Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► So Myke, did you enjoy your Cortexmas?

00:00:04 ◼   ► A little too much, I think.

00:00:06 ◼   ► That's the problem with Cortexmas, is it's the time when we take a break from work and relax for a while.

00:00:12 ◼   ► And sometimes it's a little bit hard to get back into the swing of things.

00:00:18 ◼   ► I've been trying very hard the past couple of days just to get back into working again post-holiday season.

00:00:24 ◼   ► and I have just failed repeatedly, but this recording of Cortex was on the schedule.

00:00:31 ◼   ► You wouldn't let me move it, and so it's like, "Oh, I can no longer be in denial that the holidays are still going on."

00:00:37 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, it's January 4th. That's still sort of Christmas/New Year time, right?"

00:00:41 ◼   ► Nope, not anymore. Now we're recording. Now work for the rest of the year is starting again.

00:00:47 ◼   ► You've tried to drop this in in a message conversation we had.

00:00:51 ◼   ► "We are probably recording a show tomorrow."

00:00:53 ◼   ► You knew full well that we were.

00:00:55 ◼   ► It was just your last-dish attempt to get out of it.

00:00:58 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:01:00 ◼   ► It's like, I'll just give it one more go.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought maybe you'd want to push it back another week or so.

00:01:05 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:01:06 ◼   ► [DING]

00:01:08 ◼   ► I received a early Christmas gift in the form of an iPad Pro coloring book app.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Oh, finally.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Your wish has come true, Myke.

00:01:17 ◼   ► It's so glorious as well.

00:01:19 ◼   ► It's called Pigment.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, and it's just superb. Is it everything that you hoped it would be about 90% of what I would like it to be

00:01:27 ◼   ► It's missing a couple of things like it doesn't have like an eraser

00:01:30 ◼   ► Mm-hmm

00:01:31 ◼   ► So if you color something accidentally you have to like go in and select the white color and color it out again real coloring books

00:01:38 ◼   ► Don't have erasers if you're a little kid and you're coloring with crayons, there's no crayon eraser

00:01:42 ◼   ► But it also has an undo function. So I mean, yeah, you've got to embrace the technology

00:01:47 ◼   ► I also have like one pencil and an unlimited amount of colors. I wanted you to see my work

00:01:54 ◼   ► There's one of the links in our in our document. Oh, yeah is a selection of my favorite work

00:02:00 ◼   ► I mean again Myke every time I see this coloring book stuff

00:02:03 ◼   ► I want to be impressed like I was about to say oh wow that looks really great

00:02:07 ◼   ► But then I remember of course you haven't drawn any of this the colors. Yeah, all right

00:02:13 ◼   ► I'd choose the colors, I'd make it look the way I want, and I think I like the lion one. That's my favorite one.

00:02:18 ◼   ► There's two lions here. Oh no, it's a bear.

00:02:20 ◼   ► See, I thought that was a lion until I finished it. I was like, "Oh, it's a bear. That's why it's that color."

00:02:25 ◼   ► I thought it was a lion.

00:02:27 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:29 ◼   ► I feel like the teacher in me wants to write on that bear, "Great effort!"

00:02:35 ◼   ► I bet you're so condescending with your marking.

00:02:41 ◼   ► No, you can't be condescending when it's physics. Physics is either right or it's wrong, and it's mostly wrong.

00:02:45 ◼   ► So you never got to say great effort to someone then?

00:02:48 ◼   ► No, because effort doesn't count at all in math and physics.

00:02:51 ◼   ► It's like your effort is irrelevant. If this was really easy and you got it right,

00:02:55 ◼   ► it's worth just as much as you greatly struggling and getting it right.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Talking about struggling.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah?

00:03:01 ◼   ► Are you back on the internet?

00:03:02 ◼   ► So I'm gonna take a guess and say that you are in some ways because I noted

00:03:09 ◼   ► That you were tweeting from tweet bot which means that you've at least on some devices you have it installed again

00:03:16 ◼   ► I feel like you stalk me Myke because you're looking closely enough to see well

00:03:21 ◼   ► What what device have I tweeted from like it's a little disconcerting when you're like, oh, I know that you tweeted from tweet bot

00:03:27 ◼   ► I'll tell you how I noticed this right. So you tweeted a picture of your

00:03:32 ◼   ► devices

00:03:34 ◼   ► Right the home screens. Yeah, it was the Christmas decorating for iOS devices

00:03:39 ◼   ► Yeah, so I went onto it and I saw that it said Twitter web client.

00:03:44 ◼   ► So I looked at it because I was going to grab the link to talk about it at some point.

00:03:48 ◼   ► And it said Twitter web client.

00:03:50 ◼   ► And then I started looking around then and then saw that there was things coming from

00:03:54 ◼   ► Tweetbot.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Because it didn't come from Buffer, which meant that you were accessing it from somewhere.

00:04:00 ◼   ► This is all show prep, Gray.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what it is.

00:04:03 ◼   ► It's not stalking, it's show prep.

00:04:05 ◼   ► It's not stalking.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Show prep.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Yeah, so the end of the year has come and I did the dialing down for November and then

00:04:18 ◼   ► I said that I was going to extend it for a while and I am now slowly opening up the gates

00:04:27 ◼   ► again to these parts of the internet that I have left behind.

00:04:32 ◼   ► And in my own attempt at preparing for this show, I was trying to think about what are

00:04:38 ◼   ► the lessons that I have learned from these two months of quasi self-imposed internet

00:04:45 ◼   ► isolation.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Can I take a quick guess and say you've learned nothing?

00:04:48 ◼   ► Yeah, well I was just going to say, what I want to do is to come down from high on the

00:04:55 ◼   ► mount like with...

00:04:56 ◼   ► iPad Pro in each hand.

00:04:57 ◼   ► chiseled on an iPad Pro that tells people here's how you should live your internet lives.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And in the end I just have this very ambivalent feeling about a lot of it and particularly about

00:05:11 ◼   ► Twitter. Like I'm gonna say right at the beginning I am very glad that I did this for two months. I

00:05:16 ◼   ► think this was definitely something worthwhile to do. But it's very hard for me now to know where am

00:05:25 ◼   ► am I going forward from this?

00:05:28 ◼   ► So like Twitter is a good example

00:05:30 ◼   ► because it's at the intersection of a couple of things.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And like I realized the value that I get out of Twitter

00:05:38 ◼   ► is being ambiently aware of what people in my life

00:05:45 ◼   ► who I'm interested in are doing.

00:05:48 ◼   ► And I've been really aware over the past couple months

00:05:51 ◼   ► that a bunch of the people that I follow

00:05:53 ◼   ► who I don't instant message with on a regular basis,

00:05:55 ◼   ► but who I'm friendly with, like I have no idea what they're doing.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Because I'm not on Twitter and I'm not just seeing what they're up to

00:06:02 ◼   ► and so then I have far fewer reasons to just interact with someone.

00:06:07 ◼   ► How do you feel about that?

00:06:08 ◼   ► The way I feel about that is it is a kind of disconnection that...

00:06:13 ◼   ► I wouldn't say that it isn't good, but the presence of it is good.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Like, I like a certain amount of ambient awareness of what people are up to.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Because, in no small part, I am the world's worst person at keeping up with people.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Like, I am terrible about sending emails and iMessages to people.

00:06:37 ◼   ► Like, I'm just very bad at staying in touch.

00:06:39 ◼   ► This is just something I know about myself.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Uh, I've known about myself for a very long time.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Because I remember when I was graduating from high school and going on to college,

00:06:52 ◼   ► everybody was always talking about how like, "Oh, we'll keep in touch, we'll keep in touch!"

00:06:55 ◼   ► And I would say things like, "Oh yeah, we'll keep in touch!"

00:06:58 ◼   ► But inside I was thinking, "I know I won't keep in touch."

00:07:00 ◼   ► Right, like we'll never talk ever again. That's what's gonna happen here.

00:07:03 ◼   ► "Chit chat is not one of your strong suits."

00:07:06 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:07:07 ◼   ► "Chit chat, a certain kind of social grooming, is not my area of strength."

00:07:13 ◼   ► And so that's where I feel like Twitter is an interesting tool for me in that it provides a certain amount of value.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And I even just, I went through Twitter again as I was kind of preparing to come back online.

00:07:26 ◼   ► And as you have done, I culled down the number of people I was following once again.

00:07:30 ◼   ► So now I'm under a hundred now for how many people I'm following.

00:07:34 ◼   ► So this is the part of Twitter that I want.

00:07:38 ◼   ► But then I'm also really aware of one of the things that's been great over the past couple months is

00:07:43 ◼   ► not having

00:07:46 ◼   ► just like this source of constant distraction

00:07:51 ◼   ► just even available, because going on it's just like, okay this is just simply not an option

00:07:55 ◼   ► like it's not installed on any of my devices, I've set all my computers so it won't open

00:07:59 ◼   ► like this thing just won't be there, and so I like not having the distraction

00:08:04 ◼   ► the other thing is that if I have Twitter open

00:08:07 ◼   ► the source of just @ messages from random people that I don't know

00:08:12 ◼   ► don't know is a source of distraction.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And so I've been feeling like, okay, as I'm trying to figure out how to get back onto

00:08:19 ◼   ► the internet with something like Twitter, I almost wish there was a way on Twitter that

00:08:23 ◼   ► I could only see @ messages from people that I follow.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Do you know how you get that?

00:08:30 ◼   ► Well, the web version does it, right?

00:08:32 ◼   ► Well, if you're verified.

00:08:33 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:08:34 ◼   ► On the regular web version, there's a tab that says like "activity from people I follow"

00:08:39 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Yeah, there is a if you're verified then like there are specific tools that you get that other people don't get which are like that.

00:08:47 ◼   ► Oh, isn't that interesting?

00:08:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:51 ◼   ► I wonder if anybody who listens to Cortex happens to work at Twitter.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Get in touch!

00:08:56 ◼   ► I would like that as well just to have the tick. I don't need the tool.

00:08:59 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:09:01 ◼   ► I, listen, if you work at Twitter, I'll take the reverse of Myke.

00:09:05 ◼   ► You don't have to give me the verified tick. I don't care at all about that.

00:09:08 ◼   ► I just want the tool. I just want to be able to see only @ mentions from people that I actually follow.

00:09:14 ◼   ► So that's one of the things that like spending this time away from Twitter has distilled in my mind

00:09:19 ◼   ► what it is that I actually want from Twitter, which is a subset of what Twitter wants to actually offer me.

00:09:26 ◼   ► So I like I don't really know we may have an actionable point forward from here from that but...

00:09:32 ◼   ► I'm just I need to say this because otherwise all the feedback will get lists will not help.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Lists never help with anything. It's just when I went through my Twitter experiment,

00:09:43 ◼   ► everybody told me that what I wanted was lists and what I don't want is lists.

00:09:48 ◼   ► How do I make the lists work?

00:09:50 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you could, I'm sure there's something you could do with lists.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Because people always find things to do with lists.

00:09:56 ◼   ► I've never used a single Twitter list. I don't even really know what it does.

00:10:00 ◼   ► Just don't. It's not going to help you.

00:10:03 ◼   ► So what about having another account? Have you considered that? Like a private account?

00:10:10 ◼   ► No, I don't. That's just too much trouble. That's just way too much trouble. That's just...

00:10:13 ◼   ► The last thing I want is to double the Twitter when I'm trying to think about how do I want less

00:10:18 ◼   ► Twitter. So what you want is an account of a small amount of people that you follow,

00:10:23 ◼   ► so you don't see too much and you get the kind of the ambient what's going on in people's lives,

00:10:28 ◼   ► so you feel connected to them and also for you to just see

00:10:33 ◼   ► the mentions from those people as well.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Yeah, like I'm like I just opened up I just opened up Tweetbot

00:10:42 ◼   ► right now on my computer and

00:10:44 ◼   ► you know, it says like there's a little message there that's like, oh,

00:10:48 ◼   ► there are 200 plus tweets since the last time you looked.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Right. But I like the thing is, what I really just want to know is,

00:10:55 ◼   ► are there any @mentions from people who I follow?

00:11:00 ◼   ► Like that is the valuable subset of this to me.

00:11:04 ◼   ► And like there are definitely times when I would want to see all the @mentions,

00:11:09 ◼   ► but I would like the default to be just @mentions from people that I actually follow.

00:11:14 ◼   ► But yeah I guess on the Twitter webpage, right, you can just go to the people you follow,

00:11:17 ◼   ► as you said, and you can get it sort of broken down that way.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Is that what you want then?

00:11:22 ◼   ► Yeah the one that you have on the Twitter website now,

00:11:25 ◼   ► I want to be able to have that in a Twitter client. That's precisely what I want.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Hey Gray, I have some instant follow-up for you.

00:11:31 ◼   ► In the settings of the official Twitter app, under the notifications tab,

00:11:36 ◼   ► you can filter it to only people you follow.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Okay, but that's notifications. That's not a timeline though.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Well, it says notifications tab.

00:11:45 ◼   ► Really?

00:11:47 ◼   ► Yeah, look at this. We're doing some real stuff here.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Yeah, look at us. I'm gonna install it right now and we're going to see if this works.

00:11:54 ◼   ► But just a couple other just quick things.

00:11:56 ◼   ► While Twitter is the one that I've been thinking about the most because it's the one that I've had that kind of

00:12:01 ◼   ► ambiently in my life,

00:12:02 ◼   ► I've also now just been like slowly going back on Reddit and Hacker News and slowly going back to podcasts and things.

00:12:09 ◼   ► I'm just trying to figure out precisely what I was saying months ago, which is what is the place for these things in

00:12:15 ◼   ► my life? And

00:12:18 ◼   ► it's

00:12:21 ◼   ► It's interesting because I think like in some ways one of the clearest lessons is that

00:12:26 ◼   ► Podcasts were definitely this thing that I was listening to way way too much and

00:12:33 ◼   ► When like when January first rolled over I was like, okay

00:12:37 ◼   ► Let me put podcast back on my phone and let me let me try doing this and I realized immediately like no way man

00:12:43 ◼   ► I think podcasts have to stay off your phone forever

00:12:45 ◼   ► Like there can be other circumstances in which you listen to podcasts. Like I've been trying

00:12:50 ◼   ► just playing podcasts like over the speaker at my house while I'm like cleaning up or doing the dishes or like putting stuff away kind

00:12:57 ◼   ► of thing. But like I'm not sure that I can actually just

00:13:00 ◼   ► that I really want to have

00:13:03 ◼   ► podcasts available all the time wherever I am. Like I think it's just too much of a distraction and too much of a like

00:13:10 ◼   ► "Oh, I really like listening to podcasts. So I always want to listen to podcasts."

00:13:13 ◼   ► So it's just it just makes me think again of that

00:13:16 ◼   ► that little image that somebody mocked up from a previous show or it's like

00:13:20 ◼   ► Where they quoted me as saying like I don't watch YouTube videos and I don't listen to podcasts CGP Grey professional

00:13:27 ◼   ► youtuber and podcaster, I think that it's like that's definitely the case because

00:13:31 ◼   ► Again, two months in I'm really aware that

00:13:34 ◼   ► Not also following all the educational videos and all the educational podcasts like that is definitely also a big improvement

00:13:43 ◼   ► So I think those are changes that are going to stay.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Like, I don't think I'm going to get back into following, like,

00:13:49 ◼   ► what are all the other videos that everybody's putting out?

00:13:51 ◼   ► Like, I think I'm just leaving that behind.

00:13:53 ◼   ► And all of the various educational podcast shows that I listen to,

00:13:57 ◼   ► like, all of those I'm not going to resubscribe to.

00:14:00 ◼   ► And even the podcasts that I do listen to,

00:14:02 ◼   ► like, I still need to limit those.

00:14:04 ◼   ► So it's just been an interesting experience overall

00:14:08 ◼   ► that I'm very glad that I have done.

00:14:10 ◼   ► I would highly recommend anybody else if they feel the same way that I was about being kind of distracted or overwhelmed.

00:14:17 ◼   ► This is a thing to try. Maybe not for as long as I've done it, but you know, definitely try it.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Because I feel like I have some

00:14:25 ◼   ► inarticulate sense of a way that things should be different. But like it is really hard to talk about because

00:14:32 ◼   ► like for example, I was on

00:14:36 ◼   ► Hacker news the other day, which is a reddit like site which hacker news people do not want you to say

00:14:41 ◼   ► What are you laughing at? I know you only say it because it annoys people

00:14:45 ◼   ► No, I don't know any other faster way to describe hacker news for people who don't know what hacker news is

00:14:51 ◼   ► but it's it's a reddit like site in some ways but

00:14:54 ◼   ► There happened to be this the guy one of the guys who kind of runs Y Combinator

00:14:59 ◼   ► Which runs hacker news is a guy called Paul Graham who I've been following for years who's had this very very interesting career

00:15:05 ◼   ► And he writes these essays every once in a while, which are very interesting to read.

00:15:10 ◼   ► And there was just a huge big brouhaha

00:15:14 ◼   ► on Hacker News over two essays that he wrote recently which were about income inequality.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And there were just huge discussions about these articles of people arguing like, "Is he right? Is he wrong?

00:15:26 ◼   ► Did he totally miss the point? Has he gotten to the core of something really interesting?"

00:15:32 ◼   ► this is exactly the kind of thing that I just didn't have any exposure to over the past couple months not going on these kind of sites

00:15:39 ◼   ► And this to me was just a perfect example of like, "man, I just love this kind of stuff." There's something about

00:15:45 ◼   ► certain kinds of people arguing on the internet in long comment threads that I just love, like I just love that and

00:15:58 ◼   ► That's a thing that I don't want to eliminate from my life.

00:16:03 ◼   ► Like I just I really get into that kind of thing. Like I love seeing people

00:16:06 ◼   ► arguing over a topic and

00:16:09 ◼   ► I

00:16:11 ◼   ► just don't know now

00:16:13 ◼   ► how much of that I'm going to necessarily let back in because even just opening opening up the doors again to going back on Reddit

00:16:21 ◼   ► and Hacker News, it's like boy

00:16:22 ◼   ► It's very easy to just kind of spend an afternoon clicking around and looking at everything way past the point

00:16:29 ◼   ► When you're really feeling like oh, this is a great comment thread and you're still just like looking for more stuff. So

00:16:34 ◼   ► So I just don't know. I just don't know Myke but for the time being I am back on the internet to some extent

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00:18:35 ◼   ► So it's January.

00:18:36 ◼   ► January.

00:18:38 ◼   ► January is the time for New Year's resolutions.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Oh boy!

00:18:43 ◼   ► So this was something like when I initially thought about talking to you about this. Like

00:18:48 ◼   ► I've had the idea of New Year's resolutions in my big topic list for a while because I

00:18:53 ◼   ► thought it would be something interesting to talk about with you. And the whole time

00:18:57 ◼   ► that I've been thinking about it, I cannot work out in my brain what I think you're gonna

00:19:02 ◼   ► say as to whether you set new year's resolutions because the idea of a tradition like this

00:19:09 ◼   ► seems like something you would not get involved with because you tend not to get involved

00:19:14 ◼   ► in traditions like this right like everyone does this thing which kind of mean is completely

00:19:20 ◼   ► arbitrary but then the more i think about it it's like goals and objectives which is

00:19:24 ◼   ► something that you love. So I can't work out if you set new year's resolutions or if you

00:19:33 ◼   ► use January as a time for goal and objective setting.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Well you got to put some money on the table Myke, make a bet. What do you think?

00:19:43 ◼   ► Alright in the traditional sense of a new year's resolution I would say that you do

00:19:48 ◼   ► not do that.

00:19:50 ◼   ► You are correct.

00:19:54 ◼   ► In the way that I think most people mean it when they say "New Year's resolutions",

00:19:59 ◼   ► I do not do New Year's resolutions.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Do you?

00:20:03 ◼   ► No.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Now, why don't you do it?

00:20:05 ◼   ► Because I think you might be quite right in your assessment about why I don't do New

00:20:09 ◼   ► Year's resolutions, but are those your reasons as well?

00:20:12 ◼   ► It's just pointless to be like, "Oh, it's January, I set those goals."

00:20:16 ◼   ► I do set goals for myself.

00:20:19 ◼   ► I have used January as a time to set goals for myself,

00:20:23 ◼   ► but not as like, hey, this is my New Year's resolution.

00:20:27 ◼   ► I mean, like many people, when the New Year begins,

00:20:30 ◼   ► I'm like, it's like a time for reflection.

00:20:32 ◼   ► It's like, okay, let me think, okay,

00:20:34 ◼   ► this is something I wanna try and do, that kind of thing.

00:20:37 ◼   ► And I've used it as a way to discuss goals

00:20:39 ◼   ► and objectives on other shows before, like we're doing now.

00:20:42 ◼   ► And then as part of that, set goals.

00:20:44 ◼   ► But I never treat them as like New Year's resolutions.

00:20:48 ◼   ► It's like the same thing. It's like I'm now, I am now on a low carb diet, Gray.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Oh really?

00:20:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Really?

00:20:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:58 ◼   ► You sound about as happy about it as I do when I go all in on it at first.

00:21:04 ◼   ► I'm f***ing hungry. All the time. That's the problem.

00:21:10 ◼   ► But I, you know...

00:21:15 ◼   ► Adina is setting meals for me because otherwise I just won't do it. Like, and as I said to

00:21:20 ◼   ► her, a great motivation for me is to not, is to just make sure I'm just trying to not

00:21:24 ◼   ► p*** her off, right? I just feel that this is a good motivation in my life and if she

00:21:28 ◼   ► sets the meals, I don't want to get, I don't want to not do it because then I'm going to

00:21:32 ◼   ► annoy her because she put all the work in. It's a great motivational tool for me. So

00:21:37 ◼   ► I'm doing that and most of the time, like the meals are fine, I just live in a state

00:21:41 ◼   ► of constant hunger now.

00:21:43 ◼   ► I'm saying this, it's been like four days,

00:21:46 ◼   ► but I've been hungry for four days.

00:21:48 ◼   ► So I'm a little bit cranky.

00:21:50 ◼   ► I think that was what I didn't want to do the show today.

00:21:52 ◼   ► 'Cause now we're like an hour in

00:21:54 ◼   ► and I feel like I'm gonna pass out,

00:21:55 ◼   ► but I haven't got anything to eat for the next few hours

00:21:57 ◼   ► because I've already eaten all the things on my meal plan.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:22:01 ◼   ► - So you do have a new year's resolution.

00:22:05 ◼   ► - I wouldn't even really call it that.

00:22:07 ◼   ► It was just like, we decided we wanted to do this

00:22:11 ◼   ► in like late November or whatever and there is no point trying to set something like that up in December.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. I have, I mean we knew we were going to talk about goals today,

00:22:21 ◼   ► but I have on here just a note about my own weight goals. Like this is something I've been setting

00:22:28 ◼   ► and talking about on Hello Internet, but I was, as I was in like the middle of December,

00:22:36 ◼   ► I was creeping close to my goal weight of to be under 200 pounds and it was something like December 15th or something

00:22:42 ◼   ► I was thinking boy if I really if I really push it for the rest of the month

00:22:46 ◼   ► Like I could be under 200 pounds before the start of the new year and realize like yeah

00:22:51 ◼   ► but what fantasy land do you live in where between December 15th and

00:22:55 ◼   ► January 1st is going to be the time that you are the most disciplined ever. It's never gonna happen

00:23:02 ◼   ► And also there was this is probably the wrong way to do it but then because I knew this is coming

00:23:08 ◼   ► I I will blew out of the war in December man. Yeah, you really stocked up. Oh, yeah the week before Christmas I had three

00:23:15 ◼   ► lunches that included burgers in three days

00:23:19 ◼   ► Nothing wrong with burgers on the on low carb, you know, as long as you're not eating the bread. Well, that's the thing

00:23:25 ◼   ► Well, that's the thing is extra bread

00:23:28 ◼   ► Bucky, but I'll have all of the bread

00:23:31 ◼   ► Oh boy, do I miss bread. I did have a bagel today, which was great, but that's the only

00:23:37 ◼   ► brother I didn't eat.

00:23:38 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, let's see. So yeah, you've already fallen down here. You haven't actually done

00:23:40 ◼   ► it for four days.

00:23:41 ◼   ► That was part of the meal plan, man. It was part of the meal plan.

00:23:43 ◼   ► No, there's no way a bagel is keeping you under your carbohydrate limit.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. I know.

00:23:49 ◼   ► No.

00:23:50 ◼   ► I don't write the meal plan.

00:23:51 ◼   ► Okay.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Meal plan said I could have one, so I had one.

00:23:55 ◼   ► All right, I'm going to have to talk to Adina then. I'm going to get her sorted on you here.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I feel like she was trying to ease me into it.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Like I get a bagel this week, you know, next week.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - You need to give me her iMessage.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Nina and I need to chat about this.

00:24:10 ◼   ► - That is never gonna happen.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I am eating with some meals, rivitas, right?

00:24:15 ◼   ► The other thing is, this just makes me smile,

00:24:18 ◼   ► low carb tortillas, which their description is,

00:24:23 ◼   ► tastes like wholemeal.

00:24:25 ◼   ► What are you, low carb tortilla?

00:24:28 ◼   ► What are you?

00:24:29 ◼   ► Because you're not whole meal, right?

00:24:31 ◼   ► What tastes like whole meal?

00:24:32 ◼   ► I don't want to know.

00:24:33 ◼   ► They were kind of OK.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Kind of OK.

00:24:36 ◼   ► Ringing endorsement.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Most of the food I'm eating now is kind of OK.

00:24:42 ◼   ► But anyway--

00:24:45 ◼   ► Oh, Myke.

00:24:46 ◼   ► So have you ever set a New Year's resolution?

00:24:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the answer to that is no.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I haven't ever really set a formal New Year's resolution.

00:24:57 ◼   ► I almost feel like, I don't know,

00:25:00 ◼   ► maybe this is going to sound horrifically uncharitable,

00:25:03 ◼   ► but when people tell me, like this,

00:25:04 ◼   ► when I used to be at school and people would talk

00:25:06 ◼   ► about their New Year's resolutions,

00:25:08 ◼   ► I swear, I always felt like anyone who framed their goal

00:25:13 ◼   ► in terms of a New Year's resolution,

00:25:16 ◼   ► all I could hear in my mind is like,

00:25:17 ◼   ► you are planning to fail.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Like this seems to me the way you're doing it.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Like you might as, when people said like,

00:25:23 ◼   ► my new year's resolution is to lose weight or whatever.

00:25:27 ◼   ► I like in my head, I might as well have translated into,

00:25:32 ◼   ► I wish to lose weight like that.

00:25:35 ◼   ► That's what the new year's resolution sound like to me.

00:25:37 ◼   ► Like people making birthday wishes. I think that's,

00:25:39 ◼   ► that's the way it seems to be culturally done. I just, I almost,

00:25:43 ◼   ► I just had a really hard time taking anybody seriously who was telling me about

00:25:48 ◼   ► their new year's resolutions.

00:25:50 ◼   ► I feel like there is a small but important difference between new year's

00:25:54 ◼   ► resolution and using January as a time to set a goal.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I think there is, there is a real difference there.

00:26:00 ◼   ► There's something about the new year's resolution phrased in that way that,

00:26:04 ◼   ► that is just like a wish. I think that's the best way to put it.

00:26:08 ◼   ► The reason that the new year's resolution probably began is because January is a

00:26:12 ◼   ► great time to make a change,

00:26:14 ◼   ► but it then over time became this like

00:26:19 ◼   ► society thing of like, "Oh, what's your New Year's resolution? Well, if everyone

00:26:24 ◼   ► has one, I guess I'll stop smoking." And then nobody ever does.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Right, right, because we're all collectively holding each other's hands on this exact

00:26:33 ◼   ► same thing of, "Let's all close our eyes and wish to stop smoking at the same time.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Maybe Santa will bring it." Maybe he will. You are a person who strongly

00:26:43 ◼   ► believes in goals and objectives, though, right? And not in the corporate goals and

00:26:48 ◼   ► objectives thing. You work in a big corporation, goals and objectives become kind of a farce,

00:26:55 ◼   ► at least they did for me.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Yeah, how so?

00:26:58 ◼   ► Well, it's like your objectives are set at the start of the year, so at the end of the

00:27:02 ◼   ► year they have a reason not to give you a pay rise.

00:27:04 ◼   ► Ooh, ouch!

00:27:06 ◼   ► That is effectively, in big corporations, why goals and objectives are set for many

00:27:11 ◼   ► people.

00:27:12 ◼   ► So the goals come down from on high, and they say, "Oh, you need to reach X goals, but we

00:27:16 ◼   ► we know these goals are never reachable,

00:27:18 ◼   ► so then we can say, well, we haven't given you a raise.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Is that the reason for it?

00:27:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:27:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:23 ◼   ► Or at least in management positions,

00:27:26 ◼   ► they are used very frequently

00:27:27 ◼   ► as a reason to not give somebody a raise.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Oh, you didn't meet this performance goal.

00:27:31 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:27:32 ◼   ► - So all about performance management, Gray,

00:27:35 ◼   ► that's what goals are all about.

00:27:37 ◼   ► But there are, yeah, I'm sure that you don't do this,

00:27:41 ◼   ► so you don't give yourself a raise.

00:27:42 ◼   ► - I'm not in the position to just magic money from nowhere

00:27:45 ◼   ► to give myself a raise.

00:27:46 ◼   ► - Isn't that what happens when you put out a video?

00:27:48 ◼   ► Isn't that what that is?

00:27:49 ◼   ► Like magicking money?

00:27:51 ◼   ► - It's not magic from nowhere though.

00:27:53 ◼   ► - Well, it depends I guess.

00:27:54 ◼   ► - But that's the feeling in a corporation, right?

00:27:56 ◼   ► Like, oh, there's just this gigantic entity

00:27:57 ◼   ► which can dole out money that from your perspective

00:28:00 ◼   ► seems to come from absolutely nowhere.

00:28:02 ◼   ► - Well, the fact that like the terms bonus pot are used

00:28:05 ◼   ► is funny 'cause it makes you imagine

00:28:08 ◼   ► like at the end of the rainbow.

00:28:09 ◼   ► - Right, there's a leprechaun distributing

00:28:11 ◼   ► everybody's bonuses.

00:28:12 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:28:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:28:14 ◼   ► That's funny. I mean, I had just a tiny taste of that being a teacher where we had,

00:28:19 ◼   ► they always had some awful at the various schools,

00:28:22 ◼   ► they were called different things,

00:28:23 ◼   ► but they were always awful and they were like self improvement targets that you

00:28:27 ◼   ► had to set for yourself at the beginning of the year and hit at the end of the

00:28:31 ◼   ► year. And one of, one of my bosses,

00:28:36 ◼   ► I always loved her because she was really explicit about it. She was like, okay,

00:28:38 ◼   ► listen,

00:28:39 ◼   ► we're just we're just going to set these so that you can't not hit them because

00:28:44 ◼   ► you want to be able to say you met all your self-improvement goals,

00:28:47 ◼   ► and I want to be able to tick all the boxes that said you met them.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Because if I don't tick these boxes, the people above me are ticking boxes that say,

00:28:55 ◼   ► "I have ticked all the boxes."

00:28:57 ◼   ► So all we want to do is tick a bunch of boxes all up the chain.

00:29:00 ◼   ► That's the inverse of what I was suggesting,

00:29:03 ◼   ► like what I'm saying about corporations.

00:29:05 ◼   ► But that person is doing it because it's beneficial to them.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Where in some scenarios it might be beneficial to not have people meet all of their goals.

00:29:13 ◼   ► goals that you do at your own.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Well, this, that's what I mean. Like this is,

00:29:17 ◼   ► this is funny because it is the reverse. And then of course I,

00:29:21 ◼   ► when I was in charge of a form of kids,

00:29:24 ◼   ► I had this exact same thing then trickled down onto me where I had to have the

00:29:29 ◼   ► kids do their little self-improvement sheets over the course of the year.

00:29:32 ◼   ► And just as my boss was explicit with me, I always explicitly told those kids,

00:29:36 ◼   ► okay, listen, here's the deal.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Like, this is a bunch of nonsense,

00:29:43 ◼   ► but we just need to make sure these boxes are ticked at the end of the year.

00:29:46 ◼   ► And I forget what it was, but I,

00:29:48 ◼   ► I used to have a list of 10 that I just told them to pick from of like,

00:29:53 ◼   ► look, here's goals you like.

00:29:54 ◼   ► There's no way for me to prove that you haven't done it.

00:29:57 ◼   ► You can just tell me that you've done it.

00:29:58 ◼   ► And then I can tick the box at the end of the year. And they were, you know,

00:30:01 ◼   ► they were horrible goals. Like,

00:30:03 ◼   ► I will attempt to be more organized over the course of the year.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And it's like, great. Yeah. A little Susie at the end of the year,

00:30:10 ◼   ► you can just tell me you did it and I can tick the box and we can we can both go on with our lives

00:30:15 ◼   ► because if we don't do this

00:30:17 ◼   ► Then you have to go to like the guidance counselor and I have to be

00:30:20 ◼   ► Giving an explanation about why all of my students didn't reach all of their goals

00:30:24 ◼   ► inspiring the hearts and minds gray

00:30:27 ◼   ► I think that is inspiring in its own way right to not lie and just be like listen

00:30:32 ◼   ► This is a valuable skill that I'm imparting to you right now

00:30:36 ◼   ► Sometimes work is meaningless and you just need to get it done and nobody cares how well it's actually done

00:30:43 ◼   ► I think that's an invaluable lesson

00:30:45 ◼   ► Don't you?

00:30:48 ◼   ► I feel like there's a line that I don't know about

00:30:53 ◼   ► I can't say how I feel about that one. But anyway, we today are not talking about those kind of

00:31:00 ◼   ► corporate

00:31:01 ◼   ► academic

00:31:02 ◼   ► totally nonsensical, existing for entirely other reasons goals.

00:31:06 ◼   ► We're talking about actual goals that are useful to people.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I think that's, that's what we want to talk a little bit about today.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Now I'm going to assume that you do have lots of these types of goals and a lot

00:31:19 ◼   ► of these goals for you are measured in metrics.

00:31:22 ◼   ► There's a broader context here,

00:31:24 ◼   ► which is sort of like the opening of the show is having a hard time talking

00:31:28 ◼   ► about, uh,

00:31:29 ◼   ► how I felt about the return of social media in its various forms.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I sometimes have a little bit of a hard time talking about goals because my view on this

00:31:42 ◼   ► is that the point of having a goal is not the goal itself, but it is to encourage you

00:31:54 ◼   ► to be thinking about systems that help you reach that goal.

00:31:59 ◼   ► I mean, maybe that sounds obvious,

00:32:00 ◼   ► but I have just run across enough people who sort of set the goal and then they'll

00:32:08 ◼   ► maybe attempt one or two things to try to reach it.

00:32:10 ◼   ► They fail at those things and then like the new year's resolutions,

00:32:15 ◼   ► the goal just gets kind of swept to the side and not directly looked at again.

00:32:20 ◼   ► Or treated as like this is impossible.

00:32:22 ◼   ► Yeah. Or treated like it's impossible. And yeah, so I,

00:32:26 ◼   ► I really feel that the important thing is to think about it in a systems way.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Like the goal is just there to stimulate your mind,

00:32:40 ◼   ► to think about how you can change things over the course of time,

00:32:44 ◼   ► to approach that goal.

00:32:46 ◼   ► And yes, I agree that having numerical goals is extremely useful.

00:32:50 ◼   ► I mean, I think maybe all of my goals can be expressed in numerical format.

00:32:58 ◼   ► I'm just trying to mentally run through some of the main things that I have on my list.

00:33:05 ◼   ► And yeah, actually they can all be expressed in some numerical form.

00:33:08 ◼   ► I don't think I have any goals that are not expressed in that way.

00:33:13 ◼   ► What type of goals do you have set then?

00:33:15 ◼   ► And how do you record them?

00:33:16 ◼   ► Like, do you have a list of goals somewhere?

00:33:18 ◼   ► Yeah, actually I do keep a list.

00:33:23 ◼   ► So one of the things...

00:33:24 ◼   ► Okay, so let's back up a step for a second.

00:33:26 ◼   ► So I don't do these New Year's resolutions.

00:33:28 ◼   ► You know, again, I don't wish upon a star that things are better than they were.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Because that goes nowhere.

00:33:33 ◼   ► And I also think that a year is just a ridiculously long time to try to plan for anything.

00:33:39 ◼   ► No one can really plan for anything a year in advance.

00:33:42 ◼   ► So I do reviews basically every quarter,

00:33:51 ◼   ► and that is my biggest time frame over which I really think about stuff.

00:33:58 ◼   ► And so I do actually have-- I use OmniOutliner for this,

00:34:02 ◼   ► but I have just a list of the things that I might want to attempt this quarter.

00:34:11 ◼   ► Like, what are the goals for this quarter?

00:34:13 ◼   ► And I like to think in three-month time frames,

00:34:17 ◼   ► because it's relatively easy to kind of look back

00:34:20 ◼   ► over the past three months and think,

00:34:22 ◼   ► okay, how did things go?

00:34:24 ◼   ► Where did things work?

00:34:24 ◼   ► Where did things not work?

00:34:26 ◼   ► And look forward three months and think about,

00:34:28 ◼   ► okay, how can I possibly change things?

00:34:31 ◼   ► You know, what could be better?

00:34:32 ◼   ► I think that's just a much, much better human time frame

00:34:37 ◼   ► to think over as opposed to a year.

00:34:40 ◼   ► Because really, we don't have that many years.

00:34:43 ◼   ► But you know, you get four times as many quarters.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Reviewing that more frequently allows you to make more course corrections

00:34:50 ◼   ► than just trying once a year to change something.

00:34:53 ◼   ► So what types of things are there then, in that list?

00:34:56 ◼   ► Well, some of the things are private things,

00:34:58 ◼   ► but the public thing that I can say is like what we mentioned before, like weight.

00:35:01 ◼   ► So like, I have been trying really over the past year to get my weight under 200 pounds.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Which is I have no idea how many kilograms that is you wanted in kilograms, don't you? I don't know kilograms

00:35:14 ◼   ► What you don't know kilograms? I'm not a European. Well, I do things in stone and pounds my friend

00:35:20 ◼   ► Oh like a good person from the United Kingdom

00:35:23 ◼   ► Stone has got to be the worst the worst measurement of weight in the world. Yeah, it's horrific

00:35:30 ◼   ► I don't even know how many pounds are in a stone. It's like 12. It's 14. There you go

00:35:35 ◼   ► You just told me that you measure things in pounds and stones, but you only have any idea about pounds and stones

00:35:40 ◼   ► Yeah, because I just do what the what the scale tells me. It tells me like

00:35:43 ◼   ► X amount of stone X amount of pounds like that's all I need to know but there's nothing I can't find anything that does pound to

00:35:50 ◼   ► Stone conversions because it's just dumb any

00:35:52 ◼   ► Conversion tool will do pounds to stone. Yeah, but I'm just typing it

00:35:56 ◼   ► I'm just typing it into the browser and I just again do it for me. If you used Google, you'd have no problem

00:36:02 ◼   ► Yeah, it does.

00:36:03 ◼   ► No, it won't.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Yes, it will.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I did it like two days ago.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Okay, I'm gonna type 200 pounds in stones.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't want the stones and the pounds, not whatever.

00:36:15 ◼   ► It's 14.2 stones.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's 14 stone, 2 pounds.

00:36:19 ◼   ► No, that's not how the 0.2 works, Myke.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Oh, well, just ask it for that then.

00:36:23 ◼   ► All right, hang on.

00:36:24 ◼   ► That's not how the 0.2 works.

00:36:27 ◼   ► We need to take you back to school and do fractions.

00:36:29 ◼   ► But no, you need to do point two stone in pounds. That's what you need to do.

00:36:33 ◼   ► I feel like I'm trying your patience here.

00:36:36 ◼   ► You are.

00:36:37 ◼   ► Yeah, see point two stone is essentially three pounds.

00:36:41 ◼   ► Okay.

00:36:42 ◼   ► That's where we're going here.

00:36:44 ◼   ► So did you get an answer?

00:36:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I already told you the answer.

00:36:49 ◼   ► What is it?

00:36:49 ◼   ► It's 14 stone, three pounds.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Okay.

00:36:53 ◼   ► But so anyway, that is one of the goals that I've had, and I've been working towards this

00:36:57 ◼   ► really over the past year. And the thing that I view about that goal is it's

00:37:02 ◼   ► not the specifics of it, it's just that what this has allowed me to do is that

00:37:08 ◼   ► over the last year I keep regularly thinking about what has gone well

00:37:13 ◼   ► with my weight loss, what has not gone well with my weight loss, what things

00:37:16 ◼   ► have I changed, what things seem to be working. And slowly over the course of

00:37:22 ◼   ► the year, by paying attention to what works and what doesn't work, I have

00:37:27 ◼   ► started to cobble together for myself a system of things that work for me and

00:37:33 ◼   ► that if I do them my weight on average slowly goes down. And like to me

00:37:39 ◼   ► that is the important part of this is the system of things that you do not

00:37:45 ◼   ► just the actual goal itself. But I suppose in most instances the system

00:37:51 ◼   ► doesn't reveal itself until you've already set the goal and start working

00:37:54 ◼   ► towards it, right? That's where the system would fall out in most instances.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly it. Like, it's like you're saying your goal is to travel west.

00:38:02 ◼   ► It's like, okay, well, you need to start moving west and you will figure out good

00:38:07 ◼   ► ways to go and good ways to travel. Yeah, like eventually you'll work out what to

00:38:11 ◼   ► do when you're a face of a mountain. Right, right. But the goal is just the

00:38:15 ◼   ► direction that you're setting. But again, I only say this because I just come

00:38:18 ◼   ► across many people who seem to think that the goal is the thing, and I think

00:38:23 ◼   ► you really have to think about it in terms of systems.

00:38:28 ◼   ► Like, what is it on a daily or weekly basis

00:38:32 ◼   ► that you are actually doing?

00:38:34 ◼   ► And be very open to the idea that many things

00:38:37 ◼   ► that you will try may be totally ineffective.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And the important part here is that you're just

00:38:44 ◼   ► reviewing that and thinking, was this thing effective?

00:38:48 ◼   ► Hmm, it seems to not be, so let me change that,

00:38:51 ◼   ► and let me try something different,

00:38:52 ◼   ► And let me just keep trying a bunch of different things and eventually seeing what works and and what doesn't work

00:38:58 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe one of the things is you eat wholemeal like tortillas.

00:39:03 ◼   ► I predict that wholemeal like tortillas will not be a thing that you will keep in your diet.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Oh, I predict that as well. They're fine

00:39:13 ◼   ► But I would like something else. Well, actually what I want Gray is regular tortillas. That's what I want

00:39:20 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what you want right now.

00:39:22 ◼   ► But it's not what I get.

00:39:23 ◼   ► [BEEP]

00:39:24 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Backblaze.

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00:41:35 ◼   ► Well, okay, so here's an example actually, just to your own particular circumstance about

00:41:41 ◼   ► going on a low-carb diet.

00:41:43 ◼   ► So there's various different ways that someone can try to do this to reduce the number of

00:41:46 ◼   ► carbohydrates that they take in.

00:41:48 ◼   ► And when I first tried this, I found that it was obviously very effective, but it was

00:41:55 ◼   ► very hard to stick with over any period of time.

00:41:58 ◼   ► I was like, man, if I'm having a bunch of low-carb days in a row, I can see on the scale

00:42:04 ◼   ► that my weight goes down, but I was just being honest with myself and saying like, "Okay,

00:42:08 ◼   ► yeah, but I have a hard time doing more than four or five days in a row before I just like,

00:42:13 ◼   ► I need a pizza." Right, and you just eat the pizza. And so I tinkered around with it and

00:42:18 ◼   ► eventually discovered that for me anyway, like one of the little tweaks that really

00:42:23 ◼   ► worked was it's not strictly slow carb, but like allowing myself to have cheese as part

00:42:31 ◼   ► of this diet. So like little snacks of cheese throughout the day. And like that made all

00:42:36 ◼   ► of the difference in the world, just this little change. It's like, okay, this is technically

00:42:41 ◼   ► a worse slow carb diet than I should be doing. But this tweak makes enough of a difference

00:42:50 ◼   ► to me that it works better over the long run. Like my weight loss might be slower than it

00:42:55 ◼   ► would be if things were perfect, but I'm not a perfect human being and I need something

00:43:00 ◼   ► that's like easy to snack on that I actually like to snack on and so like this change makes

00:43:05 ◼   ► a difference so that that to me is like part of the system like I'm changing the diet and

00:43:10 ◼   ► the way that I eat things to make the changes over the long term.

00:43:16 ◼   ► I like cheese.

00:43:17 ◼   ► Yeah, do you like cheese?

00:43:18 ◼   ► I do like cheese.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Yeah, are you eating cheese?

00:43:22 ◼   ► Not as much.

00:43:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:24 ◼   ► See, you might you might be where I am in a little while.

00:43:28 ◼   ► I hope so. I might, I might just keel over. So far the jury is out. I'm assuming that

00:43:40 ◼   ► not all of your goals are personal goals though. You have business related goals, right?

00:43:44 ◼   ► Well yeah, so this is, this is the other thing is like I find it very, very helpful to be

00:43:49 ◼   ► able to track numerically what it is that I've actually set as goals. So with the weight

00:43:57 ◼   ► weight loss thing, for example, like my scale automatically logs the weight and I have spreadsheets

00:44:03 ◼   ► about that and I like to be able to look at the trends over the long term.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Like I think that's also a very helpful thing is the longer time frame that you can possibly

00:44:13 ◼   ► look at something, that to me is just very helpful because it changes the focus from

00:44:19 ◼   ► like just today to what is the overall trend.

00:44:24 ◼   ► And while I do embarrassingly make my weight public on Twitter because my scale tweets

00:44:29 ◼   ► automatically when I step on it, I do have a bunch of private spreadsheets that I just

00:44:34 ◼   ► keep that are related to business stuff.

00:44:38 ◼   ► And so in there is where just about every month I go through and I take a look at some

00:44:44 ◼   ► of the numbers for the business that I'm working on and I have a bunch of numerical goals that

00:44:51 ◼   ► I like to keep an eye on.

00:44:53 ◼   ► I find it extremely helpful to be able to say look at a graph

00:44:56 ◼   ► That's like the business over the last 24 months and see what are the trend lines like are these lines going up?

00:45:03 ◼   ► Are they going down which way do I want them to go?

00:45:05 ◼   ► What things have I changed that have affected these lines like I almost don't know of any other way to

00:45:10 ◼   ► Think about and to make progress than this like if if you're not

00:45:16 ◼   ► Tracking it on a line graph like I have a very hard time

00:45:21 ◼   ► Feeling like are you making any progress really? Like how do you know if you're making any progress?

00:45:25 ◼   ► I think everybody should definitely learn at least the basics of how to use Excel or how to use numbers to be able to

00:45:31 ◼   ► Track this kind of stuff. Yeah, that was a task that I went through a month or two ago

00:45:37 ◼   ► We should just like plotting out a few different metrics that my business

00:45:42 ◼   ► Generates and just looking at how they operate in conjunction with each other

00:45:45 ◼   ► And it just helped me think about what what do I need to do next?

00:45:50 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, if you don't have an actual thing to look at you don't realize how fuzzy your thinking is about stuff

00:45:57 ◼   ► until you see it in front of you and

00:46:00 ◼   ► Okay, this is exactly what's happening. It is, I mean the human brain as we've discussed before it's like it is a nemesis of yours

00:46:08 ◼   ► it's just it remembers things incorrectly it tries to distract you and

00:46:12 ◼   ► It is so easy to have a wildly wrong

00:46:17 ◼   ► estimate of where you actually are or like how much you've actually made progress on a thing and

00:46:22 ◼   ► With the weight again going back to that like I have found having it on a graph and being able to look at it

00:46:29 ◼   ► Incredibly helpful because it cuts away any of this

00:46:33 ◼   ► Imagination stuff that the brain does about like oh, how's my weight been changing?

00:46:37 ◼   ► I think it's been going down like has it though? Like is that what the graph says?

00:46:41 ◼   ► No, that's not what the graph says at all. Like your brain just lying to you to make you feel better and

00:46:46 ◼   ► with business stuff like it's just

00:46:49 ◼   ► Shockingly helpful to be able to see that I mean I think I mentioned before

00:46:55 ◼   ► that when I was trying to make it full-time on

00:46:59 ◼   ► YouTube I

00:47:02 ◼   ► had a goal which was to get to

00:47:05 ◼   ► 200,000 subscribers by a particular day and

00:47:08 ◼   ► I figured that that like that was the number that I needed

00:47:11 ◼   ► to be able to quit and like the way I knew that is because I had a bunch of spreadsheets that were giving me

00:47:16 ◼   ► information about okay, how much revenue is the YouTube business generating? Like what is the rate of growth here? And

00:47:22 ◼   ► if I can get to this number by this day

00:47:25 ◼   ► I can be reasonably confident that this thing has reached the point where it's going to take off and

00:47:30 ◼   ► like having that spreadsheet was

00:47:34 ◼   ► extraordinarily helpful. Like the goal of 200,000

00:47:40 ◼   ► wasn't the important thing, but that spreadsheet and keeping track of it was extremely important because it kept bringing my mind back to this

00:47:48 ◼   ► idea of

00:47:49 ◼   ► Okay, how can we get more subscribers?

00:47:51 ◼   ► Or and I had little calculations on there like how many days are left how many subscribers short am I so like on average how?

00:47:58 ◼   ► Many subscribers per day do I need to pick up and like focusing on that is the really helpful thing like that is extraordinarily

00:48:06 ◼   ► helpful. One of my big goals, and it was a goal that I set, which is a pretty simple goal for me,

00:48:11 ◼   ► is just knowing how much money the business needs to generate on a monthly basis to keep everyone in

00:48:17 ◼   ► a good kind of setting. That's an important goal that I try and meet, which is a good one for me,

00:48:23 ◼   ► which is informed by a lot of that kind of planning stuff. And it's funny, but it is a

00:48:29 ◼   ► goal, right? That's an amount of money I have to get every month, and I now know the system in

00:48:33 ◼   ► place which helps me try and get that. And there are things that are outside of my control,

00:48:38 ◼   ► but then when things are outside of my control, I then learn how to control them differently

00:48:41 ◼   ► the next time.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly it. You have to plan for stuff not always going right. That's part

00:48:49 ◼   ► of it, and I think that's where people often fail on the goals. It's like, "Oh, the first

00:48:53 ◼   ► time they fail, they're just like, 'Oh, okay, well, you know, put it to the side.'" But

00:48:56 ◼   ► no, no, no, you don't understand. You can build a system to be prepared for certain

00:49:01 ◼   ► kinds of failures. Like that's a super important part of this. This is all part of the system,

00:49:07 ◼   ► it's just trying to figure out how to put in buffers for example, so that if something

00:49:13 ◼   ► goes wrong then you have a little bit of a backup to fall back on. But yeah, if you have,

00:49:20 ◼   ► I'm going to guess that for you, just simply knowing that you have a certain number in

00:49:25 ◼   ► terms of advertising revenue that you need to hit every month, like that probably focuses

00:49:31 ◼   ► your mind more when you are in selling advertising mode. Like you know what the minimum bar is

00:49:37 ◼   ► that you need to hit.

00:49:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it also adds pressure in its own way. But the pressure is there for a reason.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Yeah, the pressure is there to make you actually do something.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Which is useful. Especially when you're on a low-carb diet.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Right, when you just want to lay on the couch and do nothing at all. That's what you want

00:50:00 ◼   ► to do right now. Yeah, it really is. It really is. This chair that I'm sitting in is not

00:50:06 ◼   ► optimal for my current state. Yeah, it's too optimally comfortable? Is that your problem?

00:50:10 ◼   ► No, it's in the inverse. I want to be in a relaxing chair and I'm in an uncomfortable

00:50:15 ◼   ► chair. Oh poor Myke. It doesn't sound like your system's working very well right now.

00:50:22 ◼   ► No, not right now. I gotta talk to Adina. Please don't. I'm going to. I'm gonna find

00:50:28 ◼   ► out our contact information. So to me, I think if any if anybody is in the mind

00:50:34 ◼   ► frame right now of setting goals, which they may very well be because it's

00:50:39 ◼   ► January, New Year's resolution time, yeah yeah wishing time, to me that like the

00:50:45 ◼   ► most the most fundamental thing is just continually revisiting whatever it is

00:50:57 ◼   ► you're trying to do. And like this is how a person changes their life is by

00:51:06 ◼   ► setting up a continuous self-evaluation loop. And it's not strictly speaking

00:51:15 ◼   ► goals but when I think back to like a real changing point in my life was when

00:51:22 ◼   ► I started doing like getting things done and I came across a system which talked

00:51:26 ◼   ► about how to organize things.

00:51:27 ◼   ► It wasn't even so much the getting things done system.

00:51:30 ◼   ► I always think the thing that mattered the most, like the absolute life-changing thing,

00:51:35 ◼   ► was that after reading the Getting Things Done book, I had a notebook in my pocket always

00:51:42 ◼   ► that I wrote things down in and I routinely went back and looked through the things that

00:51:49 ◼   ► I wrote down.

00:51:51 ◼   ► And like that little tiny loop of, I don't even want to call it self-accountability,

00:51:58 ◼   ► but just like a self-reflection loop of like looking at the things you wrote down last

00:52:02 ◼   ► week and kind of forcing in your mind much more clearly the notion of like, "Oh, there's

00:52:06 ◼   ► a past me and there's a current me who's reading this thing that past me wrote, and there's

00:52:11 ◼   ► a future me who will read the things that current me is now writing."

00:52:15 ◼   ► I think setting up this, this like temporal responsibility is how you can bootstrap your

00:52:23 ◼   ► life into a better situation.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And so like if you, if you're trying to set some goals, the important thing is whatever

00:52:30 ◼   ► you're going to do, make sure that you are re visiting them on a regular basis.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Like this is the absolute key because if you force yourself to keep revisiting them, if

00:52:45 ◼   ► If you're not getting closer to your goals, it forces you to think about why.

00:52:51 ◼   ► What is it that has happened over the past week or two weeks that has not caused motion

00:52:57 ◼   ► in the direction that you want?

00:52:59 ◼   ► That is really the key thing, is this self-evaluation loop.

00:53:04 ◼   ► Keep revisiting it.

00:53:07 ◼   ► Keep thinking about it consciously.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Because if you don't, it just goes away.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And I think that's why the New Year's resolutions go away.

00:53:13 ◼   ► because people think about them on January 1st, and then they just don't really think about them ever again.

00:53:19 ◼   ► Like that's why they just disappear over time.

00:53:23 ◼   ► Like that to me is the real core and that is like the fundamental system of all systems

00:53:30 ◼   ► is the very notion of just revisiting what it is that you do and thinking about it.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Like that is the thing that changed my life.

00:53:40 ◼   ► having a little notebook and going back to it on a regular basis.

00:53:43 ◼   ► It hardly even mattered what I wrote down in the beginning.

00:53:46 ◼   ► A bunch of nonsense, probably.

00:53:48 ◼   ► But like that's where it starts.

00:53:51 ◼   ► Gray, the time has come

00:53:53 ◼   ► to return to Ask Cortex.

00:53:55 ◼   ► It has been a long time.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Yeah, we had maybe what was it, three shows where we were so busy

00:54:01 ◼   ► talking about iPad pros that we didn't have any time to talk about.

00:54:05 ◼   ► We had so much stuff to talk about.

00:54:07 ◼   ► There was so many iPad stories to tell.

00:54:09 ◼   ► I have many more, but I'm holding away.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I have to say, I am filled with more iPad Pro stories, but a feeling like I am consciously refraining.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Because I could talk about it for forever, and I will.

00:54:23 ◼   ► But we're trying to pull back. Today we thought we would revisit Ask Cortex.

00:54:27 ◼   ► So worry not, ye Android user.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Right.

00:54:32 ◼   ► This was on our subreddit from firsttimecaller, which I love as the name for the question.

00:54:39 ◼   ► "I have a boring monkey office job and I want to leave. I started doing some freelance work

00:54:44 ◼   ► on the side in the morning with some success. Do you think I can leave my job? I earn about

00:54:48 ◼   ► £47,000 in my work and I'm freelancing at about £1800 a month. Should I make the jump?"

00:54:55 ◼   ► So my feeling on this would be that they should. Because £1800 a month freelancing,

00:55:02 ◼   ► when you're also working a full time job, that's pretty good going. Like you're pulling

00:55:07 ◼   ► in some serious money at that point, like this isn't just like a hobby. And I think

00:55:12 ◼   ► that if you can pull in 1800 a month, when you're still working a full time job, if you

00:55:17 ◼   ► were able to devote yourself to that freelancing work, if that's what you want to do, that

00:55:23 ◼   ► freelance work, then I think that you should do it because that was the mindset that I

00:55:27 ◼   ► I was pulling in, you know, from Relay,

00:55:31 ◼   ► a good amount of money, like it was probably

00:55:33 ◼   ► like two thirds of my wage or something

00:55:35 ◼   ► before I made the jump, because I felt like

00:55:38 ◼   ► if I can just in my evening hours and in my spare time

00:55:42 ◼   ► pull this amount of money and imagine how much I could do

00:55:45 ◼   ► if I was able to put all of my money into it.

00:55:48 ◼   ► And also, some of your expenditure will probably go down

00:55:52 ◼   ► if you stop traveling to an office every day.

00:55:55 ◼   ► You know, all those sort of things

00:55:56 ◼   ► when you start adding them up, it can really help.

00:55:59 ◼   ► And so for me, I would say that if you are in this situation

00:56:02 ◼   ► if you're earning like good money,

00:56:04 ◼   ► like your freelance thing at the thing that you wanna do,

00:56:07 ◼   ► I think that you should probably give it a go.

00:56:10 ◼   ► - So of course, there's not a huge amount of detail here.

00:56:14 ◼   ► So we have to do some speculation.

00:56:16 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:56:17 ◼   ► - And so just running the numbers,

00:56:19 ◼   ► so they're pulling in about 21, 22,000 pounds a year.

00:56:24 ◼   ► So we can say they're earning, I mean, just rounding it off,

00:56:27 ◼   ► we can say they're earning about half as much

00:56:29 ◼   ► from their freelancing as they're earning

00:56:31 ◼   ► from their actual work, right, which is pretty good.

00:56:34 ◼   ► I guess, like, I might be slightly more risk-averse

00:56:39 ◼   ► than you are, because there's two things

00:56:43 ◼   ► that I would want to know to feel really confident

00:56:45 ◼   ► about answering this question.

00:56:47 ◼   ► The first is I would want to know

00:56:49 ◼   ► if the person has any kind of buffer fund.

00:56:53 ◼   ► So, I think when I left my teaching job, I had...

00:57:01 ◼   ► I think it was maybe like three months worth of expenses in the bank,

00:57:06 ◼   ► like, just as like total emergency, kind of everything turns to crap immediately in a way that I didn't expect money.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Maybe it was closer to four months. I don't remember exactly, but so...

00:57:16 ◼   ► I think just for sheer sanity, I would once before making a leap like this to have some emergency backup money.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Do you know I had none?

00:57:27 ◼   ► Yeah, see that's terrifying to me.

00:57:29 ◼   ► Because I'd spent all my life savings basically starting the business.

00:57:33 ◼   ► And because I quit on a whim, right?

00:57:37 ◼   ► The actual decision to quit was on a whim.

00:57:39 ◼   ► It was the plan, but it wasn't going to be when it was.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Right.

00:57:42 ◼   ► kind of just made the decision in like a flash and did it.

00:57:46 ◼   ► And it worked out fine, but I would agree that you should.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Yeah, but so keep that in mind, first time caller, listening to Myke's advice.

00:57:56 ◼   ► Yeah, in an ideal world, I maybe wouldn't have done it the way that I did.

00:57:59 ◼   ► It was just the way that I ended up doing it.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Yeah. So that's one thing I would want to know.

00:58:05 ◼   ► The second thing is, for

00:58:11 ◼   ► people I know who have gone full-time like self-employedness, one of the really

00:58:18 ◼   ► key features is like okay so this person says they're doing freelance work on the

00:58:21 ◼   ► side in the morning so I presume that before work they're doing I don't know

00:58:26 ◼   ► whatever it is they do they don't specify. They're like you in the spider

00:58:28 ◼   ► dungeon. In the spider dungeon? Yeah that was basically the way you described it

00:58:34 ◼   ► to me the first time on the show you saying you're in places with all the spiders.

00:58:39 ◼   ► I think the word dungeon threw me off there.

00:58:41 ◼   ► It's the basement I would have remembered.

00:58:43 ◼   ► That was a harsh word, but you can imagine my mental image of you doing your work.

00:58:48 ◼   ► I really do imagine you, genuinely, just on a stool in like a dungeon-looking room with

00:58:54 ◼   ► your laptop on your legs.

00:58:56 ◼   ► That's how I imagine you used to do your work in the mornings.

00:58:58 ◼   ► I'll have to send you a picture of it sometime.

00:59:03 ◼   ► I did the writing work in the evening, but I did my – a different attempt at becoming

00:59:07 ◼   ► full-time self-employed that didn't pan out was I did do a different kind of

00:59:09 ◼   ► freelance work before work started. But that's another story.

00:59:14 ◼   ► But so I guess what I'm trying to work with is I think a key piece of

00:59:18 ◼   ► information that I've heard from other people as well is the question of demand

00:59:23 ◼   ► for whatever it is you're doing freelancing on the side. So I think like,

00:59:29 ◼   ► okay, maybe if we put aside emergency fund money for a moment,

00:59:33 ◼   ► a really interesting question is,

00:59:35 ◼   ► are you running out of spare time to do your side project because there is

00:59:41 ◼   ► enough demand for it? Again,

00:59:44 ◼   ► I think that is a really interesting point to reach when you realize like you

00:59:49 ◼   ► are not able to fill the demand with the number of hours that you actually have.

00:59:54 ◼   ► And so if, if for this person and for anybody else who works themselves into

01:00:00 ◼   ► that same situation. I think that like that is a good indication that maybe you

01:00:04 ◼   ► can leave your job is when people are demanding more of your time than you

01:00:10 ◼   ► actually have available. So because this person is currently earning about half

01:00:17 ◼   ► of what their full-time job is, if they're in a situation where they have

01:00:22 ◼   ► hours available to fill with client work but no clients to actually fill it, like

01:00:28 ◼   ► then that wouldn't be a good indication that this is a great time to jump ship.

01:00:32 ◼   ► So I am much more cautious here, I don't know, but if this person has an emergency fund and

01:00:39 ◼   ► also has clients or whatever they're doing wanting more of their time than is available,

01:00:45 ◼   ► then I would say yes, those are both really good indications that you should make the

01:00:50 ◼   ► jump and leave your boring monkey office job, which it sounds like you love.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And again, look, of all the caveats, because I don't know any of the information, it's

01:01:02 ◼   ► the worst that could happen.

01:01:03 ◼   ► You just have to go and get another job if it doesn't work out.

01:01:06 ◼   ► You are clearly an employable person.

01:01:08 ◼   ► You're earning good salary, you have the skills to do a freelancing job, you could

01:01:13 ◼   ► get another job.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, £47,000, that's already pretty well above the median income in the UK.

01:01:20 ◼   ► So they are an employable person.

01:01:23 ◼   ► (beep)

01:01:23 ◼   ► Today's episode is also brought to you by Squarespace.

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01:01:33 ◼   ► Build it beautiful.

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01:03:16 ◼   ► beautiful. This is a question that I have seen go by many times. People were like

01:03:21 ◼   ► obsessed with this after we did the bag episode, like what goes in your bag episode.

01:03:25 ◼   ► Like what bags do you actually use and what do you consider when choosing one?

01:03:29 ◼   ► This comes from Chris. I just got a new bag, where is it? Oh a new bag, wow. Yeah well my old one was

01:03:37 ◼   ► falling apart let me grab it. Whilst Gray talks about his new bag I'll tell you

01:03:41 ◼   ► about my current bag. My bag is by a company called Topo Designs and it's

01:03:46 ◼   ► called the Topo Mountain Briefcase and I love my Mountain Briefcase because it

01:03:51 ◼   ► can be carried in three different ways. It has backpack straps, it has a shoulder

01:03:55 ◼   ► strap and handles. I like that a lot and it's just about the right size for me to

01:04:00 ◼   ► put even my MacBook and my iPad in the sleeve and then I can fit a bunch of

01:04:03 ◼   ► other stuff in it and I like it a lot more than I liked any backpack I had so

01:04:08 ◼   ► So, a big thumbs up for me on that one, the Topo Mountain Briefcase.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Topo.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Topo.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Topo Mountain Briefcase.

01:04:16 ◼   ► The thing you said there was a total deal breaker for me, is I refuse to use anything

01:04:21 ◼   ► that is a shoulder strap.

01:04:23 ◼   ► I think that's like a messenger bag kind of thing.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you didn't hear it.

01:04:26 ◼   ► It has backpack straps, it has a shoulder strap and handles.

01:04:30 ◼   ► No, no, I heard that.

01:04:31 ◼   ► I heard that.

01:04:32 ◼   ► I heard all those things.

01:04:33 ◼   ► So what's the problem?

01:04:34 ◼   ► You just don't use the shoulder strap.

01:04:35 ◼   ► Okay, yeah.

01:04:36 ◼   ► But I'm just saying.

01:04:37 ◼   ► It's not a deal breaker, just don't use it.

01:04:39 ◼   ► I don't use it, I have it unclipped.

01:04:41 ◼   ► - No, even if it's an option, I don't want it.

01:04:43 ◼   ► No, it's no good. - That's weird.

01:04:45 ◼   ► All right, so if I took your current bag

01:04:48 ◼   ► and attached a shoulder strap to it

01:04:49 ◼   ► while you weren't looking.

01:04:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, worthless, worthless now.

01:04:52 ◼   ► - Okay, good to know.

01:04:53 ◼   ► One of the things I really like about this bag

01:04:55 ◼   ► is it's like a canvas, but it has a leather bottom.

01:04:59 ◼   ► - Oh, gross. - So if you set it down,

01:05:03 ◼   ► it doesn't soak in liquid.

01:05:05 ◼   ► Why is that gross?

01:05:06 ◼   ► Leather's just gross in a bag.

01:05:08 ◼   ► It smells after a while.

01:05:10 ◼   ► It's on the outside, it's not on the inside.

01:05:12 ◼   ► It's not leather on the inside.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Okay, but it still smells after a while.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Everything smells after a while.

01:05:18 ◼   ► Not plastic.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Does if you burn it. Anyway...

01:05:22 ◼   ► Yeah, if you set your bag on fire and it's plastic, then it smells really bad.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Of course you'd have something leather. That seems appropriate.

01:05:28 ◼   ► Surpr- Is it handcrafted?

01:05:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Oh god, is it really?

01:05:34 ◼   ► Probably.

01:05:34 ◼   ► [laughs]

01:05:35 ◼   ► It's made in Colorado, so...

01:05:37 ◼   ► Uh-huh.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Yeah, this looks like your kind of bag.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Looks like exactly what I would expect you to have.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Mine is maroon and blue.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Of course it is.

01:05:48 ◼   ► I can hear your bag over there.

01:05:50 ◼   ► I'm trying to find...

01:05:53 ◼   ► I'm trying to be helpful here, Myke.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I was trying to find a model number or something on it, but I can't actually find it.

01:06:00 ◼   ► From the rustling, it sounds like it's brand new.

01:06:03 ◼   ► No, it's like a month old.

01:06:06 ◼   ► Sounds like you're taking paper out of it or something, like the crunched up paper.

01:06:10 ◼   ► No, it's just made out of space age materials.

01:06:13 ◼   ► It's not made out of the hide of a dead animal like your bag.

01:06:16 ◼   ► Canvas, mainly.

01:06:18 ◼   ► The canvas animals that roam the fields.

01:06:23 ◼   ► Yeah, everybody knows about those.

01:06:25 ◼   ► So what I'm currently using as my most often bag is

01:06:31 ◼   ► it is from Asics and it's just it's a bag that is designed for runners which

01:06:39 ◼   ► is not even remotely how I'm using it of course but what I was like what I'm

01:06:44 ◼   ► looking for in a bag whenever I get something is I'm trying to find the bag

01:06:51 ◼   ► that is the smallest lightest thing that can just hold whatever device I am

01:06:58 ◼   ► currently using. So over the years whenever I got a bag I would say in years gone by I'd be taking

01:07:05 ◼   ► around my Apple laptop and I'd like I'd want to find a laptop bag that it could like a backpack

01:07:11 ◼   ► that it could just fit into and so now I was looking for something that my iPad Pro can just

01:07:16 ◼   ► fit into and this backpack that's designed for runners is exactly what I'm looking for. Like the

01:07:22 ◼   ► iPad it just fits in width wise and there's a little outer pocket that I can

01:07:28 ◼   ► just have the the bare minimum of things in there but I really I really want out

01:07:33 ◼   ► of a backpack something that is as light and as small as possible like that is

01:07:38 ◼   ► always what I'm looking for.

01:07:39 ◼   ► For as much as my bag was me this bag is you.

01:07:43 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:07:45 ◼   ► What makes you say that Myke?

01:07:47 ◼   ► It's just...

01:07:49 ◼   ► very utilitarian.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah, it's glorious!

01:07:52 ◼   ► And even in this photo it looks way bigger than it actually is.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Like it is quite small in real life.

01:07:56 ◼   ► It's the nice way of me saying that it's ugly.

01:07:59 ◼   ► You're not ugly, that's not what I'm saying.

01:08:02 ◼   ► But--

01:08:03 ◼   ► I know that's what you think you're saying.

01:08:05 ◼   ► You think you're, oh, it's so ugly.

01:08:07 ◼   ► It doesn't have leather stitching on the bottom.

01:08:10 ◼   ► But we just have great disagreement here.

01:08:13 ◼   ► I think there is much beauty to be found in utility.

01:08:16 ◼   ► Do you have the blue one with the pink highlight?

01:08:18 ◼   ► No, they don't have my color on here.

01:08:20 ◼   ► a black one with neon green highlights.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Wow, I wouldn't have expected that.

01:08:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I felt like going crazy.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Wow, that is kind of crazy for you.

01:08:30 ◼   ► All right, neon green.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it's good. It's great. I like it.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Runner's Backpacks.

01:08:35 ◼   ► I find for a lot of gear, it's helpful sometimes to look at

01:08:41 ◼   ► sporting stores or places that are making stuff that is intended to be used

01:08:46 ◼   ► much more intensely than you're ever going to use it.

01:08:49 ◼   ► That's like runners want the lightest of all possible backpacks. And so that's why I thought like oh

01:08:54 ◼   ► Let me go into stores and see let me find one of those tiny backpacks that runners use

01:08:57 ◼   ► That's what you that's what you want to do

01:08:59 ◼   ► Next up we have from toaster 312

01:09:03 ◼   ► What is your policy on workflow buffers like having one or two items that you keep unreleased in case you have an emergency pop-up?

01:09:10 ◼   ► I reckon that we both would love the idea of this

01:09:14 ◼   ► But neither of us have anything because I certainly don't and enough that I know about you would suggest that you don't either

01:09:21 ◼   ► Wouldn't it be great?

01:09:24 ◼   ► My new year's resolution is to have

01:09:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean yeah, this sounds like a great idea I just don't have anything this is a thing that I constantly think about I

01:09:35 ◼   ► Would just love to be able to do this

01:09:41 ◼   ► But I have learned over time that this is just not possible.

01:09:44 ◼   ► We were talking before about, you know, trying to plan for things and like knowing that there's going to be problems and having

01:09:51 ◼   ► buffers in place. Like yes,

01:09:53 ◼   ► but this is one case where I just know that the work required to make this happen is never going to happen.

01:09:59 ◼   ► It would just be just an amazing fantasy land if I was ever able to create a video ahead of time. And more importantly,

01:10:07 ◼   ► If I ever did through some kind of magic

01:10:11 ◼   ► have a video

01:10:13 ◼   ► ready in advance I

01:10:15 ◼   ► would just end up being

01:10:17 ◼   ► Ridiculously paranoid that someone else was going to release a video on the same topic while I was just sitting on one

01:10:23 ◼   ► Well, you didn't worry about that anymore. Yeah, like in theory

01:10:26 ◼   ► I don't worry about that, but it's very different if if I'd like oh I was just sitting on a thing

01:10:32 ◼   ► We yeah, and so it would feel kind of wasted. Yeah, that would be just the worst

01:10:36 ◼   ► This is why my vastly more modest goal, which I still fail at all the time, is

01:10:44 ◼   ► to not be finishing animations on the day I release the video.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Like if I could just get to that stage, that would be amazing. But it's just almost every single time

01:10:57 ◼   ► it's like as soon as I finish that last bit of animations, like great, gotta put it up right now, this moment.

01:11:04 ◼   ► So I do not think that I will ever have a workflow buffer for the YouTube channel. That's just

01:11:09 ◼   ► This is not gonna happen not ever, you know

01:11:13 ◼   ► It's it's not gonna happen you even wanted like a workflow buffer for cortex for cortex miss

01:11:19 ◼   ► Which comes twice a year by the way Myke and I wouldn't even allow that one workflow buffer episode

01:11:26 ◼   ► It's like no, it's not gonna happen. Well, Texas comes once a year Texas comes twice a year

01:11:30 ◼   ► I just haven't told you yet. You're gonna have to tell me at some point

01:11:34 ◼   ► Twice a year Myke. Do we have any other questions?

01:11:37 ◼   ► We do very would like to know if you use a VPN when connecting through public Wi-Fi hotspots

01:11:42 ◼   ► I do I do. I know I didn't used to

01:11:47 ◼   ► A VPN for listeners who might be unaware. It's it's a was a virtual private network. Is that is that what it stands for? Yeah

01:11:54 ◼   ► but it is a way if you are in a public location to

01:11:58 ◼   ► filter your internet traffic

01:12:01 ◼   ► through like a secure tunnel so that someone else on like the cafe's Wi-Fi can't get access to your data or anything.

01:12:08 ◼   ► I always used to think like, "Oh, I should use a VPN,"

01:12:12 ◼   ► but I never did because it was kind of a pain in the butt to set it up.

01:12:16 ◼   ► But I recently discovered

01:12:18 ◼   ► Cloak for iOS, which I highly recommend because of one feature that totally sold me, which is its ability to

01:12:26 ◼   ► automatically turn on and turn off the VPN. So you can tell it, Oh,

01:12:31 ◼   ► I trust my home network and I trust the connection built into my cell phone and

01:12:36 ◼   ► every other internet connection is totally untrustworthy and it just

01:12:41 ◼   ► automatically turns on. And that to me, that as dumb as it sounds like, Oh,

01:12:45 ◼   ► I can't be bothered to turn on my VPN to potentially save all of my private data

01:12:49 ◼   ► because it's three taps, but I just, I hate doing stuff manually.

01:12:53 ◼   ► And so cloak does it automatically and I love it for that.

01:12:56 ◼   ► So that's what I use on, I installed it on everything that I have as soon as I found

01:13:01 ◼   ► out about that feature.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Same.

01:13:03 ◼   ► Yeah, you use cloak?

01:13:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I use cloak.

01:13:05 ◼   ► I love cloak.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Benza would like to know what we keep in our pockets.

01:13:09 ◼   ► I have a regimented pocket system.

01:13:12 ◼   ► What goes in which pocket?

01:13:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the only way to live.

01:13:15 ◼   ► I assume so.

01:13:16 ◼   ► In my right pocket goes my iPhone.

01:13:19 ◼   ► In my left pocket are my keys and my ear pods.

01:13:24 ◼   ► And then in my back right pocket is my wallet.

01:13:27 ◼   ► Okay, so this has been a long struggle for me, but I've finally come to a steady state

01:13:35 ◼   ► over the past six months, which is that I use wallet in front right pocket.

01:13:43 ◼   ► I used to be a back pocket wallet person, but it is clearly the superior solution to

01:13:49 ◼   ► have your wallet in your front pocket.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Why?

01:13:52 ◼   ► What do you make the switch? You don't go back.

01:13:55 ◼   ► I switch when I am in places I don't know.

01:13:59 ◼   ► I mean first of all, when you're sitting down you have the George Costanza problem that

01:14:02 ◼   ► you're sitting on your wallet so you're never really sitting down.

01:14:04 ◼   ► No, I just change to a slim card wallet.

01:14:07 ◼   ► It's never slim enough. It's still always uneven.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I have four cards. That's it.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Not slim enough.

01:14:12 ◼   ► There's nothing. You don't even know it's there.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Nope. It's uneven. You're ruining your spine, Myke. Ruining it.

01:14:17 ◼   ► What are you keeping your back pockets in?

01:14:19 ◼   ► Nothing. Nothing goes in the back pockets.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Keys! The book!

01:14:23 ◼   ► The back pockets are for nothing. I see some people put phones in their back pocket, which makes me nervous to even just see.

01:14:32 ◼   ► I don't know why you'd do that.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Yeah, every time I see someone do that, I think, "How can you live like that?" But so, wallet in front right pocket,

01:14:40 ◼   ► iPhone in front left pocket, and

01:14:44 ◼   ► then the thing that I've recently switched to, which I really like, is this little

01:14:50 ◼   ► It's not a key chain. It basically is called KeySmart. It's this little thing that turns your keys into

01:14:58 ◼   ► into like a Swiss Army knife is what it looks like. They fold together into this little package and

01:15:06 ◼   ► I then can use that useless little coin pocket in your jeans on the right-hand side.

01:15:13 ◼   ► I can put my keys in that previously useless pocket

01:15:18 ◼   ► And so now everything is nice and isolated from everything else. There's not two items in any pocket

01:15:25 ◼   ► Everything is in its own little pocket. That's the way I roll

01:15:27 ◼   ► Do you use your iPhone left-handed? Yeah, yeah, I use my iPhone left-handed. Are you left-handed? No.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Hmm you answered that very defensively by the way, it's okay to be left-handed

01:15:39 ◼   ► well, just because I know where this is going because

01:15:41 ◼   ► Everybody seems to freak out when they discover this. I know other people who do this

01:15:46 ◼   ► Well, I'm left handed and use my iPhone with my right hand.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, so you do the same thing then?

01:15:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think it's weird that you do it. I just wanted to know if you were left

01:15:55 ◼   ► handed.

01:15:56 ◼   ► No, I'm right handed.

01:15:57 ◼   ► All right.

01:15:58 ◼   ► As humans are supposed to be, apparently.

01:16:01 ◼   ► And why am I left handed?

01:16:03 ◼   ► Because you are some kind of freak, that's why.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Good to know!

01:16:10 ◼   ► Shahar would like to know, what headphones do we use? And wonder how much of an audio

01:16:15 ◼   ► file you are as well. Do you care about really great sounding audio? Like more than you maybe

01:16:20 ◼   ► should?

01:16:21 ◼   ► No, no I'm not an audiophile.

01:16:23 ◼   ► Alright, what headphones do you use then?

01:16:25 ◼   ► I don't obsess over things that aren't real. The Super Audio Files, they're just playing

01:16:32 ◼   ► in an imagination land. That's what they're doing. I use two headphones depending on the

01:16:38 ◼   ► circumstances. I use the Bose QuietComfort noise cancelling headphones most of the time.

01:16:45 ◼   ► That's what I'm wearing right now.

01:16:47 ◼   ► If I go out to work anywhere in public, I often like to take those because they're just great at canceling sounds.

01:16:52 ◼   ► And they are vital for any kind of travel where there are going to be other people, particularly children,

01:17:01 ◼   ► like on airplanes, crying babies or something.

01:17:03 ◼   ► You just can't live without them.

01:17:06 ◼   ► So those are my heavy lifting headphones.

01:17:12 ◼   ► And then when I go to the gym or if I'm moving around a lot and I do want to be listening to something,

01:17:18 ◼   ► I have the Jaybird Bluetooth headphones, which are pricey, but they are totally worth it.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Mainly because most Bluetooth headphones are garbage with terrible battery life and terrible connection problems and terrible sound.

01:17:33 ◼   ► And the Jaybirds are the only ones that I have tried that are actually worth the amount of money that you pay for them.

01:17:41 ◼   ► I have a whole selection of different headphones.

01:17:43 ◼   ► I have some Bose headphones that I don't know the name of.

01:17:47 ◼   ► They are not noise cancelling.

01:17:49 ◼   ► And I use these on planes and stuff.

01:17:52 ◼   ► I can't use noise cancelling because it makes me feel nauseous.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Yeah, if you turn on the noise cancelling,

01:18:02 ◼   ► I think there are just some people who are built this way.

01:18:04 ◼   ► If you put headphones on and turn on the noise cancelling,

01:18:06 ◼   ► it freaks some people out.

01:18:08 ◼   ► And I feel a little weird if I have them on my head and there's nothing playing.

01:18:14 ◼   ► But I'm fine once there's music or something coming through the headphones.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Or like I do sometimes on an airplane,

01:18:20 ◼   ► I will play airplane engine noise through the headphones that I'm listening to.

01:18:25 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:18:25 ◼   ► No! Why?

01:18:27 ◼   ► You could play any type of white noise. Any white noise.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's like a double "drown out the screaming child" effect.

01:18:38 ◼   ► But why not like rain?

01:18:40 ◼   ► No, it's not as good. There's something about the airplane noise, which is really good at

01:18:44 ◼   ► masking other sounds.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Only you would do that.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Airplane noise on an airplane with noise cancelling headphones.

01:18:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's great.

01:18:54 ◼   ► It's really great.

01:18:56 ◼   ► You need some music. Any kind of music.

01:18:59 ◼   ► Well, yeah, sometimes I'll listen to music, but I'm just saying if I'm trying to sleep or something

01:19:02 ◼   ► I'll put on an airplane noise while I'm on the airplane with my noise cancelling headphones.

01:19:06 ◼   ► It's great. Everyone should try it

01:19:08 ◼   ► But anyways

01:19:11 ◼   ► I was bringing that up only because I was saying like I can sympathize with people who just can't use the noise cancelling I can

01:19:16 ◼   ► Feel like ooh if I was more sensitive to this these headphones simply wouldn't be an option

01:19:22 ◼   ► So if anyone out there is thinking about noise cancelling headphones

01:19:25 ◼   ► You might want to try them in a store first to see if you have a bad reaction to them

01:19:29 ◼   ► So yeah

01:19:30 ◼   ► Yeah these Bosons, they're like fine. Just any like Bose headphones that don't have noise

01:19:35 ◼   ► cancelling will be effectively the same scenario. They're over the year, they're fine. I have

01:19:41 ◼   ► just got some Sennheiser Bluetooth headphones. Sennheiser MM400X. They're not great sounding.

01:19:51 ◼   ► The only reason I have these is they have buttons on the side that aren't touch buttons.

01:19:57 ◼   ► They have physical buttons and they have like little ridges on them so you can control playback

01:20:02 ◼   ► whilst walking around without looking at anything.

01:20:05 ◼   ► That's why I got those.

01:20:07 ◼   ► And my recording headphones.

01:20:09 ◼   ► Recently I bought the Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro headphones.

01:20:16 ◼   ► This was because I went to Marco's house and I put these on my head and I listened to some

01:20:22 ◼   ► music that I know and heard things in the music I hadn't heard before so went

01:20:27 ◼   ► with these headphones they sound great do you hear things in my voice that you

01:20:33 ◼   ► haven't heard before with those headphones on of course mmm I hear the

01:20:37 ◼   ► little man inside your brain that controls everything right it's pulling

01:20:41 ◼   ► all the levers I'm on killis Gavin would like to know are we Twitter completionists

01:20:45 ◼   ► a Twitter completionist is somebody who reads every tweet I used to be more than

01:20:50 ◼   ► I am now. Now I'm, if I'm many many hundreds of tweets behind, I'm okay with skipping them.

01:20:56 ◼   ► This was one of the things that came out of my time away from Twitter. But now I'm okay

01:21:02 ◼   ► with it. I do like to read the majority of stuff because I follow these people for a

01:21:06 ◼   ► reason, because I want to read what they have to say, but I don't go crazy about it now,

01:21:11 ◼   ► like I used to. I'm gonna assume that you're not.

01:21:14 ◼   ► No, I've not and I've never been.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And it's in no small part because I've always felt that,

01:21:19 ◼   ► you know, we're talking about Twitter again, but

01:21:22 ◼   ► one of the benefits of Twitter is its currentness.

01:21:27 ◼   ► Twitter feels like, "What is happening right now?"

01:21:31 ◼   ► So even from the very, very beginning times when I first signed up for Twitter,

01:21:36 ◼   ► I don't know, a couple years ago,

01:21:38 ◼   ► I never felt any compulsion to read things that were in the past.

01:21:43 ◼   ► It's it just Twitter to me feels like a very current

01:21:47 ◼   ► present thing and so I've always found the notion of people who are Twitter completionists to be just

01:21:54 ◼   ► Just a little weird like it, but that's not what the tool is, right?

01:21:57 ◼   ► I mean, of course the tool is whatever people want it to be but that just seems so

01:22:01 ◼   ► Anti my conception of what Twitter is for so I have I am NOT and have never been a Twitter completionist

01:22:10 ◼   ► Autumn would like to know do we ever make the mistake of staying up far too late or sleeping in on a regular day? I

01:22:16 ◼   ► Stay up far too late every day. I was gonna say you sleep in every day, don't you?

01:22:22 ◼   ► I don't sleep in every day. I go to bed at 2 a.m. I woke up at half 9 today

01:22:26 ◼   ► So that seems pretty early

01:22:28 ◼   ► We were having an instant message conversation the other day and I realized it was like 830 in the morning or something

01:22:33 ◼   ► I asked oh god, what are you doing? So early mine because I know that's early for you

01:22:37 ◼   ► Sometimes I am awake at that time, but it is it's early if you go to bed at 2 in the morning

01:22:42 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, but don't you go to bed at 2 in the morning because you're recording shows then what's the latest you're recording a show?

01:22:47 ◼   ► I only now I've made some changes. I record one show every two weeks and midnight

01:22:53 ◼   ► Starting at midnight? Starting at midnight. Oh god. What show is that? That's analog. Oh

01:22:59 ◼   ► And then the rest of them now, I'm usually done by like 8 p.m.

01:23:03 ◼   ► That's a rough. That's a rough time slot

01:23:06 ◼   ► The midnight time slot. Yeah. Yeah, work in the late shift. Yeah, it is tricky. Hence why now it's every two weeks.

01:23:13 ◼   ► So yeah, you just stay up late all the time then.

01:23:18 ◼   ► Just you stay up to two in the morning because that's just your the way you are.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Yeah, that's just the way I am. You can't change that. Can't change it. Can't fight it.

01:23:27 ◼   ► So you have to be self-employed so that you can stay up until two in the morning. Yep.

01:23:31 ◼   ► It's an absolute requirement.

01:23:34 ◼   ► So I mean the question of course, do you ever make the mistake? The answer is of course, right? Humans make the mistake of doing this.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Just recently as my own holiday was coming to a close, I made the mistake of like, "Oh,

01:23:47 ◼   ► I'll just keep playing Factorio for a little while longer.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Just a little while longer, just a little while longer." And then you realize like, "Oh, it's actually 3 in the morning.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Like what have I done?"

01:23:57 ◼   ► This is just...

01:23:59 ◼   ► This is a terrible decision that I didn't even know I was making. I was just like, "Oh, I'm having a good time!"

01:24:04 ◼   ► And then suddenly like, "Oh, I'm so sleepy. Why?" It's like, "Oh, I'm way up. I'm up way, way too late. That's why."

01:24:11 ◼   ► So yes, of course occasionally make that mistake and

01:24:15 ◼   ► when it's been holiday time, I am way more likely to make that mistake because I feel like, "Oh, there's no

01:24:23 ◼   ► there's no constraints or anything." And then it is

01:24:27 ◼   ► It is that very mistake that I find compounds for me in a bad way. Like I definitely know that I am a person who

01:24:35 ◼   ► benefits from routine and

01:24:38 ◼   ► no matter how much I might think, "Oh, breaking the routine is fun sometimes!"

01:24:42 ◼   ► There is always a price to pay for it later. And so I have been

01:24:48 ◼   ► struggling to get back into the working routine precisely because of staying up late or waking up too late in the morning.

01:24:56 ◼   ► But now that we have recorded this episode of Cortex, the working routine is back in place.

01:25:02 ◼   ► Thanks.