Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Oh, by the way, I don't know how I missed you bleeping out the god damn it, but boy did that sound hilarious on the actual show.

00:00:04 ◼   ► [Ding]

00:00:05 ◼   ► You have very nice show notes, by the way. You have little outlines, bullet points.

00:00:09 ◼   ► There's way better show notes than I ever put together.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I very much like outlines and show notes,

00:00:15 ◼   ► because it allows me to feel safe and secure when I come to the show that I always know what I'm going to be talking about.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hmm. But this is quite an outline for the listeners.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Myke has an outline that's about four pages long in our shared Google doc here.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And it also is four indentations deep at some points here.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Four levels of hierarchy. It's quite the outline.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Questions on questions, Gray.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, there you go.

00:00:42 ◼   ► So our first piece of follow-up comes from BNCosby on Twitter,

00:00:46 ◼   ► and they found the background that you couldn't find,

00:00:52 ◼   ► Which is your iPhone background.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Yes, I looked at that link, that does seem to be the artist and the original,

00:00:58 ◼   ► so we'll put that in the show notes as the wallpaper that I use.

00:01:01 ◼   ► So thank you to Brandon for finding that.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I actually put it in last episode's show notes as well.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Mhm.

00:01:07 ◼   ► But the thing is, only some podcast apps update the show notes.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Eagle-eyed observers will have found it in last week's notes.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Mhm.

00:01:18 ◼   ► But if you didn't see it in last week's notes, it is now in this week's.

00:01:22 ◼   ► And it's an excellent background.

00:01:24 ◼   ► It is very nice. I like mine though.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Now. I'm very happy.

00:01:28 ◼   ► I spent about 20 minutes aligning it.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Uh huh. Is it actually aligned now?

00:01:33 ◼   ► Pretty much.

00:01:34 ◼   ► There is no pretty much aligned.

00:01:38 ◼   ► It cannot be aligned though, because even with perspective zoom off,

00:01:42 ◼   ► the iPhone will move the background depending on the angle that you look at it.

00:01:46 ◼   ► So I can kind of never get it perfect, but as I'm looking at it right now, it is in my

00:01:51 ◼   ► dock and it is perfectly still, the line is nice and in between those two dots that I

00:01:56 ◼   ► have.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it doesn't move at all if you have perspective zoom off.

00:01:59 ◼   ► It moves very, very marginally, but it does move.

00:02:02 ◼   ► I can see it.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I can see the line moving between the two dots as I move to front left and right.

00:02:07 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure I believe you.

00:02:08 ◼   ► I think you've just misaligned it.

00:02:10 ◼   ► The thing with misaligning stuff is it's a bit like the uncanny valley where the closer

00:02:15 ◼   ► something is to being aligned but it's not aligned the more annoying it gets

00:02:20 ◼   ► whereas if it's just completely misaligned you think oh it doesn't even

00:02:23 ◼   ► matter who cares but if you're just a couple millimeters off that's way more

00:02:28 ◼   ► irritating than being a centimeter off I guarantee to you I have perspective zoom

00:02:32 ◼   ► off mm-hmm I've taken two screenshots and you will see how it has moved from

00:02:37 ◼   ► left to right because I know that you won't believe me I'm now taking a

00:02:41 ◼   ► screenshot of the settings where it shows that I have perspective zoom

00:02:44 ◼   ► turned off. That proves nothing. Do you see? Do you see how the line is moving?

00:02:51 ◼   ► Well then then what good is the setting of perspective zoom if turning it off

00:02:54 ◼   ► still leaves it on? I don't know because I think perspective zoom is way more

00:02:58 ◼   ► than that like it's like the crazy looks like you're flying through space kind of

00:03:01 ◼   ► thing. It's not that I don't believe you but it's mostly that I don't believe you.

00:03:06 ◼   ► Yeah. I totally get it. Maybe I just can't see it on mine because it's not a perfect grid.

00:03:14 ◼   ► But if you take a look at the evidence that I have presented you, does it appear that I am correct?

00:03:20 ◼   ► Sorry, I'm too busy taking my own evidence here. I wasn't really listening to you.

00:03:24 ◼   ► What were you saying? You're right? Is that what you're trying to tell me?

00:03:26 ◼   ► I'm trying to, yes. If you look at exhibit A, B, and C, then you must be able to agree

00:03:33 ◼   ► that there is an issue here. That it seems like it is moving. And I have it set us off.

00:03:38 ◼   ► I have perspective zoom off on my phone. I've just wiggled it around and taken different

00:03:42 ◼   ► screenshots and the background does not move. I think your phone's just broken.

00:03:45 ◼   ► I have another question for you. Do you have the reduced motion setting turned off?

00:03:48 ◼   ► Okay, reduced motion is off.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Well, it is on mine too. And you can clearly see how the icons are moving left to right.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I think you're just really bad at aligning wallpaper.

00:04:03 ◼   ► I think you just don't know what you're doing or your phone is broken.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Okay, if you moved your phone to the absolute left,

00:04:09 ◼   ► taken a screenshot, move it to the absolute right, take a screenshot.

00:04:11 ◼   ► That is exactly what I just did. My wallpaper didn't move.

00:04:14 ◼   ► Can you send me them?

00:04:15 ◼   ► I can't believe we're doing this.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Yeah, they are exactly the same.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I don't understand what's happening here.

00:04:20 ◼   ► That's what I'm telling you.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Right, this can only be truly resolved

00:04:24 ◼   ► when the next time me and you meet for lunch.

00:04:26 ◼   ► So I believe that is going to be before we record episode five.

00:04:30 ◼   ► I think so.

00:04:31 ◼   ► By the time next week's show this will be finally resolved!

00:04:33 ◼   ► Although I fear this is one of those things we are going to get many many many screenshots

00:04:39 ◼   ► about from people's phones.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Tweet at you, I'm not interested in receiving people's near identical screenshots.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Your phone is broken.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Mine is fine.

00:04:50 ◼   ► My phone works the way I would expect it would.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Graham suggested a Reddit app called iAliens to me, because I said I hated Alien Blue.

00:05:01 ◼   ► And I like this app.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Oh yeah, have you used it?

00:05:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been using it for the commenting and stuff this week, and for looking at our

00:05:09 ◼   ► posts on your subreddit.

00:05:12 ◼   ► And I have been way happier with this than Alien Blue.

00:05:15 ◼   ► It makes so much more sense to me.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Does it have a dark mode?

00:05:18 ◼   ► I'm not seeing that in screenshots.

00:05:19 ◼   ► It does, but the contrast of the text is quite low. But it does have a dark mode.

00:05:25 ◼   ► That's fine, I'm happy to accept low contrast text for dark mode. I might give it a try,

00:05:30 ◼   ► I've been keeping my eye out for an alternative Reddit client because I haven't been thrilled

00:05:33 ◼   ► with Alien Blue lately.

00:05:35 ◼   ► You should really check this out, I like it a lot, it's very simple.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Okay, I'll give it a try.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I recommend it. So thank you so much to Graham, who was the first person to send that in to

00:05:46 ◼   ► us.

00:05:46 ◼   ► We had a few people ask this question, Gray, and I must say that I am very interested to

00:05:50 ◼   ► understand the answer to this as well because this is something that frustrates me.

00:05:54 ◼   ► How do you deal with the fact that when you move your iPad into portrait, all of the iPhones

00:05:59 ◼   ► move around and it ruins all of the work that you've done?

00:06:03 ◼   ► Yeah, well this is the same problem that the iPhone 6 Plus has as well, that if you use

00:06:07 ◼   ► it in landscape mode everything just slides over.

00:06:10 ◼   ► That is just ugly as hell though.

00:06:13 ◼   ► It is way worse to look at on the iPhone 6 Plus than on the iPad.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Yes. I remember when I first got an iPad, the first time I rotated it and saw that the icons moved around,

00:06:29 ◼   ► I was horrified. Because I knew that this was something I was going to have to live with for quite a while.

00:06:35 ◼   ► One of the reasons why I have, in landscape mode, I have three rows of icons on my iPad

00:06:42 ◼   ► is I think that that is fairly optimal for when you rotate it, you're left with, I think it's almost a 4x4 grid

00:06:49 ◼   ► there's one icon missing at the bottom, I think is the way that ends up

00:06:53 ◼   ► and I don't think it looks too bad when you rotate it

00:06:56 ◼   ► but I hate that and I don't understand why Apple doesn't adopt what to me seems the most simple solution

00:07:03 ◼   ► Which is, have the icons rotate in place.

00:07:08 ◼   ► I don't understand why they have to realign when you turn something to landscape or to portrait.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I don't understand why this is the solution.

00:07:17 ◼   ► So you'd have the dock on the side, for example.

00:07:21 ◼   ► And the dock wouldn't go to the bottom.

00:07:23 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, I wasn't thinking about that.

00:07:25 ◼   ► If you put the dock on the side, that's fine. Whatever.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I'm less concerned about where the dock is.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Because that's the less horrible part.

00:07:31 ◼   ► part. You can do something with the dock. That makes more sense to me actually. Just turn the icons around.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Yes, all of the icons stay in their same spot, but they just rotate 90 degrees when you turn it.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And then you still have them laid out in the same manner. That seems to me the reasonable way that

00:07:50 ◼   ► when you rotate something it should work. They wouldn't though, would they? Because what's in your top left

00:07:56 ◼   ► have to zen the top right, for example.

00:07:58 ◼   ► You can't ever, you can't achieve the thing that you want, which is,

00:08:03 ◼   ► "Oh, I want all the icons in the same relative locations,"

00:08:05 ◼   ► because you're moving a physical object,

00:08:08 ◼   ► and the screen ratio is different one way or the other.

00:08:11 ◼   ► So you have to do something with moving the icons around.

00:08:14 ◼   ► But I think the visual metaphor is best,

00:08:17 ◼   ► as if you were taking a piece of paper and you drew icons on it,

00:08:22 ◼   ► and then you rotate that paper.

00:08:25 ◼   ► that's what the icon should do.

00:08:27 ◼   ► But then because it's digital,

00:08:28 ◼   ► just have them rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise

00:08:32 ◼   ► or whichever way so that they are upright,

00:08:36 ◼   ► but they're still in the same location

00:08:37 ◼   ► as if you were moving a piece of paper.

00:08:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, like if you're looking at them,

00:08:42 ◼   ► they don't shift around.

00:08:44 ◼   ► They stay where they are when you're looking at them.

00:08:46 ◼   ► I feel that that makes more sense.

00:08:47 ◼   ► It doesn't help the muscle memory problem, but you can't.

00:08:50 ◼   ► Like the way that you'd have to do that,

00:08:51 ◼   ► it would look so ugly

00:08:53 ◼   ► because you'd have to do all this crazy stuff.

00:08:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, muscle memory is going to be broken

00:08:57 ◼   ► no matter what you do,

00:08:59 ◼   ► because the iPad is not a square device.

00:09:01 ◼   ► So since you already have to give up

00:09:04 ◼   ► muscle memory fidelity,

00:09:06 ◼   ► you might as well try to preserve visual fidelity.

00:09:10 ◼   ► But they go with breaking both.

00:09:11 ◼   ► They go, "Oh, well, we can't keep muscle memory fidelity,

00:09:14 ◼   ► so let's break visual fidelity as well."

00:09:16 ◼   ► And I don't understand this decision.

00:09:18 ◼   ► My guess is this falls out from the way

00:09:21 ◼   ► iOS was originally designed to handle rearranging icons.

00:09:25 ◼   ► That's why this is there. This is just old code that hasn't been updated.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And that when you rotate it, it's basically just saying, "Oh, let's pretend like all the icons

00:09:33 ◼   ► were lifted up for a second and then we'll just slide them in like we're putting them in place."

00:09:37 ◼   ► I think that's why that happens, but it is ugly as sin when it happens.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And anyway, the true answer is that I almost always use my iPad in landscape mode anyway.

00:09:47 ◼   ► So I rarely have it in portrait mode. I like it in landscape.

00:09:51 ◼   ► And I guess if you use an app in portrait you put it back to landscape when you're on the home screen, for example.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Because I seem like if you read you probably read in portrait, right?

00:10:00 ◼   ► No, I read in landscape.

00:10:02 ◼   ► Okay, like two pages side by side or one page?

00:10:04 ◼   ► Yeah, if I'm using iBooks I do the two pages thing or it has two small pages of text. I like that.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Do you use the rotation lock?

00:10:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I do use the rotation lock.

00:10:12 ◼   ► I mean some things are better in portrait mode like if I am using instapaper instapaper is my one complaint about it

00:10:18 ◼   ► Is it doesn't do a double column thing and then the text is just too wide so I'll read instapaper in portrait mode

00:10:23 ◼   ► It's not like it never happens, but the vast majority of my time

00:10:26 ◼   ► I leave the iPad in landscape mode when I'm doing kind of anything productive

00:10:30 ◼   ► I seem to keep it in landscape

00:10:31 ◼   ► But when I'm reading stuff like if I'm looking at Twitter or something like that

00:10:34 ◼   ► Then I will look at it in portrait mode in episode one

00:10:38 ◼   ► We covered the various to-do apps that you use and then many people noticed in last week's episode an app that lives

00:10:45 ◼   ► smack-bang in the middle of your iPad home screen

00:10:47 ◼   ► That was not present on your iPhone home screen. That is wonder list of vunder list. I think it's I'm gonna call it wonder list

00:10:55 ◼   ► Yeah, you can but I like to call it from the list

00:10:58 ◼   ► Okay, because the company that makes it is called six from the kinder. So

00:11:01 ◼   ► Okay, I like to go with you. Let me know how that works for you in the comments of this discussion

00:11:07 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, some people will love it, most people will probably hate it.

00:11:12 ◼   ► What do you use Vunderlist for committing? Like what do you use it for?

00:11:17 ◼   ► Why is it just, or is it just siloed to your iPad?

00:11:23 ◼   ► I think, this again, I'm always trying stuff out.

00:11:28 ◼   ► I think it was present in the original screenshots of my iPhone, it was just in one of my work folders.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Ah, uh-huh.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I think that that was the case.

00:11:37 ◼   ► That would make sense. I was kind of expecting that that would be the case.

00:11:40 ◼   ► But if that is the case, then for some reason it is given pride of place on your iPad and not on your phone.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Wonderlist is given pride of place on my iPad,

00:11:52 ◼   ► mainly because I have a hard time actually filling all three rows with icons on my iPad.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Since that is primarily a work device,

00:12:01 ◼   ► there are more icons on there than I would if I didn't care about the aesthetics of it.

00:12:06 ◼   ► If I was just wanting two rows, I could get away with removing some things on there.

00:12:12 ◼   ► So there are more things on my iPad that are higher priority than they would otherwise be

00:12:16 ◼   ► on the iPhone, which is why it's slightly different.

00:12:18 ◼   ► I did a zoom and enhance on the original screenshot that you provided.

00:12:24 ◼   ► Enhance, Myke, enhance!

00:12:25 ◼   ► I have enhanced and I can see Wunderlist tucked away inside your work folder.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Or your VERC folder, I guess.

00:12:31 ◼   ► Yes, that's right, it's the VERC folder.

00:12:33 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:12:34 ◼   ► This is going to end well for you.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:12:36 ◼   ► This will not end well for you.

00:12:38 ◼   ► No, it will not.

00:12:39 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:12:40 ◼   ► But anyway, to answer the question is going to have to allude again to a topic that we're going to put off until another time.

00:12:46 ◼   ► But I asked Twitter a few weeks ago about to-do list apps that worked particularly well for sharing with somebody else.

00:12:58 ◼   ► And Wonderlist was one of the ones that came fairly well recommended.

00:13:03 ◼   ► There were a bunch of others. I spent maybe an hour or so trying out a few.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And I eventually settled on Wonderlist as the to-do list app that I am currently using to communicate with my personal assistant.

00:13:15 ◼   ► So that is a place that I can put tasks for her instead of having to do things in email.

00:13:21 ◼   ► This is relatively new. I'm trialing this out. I don't know if it will stick or not, but that's currently what I'm using it for.

00:13:27 ◼   ► Ah, the elusive personal assistant.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Yes, it's very exciting.

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00:15:20 ◼   ► So last week I teased the idea of talking about your video posting and kind of what

00:15:26 ◼   ► happens on the day that you post a video because you posted a video last week and there were

00:15:30 ◼   ► just things that are happening in your social media life that I found very interesting and

00:15:36 ◼   ► I wanted to kind of unpack a little bit of that.

00:15:38 ◼   ► So we can maybe look at some of that today.

00:15:40 ◼   ► So I want to start with the actual day itself and kind of talk through a little bit about

00:15:46 ◼   ► a day in the life.

00:15:48 ◼   ► I think there's some technical aspects of this that I would like to address at a later

00:15:52 ◼   ► date.

00:15:53 ◼   ► So the day that videos are posted, I assume that you know about these in advance, like

00:15:59 ◼   ► they don't just happen accidentally.

00:16:01 ◼   ► Like it's not like, "Oh, the video is done, I'll post it."

00:16:05 ◼   ► I can't imagine that you're that kind of person and like you know that it's going to be maybe

00:16:10 ◼   ► Wednesday or Thursday and then Monday rolls around and you're like yes it's gonna be Wednesday

00:16:14 ◼   ► and you prepare that way.

00:16:16 ◼   ► Yes I wish the videos could be almost accidentally finished.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Oh it's done!

00:16:21 ◼   ► How amazing!

00:16:22 ◼   ► But that is...

00:16:23 ◼   ► Look at this!

00:16:24 ◼   ► Who put this there?

00:16:25 ◼   ► That is most certainly not the case.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Yes I am I'm usually aiming for a particular Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday region that I want

00:16:37 ◼   ► to get a video finished by.

00:16:40 ◼   ► That doesn't always work out because things can take longer, but yes, I'm usually aiming

00:16:44 ◼   ► for a particular day.

00:16:46 ◼   ► And I roughly schedule out the next three months of videos and approximately when I

00:16:51 ◼   ► want them to appear.

00:16:54 ◼   ► So I do have a general notion of when I want the videos to happen.

00:16:58 ◼   ► But yes, they do get pushed back on occasion.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Is that a rolling thing, or do you sit and take time to plan that out at certain intervals?

00:17:07 ◼   ► It's both because things can happen that change what I'm intending to work on, and this is

00:17:13 ◼   ► where I'm usually working on, actively working on maybe two or three videos at a time.

00:17:21 ◼   ► I don't really like to work on three.

00:17:22 ◼   ► I can feel that my productivity goes down a bit, but I'm usually juggling a few that

00:17:28 ◼   ► I'm thinking about for the next few months.

00:17:32 ◼   ► But yes, whenever I finish a video, after that I do recheck the calendar and the schedule

00:17:40 ◼   ► and really think about it and say, "Okay, almost always the video is up later than I

00:17:45 ◼   ► wanted it to be and so I have to think about rejiggering the dates for the later ones instead

00:17:49 ◼   ► of pretending like I'm some kind of superhuman that's going to magically make up the lost

00:17:53 ◼   ► time which never actually happens."

00:17:55 ◼   ► And so he's-

00:17:56 ◼   ► Hey!

00:17:57 ◼   ► I have a video scheduled for tomorrow!

00:17:58 ◼   ► I mean, I say that like I do it perfectly, but there are definitely times when some part of my brain goes

00:18:05 ◼   ► "Oh no man, you're two weeks late for this one, you'll definitely make up the lost ground between now and the next one"

00:18:12 ◼   ► I mean, your track record is zero for ever actually doing this, but this time will be different

00:18:18 ◼   ► My brain does trick me in that way on occasion, but I try to be very conscious of if something is late

00:18:25 ◼   ► backing up videos that are in the future and not pretending to myself like, "Oh, I'm gonna magically somehow do it faster than I did before."

00:18:32 ◼   ► So the last video that I just put up, the one about the UK election, that ended up being pretty solidly a week later than I wanted it to be.

00:18:42 ◼   ► I think it was actually a lot closer to a week and a half later than I wanted it to be.

00:18:45 ◼   ► And so, yes, that does affect the other videos downstream. It always does.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Is there a specific change in your schedule that day that you maybe throw all our tasks out the window?

00:18:54 ◼   ► Like how does that look?

00:18:57 ◼   ► Okay, so let's talk historically what's happened.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And then what has happened a little bit more recently.

00:19:03 ◼   ► Ooh! Optimization!

00:19:06 ◼   ► Well, I don't know if it's optimization, but this is...

00:19:09 ◼   ► It could be the opposite.

00:19:11 ◼   ► This is the ongoing story of trying to engineer a life that I want to live.

00:19:18 ◼   ► and trying to make changes.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And you have convinced me to do Cortex at this very interesting time

00:19:25 ◼   ► when I've been very conscious this year about things settling in my business

00:19:31 ◼   ► in some ways that I feel comfortable making some changes.

00:19:34 ◼   ► And this, okay, what I'm about to talk about is one of these changes.

00:19:37 ◼   ► So what happened historically for almost every video that I've ever made,

00:19:41 ◼   ► The animation phase has always been just this horrible, horrible time

00:19:49 ◼   ► when I end up staying up really, really late to get it done, to get it finished.

00:19:56 ◼   ► How late is really, really late?

00:19:58 ◼   ► Okay, so for many of my videos, the answer is I didn't go to sleep.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:20:05 ◼   ► The one in particular that I remember was "Humans Need Not Apply"

00:20:09 ◼   ► where that video was months and months later than I intended it to be.

00:20:15 ◼   ► That one took a long, long time to make.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And that one was quite different from a bunch of other videos that I've done,

00:20:22 ◼   ► which I think contributed to that. I'd never done anything quite like that.

00:20:24 ◼   ► More like a documentary.

00:20:26 ◼   ► Yeah, the world's tiniest documentary might be the way to describe it.

00:20:31 ◼   ► I was more the style, definitely, like just in presentation and everything and length and that kind of stuff.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:38 ◼   ► But that one, I remember, I was getting really nervous that somebody else was going to do a big video on that topic.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And there were just a bunch of things in the news which were kind of contributing to "people are talking more and more about robots now".

00:20:52 ◼   ► And...

00:20:54 ◼   ► When I finally thought "this is close enough that I can finish animating this",

00:21:01 ◼   ► Whatever it was, the day before I just said, "Right, I'm just going to finish it."

00:21:06 ◼   ► And I spent the whole day and I ended up staying up the whole night and publishing it in the next morning.

00:21:13 ◼   ► That was not uncommon for me to just end up staying up most of the night to finish the animation,

00:21:18 ◼   ► to just do it all in one big rush.

00:21:20 ◼   ► Which was not very good for my physical health and it was not very good for my mental health,

00:21:26 ◼   ► but that is the way most of the videos have been made, is just with a huge push at the end.

00:21:32 ◼   ► And so, lately, with the past three videos, maybe four videos,

00:21:41 ◼   ► I'd have to look at what that fourth one was, I can't remember off the top of my head,

00:21:44 ◼   ► I have been trying much harder to not do that.

00:21:49 ◼   ► To not stay up all night.

00:21:52 ◼   ► I have long days still of animation that I find really boring, but I'm trying very hard

00:21:57 ◼   ► to say like, "You can't stay up anymore, man.

00:22:01 ◼   ► This is not a thing that you can keep doing.

00:22:04 ◼   ► This is a thing that you could do when you were establishing your video business, but

00:22:09 ◼   ► this is a thing that has to stop now."

00:22:12 ◼   ► For the UK one, I animated the whole day before it was released, and I finished the animations

00:22:19 ◼   ► the morning it was released, but I slept a regular night in between those two.

00:22:25 ◼   ► So previously you would have done that on the all the night before until it was finished.

00:22:32 ◼   ► Yeah I would have almost certainly stayed up until extremely late at night

00:22:37 ◼   ► and then gone to bed and just not go to sleep until it was finished.

00:22:42 ◼   ► So you're kind of in a way giving in a little bit to the part of your...

00:22:49 ◼   ► Maybe giving in isn't the right turn of phrase, but you are allowing the part of your brain which

00:22:56 ◼   ► is like "hey man someone might do this" you're just like being like "well that's gonna have to

00:23:01 ◼   ► be the case if that's what happens because I need to go to sleep now".

00:23:04 ◼   ► Yeah that's partly what it is. It's trying to

00:23:10 ◼   ► Ignore that feeling. I get this no matter what the topic is

00:23:13 ◼   ► I always get this irrational feeling right towards the end that somebody else is going to put this up right now

00:23:18 ◼   ► Of course nobody's doing a video about some nerdy tree of the UK election and nobody was going to do that video

00:23:26 ◼   ► but it doesn't change the fact that my brain still worries about that the closer we get because it's it's a

00:23:32 ◼   ► It's like my brain is doing some kind of opportunity cost freak out of oh, we're so close

00:23:39 ◼   ► This would be the worst time for someone to scoop us on a topic so we might as well finish it right now

00:23:43 ◼   ► And that that has been the freak out and that's usually why the it's very rushed and very

00:23:49 ◼   ► Panicky the animation section towards the end and so yes

00:23:53 ◼   ► I'm trying to push that back a little bit

00:23:56 ◼   ► And it's also just it's also just part of trying to live a healthier life

00:24:00 ◼   ► which has been an ongoing goal this year of mine and I

00:24:03 ◼   ► Function terribly when I don't sleep well

00:24:08 ◼   ► I'm very sensitive to a lack of sleep.

00:24:11 ◼   ► And so I was just like, this is not good for me.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And, you know, it can ruin the rest of the schedule for a couple days if I was up all night

00:24:19 ◼   ► and then I don't sleep well the next day. So that's partly why I'm trying to change the way this happens.

00:24:24 ◼   ► That's one thing that I wonder about myself because I push myself very late into the evenings.

00:24:29 ◼   ► Many days a week. And I feel like I kind of do okay on it.

00:24:34 ◼   ► But it's one of those things where I'm like, I wonder how many more years I have left to continue doing this

00:24:40 ◼   ► Well, this is the thing. You don't have an infinite number of years

00:24:44 ◼   ► That there is some finite amount of time and I have been doing YouTube now for four years

00:24:50 ◼   ► or so and

00:24:52 ◼   ► The things that I did in the first two years

00:24:54 ◼   ► Would have killed me if I kept doing them for three years

00:24:59 ◼   ► So I know I definitely toned down some stuff in the third year and and now again

00:25:04 ◼   ► I'm finding myself in another phase of trying to figure out how to

00:25:07 ◼   ► How to balance personal health and the amount of work that's being done because the trade-off here is that it

00:25:14 ◼   ► Definitely takes longer to do things in a more reasonable way

00:25:19 ◼   ► There's there's no doubt about that. It takes longer in terms of the number of days if I make myself

00:25:25 ◼   ► Stop working sooner

00:25:29 ◼   ► It can take, okay, three working days of animation versus a day and a half of just staying up all night and doing it

00:25:35 ◼   ► But that's the trade-off. There's always trade-offs.

00:25:38 ◼   ► The urgency a little bit is what you lose, I think.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Which is good because you can't keep that up forever.

00:25:44 ◼   ► But it's the urgency that enables you in the first instance to actually go out and do the thing.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. I mean,

00:25:52 ◼   ► It's also urgency for a thing that is yours.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Like it's very different when you are making a thing and you feel this urgent sensation to release it into the world

00:26:03 ◼   ► whereas

00:26:05 ◼   ► when I was working a regular job, I

00:26:07 ◼   ► Could not have stayed up all night and continued to work through the day with teaching stuff. No, I wouldn't it's just yeah

00:26:15 ◼   ► Yeah, it just wouldn't happen

00:26:17 ◼   ► there were there were times when there's there's a lot to do but you know what you're going to bed at a certain point because

00:26:21 ◼   ► You have to get up again in the morning and go into work

00:26:24 ◼   ► And so that kind of physical sacrifice is just not possible for a regular job.

00:26:30 ◼   ► So on that day, on posting day,

00:26:33 ◼   ► is there a kind of like a war room mentality in great hours? Like do you set up your environment differently?

00:26:42 ◼   ► Do you tend to do this stuff at home?

00:26:44 ◼   ► Okay. Yes, let me tell you about the setup, but I just want one final thing from the last point which is

00:26:52 ◼   ► There's a goal that I keep telling myself I'm going to hit and that I have yet to hit which is

00:26:58 ◼   ► I want to get to the point where I am no longer

00:27:01 ◼   ► animating on the same day that I release a video. I keep promising myself this will this will happen that I will

00:27:09 ◼   ► Say finish the animation on Sunday, and then I'll post the video on Monday

00:27:15 ◼   ► But I still keep doing like with the UK one

00:27:18 ◼   ► the last bit of the animation in the morning and then feeling like okay, well, it's done animating. I'm gonna put it up right now

00:27:24 ◼   ► Even if this doesn't make any sense time-wise about when to put it up

00:27:28 ◼   ► because of that that sensation of urgency of it needs to happen now and

00:27:32 ◼   ► The reason I want to do that is because the the you're right. I do have a kind of war room

00:27:37 ◼   ► Oh the the video is up now feeling for the day, and I don't like mixing a kind of animation

00:27:44 ◼   ► Stage versus putting it up live stage because there's enough things to do when I put it up live someday

00:27:50 ◼   ► I hope I'm good enough to separate out those two different kinds of days, but I'm not quite there yet

00:27:55 ◼   ► So do you just have like I have this feeling of like as soon as something's finished all it's doing is getting old

00:28:02 ◼   ► Yeah, a little bit. I think that's partly why I find this hard

00:28:06 ◼   ► particularly with the UK one is the one I just did is a good example of I

00:28:11 ◼   ► I uploaded it at not a really great time in the day for the video that it was.

00:28:16 ◼   ► I uploaded it at something like about 5.30 UK time.

00:28:20 ◼   ► And ideally I should have waited until the next morning to post that.

00:28:25 ◼   ► 5.30 in the UK in the afternoon was not a good time for that video.

00:28:30 ◼   ► But it was done and I couldn't hold back.

00:28:34 ◼   ► I was like, "I'm just going to put it up now because I just want this to be over with.

00:28:37 ◼   ► I want this to be finished."

00:28:39 ◼   ► And yes, I definitely had that feeling.

00:28:40 ◼   ► It's also a bit weird with even with doing this podcast with you. I think the

00:28:45 ◼   ► last one or something whenever it is we the the last one was done on maybe

00:28:51 ◼   ► Thursday night or something as I go we're gonna publish it tomorrow

00:28:54 ◼   ► afternoon and it was it was a bit of a strange feeling of oh we're just we're

00:29:00 ◼   ► just gonna sit on this I guess but it's done. Yeah I don't like it I hate it I

00:29:04 ◼   ► really really don't like recording things in advance like multiple days in

00:29:09 ◼   ► advance unless there is a reason like I'm going on holiday. I always have had

00:29:14 ◼   ► this feeling of like well it's done now so like that's all it is doing is

00:29:21 ◼   ► getting old. Like references of what a breaking things could happen in the

00:29:26 ◼   ► world that mean that something we say is out of date like I hate all of that stuff.

00:29:30 ◼   ► Yeah. Someday I may convince you of my philosophy of people don't really care

00:29:36 ◼   ► as much about schedules as you think they care about schedules.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Oh I know that. I definitely know. I know that I'm the one who cares.

00:29:42 ◼   ► That's the problem.

00:29:44 ◼   ► I think I care more for me than than the concern

00:29:47 ◼   ► that other people are going to think that it's weird.

00:29:50 ◼   ► You know, like I know that if I see something that makes the show out of date,

00:29:54 ◼   ► I'm like, oh man, look what we've done.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Like perspective zoom has been fixed. Mm hmm.

00:29:59 ◼   ► And then I'll be sad.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Going back to the to the location in the war room,

00:30:05 ◼   ► you're at home when when you post the videos.

00:30:08 ◼   ► I couldn't imagine you being anywhere else.

00:30:10 ◼   ► - Posting day is not an iPad day.

00:30:13 ◼   ► This would be a very bad day to say,

00:30:17 ◼   ► oh, I'm gonna go out to a cafe for the afternoon

00:30:19 ◼   ► with my iPad, right?

00:30:20 ◼   ► My whole business depends on this thing,

00:30:22 ◼   ► which happens once every six weeks,

00:30:24 ◼   ► and I'm gonna make sure that I'm in the least

00:30:26 ◼   ► optimal situation to fix anything if there's a problem.

00:30:29 ◼   ► So no, this is not a day for the iPad.

00:30:33 ◼   ► This is a day for sitting at home with my clicky keyboard

00:30:37 ◼   ► at my desk in my big iMac and that is what that is the situation under which I

00:30:42 ◼   ► release the videos. Plus a lot of this stuff is just a thousand times faster to

00:30:48 ◼   ► do on the computer because I have this big long checklist of there's so many

00:30:53 ◼   ► little boxes to tick and settings to make sure are done in the right way when

00:30:58 ◼   ► you're uploading a video that I just it's way easier to do at home of yeah

00:31:06 ◼   ► Just going through all of those little things.

00:31:08 ◼   ► Actually let me pull it up on OmniFocus.

00:31:10 ◼   ► How many... I'll pull up my little

00:31:12 ◼   ► template here that people are always asking about.

00:31:14 ◼   ► You called it

00:31:16 ◼   ► "posting day" a moment ago.

00:31:18 ◼   ► Is that what you call it?

00:31:20 ◼   ► I think... I don't have any particular...

00:31:22 ◼   ► It's not labeled anything in particular.

00:31:26 ◼   ► I mean, that's just how you reference the day.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Like, you know, if somebody said to you,

00:31:31 ◼   ► "Maybe Mrs. Grey, you're talking to Mrs. Grey,

00:31:34 ◼   ► Mrs. Grey and you're like it's posting day today and she's like oh okay I'm

00:31:37 ◼   ► gonna leave Grey alone. Yeah I don't think I have a particular name for it I just

00:31:42 ◼   ► talked about when a video was going live she does know that when when when the

00:31:47 ◼   ► video has gone live particularly if she is around when that happens this is not

00:31:51 ◼   ► a time to bother me about anything. So people just know this is do not disturb

00:31:56 ◼   ► day. Yes this is do not disturb time usually in the evenings I will emerge

00:32:02 ◼   ► from the office and then it's okay but otherwise I'm very focused on on what's

00:32:09 ◼   ► happening which will sound might sound a little strange when I talk about what's

00:32:12 ◼   ► actually going on but it's still it still requires a lot of focus yeah there

00:32:16 ◼   ► have been times where I have had to ask you something or I've spoken to you

00:32:19 ◼   ► about something on a day that a video has gone live and I just feel terrible

00:32:24 ◼   ► like I'm like I'm concerned that he may like send a dragon to my house something

00:32:31 ◼   ► I get very, you know, maybe you like cast a spell on me or something. I don't know but it I always get very concerned

00:32:37 ◼   ► about asking, bothering you with anything on those days, especially when I think one day I found a mistake of some description

00:32:44 ◼   ► that I was sending you, that felt worse, that felt way worse.

00:32:47 ◼   ► But at least I knew it was a fixable one, it's like a typo in a description or something like that.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I just pulled it up here in OmniFocus and

00:32:58 ◼   ► In my big template that that covers videos from creation to the end phase

00:33:04 ◼   ► There are about 35 items that need to happen after the video is complete

00:33:12 ◼   ► So I already have the file on my desktop and then what happens from then on there's there about 35 items and

00:33:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that that's what I'm what I'm grinding through about uploading it to YouTube checking that it looks okay on YouTube

00:33:26 ◼   ► turning off unskippable ads on YouTube, running through this whole list of things

00:33:32 ◼   ► and now with, there's so many places this stuff gets published now

00:33:36 ◼   ► now this includes also uploading it to the RSS feed

00:33:39 ◼   ► and doing all the stuff to get it ready to publish on the RSS feed as well

00:33:44 ◼   ► and there are just so many little buttons to tick and switches to flip

00:33:51 ◼   ► about getting it ready to go live in exactly the way that I want it to go live

00:33:55 ◼   ► Because when I had a much smaller audience, this stuff mattered way less

00:34:02 ◼   ► But now that when I press a button, I know it's going to go out to...

00:34:07 ◼   ► I don't even know what my subscriber numbers are right now

00:34:09 ◼   ► It's going out to somewhere between 1.5 to 2 million people

00:34:14 ◼   ► It has to be really ready to go

00:34:19 ◼   ► You can't fix stuff afterward

00:34:23 ◼   ► I need to have all of the annotations in place. I need to have the captions in place.

00:34:28 ◼   ► I need to have the Patreon people all thanked. All of this needs to be ready

00:34:33 ◼   ► before I can really press publish. And then there are a few things that happen after that.

00:34:38 ◼   ► Because if 0.1% of those people saw an error and told you about it,

00:34:45 ◼   ► it's a lot of people.

00:34:46 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, these are crazy numbers.

00:34:51 ◼   ► I try very hard not to think about that on the day that I'm actually uploading stuff.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I can imagine that probably helps.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I am very aware of the audience when I'm creating the video, but I try really hard

00:35:08 ◼   ► not to think about it at the moment when I'm getting stuff ready to go live,

00:35:11 ◼   ► because it is not helpful. It is not helpful at all.

00:35:14 ◼   ► I mean, I can sympathize with this on a small scale.

00:35:18 ◼   ► like my audience size or our audience sizes are nowhere near as big as those

00:35:23 ◼   ► but they're still large enough that when I am posting things I am seeing it as a

00:35:28 ◼   ► purely functional thing that is happening that I do this and then

00:35:32 ◼   ► something happens I don't think of it like I'm gonna send this out to the tens

00:35:36 ◼   ► of thousands of people that are out there in the world like I don't think

00:35:39 ◼   ► about that I just think about right I go to this place and I click that check box

00:35:43 ◼   ► and I copy this link and I test it and then I put it in the CMS and I publish

00:35:47 ◼   ► And then it's like that's the end.

00:35:49 ◼   ► Like nothing else happens past that point.

00:35:52 ◼   ► It's kind of all the way in my brain works.

00:35:54 ◼   ► So you press publish episode and you're done.

00:35:58 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:35:58 ◼   ► You can just go away then you can move on to the next thing.

00:36:01 ◼   ► How big is that OmniFocus list in total?

00:36:04 ◼   ► 'Cause you mentioned,

00:36:05 ◼   ► I assume it's like broken down into certain points.

00:36:07 ◼   ► - The broad categories are the script writing process,

00:36:12 ◼   ► the audio creation process, the animation,

00:36:16 ◼   ► The thing that I call "uploaded", which is everything from export to button press of "it goes live"

00:36:23 ◼   ► And then I have another whole section which is everything that needs to be done once it's post-public, once it's out actually in the world

00:36:30 ◼   ► So those are the various categories that it's broken down into

00:36:34 ◼   ► And can I see how many are in the list as a whole?

00:36:40 ◼   ► I think it's about 70-something now

00:36:43 ◼   ► Every time I go through and make a video, there's always something on this list that ends up getting slightly changed

00:36:51 ◼   ► or that I improve a little bit or I change.

00:36:55 ◼   ► So this is a real living document for me. It's something that is constantly getting better each time that I use it

00:37:02 ◼   ► and is like a message to future me about what you should do slightly differently next time.

00:37:08 ◼   ► How much of that stuff on that list you just would do from memory, but you put it there anyway?

00:37:15 ◼   ► It's just a confirmation. Because I imagine that about 95%, maybe even 98% of the YouTube publishing system

00:37:25 ◼   ► you could just do that without needing to consult that document. Because you've done it enough.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Okay. To answer your previous question, just look, there are 73 items currently on the list.

00:37:37 ◼   ► That number goes up and down a little bit.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Now, here is the thing that I have learned about myself.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And this is one of the reasons why I am so systems-focused,

00:37:48 ◼   ► is I will overestimate how much I will remember

00:37:53 ◼   ► if I don't look at the checklist.

00:37:58 ◼   ► It never fails that on an upload day,

00:38:02 ◼   ► I am way more confident that I am remembering

00:38:05 ◼   ► and doing everything than I actually am.

00:38:10 ◼   ► And even though I know this,

00:38:12 ◼   ► it still doesn't change how the day actually goes.

00:38:16 ◼   ► It's almost like an optical illusion or something.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Like when you're looking at optical illusion,

00:38:22 ◼   ► you know, oh, there's nothing moving on the page,

00:38:24 ◼   ► but it looks that way.

00:38:26 ◼   ► And there's a part of me which knows

00:38:28 ◼   ► you can't possibly be remembering all of this stuff

00:38:31 ◼   ► if you're trying to do this without the checklist,

00:38:33 ◼   ► but my brain always returns,

00:38:35 ◼   ► "Oh, no, we remember. We remember it all. Everything's great."

00:38:38 ◼   ► So this is one of the reasons why I really stick to the checklist.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And there was a very good example of this just happened, which was...

00:38:46 ◼   ► So Brady and I did this different episode of Hello Internet,

00:38:50 ◼   ► and the main thing about it was that there was a video in addition to the audio of it.

00:38:55 ◼   ► Now, on my "Putting Up an Episode of Hello Internet" checklist,

00:39:00 ◼   ► I have very many things.

00:39:02 ◼   ► I have a separate checklist for when I'm uploading a video to the Hello Internet YouTube channel.

00:39:11 ◼   ► For some reason that I can't conceive of, when Brady gave me the video file for our

00:39:20 ◼   ► special episode, I thought, "Oh, I'll just put this up.

00:39:23 ◼   ► I don't need to invoke the template.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Let me just do this now."

00:39:27 ◼   ► Brady must have found four or five things that were missing from the video when I put it live

00:39:33 ◼   ► of just little stuff that wasn't where it was supposed to be, or I didn't put in the annotation, or I forgot something in the description

00:39:39 ◼   ► And it was just a perfect example of, you can't remember these things, just go through the checklist

00:39:45 ◼   ► There's always something that you're going to forget

00:39:48 ◼   ► And the Hello Internet YouTube video checklist is only 18 items long

00:39:52 ◼   ► It's not some crazy long list, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm very likely to overlook some small thing when I'm actually putting it up.

00:40:03 ◼   ► I heard you laughing. Did you think 18 is a long list? I don't think that's a long list.

00:40:08 ◼   ► I think it highlights how differently me and you use these systems.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Like, for example, I would be more likely to just have post-episode one task.

00:40:20 ◼   ► Right. I understand that but I learned that this doesn't work well for me.

00:40:25 ◼   ► No, no, no. That's a difference in the system which is interesting.

00:40:29 ◼   ► I sometimes think that maybe I could do a little bit more.

00:40:32 ◼   ► There are some very special projects that I have these longer lists for.

00:40:36 ◼   ► For example, I have found that the biggest thing that I can do in this regard

00:40:43 ◼   ► is the first episode of a brand new show.

00:40:49 ◼   ► There are so many tiny details that need to go into getting that right.

00:40:54 ◼   ► And that is one thing it has to be right.

00:40:58 ◼   ► That is a perfect example of the kind of task that really benefits from a

00:41:03 ◼   ► checklist because it is infrequent enough that it's going to feel new every time

00:41:08 ◼   ► you do it.

00:41:11 ◼   ► And it is also complicated enough that it's not always immediately obvious what

00:41:16 ◼   ► you need to do.

00:41:18 ◼   ► And so that is prime checklist territory for that kind of task.

00:41:26 ◼   ► So yeah, I've learned that I need to do these things.

00:41:29 ◼   ► And I always-- another small example of just me being kind

00:41:35 ◼   ► of dumb, which I think some ways this show is, people are like,

00:41:39 ◼   ► oh, he's so productive.

00:41:40 ◼   ► And it's really more about the story

00:41:42 ◼   ► of a man who is not very productive trying

00:41:44 ◼   ► to figure out how to become very productive.

00:41:46 ◼   ► It's the way I think about my life.

00:41:48 ◼   ► But for some reason I used to always just trust myself to remember to upload the captions part of the videos.

00:41:56 ◼   ► That wasn't on my checklist for a long time.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Because I just thought, "Oh, it's just obvious enough. I'll just always do this. I'll just remember."

00:42:04 ◼   ► But YouTube eventually changed the way that captions were done and so it became less obvious to me to do it.

00:42:13 ◼   ► And then I felt really terrible because I actually got contacted by a number of deaf subscribers to my channel

00:42:20 ◼   ► who were saying, "Oh, I just wanted to let you know that the captions seem to be broken on your last couple of videos when they went live."

00:42:26 ◼   ► And I thought, "Oh god, now I feel really terrible."

00:42:28 ◼   ► And so they're like, "You need to add this. Even things that you are confident that you can remember,

00:42:35 ◼   ► situations can change around you." And so it is still helpful to have that item to check off.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Yes, upload captions. Make sure they're working before the video goes live.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Even if you think you're always going to remember it, you won't and you don't know how things are going to be in the future.

00:42:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's one of those things you don't want to get those emails.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Yeah, you just feel bad. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like a jerk.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Do you still get nervous when you put the videos up?

00:43:02 ◼   ► Like, do you kind of like, does your mouse hover over the publish button for a few moments before you press it? Like,

00:43:08 ◼   ► checking, double checking, triple checking, and then it's like "ahhh" press the button and run away

00:43:13 ◼   ► I have gotten better about that, but it is partly because on

00:43:20 ◼   ► on posting day, which we're now calling it apparently, yep, I

00:43:24 ◼   ► have

00:43:27 ◼   ► started to do a thing where I release the video in small phases to

00:43:32 ◼   ► try and help catch any problems that might arise and

00:43:38 ◼   ► And so what I do with the moment is

00:43:40 ◼   ► When I have most of the animations done

00:43:44 ◼   ► I have a reward on my Patreon page

00:43:47 ◼   ► which I call the the grammar Nazi perk or the grammar Nazi sneak peek is what is exactly what I call it and

00:43:53 ◼   ► I post a preview of some of the animations to a very small section of my

00:44:01 ◼   ► Patreon supporters and so they can look and see if there's any dumb mistakes that are on there

00:44:06 ◼   ► And they're very good. Those people catch stuff that I would never see in a million years.

00:44:11 ◼   ► I can't always fix all of it depending on how minor the error is and how many slides they're on.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Like one of the things that will happen sometimes is inconsistent capitalization in words.

00:44:24 ◼   ► But then that inconsistent capitalization is across a hundred frames, and it's like I can't possibly fix this now. It's not going to happen.

00:44:31 ◼   ► But if there's anything major, I will fix it then.

00:44:36 ◼   ► And then when the video is actually up on my YouTube page, I also now send out an early preview to a small section of the people who subscribe to my email list.

00:44:51 ◼   ► I use a spreadsheet to create a random subsection of the people who are subscribed to the email list and I send it out to them.

00:44:57 ◼   ► And that is a moment of very much trusting my audience because I don't want those people sharing that publicly yet.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And so far I haven't had any problems so I can keep doing it.

00:45:09 ◼   ► But I'll usually end up sending it to maybe a thousand people or so.

00:45:14 ◼   ► And sometimes they will catch something at the last moment that's a minor problem.

00:45:18 ◼   ► And I have changed stuff based on what that preview group has seen.

00:45:23 ◼   ► has seen. So by the time I'm ready to press the actual "publish this to a million people"

00:45:30 ◼   ► button, it has been through two layers of people seeing it to some extent in advance.

00:45:38 ◼   ► And with this very last video, I tried even one third layer, which is to post it on the

00:45:45 ◼   ► Patreon page first as an unlisted video so that the Patreon--all the Patreon people then

00:45:50 ◼   ► can then see it first for a few minutes just to make sure, okay, there's not any deal-breaking problem

00:45:56 ◼   ► and then having it finally go live. So that has definitely reduced the "Oh God, I hope everything is correct"

00:46:02 ◼   ► feeling that I used to have, is being able to rely on my audience to help me find stuff that would be

00:46:12 ◼   ► deal-breakers in the video before it goes out to absolutely everyone.

00:46:16 ◼   ► I want to come back to that in just a moment.

00:46:21 ◼   ► But what is the first thing that you do when you post?

00:46:25 ◼   ► Do you like get up and walk away for a few minutes?

00:46:31 ◼   ► What is the first thing, if you can even remember, or does it all just get a bit hazy?

00:46:38 ◼   ► The very first thing I do after I make the video public is I create the official Reddit

00:46:43 ◼   ► discussion link.

00:46:45 ◼   ► That is right afterward because I...

00:46:47 ◼   ► That is important to you, isn't it?

00:46:49 ◼   ► To make sure you get in there and do that?

00:46:50 ◼   ► Yes, I want that to be there as quickly as possible for people.

00:46:55 ◼   ► Because people love to comment right from the beginning.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And especially my videos aren't that long.

00:46:59 ◼   ► People can watch a video in four or five minutes.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And people are ready to have feedback right away.

00:47:04 ◼   ► So I want to make sure that the Reddit link is up as quickly as it can be as soon as the

00:47:09 ◼   ► video is public.

00:47:10 ◼   ► I've noticed that with Cortex, actually.

00:47:13 ◼   ► Like, we coordinate the release so you can get the Reddit thread up.

00:47:20 ◼   ► And as soon as it's there, people comment on it to be excited about the fact that the

00:47:24 ◼   ► episode's there.

00:47:26 ◼   ► Like before they've even listened to it.

00:47:28 ◼   ► So that is definitely a thing, which is very interesting.

00:47:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I like to have it up.

00:47:32 ◼   ► I do know that there's some small section of the audience that uses...

00:47:37 ◼   ► Reddit generates an RSS feed for every subreddit.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And so there are some people that use the Reddit inbuilt RSS as notifications for when

00:47:45 ◼   ► new things are up.

00:47:47 ◼   ► So that's a way of also just notifying some people that it is there.

00:47:50 ◼   ► We see it.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Like, I see the numbers spike.

00:47:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:54 ◼   ► I like to have that available as quickly as possible.

00:47:57 ◼   ► So that is the very first thing that I do when I put the video up.

00:48:01 ◼   ► And then there's a few other things on the checklist, but that's the one that I really

00:48:04 ◼   ► want to make sure is there.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Because the Reddit thread for me becomes the central place in which I'm gauging how the

00:48:13 ◼   ► thing is going, how are people reacting to it, what are people commenting on.

00:48:18 ◼   ► That's the other reason why I want it up as fast as possible.

00:48:21 ◼   ► But no, I don't press the button and then go for a walk around the block or something.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Because there's always the possibility that there is still some kind of disaster that

00:48:30 ◼   ► people haven't caught.

00:48:31 ◼   ► So basically there is no break.

00:48:34 ◼   ► Right, it's just you do it and then the next phase begins.

00:48:38 ◼   ► That is right. As soon as it's live, there are a bunch of things that I do, and there isn't a break.

00:48:45 ◼   ► I don't come back to the computer in a little while. I'm usually at my desk for a couple of hours at least after the video goes live.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Some of the people I know on YouTube, they post videos and then they're not as obsessed with following it right away.

00:49:04 ◼   ► I have known people--I'm not going to name names--but I have known people who have set videos to publish

00:49:11 ◼   ► while they are on transatlantic flights completely separate from the world.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And I could not live like that.

00:49:19 ◼   ► I would freak the hell out on an airplane

00:49:23 ◼   ► if I knew that one of my videos was going up at that moment

00:49:26 ◼   ► and I wasn't around in case there's some kind of problem

00:49:30 ◼   ► or just to see what the feedback is like.

00:49:32 ◼   ► But some people are braver than me.

00:49:34 ◼   ► (beep)

00:49:35 ◼   ► - This week's episode of Cortex is also brought to you

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00:49:52 ◼   ► I have followed Sean's work online for years.

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00:51:41 ◼   ► When you start posting things to Reddit

00:51:45 ◼   ► and to Twitter and everywhere else,

00:51:48 ◼   ► are you basically just going from tab to tab,

00:51:52 ◼   ► refreshing things to make sure that things aren't broken?

00:51:55 ◼   ► Like, is that kind of the first thing

00:51:57 ◼   ► that less about the actual content of the feedback

00:52:00 ◼   ► and whether people like the video,

00:52:01 ◼   ► but more like there is a period of time

00:52:04 ◼   ► It's like, I need to ensure that this is okay.

00:52:07 ◼   ► I'm mainly focusing from the beginning on making sure that it's working, that there

00:52:12 ◼   ► aren't problems somewhere.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And usually, I mean if the video is five minutes long, if there isn't some comment about a

00:52:22 ◼   ► real problem in the first 15 minutes, there usually won't be.

00:52:25 ◼   ► And so after that I can calm down a little bit more and then switch into talking with

00:52:31 ◼   ► people on Reddit about the video and trying to gauge what the reaction is to see, oh,

00:52:35 ◼   ► what do people like, what do people comment on?

00:52:38 ◼   ► And a particular favorite of mine is seeing if people spot some of the little jokes or

00:52:46 ◼   ► the little references that I'll put into the video.

00:52:48 ◼   ► I'm always really pleased when people find something that I add that's only there for

00:52:51 ◼   ► a frame of the video or they just notice a little detail that I put in.

00:52:55 ◼   ► I'm always very happy about that.

00:52:57 ◼   ► So after the first 15 minutes I can relax a little bit and then it's much more about

00:53:00 ◼   ► how is this video going?

00:53:03 ◼   ► What is, my understanding is, if there is an error of some description, YouTube makes

00:53:09 ◼   ► this very difficult to rectify.

00:53:12 ◼   ► It's basically the case of delete and start again.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Yeah, that is the only option that YouTube provides at this time, is that you need to

00:53:21 ◼   ► delete and start again.

00:53:23 ◼   ► Which probably makes the stakes high.

00:53:25 ◼   ► For example, if there is an error in our shows, I hate it and I fix it as soon as I can, but

00:53:29 ◼   ► I'm less freaking out about it because I know I can fix it.

00:53:32 ◼   ► And yeah, unfortunately the people

00:53:34 ◼   ► that have already downloaded it will either hear the problem

00:53:36 ◼   ► or they can just re-download the episode

00:53:38 ◼   ► 'cause I will replace it.

00:53:39 ◼   ► I can just replace things in our system

00:53:41 ◼   ► with the new audio file.

00:53:42 ◼   ► It's very easy for me to do that.

00:53:44 ◼   ► So I would assume that it probably heightens

00:53:48 ◼   ► the sense of needing to do things correctly

00:53:52 ◼   ► if the system that you publish to

00:53:53 ◼   ► does not allow for mistakes to be corrected

00:53:56 ◼   ► within the actual videos.

00:53:58 ◼   ► So what is the threshold of mistake?

00:54:01 ◼   ► How bad does it need to be?

00:54:03 ◼   ► Do you have an idea in mind of how bad it needs to be?

00:54:08 ◼   ► And tell me about a time when it has been that bad.

00:54:11 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:54:13 ◼   ► I have been, I don't wanna say that I have been fortunate

00:54:20 ◼   ► or lucky, even though I have,

00:54:24 ◼   ► but that's not the best word to use.

00:54:26 ◼   ► I have been lucky that I have never had a stake through the heart kind of error or mistake

00:54:38 ◼   ► in one of the videos where someone leaves a comment and I realize, "Oh, they just killed

00:54:44 ◼   ► my video dead.

00:54:46 ◼   ► I did something that was wrong or there was a thing that I didn't consider that completely

00:54:53 ◼   ► changes this video."

00:54:55 ◼   ► The reason why I don't want to say that I'm lucky is because I do spend a lot of time

00:55:00 ◼   ► trying to ensure that this doesn't happen

00:55:04 ◼   ► And that I am the person who puts the stake through the heart of my video when I am working

00:55:08 ◼   ► on it

00:55:09 ◼   ► And hopefully as soon as possible that I find something that makes me realize, "Oh, this

00:55:13 ◼   ► video, I should not make this video any further"

00:55:15 ◼   ► Or "This argument that I'm putting together falls apart because of x, y, or z"

00:55:22 ◼   ► So I haven't had that happen yet.

00:55:27 ◼   ► So I have been lucky in that sense, but I have also worked very hard to try to make

00:55:31 ◼   ► sure that that never happens.

00:55:33 ◼   ► But nonetheless, I have on two occasions that I can remember off the top of my head, I've

00:55:41 ◼   ► pulled the video after it's gone live.

00:55:44 ◼   ► And it causes problems.

00:55:48 ◼   ► One of the ones was for the Holland vs the Netherlands one

00:55:54 ◼   ► And I pulled it for something that I normally never would

00:55:57 ◼   ► Which was, there was a slide where I had the flags reversed for France and the Netherlands

00:56:04 ◼   ► Which is just embarrassing and makes me look really stupid

00:56:09 ◼   ► And the video went live and people pointed it out almost immediately

00:56:13 ◼   ► And because that was one of the rare videos that was like a pleasure to make from beginning to end.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Everything just worked. I knew that I really liked this video.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Everything about it was just great.

00:56:29 ◼   ► I knew it was going to kill me to have that flag reversal in the future.

00:56:34 ◼   ► And so when it went up, people immediately noticed I pulled it down right away.

00:56:39 ◼   ► I was able to fix it and re-upload the new version within maybe an hour or so

00:56:44 ◼   ► and then put it out live.

00:56:46 ◼   ► So that's something that I changed.

00:56:48 ◼   ► If it had been a different video,

00:56:51 ◼   ► let's say for example my...

00:56:53 ◼   ► "How many countries are there" video,

00:56:57 ◼   ► if there was some slide on there where flags were reversed,

00:57:00 ◼   ► I might not have changed that.

00:57:02 ◼   ► It would depend on the context.

00:57:03 ◼   ► But the Holland versus the Netherlands one

00:57:06 ◼   ► which is a video that I liked so much I didn't want it to have just a dumb, stupid problem like that

00:57:13 ◼   ► So that's one that I pulled

00:57:15 ◼   ► The other one that I pulled was...

00:57:17 ◼   ► There wasn't an error

00:57:19 ◼   ► I need to be a bit vague about this

00:57:21 ◼   ► but we'll just say there was a section that needed to be removed from my 10 animal misconceptions one

00:57:28 ◼   ► and...

00:57:30 ◼   ► That was one of the cases where it was a real problem because that video had been up for a little bit.

00:57:37 ◼   ► And when you're posting to a big audience, one of the things that can happen is other websites are going to link to your video.

00:57:47 ◼   ► The way the publishing world works sometimes is that they will load the video basically into a long line of videos that are going to be distributed out through the rest of the day.

00:57:57 ◼   ► And so someone who works at a website sees my video and they say "Oh, we're going to post that."

00:58:02 ◼   ► They put it in their system and they'll time it to be released in three or four hours from now.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And with the 10 Animal Misconceptions video, I heard from a bunch of publishers who were annoyed

00:58:15 ◼   ► because my video had been up long enough for them to see it and to schedule a link to it.

00:58:21 ◼   ► and I pulled it down and changed it, but then their links are all dead when their story

00:58:28 ◼   ► goes live later and then they look dumb, that they've linked to a broken video or a video

00:58:32 ◼   ► that's no longer there.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Plus there's also just the pressure that so many emails go out in the YouTube system that

00:58:38 ◼   ► when you pull something down, all of those links now no longer work.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And again it's like, "Oh, great, I just sent out several hundred thousand emails, all of

00:58:47 ◼   ► them with a link that doesn't work, and then I'm going to have to resend out a message

00:58:52 ◼   ► with a link that does work to all of these people.

00:58:54 ◼   ► That's why the bar is pretty high for when am I going to pull down a video at the last

00:59:00 ◼   ► moment, which is why I haven't done it very often.

00:59:03 ◼   ► How does this process feel in relation to posting a podcast episode?

00:59:08 ◼   ► Because I assume it's less pressure.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, the podcast is way less pressure.

00:59:14 ◼   ► There's way less pressure because you are dealing with the same system that I am dealing

00:59:18 ◼   ► with where sometimes something is wrong with the podcast when it gets exported, like the

00:59:23 ◼   ► audio falls out of sync for a little bit or there's some kind of dumb mistake.

00:59:27 ◼   ► It's very easy to fix.

00:59:29 ◼   ► It doesn't cause massive problems.

00:59:31 ◼   ► And yes, the people who downloaded it originally might hear an audio glitch or something in

00:59:36 ◼   ► the podcast, but it can be fixed for the future, and then that's fine.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I can relax about that.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I don't have to worry about that.

00:59:45 ◼   ► It's still annoying, I still don't like it,

00:59:48 ◼   ► but it is nowhere near the kind of pressure

00:59:52 ◼   ► that it is with the videos.

00:59:53 ◼   ► It's just because of YouTube's system

00:59:55 ◼   ► of not allowing you to change it,

00:59:56 ◼   ► which I don't know, I think it's dumb.

00:59:59 ◼   ► I think YouTube should be able to trust users

01:00:02 ◼   ► that have millions and millions of subscribers

01:00:04 ◼   ► to know what they're doing

01:00:05 ◼   ► if they wanna change something in a video.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I know that they have that system in place

01:00:10 ◼   ► because they don't, they're trying to prevent

01:00:13 ◼   ► like fraud or people taking advantage of viral videos, but I just think like come

01:00:18 ◼   ► on guys you should if you have have regular content producers doing this

01:00:23 ◼   ► every week I think you can I think you can allow it to let them change a video

01:00:27 ◼   ► if they if they deem it necessary but it's not the case.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Like there could be a contract that you would sign to say that you won't do X.

01:00:35 ◼   ► Yeah that you know that would be great I mean I've heard you know whispers on the

01:00:40 ◼   ► grapevine that maybe there's a way that if I do the right kind of secret handshake, if

01:00:47 ◼   ► I go to YouTube headquarters, that someone can manually swap out a video if it's a real

01:00:51 ◼   ► problem. But you know what, I don't want to have to rely on that or pull in favors to

01:00:56 ◼   ► get a video swapped out. That kind of thing then ends up annoying me more. It's like,

01:01:01 ◼   ► "Oh, so you're telling me it's technically possible, but you're just not doing it for

01:01:04 ◼   ► something? Oh, great. Thanks. Thanks, guys."

01:01:06 ◼   ► I assume with responding to emails and Twitter, well not emails, Twitter and Reddit and stuff

01:01:13 ◼   ► like that.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Definitely not emails.

01:01:15 ◼   ► And I'm assuming you probably don't do a lot with YouTube comments?

01:01:20 ◼   ► Every once in a great while I'll respond to a YouTube comment because on posting day,

01:01:26 ◼   ► very often I'm going back to the page where the video is for some reason.

01:01:30 ◼   ► I want to copy the URL or I just want to refresh it and see what the view numbers are.

01:01:35 ◼   ► So every once in a while the comment that is at the very top I will reply to.

01:01:41 ◼   ► But that is pretty rare because the YouTube comment system--

01:01:46 ◼   ► I mean, everybody makes fun of it.

01:01:48 ◼   ► People at YouTube seem weirdly proud of it sometimes.

01:01:51 ◼   ► I talk to engineers like, "Oh, we did a great job reworking our comment system."

01:01:55 ◼   ► It's like, "Okay, well, it might have been garbage before, but it's still a pile of garbage now."

01:02:00 ◼   ► So the YouTube comment system is just useless, which is why I don't really participate in it.

01:02:05 ◼   ► It's absolutely terrible.

01:02:07 ◼   ► So that is why, for me, the actual conversation takes place on Reddit,

01:02:13 ◼   ► which has reasonable algorithms for sorting comments and allowing people to vote stuff up and down.

01:02:19 ◼   ► It's like, it's not rocket science how to do a comment system that is reasonable,

01:02:23 ◼   ► but for some reason Reddit seems to be one of the very few places that actually does it.

01:02:27 ◼   ► So the video's been up, and it's been up for maybe an hour or two.

01:02:31 ◼   ► What's happening then? What is that like?

01:02:35 ◼   ► This is where, on my computer, I'll see if I can drag it up. I took a screenshot once

01:02:41 ◼   ► of what this looks like. But on my Mac,

01:02:44 ◼   ► on the day it has gone live,

01:02:47 ◼   ► it's been up for a little bit, I like to

01:02:51 ◼   ► put up on the screen the... YouTube allows you to have real-time

01:02:57 ◼   ► analytics. So you can see how many people are watching the video right now.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Oh man. Where are they? Where are they coming from?

01:03:07 ◼   ► And that is very interesting to see. Yeah, there goes the day.

01:03:11 ◼   ► I can see... I'm just staring at the numbers.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I don't really stare at the numbers, but I'll put up the screenshot.

01:03:20 ◼   ► And they'll actually do that for websites as well. And so I will usually

01:03:23 ◼   ► pull up

01:03:24 ◼   ► and put to one side of the screen the live view of what is happening on the YouTube page

01:03:30 ◼   ► right now and then what is happening on cgpgrey.com right now.

01:03:37 ◼   ► One of the things that allows me to do is to try to figure out occasionally when traffic

01:03:42 ◼   ► spikes occur, if some big place links to the video, I want to know when that happens.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And so I can see in the live stats of like, okay, there were a thousand people on cgpgray.com

01:03:57 ◼   ► right now, but all of a sudden it's gone up to 5,000 in the last 30 seconds.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Where did they come from?

01:04:04 ◼   ► And I wanted to be able to track that down.

01:04:06 ◼   ► So I will have that on one side of the screen, and what I'm doing for the rest of the day

01:04:12 ◼   ► is I have those stats up.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I will usually have Twitter on the other side of the screen so I can see the @ mentions

01:04:20 ◼   ► coming in, and I'll have Reddit in the center of the screen where I'm talking to people

01:04:24 ◼   ► and if I can, answering questions and stuff.

01:04:28 ◼   ► That to me is the enjoyable part of this process, is it's been up for a while, there's no problems,

01:04:35 ◼   ► I can see how it's doing, and also now I get to talk to people on the Reddit.

01:04:39 ◼   ► I really like engaging with people talking about the video, like making jokes and all

01:04:46 ◼   ► this other stuff on the Reddit while I'm keeping an eye on how are things going with the real-time

01:04:52 ◼   ► stats and how are things going on Twitter on the side.

01:04:56 ◼   ► So that's what I'm looking at for a large portion of the day.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And the other thing that I will do, which some people on the Reddit know, is that at

01:05:05 ◼   ► a certain point there really isn't much to do anymore.

01:05:09 ◼   ► I've answered most of the unique questions that are coming in on the Reddit, so questions just start getting duplicated.

01:05:15 ◼   ► And I can see, okay, the video is fine.

01:05:18 ◼   ► I probably had all the traffic spikes that I'm going to have at this stage.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And then I'll often, I will be basically alt-tabbing between this overview screen,

01:05:27 ◼   ► and I'll have a video game on some other screen.

01:05:30 ◼   ► So I'll flip over to the game for 20 minutes, play a little bit, and then I'll flip back and see, okay,

01:05:35 ◼   ► how's everything doing? Are there any new comments that came in that I want to reply to?

01:05:38 ◼   ► And then I'll flip back to the game for another 20 minutes and then flip back so that that's what I'll do

01:05:44 ◼   ► Probably around until dinner time at which point I feel just absolutely exhausted and emerge from my office to have

01:05:51 ◼   ► dinner and then usually sit on the couch like a brain-dead zombie for the rest of the day and

01:05:56 ◼   ► Watch arrested development or something

01:05:58 ◼   ► So you stop?

01:06:01 ◼   ► Well when I'm sitting there watching arrested development at this stage

01:06:04 ◼   ► I switch, I will have my iPad with Reddit on it, and I'll keep an eye a little bit on what's happening on Reddit.

01:06:12 ◼   ► But at that point, you have to realize on these long days, I have been

01:06:16 ◼   ► animating in the morning, I've gone through the whole process of releasing it to the world,

01:06:21 ◼   ► I've been keeping an eye on the comments. At that point, I'm pretty tapped out for my cognitive abilities.

01:06:29 ◼   ► So I will

01:06:31 ◼   ► usually not be doing very much except doing the like the minorest of eye keeping on with with my iPad on the couch

01:06:39 ◼   ► That's where I end up

01:06:41 ◼   ► So what about the next day?

01:06:43 ◼   ► I always play this little game with myself, which is how long can I go before I look at how the video is doing in the morning?

01:06:50 ◼   ► This is a this is a funny side effect of living in the UK

01:06:55 ◼   ► because

01:06:58 ◼   ► The rest of the world is still awake and doing things when we go to bed in the UK.

01:07:05 ◼   ► I love the UK time zone, by the way. I think it is really great, especially for someone who has an internet career.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I like it quite a lot. But it does mean that significant things can happen sometimes between the point at which I go to bed at like, say, 10 o'clock at night, and when I get up in the morning.

01:07:24 ◼   ► Sometimes there can still be big sites that link to it or another discussion that flared up somewhere about the video.

01:07:30 ◼   ► So I do go for how long can I go without checking in the morning.

01:07:36 ◼   ► But usually I don't make it past breakfast before I have to whip out my iPad and say,

01:07:40 ◼   ► "Okay, what are the view numbers at? How is this doing?"

01:07:43 ◼   ► I usually plan on having a kind of unofficial weekend after the video goes up.

01:07:55 ◼   ► That may not actually be on the weekend, usually it isn't,

01:07:58 ◼   ► but I don't plan to do any real work for the day or two after a video goes live.

01:08:07 ◼   ► And it's, again, usually because the run-up to launching the video is very intense.

01:08:13 ◼   ► And I've learned from experience that if I try to get right back into writing scripts for the next video immediately the following morning,

01:08:21 ◼   ► like I normally would do if it was a normal day, that just doesn't work out.

01:08:26 ◼   ► I'm still tapped out. I usually need at least one day, and I normally take two off.

01:08:32 ◼   ► And that is just pure downtime.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Usually I will just veg out and play video games, or I have a list of movies and stuff to watch,

01:08:43 ◼   ► and maybe I'll watch them.

01:08:46 ◼   ► And then this still allows an occasional checking in with seeing how Reddit comments are,

01:08:51 ◼   ► seeing what people are saying on Twitter.

01:08:53 ◼   ► But by the second day, that's died down, pretty much.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And then after that I feel, "Okay, I'm recovered."

01:09:00 ◼   ► And now it's time to pick up on the next video that is closest to release

01:09:06 ◼   ► wherever you left off and start grinding away on that one and bring that one forward to a publication day.

01:09:12 ◼   ► One of the things we spoke about last time was the fact that you remove core applications from your iPhone

01:09:20 ◼   ► like a very very interesting person.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And you mentioned on posting days, you not only put Safari back on, you also put Alien Blue and Tweetbot onto your devices.

01:09:35 ◼   ► On my phone, Safari usually stays off, but on the video day, yeah.

01:09:42 ◼   ► Alien Blue and Tweetbot go back on the phone in that space on the bottom is the way that normally works.

01:09:48 ◼   ► works. So the reasoning for this being... because you're at home so you've got the Mac. So why

01:09:56 ◼   ► did he come back? The reason for this is that almost certainly at some point before dinner

01:10:05 ◼   ► I will have to get up and take a walk around the block. Just to get out of the house for

01:10:12 ◼   ► a minute. And then I can have Tweetbot and Alienblue on the phone and it's there in case

01:10:19 ◼   ► I want to look at anything. I usually don't, but it's there just in case. And then it also,

01:10:27 ◼   ► they just stay on the phone for this sort of unofficial weekend that I take. And this

01:10:34 ◼   ► way if I go for a walk in the park or I go somewhere, I can then at any moment if I want

01:10:41 ◼   ► respond to some comments if anything interesting comes in

01:10:43 ◼   ► or if people say anything on Twitter

01:10:45 ◼   ► So during this phase, I like to have those things accessible

01:10:50 ◼   ► but it's because it's a very different phase of my life

01:10:54 ◼   ► The video is on my mind

01:10:56 ◼   ► It is useful to be checking stuff now in a way that

01:11:01 ◼   ► three days after a video goes live

01:11:04 ◼   ► is not useful anymore to be checking on how things are doing

01:11:07 ◼   ► The big, like 90% of the wave is over at that point.

01:11:11 ◼   ► There's no reason to keep checking stuff anymore.

01:11:14 ◼   ► And so that's why those apps then come off after, two days after the video has gone up.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Do you do anything with notifications during this period of time?

01:11:23 ◼   ► Because there's something to be said for like, going and checking Twitter over and over again

01:11:30 ◼   ► to see if there's anything bad, other than just having notifications and they just come to you

01:11:35 ◼   ► so you see them as they happen.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I used to allow notifications from these apps after a video had gone up,

01:11:44 ◼   ► but I realized that this is actually not very helpful to have the notifications come in.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Because then if I'm taking a quick walk, I'm just distracted now.

01:11:54 ◼   ► It slightly defeats the purpose of the walk.

01:11:57 ◼   ► So I don't allow the notifications on there.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I just have it if I feel like I want to take a look at them.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Then I will open the app, but I don't have it beep every time someone leaves a comment on Reddit.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Because it sounds like posting a video makes a really big impact on your life.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Like it derails things for like four days, you know?

01:12:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that is fair to say that the minimum derailment is four days.

01:12:25 ◼   ► The two days of animation posting and then two days off work, essentially.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Effectively, more often than not maybe, it basically blows out all week.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that's fair enough to say.

01:12:38 ◼   ► Do you think that this impact is maybe one of the things that prevents you from making

01:12:45 ◼   ► more than you do?

01:12:47 ◼   ► Well how do you mean that?

01:12:49 ◼   ► Well both, I guess, emotionally and time-wise, with the way that you do things and the way

01:12:56 ◼   ► that you react to things and how you take them and deal with them, every time you post

01:13:00 ◼   ► video you lose one whole week which pushes everything else out further again.

01:13:05 ◼   ► So maybe imagine if you had a video every week it would never work right

01:13:10 ◼   ► because you'd never be able to take that time off which then also means you can't

01:13:14 ◼   ► do every two weeks right mm-hmm so do you think that it affects you?

01:13:18 ◼   ► I have tried very hard to do more animation sooner but I have just found that this it

01:13:25 ◼   ► It takes longer trying to spread it out into six afternoons instead of just two or three solid days.

01:13:33 ◼   ► So there are ways in which I think if I was able to lessen the impact of that one week,

01:13:40 ◼   ► it might actually take longer overall to make videos.

01:13:46 ◼   ► I don't think I would ever get rid of the two days off because, quite frankly,

01:13:51 ◼   ► I look forward to that as a huge relief.

01:13:53 ◼   ► A show gift. Thank God like I put this thing up. It's done. It's over and now I'm going to take

01:14:00 ◼   ► Two days of just guilt-free. I don't have to do anything. I mean

01:14:05 ◼   ► this is something else that we can talk about on another show, but

01:14:09 ◼   ► the the biggest downside of being

01:14:13 ◼   ► Self-employed is the the constant feeling that there is always something you could be doing

01:14:20 ◼   ► There's never not more that you can do

01:14:24 ◼   ► And again, this year I have been trying very hard to carve out one day a week regularly where I don't do any work and I can just spend time with my wife

01:14:39 ◼   ► And that has been very hard to actually achieve

01:14:42 ◼   ► To have one day where I say, "You know what? I'm not going to do work on this Saturday"

01:14:49 ◼   ► So that's one of the reasons why the two days of relaxing after the video goes up, they are important

01:14:59 ◼   ► because it's the only time that my brain can really let go and say, "You don't need to be working on a video right now

01:15:07 ◼   ► because you just put up a video. You just put up a video. Nobody's expecting a video three days from now.

01:15:13 ◼   ► that's not going to happen, you can actually just relax and see how this one

01:15:19 ◼   ► see how this one turns out.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Yes, this is what I was like thinking about and getting at

01:15:25 ◼   ► because it's like you know the scheduling thing and we're gonna talk about

01:15:28 ◼   ► scheduling at some point as well but I know it's something that many people

01:15:31 ◼   ► always ask you like you know give me more videos and there is an element if you

01:15:35 ◼   ► made more videos you would make more money you could double your income right

01:15:38 ◼   ► so there are definite reasons for you that you would want to make more videos

01:15:42 ◼   ► I always joke with people, but it's not a joke, that nobody has more reasons to release more videos than me.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:51 ◼   ► But people don't seem to believe that.

01:15:53 ◼   ► It's... it's a very interesting position to be in.

01:15:59 ◼   ► But because of the... there's maybe something just about you that prevents you from doing that

01:16:06 ◼   ► because of the way that you approach this stuff.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And that you need to take that time to build yourself back up again.

01:16:13 ◼   ► To, like, take that break and carry on.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Like, so it's not really a criticism or a comment or anything like that,

01:16:18 ◼   ► but it just feels like that this is part of the reason that the schedule, if you'd call it that, is as it is.

01:16:26 ◼   ► Yeah, the thing that I've tried to explain on Reddit a few times is...

01:16:32 ◼   ► Like what we're talking about today, all of this stuff, we're talking about some of the details about what happens just before and just after launch day

01:16:39 ◼   ► But the real bottleneck in the whole process is actually the writing

01:16:45 ◼   ► Which is the part that nobody sees and is the least interesting to many people in some ways

01:16:52 ◼   ► Is how the writing happens

01:16:54 ◼   ► And that is the one part that is the slowest part, where the animations are all waiting on a completed script.

01:17:06 ◼   ► And I have come to terms over the past year with the speed at which I write, which is apparently very slow compared to other people who write.

01:17:16 ◼   ► And I don't think that there is anything that I can try that I haven't already tried to increase that

01:17:24 ◼   ► I am working at optimal capacity for my writing

01:17:29 ◼   ► And that is really the part that slows the whole thing down

01:17:33 ◼   ► If scripts just appeared completed, I could do more animations

01:17:37 ◼   ► You know, I could release a video every three weeks instead of every six weeks

01:17:40 ◼   ► If scripts just appeared, that would be possible

01:17:43 ◼   ► But it is really the scripts that slow down the whole process. That is the true bottleneck.

01:17:48 ◼   ► [Music]

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01:20:29 ◼   ► Could you hire anybody to make any of this any easier?

01:20:33 ◼   ► Or is there an element which is, I think,

01:20:37 ◼   ► perfectly fine, which is something that you complain about me a lot, to me,

01:20:41 ◼   ► the way that I work. Do you feel that you have to do this stuff yourself?

01:20:45 ◼   ► Like, you could give it to somebody, but you just can't give it to someone.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Oh, this is a whole other topic. I will say

01:20:53 ◼   ► in brief to answer that question, that I have

01:20:57 ◼   ► tempted to hire people to help me out with it.

01:21:01 ◼   ► And for the kind of thing that I do,

01:21:05 ◼   ► it has always been a negative

01:21:09 ◼   ► amount of help. That it is worse and takes longer

01:21:13 ◼   ► than doing it myself. The kinds of things that I can have

01:21:17 ◼   ► people help me out with.

01:21:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I have had people, I have tried to hire people to help me with certain

01:21:25 ◼   ► parts of the animation which are just tedious to do but easy to explain and

01:21:30 ◼   ► It's always come back in a way where it's like oh great well now

01:21:33 ◼   ► I just have a thing to fix and then fixing this thing takes longer than it would

01:21:37 ◼   ► Have just taken for me to do it plus the time that it takes to explain to the person and then the back and forth

01:21:43 ◼   ► So that has that has not worked out well

01:21:49 ◼   ► I will casually reference here, and maybe we can talk about it at some point in the future. I did at one point

01:21:54 ◼   ► People know I have very many secret projects that I'm always working on.

01:21:58 ◼   ► One of the secret projects that I killed was attempting to put together

01:22:02 ◼   ► a new YouTube channel in which I would work

01:22:06 ◼   ► in an editorial function and try to manage a team of people

01:22:10 ◼   ► to put out videos on a much more frequent basis

01:22:14 ◼   ► but that also just, that did not work out for

01:22:18 ◼   ► a variety of reasons that we can talk about. I think that kind of

01:22:22 ◼   ► project of starting something from the beginning with the idea of this is going

01:22:27 ◼   ► to be a team of people who make things that has way more possibility to succeed

01:22:33 ◼   ► but my videos it's very hard to have people help me

01:22:39 ◼   ► I occasionally have a little bit of help with the fact-checking but the

01:22:45 ◼   ► animations and the script are so closely connected that it there isn't room for

01:22:51 ◼   ► for someone else to really help out with this?

01:22:55 ◼   ► We are gonna look at a case study of the grey editorial YouTube channel at some

01:23:00 ◼   ► point in the future and try and understand why it didn't work.

01:23:03 ◼   ► I don't know if we will, but I just... people always wonder what my secret

01:23:09 ◼   ► projects are and I don't often like to talk about them but this...

01:23:11 ◼   ► Well, you have just revealed one, so you know, I think it would be very interesting to take a

01:23:15 ◼   ► look at that as a... to try and understand a little bit more around the

01:23:21 ◼   ► whole process is we talk about is how far you let that go before it was like

01:23:25 ◼   ► no this isn't gonna work.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Yeah that was that was killed in the relatively early stages for a bunch of

01:23:33 ◼   ► reasons but well yeah we'll save that we'll save that for later.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Let's do some Ask Ray.

01:23:40 ◼   ► All right.

01:23:41 ◼   ► So Matthew via Twitter asked do you have a work uniform?

01:23:46 ◼   ► So do you have clothes that you wear every day?

01:23:47 ◼   ► Do you have clothes that you wear on specific days to pair with different tasks?

01:23:53 ◼   ► This is a common piece of advice for the self-employed, and especially the newly self-employed, which

01:24:00 ◼   ► is don't show up to your work in your jammies.

01:24:05 ◼   ► Pretend like you're still a respectable member of society and actually get dressed for work.

01:24:11 ◼   ► And this is something that I definitely did when I first started working on my own.

01:24:19 ◼   ► But now!

01:24:21 ◼   ► Yes!

01:24:23 ◼   ► I did this in the beginning and I did find it helpful.

01:24:27 ◼   ► But it was partly that I used to have this whole set of white collared shirts that I used to wear to work my actual job all the time.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Of course, at my actual job, I had to wear a tie and a blazer.

01:24:40 ◼   ► I was very happy to ditch those.

01:24:43 ◼   ► But when I first started working on my own, I did stick with, "Okay, I'm going to try

01:24:46 ◼   ► to put on the white-collared shirt, and this is me working.

01:24:50 ◼   ► And then at the end of the workday, I'm going to take it off and just put on a regular t-shirt."

01:24:56 ◼   ► I think it was a little bit helpful at the beginning, but I dropped that after a while,

01:25:05 ◼   ► because those white shirts were coming to their end of their life and I thought

01:25:08 ◼   ► I'm not I'm not gonna buy more white business shirts this isn't gonna happen

01:25:11 ◼   ► I think that's a bit of I don't want to say a crutch because I know people who

01:25:16 ◼   ► still do it and find it useful but for me it was a it was a it was a crutch

01:25:21 ◼   ► that helped me get over the this like difficult transition of being employed

01:25:27 ◼   ► to being self-employed I don't feel like I need that now but it's also because I

01:25:33 ◼   ► I have a really hard time finding a men's collared shirt that I find acceptable.

01:25:38 ◼   ► This has been a frustration in my life for years. I think in the week that I

01:25:42 ◼   ► became self-employed I took all of my... I used to wear suits, I had to wear suits to

01:25:47 ◼   ► work, full suits. I took all of them and I put them into vacuum bags and I

01:25:54 ◼   ► did the vacuum thing to them to take all the air out and now they have been under

01:25:58 ◼   ► my bed and they will they do not come out until a couple of weeks ago when I

01:26:04 ◼   ► needed a suit for something and it's like oh man I have to go in those bags

01:26:07 ◼   ► and and I pulled it out but I over the over many years have accumulated a large

01:26:15 ◼   ► selection of nerdy t-shirts mm-hmm t-shirts to different podcasts that I

01:26:19 ◼   ► like for different websites that I like and I never really have the chance to

01:26:23 ◼   ► wear them. You know I'd maybe wear them for like PJs or whatever but now they are my uniform.

01:26:30 ◼   ► I get to wear my nerdy t-shirts every day and it makes me very happy.

01:26:34 ◼   ► I'm still looking for a daily wear uniform for myself just in the sense of I want things to be

01:26:41 ◼   ► the same all the time but I have not satisfactorily found shirts that work for this. Like I have a set

01:26:49 ◼   ► of black t-shirts that I normally wear. But I'm always on the quest for the perfect black

01:26:55 ◼   ► t-shirt. And it's the same thing with a collared shirt. Like I am on a quest for the perfect

01:26:59 ◼   ► collared shirt. Sometimes I go into stores and take a look at their shirts and they always,

01:27:03 ◼   ► they're always lacking to me and it is sad. But when I find the perfect shirts, this day

01:27:08 ◼   ► will happen one day. I will just buy a hundred of them. So I just have them and they are

01:27:14 ◼   ► always the same but yeah everything that I have come across is sadly lacking.

01:27:20 ◼   ► To save him from needing to send you a message in some description, Marco Arment

01:27:24 ◼   ► will suggest to you to check out Uniqlo. Uniqlo? Yeah he had he buys black t-shirts

01:27:30 ◼   ► I believe from Uniqlo and says that they are they are the perfect t-shirt that he

01:27:35 ◼   ► has found because Marco does that right he has just the same t-shirt and the

01:27:39 ◼   ► same jeans mm-hmm he just has lots of them and just wears them. This is Marco

01:27:43 ◼   ► armament of ATP. Yeah. But they don't... okay do they have collared shirts though?

01:27:50 ◼   ► Oh no this is for the t-shirt. Okay here internet you're gonna help me out here

01:27:54 ◼   ► internet listeners of Cortex. Here's here's what I want in a black collared

01:28:00 ◼   ► shirt. I don't think I'm asking for a lot but apparently this is like asking for

01:28:05 ◼   ► the moon. I want a black collared shirt, long sleeves with a pocket on the left

01:28:17 ◼   ► hand side. I want the buttons to not be shiny white or anything. I want them to

01:28:23 ◼   ► be black matte buttons. And I don't know the name for this, but I want the the

01:28:29 ◼   ► bottom part of the shirt to be a straight cut around. Do you know what I

01:28:34 ◼   ► I mean Myke? Do you know this term for this? You're a fashionable guy. You know how some

01:28:37 ◼   ► men's shirts they have like semi circles in the front and back and some men's shirts are

01:28:41 ◼   ► cut flat? What is that? You should know this term.

01:28:43 ◼   ► I have no idea but I know exactly what you're talking about.

01:28:46 ◼   ► Yeah you know what I'm talking about. So I want it cut flat on the bottom and this is

01:28:51 ◼   ► always the deal breaker part. I want a shirt that doesn't wrinkle all to hell at the slightest

01:28:56 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna be ironing my shirts. This is not going to happen.

01:29:02 ◼   ► I have I have honestly thought about trying to found my own colored shirt manufacturing company. It's like listen

01:29:10 ◼   ► What is it gonna take like how much how much startup money do I need here to

01:29:18 ◼   ► Purchase time at a clothing factory. I can be like, okay, here's what I want

01:29:23 ◼   ► I want like a man's shirt, but I want to be wrinkled free, I want to do this, like what could it possibly take?

01:29:28 ◼   ► And then I'll start a company that just sells

01:29:31 ◼   ► one kind of men's collared shirt. I have no joke

01:29:37 ◼   ► seriously considered doing this because I cannot find a collared shirt that is acceptable to me.

01:29:42 ◼   ► You seem to think this is funny.

01:29:47 ◼   ► I just like the idea that you said that you have seriously considered starting your own clothing brand.

01:29:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:54 ◼   ► Basically.

01:29:55 ◼   ► I really have.

01:29:56 ◼   ► I have looked into how this works if you want to get clothing manufactured.

01:30:01 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:30:04 ◼   ► You should talk to Matt.

01:30:06 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:30:08 ◼   ► Daniel over Twitter would like to know what your preferred email app is.

01:30:13 ◼   ► Okay, for some reason this seems to be a controversial choice. I like mail.app. I use Apple's mail.

01:30:20 ◼   ► Yes, okay, listen, this is you. Why? Why is this no good?

01:30:26 ◼   ► I have one major problem with mail. I don't know why this happens. If you are reading

01:30:34 ◼   ► an email, you have an email open, and you reply to an email, or you archive an email,

01:30:40 ◼   ► It opens the next email and then marks the email as read.

01:30:44 ◼   ► That is not what I wanted to happen.

01:30:47 ◼   ► Just because I deal with one email doesn't mean I need to deal with the next email and

01:30:51 ◼   ► so on.

01:30:53 ◼   ► That one piece of interaction really really frustrates me.

01:30:57 ◼   ► I think this only happens on the Mac.

01:31:00 ◼   ► Probably happens on iOS as well actually but I don't use them.

01:31:02 ◼   ► I think it happens on iOS as well.

01:31:04 ◼   ► I'm 90% sure it happens on iOS.

01:31:06 ◼   ► I never even think about this behavior.

01:31:09 ◼   ► This goes right to the heart of how differently we deal with email, which should be a separate

01:31:13 ◼   ► show.

01:31:15 ◼   ► So that's your only complaint?

01:31:17 ◼   ► That's my major complaint.

01:31:19 ◼   ► I found mail to be a little bit slow.

01:31:24 ◼   ► It frustrates me that if somebody, if you could have exchanged a million emails to someone,

01:31:29 ◼   ► but if they're not in your address book, they will not populate in the "to" field when you

01:31:34 ◼   ► start writing a new email.

01:31:35 ◼   ► Like if you open a brand new email and just type like gray if I don't have your email address in my address book

01:31:40 ◼   ► It just refuses to find them, but we'll find them magically if I try to search for you

01:31:44 ◼   ► So it seems like this sounds like a feature to me these both sounds up these both are features

01:31:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and they are features that I find useful in mailbox. Okay, so you use mailbox that yours

01:31:54 ◼   ► And then Mac app is rough because it's a beta so it has a million other problems, but the features of mailbox

01:32:04 ◼   ► the system the stuff that I really like like the ability to

01:32:07 ◼   ► Organize messages into any arbitrary view that you want so you can drag and drop them around the list around the inbox

01:32:14 ◼   ► You can set things to snooze. I really like that

01:32:16 ◼   ► All of those features are great features that I enjoy very much

01:32:21 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll have to talk about this more in detail. That sounds like a terrible way to do. No, it's the best

01:32:25 ◼   ► So you use mail universally yep

01:32:33 ◼   ► The trick is though I don't really look at my email very much anymore.

01:32:37 ◼   ► All I do is have an app that just archives everything so it's not really a problem.

01:32:42 ◼   ► It's getting close to that lately.

01:32:45 ◼   ► Ok, Connor asked this question. This is so genius. I love this.

01:32:51 ◼   ► So in regards to last week when we were talking about complaints about the Apple Watch

01:32:56 ◼   ► where you were saying that you wished that the watch charged quickly

01:33:01 ◼   ► quickly so you could wear it to sleep and to wake you up and then you could

01:33:05 ◼   ► like maybe put it down for 20 minutes at charge and you can go about your day and

01:33:09 ◼   ► then pick it up and you're ready and the watch has got enough battery life to get

01:33:12 ◼   ► through the day because you missed the sleep tracking stuff. Connor asked why

01:33:16 ◼   ► don't you just have redundant watches like you have redundant iPads charge one

01:33:20 ◼   ► during the daytime which you use at nighttime you put it on when you go to

01:33:23 ◼   ► sleep it wakes you up silently then you could charge that one and pick up the

01:33:27 ◼   ► new one and we use that for the day. Funny timing for this one because between

01:33:34 ◼   ► the last episode of Cortex and this one, actually there are two Apple watches in

01:33:38 ◼   ► my house right now because my real Apple watch, the one that I had my heart set on,

01:33:44 ◼   ► finally arrived and the one that I had been using I've been thinking of just my

01:33:48 ◼   ► temporary Apple watch. Oh you've got the super fancy. I got the Evil Empire

01:33:52 ◼   ► edition which is that Black Link bracelet one which I really really like

01:33:57 ◼   ► I'm very happy to have that I very much look forward to seeing that and

01:34:02 ◼   ► hopefully trying it on will you allow that? No way man! Really? Why wouldn't you let me try your watch on?

01:34:12 ◼   ► I'm not sure if you're aware this is the most intimate device that Apple has ever

01:34:15 ◼   ► made I'm not I'm not letting you try on the most intimate device that's that's

01:34:20 ◼   ► attached to my body all the time that would feel really weird.

01:34:23 ◼   ► It would feel very weird.

01:34:24 ◼   ► That would not be weird.

01:34:25 ◼   ► I don't know man.

01:34:27 ◼   ► I would never let anyone try on my old watch.

01:34:30 ◼   ► You have in possession one of my prized pens.

01:34:35 ◼   ► Oh that pen by the way man that is awful.

01:34:38 ◼   ► I keep meaning to tell you that pen is terrible.

01:34:40 ◼   ► I have many things to complain about that pen when we meet in person on Tuesday.

01:34:44 ◼   ► That's been sitting in my bag.

01:34:46 ◼   ► It was just another option for you that was all.

01:34:48 ◼   ► I was waiting to get rid of that thing.

01:34:49 ◼   ► Well you can give it back to me.

01:34:51 ◼   ► But to return to the watches.

01:34:53 ◼   ► So I happen to have two watches. The one that I have been using is on its way out now.

01:34:58 ◼   ► It is destined for a person who doesn't yet know they're going to receive it.

01:35:02 ◼   ► But it is basically going to be elsewhere. I'm not keeping two watches.

01:35:06 ◼   ► But the thing that I noticed when I got the new one is that Apple, I think quite sensibly,

01:35:11 ◼   ► doesn't actually allow you to have two watches set up with one phone, even if you wanted to.

01:35:16 ◼   ► Like let's say you're some crazy multi-millionaire and you want to have multiple gold watches.

01:35:23 ◼   ► Apple won't let you do that.

01:35:25 ◼   ► You have to unpair the watch and like go re-go through a kind of load from backup irritating

01:35:32 ◼   ► semi-setup process for switching over the watches.

01:35:35 ◼   ► So even if you wanted to be a crazy person who had redundant watches, which I think is

01:35:41 ◼   ► a little bizarre, Apple is saying no on this one.

01:35:46 ◼   ► putting down their foot and going you can't have redundant watches. I don't know if you

01:35:49 ◼   ► can start throwing the bizarre tag around. You do have like three iPads in use. Yes,

01:35:55 ◼   ► but there are uses for all those iPads. Yeah, but there will be a use for the two watches.

01:35:58 ◼   ► One to track your sleep. One to go about your day with. Okay, but even if you could pair

01:36:07 ◼   ► two watches, this whole notion of using the watch to track your sleep as a redundant one,

01:36:13 ◼   ► It wouldn't work anyway, the watch isn't designed for that

01:36:15 ◼   ► And I don't think this sleep tracking with the current state of it would even work overnight anyway

01:36:20 ◼   ► So there is no point in the world to having two Apple watches

01:36:26 ◼   ► This is a solution for nobody's problem

01:36:30 ◼   ► This accomplishes nothing

01:36:32 ◼   ► Whereas there are many cases of more than one iPad being useful

01:36:37 ◼   ► This is not possible

01:36:39 ◼   ► However, however, since we talked about the watches last time, I thought, "Oh, I have

01:36:48 ◼   ► an idea.

01:36:49 ◼   ► There's something I can do which sort of works."

01:36:54 ◼   ► I've been trying this for five days and so far I've been pretty happy.

01:36:58 ◼   ► Here's what I've been up to, Myke.

01:37:00 ◼   ► Most days, my Apple Watch battery doesn't get below 50 or sometimes 60 percent because

01:37:07 ◼   ► I don't use it for almost anything except receiving notifications.

01:37:12 ◼   ► I don't use glances, I don't use apps, I don't use any of this stuff.

01:37:17 ◼   ► My battery life is already pretty great.

01:37:20 ◼   ► What I've been doing is I thought, "Okay, here's what's going to happen."

01:37:25 ◼   ► I am actually going to wear the watch overnight and set an alarm on it to wake me up in the

01:37:32 ◼   ► morning through the Taptic Engine.

01:37:36 ◼   ► What I have been doing is, when I'm getting ready for bed, I've been putting the watch

01:37:42 ◼   ► on the charging stand.

01:37:44 ◼   ► In the time it takes me to get ready for bed, doing the brushing of the teeth, flossing,

01:37:49 ◼   ► all the stuff you do, the watch can almost always get from 50 or 60% back up to 80 or

01:37:57 ◼   ► 90%.

01:37:58 ◼   ► Then, this is the trick, I put the watch into airplane mode before I go to sleep.

01:38:05 ◼   ► This way it's not even trying to connect to anything wirelessly, it's just sitting there

01:38:08 ◼   ► on my wrist.

01:38:10 ◼   ► And then in the morning when the alarm time rolls around, it silently taps my wrist until

01:38:15 ◼   ► I wake up.

01:38:16 ◼   ► And so far, I really like this.

01:38:19 ◼   ► It's obviously not tracking my sleep, but I have been really bothered by not having

01:38:24 ◼   ► an effective alarm in the morning that doesn't also bother my wife.

01:38:30 ◼   ► The Sleep Cycle app I have been using on my phone has been...

01:38:35 ◼   ► The app is very good, it's just my circumstances in using it are not.

01:38:41 ◼   ► Using it with the iPhone 6 Plus.

01:38:42 ◼   ► The stuff we talked about last time.

01:38:45 ◼   ► So for these five days I have been very happy with my silent alarm, which is the watch in

01:38:52 ◼   ► the morning, and I haven't been having any battery problems doing this at all.

01:38:57 ◼   ► So that's what I've been up to.

01:38:58 ◼   ► That's what I've been testing out.

01:38:59 ◼   ► So you're not like chasing an empty battery.

01:39:03 ◼   ► It's not like every day it goes down by 5%, for example.

01:39:07 ◼   ► No that's what I've been keeping an eye on.

01:39:08 ◼   ► I have temporarily put on the battery indicator as a complication on my watch just so I could

01:39:14 ◼   ► keep an eye on, okay how is this working?

01:39:16 ◼   ► How is this going?

01:39:18 ◼   ► And it does not seem like I'm chasing down the battery.

01:39:22 ◼   ► But even if it is, the Apple Watch gets to 80% so fast that if I just accidentally leave

01:39:28 ◼   ► it a little bit longer one night, it'll charge up more. Like last night it happened to get

01:39:34 ◼   ► almost up to 100% because whatever it was, I just took a little longer getting ready

01:39:39 ◼   ► for bed than I normally do. So it definitely is the case that within this window of sleeping

01:39:44 ◼   ► with it overnight in airplane mode and then using it throughout the day, when I put it

01:39:50 ◼   ► on the charging stand at night, the watch is still very consistently at 50 or 60 and

01:39:55 ◼   ► And then in that 20 or 30 minutes it gets up to 80 or 90 percent.

01:39:59 ◼   ► And then you could do the same in the morning when you're getting ready in the morning.

01:40:02 ◼   ► Put it on the charger, go get ready in the morning.

01:40:05 ◼   ► I originally thought that I needed to do that, but it became obvious pretty quickly that

01:40:09 ◼   ► I didn't actually need to do that.

01:40:11 ◼   ► So if I don't have to charge—I always want to think about fewer things, and so I think

01:40:16 ◼   ► this is perfectly satisfactory, the charging it at night just before I go to bed, use it

01:40:21 ◼   ► as a silent alarm clock in the morning.

01:40:23 ◼   ► I'm very happy with this.

01:40:24 ◼   ► That's my suggestion for people who have watches.

01:40:27 ◼   ► - That is life hack.

01:40:29 ◼   ► - It's not a life, don't use that,

01:40:30 ◼   ► that is like a dirty word.

01:40:32 ◼   ► - That's why I like to use it.

01:40:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, I know you're doing it

01:40:35 ◼   ► because of what this word has become,

01:40:39 ◼   ► but let's not get into this habit.

01:40:40 ◼   ► - But you are hacking your life though, so it's--

01:40:43 ◼   ► - It's not even remotely a life hack.

01:40:44 ◼   ► - Okay, life trick.

01:40:46 ◼   ► - I'm not accepting any of this nonsense.

01:40:49 ◼   ► It's a thing that I am trying that is working out so far.

01:40:53 ◼   ► So if you'd like to leave us with feedback or questions or comments, there's a couple

01:40:57 ◼   ► of great ways you can do this.

01:40:58 ◼   ► You can leave us feedback on the thread for this week's episode.

01:41:02 ◼   ► Right?

01:41:03 ◼   ► I got that right, didn't I?

01:41:04 ◼   ► The thread.

01:41:05 ◼   ► You can go to cgpgrey.reddit.com and you will find probably the relatively close to the

01:41:12 ◼   ► top and you'll want to look for the episode 4 of Cortex, which of course this one is.

01:41:16 ◼   ► I'll show notes at relay.fm/cortex/4.

01:41:21 ◼   ► And you can also tweet with your questions if you choose the hashtag #AskGray, then I

01:41:26 ◼   ► will be able to pick them up and consider them for later episodes.

01:41:29 ◼   ► Bye bye Mr Gray.