, extraordinarily

00:46:15 ◼   ► And so one of the things that has been a problem for me is where do I get messages from people?

00:46:21 ◼   ► And like I said, my experience was I thought that I really wanted that to be the phone, but the practical result of that was I actually just kind of procrastinated on getting back to people.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Because I felt this constant low-level anxiety from my phone.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Just like, "I just don't want to deal with this."

00:46:36 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, someone just messaged me. I'll look at it later, but I really won't." Right?

00:46:39 ◼   ► And so I thought, "Okay, so the phone is not the place for this."

00:46:42 ◼   ► for this. I was trying to think about where do I want this to be and I was thinking like

00:46:46 ◼   ► is the Mac the place that I get messages from people? But then the problem with that was

00:46:49 ◼   ► also like well I don't really use my Mac that much anymore.

00:46:53 ◼   ► I respond to messages once a week. But that was what I kind of realized like

00:46:58 ◼   ► I had sort of set up my Mac so that like I would always see badges from Slack on my Mac

00:47:03 ◼   ► but I realized like I now with a whole bunch of the changes that I have made in my life

00:47:07 ◼   ► I am pretty much only sitting front of my Mac, yeah, like once a week at most, right?

00:47:13 ◼   ► And depending on like how podcast schedules go, sometimes not even that much.

00:47:16 ◼   ► So I was like, "Okay, well this isn't practical."

00:47:19 ◼   ► And so by defining what everything else was, I was kind of left with the phone is with

00:47:24 ◼   ► me all the time, but I don't want to use it for messages.

00:47:27 ◼   ► My iPad Pro is my dedicated writing device and it lives in my office where it's mounted

00:47:32 ◼   ► as a big screen that is hugely valuable to me.

00:47:36 ◼   ► The mini I just use for books and the whole purpose of it is to be relaxing.

00:47:40 ◼   ► And so I was like, okay, well I'm left with one thing, which is that I have an iPad that

00:47:46 ◼   ► I often use on the couch when I'm just sitting around and that I would sometimes use for

00:47:53 ◼   ► administrative tasks like light email and things.

00:47:57 ◼   ► So this previously was an iPad Air 2, but now any iPad without pencil support is dead

00:48:02 ◼   ► to me.

00:48:03 ◼   ► I immediately got the Baby Pro for RSI reasons.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And I thought, "Okay, what I am going to try now is that this miscellaneous iPad is the

00:48:14 ◼   ► place where if people send me messages, here is where I receive them."

00:48:19 ◼   ► That by picking up this iPad, I am implicitly telling my brain, like, "I am open to the

00:48:25 ◼   ► outside world now."

00:48:27 ◼   ► That's what I'm trying to work on and to set up.

00:48:31 ◼   ► What I have done so far, which has, I mean this has just been a couple days and I was

00:48:36 ◼   ► playing around with the earlier iPad Air about this, but what I have tried to do is to funnel

00:48:41 ◼   ► everything through Notification Center on this iPad, which is a thing I've never really

00:48:45 ◼   ► used before, like I never found much use for it.

00:48:48 ◼   ► But what I want to be able to do is pull down Notification Center and just see what are

00:48:54 ◼   ► the things that people need from me in one place.

00:48:58 ◼   ► What are email messages from VIPs?

00:49:01 ◼   ► What are messages from Slack?

00:49:03 ◼   ► And work through it this way.

00:49:06 ◼   ► And so I don't, again, with all of these things I just like to try out different stuff and

00:49:10 ◼   ► see how it works.

00:49:12 ◼   ► I think this is going to work very well for me, but I, just like with the office, what

00:49:17 ◼   ► I have to see is over time how does this hold up.

00:49:21 ◼   ► But at least right now I think I have a much more workable, much more clear sense of what

00:49:27 ◼   ► What do I want to use things for?

00:49:29 ◼   ► And so in my own work cycle, you know, in the run up to a video for example, I tend

00:49:35 ◼   ► to ignore a lot of administrative email message tasks from people.

00:49:40 ◼   ► As you well know, like people in my life know that if…

00:49:43 ◼   ► I don't know what you're talking about.

00:49:45 ◼   ► People in my life can basically figure out when a video is shortly coming because they

00:49:49 ◼   ► realize that I just drop off the radar for a couple of weeks.

00:49:51 ◼   ► Yeah, but then we also know when it's nearly out because you get so chatty.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Yeah, but never chatty about work stuff, right?

00:49:59 ◼   ► Just chatty, just like, "Hey, how you doing?"

00:50:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm just an honest messenger talking, talking.

00:50:04 ◼   ► But yeah, so yesterday I was trying to clear a bunch of administrative stuff,

00:50:11 ◼   ► and I was working through on this Baby Pro, and I took it out,

00:50:15 ◼   ► and I had the keyboard, external keyboard with it and the pencil,

00:50:17 ◼   ► and I was like, "Okay, this to me kind of feels right,

00:50:20 ◼   ► that I can take this smaller device out to someplace like a coffee shop

00:50:27 ◼   ► and grind through a bunch of administrative work and then leave and be done with that there.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And I think this is going to work out.

00:50:37 ◼   ► The one little wrinkle in this is I'm not quite sure...

00:50:43 ◼   ► because this will end up being like an all-purpose iPad,

00:50:46 ◼   ► like I'm a little bit concerned about some of my other use of it, like, "Oh, what do I want to do when I'm just relaxing?"

00:50:51 ◼   ► Like playing a game or something, like I don't...

00:50:53 ◼   ► This will be that iPad for that as well, so I...

00:50:56 ◼   ► That's my one little wrinkle on this right now, but for the moment I feel like

00:51:00 ◼   ► I'm pretty happy with my physical working setup in a way that I haven't been for a long time.

00:51:07 ◼   ► Because I've really come to terms with this idea that like, the Mac is just used for a few specific tasks,

00:51:13 ◼   ► specific tasks, stop trying to pretend like you're super productive on it, you're not,

00:51:18 ◼   ► and here's what you're going to do with these other various devices. So that's the whole

00:51:25 ◼   ► big story behind these home screens.

00:51:28 ◼   ► So I think maybe eventually this iPad here that you've just shown me will maybe end up

00:51:36 ◼   ► looking a little bit more like my iPad.

00:51:38 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:51:39 ◼   ► because it will become more multi-purpose.

00:51:42 ◼   ► You'll have more and more things on it, right?

00:51:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't have other icons on the desktop

00:51:46 ◼   ► because it is multi-purpose.

00:51:48 ◼   ► As in, when I was playing around with the setup,

00:51:50 ◼   ► I originally thought, "Oh, let me pull out all of the apps

00:51:53 ◼   ► that I might receive notifications for

00:51:54 ◼   ► and put them on the front."

00:51:56 ◼   ► But then that to me was like, "Oh no, no,

00:51:57 ◼   ► I don't like this at all."

00:51:58 ◼   ► Because then there's just, looking at it,

00:51:59 ◼   ► there's a feeling of obligation here.

00:52:02 ◼   ► And what I want instead is that this is the only iPad

00:52:05 ◼   ► where apps are allowed to have badges.

00:52:08 ◼   ► And so what will happen is on that little folder

00:52:11 ◼   ► a badge will appear if there's a notification

00:52:13 ◼   ► in one of those apps and then I swipe down

00:52:16 ◼   ► on Notification Center and can tap on exactly what it is

00:52:19 ◼   ► and it just brings me right to the app

00:52:20 ◼   ► to reply about whatever.

00:52:21 ◼   ► - Okay, so there'll be more stuff on it

00:52:23 ◼   ► but it will still be controlled as to how it looks.

00:52:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think I might leave it controlled

00:52:28 ◼   ► to the way that it looks because I'm also thinking like

00:52:31 ◼   ► I was relaxing and playing for example like X-Com

00:52:34 ◼   ► on this iPad with a pencil while I was sitting

00:52:37 ◼   ► on the couch, right? And like, that's the one place where I'm like, I need to figure out exactly how this is going to work, like will I put it into Do Not Disturb after a certain period of time?

00:52:45 ◼   ► Like I haven't figured out precisely what those wrinkles are yet, but because I'm using it for many things, I don't want to have it set up.

00:52:54 ◼   ► So it's like, oh I have a bunch of game icons on here, because then if I take it to go do some administrative work, my brain's going to be like, "Yeah, but XCOM looks more fun!"

00:53:02 ◼   ► And I don't want a bunch of work icons on here,

00:53:07 ◼   ► because then that creates this feeling of obligation.

00:53:10 ◼   ► So that's why this is the one that's the funny one,

00:53:12 ◼   ► and that's why it's set up in a particular way of like,

00:53:15 ◼   ► I'm trying to keep it more neutral about what is the purpose

00:53:18 ◼   ► of this device in my life.

00:53:20 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:53:21 ◼   ► One of the things, I don't know if annoy is the right word,

00:53:26 ◼   ► but one of the things about you is,

00:53:28 ◼   ► it frustrates me that I see these things and I look crazy,

00:53:32 ◼   ► and then by the time you're done, they start to make sense.

00:53:35 ◼   ► - See, see, that's exactly it.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Everybody thinks, oh, you lunatic.

00:53:39 ◼   ► But if I can explain myself,

00:53:41 ◼   ► I think it comes off sounding perfectly reasonable.

00:53:43 ◼   ► - I picked up my ear too yesterday,

00:53:45 ◼   ► which I haven't for a long time.

00:53:47 ◼   ► And it's, I wanna play with it a little bit more.

00:53:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, what are you thinking?

00:53:53 ◼   ► What are you thinking?

00:53:55 ◼   ► - So that size is great for different reasons.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Like it's really light, it's really portable,

00:54:02 ◼   ► I can hold it really easily in both hands.

00:54:04 ◼   ► It has a split keyboard, which the big pro doesn't have.

00:54:08 ◼   ► - Very nice.

00:54:09 ◼   ► - Which is great.

00:54:09 ◼   ► But what it lacks is the multitasking isn't as good

00:54:15 ◼   ► as it is on the big iPad.

00:54:17 ◼   ► So I just wanna play with it a little bit more

00:54:20 ◼   ► because, so I have been for many years

00:54:24 ◼   ► a multiple Mac person.

00:54:26 ◼   ► Everyone that I know is a multiple Mac person,

00:54:29 ◼   ► They have a desktop machine and a laptop machine, mostly.

00:54:33 ◼   ► Or they have a laptop that they plug into a display,

00:54:36 ◼   ► which, you know, they have other equipment

00:54:38 ◼   ► to make it a dual experience.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - Right. - Big and small.

00:54:43 ◼   ► When the iPad Pro came out,

00:54:46 ◼   ► that's what me and Federico were talking a lot on connected

00:54:50 ◼   ► and I thought he was gonna do that.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Big iPad, small iPad, for the same reason

00:54:54 ◼   ► that you have the big iPad that you work on at home,

00:54:57 ◼   ► You have the small iPad for multiple reasons

00:54:59 ◼   ► and to take it outside.

00:55:01 ◼   ► He said he wouldn't do that.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Wist, and now that this is out,

00:55:04 ◼   ► he's still saying that he's not interested in that.

00:55:06 ◼   ► But now I'm getting interested in that.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - That comparison is, again, when I talk to people

00:55:11 ◼   ► about having multiple iPads for multiple purposes,

00:55:13 ◼   ► people think I'm a lunatic,

00:55:15 ◼   ► but I think that this is the same thing.

00:55:17 ◼   ► But tons of working professionals have multiple computers

00:55:20 ◼   ► for multiple reasons.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Is this all that different?

00:55:24 ◼   ► I don't think it is.

00:55:25 ◼   ► and entirely unexpected to me.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Like I would not have predicted

00:55:30 ◼   ► the way that I ended up using my Pro,

00:55:31 ◼   ► but I realized so fast, like,

00:55:33 ◼   ► "Oh, you know what my Pro is?

00:55:35 ◼   ► It is my desktop computer at my office."

00:55:38 ◼   ► Like it just so naturally fell into that role.

00:55:43 ◼   ► I mean, almost immediately that it's like,

00:55:45 ◼   ► "Yes, and now the Baby Pro,

00:55:47 ◼   ► like this is the version of my laptop."

00:55:50 ◼   ► I still think there's a weird way

00:55:51 ◼   ► that people think about iPads.

00:55:54 ◼   ► and I'm still trying to sell this version of like,

00:55:57 ◼   ► no, no, no, they're like digital pieces of paper,

00:55:59 ◼   ► you know, and they're going in this direction.

00:56:01 ◼   ► - The reason you can't do it is that there are so many

00:56:04 ◼   ► people that believe you cannot do work on them.

00:56:06 ◼   ► Like I watched a review of the 9.7 by Joanna Stern

00:56:11 ◼   ► at the Wall Street Journal, and she's talking about

00:56:14 ◼   ► the differences between an iPad and a PC in her review,

00:56:19 ◼   ► because that's how Apple is now pitching it,

00:56:20 ◼   ► it's like a PC replacement.

00:56:22 ◼   ► and she's saying the good things and the bad things

00:56:24 ◼   ► like how PCs are cheaper and you can manage windows on them

00:56:28 ◼   ► and she's making some really good points

00:56:30 ◼   ► about the differences for some people

00:56:32 ◼   ► and then right at the end she makes a comment

00:56:34 ◼   ► about how you can't do real work on an iPad

00:56:37 ◼   ► and I nearly just flipped a table over.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Because the review was good

00:56:45 ◼   ► and she was making some really good points

00:56:47 ◼   ► but then at the end she showed a bias.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Because you can.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And I do every single day.

00:56:55 ◼   ► And it's getting closer and closer now

00:56:58 ◼   ► to the point where I could do 100%.

00:57:02 ◼   ► I could record and edit.

00:57:04 ◼   ► I genuinely believe now that by this time next year,

00:57:08 ◼   ► I could, if I wanted to, do everything on my iPad.

00:57:13 ◼   ► I think that it's gonna be changes in iOS 10

00:57:16 ◼   ► to put more audio stuff in.

00:57:17 ◼   ► And then I can do it.

00:57:22 ◼   ► So that's why I think it's an issue trying to explain this stuff to some people because they believe and they have a prejudice against work on the iPad.

00:57:28 ◼   ► And I don't know why it's there, I have some theories, but it's basically becoming like a Mac PC war again.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it does kind of have that flavor to it of people picking sides in a way.

00:57:42 ◼   ► And I mean, it's just so interesting because I am really aware that what we may talk about,

00:57:49 ◼   ► I was working on my computer quite a lot recently, and I just kept thinking,

00:57:53 ◼   ► "Man, the only reason I am doing all of this animation work on my Mac

00:57:58 ◼   ► is because there isn't yet a vector program that I can use to my satisfaction on the iPad

00:58:05 ◼   ► for illustrating and for drawing."

00:58:07 ◼   ► There's a couple of things that sort of come close, but none of them quite meet what I'm looking for.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Like, "We're all waiting, Adobe, for you to put Illustrator in the full version on the iPad.

00:58:16 ◼   ► like we know it must be coming, like someday they're gonna do it.

00:58:19 ◼   ► And the day that Adobe or some other company puts a real full vector drawing app on the iPad,

00:58:27 ◼   ► which just seems inevitable, is like, man, my Mac has suddenly become essentially just the podcasting machine,

00:58:35 ◼   ► and then that is also being attacked as a problem to be solved as well.

00:58:39 ◼   ► Well, it's like I can easily see a future where I have a Mac but essentially don't ever use it anymore.

00:58:47 ◼   ► But that to me feeds into this what other people think of as crazy this idea of having different iPads for different things.

00:58:57 ◼   ► And I think the desktop PC versus laptop PC is the exact comparison.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Like you don't think it's crazy to have two computers.

00:59:05 ◼   ► It's not crazy to have two iPads, a big iPad and a little iPad.

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01:01:08 ◼   ► So I'm gonna spend a little bit more time with my Air 2 and make a decision because

01:01:15 ◼   ► I don't have an iPad with a cellular connection. I've never done that because I never thought it

01:01:23 ◼   ► would be that important but it's becoming something now where it seems more interesting. So I could

01:01:28 ◼   ► then have a smaller iPad, the iPad Pro 9.7 that has a cellular connection and it's one that I take

01:01:35 ◼   ► with me and it has a keyboard and it has a pencil and it's like just a replicated experience but in

01:01:40 ◼   ► in a smaller package because the weight and size difference,

01:01:45 ◼   ► boy, do you notice it.

01:01:46 ◼   ► Wow, wow, wow, wow.

01:01:48 ◼   ► I mean, the iPad Pro, it's kind of crazy

01:01:52 ◼   ► that it weighs what it does considering how big it is,

01:01:55 ◼   ► but when you pick up something like an Air,

01:01:58 ◼   ► it's like, I may as well be wheeling my iPad Pro

01:02:02 ◼   ► around in a cart.

01:02:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:02:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a huge difference.

01:02:08 ◼   ► It's, you know, again, it's like wheeling around your desktop, you see.

01:02:12 ◼   ► You know, it's the same kind of thing.

01:02:14 ◼   ► So you might be dual-wielding iPads as well.

01:02:17 ◼   ► So you're just eventually going to have the same setup as me, Myke.

01:02:20 ◼   ► It's only a matter of time.

01:02:21 ◼   ► You're going to be putting all your...

01:02:23 ◼   ► No, I don't think I'm going to go that extreme.

01:02:25 ◼   ► No, you're going to be putting all of your app icons in a single folder.

01:02:28 ◼   ► That's what you're going to be doing.

01:02:30 ◼   ► Just like me, using the keyboard to do command space bar and type out all the app names.

01:02:36 ◼   ► so you never have to touch anything on the screen, keep it nice and fingerprint clean.

01:02:41 ◼   ► I do that. That's how I launch applications.

01:02:43 ◼   ► So that was one thing about my iPad home screen is I very, very rarely ever tap those icons.

01:02:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Because I have my keyboard attached constantly, I just use Spotlight to open everything.

01:02:57 ◼   ► And it's mainly through the keyboard command.

01:02:59 ◼   ► That's why I was trying to say before is those icons are much more a reminder to me what

01:03:04 ◼   ► the device is for, then shortcuts to be pressed.

01:03:08 ◼   ► So that's why I think like just go all the way with this.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Just go all in.

01:03:14 ◼   ► If you never press them anyway, why have them on the screen?

01:03:17 ◼   ► See?

01:03:18 ◼   ► What a life hack.

01:03:20 ◼   ► What a life hack you've worked out.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Don't you use that word.

01:03:25 ◼   ► What's wrong with it?

01:03:26 ◼   ► You're hacking your life.

01:03:27 ◼   ► It's sullied forever.

01:03:28 ◼   ► It's just a terrible word now.

01:03:30 ◼   ► It's gone.

01:03:31 ◼   ► That's one of those words.

01:03:32 ◼   ► We've just lost that word.

01:03:33 ◼   ► It was good once.

01:03:35 ◼   ► It was good while it lasted, but not for long.

01:03:37 ◼   ► There's something we need to address about your devices.

01:03:41 ◼   ► This is big controversy.

01:03:45 ◼   ► So, yes, Myke.

01:03:47 ◼   ► Big controversy.

01:03:49 ◼   ► You teased last time, because you knew what you were doing,

01:03:53 ◼   ► that there was a notable change on the home screen of all of my devices,

01:03:59 ◼   ► which is that the dock, which of course is the primary golden spot for apps,

01:04:05 ◼   ► I have always had three apps there. I've always had Notes, I've always had Launch Center Pro,

01:04:13 ◼   ► and I have had my To-Do application.

01:04:18 ◼   ► And that has been, for most of my iOS life, that has been OmniFocus.

01:04:25 ◼   ► focus though previously when I got my very first iPad touch back in the day as my first

01:04:31 ◼   ► iOS device that slot was Remember the Milk which I loved at the time but is not two specs

01:04:38 ◼   ► now.

01:04:39 ◼   ► Stephen has this love for Remember the Milk. I have nothing but disdain for it. Everything

01:04:46 ◼   ► about it. Everything about it. The name, the icon, the whole philosophy. It's...

01:04:53 ◼   ► We can't get started on this because I think, remember the milk does have some very interesting

01:04:57 ◼   ► killer features but we can't get into this right now.

01:04:59 ◼   ► Because otherwise we'll be here forever and we're already going super long.

01:05:04 ◼   ► So we can't start getting into it like let me talk about every to-do app that I have

01:05:08 ◼   ► ever used and all of the things that are good or bad about all of them.

01:05:11 ◼   ► We can't do that right now, we've got to narrow the focus.

01:05:13 ◼   ► And so what we're going to narrow the focus on is that to-do is now the app that is taking

01:05:18 ◼   ► my slot there for task management.

01:05:22 ◼   ► And OmniFocus is no longer on the devices.

01:05:27 ◼   ► And this has been a big change, and I must say quite a reluctant change on my part.

01:05:38 ◼   ► And spoiler alert, still a thing that I am deeply unhappy with.

01:05:43 ◼   ► As much as we have talked on this show about switching to iOS and doing all the work on

01:05:50 ◼   ► One of the frustrations that I do come across sometimes is lack of getting things like exactly how you want them to be on iOS.

01:05:59 ◼   ► Many iOS apps still have a feeling of, like back from the pre-iOS 7 days of,

01:06:06 ◼   ► "We are going to build an app and we are going to make a whole bunch of decisions for you about how it's going to be,

01:06:12 ◼   ► and you will just accept it or you will not accept it."

01:06:15 ◼   ► it and as iOS continues to develop I find that less and less tolerable.

01:06:22 ◼   ► So it's just easier to run into problems with iOS for like "Oh I can't quite get this exactly

01:06:27 ◼   ► the way I want it."

01:06:28 ◼   ► Because it's harder to dig in and tweak it.

01:06:30 ◼   ► It's harder to dig in to tweak it.

01:06:32 ◼   ► You can't run things on your system that will change things for you even if app authors

01:06:37 ◼   ► don't want them to be like this.

01:06:38 ◼   ► There's just more limitations, there's fewer ways to work around things and you run into

01:06:41 ◼   ► that problem sometimes.

01:06:43 ◼   ► And so I am using To Do, I have switched away from Omni, but I am just in a state of deep

01:06:53 ◼   ► dissatisfaction with regards to task management.

01:06:57 ◼   ► So I don't know where to begin, I guess maybe I should talk about the story of how

01:07:01 ◼   ► I moved away from Omni?

01:07:03 ◼   ► We need to understand why To Do was a contender and why it was even enough.

01:07:12 ◼   ► What made it that it was enough that you were willing to switch away from OmniFocus which

01:07:16 ◼   ► you've used forever?

01:07:17 ◼   ► Yeah forever.

01:07:18 ◼   ► I mean you pulled up on one of the previous shows my first posting on the OmniGroup forums

01:07:24 ◼   ► like years and years ago about like "hey I'm just wondering about a thing".

01:07:28 ◼   ► So here's been the story with Omni and this has been a thing that has been coming for

01:07:33 ◼   ► a year.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I think actually might have been one of the very first conversations that you and I had

01:07:36 ◼   ► a long time ago, which was a huge part of my workflow is that I use templates for all

01:07:45 ◼   ► of my projects.

01:07:47 ◼   ► So just to go to the most complicated example, whenever I make a YouTube video I have a template

01:07:54 ◼   ► that's about 80 items long of everything that needs to be done from the moment I have an

01:08:00 ◼   ► idea for a video through to the final promotion on Twitter and etc. for that video.

01:08:07 ◼   ► So I have recorded every step of everything that has to happen in order, when does it

01:08:14 ◼   ► need to happen, all of this kind of stuff.

01:08:17 ◼   ► And this is a thing that I have been building up and refining over years.

01:08:21 ◼   ► What is the best process?

01:08:22 ◼   ► What are things that I often forget?

01:08:24 ◼   ► Which order is it the most efficient way to do things in?

01:08:27 ◼   ► This is a thing that I constantly tweak about and every time I run through a project, I

01:08:31 ◼   ► think about it like, "Is this the best way to do it?

01:08:33 ◼   ► Is there anything that needs to be changed for the next time I do this?"

01:08:37 ◼   ► And this is the kind of thing with my working life that I think is super important of externalizing

01:08:43 ◼   ► and formalizing what it is that you are doing, which then allows you to think about how you

01:08:48 ◼   ► work and how to change and improve how you work.

01:08:52 ◼   ► So I do it for the videos.

01:08:54 ◼   ► I do it for Hello Internet podcast.

01:08:56 ◼   ► I do it for Cortex, I have templates for business reviews that I do, I have templates for managing

01:09:03 ◼   ► my finances.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Essentially at this stage there are very few things now in my system which are not template

01:09:11 ◼   ► based.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Like there are very few one-off projects.

01:09:15 ◼   ► So with OmniFocus it doesn't have template support.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Right, so this is what everyone always asks whenever I talk about using templates is that

01:09:23 ◼   ► but there is no template stuff built into OmniFocus.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Now what I found many many years ago,

01:09:29 ◼   ► it was that there was someone who created a script,

01:09:34 ◼   ► a third-party script, that would allow you to do some incredibly complicated things

01:09:40 ◼   ► with OmniFocus in terms of templates.

01:09:43 ◼   ► So it allowed you to create a kind of fake project within OmniFocus

01:09:48 ◼   ► where you could put in variable names and relative dates

01:09:53 ◼   ► and set the whole thing up so that you could invoke it

01:09:56 ◼   ► answer a few questions for variables and dates

01:10:00 ◼   ► and this script would directly modify

01:10:04 ◼   ► the OmniFocus database to instantiate this template.

01:10:09 ◼   ► And it was amazing. It was just great, and I was using it for years and years and years.

01:10:15 ◼   ► But eventually, I think it's about a year ago now,

01:10:18 ◼   ► one of my templates got long enough that I ran into a bug

01:10:22 ◼   ► where it's like, "Okay, I have so many items in this template that this script is running into this funny bug

01:10:26 ◼   ► where it doesn't do things right at the end."

01:10:28 ◼   ► So I created a test case and I contacted the author

01:10:32 ◼   ► and I said, "Oh hey, I ran into this situation where this doesn't work right, I just wanted to let you know,

01:10:36 ◼   ► you know, for bug fixes in your script."

01:10:38 ◼   ► And basically the guy wrote back and said that he was no longer maintaining the script

01:10:42 ◼   ► because he personally was no longer using OmniFocus.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And to me that was a big like, "rah rah" right?

01:10:50 ◼   ► It's because it's like, "Okay, I have a real problem here because this is a fundamental part of the way that I work."

01:10:59 ◼   ► And if it is no longer being updated, I knew ever since that day that like the clock was ticking.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Because at some point, OmniFocus is going to update their app so that they change their database format

01:11:13 ◼   ► and then this thing just doesn't work at all.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And so I had been keeping my eye out ever since then.

01:11:19 ◼   ► And while as I record today, like that script still works,

01:11:27 ◼   ► like you can download it and you can still run templates just the way that I always have,

01:11:31 ◼   ► but I also ran into the problem of like, "Okay, but this only runs on my Mac,

01:11:35 ◼   ► and then I don't use my Mac very much anymore."

01:11:38 ◼   ► And I found myself in these weird situations where it's like,

01:11:41 ◼   ► in order to create a template, I am on my iPad,

01:11:45 ◼   ► VNCing into my home Mac to try to run a script on the Mac.

01:11:50 ◼   ► - That's exactly, I was just about to say,

01:11:52 ◼   ► why didn't you, and you just did it.

01:11:53 ◼   ► And I was like, yeah, that's the crazy thing to do.

01:11:57 ◼   ► - It is the crazy thing to do,

01:11:59 ◼   ► but at a certain point it goes from just being like,

01:12:01 ◼   ► oh, isn't it cool that I can do this thing to like,

01:12:03 ◼   ► this just feels so fragile.

01:12:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, that is like a house of cards.

01:12:10 ◼   ► Yeah, there's so many pieces here that are just waiting to fall apart.

01:12:14 ◼   ► That's nothing to build a system on, man. You can't do that.

01:12:17 ◼   ► And the other thing that I have to say here, which is the increasing concern, is like,

01:12:21 ◼   ► okay, back when I was just managing my own stuff,

01:12:24 ◼   ► relying on something like a third-party script to do a thing, like, it was fine. It didn't really matter.

01:12:30 ◼   ► But now it's like my whole business is riding on these things going right.

01:12:35 ◼   ► And so like this becomes just unsustainable at a certain point.

01:12:39 ◼   ► It's like it's too important for this to go wrong.

01:12:41 ◼   ► So for the moment, we'll just say that was the main thing

01:12:45 ◼   ► that was of concern to me.

01:12:46 ◼   ► And so I had been keeping my eye out for a long time

01:12:49 ◼   ► about like, is there something else that I can use?

01:12:50 ◼   ► Or like, what else can I do?

01:12:53 ◼   ► Now, the problem is that, you know,

01:12:56 ◼   ► many apps don't have this kind of template need.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Like I am aware that I am at the far extreme end of users,

01:13:03 ◼   ► as far as the way I manage this stuff.

01:13:05 ◼   ► Like, I bet if you looked at people's databases of to-dos,

01:13:09 ◼   ► I might be the person in the world who has

01:13:13 ◼   ► the smallest number of manually entered tasks in a to-do list,

01:13:17 ◼   ► just because so much of my stuff is automatically generated through templates.

01:13:22 ◼   ► So this is not like a huge demand in the to-do world,

01:13:24 ◼   ► and so basically I was always SOL whenever looking at anything.

01:13:28 ◼   ► But eventually, I came across to-do as one of the apps,

01:13:33 ◼   ► and I kept hearing from various corners of people saying like "Oh, To-Do is this really interesting app."

01:13:38 ◼   ► And I never really had time to take a look at it until, of course, the thing that I can't stop mentioning

01:13:45 ◼   ► where do you think I took a look at it, Myke?

01:13:47 ◼   ► Amsterdam.

01:13:49 ◼   ► You are correct. When I last travelled there, I thought "Oh, this is a perfectly great time to just start messing around with something else that's new."

01:13:56 ◼   ► So I was playing around with it for a while.

01:13:59 ◼   ► And basically what I discovered was, "Oh, okay."

01:14:03 ◼   ► Todo has a plugin that works with Workflow, the app,

01:14:09 ◼   ► that allows you to specify tasks and pre-populate it with a bunch of data.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Now, I ended up creating a workflow that has something like four nested if statements,

01:14:24 ◼   ► where I basically wrote a little workflow that will take formatted data

01:14:31 ◼   ► and pre-populate a template as close as I possibly can get it to the way that I want.

01:14:36 ◼   ► So what I did was I wrote out this little script that will say,

01:14:40 ◼   ► "Okay, what is the..." It'll take like the task name,

01:14:43 ◼   ► it'll populate it with an arbitrary number of tags,

01:14:46 ◼   ► it'll ask for a date,

01:14:48 ◼   ► and it will set items as due or starting an arbitrary number of days before that date.

01:14:53 ◼   ► Whoa.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Yeah, it took a long time to get this to work in workflow

01:14:57 ◼   ► and I was really pushing the edges of what workflow can do

01:15:01 ◼   ► in so much as once again, I ran into a bug in workflow

01:15:05 ◼   ► that nobody had run into before

01:15:06 ◼   ► because they hadn't tried to do what I do,

01:15:09 ◼   ► which is iterate over a loop 70 times.

01:15:12 ◼   ► So when I invoke a workflow now,

01:15:16 ◼   ► it'll bounce back and forth

01:15:18 ◼   ► between to do and workflow 70 times.

01:15:20 ◼   ► - What, hang on, it's flipping between the apps?

01:15:24 ◼   ► - It's flipping between the apps.

01:15:25 ◼   ► - Oh my God, don't look at that screen.

01:15:27 ◼   ► - Well, it does take a couple of minutes to actually do.

01:15:30 ◼   ► Right, like it just goes loop, loop, loop, loop,

01:15:33 ◼   ► which is really funny because this is like,

01:15:34 ◼   ► oh, has an iOS animation ever more slowed down a process

01:15:38 ◼   ► than at this moment?

01:15:39 ◼   ► Like, I think not, right?

01:15:40 ◼   ► This must be taking a hundred thousand times longer

01:15:43 ◼   ► than necessary simply because iOS

01:15:44 ◼   ► wants to show you what's happening.

01:15:45 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, I get it iOS,

01:15:46 ◼   ► I don't really need to see this.

01:15:48 ◼   ► - Have you ever done that in split screen?

01:15:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it doesn't work in split screen.

01:15:51 ◼   ► That's a real shame.

01:15:53 ◼   ► It freaks the hell out if you try to do it in split screen.

01:15:55 ◼   ► But key difference here

01:15:57 ◼   ► is that the workflow

01:15:59 ◼   ► developers are like, "Oh, great.

01:16:01 ◼   ► We'll fix this bug." Because it's like, it's actively being

01:16:03 ◼   ► developed. And like, "Okay, great."

01:16:05 ◼   ► And I think it's actually already fixed, right?

01:16:07 ◼   ► So I can run these super long loops.

01:16:09 ◼   ► What I'm going to say next is there are

01:16:11 ◼   ► some things about OmniFocus that I

01:16:13 ◼   ► deeply,

01:16:15 ◼   ► deeply miss about to do.

01:16:17 ◼   ► and I have many, many problems with To-Do.

01:16:21 ◼   ► I try so hard to restrain myself on Twitter from

01:16:25 ◼   ► constantly pestering the To-Do developer.

01:16:29 ◼   ► Because they're like, "No man, just hold back, right? Just keep it to yourself. Only mention one or two things.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Don't mention everything that pops into your head."

01:16:37 ◼   ► He's a very nice guy and I think he would accept the feedback.

01:16:41 ◼   ► I know Federico could be pretty tough on him as well.

01:16:45 ◼   ► I'm just trying so hard to just be like a normal human being,

01:16:49 ◼   ► but I could actually write out a list of 100 things

01:16:51 ◼   ► that I would want done differently.

01:16:53 ◼   ► But I'm like, no, no, no,

01:16:54 ◼   ► just focus on the one or two things that really matter.

01:16:56 ◼   ► - So I said I didn't like the icon, right?

01:16:58 ◼   ► We were talking about it on Connected.

01:17:00 ◼   ► The guy sends me an email,

01:17:02 ◼   ► tells me the app is really good to look past the icon

01:17:04 ◼   ► and gave me a free coffee.

01:17:06 ◼   ► - That's very nice.

01:17:07 ◼   ► - I was like, man, you're breaking my heart here.

01:17:08 ◼   ► I feel terrible.

01:17:09 ◼   ► - I actually think I used to have a problem

01:17:13 ◼   ► with the app icon until you see the app icon

01:17:15 ◼   ► the Mac and then I think it totally makes sense. The icon looks fine on the Mac and

01:17:20 ◼   ► then I can see, oh this is what the icon is trying to do on iOS and now I'm fine with

01:17:25 ◼   ► it. It's circular on the Mac, right? Yeah, it works better as a circle. I don't have

01:17:29 ◼   ► any problem with the app icon even though everybody loves to complain about it.

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01:19:39 ◼   ► But so here's the thing, like, there are many things in To-Do that I find deeply frustrating,

01:19:43 ◼   ► and there are many ways in which it just... it doesn't work for me the way that I want it to.

01:19:49 ◼   ► But nonetheless, when I have to make a decision about trade-offs,

01:19:55 ◼   ► the answer is I would rather have...

01:19:59 ◼   ► I would rather have a system where I can trust that this automated creation of templates works

01:20:08 ◼   ► and is being actively developed on, as opposed to using a system where I feel like there's just a ticking time bomb for the day that I wake up and it doesn't work, and then I'm really in trouble.

01:20:20 ◼   ► So like, I would rather move and deal with the problems than be waiting for something that I don't know when it's going to happen.

01:20:30 ◼   ► And that's the situation that I am in.

01:20:35 ◼   ► But man, do I really miss some of the ways that OmniFocus works.

01:20:42 ◼   ► And if you will indulge me for a moment, I will mention the one thing which I would just die for in To Do.

01:20:50 ◼   ► Which is that OmniFocus's single best feature that I have seen no other apps ever do remotely as well

01:20:59 ◼   ► Is the idea of projects being sequential or being parallel?

01:21:06 ◼   ► So you can say, "This project, these things need to happen in order."

01:21:12 ◼   ► And so only show one thing at a time from this project,

01:21:17 ◼   ► because thing 2 can't happen until thing 1 is complete.

01:21:21 ◼   ► And parallel projects, these items can happen at the same time.

01:21:24 ◼   ► They are not dependent on each other.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And even better than that, OmniFocus will let you divide that up in terms of projects and sub-projects.

01:21:34 ◼   ► So you can say like, "Oh, this part of the project is sequential, this part is parallel."

01:21:40 ◼   ► And that is a thing--for example, that is a thing in my template for making YouTube videos,

01:21:47 ◼   ► I could say, "Okay, at the start, I'm going to write a bunch of drafts.

01:21:52 ◼   ► those drafts all have to happen in sequence, because I can't write draft 3 until draft 2.

01:21:57 ◼   ► So just show me you're up to draft 2, and when I click "Done", then it says you're up to draft 3, and I click "Done".

01:22:03 ◼   ► And then when I work through a number of drafts, there's a lot of stuff in the animation phase which can happen in parallel.

01:22:10 ◼   ► Right? I can work on the audio, I can work on the video, I can work on particularly tricky sections,

01:22:16 ◼   ► I can do what I call like rough storyboards for some sections.

01:22:20 ◼   ► There's a lot of stuff that doesn't depend on earlier things happening.

01:22:23 ◼   ► So when I get to that point, automatically OmniFocus knows,

01:22:28 ◼   ► "Oh yes, this part of the project now happens in parallel."

01:22:31 ◼   ► So when he's looking at what's the video work that he can do,

01:22:34 ◼   ► he will now see, "Here are these three parallel things that can happen."

01:22:37 ◼   ► And then once I'm done with that, like it can flip back over to another sequential section.

01:22:41 ◼   ► It's just amazing. Like OmniFocus' key ability is,

01:22:46 ◼   ► only show me the things that I can do right now.

01:22:50 ◼   ► And todo has no concept of this.

01:22:54 ◼   ► So when I invoke a template in todo

01:22:57 ◼   ► it just treats all of those items as like, "Oh, they're all available right now. You can do 100 drafts today."

01:23:03 ◼   ► It's like, "No, I can't do 100 drafts today. I don't want to see all of these things."

01:23:06 ◼   ► But there's no way to filter it out and say like,

01:23:09 ◼   ► "This is a sequential project. This is a parallel project."

01:23:13 ◼   ► And that just, it just kills me.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And so even though I went to Amsterdam

01:23:19 ◼   ► back in like whatever it was, January now,

01:23:21 ◼   ► and I've been using to do every day since then,

01:23:24 ◼   ► I am still constantly trying to like fight with it

01:23:28 ◼   ► and get it to show me things the way I want to see them,

01:23:33 ◼   ► not just show me like a thousand items

01:23:36 ◼   ► which can't be done at this very moment.

01:23:39 ◼   ► - I couldn't live like that.

01:23:41 ◼   ► The way that I am tricking it right now

01:23:43 ◼   ► is the way that I've done it with this template thing

01:23:46 ◼   ► is to set a huge number of artificial start times for projects.

01:23:52 ◼   ► And again, I can only—this is where, like, I'm willing to try to work with this thing

01:23:56 ◼   ► because I can try to programmatically fix this.

01:23:59 ◼   ► So when I invoke a template for a writing project now,

01:24:04 ◼   ► I set a date where in theory I want it to be done by this date,

01:24:08 ◼   ► and then the little template goes through

01:24:10 ◼   ► and sets artificial start dates for every single subpart of that.

01:24:15 ◼   ► So you don't see it because you're kind of tricking it.

01:24:17 ◼   ► I'm tricking the system, but there are many, many ways in which this doesn't work.

01:24:21 ◼   ► It doesn't work if you get ahead, it doesn't work very well if you fall behind.

01:24:25 ◼   ► It's fragile.

01:24:27 ◼   ► But the thing is, because it's automated,

01:24:30 ◼   ► worse comes to worse, if the due date gets really off,

01:24:33 ◼   ► I can just delete the whole project and re-invoke the template with a different date.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Right, so I can like try to trick it.

01:24:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:39 ◼   ► But it's hugely frustrating to not have that notion of parallel and sequential.

01:24:46 ◼   ► But yeah, so this is the thing, like I...

01:24:50 ◼   ► A to-do app is such a fundamental part of the way I work.

01:24:56 ◼   ► Like I run everything through this.

01:24:58 ◼   ► And it's frustrating to be faced with what I view as a really deep trade-off

01:25:05 ◼   ► between two different things.

01:25:07 ◼   ► It's like you can have automation, but you can't have available only, or you can have

01:25:12 ◼   ► available only, but you can't have automation.

01:25:17 ◼   ► And it's like, well, between those two, it's like pick your poison.

01:25:21 ◼   ► And I have picked the poison, but I'm not happy about it.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I use OmniFocus very basically.

01:25:30 ◼   ► I don't use projects, I don't use context.

01:25:34 ◼   ► I use it as a glorified to-do list essentially.

01:25:38 ◼   ► But because of that, I have very simple

01:25:44 ◼   ► but fundamental ways that a to-do app needs to work for me.

01:25:49 ◼   ► And I've not spent a bunch of time in to-do,

01:25:54 ◼   ► but every app that I have tried,

01:25:56 ◼   ► so this may, to-do may do it, I just haven't looked at it.

01:26:00 ◼   ► Every app that I have tried does something

01:26:02 ◼   ► that I don't like in a way that means I cannot use it.

01:26:05 ◼   ► I tried to use Todoist for a while,

01:26:08 ◼   ► and its way of setting reminders and notifications

01:26:12 ◼   ► is mind-boggling, and I'm just not accepting that

01:26:17 ◼   ► as a thing.

01:26:18 ◼   ► The omnic focus forecast function,

01:26:21 ◼   ► one of the best things on the planet.

01:26:24 ◼   ► The idea that I can get just at a glance,

01:26:26 ◼   ► I can look at a calendar and see how busy I'm gonna be,

01:26:29 ◼   ► and then dig in and move things around

01:26:32 ◼   ► and really get an idea of what my week's gonna look like

01:26:35 ◼   ► just based on my tasks and the numbers.

01:26:39 ◼   ► And I can, now I'm like, I know what a busy day is

01:26:42 ◼   ► by the number and I know how I can adjust it

01:26:45 ◼   ► by the numbers, right? - Right.

01:26:48 ◼   ► - That for me is just like, if you don't have that,

01:26:50 ◼   ► like I'm just not, I just can't, I can't go to you

01:26:53 ◼   ► because I am now so deeply embedded in that system

01:26:57 ◼   ► and the way that it works for me,

01:26:59 ◼   ► that if it's not exactly like this, I can't do it.

01:27:03 ◼   ► But my needs are so much more simple than yours,

01:27:05 ◼   ► but they're still fundamentally the same ideas.

01:27:07 ◼   ► Like if you don't do it the way that I need it,

01:27:09 ◼   ► I just can't use it.

01:27:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is where I've always thought that

01:27:14 ◼   ► to-do apps and email apps are two examples

01:27:20 ◼   ► of the clear area of where there is an infinite market demand

01:27:24 ◼   ► for these things. - Yep.

01:27:25 ◼   ► because people just have their own particularly picky ways

01:27:29 ◼   ► that they want stuff done.

01:27:30 ◼   ► And I have played with every to-do app ever.

01:27:34 ◼   ► I mean, that is no exaggeration.

01:27:36 ◼   ► Every to-do app in existence I have bought and tried.

01:27:38 ◼   ► And like, it's remarkable how quickly you can come

01:27:42 ◼   ► across something where you're like,

01:27:43 ◼   ► this is just a total deal breaker.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Like I cannot, I cannot work with this.

01:27:47 ◼   ► And in the whole world of to-do apps,

01:27:50 ◼   ► it's like there are only three that I can recommend

01:27:54 ◼   ► with a clear conscious to people

01:27:55 ◼   ► based on what their needs are.

01:27:57 ◼   ► And it's like, To Do, OmniFocus and Clear.

01:28:00 ◼   ► And those are the ones that I will recommend to people

01:28:02 ◼   ► when they ask me for advice.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, I'll try to get a sense of like,

01:28:05 ◼   ► what are you looking for?

01:28:05 ◼   ► What do you need?

01:28:06 ◼   ► And let's talk about this.

01:28:07 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, well, To Do is on one end

01:28:09 ◼   ► of the spectrum of like super, super complicated.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Omni is on this closer on that end of that spectrum

01:28:15 ◼   ► of like power user kind of thing.

01:28:17 ◼   ► And then Clear is like, do you just want a list of things?

01:28:20 ◼   ► This is probably the best one that you're gonna use.

01:28:22 ◼   ► - I agree with that, but I have one more

01:28:23 ◼   ► I have to throw in which is "due" which is just like do you need to know about something

01:28:28 ◼   ► at a specific time?

01:28:29 ◼   ► Due to me falls into the category of timers.

01:28:32 ◼   ► I don't really think of it as a to-do app but yeah it does have to-do like functions.

01:28:38 ◼   ► So I recommend that as a timer app is the way it is in my brain.

01:28:42 ◼   ► But the number of apps that I have tried I mean it's got to be like hundreds you know

01:28:46 ◼   ► including like web services and everything over you know 15 years of playing around with

01:28:52 ◼   ► this stuff going all the way back to the Palm Pilot where I was using to do apps

01:28:55 ◼   ► of various sorts. So it's like anybody who ever wants to develop a to-do app

01:29:01 ◼   ► please do so. Like there is always room for more of these. Like you can always

01:29:05 ◼   ► have more icons with check boxes in the App Store. Like it'll never it'll never

01:29:09 ◼   ► be tired. The very worst thing about trying to swap is how do you move your

01:29:14 ◼   ► tasks? Yeah that's... Now there is an export function. Does todo allow you to import?

01:29:20 ◼   ► Like, OmniFocus has an export.

01:29:23 ◼   ► - I don't know because my feeling with that is

01:29:26 ◼   ► I don't want to use those things

01:29:29 ◼   ► because whenever I have switched to do apps,

01:29:32 ◼   ► what I have gone through now has always been the case of

01:29:35 ◼   ► you need to somewhat align your brain

01:29:39 ◼   ► with the way this app thinks you need to use it.

01:29:42 ◼   ► And if you just try to do a straight import,

01:29:44 ◼   ► it doesn't work as well.

01:29:46 ◼   ► So I had like a transition period

01:29:49 ◼   ► where I was keeping an eye on OmniFocus

01:29:51 ◼   ► to see about things that pop up

01:29:53 ◼   ► and I was going through and taking a look at stuff,

01:29:55 ◼   ► but I have to re-figure out how to-do works.

01:29:58 ◼   ► And to-do has, it has a very complicated hierarchy of stuff.

01:30:03 ◼   ► And it, fundamentally, if you just try to move

01:30:08 ◼   ► straight from OmniFocus to to-do,

01:30:10 ◼   ► like you're gonna have a bad time.

01:30:11 ◼   ► You need to seriously rethink the way this works.

01:30:14 ◼   ► - Right.

01:30:15 ◼   ► You need to understand its language, basically.

01:30:18 ◼   ► Yeah, it took me a very long time to even have any kind of basic functional setup in To Do.

01:30:24 ◼   ► Because I was just not thinking about it the way the developer was thinking about it.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Like, okay, now I have this whole thing which works.

01:30:32 ◼   ► It's like, okay, I understand this idea of smart lists, I understand groups and projects and tasks

01:30:37 ◼   ► and the way they have it all set up in their brain.

01:30:39 ◼   ► It's like, okay, fine. I can do stuff now, but the question is just can I actually get it set up exactly the way I want?

01:30:45 ◼   ► and the answer is fundamentally no,

01:30:46 ◼   ► because the app doesn't have an understanding

01:30:48 ◼   ► of sequential and parallel projects.

01:30:50 ◼   ► And without that, even the smartest, cleverest automation

01:30:54 ◼   ► in the world, it's a problem it just can't solve.

01:30:57 ◼   ► - Have you told the developer this?

01:30:58 ◼   ► Have you shared your feelings?

01:30:59 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, this was my one thing on Twitter

01:31:03 ◼   ► that I was like, if I can try to sell him on a single thing,

01:31:07 ◼   ► this is the thing I'm going to try to sell him on.

01:31:09 ◼   ► I was trying to be super gentle,

01:31:10 ◼   ► but that is the one thing

01:31:14 ◼   ► that would make the biggest difference, right?

01:31:16 ◼   ► So that's what I was trying to push for.

01:31:17 ◼   ► - Do you wanna talk directly to him right now?

01:31:19 ◼   ► - No, I've already spoken.

01:31:20 ◼   ► I've already spoken.

01:31:21 ◼   ► - Okay, you've already had the actual direct conversation.

01:31:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, we've already had the actual direct conversation.

01:31:25 ◼   ► So that's the big thing.

01:31:26 ◼   ► Like I said, there are things that I totally love

01:31:30 ◼   ► about Todo, one of which is it has reminders

01:31:34 ◼   ► in the same way that the do app we were just discussing does

01:31:39 ◼   ► where you can set it to like repeatedly bug you

01:31:41 ◼   ► about a thing on an hourly basis until you have done it.

01:31:44 ◼   ► - Well that's amazing.

01:31:45 ◼   ► - That feature is so great, right?

01:31:49 ◼   ► Because that is the best part of the do timer is

01:31:52 ◼   ► I want you to not just be a timer,

01:31:54 ◼   ► I want you to be a timer that constantly

01:31:56 ◼   ► re-reminds me about a thing.

01:31:57 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:31:58 ◼   ► - Like it's just, that is really nice to be able to pick

01:32:01 ◼   ► some items to say like bug me every hour until I say yes,

01:32:04 ◼   ► this thing was done.

01:32:04 ◼   ► - Well look at me going straight to the app store.

01:32:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:32:10 ◼   ► If you try to, I will be genuinely curious

01:32:13 ◼   ► about your onboarding experience, because I think it,

01:32:16 ◼   ► again, I am coming at it from this bad position

01:32:18 ◼   ► of I'm trying to reproduce a thing.

01:32:21 ◼   ► I imagine that the onboarding experience

01:32:24 ◼   ► for anyone in To-Do is quite complicated.

01:32:26 ◼   ► Of like, what do I do?

01:32:28 ◼   ► Like, how is this supposed to work?

01:32:30 ◼   ► And it actually does remind me the most

01:32:33 ◼   ► of Remember the Milk in some ways,

01:32:35 ◼   ► where Remember the Milk is entirely

01:32:37 ◼   ► this search-based algorithm of like,

01:32:40 ◼   ► you build searches to show what you want,

01:32:43 ◼   ► and the app itself has a very basic concept of lists.

01:32:47 ◼   ► But the other big thing that I will say in favor of To Do,

01:32:52 ◼   ► which has been my long-time frustration with OmniFocus,

01:32:57 ◼   ► but I can understand why they do it,

01:32:59 ◼   ► is To Do allows you to have

01:33:03 ◼   ► multiple tags associated with a task.

01:33:07 ◼   ► OmniFocus is a software implementation

01:33:11 ◼   ► of a strict "getting things done" system.

01:33:15 ◼   ► They even borrow a lot of the language from "getting things done".

01:33:19 ◼   ► So you can assign what are called "contexts"

01:33:23 ◼   ► to a task. And context is essentially equivalent

01:33:27 ◼   ► to like a tag. But in "Getting Things Done", because that book

01:33:31 ◼   ► was written with this idea of paper, or even when it was written like he's talking about

01:33:35 ◼   ► on his Blackberry managing list, like it's essentially still paper, he's using nothing

01:33:39 ◼   ► digital about it.

01:33:41 ◼   ► All tasks have a single context.

01:33:44 ◼   ► Like it's this idea that like, "I can do this thing while I am at the office.

01:33:47 ◼   ► I can do this thing while I am at home.

01:33:49 ◼   ► I can do this thing while I am running an errand."

01:33:52 ◼   ► And that has always been just like a hugely frustrating limitation, especially as I have

01:33:57 ◼   ► transitioned into being self-employed and especially as my whole life has become a series

01:34:02 ◼   ► of screens, which theoretically can be anything, it's like I would like to be able to assign

01:34:07 ◼   ► multiple tags to a task because I would like to be able to say like, "Oh, this task can

01:34:13 ◼   ► be done in a bunch of environments.

01:34:15 ◼   ► This task is a mindless task that you can do while watching TV, but it's also a task

01:34:20 ◼   ► that might be super important to do while you're working on the video, like animating

01:34:24 ◼   ► stuff."

01:34:25 ◼   ► And Omni has always allowed you to say like, "This task can go in this folder and this

01:34:32 ◼   ► task can be assigned a single context."

01:34:37 ◼   ► And I've always found that super frustrating.

01:34:40 ◼   ► Like no, I want to assign multiple contexts to a task.

01:34:45 ◼   ► And so being able in To Do to be able to assign multiple tags to a task, which means that

01:34:52 ◼   ► that I can search for it in a bunch of different ways.

01:34:54 ◼   ► Like that is so nice to be able to do that.

01:34:57 ◼   ► And like, yes, I want to be able to see this thing

01:34:59 ◼   ► in many different situations, not just one situation.

01:35:03 ◼   ► So that's another thing in favor of to-do.

01:35:05 ◼   ► - This goes back to what you were saying earlier

01:35:07 ◼   ► about design decisions.

01:35:09 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:35:10 ◼   ► - There's got to be them,

01:35:11 ◼   ► but they will work for a lot of people,

01:35:14 ◼   ► but it doesn't necessarily mean that it works for you,

01:35:16 ◼   ► but you can't make an app without them.

01:35:18 ◼   ► They have to have an opinion for it to be good.

01:35:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's a totally reasonable opinion to say,

01:35:23 ◼   ► like, we are going to make an app,

01:35:24 ◼   ► which is going to be the default Getting Things Done app.

01:35:26 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Or like that,

01:35:27 ◼   ► this huge market share,

01:35:29 ◼   ► like they've been incredibly successful with that.

01:35:32 ◼   ► And that's why I have found it frustrating,

01:35:34 ◼   ► but I have seen Omni in the forums,

01:35:35 ◼   ► like repeat that line of like,

01:35:38 ◼   ► this is for getting things done.

01:35:39 ◼   ► Like tasks have a single context,

01:35:41 ◼   ► you know, and they have some database behind the scenes

01:35:43 ◼   ► of how things work, and like, that's fine.

01:35:46 ◼   ► But I have always been trying to fight against that

01:35:48 ◼   ► with doing things like putting stuff in the notes

01:35:51 ◼   ► and trying to search based on,

01:35:52 ◼   ► like I've always just tried to get around it in some ways.

01:35:54 ◼   ► So it's never been a deal breaker for me,

01:35:58 ◼   ► but it's one of those things which is like,

01:35:59 ◼   ► oh right, to use a to-do app,

01:36:00 ◼   ► which from my perspective allows the correct thing,

01:36:03 ◼   ► which is an arbitrary number of tags,

01:36:05 ◼   ► like why would you limit this,

01:36:06 ◼   ► is just simply much nicer.

01:36:09 ◼   ► So I don't know, like this has been this whole big thing,

01:36:12 ◼   ► Myke, but like I said, I'm just,

01:36:14 ◼   ► I'm fundamentally frustrated.

01:36:16 ◼   ► Oh, and also just to try to forestall a thousand emails from people.

01:36:21 ◼   ► I am aware that OmniFocus does have an action in workflows which will allow you to add tasks

01:36:27 ◼   ► to OmniFocus.

01:36:29 ◼   ► And OmniFocus also has this thing called Mail Drop where you can use email to add tasks

01:36:34 ◼   ► to OmniFocus.

01:36:36 ◼   ► But both of those things only work for adding inbox items with no additional information.

01:36:43 ◼   ► So they are completely unsuitable for the purposes that I am trying to do.

01:36:47 ◼   ► I'm aware they exist. Trust me people, I have tried like hell to make them work, but there is no way to make them work.

01:36:55 ◼   ► You would just have 70 tasks in your inbox.

01:36:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I would just have 70 unsorted tasks in my inbox with no information about start dates, no information about project states,

01:37:03 ◼   ► sub-project state, parallel, sequential, contexts. You would have none of this.

01:37:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's always frustrated me about OmniFocus

01:37:10 ◼   ► is I can't take advantage of any of those things

01:37:12 ◼   ► 'cause I don't use the inbox like that.

01:37:14 ◼   ► Every task I add has a due date immediately when it's added.

01:37:18 ◼   ► And I never look through my inbox.

01:37:21 ◼   ► Like I don't have that system,

01:37:23 ◼   ► so it always frustrates me that basically

01:37:25 ◼   ► everything that they have to automatically add tasks

01:37:28 ◼   ► or to make it fast to add tasks

01:37:30 ◼   ► just throws it into the inbox.

01:37:32 ◼   ► It's like that's not what I want at all.

01:37:35 ◼   ► But again, that is a fundamental getting things done design decision.

01:37:39 ◼   ► Exactly. Like that you throw everything in, go in and review and sort it,

01:37:42 ◼   ► but that's, I don't have a getting things done like system.

01:37:46 ◼   ► It's the system that Myke came up with.

01:37:49 ◼   ► Right?

01:37:50 ◼   ► Yeah, everything has a due date.

01:37:52 ◼   ► And again, this is like, everybody has their own way of working for them,

01:37:55 ◼   ► which is why you can have all of these things exist in parallel.

01:37:58 ◼   ► Like there can be many, many apps, people use them in different ways.

01:38:01 ◼   ► I am really frustrated that I find myself to do app homeless at the moment.

01:38:06 ◼   ► I'm like, "Man, I'm using To Do," but I have a lot of frustrations with it, even

01:38:11 ◼   ► after - what is it now, like two months, three months of using it every day as my primary

01:38:16 ◼   ► task manager and trying to make it work more the way that I want?

01:38:19 ◼   ► It's like, "Okay, but this is a case where I have to pick my poison and I have picked

01:38:24 ◼   ► this poison."

01:38:26 ◼   ► It has had a big impact on the way that I work.

01:38:31 ◼   ► And it is a thing that I end up thinking about every day,

01:38:34 ◼   ► about how can I make this better or closer

01:38:37 ◼   ► to a system that works for me?

01:38:40 ◼   ► But the bottom line is, for me, templates

01:38:45 ◼   ► that work consistently are a total deal breaker.

01:38:48 ◼   ► Like without that, I really can't use a to-do app.

01:38:53 ◼   ► And that means I am going to use to-do

01:38:55 ◼   ► because it is the only app that does this at the level that I require.

01:38:59 ◼   ► So that's the short answer to why the apps

01:39:03 ◼   ► are different on my dock that you hinted at last time.

01:39:07 ◼   ► Maybe next time we'll talk about trucks.

01:39:11 ◼   ► We're never going to get to talking about trucks, Myke. We're never going to get there.

01:39:23 ◼   ► This is my new iPad, this is the background.

01:39:25 ◼   ► I just wanted to prepare you, like this background will probably not stay.

01:39:28 ◼   ► So I'm sending this along, here is the setup for my current iPad, which I use for a lot of different things.

01:39:35 ◼   ► I hope it's a picture of me.

01:39:39 ◼   ► Not a picture of you. You are not my background.

01:39:42 ◼   ► That would be great though.

01:39:44 ◼   ► That would be great.

01:39:46 ◼   ► It's just like I got the three dots and then they just disappeared.

01:39:51 ◼   ► It's still sorry.

01:39:53 ◼   ► Don't worry, iMessage never lies about its progress with sending something. Maybe I should try it on Skype as well.

01:40:01 ◼   ► Oh god, now it took four hours.

01:40:03 ◼   ► Skype file transfer is the worst thing in the world.

01:40:07 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I forgot the Skype file transfers.

01:40:10 ◼   ► I don't know what they do. Like I feel like there's they send it to somebody who redraws the image and sends it to you or something.

01:40:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that that's precisely what they do two megabytes how about four hours

01:40:24 ◼   ► Let me

01:40:30 ◼   ► Let's pick this up next time yeah, let's pick this up next time perfect

01:40:37 ◼   ► Okay, I'm gonna send a smaller version on Skype no don't do it. Oh, okay. I won't be a disaster

01:40:47 ◼   ► I've got the three dots in Skype now though

01:40:49 ◼   ► It's not gonna be a disaster it's gonna be fine Oh Skype gave me just gave me a frowny face it says no

01:40:59 ◼   ► Oh wow

01:41:03 ◼   ► I've never seen that before

01:41:05 ◼   ► It's getting judgmental

01:41:08 ◼   ► Yes, it's getting judgmental

01:41:11 ◼   ► This is ridiculous what is happening I have no idea

01:41:16 ◼   ► Has it sent?

01:41:19 ◼   ► It says to me that it's still sending.

01:41:21 ◼   ► How big is this image?

01:41:24 ◼   ► It's just a 2 megabyte image.

01:41:26 ◼   ► Skype is giving me frowny faces for sending you stuff.

01:41:29 ◼   ► You know what I could do?

01:41:30 ◼   ► I could email you.

01:41:31 ◼   ► You could email me.

01:41:32 ◼   ► Or I could slack it to you.

01:41:33 ◼   ► You could slack it?

01:41:34 ◼   ► I could slack it to you, I could email it to you.

01:41:36 ◼   ► We got many options here.

01:41:39 ◼   ► I'm gonna go with slack.

01:41:41 ◼   ► Uploading 43%.

01:41:42 ◼   ► Oh god I just accidentally opened Final Cut Pro.

01:41:45 ◼   ► Oh god.

01:41:46 ◼   ► What are you do- no no!

01:41:47 ◼   ► Back, abort, abort, abort, Myke.

01:41:49 ◼   ► Oh no!

01:41:54 ◼   ► I think all of these upload things lie because-

01:41:57 ◼   ► Alright.

01:41:58 ◼   ► Slack has told me it's uploaded 90% and then it's just sitting there.

01:42:01 ◼   ► Oh no wait, processing, processing on Slack.

01:42:03 ◼   ► We're getting better, we're getting closer.

01:42:06 ◼   ► Alright I got it.

01:42:08 ◼   ► Alright, okay.

01:42:09 ◼   ► Well.