Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► So where actually are you at the moment? Because I thought you were home, like in the UK.

00:00:05 ◼   ► No, I'm not home in the UK yet. I'm only halfway on my trip back around the world.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I was recently in Hawaii, and I am now back in North Carolina.

00:00:18 ◼   ► And at some uncertain point, I will be returning back to London.

00:00:22 ◼   ► But because I fly standby, I don't exactly know when I'm leaving yet.

00:00:25 ◼   ► [DING]

00:00:26 ◼   ► Flying directly from Hawaii, which is one time zone away from being the furthest

00:00:34 ◼   ► away a place can be from London before it starts getting closer. Like doing

00:00:38 ◼   ► doing a trip from that place directly back to London, I'm pretty sure my body

00:00:44 ◼   ► would just give up and die. And so even when I just fly to the West Coast I

00:00:48 ◼   ► usually try to plan it that I come to North Carolina, do a slight adjustment

00:00:52 ◼   ► with time zones, go to the West Coast or go to Hawaii, spend some time there, and then come back to North Carolina

00:00:59 ◼   ► to try to do some adjustment again before returning to London.

00:01:03 ◼   ► So I have to break up the trips because jet lag is always just rough on me.

00:01:08 ◼   ► So I am still jet lagged now because I just got back from Hawaii a couple days ago,

00:01:11 ◼   ► and now this is the dreaded eastward journey in which you wake up terribly late and feel awful every day

00:01:18 ◼   ► and it's very hard.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Anyway, that's a long answer to the fact that I am in North Carolina right now for some

00:01:23 ◼   ► indeterminate amount of time.

00:01:25 ◼   ► I don't think I was aware of Hawaiian time or whatever the actual time zone is called.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like Hawaii-Alaska time zone, they're both on the same one.

00:01:35 ◼   ► I didn't know that it existed.

00:01:38 ◼   ► And us trying to communicate during that time period.

00:01:42 ◼   ► We had about half an hour a day where we could talk, it's crazy.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Ten hours is madness.

00:01:49 ◼   ► Yeah, depending on the time of year, I think it's almost like 11 hours.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Because again, the UK and the US don't line up their time zones perfectly.

00:01:58 ◼   ► So yes, it is an awful time zone.

00:02:00 ◼   ► And that is why you seem to not believe me that we might have difficulty coordinating recording a show when I was in Hawaii.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Like, it's on the other side of the earth.

00:02:09 ◼   ► It's not a convenient time zone.

00:02:11 ◼   ► It feels like having fallen off the earth when you're in Hawaii.

00:02:16 ◼   ► If you even just go on the internet and Twitter, it's just like tumbleweeds are rolling by

00:02:20 ◼   ► because nobody's awake when you're awake.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Or you go onto Reddit and all of the stories are very static.

00:02:27 ◼   ► There isn't any motion of things going up and down because nobody's voting because it's

00:02:30 ◼   ► just you and the Australians and everybody else is asleep.

00:02:34 ◼   ► So it even feels really like you're not on the planet Earth when you're there.

00:02:38 ◼   ► It's very far away from everything.

00:02:40 ◼   ► So during the time period of our interestingly scheduled shows recently, we now have stickers

00:02:45 ◼   ► for Cortex available on the Relay FM store.

00:02:48 ◼   ► - Yes, we do.

00:02:49 ◼   ► - I love the little square sticker

00:02:50 ◼   ► of the Cortex artwork that you can buy.

00:02:54 ◼   ► And I'll put a link in the show notes,

00:02:55 ◼   ► but the easiest way, if you go to relay.fm/store,

00:02:58 ◼   ► you'll see all of our shows there

00:02:59 ◼   ► and you can buy some stickers.

00:03:00 ◼   ► And I have one stuck to my laptop

00:03:02 ◼   ► and I'm very happy with it.

00:03:04 ◼   ► And I like to see that little brain

00:03:05 ◼   ► when my computer is closed.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - It looks great.

00:03:08 ◼   ► - If you want to stick Cortex stickers

00:03:10 ◼   ► all over everything you own,

00:03:11 ◼   ► you now have the ability to do that.

00:03:13 ◼   ► - As you should do.

00:03:14 ◼   ► So I obviously follow CGP Grey on Twitter.

00:03:17 ◼   ► - Oh yeah?

00:03:18 ◼   ► - That is something that I do.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And whilst reading my tweets the other day,

00:03:22 ◼   ► I saw a pretty horrific event occur to you

00:03:27 ◼   ► which was your home screen organization.

00:03:29 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:03:30 ◼   ► (Myke laughs)

00:03:33 ◼   ► Yes, Myke.

00:03:34 ◼   ► - So at your favorite Audible,

00:03:36 ◼   ► they changed the color of their icon to orange

00:03:38 ◼   ► which then basically incurred too much orange

00:03:43 ◼   ► on the home screen of your iPhone.

00:03:44 ◼   ► - Okay, okay, yeah, let's back up for a second,

00:03:47 ◼   ► because home screen organizing

00:03:50 ◼   ► is a bit of a topic on the show, it seems like.

00:03:51 ◼   ► People love it, much to my surprise, but yeah.

00:03:56 ◼   ► So, okay, with iOS 7, there has always been this problem

00:04:00 ◼   ► of too many white icons, and I already have,

00:04:03 ◼   ► my home screen has too many white icons on it.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I forget exactly what it is, but everybody's like,

00:04:07 ◼   ► "Ooh, white looks so cool."

00:04:09 ◼   ► No, it doesn't, it's a terrible icon color,

00:04:11 ◼   ► but lots of things have chosen it.

00:04:12 ◼   ► But it just so happens that orange is disproportionately represented on my home screen as well, in proportion to the number of icons that actually have that as a color.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And I feel like my iPhone, the central most things on it are the ones that I used to have in the center of

00:04:28 ◼   ► Overcast and Audible were right next to each other and they were orange and white

00:04:32 ◼   ► and I tried to arrange everything else around those two in the middle

00:04:37 ◼   ► so that it was like the colors were balanced nicely.

00:04:40 ◼   ► It didn't look random,

00:04:42 ◼   ► but it didn't look like there was too much of a pattern.

00:04:44 ◼   ► I spent, as you can imagine, a lot of time,

00:04:45 ◼   ► just from the way I'm describing this,

00:04:46 ◼   ► trying to get it to look just right.

00:04:48 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:04:49 ◼   ► And it's one of these funny things where it's,

00:04:51 ◼   ► I have a hard time even knowing what I mean by looking right,

00:04:53 ◼   ► but people think like, "Oh, stripes, no, I hate stripes,"

00:04:56 ◼   ► or just, you know, little checker patterns.

00:04:58 ◼   ► No, that's awful.

00:04:58 ◼   ► It's very hard to get looking the way I feel is balanced,

00:05:01 ◼   ► because I don't even know exactly what I'm going for.

00:05:03 ◼   ► I just play around with it until it looks right.

00:05:05 ◼   ► But yeah, so Audible, I saw something about how Audible

00:05:09 ◼   ► changed the icon color and I thought, oh, thank goodness.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Because they've almost certainly chosen the standard

00:05:15 ◼   ► like Amazon yellow maybe or you know, like Audible

00:05:19 ◼   ► has sometimes used red as design elements.

00:05:21 ◼   ► But no, they chose orange.

00:05:23 ◼   ► But the worst thing about the orange, Myke,

00:05:25 ◼   ► is that they chose an orange which clashes somehow

00:05:28 ◼   ► with every other shade of orange I have ever seen.

00:05:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:32 ◼   ► I think someone at Amazon must have thought,

00:05:36 ◼   ► how can we make an orange that we are sure

00:05:40 ◼   ► will look terrible next to every other shade of orange

00:05:43 ◼   ► that has ever existed?

00:05:44 ◼   ► And if you look at that Audible icon

00:05:47 ◼   ► next to the Overcast icon,

00:05:48 ◼   ► which Overcast has a really great,

00:05:50 ◼   ► if you're gonna go orange, right, you go a bright orange,

00:05:53 ◼   ► but the Audible orange is like it was dragged

00:05:55 ◼   ► through the mud and then not properly cleaned

00:05:58 ◼   ► after it occurred.

00:05:59 ◼   ► So it's not a great looking icon,

00:06:02 ◼   ► But now it also looks extra awful next to a vivid orange.

00:06:07 ◼   ► And so I swear to God,

00:06:08 ◼   ► since this happened a couple of days ago,

00:06:10 ◼   ► I just keep moving things around on my phone

00:06:13 ◼   ► and I can find no acceptable configuration

00:06:17 ◼   ► of all of these icons.

00:06:18 ◼   ► And I've been trying to think,

00:06:19 ◼   ► okay, can I take things off my home screen?

00:06:22 ◼   ► I'm making aesthetic decisions

00:06:25 ◼   ► about the colors of the icons.

00:06:27 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, what can I do to try to put a buffer in here?

00:06:29 ◼   ► But the big problem is I still want audible

00:06:31 ◼   ► and overcast in the center, and it's like, no, this is now like two North Pole magnets.

00:06:36 ◼   ► They can't be next to each other, they can't be diagonally next to each other, they need

00:06:39 ◼   ► a buffer of one icon in between them somehow, and it's, I'm gonna say it's been genuinely

00:06:44 ◼   ► upsetting because I just, I'm frustrated and I cannot find, I cannot find a solution to

00:06:49 ◼   ► this.

00:06:50 ◼   ► So then you tweeted another picture which was like maybe your current interim setup,

00:06:55 ◼   ► which I quite like because if you look at both pictures side by side, and I'll include

00:06:59 ◼   ► the tweets in the show notes so people can see them. Audible and Overcast used to be

00:07:03 ◼   ► together sitting next to each other. Now it's like they've had a bad breakup because they

00:07:07 ◼   ► are now both on opposite ends. Only music, like music and maps are like their buddies

00:07:13 ◼   ► and they have to stay in the middle like to keep them apart.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Yeah, but the problem with that, okay so I put music and maps between Audible and Overcast,

00:07:21 ◼   ► but I used to have such a nice pleasing three audio things in a row and now maps feels like

00:07:27 ◼   ► It's just it doesn't belong there. Hey guys! Exactly, it's disharmonious with that row.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And also even looking at this, I just pull it up on my screen, and I look at it

00:07:37 ◼   ► and this is just awful. Like I said, it's an unbalanced disaster. You also have

00:07:42 ◼   ► two diagonal orange icons next to each other which sort of forms a pattern, but

00:07:47 ◼   ► the pattern is asymmetric. There's no good solution. I think what

00:07:51 ◼   ► I have to do is try to figure out icons to remove or replace on this screen. It's

00:07:56 ◼   ► just I'm very displeased because I've come to the conclusion that there is no

00:08:01 ◼   ► good way to arrange all these icons. So I'm not happy. I like Audible, don't

00:08:06 ◼   ► like their icon. So I may have a potential solution for you that came from

00:08:13 ◼   ► listener Steven. And do you remember we were talking a couple of weeks ago, maybe

00:08:19 ◼   ► a few weeks ago now, about how we would both like to have audiobooks in

00:08:23 ◼   ► Overcast for smart speed. Well, Steven has created a workflow with the

00:08:29 ◼   ► workflow app that we both use on iOS where it can take audio files from your

00:08:34 ◼   ► Dropbox account so you could save audio books into a folder at Dropbox and it

00:08:38 ◼   ► can then take that file and add it to the service Huffduffer which is kind of

00:08:43 ◼   ► like Instapaper for audio so then it would add this audio book into your

00:08:47 ◼   ► Huffduffer feed which you could subscribe to in Overcast and listen to

00:08:51 ◼   ► them that way.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:08:55 ◼   ► So it's a solution.

00:08:57 ◼   ► I will definitely try this.

00:08:59 ◼   ► The only thing I don't like about Huffduffer, and the reason I've never really used it is

00:09:03 ◼   ► because is it still this way that it's all public?

00:09:06 ◼   ► You can't have a private Huffduffer account?

00:09:08 ◼   ► I feel like it might be public.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Let me...

00:09:11 ◼   ► I was just thinking, because I was like, if you're putting audiobooks, it could kind of

00:09:15 ◼   ► be...

00:09:16 ◼   ► It's like shady.

00:09:18 ◼   ► You know, because it's like, ah, now...

00:09:20 ◼   ► and huffduffer end up creating a public directory that you can search of everything that people

00:09:25 ◼   ► put on there and...

00:09:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:27 ◼   ► I'm not saying that I wouldn't do it under a fake name that I subscribe to.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Because you know what you could do?

00:09:35 ◼   ► One way that you could do it is you could put it in, so you could put it in the feed,

00:09:40 ◼   ► download them into your app, into Overcast, and then delete them from your huffduffer

00:09:44 ◼   ► account.

00:09:45 ◼   ► Ah, that's too much work.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Well, it's just a solution or you could just leave them there because whatever.

00:09:51 ◼   ► Because Amazon made me do it with their icon, that's why.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Exactly. That would hold up in court.

00:09:58 ◼   ► I'm sure it would. But your honor, look at this shade of orange.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I had to commit.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Objection.

00:10:05 ◼   ► I had to be committing copyright distribution felonies because this orange is

00:10:11 ◼   ► just so ugly. I object to that orange. Yeah.

00:10:15 ◼   ► I will definitely look into this. This is interesting. I've often wondered if there's

00:10:19 ◼   ► a way to create like an RSS feed from a folder of Dropbox MP3s. Like there are various reasons

00:10:26 ◼   ► why I want to do that, but for the time being I'm definitely going to give this workflow

00:10:31 ◼   ► by Steven a try and see if it works for me and if I can try to hide those audiobook files

00:10:37 ◼   ► on HuffDuffer. But if that works, if that works, I already know what I'll do. That will

00:10:42 ◼   ► allow me to get rid of the audible icon on that homepage

00:10:45 ◼   ► and I will replace it with the settings icon,

00:10:49 ◼   ► which is my next most frequent use thing, which is not out of a folder.

00:10:52 ◼   ► So that's what will happen.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Settings will go on there,

00:10:55 ◼   ► and at least settings is grey so I can put it almost anywhere.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I'm liking this.

00:11:00 ◼   ► If I can get rid of that audible icon and still get audiobooks from Audible,

00:11:03 ◼   ► I'll be very happy.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Nice work, Stephen.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:11:05 ◼   ► @junygirl on Reddit was...

00:11:09 ◼   ► She asked a question that I meant to ask you.

00:11:12 ◼   ► about how many duplicate sets of recording gear you have around the world

00:11:16 ◼   ► because you're currently talking to me from North Carolina

00:11:20 ◼   ► from equipment that was already in North Carolina.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know why people find this interesting

00:11:28 ◼   ► but yeah, of course I have a microphone here that I leave here. This seems unremarkable to me.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Why? Because the thing that I have in front of me is

00:11:36 ◼   ► I'm still using the Blue Yeti USB microphone, very convenient

00:11:40 ◼   ► and I have a big metal arm for it and a clamp for the desk

00:11:44 ◼   ► and a bunch of equipment underneath the desk that I can connect it to my laptop.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Why on earth would I pack all of this in a suitcase and move it all over the place?

00:11:54 ◼   ► But this is added on to the fact that you have this stuff at home

00:11:58 ◼   ► and in your co-working space.

00:12:00 ◼   ► Right, but the question there again is why would I pack it into a suitcase

00:12:03 ◼   ► and move it from my home to my office?

00:12:06 ◼   ► It's a huge, it's a huge hassle.

00:12:09 ◼   ► I don't think anybody disagrees with like the fact that it's there like it's great, but I just don't think many people do this like by

00:12:17 ◼   ► Like multiple things and stash them in different places

00:12:21 ◼   ► It kind of reminds me a little bit of Batman like when I used to watch the old Batman show

00:12:27 ◼   ► I like this comparison keep going. Yes. You remember the Adam West show? I don't know how you'll much you like

00:12:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw some of the Adam West when I was a kid

00:12:33 ◼   ► There was always like a scenario that he would find whatever he needed wherever he was

00:12:38 ◼   ► There was always like another bat cave or like there was a bush which was in a real bush

00:12:44 ◼   ► But it had a motorcycle underneath like the bat cycle or like he would need the bat boat

00:12:48 ◼   ► And it would just be under the dock like it was always just there and this

00:12:52 ◼   ► That's exactly the way if I was Batman

00:12:55 ◼   ► I would do the same thing you would hide bat stuff everywhere that you possibly could so that you always have it available

00:13:00 ◼   ► You never know when you're gonna need another batarang. It's very true. Yeah

00:13:04 ◼   ► You can't argue with that Myke

00:13:07 ◼   ► I mean, one of the things, just to point out, that I think makes this scenario a little bit different is

00:13:14 ◼   ► I have a business and this is business equipment, so like what we're doing right now, we're doing business at this very moment, Myke.

00:13:23 ◼   ► And so I can have these as business expenses and it always seems to me like a no-brainer.

00:13:29 ◼   ► If there's anything that can make the business easier, I will do that as a business expense just without thinking about it.

00:13:35 ◼   ► thinking about it. But of course, no normal person is going to have redundant equipment

00:13:39 ◼   ► for recording podcasts at their office

00:13:43 ◼   ► and at their home and at their parents' home. But it is a different scenario

00:13:47 ◼   ► when you do make a living, partially, at least making podcasts.

00:13:51 ◼   ► So that's why I'm very comfortable having this stuff everywhere, so that I can do it at any time.

00:13:55 ◼   ► And one of the big reasons that we didn't record it in Hawaii, in addition to the fact

00:13:59 ◼   ► that the time zones were terrible, is I kept looking at this microphone and thinking,

00:14:03 ◼   ► I'm gonna pack that in my suitcase and bring it with me. No way. It's not gonna happen.

00:14:08 ◼   ► I have enough space for everything perfectly. This does not fit.

00:14:12 ◼   ► It doesn't. It doesn't. Even if I had plenty of spare space,

00:14:16 ◼   ► you know what I like better than bringing a microphone with me? A lighter suitcase.

00:14:19 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Warby Parker. Look, glasses that you wear on your lovely

00:14:27 ◼   ► face should not cost as much as an iPhone. But far too often they do. And this is where

00:14:33 ◼   ► Warby Parker is here to help you out. Warby Parker's prescription glasses start at just

00:14:38 ◼   ► $95 and that includes prescription lenses. And these aren't just ugly cheap looking

00:14:43 ◼   ► designs at these prices either. Warby Parker believes that glasses should be viewed as

00:14:48 ◼   ► a fashion accessory just like a bag, a shoe, a necktie, a hat or even that fancy smartwatch

00:14:54 ◼   ► watch that you wear. They want you to look good in your glasses and Warby Parker achieved

00:14:59 ◼   ► just that. Their designs are super great looking and if you're looking to wear something on

00:15:02 ◼   ► your face all day then they should look good on your face. It's simple you know you're

00:15:05 ◼   ► going to wear it all the time you're going to be out in the world you want glasses that

00:15:08 ◼   ► are going to look great. As well as those fantastic frames start at $95 they also have

00:15:13 ◼   ► a titanium collection that starts at $145 that also include prescription lenses of course.

00:15:19 ◼   ► feature premium Japanese titanium and French non-rocking screws.

00:15:29 ◼   ► But all of Warby's glasses include anti-reflective and anti-glare coating.

00:15:36 ◼   ► And all the glasses include a hard case and cleaning cloth too.

00:15:40 ◼   ► There is no additional items you need to purchase, you're going to be hard pressed to find a

00:15:43 ◼   ► deal this good anywhere else.

00:15:45 ◼   ► But the best part about Warby Parker, the best part of their whole experience is what

00:15:49 ◼   ► they call the home try-on.

00:15:50 ◼   ► This makes buying glasses online totally risk free and super easy.

00:15:54 ◼   ► You just go to Warby Parker, you sign up and you go to their home try-on program.

00:15:58 ◼   ► This allows you to order 5 pairs of glasses that will be shipped to you directly.

00:16:03 ◼   ► They send you 5 frames, you can try them on in the comfort of your own home for 5 days

00:16:06 ◼   ► where you can get feedback from friends and family and colleagues and they can tell you

00:16:10 ◼   ► which ones they like.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Then once you choose the ones you want you send them back, this is all for free of course

00:16:14 ◼   ► using the prepaid return shipping label with no obligation to purchase.

00:16:18 ◼   ► So you just get a bunch of frames, you choose the ones that you want, you send them all

00:16:21 ◼   ► back to a worker and then once you're happy you place your order and they will get started

00:16:25 ◼   ► on putting those love your prescription lenses into the frames of your choice and you will

00:16:30 ◼   ► have them back in your hands of in 10 business days and they usually arrive a lot faster

00:16:35 ◼   ► than that.

00:16:36 ◼   ► This is something super cool, they have such a great experience, their frames look so good

00:16:39 ◼   ► as I said and their home try on really is something that's awesome.

00:16:42 ◼   ► You're not just trying them on for a couple of minutes and looking in a mirror in an optometrist

00:16:46 ◼   ► You actually get to try them on and show friends and family members and get all of their opinions as well

00:16:51 ◼   ► So go to warbyparker.com/cortex to choose your five free home try on frames

00:16:56 ◼   ► Once you're happy with what you've decided send the frames back choose your favorite pair and order by visiting that URL

00:17:02 ◼   ► You will also get free three-day shipping on your final frame choice

00:17:06 ◼   ► Warby Parker makes your experience completely risk-free and with free shipping all around

00:17:11 ◼   ► And also you'll be contributing to a charitable cause as for every pair of glasses sold

00:17:15 ◼   ► Warby Parker distributes a pair of glasses to someone in need. Thank you so much to Warby Parker for supporting this show

00:17:21 ◼   ► Go to warbyparker.com/cortex

00:17:24 ◼   ► You have

00:17:27 ◼   ► Made another impact on my life. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with. Oh, yeah. What have I done? Prison Architect. Oh

00:17:33 ◼   ► Prison Architect you're playing that? I have started playing Prison Architect. Yes. I

00:17:39 ◼   ► I didn't think you're much of a PC gamer guy. No, you have like a thousand consoles connected to your TV

00:17:44 ◼   ► I do but this one wasn't available for any of them. However, it is coming to the iPad in October

00:17:50 ◼   ► Which I'm very excited about because whenever I play Prison Architect on my Mac Pro, my Mac Pro sets on fire

00:17:55 ◼   ► Immediately it just catches on fire. It's really difficult

00:18:01 ◼   ► But listeners again Prison Architect is a game where you are simulating constructing a prison and I love these kind of simulation work games

00:18:08 ◼   ► But one of the things I'm always aware of with them that as technology has progressed,

00:18:13 ◼   ► many of these simulation games don't have the most amazing graphics,

00:18:17 ◼   ► but your computer will still run incredibly hot because it's trying to simulate the needs of a thousand prisoners running around

00:18:24 ◼   ► and how much food each and every one of them wants.

00:18:26 ◼   ► So I always find it interesting that some of these games that are very simple graphically

00:18:30 ◼   ► are still hugely demanding on the processor because of how many individual little elements they are simulating.

00:18:37 ◼   ► So yes, it may look simple, but you're still going to need a pretty good computer to run some of these things.

00:18:42 ◼   ► So I found the game very hard to get to grips with. It is not good at explaining what you need to do, like in any way.

00:18:49 ◼   ► The tutorial is kind of pointless, and I failed horribly my first two times.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Yeah, that's part of the game, is failing horribly right from the beginning. Did your prison burn down? Did you have a riot?

00:19:00 ◼   ► I had a riot, yeah, but that wasn't on that one. So I basically was very stuck with the

00:19:06 ◼   ► first two and decided that my favourite thing about this game is just the building of the

00:19:11 ◼   ► prison. That's what I like to do. I like to build the prison. So I enabled unlimited money,

00:19:18 ◼   ► which I'm sure probably upsets you.

00:19:20 ◼   ► It does upset me.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Because I like to just start building a prison and iterate the design. However, I was really

00:19:28 ◼   ► invested in building this prison and wasn't paying attention to the amount of prisoners

00:19:32 ◼   ► that were being delivered to my prison every day. And then I got into the situation where

00:19:36 ◼   ► I had 60 cells and 90 prisoners and then there was a terrible riot which I couldn't stop.

00:19:41 ◼   ► Which was entirely your fault.

00:19:43 ◼   ► 100% my fault. So now my current prison, which I've just started building, I have unlimited

00:19:49 ◼   ► money naturally and I have turned off failure.

00:19:56 ◼   ► - You turned off the game part of this.

00:19:58 ◼   ► The part of the game where you can fail

00:20:00 ◼   ► is now no longer active.

00:20:02 ◼   ► - All I wanna do is just build a really beautiful prison.

00:20:06 ◼   ► - Right.

00:20:07 ◼   ► - That is how I approach this game.

00:20:09 ◼   ► I just want to build a prison,

00:20:11 ◼   ► which is really nicely designed

00:20:13 ◼   ► and everything works really well

00:20:15 ◼   ► and it just functions good.

00:20:17 ◼   ► 'Cause when I'm playing these games,

00:20:20 ◼   ► I'm doing similar tasks to you,

00:20:21 ◼   ► like editing shows and stuff like that.

00:20:23 ◼   ► So I want to have like the least amount

00:20:25 ◼   ► distraction. So basically it's just a case of me drawing like a hundred cells

00:20:30 ◼   ► like you know like two blocks and then by three blocks two blocks by three

00:20:34 ◼   ► blocks and just making all these individual prison cells and I like doing

00:20:38 ◼   ► all of that part. I hope to God you know about the clone stamping tool you do

00:20:42 ◼   ► know that right? I have no idea what you're talking about. Oh god Myke it's like you're not

00:20:46 ◼   ► even playing the same game. They don't do anything to tell you about anything. Okay

00:20:50 ◼   ► just just to save you and any of the dear listeners out there who try Prison

00:20:54 ◼   ► architect which again I highly recommend I think it is a very well designed game

00:20:58 ◼   ► one of the things you can research is a little blueprint so that you can draw a

00:21:03 ◼   ► rectangle around a section of your prison that you wish to duplicate

00:21:07 ◼   ► exactly somewhere else so this allows you to stamp down rows and rows of blocks

00:21:12 ◼   ► of cells that each have 12 prisoners in them or whatever that would have really

00:21:15 ◼   ► helped me when I was having that riot that would have saved you thousands of

00:21:20 ◼   ► clicks probably from the way it sounds. The problem was I realized I had 90 prisoners

00:21:25 ◼   ► and then started to immediately build another wing of prison cells. It would have taken

00:21:29 ◼   ► you forever. Whilst I was building them, everybody died. Right, yes. So that would have helped.

00:21:36 ◼   ► But I don't know if I would use it because I actually just like the mind, like the mindless

00:21:41 ◼   ► process of just building these things. It's fun, it's a fun game. But for me it's just,

00:21:48 ◼   ► I just want to build stuff. That's what I like doing. The rest of the game

00:21:52 ◼   ► I'm not so interested in yet. Maybe once I build the perfect prison

00:21:56 ◼   ► I will then pay attention to everything else. Yes, maybe. Stop me if I've made

00:22:00 ◼   ► this comparison before, but my wife always describes some of the ways

00:22:03 ◼   ► that I play the games as the the man version of knitting.

00:22:09 ◼   ► That the way she looks at it is like I want something to keep my hands

00:22:13 ◼   ► busy, you know, while you're sort of doing

00:22:15 ◼   ► something else and I think that that is 100% on board and the way you are playing prison

00:22:21 ◼   ► architect where you're like "ooh I enjoy drawing the exact same identical cell over and over

00:22:26 ◼   ► and over again" is like man that sounds even more like knitting than what I do.

00:22:29 ◼   ► This is crazy.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I was talking to Tiffany Arment yesterday who you also have infected with prison architect.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Yes, who I also have seen has caused riots that killed thousands of prisoners, yes.

00:22:39 ◼   ► And she said to me "you should take up knitting".

00:22:42 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:22:43 ◼   ► I think there's something to this comparison.

00:22:46 ◼   ► I really do.

00:22:47 ◼   ► - Maybe somebody should make a knitting game for Steam

00:22:49 ◼   ► and then we can play that.

00:22:51 ◼   ► - Let's see that if there's knitting simulator.

00:22:54 ◼   ► - There's gotta be, there has to be.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Okay, like don't.

00:22:56 ◼   ► - There has to be a knitting simulator.

00:22:57 ◼   ► - Yep, there is a knitting game.

00:23:00 ◼   ► - Really, there really is?

00:23:02 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:23:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, but somebody has created it

00:23:05 ◼   ► and you have knitting needles

00:23:07 ◼   ► that are connected to your computer.

00:23:09 ◼   ► So you sit and do the action and it knits something.

00:23:13 ◼   ► That's amazing. That is fantastic.

00:23:17 ◼   ► What a world we live in, Myke. Knitting simulators. It is a world.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Just while we're talking video games I'll mention one other thing. I was

00:23:25 ◼   ► telling my parents a little bit about the video game world when I'm here because this is something

00:23:29 ◼   ► that is just outside of their experience and so we were having a bunch of conversations

00:23:33 ◼   ► but I was trying to convince them that Euro Truck

00:23:37 ◼   ► Simulator was a real thing. Do you know Euro Truck Simulator?

00:23:41 ◼   ► I have seen it and heard of it. I've never played it.

00:23:44 ◼   ► The basic gist of Hero Truck Simulator is it is an exact simulation of long-haul trucking

00:23:51 ◼   ► in that the whole game is you driving a truck across the continent of Europe delivering items.

00:24:00 ◼   ► But when I say most people who play video games are imagining, "Oh, it's some top-down view and you're avoiding obstacles."

00:24:06 ◼   ► "No, no, no, it's really a simulation of a road. It's like a flight simulator except it's a truck on the road and you're just driving."

00:24:13 ◼   ► And my parents were like, "Oh, no, that can't possibly be real. Nobody would do that. Nobody would sign up for virtual work in this way that isn't even remotely a game. It can't possibly be real."

00:24:23 ◼   ► I showed them a Let's Play on YouTube of someone just silently driving the truck across Europe, and within 60 seconds they were sold.

00:24:31 ◼   ► They go "Ooh, I could play that! That looks really enjoyable! I wouldn't mind taking a drive across Europe."

00:24:36 ◼   ► I just think gaming is a very funny thing in what captures what person's mind.

00:24:44 ◼   ► It's all about how your brain is built and what kind of things you react to.

00:24:48 ◼   ► So I imagine there's someone out there who has just heard about the knitting simulator who is very excited.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Even though I could not imagine playing that game.

00:24:56 ◼   ► I'm now watching a truck on YouTube driving through a forest.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Look at that. What a world.

00:25:04 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:25:06 ◼   ► We live in so much luxury that we can simulate work as enjoyment.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I want to talk to you about scriptwriting a little bit today.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Oh, now we're getting serious? This is your topic for today? Scriptwriting?

00:25:16 ◼   ► - Scriptwriting. - Okay.

00:25:17 ◼   ► All of your videos, they are scripted.

00:25:19 ◼   ► - Right? Completely scripted. - That is correct.

00:25:22 ◼   ► Because obviously this is a decision you had to make, right?

00:25:25 ◼   ► I'm gonna make these videos and I'm gonna make scripts and I'm gonna read the scripts.

00:25:29 ◼   ► That's the audio.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Did you always know like the only way I can do this is if I script the videos?

00:25:36 ◼   ► In some ways the videos are an outgrowth of a lot of the time that I spent teaching because

00:25:44 ◼   ► what I would do as a teacher was to create much more detailed PowerPoint presentations

00:25:51 ◼   ► than most teachers would make, so that I could have an outline of the lesson that I was going

00:25:58 ◼   ► through.

00:26:00 ◼   ► These presentations took a lot of time to make, but it was great because they were reusable.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Because every time I saw a teacher on my teacher training course writing something by hand

00:26:10 ◼   ► on the board, I thought, "Oh, what a waste of human effort."

00:26:12 ◼   ► You're going to have to be writing that same sentence twice a day, twice a week, every

00:26:19 ◼   ► week for the rest of your teaching life.

00:26:21 ◼   ► I'm not going to do that. It's just awful.

00:26:23 ◼   ► So that's why I tended to make everything as PowerPoint presentations.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And what I would do is I would go into empty classrooms somewhere in the school

00:26:33 ◼   ► and walk through in real time what a lesson was going to be like.

00:26:40 ◼   ► So I think, okay, here's the introduction, here's the part where I'm talking.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Some slide would come up and it would be my marker of, okay, here, worksheets go out here,

00:26:49 ◼   ► everybody takes notes here or this is where the experiment starts.

00:26:52 ◼   ► But everything was kind of directed by the slideshow as a marker to me, almost like I'm

00:26:57 ◼   ► doing a presentation, except it's an unusual presentation because there are breaks when

00:27:01 ◼   ► the students are doing things.

00:27:02 ◼   ► But it was a very reusable but very practiced thing.

00:27:07 ◼   ► I really hope that somebody saw you through a window once and you're just like talking

00:27:13 ◼   ► to no one.

00:27:15 ◼   ► I know people saw me through the window.

00:27:17 ◼   ► The other teachers thought that I was crazy for doing this, but my perspective has always

00:27:24 ◼   ► been I am very happy to do what seems like a ridiculous amount of work up front if it's

00:27:31 ◼   ► going to save me work on the back end.

00:27:35 ◼   ► And I think that trade-off is almost always worth it.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And this was a case where in my later years as a teacher, these presentations were great

00:27:45 ◼   ► because almost the only preparation I had to do for any lesson was,

00:27:49 ◼   ► "Which PowerPoint file is it going to be? This one? Okay, great."

00:27:54 ◼   ► And in that folder, if there was anything that needed to be printed out,

00:27:57 ◼   ► those printouts were just in the folder with the presentation,

00:27:59 ◼   ► and that was all I needed to just go.

00:28:02 ◼   ► I wouldn't even have to review the lesson ahead of time

00:28:06 ◼   ► because the presentation was designed with speaker notes and other things

00:28:09 ◼   ► to prompt me about everything that I need to have on my mind

00:28:12 ◼   ► when I'm going through this.

00:28:14 ◼   ► And one of the things as well is I often had points in my notes for fake diversions.

00:28:23 ◼   ► So the students would think that I was getting off track with some kind of story about whatever,

00:28:30 ◼   ► but it was all planned.

00:28:31 ◼   ► I never got off track unless I wanted to get off track, but the students would always think

00:28:37 ◼   ► that I was getting off track.

00:28:39 ◼   ► But I'd start to stumble over something and pretend like,

00:28:43 ◼   ► oh, let me, oh, this thing, there was also this thing,

00:28:45 ◼   ► but you know what, I'm not sure we have time for that.

00:28:48 ◼   ► But then the students would be like, no, what is it?

00:28:49 ◼   ► And I was like, eh, okay, well,

00:28:51 ◼   ► let me, looking at the clock,

00:28:52 ◼   ► like pretending like I don't know how much time

00:28:54 ◼   ► we have left, but I know exactly how much time we have left.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Like, is there time to do it?

00:28:58 ◼   ► Okay, let me quickly tell you this thing.

00:29:00 ◼   ► But the whole point of like the diversion

00:29:02 ◼   ► was 'cause I had learned like,

00:29:04 ◼   ► oh, this part of the lesson is too long.

00:29:06 ◼   ► Like the kids need a break at this point,

00:29:09 ◼   ► and a pretend diversion feels very much like a break,

00:29:13 ◼   ► and then we come back to the real lesson.

00:29:14 ◼   ► It's like, okay, we gotta get serious now

00:29:15 ◼   ► because we've lost some time,

00:29:17 ◼   ► but we haven't lost any time.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Like I knew about that ahead of time.

00:29:19 ◼   ► So this is what I mean, like even the lessons that I gave

00:29:22 ◼   ► were very well prepared.

00:29:23 ◼   ► They weren't scripted.

00:29:24 ◼   ► I didn't do things word for word

00:29:26 ◼   ► because that's horrifically boring,

00:29:27 ◼   ► but I knew like what are the beats of this lesson

00:29:31 ◼   ► and how exactly do I want it to go?

00:29:32 ◼   ► - So I guess when you started to do this,

00:29:35 ◼   ► was no way you were going to do it other than like being completely prepared for everything

00:29:39 ◼   ► you were going to say.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Yes, that's exactly right.

00:29:41 ◼   ► So if you watch that first, the very first video that I did, that video was totally prepared

00:29:49 ◼   ► in the same way that I would prepare a lesson in that I made that almost entirely in Keynote,

00:29:59 ◼   ► Apple's version of PowerPoint, not writing a script with it but thinking about it as

00:30:05 ◼   ► "Okay, I want to go through this thing, and what point do I want to sort of change the topic?"

00:30:12 ◼   ► "When am I going to talk about things quickly?"

00:30:13 ◼   ► "When am I not going to talk about things quickly?"

00:30:16 ◼   ► And that first presentation was extraordinarily presentation-like,

00:30:22 ◼   ► in that I would just rehearse it over and over again, and I didn't have as many written notes.

00:30:27 ◼   ► It wasn't completely memorized, because some of the sections like the countries,

00:30:32 ◼   ► you couldn't possibly memorize those things.

00:30:34 ◼   ► And as time went on, I added like more and more and more of an actual script around that.

00:30:38 ◼   ► But I made that one like a presentation first.

00:30:40 ◼   ► And so, that one, and I think the first two voting videos I know were done in the same way.

00:30:46 ◼   ► And that way of making a presentation in-- or making a video in some ways I think is better.

00:30:52 ◼   ► But it's way too time-consuming once I've transitioned to doing this for a living now.

00:31:00 ◼   ► If I still made videos the way I made the first one, it would take months for each of them.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Because the first one took months to do.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Is that because you're practicing them? Is that the problem?

00:31:11 ◼   ► Is that why it takes so much longer?

00:31:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like I'm practicing giving a presentation on a stage in front of a group of people.

00:31:19 ◼   ► And when I'm talking it out loud, you realize, "Oh, this part's a little boring."

00:31:24 ◼   ► And what I'm doing then is, because I wasn't working with the script, I'm working with slides in Keynote,

00:31:29 ◼   ► I would be rearranging slides in keynotes, but also basically it was an animation first way of making a video

00:31:36 ◼   ► Start with the animations and I'm like rearranging things and seeing how it's going to look on the screen and figuring out how the words

00:31:42 ◼   ► Go together at the same time. I

00:31:44 ◼   ► Do think that's a better way to make a presentation because you can sometimes have really great

00:31:50 ◼   ► Overlaps of like oh I want exactly this on the screen while I'm saying these words

00:31:54 ◼   ► But it's just too time-consuming. So as I made more and more videos

00:31:59 ◼   ► I eventually learned that one way to speed up production and still maintain high quality

00:32:06 ◼   ► is to do it all script first.

00:32:09 ◼   ► Because it's much faster to change things in words when I'm not moving around slides

00:32:14 ◼   ► or trying to change drawings or realizing that some drawing isn't going to work

00:32:18 ◼   ► and I've just wasted a huge amount of time.

00:32:20 ◼   ► So I lock down the words now first and then the animations come later.

00:32:25 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:32:26 ◼   ► But I kind of did it reverse when I started.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Or I should say, it's not exactly reverse,

00:32:30 ◼   ► but I did it more together,

00:32:32 ◼   ► of like looking at the animations

00:32:34 ◼   ► as I'm thinking through what I'm going to do.

00:32:36 ◼   ► But it's just too time consuming to do that.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that seems like the wrong way to do it now.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Like to have everything ready and then speak over it,

00:32:45 ◼   ► that is much harder to do on a more frequent basis, I think.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Yeah, it's much harder to do.

00:32:52 ◼   ► especially to maintain clarity and quality.

00:32:56 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:32:57 ◼   ► If you're doing presentations like I was making for school,

00:33:00 ◼   ► my lessons were very time consuming to create,

00:33:04 ◼   ► but it's still less,

00:33:05 ◼   ► like it took less time to make a lesson

00:33:06 ◼   ► than it did to make a video,

00:33:08 ◼   ► because again, the exact thing that you say

00:33:11 ◼   ► in front of a group of people doesn't matter,

00:33:13 ◼   ► and you can always clarify,

00:33:14 ◼   ► like it's a very different experience.

00:33:16 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:33:17 ◼   ► - But so that's what I was doing in the beginning.

00:33:19 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:33:20 ◼   ► very glad to have transitioned to script making now first as the words get locked down and

00:33:26 ◼   ► then the animations. Like I don't even really start on animations almost ever until the

00:33:30 ◼   ► script is 90% done.

00:33:33 ◼   ► So I want to talk about like how they get put together, like how you write them. So

00:33:38 ◼   ► I assume that after you decide on an idea the next part will be research. I assume that's

00:33:44 ◼   ► the first part, right?

00:33:46 ◼   ► Okay, no, it's actually kind of backwards.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Okay.

00:33:49 ◼   ► I don't understand.

00:33:53 ◼   ► The very very beginning of videos now is I have a lot of things that I feel are topics

00:34:03 ◼   ► that I am interested in.

00:34:05 ◼   ► And maybe some days these will become a video, maybe they won't.

00:34:10 ◼   ► But there are topics that catch my attention.

00:34:14 ◼   ► And I spend a lot of time acting as a kind of collector for a topic, and I think, "Oh,

00:34:20 ◼   ► this is an interesting piece of information."

00:34:22 ◼   ► And at the moment I'm using Evernote, which I have incredibly mixed feelings about, but

00:34:29 ◼   ► Evernote is my tool where I have about 200+ folders, each one that acts as a collecting

00:34:38 ◼   ► point for a particular topic of interest.

00:34:42 ◼   ► So if I'm reading something in a book or I come across an article or I hear something

00:34:46 ◼   ► on a podcast, I have all of these buckets that I can just dump this thing into.

00:34:50 ◼   ► And I say, "Oh, this is related to this topic of interest and I'm going to throw it in there."

00:34:55 ◼   ► So it's actually, I end up kind of selecting from these collections when I'm thinking about

00:35:02 ◼   ► making a video.

00:35:05 ◼   ► But the collection for me is really the starting point.

00:35:08 ◼   ► I don't know why, but for some reason some topic is of interest to me,

00:35:11 ◼   ► and I end up starting collecting things over a long period of time that are related to that topic.

00:35:18 ◼   ► So when I'm working on an individual video, you can see that that's downstream of this process.

00:35:23 ◼   ► I often look through, "What are my collections?"

00:35:26 ◼   ► And I'm like promoting something from the stage of a collection

00:35:30 ◼   ► to being something that is much more actively worked on,

00:35:33 ◼   ► as opposed to passively collecting information that I'm throwing into it.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Does that make sense? Does that make any sense what I've just said?

00:35:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's like base research, right?

00:35:44 ◼   ► It's just collection of materials, but I assume you then, after that period,

00:35:49 ◼   ► go into heavy research, right?

00:35:51 ◼   ► Yeah, so...

00:35:54 ◼   ► Let me come back to the research thing in a second,

00:35:57 ◼   ► because I just want to take a sidebar on Evernote.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Yep, Evernote sidebar, go ahead.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Yeah, that little sigh that you've just made, that's like my feeling about Evernote too.

00:36:07 ◼   ► It's like, "Ahh."

00:36:08 ◼   ► They haven't...

00:36:09 ◼   ► I don't really feel like that they've advanced the product in any meaningful way in like

00:36:14 ◼   ► five years.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Every addition Evernote seems to make is like for a user that's not me.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Well, I've often thought Evernote is a difficult program to make anyway.

00:36:26 ◼   ► For the listeners who are unaware, Evernote, its express purpose is...

00:36:30 ◼   ► I always describe it as to be a very organized pile of junk.

00:36:35 ◼   ► So you can throw anything at it.

00:36:38 ◼   ► It's fundamentally collecting like a whole bunch of just unrelated junk, but still trying

00:36:44 ◼   ► to give you a very good way of sifting through that when you need to.

00:36:49 ◼   ► They have good search tools and they use OCR to read words and images and all kinds of

00:36:55 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Yeah, they do a lot of clever stuff to try to help make you able to find stuff when you

00:37:00 ◼   ► need to, which is one reason that I use it.

00:37:03 ◼   ► But I always think there are a few programs that are very high on this "I use them but

00:37:09 ◼   ► I don't like them" spectrum, and Evernote is one of these programs for me.

00:37:14 ◼   ► That I use it a lot, but I sure don't like it, and I'm always scanning the horizon for

00:37:19 ◼   ► some kind of alternative.

00:37:20 ◼   ► I've never found anything that comes close.

00:37:24 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't use Evernote as much as I used to anymore.

00:37:27 ◼   ► 'Cause I tend to keep a lot of my things like this now

00:37:31 ◼   ► in just plain text, right?

00:37:33 ◼   ► Because as well, Evernote is like basically impossible

00:37:37 ◼   ► to get your stuff out of.

00:37:38 ◼   ► It's really hard.

00:37:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, no matter how much Evernote tells you,

00:37:41 ◼   ► oh, you can export stuff.

00:37:43 ◼   ► It's like, no, you can export stuff

00:37:44 ◼   ► in Evernote's custom XML format,

00:37:46 ◼   ► which is also just impossible to deal with.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Like yeah, export in gigantic quotation marks.

00:37:51 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's, I don't like that there's a lock in there.

00:37:56 ◼   ► If I could do everything in just plain text, I would and I used to.

00:38:00 ◼   ► But as time has gone on, I want to be able to throw more things like MP3s and infographics

00:38:06 ◼   ► and all kinds of stuff in there.

00:38:08 ◼   ► So I need to be able to have many, many different media.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Before we get lots of feedback, I have investigated all of the main players in this field.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I was looking very hopefully at Microsoft OneNote,

00:38:18 ◼   ► but that's also terrible for a bunch of reasons.

00:38:20 ◼   ► So I'm aware of all the big players in this field

00:38:23 ◼   ► and I use Evernote because it does solve

00:38:26 ◼   ► my problem the best.

00:38:28 ◼   ► When I take a collection and I say, okay,

00:38:30 ◼   ► I'm going to be more actively working

00:38:32 ◼   ► on this particular topic,

00:38:34 ◼   ► one of the things I do is try to pull out from Evernote

00:38:38 ◼   ► and just go through all of that and say, okay,

00:38:40 ◼   ► what of this is actually useful to me now?

00:38:43 ◼   ► What am I actually going to need for the project

00:38:45 ◼   ► that I'm working on and go through all of that

00:38:48 ◼   ► and take out just the actionable stuff that I actually want.

00:38:52 ◼   ► So I feel like my whole goal is to touch Evernote directly

00:38:55 ◼   ► as little as possible.

00:38:57 ◼   ► I'm sending things to it and then when I need them,

00:39:01 ◼   ► I'm removing them from Evernote,

00:39:03 ◼   ► but it is very rarely actually open on my screen

00:39:06 ◼   ► except for this brief phase where it's like,

00:39:08 ◼   ► okay, I'm going to extract from you what I need

00:39:11 ◼   ► and put it in a text file

00:39:13 ◼   ► that is going to eventually become my script.

00:39:15 ◼   ► That's the way that I use it.

00:39:18 ◼   ► - I love Evernote for traveling stuff.

00:39:21 ◼   ► So I put all my travel documents and things in there,

00:39:23 ◼   ► but that's pretty much the only thing I use it for now.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Because I'm just not confident to put a lot

00:39:29 ◼   ► of really important things in there anymore.

00:39:31 ◼   ► But for you, that system, I can't think of anything else

00:39:35 ◼   ► that would be better.

00:39:37 ◼   ► So with the way that you're collecting,

00:39:40 ◼   ► Evernote is the way to do it.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Because as well, one of the other great things,

00:39:43 ◼   ► I think probably the best thing about Evernote is it's everywhere.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yes, yes. That's one of the things I really like. If Evernote went

00:39:50 ◼   ► away today I would probably do my best

00:39:53 ◼   ► to recreate as much of this as I could using folders in Dropbox.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I wouldn't go to one of the other alternatives but yeah,

00:40:01 ◼   ► I do use Evernote but reluctantly is the bottom line.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Sorry Evernote CEO who's brand new.

00:40:07 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you once again by

00:40:10 ◼   ► Harvest. If you're a freelancer or part of a team and you have client work, you know just how tricky

00:40:15 ◼   ► and annoying it can be to both track your time and send out the invoices that you need so you can get

00:40:20 ◼   ► paid. Well, this is where Harvest can help you. Harvest lets you track exactly how much time

00:40:25 ◼   ► you're spending on your projects and you can do this from the web, from your phone, your computer,

00:40:30 ◼   ► or even your watch. Harvest's great time tracking is available for you no matter where you get your

00:40:36 ◼   ► work done or no matter where it pops into your mind that you need to be tracking that time or

00:40:40 ◼   ► sending that invoice. This makes sure that you'll never lose track of anything.

00:40:45 ◼   ► You want that time to be logged, you want that money to be counted and you want

00:40:49 ◼   ► all those invoices to be sent and this is what Harvest will help you with.

00:40:52 ◼   ► When it comes time to bill your clients, Harvest lets you take those tracked

00:40:56 ◼   ► hours and easily create and send beautiful invoices. They can be

00:41:00 ◼   ► customized with your own company logo to make sure that everything both looks and

00:41:04 ◼   ► feels super professional. Once you send that invoice out you also want to be

00:41:08 ◼   ► paid as quickly as possible.

00:41:09 ◼   ► You want to make it as easy as you can for people to pay you immediately.

00:41:13 ◼   ► And Harvest helps make that happen as it integrates with PayPal and Stripe.

00:41:17 ◼   ► So you can accept online payments on those invoices to help you get paid faster.

00:41:21 ◼   ► They also feature multi-currency support in case you're billing overseas.

00:41:24 ◼   ► That's really helpful for me.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And also automated invoices in case you need to just be sending the same thing

00:41:29 ◼   ► over and over every week, every month, every year.

00:41:31 ◼   ► Harvest have really built a full package for people that need to

00:41:35 ◼   ► track time and get paid.

00:41:36 ◼   ► They do this with great looking apps that are a pleasure to use by giving you the powerful

00:41:41 ◼   ► reporting tools that you need to keep up to date with what's going on in your business

00:41:45 ◼   ► and also by helping you go paperless with great expenses tracking.

00:41:49 ◼   ► I am super impressed with what Harvest offers.

00:41:51 ◼   ► It really is a full package and if you're the type of person that needs this kind of

00:41:54 ◼   ► thing I am sure that they're going to make you happy.

00:41:57 ◼   ► To get started with Harvest go to getharvest.com and create an account.

00:42:05 ◼   ► The first month is free, but you can save 50% off the next month by entering the coupon

00:42:10 ◼   ► code "CORTEX" at checkout.

00:42:12 ◼   ► Don't forget that.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Harvest for their support of this show.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Let's get back to the research part.

00:42:20 ◼   ► So I assume that once a topic has been lifted out of Evernote and like to be advanced.

00:42:27 ◼   ► I assume that you then when you start thinking about writing the script you have to start

00:42:31 ◼   ► more detailed research?

00:42:33 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's an intermediate stage we can kind of skip here, where things are what are called a zeroth draft.

00:42:39 ◼   ► We'll skip that for the moment. We'll talk about videos that I'm actively working on, of which there are usually two or three that I think of I'm actively working on these things.

00:42:50 ◼   ► things. And yes, at that stage I do set aside dedicated time to take all of this stuff that

00:42:57 ◼   ► I've gotten that I've been collecting over maybe possibly years because I think my oldest

00:43:01 ◼   ► notebook goes back to 2011 for a topic that I want to do that I've been collecting stuff

00:43:05 ◼   ► on.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:43:07 ◼   ► Yeah, that 2011 topic is one of these topics where the more I research about it I feel

00:43:14 ◼   ► like the less I know, which is why that topic has been for so long. Yeah, that's a topic

00:43:19 ◼   ► the more I research I feel like the less I know. But anyway, when I have--I have just all of this like

00:43:24 ◼   ► random stuff that has collected over the years,

00:43:27 ◼   ► but very often there are lots of holes in that collection because I haven't been actively trying to look through

00:43:33 ◼   ► whatever the topic is. So I do set aside

00:43:36 ◼   ► dedicated time to

00:43:39 ◼   ► research the topic as fully as is reasonable. And it's a bit--it's a bit hard to describe

00:43:45 ◼   ► this process because it feels very

00:43:48 ◼   ► Like people always ask how do you know what sources to trust or what do you think is reliable?

00:43:53 ◼   ► And it's the only thing I can honestly say is I feel like I've developed a sense of this over time

00:43:58 ◼   ► about like like where do you want to stop with trying to verify if something is true or

00:44:04 ◼   ► I'll give an example of one of the things that happens when you're looking at a big collection of

00:44:10 ◼   ► articles and and book segments and maybe podcasts on the topic is I sometimes come across little stories that in my mind

00:44:18 ◼   ► I always think of as too cute, right, or too perfect.

00:44:21 ◼   ► That whatever a topic is, there's some very commonly told story about it.

00:44:26 ◼   ► That just like it fits the narrative like a little bit too well, or the story is just a little bit too perfect about maybe

00:44:35 ◼   ► a historical incident or about how something works,

00:44:38 ◼   ► I feel like my brain has developed these red flags for these stories that are repeated over and over again,

00:44:45 ◼   ► but just can't... they just don't sound right to me. It doesn't mean that they can't be true, but they just don't sound right.

00:44:51 ◼   ► And the classic example I normally use is the

00:44:55 ◼   ► the naming of

00:44:57 ◼   ► Uranus, the planet. There's like this story about how it was originally called King George that was repeated enormously

00:45:04 ◼   ► in many different places, but it was just like too cute of a story.

00:45:09 ◼   ► And that's why I ended up researching that one and trying to find out like was this... is there any

00:45:13 ◼   ► documented evidence of Uranus ever being called King George? And the answer is not really, like no

00:45:19 ◼   ► there's this related thing about it being called the the

00:45:23 ◼   ► Jorgum situs, which kind of means King George in Latin, maybe? I don't know.

00:45:28 ◼   ► But like the King George story was just too cute, and so I felt like I wanted to research it.

00:45:32 ◼   ► But I can't describe like an algorithm for

00:45:37 ◼   ► this part of the script I feel like is really solid and this part isn't. I try to verify

00:45:43 ◼   ► everything but you always have to stop somewhere. You know, where do you

00:45:48 ◼   ► want to stop with research? And that I don't have a good answer to. How do I

00:45:52 ◼   ► know precisely when to stop?

00:45:55 ◼   ► By this point do you have like trusted

00:45:58 ◼   ► sources like people and/or places that you go for your research?

00:46:03 ◼   ► Yeah one of the things I try to do now that I've gotten a little bit better

00:46:08 ◼   ► about doing is when a script is about 80% done, I try very hard to reach out to domain

00:46:15 ◼   ► experts to have them review it before the script goes any further. It is one of the

00:46:23 ◼   ► most satisfying parts of my work, is to send off a script to someone who is an expert in

00:46:30 ◼   ► the field asking for their input, and they come back saying that there aren't any major

00:46:37 ◼   ► errors. That is always hugely satisfying when I feel like okay that is a good indication

00:46:45 ◼   ► that my system, even though it's a bit vague about research, is up to task. That an expert

00:46:52 ◼   ► in an area will agree with me that there are no major errors in the script. What usually

00:46:56 ◼   ► comes back is, and this is where judgment calls always come into place, is some question

00:47:02 ◼   ► about detail or simplification or like I've jumped over some step and I always feel like

00:47:09 ◼   ► that's a judgment call that has to be made about length of video versus detail of video.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Yeah that's a narrator's decision basically.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Yeah that's exactly right. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't always follow

00:47:22 ◼   ► all of the feedback that comes back from the domain experts when I feel like we have a

00:47:26 ◼   ► disagreement over the way the narration is going to go. And that's always the biggest

00:47:33 ◼   ► complaint is people say "Oh you left out this detail" and again it's like yes I left out

00:47:37 ◼   ► the part where the universe was created up until this point. Like you can't talk about everything

00:47:41 ◼   ► but it is very very rare. That's your job right? That is your domain. Like the understanding of

00:47:47 ◼   ► the narrative and telling the story. Yeah yeah but so I'm just very pleased that it is quite

00:47:53 ◼   ► rare that they'll come back and say, you know, "This is just a straight-up

00:47:57 ◼   ► error," or "This didn't happen in this way." But I feel a lot better

00:48:01 ◼   ► when I can have a domain expert review the script before I move any

00:48:05 ◼   ► further along with it. Now, the thing with the writing is

00:48:09 ◼   ► a lot of people say, "Why don't you approach the expert first and

00:48:13 ◼   ► save yourself a lot of trouble with the research?" Which seems like

00:48:17 ◼   ► a really reasonable question that I get asked a lot. And

00:48:21 ◼   ► My reply is that I have found that being confused and frustrated about a topic is a fundamental part of writing about that topic.

00:48:33 ◼   ► That you sometimes don't know what parts are going to trip you up if someone just explains it to you right from the start.

00:48:43 ◼   ► So I often make notes when I'm writing about which part of this am I having trouble understanding.

00:48:50 ◼   ► And those things are really valuable because in the very final drafts I often feel like,

00:48:55 ◼   ► "Oh, I completely understand this topic."

00:48:57 ◼   ► But I make sure to look at the notes of what past me was confused about

00:49:02 ◼   ► and try to think, "Okay, how can current me write this in a way

00:49:07 ◼   ► so that the first time someone sees it, it makes more sense?"

00:49:12 ◼   ► Or it anticipates the questions or the problems that I had at particular points.

00:49:18 ◼   ► So that's why I go to the experts at the end rather than at the beginning.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Because if they just explain it to you in their way and then you just take it as read,

00:49:28 ◼   ► you might not be able to then explain it in a coherent way for people watching the videos.

00:49:34 ◼   ► Yeah, or what can just happen is that somebody else's way of explaining it gets in your mind

00:49:38 ◼   ► and it seems like it's the only or best way to explain something.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Right? This is one of the reasons why I try to avoid other people's videos on topics that I want to cover.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Because a really good analogy that someone makes will lodge in your brain and it will prevent you from creating your own different analogy.

00:49:58 ◼   ► I call that brain pollution.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

00:50:02 ◼   ► Because I used to a lot more than I do now, like interview people about their work and their projects.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Kind of like a little bit about what we do here basically. And I did actually go

00:50:14 ◼   ► through one of these scenarios recently where I wanted to talk to you about, I

00:50:21 ◼   ► can't remember what it was to talk to you about something that I believed you

00:50:24 ◼   ► were gonna bring up on Hello Internet so I didn't listen to that topic until

00:50:28 ◼   ► afterwards. Because if I hear maybe Brady ask you a question or you

00:50:34 ◼   ► explain something in a certain way then it will pollute the way that I would ask

00:50:39 ◼   ► that question and I don't like to do that because even if I ask you the same

00:50:43 ◼   ► question I might come to a different sub-question or conclusion yeah and I I

00:50:49 ◼   ► just like to trust my own opinion in that rather than having it like spoiled

00:50:54 ◼   ► by any other scenario and they stood is when I used to interview people weekly

00:50:57 ◼   ► this is for inquisitive back in the day right exactly so some people would be

00:51:01 ◼   ► doing things and so they would be in on a bunch of podcasts talking about a big

00:51:05 ◼   ► thing that they were doing. Right, people are making the rounds. Exactly, like you

00:51:09 ◼   ► know the old like like on late night TV or something. Right. So I would never

00:51:14 ◼   ► listen to those until I was done with with my questioning so because it just

00:51:19 ◼   ► made the most sense to me. You mentioned about working on a couple of scripts at

00:51:25 ◼   ► one time. Mm-hmm. How do you keep them like separate in your brain so they don't

00:51:30 ◼   ► cross over like how do you and how do you decide which ones to put your time

00:51:34 ◼   ► into a certain period? I don't feel like I have any problems with cross-pollination

00:51:40 ◼   ► or confusion or overlap. It just seems very natural that I can keep them

00:51:44 ◼   ► separate. I don't feel like there's a collision if I'm working on two scripts

00:51:48 ◼   ► at once. And I actually find that it is the exact opposite. That when I'm writing

00:51:54 ◼   ► I almost always will be working on more than one script in a day. That I'll work

00:51:59 ◼   ► on I'll go through one draft of a script and then I'll take a little break like

00:52:05 ◼   ► I'm out in London this is where I'll get up I'll go for a walk for 20 minutes and

00:52:08 ◼   ► and switch to a different location and then when I get to another place I'll

00:52:12 ◼   ► sit down and then I I won't be able to work on the thing that I've just worked

00:52:16 ◼   ► on it's much easier to then switch to maybe you know what's going to be the

00:52:21 ◼   ► second video in the future and work on a draft through that I have done this

00:52:26 ◼   ► since I was a kid in school.

00:52:29 ◼   ► That I was always aware of

00:52:32 ◼   ► there's some limit of how much I can work on, say,

00:52:36 ◼   ► you know, like a dumb essay for English class in a day.

00:52:40 ◼   ► That there's no way for me to work on it more

00:52:44 ◼   ► to make it any better after a certain number of time every day.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And so I was aware that if I needed to have something be good,

00:52:52 ◼   ► I had to very much track how many days are between now and the target, because

00:52:57 ◼   ► you know, eight hour and a half long sessions over eight days is way better than working 15 hours in

00:53:05 ◼   ► a row the day before. Like, I won't produce anything remotely as good. And I think it's

00:53:10 ◼   ► probably related to sleeping between those times, is my guess. That there's something about sleeping

00:53:17 ◼   ► and then waking up and working on it anew,

00:53:20 ◼   ► that is what allows me to make improvements to the script that I'm working on.

00:53:26 ◼   ► At least that has been my experience, so that's why,

00:53:29 ◼   ► if I want to increase the rate of production of videos, well,

00:53:34 ◼   ► the limit is how much time is spent on a script in a day

00:53:39 ◼   ► so I can work very easily on multiple scripts in a day

00:53:42 ◼   ► without feeling like there's any collision,

00:53:44 ◼   ► as opposed to saying like, "Oh, I did my one draft of my one script today. Close up shop!"

00:53:48 ◼   ► Right? Then it would be forever before I produced videos if that was the case.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Okay. It's just interesting to me. Do you not need specific motivation to work on one script over another?

00:54:01 ◼   ► How do you choose which one you're going to work on?

00:54:03 ◼   ► Is that regimented, like, "I'm going to work for four hours on this one, two hours on this one"?

00:54:08 ◼   ► I think in terms of drafts is the way I always think.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And in the beginning of a project, drafts are much longer.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Because usually after the collection, pulling things out of Evernote phase,

00:54:21 ◼   ► I have a text file that's usually maybe 5 to 10,000 words long.

00:54:26 ◼   ► That's like the starting point for what's eventually going to become a video.

00:54:30 ◼   ► And just for comparison, I'm usually aiming for a thousand words in the final script.

00:54:36 ◼   ► So I want to cut it down by a fifth or by a tenth, depending on how much I've started with.

00:54:41 ◼   ► So going through 10,000 words to complete a full draft the very first time I do it,

00:54:49 ◼   ► that can take most of a morning. In no small part because it's just like random gibberish

00:54:55 ◼   ► and sentences and half thought-out thoughts, so it's like it takes a long time to go through

00:55:00 ◼   ► it once the first time. But every subsequent draft takes a little bit of less time. So this

00:55:06 ◼   ► This is how things progress.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I very much think in terms of drafts as opposed to raw hours.

00:55:14 ◼   ► I mean, there is a bit of a collision here because I have found that after about an hour

00:55:18 ◼   ► and a half, I usually need some kind of break if I'm doing this sort of work.

00:55:22 ◼   ► But if I'm taking a brand new 10,000 word thing that I'm trying to do the first draft

00:55:27 ◼   ► of, I will take a little bit of a break and then go back to it because I really want to

00:55:31 ◼   ► get through one draft of that video in that day.

00:55:36 ◼   ► that might take longer. But if I happen to be in a situation

00:55:39 ◼   ► where I have two scripts or three scripts that are

00:55:41 ◼   ► relatively close to being finished, I can do you know

00:55:44 ◼   ► three drafts in the morning because it's much much faster.

00:55:47 ◼   ► The closer the draft gets to being finished because I'm

00:55:50 ◼   ► making increasingly minor changes as time goes on. So you

00:55:54 ◼   ► kind of treat a draft as a unit of time which fluctuates. It's

00:55:59 ◼   ► just a thing. It is that the the item that needs to be

00:56:01 ◼   ► it is the draft?

00:56:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I think of

00:56:05 ◼   ► like a draft a day is what needs to happen on the scripts that I am currently working on.

00:56:12 ◼   ► But a draft may greatly vary in the amount of time that it actually takes depending on how close to finished it is.

00:56:18 ◼   ► So this is also why it's kind of easier for me to juggle things because I'm very likely to have

00:56:24 ◼   ► one video that is very close to being finished script wise and so I can go through that script very fast and

00:56:31 ◼   ► And then I have a bunch of time still left over in the morning where I can work on writing

00:56:35 ◼   ► And so I'll bump back to something that's much less finished and try to work through that

00:56:39 ◼   ► Because again, it's like I need these days between drafts. Otherwise the drafts don't seem to progress

00:56:46 ◼   ► They don't seem to get better if I try to do two or three drafts in a single day

00:56:50 ◼   ► the only exception to this that I have found is

00:56:53 ◼   ► Doing a script out loud. So say going to my office when nobody is around at night

00:57:00 ◼   ► and reading the script out loud, my brain seems to count as a totally different thing.

00:57:07 ◼   ► So as I get close to the end, I'm technically often doing two drafts on a script

00:57:12 ◼   ► because I'm doing writing in the morning and then reading it out loud in the evening.

00:57:17 ◼   ► And then I'm very much focused on how does this sound, right?

00:57:20 ◼   ► What is the rhythm of the sentence?

00:57:22 ◼   ► Which feels very different from when I'm typing or writing by hand,

00:57:26 ◼   ► writing by hand which feels much more like how do I explain this thing?

00:57:30 ◼   ► What facts need to go where? It's like two different

00:57:34 ◼   ► mental phases that allows me to squeeze out a bit more, a few more drafts

00:57:38 ◼   ► per day as I get closer to the end. So you don't actually

00:57:42 ◼   ► start speaking the script until it's nearly finished basically?

00:57:46 ◼   ► I would say I probably can't start speaking the script until halfway through

00:57:50 ◼   ► because it's just a mess. It's not even remotely

00:57:54 ◼   ► remotely in any state where it could be spoken out loud.

00:57:58 ◼   ► Because I often have big quoted sections that I've pulled from other articles, it's like

00:58:02 ◼   ► "Ooh, okay, here's two paragraphs from some article that I want to be able to

00:58:06 ◼   ► try to say in a sentence, but I want to look at the original so I don't forget what was the actual

00:58:10 ◼   ► thing that the person was saying? How can I summarize that or how can I simplify that down?"

00:58:14 ◼   ► So it often can't be spoken through

00:58:18 ◼   ► in any useful way until much, much closer to the end.

00:58:22 ◼   ► So what app are these big text documents in?

00:58:27 ◼   ► I use editorial on my iPad as my

00:58:30 ◼   ► primary writing environment and if I'm on my computer I will use Byword

00:58:34 ◼   ► but I'm a big fan of the minimal writing environment

00:58:38 ◼   ► I mean editorial can do a million things but it can still just look minimal

00:58:41 ◼   ► and the dark background

00:58:45 ◼   ► light text is absolutely vital for me

00:58:48 ◼   ► because of a small eye problem that I have so those those are my

00:58:52 ◼   ► Those are my main concerns when I'm selecting text editors.

00:58:55 ◼   ► Minimal looking, dark background, light text.

00:58:59 ◼   ► Well obviously editorial has a bunch of really powerful stuff as well right?

00:59:02 ◼   ► Which must make it even greater.

00:59:04 ◼   ► Editorial has so many powerful features, none of which I use.

00:59:09 ◼   ► I use it because I like that shade of dark dark blue.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Hey, whatever works man, it's not orange.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Yeah exactly.

00:59:17 ◼   ► Do you write outlines or do you just write straight into like paragraphs?

00:59:22 ◼   ► You know what outlines are for?

00:59:25 ◼   ► Outlines are for school and you make them after the fact.

00:59:28 ◼   ► Outlines are for podcasts, my friend.

00:59:30 ◼   ► That's what they're for.

00:59:31 ◼   ► Okay, but you're not writing something.

00:59:33 ◼   ► You do outlines for the podcast and yes, that's totally useful, very good, and you make very

00:59:39 ◼   ► in-depth outlines.

00:59:40 ◼   ► I don't know really anybody who uses outlines who isn't writing something that is book length.

00:59:49 ◼   ► At book length, it can become a very different thing,

00:59:53 ◼   ► because then the unit of writing is almost like the length of my script, a thousand word or a two thousand word segment.

00:59:59 ◼   ► And then you need some superstructure to hold it all together,

01:00:03 ◼   ► but for something that's ultimately going to be a thousand or two thousand words,

01:00:06 ◼   ► or 2,000 words, and outline is just a total waste of time.

01:00:11 ◼   ► It's like way more infrastructure than you really need.

01:00:14 ◼   ► - I know people that do use them for large pieces.

01:00:18 ◼   ► So like when Federico goes to write his like 10,000

01:00:21 ◼   ► word reviews of apps and stuff, he uses mind maps.

01:00:26 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

01:00:27 ◼   ► - I think he uses an app called iThoughts to do those,

01:00:29 ◼   ► and they can also generate outlines from the mind maps.

01:00:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:00:34 ◼   ► - But I guess it does make sense why you don't do those,

01:00:36 ◼   ► considering the pieces are actually quite small,

01:00:39 ◼   ► aren't they? - Right.

01:00:40 ◼   ► - Like a thousand words.

01:00:41 ◼   ► - Right, I just think of essays in school

01:00:45 ◼   ► where the essay's not going to be 10,000 words

01:00:47 ◼   ► when you're in high school and you're writing something dumb

01:00:49 ◼   ► for English class.

01:00:50 ◼   ► But even then, they're like, "Oh, why don't you write

01:00:52 ◼   ► "an outline for what you're going to write?"

01:00:53 ◼   ► It's like, "Because it's way more work

01:00:54 ◼   ► "and it's not useful at all."

01:00:55 ◼   ► And I think like many, many people I have spoken to,

01:00:58 ◼   ► you just write the essay and then you write the outline

01:01:01 ◼   ► afterward and hand the outline to your teacher first

01:01:03 ◼   ► and go, "Oh, this is what I'm going to write."

01:01:04 ◼   ► but you're actually doing the whole thing backwards because it's not helpful.

01:01:08 ◼   ► But if you're writing something 10,000 words,

01:01:10 ◼   ► that's the breaking point at which I can see where an outline becomes useful,

01:01:13 ◼   ► because the only time I have ever sort of kind of used an outline

01:01:18 ◼   ► was for the 15-minute "Humans need not apply" video,

01:01:21 ◼   ► which is now four or five times longer

01:01:24 ◼   ► than most of the videos I normally make.

01:01:27 ◼   ► And that was one where I felt like,

01:01:28 ◼   ► oh, this is big enough and there are enough things

01:01:32 ◼   ► that I used on the outliner,

01:01:34 ◼   ► and I was actually writing the script in OmniOutliner because I could do headings for

01:01:39 ◼   ► "This is the part where I'm talking about autos"

01:01:41 ◼   ► and then "This is the part where I talk about creative work"

01:01:44 ◼   ► and "This is the part where I'm talking about flour mills"

01:01:46 ◼   ► and I could rearrange the top-level outlines which would move around big chunks of the script underneath them.

01:01:54 ◼   ► And that was the only time I found it really useful because I was having a very hard time

01:01:59 ◼   ► figuring out the order that I wanted to talk about things

01:02:03 ◼   ► And at that level an outline was useful.

01:02:05 ◼   ► So...

01:02:06 ◼   ► With a tool like that you're able to do that stuff like, "Oh, this entire section needs to move. I'll just drag and drop it."

01:02:12 ◼   ► That's exactly right. That's where it is useful for me. So I'm not saying outlines are useless under all circumstances.

01:02:19 ◼   ► But where most people would have come across them, which is relatively short essays in school,

01:02:25 ◼   ► they seem useless because they are useless in that scenario.

01:02:30 ◼   ► But I feel like if you are working on something big enough that you feel like you need an outline, you know that.

01:02:36 ◼   ► But you don't need an outline for the vast majority of short pieces. And I know people talk about mind maps.

01:02:42 ◼   ► Maybe it's just me, but I have never found a mind map useful.

01:02:49 ◼   ► I have tried many times. I tried with "Humans need not apply." I've tried with another big project that I'm working on and it's like

01:02:57 ◼   ► the mind map is just useless.

01:03:00 ◼   ► If I'm going, I have another big project that I'm kind of working on that I have sort of an outline for,

01:03:05 ◼   ► and I tried doing it with mind maps and it's just like, nothing.

01:03:08 ◼   ► I derive no value from this, I'd much rather have an outline if I'm going to be doing this kind of thing.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Mind mapping is one of those things that I look at and be like, I would like to do that.

01:03:18 ◼   ► I think that would be really good, that looks useful. And then I start doing it and I'm like, why am I doing this?

01:03:23 ◼   ► Why don't I just write an outline?

01:03:25 ◼   ► Like my brain doesn't seem to click into why it needs to be bubbles like this like just write an outline

01:03:32 ◼   ► But I know that there are people that get a lot of value out of it

01:03:36 ◼   ► And it must just be a different like way the brains are wired. I guess I completely agree with you

01:03:41 ◼   ► I have that same experience which is why I

01:03:43 ◼   ► Find myself every few years going back to to mind map

01:03:48 ◼   ► Let me try mind mapping out my next video and it's like why am I doing this?

01:03:51 ◼   ► Oh, right, because I think the final product looks nice and it looks like something I should be doing

01:03:55 ◼   ► but it just, I get nothing out of it.

01:03:57 ◼   ► But of course, the funny thing is I'm also perfectly aware

01:04:01 ◼   ► that to a computer, an outline and a mind map

01:04:06 ◼   ► are the exact same XML structure behind the scenes.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Like they are so fundamentally the same thing,

01:04:12 ◼   ► it's just the visual representation of them

01:04:15 ◼   ► that's different, but really a mind map and an outline

01:04:17 ◼   ► are nearly identical in function.

01:04:20 ◼   ► So I think it is the same thing like you're saying.

01:04:22 ◼   ► It's just a question of something in your brain

01:04:24 ◼   ► is wired one way or the other to like indented stuff or random bubbles all over the place.

01:04:31 ◼   ► It's like my girlfriend works in advertising and she's what's called a planner so like

01:04:35 ◼   ► she comes up with the ideas and like the thinking behind what would eventually become an ad

01:04:40 ◼   ► campaign right so like what is the need of the customer that kind of thing and she uses

01:04:45 ◼   ► massive A3 pads of paper and does mind maps on them and they're so beautiful and like

01:04:52 ◼   ► She uses all colors and it just looks like a it looks like a brains work, you know, right?

01:04:58 ◼   ► and

01:05:00 ◼   ► She obviously derives a lot of value out of them, but I I look at them and I'm like these look so awesome

01:05:05 ◼   ► But I just can't wrap my head around

01:05:08 ◼   ► Why I would do it myself over just writing a list

01:05:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean interesting. Yeah, like I said before it's just I can do them

01:05:17 ◼   ► I have made big mind maps, but at the end of it, I it's just that I derive no value from this

01:05:22 ◼   ► It's just something about it seems like a total waste of time and I end up just recreating the whole thing as an outline anyway

01:05:27 ◼   ► Our final sponsor for this week's episode of cortex is igloo the internet

01:05:32 ◼   ► You'll actually like with igloo. You no longer have to be chained to your desk to get your work done

01:05:38 ◼   ► You're able to manage your tasks while strolling through a meadow on a lovely summer's day

01:05:44 ◼   ► You can share status updates from your phone as you're waiting for your card to be fixed or something like that

01:05:49 ◼   ► Or you can access the latest version of a file from home in the garden whilst having a lovely sip of lemonade

01:05:55 ◼   ► On a great day if you've ever looked at your internet and thought whoever designed this must truly hate me and everyone

01:06:02 ◼   ► I know well those days are over

01:06:04 ◼   ► igloo allows you to make your internet feel like a place that you actually want to be and a place that you can actually feel

01:06:11 ◼   ► productive in. It's surprisingly configurable. You can completely rebrand it to give it the

01:06:15 ◼   ► look and feel of your company and thanks to GroupSpaces and RoleBased Access Permissions

01:06:21 ◼   ► with their easy drag and drop widget editor you can reorganise the whole platform to fit

01:06:25 ◼   ► exactly how your teams work and each individual will be able to access the things that are

01:06:29 ◼   ► important to them and it's all going to look the way that they need. Different teams, different

01:06:33 ◼   ► departments are going to need different functionality like maybe one team needs collaboration stuff,

01:06:38 ◼   ► other team needs the microblog functionality you can just add and

01:06:41 ◼   ► switch and turn off and turn on what you need where you want. With our mobile

01:06:45 ◼   ► lives these days people are increasingly bringing in their own apps into

01:06:48 ◼   ► companies and sensitive documents are getting scattered across different

01:06:51 ◼   ► platforms. Platforms like Box, Google Drive and Dropbox. Well with igloo you

01:06:56 ◼   ► can integrate all of those apps and services into one easy to secure

01:07:00 ◼   ► platform. This means that your company's documents are not going to get spread

01:07:04 ◼   ► out to places that they shouldn't be. If you know terms like 256-bit encryption, single

01:07:08 ◼   ► sign-on and Active Directory integrations, then you'll know just how safe and secure

01:07:13 ◼   ► igloo is. And also with igloo, you can share your files with your co-workers for you all

01:07:17 ◼   ► to collaborate on with their own document preview system. You can also track who has

01:07:21 ◼   ► read them with read receipts. This can be super useful for making sure that critical

01:07:25 ◼   ► information has been seen by everyone in your department, keeping everyone on the same page.

01:07:31 ◼   ► It is time to break away from the internet you hate.

01:07:34 ◼   ► Go and sign up for igloo right now and you can try it out for free for any team of up

01:07:39 ◼   ► to 10 people for as long as you want.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Sign up right now igloosoftware.com/cortex and this will also really help support this

01:07:46 ◼   ► show.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Thank you so much to igloo for their support of cortex and all of relay FM.

01:07:52 ◼   ► How far can you go down the process of writing a script before you can throw it out?

01:07:58 ◼   ► Like how far can you go?

01:08:01 ◼   ► know this makes me sad, Myke. The answer is very far. I get very far sometimes with scripts

01:08:06 ◼   ► and trash them, which is probably the biggest reason why my schedule with uploading videos

01:08:12 ◼   ► is so random, because... I mean, I've gotten better at finding things out in the research

01:08:19 ◼   ► phase and killing videos early. That is definitely something I have gotten better at over time.

01:08:26 ◼   ► But there's still this thing that can happen with scripts that I'm working on where I get

01:08:31 ◼   ► to a very late stage and they die a death of boredom.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Where I look at the script that I have written and I think it is about as good as it can

01:08:43 ◼   ► fundamentally be, but when I speak it out loud, it just has no life to it for some reason.

01:08:52 ◼   ► It's just boring.

01:08:54 ◼   ► It's very hard to say why a thing is boring, like what makes this different from a script that you think is interesting.

01:09:00 ◼   ► It's not a...

01:09:02 ◼   ► You can't really point to stuff, but when that happens, I feel like I'm not going to animate this thing and put it up that just seems boring.

01:09:12 ◼   ► And so that is usually the killer of a video.

01:09:16 ◼   ► The latest that can ever possibly happen is death by boredom.

01:09:21 ◼   ► It doesn't happen too often, but when it does it is depressing because it usually means

01:09:26 ◼   ► there's a huge amount of work that has already gone into the thing and for some reason it's

01:09:30 ◼   ► like "ugh, it's dead Jim, it's not going anywhere, this thing is just lifeless."

01:09:37 ◼   ► Is it only you that judges the death by boredom?

01:09:40 ◼   ► If you're asking do I show it to other people and get their assessment on it, the answer

01:09:44 ◼   ► is no.

01:09:45 ◼   ► "Death by boredom" scripts to other people, but I feel like I have a very good sense of it,

01:09:51 ◼   ► and I know that it isn't interesting. I don't know why, but that is my feeling about it.

01:09:58 ◼   ► I do sometimes show scripts to people for other reasons, for feedback, you know,

01:10:03 ◼   ► but the "Death by boredom" thing just feels very final, and I always want to be clear about this.

01:10:08 ◼   ► I'm not saying that I am bored with the topic. That's a very different feeling

01:10:14 ◼   ► that can happen sometimes.

01:10:16 ◼   ► And I know the difference between

01:10:20 ◼   ► I feel bored with this topic and I just push through it

01:10:23 ◼   ► where it's like, okay, I'm just gonna finish this thing

01:10:24 ◼   ► and I'll be done, send it off into the world

01:10:27 ◼   ► and I never have to think about it again

01:10:28 ◼   ► because I have gotten bored with this topic

01:10:31 ◼   ► because it's taken too long to produce it.

01:10:33 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:10:34 ◼   ► - But the death by boredom is just like

01:10:38 ◼   ► the script is lifeless and I can recognize that.

01:10:43 ◼   ► If there's any like my my skill is really in iterating scripts and making them better and better.

01:10:50 ◼   ► And part of that is being able to recognize what is not good.

01:10:55 ◼   ► And I'm looking at the final product and saying the result of all of my iterations have not made this good enough.

01:11:03 ◼   ► It's just it's just lifeless.

01:11:04 ◼   ► So that's that's that's the end of it.

01:11:06 ◼   ► And I feel like I don't need a second opinion on that because it is irrelevant.

01:11:11 ◼   ► Are they dead, dead, completely dead, dead as a parrot kind of dead?

01:11:16 ◼   ► You can't return them.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Or are they put into... is that called cryostasis when you freeze something?

01:11:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I have a big folder that is called Dead Projects that has a bunch of topics in there.

01:11:34 ◼   ► I end up, when that kind of thing happens, I do my best to collect everything that I

01:11:38 ◼   ► about the topic and archive it away in a folder because I like to have it there just in case

01:11:45 ◼   ► for some reason it's going to be resurrected in the future or if the research on that video

01:11:52 ◼   ► is useful for another video.

01:11:55 ◼   ► But to date I have never gone back into that folder and completely resurrected something

01:12:02 ◼   ► that I thought died from death of boredom.

01:12:05 ◼   ► I have taken parts of research from other videos and used them in future things, which is why I don't just

01:12:10 ◼   ► delete it and get rid of it and never see it again. It goes into a special folder for these kinds of

01:12:15 ◼   ► projects to separate them from the folder that contains all of my successfully completed projects, which is a much happier folder.

01:12:22 ◼   ► I like that you keep them in a little folder, you know.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Do you like that, Myke?

01:12:28 ◼   ► It's like, "Yeah!" Every time you drop it in there, there should be a little sound effect, like a little ding or something.

01:12:34 ◼   ► Yeah, there's not many items in that folder

01:12:36 ◼   ► I mean, it's it's funny thing my youtube career has spanned over several years now

01:12:40 ◼   ► But my total number of videos is not an enormous number. But yes, I do have a special folder for all of them

01:12:46 ◼   ► Do you actually enjoy writing?

01:12:48 ◼   ► Because I hate it

01:12:53 ◼   ► So, uh-huh, I

01:12:57 ◼   ► like many people

01:12:59 ◼   ► That I know

01:13:00 ◼   ► Well many people I know have successful blogs or they have blogs that they keep updated frequently whilst doing other projects

01:13:08 ◼   ► You know like, you know

01:13:10 ◼   ► I know people that make their living from their blogs and I know some people that like they make money from

01:13:14 ◼   ► Podcasting and they have a blog on the side. It's just another outlet. I tried blogging for many years

01:13:21 ◼   ► Before I came to podcasting and even since I've always every now and then I get the idea of starting a blog again

01:13:28 ◼   ► But fundamentally like one of the reasons that I do this speaking stuff is because I hate the writing process

01:13:35 ◼   ► So I've been working on an article for a website over the last couple of weeks

01:13:40 ◼   ► Site that I read and like called I'm or have asked me to do a little article for them and

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's been like torture. It's just been so

01:13:53 ◼   ► difficult for me, like I think I've written the article

01:13:56 ◼   ► four times, and they've all been completely different.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Like it's not like they're drafts,

01:14:00 ◼   ► 'cause each of those have had drafts.

01:14:03 ◼   ► And it's just, I find the whole process to be so difficult

01:14:07 ◼   ► because I agonize over every word.

01:14:10 ◼   ► Now I know that this stuff isn't necessarily

01:14:12 ◼   ► getting published, but it's like people aren't reading it,

01:14:15 ◼   ► but you're still gonna do the same kind of idea

01:14:16 ◼   ► 'cause you agonize over it in a different way

01:14:18 ◼   ► because of how it sounds.

01:14:20 ◼   ► But I just find the process of writing

01:14:22 ◼   ► to be so difficult and tedious for me.

01:14:27 ◼   ► And then every time I try and do it,

01:14:30 ◼   ► every now and then I get a great idea for something,

01:14:33 ◼   ► and I'll write something, and it goes really well.

01:14:36 ◼   ► But they're the only times that it ever goes really well,

01:14:39 ◼   ► is like I have this real clear idea,

01:14:41 ◼   ► and I just couldn't imagine writing things

01:14:43 ◼   ► on a very frequent basis.

01:14:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean it's,

01:14:51 ◼   ► In some ways I'm in a similar situation because I always feel like I should write more for my website.

01:14:57 ◼   ► Like occasionally I post articles up there about something that I've written.

01:15:01 ◼   ► But it's not very often, and I have a bunch of spreadsheets that tell me the return on investment is terrible.

01:15:12 ◼   ► because if I publish something on my website,

01:15:16 ◼   ► it can take almost, not quite,

01:15:19 ◼   ► but almost as much time as writing a script for a video,

01:15:22 ◼   ► but it earns me--

01:15:25 ◼   ► - Nothing. - No money, right?

01:15:27 ◼   ► Nothing, right? (laughing)

01:15:30 ◼   ► Just zero dollars,

01:15:32 ◼   ► because I don't have Google Ads on my website,

01:15:36 ◼   ► I don't have at this time any sponsors on the website.

01:15:40 ◼   ► So it is very literally zero money,

01:15:44 ◼   ► which is why the few things that I have written

01:15:47 ◼   ► as articles, articles on my websites,

01:15:49 ◼   ► are biased toward I'm really irritated about something,

01:15:53 ◼   ► and I almost feel like I can't not write this article

01:15:55 ◼   ► because I'm angry.

01:15:57 ◼   ► It's like I don't even wanna write this thing,

01:15:59 ◼   ► but I'm just kinda angry.

01:16:01 ◼   ► But nonetheless, I like you,

01:16:03 ◼   ► I feel like I should write more for my website.

01:16:06 ◼   ► I should write more articles.

01:16:08 ◼   ► But I don't. I don't because it's just so time consuming.

01:16:14 ◼   ► And when you're asking straight up, "Do I like writing?"

01:16:18 ◼   ► I think the best way to say is that in the book that I'm always recommending to people graduating from college,

01:16:24 ◼   ► "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport, he talks in there about craft skills,

01:16:32 ◼   ► about the kinds of skills that you can think of as craft work.

01:16:37 ◼   ► And I think in my life writing falls into that category because it feels when I'm working on a script that

01:16:45 ◼   ► this is very very different kind of work from anything else that I do.

01:16:52 ◼   ► It just feels different from even something like the animating which is also

01:16:57 ◼   ► creative work in a way where I have to come up with what's going to be on the screen.

01:17:00 ◼   ► But the writing feels like something that

01:17:04 ◼   ► with practice over time I have gotten better at in in various ways and

01:17:10 ◼   ► It's not enjoyable, but there is a certain kind of satisfaction that comes from doing it and

01:17:19 ◼   ► Maybe the closest comparison that I can make is going to the gym

01:17:25 ◼   ► I know people who enjoy going to the gym and those are

01:17:29 ◼   ► lucky crazy people. But for me, I do not enjoy going to the gym. I do not find it a pleasurable experience when I'm there.

01:17:37 ◼   ► But there's a certain satisfaction in the progress that you can make with lifting weights,

01:17:44 ◼   ► you know, seeing the little line go up, or like, you know, being able to put the next heavier weight on the bar.

01:17:49 ◼   ► There's a kind of satisfaction in that that is different from lots of other things in life. And also much like writing,

01:17:55 ◼   ► sometimes the best feeling is, "Boy, I

01:17:59 ◼   ► went to the gym several hours ago, and don't I feel awesome? And writing can be the same way. It's like, boy,

01:18:05 ◼   ► I had an amazing writing session this morning, and I feel great all day when things go really well with the writing.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Even though in the moment, it's not like, oh boy, isn't this absolutely an amazing experience?

01:18:17 ◼   ► That's why I would not go so far as to say that I dislike writing.

01:18:23 ◼   ► It's just it feels like it falls into a very very different category in my life

01:18:28 ◼   ► That is not like any other kind of work that I do

01:18:31 ◼   ► There is a satisfaction in it, and there's a kind of improvement in it

01:18:36 ◼   ► You know seeing a script go from just nonsense

01:18:40 ◼   ► Into a thing that is finished and then eventually part of a video that you know hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people see

01:18:47 ◼   ► there's a satisfaction in that but

01:18:49 ◼   ► You know, I wouldn't for fun sit down and write, you know, that would not be my experience.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And I have to say I've got a lot of relief in, I read a bunch of books about writing and, you know, from real authors,

01:19:02 ◼   ► people who write books, which is just a

01:19:04 ◼   ► Mount Everest of a task I can't ever imagine doing. But the consensus seems to be from professional writers a

01:19:12 ◼   ► similar story of "Boy, they sure like having written. They're not so sure they like ever actually

01:19:19 ◼   ► the moment of writing. One final thing that just relates to that is one of my favorite books on writing is Stephen King's

01:19:26 ◼   ► "On Writing" and

01:19:28 ◼   ► I really recommend that. The book is much more enjoyable if you have read a lot of Stephen King's work

01:19:34 ◼   ► But I still think there's value to be derived from it, even if you haven't

01:19:37 ◼   ► But in that book he talks about there are four different

01:19:41 ◼   ► levels of writers. You have

01:19:44 ◼   ► terrible writers, which is the vast majority of the population and

01:19:48 ◼   ► You have the exceptional individual writers, people like Hunter S. Thompson, who are just singular writers.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And then in the middle you have two categories, which are competent writers and good writers.

01:20:05 ◼   ► And Stephen King's opinion is that you can't do anything about the extremes.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Someone who's just a terrible writer, there's very little you can do to even turn them into a competent writer.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And then someone like Hunter S. Thompson, not to say that his writing wasn't work,

01:20:23 ◼   ► but he's almost born the way that he is. Like he's just so different and so natural.

01:20:29 ◼   ► That's just his skill innately.

01:20:32 ◼   ► But that in the middle you have these two categories and that you can take someone who is a competent writer

01:20:38 ◼   ► and if they're willing to put in enough time and practice with it, they can become a good writer.

01:20:46 ◼   ► And I really feel like this has been my path over the past several years, is

01:20:51 ◼   ► someone who was a competent writer, who through repeated practice and through

01:20:58 ◼   ► this constant iteration on a script, is able to take competent writing and

01:21:03 ◼   ► turn it into something that is good, right? Something that is a

01:21:07 ◼   ► script that is enjoyable for people to hear

01:21:11 ◼   ► spoken aloud. And so I really think that there is

01:21:16 ◼   ► is something to that description that with enough practice, competent writers can turn

01:21:22 ◼   ► into good writers and that's part of the satisfaction of the job.

01:21:29 ◼   ► Going back to your gym thing, it is kind of like a muscle.

01:21:33 ◼   ► Yeah, in some sense I think it is. It's a little bit frustrating because unlike a muscle,

01:21:37 ◼   ► you know, if you start to bench press a certain amount of weight, you can be pretty confident

01:21:42 ◼   ► that the next time you go into the gym you'll also be able to bench press that amount of

01:21:45 ◼   ► weight or maybe more. But with writing, with writing there's always this roll of the dice

01:21:49 ◼   ► that does happen to everybody who ever does this of just crap days. It would be like if

01:21:54 ◼   ► you went to the gym and you roll the dice, you know, and if you roll snake eyes you're

01:21:59 ◼   ► not going to be able to lift the bar. You know, even though the day before you lifted

01:22:03 ◼   ► 150 pounds. That's what writing can be frustrating like, is it has a much more jagged upward curve

01:22:09 ◼   ► that you can still just have terrible, terrible days even if you've been doing it for a long

01:22:14 ◼   ► time. Whereas the gym is a much smoother line as long as you can keep

01:22:19 ◼   ► going. But writing is not quite the same. So to round out today I have a couple of

01:22:24 ◼   ► Ask Grey questions. Okay. Which are semi-related because you mentioned earlier on that

01:22:30 ◼   ► your iPad is your primary working device, is your primary writing device. And I

01:22:35 ◼   ► have a couple of questions about kind of iPad paraphernalia basically.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Daniel wanted to know if you use any kind of cover on your iPad.

01:22:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I just use the regular smart cover that Apple makes.

01:22:49 ◼   ► I like that too. I have always used smart covers.

01:22:52 ◼   ► I said this recently, I feel like the smart cover is basically part of the iPad, like they are together.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's pretty good. Although I will say with the iPad Air 2,

01:23:04 ◼   ► I'm aware that that iPad is so light that the cover is now becoming a

01:23:09 ◼   ► non-trivial amount of the total weight and so I often find that I will take off the cover of the iPad Air 2 in a

01:23:16 ◼   ► way that I never do with any of my other iPads

01:23:18 ◼   ► Because it just it just makes it feel very different if you're holding it in the hands just because it's so crazy light

01:23:25 ◼   ► So I must be like well

01:23:26 ◼   ► I hope with the next round of

01:23:28 ◼   ► Smart covers that Apple is actually looking into making their covers thinner and lighter much more than making the devices thinner and lighter

01:23:34 ◼   ► And Carlos wanted to know what iPad keyboard you use.

01:23:37 ◼   ► I actually I have a couple from Logitech that I can never quite decide which ones I like better.

01:23:44 ◼   ► I'll have to I don't know the brand names off the top of my head

01:23:47 ◼   ► I'll have to send them to you for the show notes, but Logitech makes two

01:23:51 ◼   ► iPad keyboards both of which I like. One of which is I think Federico Viticci uses the same one

01:23:57 ◼   ► It's one that has like a blue cover that comes with it. It's relatively old as far as Logitech goes and

01:24:03 ◼   ► and the other one has like a light up keyboard which is very nice but

01:24:08 ◼   ► I can never quite decide which of those two I like better so

01:24:11 ◼   ► I tend to leave the lighter one in my go bag with my

01:24:15 ◼   ► on the go iPad and the heavier one as like in my office with my other iPad

01:24:19 ◼   ► but I like both of them it's very hard to find a good keyboard

01:24:23 ◼   ► for the iPad but I think Logitech makes pretty good ones

01:24:27 ◼   ► so next time we talk will you be in London?

01:24:30 ◼   ► Maybe?

01:24:31 ◼   ► Uh, this show is just so frequent, Myke.

01:24:35 ◼   ► It feels like we have to record tomorrow.

01:24:37 ◼   ► We're always doing this show from my perspective.

01:24:40 ◼   ► Even though I've just had a week off, it feels like, God, I could use another week off.

01:24:44 ◼   ► Cortex is always happening somewhere.

01:24:46 ◼   ► It does feel like Cortex is always happening.

01:24:49 ◼   ► I'm still just so thrown with my whole schedule.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I feel like I have to record...

01:24:54 ◼   ► Listen, before we record the next Cortex, I have to record the next Hello Internet.

01:24:57 ◼   ► I don't know when that's going to happen.

01:25:00 ◼   ► Soon, hopefully.

01:25:01 ◼   ► I think I should be in London,

01:25:04 ◼   ► which means you will now have something like

01:25:07 ◼   ► four podcasts in a row on which I am very jet lagged.

01:25:10 ◼   ► So your timing for this 10 episode run was terrible.

01:25:14 ◼   ► - Hey. - It was over,

01:25:15 ◼   ► over a huge vacation.

01:25:17 ◼   ► - This didn't just happen to you, okay?

01:25:19 ◼   ► Like we agreed on this.

01:25:21 ◼   ► - I feel like it did just happen.

01:25:23 ◼   ► We did agree.

01:25:24 ◼   ► We did agree,

01:25:25 ◼   ► but it was terrible timing.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I'm still gonna take the opinion

01:25:29 ◼   ► that this feels like it just happened to me.

01:25:30 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:25:31 ◼   ► - I'm just minding my own business

01:25:33 ◼   ► and Myke Hurley bullied me into a podcast.

01:25:35 ◼   ► That's my story and that's what I'm sticking with.