Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► We just need to get right into it. Thank you, Cortex-ins, for making Sidekick Notepad our best product launch yet.

00:00:07 ◼   ► We have a lot of stuff that we want to talk about today.

00:00:11 ◼   ► We've got lots of topics. We're gonna do some Ask Cortex. We've got a whole bunch of things.

00:00:14 ◼   ► But we need to follow up on this a little bit.

00:00:17 ◼   ► The last few weeks have been unbelievable, really.

00:00:21 ◼   ► It's felt wild to me.

00:00:23 ◼   ► The only rival for it was the first video you put up about the journal.

00:00:29 ◼   ► because we didn't know what that would do at all.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And it sold us out immediately, right?

00:00:34 ◼   ► Because then when you did the second one,

00:00:36 ◼   ► we were a bit more prepared.

00:00:37 ◼   ► But this was like, we didn't have no idea

00:00:39 ◼   ► what to truly expect for the Sidekick Notepad.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Like how people would react

00:00:45 ◼   ► if people would be able to get it.

00:00:47 ◼   ► And I think I feel very confident in saying that yes.

00:00:50 ◼   ► We ordered a very large amount.

00:00:53 ◼   ► We ordered an amount that if we sold it in a year,

00:00:57 ◼   ► would be happy and we've sold 50% of it already.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - We sold thousands of Sidekick notepads.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - It was just unbelievable.

00:01:05 ◼   ► It's really shocking.

00:01:07 ◼   ► The behind the scenes of this is that like,

00:01:09 ◼   ► this product's life, I have been the doubter

00:01:12 ◼   ► and you have been the believer.

00:01:14 ◼   ► And the launch just really showed that #mikewasright.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - Honestly, the best thing that has happened

00:01:22 ◼   ► is how many people have contacted me

00:01:25 ◼   ► to just tell me that they love how good it feels,

00:01:28 ◼   ► like the quality of the product.

00:01:30 ◼   ► 'Cause that was what I really hoped

00:01:32 ◼   ► that people would take away from it,

00:01:33 ◼   ► that when they use it, they would understand

00:01:37 ◼   ► what we were trying to get across

00:01:38 ◼   ► and that this is a very high quality product

00:01:41 ◼   ► that feels at home on your desk

00:01:43 ◼   ► along with anything else that you might choose to put on it.

00:01:46 ◼   ► I think maybe one of the things I didn't touch on last time

00:01:49 ◼   ► about that quality aspect was we are asking you

00:01:53 ◼   ► to have this visible on your desk always.

00:01:58 ◼   ► So it has to be high quality.

00:02:00 ◼   ► It has to fit in with anything else

00:02:02 ◼   ► that you might choose to put on your desk.

00:02:04 ◼   ► And it has to have a home there

00:02:06 ◼   ► where you're happy to have it there

00:02:08 ◼   ► because it's nice to touch and feel and use.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And the experience is good.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Like if it's crappy or if we're cutting corners

00:02:15 ◼   ► rather than the beautiful rounded corners,

00:02:17 ◼   ► then it doesn't have its place.

00:02:19 ◼   ► - That's a manufacturing pun.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - Oh, got a lot of those now.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Like I felt so much pressure,

00:02:25 ◼   ► like this felt like the difficult second album

00:02:28 ◼   ► kind of thing of like, we had a great success

00:02:32 ◼   ► and now we're coming out of our second album

00:02:34 ◼   ► and it's in a different style

00:02:36 ◼   ► and are people gonna get it?

00:02:37 ◼   ► They're gonna like it?

00:02:38 ◼   ► And I feel very happy to say that yes, they do.

00:02:42 ◼   ► The other thing that I wanted to mention

00:02:43 ◼   ► which I couldn't believe is how well people reacted

00:02:46 ◼   ► to my video, which I did have out

00:02:48 ◼   ► before the episode published.

00:02:50 ◼   ► - You did, I was very proud of you.

00:02:51 ◼   ► I also extremely doubted that it would happen, but I was very proud of you for actually getting

00:02:55 ◼   ► out.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Yes, that was great.

00:02:57 ◼   ► And people seemed to really like it, which also, I don't know, it just felt so good.

00:03:03 ◼   ► What is it at now?

00:03:04 ◼   ► Is it over 45,000 views or something?

00:03:06 ◼   ► I can't believe that.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I just checked the stats on it, and again, this just goes along with how well

00:03:13 ◼   ► the launch did.

00:03:15 ◼   ► It's been out not a long time, but it's already in the top 15% of all of the videos.

00:03:21 ◼   ► we've ever released on the channel.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Like it's crazy how well that promo video did, so.

00:03:25 ◼   ► You should feel very pleased about it, because

00:03:28 ◼   ► looking through it, it's clear, like,

00:03:29 ◼   ► "Oh, the algorithm is actually recommending it to people, like,

00:03:32 ◼   ► much more than we would have expected for something like this."

00:03:35 ◼   ► So it's really well made, and it's done like a great job.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Showing people, how does this actually look?

00:03:42 ◼   ► And like, how does this actually, like, work on your desk?

00:03:46 ◼   ► - The perils of being left-handed, though, man.

00:03:48 ◼   ► - I mean, Mike.

00:03:49 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:03:50 ◼   ► Being left-handed, it comes with many disadvantages.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And there is one that we didn't really quite expect,

00:03:58 ◼   ► but yes, having our chief product designer be left-handed,

00:04:03 ◼   ► I think is an asset in all ways.

00:04:07 ◼   ► But we now know that the answer is,

00:04:09 ◼   ► it's an asset in all ways, except one,

00:04:13 ◼   ► which is actually demoing the use

00:04:16 ◼   ► of the products he has made.

00:04:17 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:04:19 ◼   ► There was a, just like a lot of people,

00:04:22 ◼   ► and I understand this, right,

00:04:23 ◼   ► where they're like, either something seemed wrong,

00:04:26 ◼   ► or they thought that the Sidekick Notepad

00:04:29 ◼   ► was somehow made for left-handed people.

00:04:31 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:04:32 ◼   ► - It's not, I can confirm to you,

00:04:34 ◼   ► it's actually part of the reason it's designed

00:04:38 ◼   ► the way that it is, like with the tearing off from the top.

00:04:42 ◼   ► So like, it is ambidextrous in that way,

00:04:44 ◼   ► like left-handed, right-handed, doesn't matter.

00:04:46 ◼   ► the layout, I don't think it makes any difference.

00:04:49 ◼   ► It's really comfortable to use.

00:04:50 ◼   ► I understand how if you're right-handed,

00:04:52 ◼   ► like most people are, you could look at me

00:04:54 ◼   ► as a left-handed person and be like,

00:04:55 ◼   ► well, that's weird, so great.

00:04:57 ◼   ► I am now trying to not learn how to write right-handed,

00:05:02 ◼   ► but I've already started doing this,

00:05:04 ◼   ► like I've been posting more like reels and stuff

00:05:07 ◼   ► and like videos, photos on our Instagram account

00:05:10 ◼   ► @cortexbrand, and I posted my first one the other day

00:05:13 ◼   ► where I'm ticking items off with my right hand.

00:05:17 ◼   ► - Yes, right, so you're faking it.

00:05:19 ◼   ► - Gotta fake it now.

00:05:20 ◼   ► But I do get it though, right?

00:05:21 ◼   ► Like if you're right handed, like most people,

00:05:24 ◼   ► and you see me as a left handed person using it,

00:05:27 ◼   ► especially the way that I write is weird.

00:05:29 ◼   ► The way that I grip a pen is even for left handed people,

00:05:32 ◼   ► abnormal, it's called over hooking,

00:05:34 ◼   ► is the way that I write.

00:05:35 ◼   ► It made you just look strange

00:05:37 ◼   ► and you just assume like something odd's going on.

00:05:38 ◼   ► So I'm gonna learn how to underline things

00:05:42 ◼   ► and tick things off in my right hand,

00:05:43 ◼   ► fake it till I make it.

00:05:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, or just write the last three letters

00:05:47 ◼   ► of a sentence right handed.

00:05:48 ◼   ► You don't need to go all in,

00:05:49 ◼   ► but you need to be able to fake a couple of letters, right?

00:05:52 ◼   ► And then it looks good on camera.

00:05:53 ◼   ► - That's harder than you think.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Like, I don't know if you've ever tried,

00:05:56 ◼   ► well, let me tell you, I've been trying this.

00:05:59 ◼   ► It does, it still looks really weird

00:06:00 ◼   ► because I can't do it right.

00:06:02 ◼   ► So the other thing is,

00:06:03 ◼   ► and something that I will do in the future, right,

00:06:05 ◼   ► is have people that are not me.

00:06:07 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:06:08 ◼   ► - But with this video, this was the only way it could be.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Like there was no time for me to bring in a ringer.

00:06:15 ◼   ► No, no, of course, of course.

00:06:17 ◼   ► This had to be done by you.

00:06:18 ◼   ► It wouldn't have happened any other way.

00:06:20 ◼   ► But like we discussed last time, you learn things as you do these rollouts and

00:06:25 ◼   ► as you like add each additional piece.

00:06:26 ◼   ► And for me, this was, this was kind of fascinating because I had the same

00:06:31 ◼   ► reaction when I first watched the video.

00:06:32 ◼   ► I was like, oh, something seems just like a little bit weird.

00:06:34 ◼   ► And I was trying to analyze all the comments.

00:06:35 ◼   ► It's like, oh, Mike being left-handed is just throwing people.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Well, you could say like, "Oh, that's not a big deal."

00:06:42 ◼   ► But this is where it's like, "Oh, you know, it's the year of being serious."

00:06:45 ◼   ► It's like, if we're being serious about things, it actually is a big

00:06:49 ◼   ► deal because lefties are used to seeing things done by righties all the time.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Righties are not.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And righties are the vast majority of the market.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And so it's like, "Oh no, this video can't have a moment of hesitation for

00:07:06 ◼   ► the default buyer who is right-handed."

00:07:09 ◼   ► And yeah, like it kind of took us a little while

00:07:11 ◼   ► to figure out what was going on,

00:07:13 ◼   ► where people were like,

00:07:13 ◼   ► "Oh, I hope he makes a right-handed version."

00:07:15 ◼   ► And it's like, what?

00:07:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:18 ◼   ► - It's just so funny to me,

00:07:19 ◼   ► like, oh, I'll look forward to the right-handed version.

00:07:22 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, it's just a piece of paper.

00:07:25 ◼   ► It doesn't make a difference.

00:07:26 ◼   ► - Like it's not a symmetrical piece of paper,

00:07:30 ◼   ► but it's very close.

00:07:32 ◼   ► So it's very, it's like, it's just so funny.

00:07:34 ◼   ► Like, oh, this nearly symmetrical object.

00:07:36 ◼   ► I hope they make it flipped.

00:07:38 ◼   ► Like, what, why?

00:07:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:41 ◼   ► That's my highlight of unexpected learning

00:07:44 ◼   ► from launch of Sidekick Notepad was that.

00:07:47 ◼   ► - Well, that's not mine.

00:07:48 ◼   ► - What's yours? What's yours?

00:07:49 ◼   ► - I don't know if you knew,

00:07:50 ◼   ► but our Notepad can help you see into the future.

00:07:53 ◼   ► It is the Sidekick Notepad.

00:07:55 ◼   ► (imitates a psychic noise)

00:07:57 ◼   ► I don't know what happened here.

00:07:58 ◼   ► I was tipped off by this.

00:07:59 ◼   ► So the thing we're talking about,

00:08:01 ◼   ► a bunch of people here, when me and Grace say it,

00:08:03 ◼   ► I think me especially, but it is both of us,

00:08:05 ◼   ► While our product is called the Sidekick Notepad,

00:08:10 ◼   ► people hear Psychic Notepad.

00:08:13 ◼   ► My first inclination to this was I made a video

00:08:17 ◼   ► during our soft launch period on Instagram,

00:08:21 ◼   ► and the automatic captions that it generates

00:08:24 ◼   ► said Psychic Notepad.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And so I edited it.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And then in the video,

00:08:30 ◼   ► I went and rerecorded a bunch of lines.

00:08:33 ◼   ► - Oh, you did some ADR work.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I did some ADR work indeed, where I make sure to hit the consonants, right?

00:08:40 ◼   ► Sidekick notepad. Sidekick notepad.

00:08:44 ◼   ► But when me and you were just talking about it freely on the show,

00:08:47 ◼   ► we're dropping that D all over the place.

00:08:50 ◼   ► Yeah, easily, easily.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And so it sounds like psychic notepad.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I even bought psychicnotepad.com in anticipation of this.

00:08:58 ◼   ► But now I feel like I'm hearing Ds where there aren't, right?

00:09:00 ◼   ► because language is you don't realize how much your brain is filling in the actual details

00:09:06 ◼   ► of what a person is saying until say you work professionally in audio and you realize how

00:09:10 ◼   ► sloppy language actually is.

00:09:11 ◼   ► So just to be clear here, you bought psychic notepad.com just in case.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Yes, just in case.

00:09:19 ◼   ► But this product is called the Sidekick Notepad.

00:09:24 ◼   ► One last thing that I want to mention about it that I also really liked.

00:09:26 ◼   ► It's just fun to know, but we have received some emails about Sidekick Notepad being used

00:09:34 ◼   ► in high security environments.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Companies, governments.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I have been to conferences where this is the case.

00:09:43 ◼   ► If secure things are being discussed, if people there are very serious about security, you

00:09:48 ◼   ► have meetings where it's like, "No computers."

00:09:52 ◼   ► And of course, no computers means no phones, no nothing.

00:09:57 ◼   ► All you can bring in is paper and a pen.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And we have received confirmation of some very interesting locations where it has been

00:10:07 ◼   ► used and I find this just delightful.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And for me, I really love this because it hits on the other side of what Sidekick Notepad

00:10:17 ◼   ► can do.

00:10:19 ◼   ► It's not just the in front of your computer thing.

00:10:21 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, you're going into a meeting and the quality is there to kind of signal

00:10:28 ◼   ► like, I'm serious about this meeting, right?

00:10:30 ◼   ► Like I'm sitting down, I have this thing, it has a nice cover.

00:10:34 ◼   ► It's horizontal, little eye catching, but not too flashy, right?

00:10:37 ◼   ► Flip over the cover.

00:10:39 ◼   ► You're here to take notes like you're getting things done.

00:10:41 ◼   ► While we can't say where these high security environments are, just know Sidekick Notepad,

00:10:48 ◼   ► protecting the freedom of everyone worldwide.

00:10:51 ◼   ► - Oh, God. (laughs)

00:10:54 ◼   ► - It's so satisfying to know

00:10:56 ◼   ► where is your product actually being used.

00:10:59 ◼   ► - On my side, I would say some of the more

00:11:01 ◼   ► for ones have been tech companies

00:11:02 ◼   ► where they have like secrecy.

00:11:04 ◼   ► So they're not allowed these devices in the rooms.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And I've heard people similarly who are using

00:11:09 ◼   ► Sidekick Notepad in those environments

00:11:11 ◼   ► because they're allowed to.

00:11:12 ◼   ► And in some instances,

00:11:14 ◼   ► you're not allowed to take the paper out with you,

00:11:16 ◼   ► which is even better for our product.

00:11:17 ◼   ► you just tear the page out, leave it behind.

00:11:19 ◼   ► - Oh, of course, right, I didn't even think about it.

00:11:22 ◼   ► You put it in the secrecy shredder at the side of the room.

00:11:24 ◼   ► - Yes, actually, this is what I've heard about.

00:11:27 ◼   ► That's the thing that really exists.

00:11:29 ◼   ► And thank you so much to everyone that bought one.

00:11:31 ◼   ► You can go to cortexbrand.com and pick one up.

00:11:33 ◼   ► This has been an incredible time for both of us

00:11:36 ◼   ► here at Cortex Brand, and it's been a wonderful validation

00:11:39 ◼   ► of what we're trying to achieve.

00:11:40 ◼   ► And so thank you to everybody that has bought one,

00:11:43 ◼   ► and I genuinely hope that you love it and use it

00:11:46 ◼   ► and want more.

00:11:47 ◼   ► So a number of months ago, a number of episodes ago, you mentioned that you would help get me set up with Obsidian if I wanted it to.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I did. I made that very generous offer.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And then you came over to my new house.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Unannounced to help you with Obsidian.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Yes, you just showed up, banging on the window, shouting Obsidian for the letterbox.

00:12:08 ◼   ► So I finally let you in, and I got the tour that I needed.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And I have now been using Obsidian for a couple of months, I think.

00:12:16 ◼   ► I think. For funny reasons, I have seen you use Obsidian in VR, which is the foreshadowing for a thing later. Oh, yes

00:12:23 ◼   ► Oh, yes. Yes, so I've seen you use it, but I since I helped set you up with it

00:12:29 ◼   ► I haven't heard like a peep about what you think about it. So I've been kind of like what's going on?

00:12:36 ◼   ► What does Mike think and are you going to tell me now? What do you think of obsidian? It's game-changing. Oh, yeah

00:12:42 ◼   ► Unbelievable. Okay. So what I will say is I've had to change some of my processes a little bit

00:12:47 ◼   ► Mm-hmm

00:12:48 ◼   ► What I'm using obsidian for is what I was using craft for previously

00:12:52 ◼   ► which is a place to keep all of my notes and files and stuff for cortex brand and

00:12:57 ◼   ► I'd mentioned previously that mixed media was something that I enjoyed now

00:13:04 ◼   ► Realistically obsidian is is very text focused. I think if I had a criticism, I wish that they handled images better

00:13:11 ◼   ► Like I don't think the way the images are handled is that great.

00:13:14 ◼   ► They kind of show up as individual files and then you can add them to notes and I wish

00:13:19 ◼   ► that there was a way to just hide those individual files from the file structure of like this

00:13:24 ◼   ► image, this image, this image.

00:13:26 ◼   ► But nevertheless, I do use this system mostly for text and so it's a lot of note taking,

00:13:34 ◼   ► a lot of writing of like descriptions and mark it and copy.

00:13:38 ◼   ► for like our meet and notes that we have,

00:13:40 ◼   ► all that kind of stuff.

00:13:42 ◼   ► So I'm doing a lot of that.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And the way in which they make it so simple

00:13:48 ◼   ► to have like multiple notes open side by side

00:13:51 ◼   ► and you can do those splits, that's all great.

00:13:53 ◼   ► But the reason I am 100% sold on this

00:13:56 ◼   ► is the Canvas feature.

00:13:57 ◼   ► So for me, in getting the Sidekick Notepad

00:14:01 ◼   ► ready for launch, I set up a Canvas

00:14:05 ◼   ► where I have logistics information,

00:14:07 ◼   ► I have feedback information, and then I have like five marketing notes that are all individual

00:14:13 ◼   ► notes that are all in one little area of the canvas.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And I'm able to actively edit them all while in the canvas without ever leaving that view.

00:14:24 ◼   ► So what I was doing was, alright, I want to make a product description.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Well, I can take this line from here and this line from here and put them together and make

00:14:31 ◼   ► edits.

00:14:32 ◼   ► And it was so good.

00:14:35 ◼   ► Like the canvas feature is so good.

00:14:37 ◼   ► again as a refresher you create this like board where you can have a bunch of

00:14:42 ◼   ► notes all visible at once along with media and you can link them together in

00:14:48 ◼   ► like kind of like a mind map style. Honestly it's hard to explain because

00:14:52 ◼   ► I've never seen anything like this before for this kind of note-taking.

00:14:58 ◼   ► And for me it's like as a way for me to do this kind of work it makes so much

00:15:04 ◼   ► more sense than jumping from note to note to note or even in some cases having a split

00:15:08 ◼   ► screen of notes. Just having them all living in this one place and they're all active,

00:15:13 ◼   ► amazing. Throughout the process of getting Sidekick Notepad ready, this was just game

00:15:19 ◼   ► changing for me in how in control I felt of things. Like something that I would find happening

00:15:26 ◼   ► a lot is I would make some notes and then forget that I made them and then make another

00:15:30 ◼   ► And this way I could have all of my notes that were related to Sidekick Notepad marketing all visible at once,

00:15:37 ◼   ► which is what I was doing, and it just meant that I wasn't duplicating work so much.

00:15:42 ◼   ► Okay, so you were using it just like a huge whiteboard in an office that everything you were going to write down,

00:15:50 ◼   ► you're putting it on here, and it's either going to go into one of the existing notes,

00:15:55 ◼   ► or you're putting it as a new note on top of there.

00:15:59 ◼   ► To try and make it completely clear what I was doing,

00:16:03 ◼   ► I was keeping this long note for nearly two years

00:16:08 ◼   ► of what is the story of this product?

00:16:11 ◼   ► So how do you explain it to somebody?

00:16:14 ◼   ► Every time I had some idea about where it could be used,

00:16:17 ◼   ► I would write them all down in there.

00:16:19 ◼   ► So I had this really long list of bullet points.

00:16:23 ◼   ► So then when it came to writing the script for the video,

00:16:26 ◼   ► writing the product descriptions,

00:16:28 ◼   ► writing some short descriptions for social media,

00:16:30 ◼   ► all I was doing is I had this one thing open

00:16:33 ◼   ► and I could duplicate or copy and paste from that one area.

00:16:36 ◼   ► So that was like a bank of stuff

00:16:39 ◼   ► and I was able to pull from that.

00:16:41 ◼   ► But then also having say the marketing lines one open

00:16:44 ◼   ► and the marketing story open made it really easy for me

00:16:48 ◼   ► to then craft the product description

00:16:50 ◼   ► because I had some short lines and I had some longer lines

00:16:52 ◼   ► or just some general ideas.

00:16:54 ◼   ► And it just made it really easy for me

00:16:56 ◼   ► to pull all of that stuff together

00:16:57 ◼   ► 'cause I could visually see it all.

00:16:59 ◼   ► Where previously, like when I was in craft,

00:17:01 ◼   ► 'cause when I moved from craft to Obsidian,

00:17:05 ◼   ► and it was really easy to do that.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I could export all my notes into files

00:17:08 ◼   ► and then just bring them all in.

00:17:10 ◼   ► - Oh wow, I'm surprised to hear it was easy.

00:17:11 ◼   ► - It was fantastic how easy it was.

00:17:14 ◼   ► - That's shocking.

00:17:14 ◼   ► - I know, craft has a great export feature,

00:17:17 ◼   ► and then it basically exported it in a way

00:17:19 ◼   ► that Obsidian could just read really easily.

00:17:21 ◼   ► I just had to drag and drop the files into the,

00:17:24 ◼   ► 'cause I'm using iCloud drive,

00:17:25 ◼   ► through everything's being stored.

00:17:27 ◼   ► And so I was able to just drag and drop the folder in

00:17:29 ◼   ► from craft and then, but then I went through.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Whenever I do a big thing like this,

00:17:33 ◼   ► like I'm just gonna manually look through it all

00:17:35 ◼   ► and see if there's anything I do and don't need.

00:17:37 ◼   ► And I was seeing for like the theme system journal, right?

00:17:39 ◼   ► I had all of these notes.

00:17:41 ◼   ► It was like, these are all just duplicates of each other.

00:17:43 ◼   ► 'Cause I'd forgotten that I'd started something

00:17:45 ◼   ► like this already.

00:17:46 ◼   ► I'd have like, oh, here's some product descriptions

00:17:49 ◼   ► for the journal.

00:17:49 ◼   ► And then I did it again.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Like I had multiple things with it.

00:17:52 ◼   ► 'Cause I was just like, oh, here's an idea.

00:17:54 ◼   ► I need to do that.

00:17:55 ◼   ► where now with the Sidekick Notepad Canvas

00:17:58 ◼   ► that I have in Obsidian,

00:17:59 ◼   ► all of these notes are just visible to me.

00:18:01 ◼   ► I can see the work that I've already done

00:18:03 ◼   ► and it just makes it really easy.

00:18:05 ◼   ► - It's interesting to hear you say that

00:18:06 ◼   ► because you sort of come at an idea in a different way.

00:18:10 ◼   ► And so this concept of, oh, Obsidian is a tool

00:18:15 ◼   ► that allows you to not accidentally duplicate work.

00:18:18 ◼   ► It's very interesting to hear

00:18:20 ◼   ► that you're using the canvas as that.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Like that totally makes sense of,

00:18:23 ◼   ► ah, I have a canvas for this topic,

00:18:26 ◼   ► everything related to this topic just goes on this thing

00:18:28 ◼   ► and I can see it.

00:18:29 ◼   ► And that dramatically reduces duplicate work.

00:18:32 ◼   ► - Like another one that I have that I love is,

00:18:35 ◼   ► I have separate notes that track the pricing of our products.

00:18:40 ◼   ► So over time, each shipment, what did it cost in production,

00:18:44 ◼   ► in shipping, in sales, and then all that kind of stuff.

00:18:47 ◼   ► I have a canvas that brings together all of those notes,

00:18:51 ◼   ► So I can compare them against each other

00:18:53 ◼   ► when I'm looking at like,

00:18:54 ◼   ► what are the prices gonna be?

00:18:55 ◼   ► Like, what do I expect shipping's gonna be?

00:18:57 ◼   ► And I have it all in one place,

00:18:59 ◼   ► rather than going back between one or the other.

00:19:02 ◼   ► But also, I don't want one note

00:19:04 ◼   ► where all these things exist.

00:19:05 ◼   ► I want them to be separate.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Like, I have one for each product.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And this is a way for me to bring in notes

00:19:11 ◼   ► that live in different folders in my file structure

00:19:14 ◼   ► into just one view,

00:19:16 ◼   ► without needing to create one master note for them all,

00:19:18 ◼   ► which I don't want to do.

00:19:19 ◼   ► What I was just thinking there is,

00:19:21 ◼   ► I don't use the Canvas feature in the way that you do,

00:19:24 ◼   ► but I'm still, it's the same concept of,

00:19:28 ◼   ► oh, if I'm going to type absolutely anything,

00:19:31 ◼   ► the first thing I'm doing is I am doing a little command

00:19:35 ◼   ► where you can search through all of your notes,

00:19:37 ◼   ► and I just start typing whatever the topic is,

00:19:40 ◼   ► as like, oh, it instantly finds,

00:19:42 ◼   ► is there an existing note on this thing?

00:19:45 ◼   ► Boom, you just go to it and start typing.

00:19:49 ◼   ► As long as I know everything that I work with that has to do with words exists in this system,

00:19:55 ◼   ► that's the same way to like not accidentally do the thing where you've written, you know,

00:20:00 ◼   ► like over the space of a year, you've written the same note four times because you're having

00:20:05 ◼   ► that like, I think it's such an important mental framework shift when using a computer.

00:20:11 ◼   ► This concept of like search first in terms of like using an actual built in search tool

00:20:16 ◼   ► like Spotlight or you're searching within this app and then go to make the thing, don't

00:20:21 ◼   ► try to find it, but it's very hard to get into that mindset.

00:20:26 ◼   ► I'm struggling with that.

00:20:27 ◼   ► But like, but that's why I think what you've done with the Canvas is really interesting.

00:20:31 ◼   ► It's solving the same problem because you just know, "Oh, okay, I might not be doing

00:20:38 ◼   ► search first just as a default, but at the very least this Canvas, I should be able to

00:20:42 ◼   ► physically see all of these notes and the thing that's really nice and you know for

00:20:47 ◼   ► listeners that's different about just like a folder with a bunch of notes is that you

00:20:51 ◼   ► see the contents of the notes at the same time. To me this is the big advantage with

00:20:56 ◼   ► Obsidian is the like the raw information density that you can have on the screen. How much

00:21:03 ◼   ► can you see at once that you can also easily navigate between and work with and like cut

00:21:08 ◼   ► copy paste across a bunch of different things.

00:21:11 ◼   ► So I think that's interesting, like your Canvas use

00:21:13 ◼   ► is a kind of pseudo search first mindset, but it works.

00:21:16 ◼   ► Like it sounds like it's totally working.

00:21:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I'm trying to do that thing

00:21:20 ◼   ► that you really recommended of like search for notes first.

00:21:24 ◼   ► What I'm realizing is I'm not good at that.

00:21:26 ◼   ► Like I know what I'm looking for,

00:21:29 ◼   ► but I sometimes fail to remember what I called the note.

00:21:34 ◼   ► So like I'm struggling with this like naming structure thing

00:21:38 ◼   ► my brain.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Okay, so let me tell you the pro tip here.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Don't try to have a naming structure.

00:21:44 ◼   ► What I do is if you search for something and you can't find it and you're like, "Oh, God,

00:21:48 ◼   ► what did I call that thing?"

00:21:50 ◼   ► And then eventually you're able to bring it up because you can remember a sentence inside

00:21:53 ◼   ► of it.

00:21:54 ◼   ► You can find it in various ways.

00:21:56 ◼   ► Just add whatever the word was that you first searched for to the title.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Just do it immediately.

00:22:03 ◼   ► And so I have some wacky file names where it's like, "Oh, this is the actual name of

00:22:07 ◼   ► the thing, but my brain just always searches for this word, so I just put that word on

00:22:12 ◼   ► the title as well. You should really think of the titles as, this is just a sequence

00:22:17 ◼   ► of tags, and some of those tags happen to be unique in the system, but it's like, it's

00:22:22 ◼   ► fast enough at searching that, like, I just find whenever you have that, I didn't find

00:22:26 ◼   ► it instantly, make a note of the word that you just searched for, find it, and add that

00:22:31 ◼   ► word to the title of the actual document. And that, that wildly improves things because

00:22:36 ◼   ► you're not fighting against yourself.

00:22:37 ◼   ► - So I would say like, in this system that I had in Kraft

00:22:42 ◼   ► and now I'm having in Obsidian,

00:22:44 ◼   ► I would say like about 75% of the time,

00:22:47 ◼   ► all I need is to be able to enter text and edit text.

00:22:51 ◼   ► Outside of that, I was using tables

00:22:53 ◼   ► and I was using like imagery,

00:22:55 ◼   ► like either like to save images

00:22:57 ◼   ► or to make some sketches and have them in a note.

00:23:00 ◼   ► - Okay, wait, before you go any further,

00:23:01 ◼   ► 'cause I wanna flag up something here.

00:23:03 ◼   ► So you have the file browser open

00:23:05 ◼   ► when you're using Obsidian.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And you're saying that you don't like what?

00:23:09 ◼   ► That the images clutter up the file browser?

00:23:12 ◼   ► Is that what you were saying?

00:23:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I still have a folder view on the side, right?

00:23:17 ◼   ► So every file, every note that I have

00:23:19 ◼   ► just gets saved into a folder, right?

00:23:22 ◼   ► 'Cause that's just the way that my brain works.

00:23:24 ◼   ► And so for example, I have a folder called Psychic Notepad

00:23:27 ◼   ► and it has a bunch of notes in it.

00:23:29 ◼   ► But at the top of the view, there's like file name dot assets

00:23:34 ◼   ► and then there's a bunch of images that are saved inside of that.

00:23:38 ◼   ► I have a note called "concept", right?

00:23:40 ◼   ► Which is when I was originally coming up with the concept

00:23:43 ◼   ► and I had a bunch of drawings and photos and stuff.

00:23:46 ◼   ► So that's a note that I have, it's called "concept".

00:23:48 ◼   ► But also in the Sidekick Notepad folder,

00:23:52 ◼   ► there is like a subfolder called "concept.assets",

00:23:56 ◼   ► which has saved individually all of the images

00:24:00 ◼   ► that are inside of the note.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Okay, so I think there's a solution to what you're doing,

00:24:05 ◼   ► which is there is an option.

00:24:07 ◼   ► I will send you a screenshot,

00:24:09 ◼   ► which tells Obsidian when I add an attachment

00:24:15 ◼   ► or when I add an image or a PDF or anything,

00:24:18 ◼   ► don't put it where I'm working.

00:24:20 ◼   ► Either put it in a subfolder where I'm working,

00:24:23 ◼   ► so I have everything just be like,

00:24:24 ◼   ► "Hey, if I add an image, it goes into a subfolder

00:24:28 ◼   ► "just called attachments in this little folder."

00:24:30 ◼   ► or you can set a global attachment folder for like just every just dump everything in there and don't worry about it.

00:24:36 ◼   ► But there is an answer to this like you shouldn't be looking at the file names for image files once you've added them to a document.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Those should basically become invisible to you.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Well that would help. I think I might have found the setting which is called default location for new attachments.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Yes that's correct that's the one.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And it's set for me as same folder as current file.

00:24:58 ◼   ► So that is what you do not want, right?

00:25:00 ◼   ► So you want to, like, I think--

00:25:01 ◼   ► - In the folder specified below.

00:25:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, so you can either have one global one,

00:25:06 ◼   ► or I have it set as like in a subfolder

00:25:09 ◼   ► under the current folder,

00:25:10 ◼   ► and I just give that the name attachments.

00:25:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I need to do that.

00:25:13 ◼   ► But then, can I move the existing ones,

00:25:16 ◼   ► or is it gonna break everything?

00:25:17 ◼   ► - As long as you do it in the file browser, in Obsidian,

00:25:21 ◼   ► it'll update the links everywhere.

00:25:22 ◼   ► It's no problem.

00:25:23 ◼   ► I've done this with a ton of stuff.

00:25:25 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:25:26 ◼   ► - So it is no issue at all.

00:25:27 ◼   ► But that's going to fix one problem completely then, the images problem.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Because I just didn't like that it was cluttering everything.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And I like that. I just need them all to be saved in one little folder

00:25:36 ◼   ► and then Obsidian can do whatever it wants with them, right?

00:25:38 ◼   ► It doesn't particularly bother me then.

00:25:41 ◼   ► I mean, here's my feeling about this, Mike.

00:25:42 ◼   ► Is when you get good enough at Obsidian,

00:25:45 ◼   ► you won't even have to do any of this anymore.

00:25:48 ◼   ► Because the file browser is just a crutch, right?

00:25:52 ◼   ► For, "Oh, I want to know where things are going."

00:25:54 ◼   ► I love folders, though.

00:25:55 ◼   ► I love organization of things.

00:25:58 ◼   ► - No, don't get me wrong.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I've got like tons and tons and tons of folders in my system,

00:26:02 ◼   ► but while you're working, having the file navigator open,

00:26:07 ◼   ► it's a crutch.

00:26:08 ◼   ► - Oh, right.

00:26:10 ◼   ► - That's what I'm saying.

00:26:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see.

00:26:11 ◼   ► - So I have it like,

00:26:13 ◼   ► ooh, nicely organize all of my attachments

00:26:15 ◼   ► in a little sub folder,

00:26:16 ◼   ► but I don't even really need to do that in any way.

00:26:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay.

00:26:20 ◼   ► - Because like I'm never really looking at the navigation.

00:26:22 ◼   ► - That makes sense.

00:26:23 ◼   ► - The other thing that I use the system a lot for was tables.

00:26:26 ◼   ► - See now this, there is no solution for that.

00:26:28 ◼   ► - I'm just using numbers now.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Like there are plugins.

00:26:31 ◼   ► And so one of the really cool things about Obsidian

00:26:33 ◼   ► that I've yet to super dive into is the plugins.

00:26:36 ◼   ► And I've installed a bunch of plugins.

00:26:37 ◼   ► The community is awesome.

00:26:39 ◼   ► For me, the themes, like I love the themes.

00:26:41 ◼   ► I'm using, I think the minimal theme,

00:26:44 ◼   ► which I customized with some fonts of my own,

00:26:47 ◼   ► which I'm really happy about.

00:26:48 ◼   ► That took a little bit of time to work out,

00:26:50 ◼   ► but I got it in the end.

00:26:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm using the minimal theme in the dark mode.

00:26:55 ◼   ► And I love how clean it is.

00:26:56 ◼   ► One of the things that always scared me about Obsidian

00:26:59 ◼   ► is I just didn't like the way it looked.

00:27:00 ◼   ► But some of the themes are just really simple,

00:27:03 ◼   ► really beautiful, which is what I want.

00:27:04 ◼   ► And I just use a couple of typefaces.

00:27:06 ◼   ► I use some of Apple's typefaces.

00:27:08 ◼   ► So I'm using San Francisco Rounded,

00:27:11 ◼   ► and they also have a serif typeface called New York,

00:27:14 ◼   ► and I adore that typeface.

00:27:16 ◼   ► So I use that as like,

00:27:17 ◼   ► that's what all the file structure is in, is in New York,

00:27:20 ◼   ► and then all of the actual fonts

00:27:22 ◼   ► are in San Francisco Rounded.

00:27:23 ◼   ► I just like those two fonts a lot,

00:27:24 ◼   ► so I just thought I'd go for it and use those.

00:27:27 ◼   ► And I even found the really complicated way

00:27:30 ◼   ► to get it to work on iOS as well, but I did it.

00:27:33 ◼   ► It's like-- - Oh wow.

00:27:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like a whole thing you need.

00:27:36 ◼   ► I think I'll try and find the instructions that I used

00:27:41 ◼   ► and I'll put them in the show notes,

00:27:43 ◼   ► but it's like you need an app that can install it

00:27:45 ◼   ► and install a profile and it's like a whole thing,

00:27:47 ◼   ► but you can make it work.

00:27:49 ◼   ► So I've just moved to Numbers.

00:27:50 ◼   ► And honestly, I'm happier,

00:27:51 ◼   ► 'cause numbers is better than craft was,

00:27:53 ◼   ► like at calculations and how easy it is to do that stuff.

00:27:56 ◼   ► And now I'll be able to get something from these,

00:27:59 ◼   ► which I always kind of wanted,

00:28:01 ◼   ► which is to build charts out of these numbers.

00:28:03 ◼   ► But I always kind of just told myself like,

00:28:04 ◼   ► "Ah, you don't need it."

00:28:06 ◼   ► 'Cause it was impossible for me to do in craft.

00:28:08 ◼   ► But now I have all of,

00:28:09 ◼   ► like it's just recordings of sales figures and stuff.

00:28:11 ◼   ► And so now I'll actually be able

00:28:12 ◼   ► to build some charts out of these numbers.

00:28:14 ◼   ► So ultimately I'll be happier with doing it this way.

00:28:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, my rule of thumb is,

00:28:19 ◼   ► you can do tables in Obsidian, but they're not great.

00:28:22 ◼   ► And you can do calculations in tables in Obsidian,

00:28:26 ◼   ► and that's extra not great.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Like, it's not the tool for this.

00:28:29 ◼   ► My advice to anyone is, if you want to do,

00:28:33 ◼   ► or think you may ever want to do,

00:28:36 ◼   ► anything more complicated than adding up

00:28:38 ◼   ► a single column or row of numbers,

00:28:42 ◼   ► do not do this in Obsidian.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - I will actually go a step further,

00:28:45 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't finish,

00:28:46 ◼   ► I realize now I didn't finish the thought that I had,

00:28:48 ◼   ► which was you can install these plugins,

00:28:50 ◼   ► which will give you markdown table support.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And that's how you're doing it.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Markdown tables look nice when you're not editing them.

00:28:57 ◼   ► When you're editing them, it's a nightmare.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And it's possible to do calculations,

00:29:03 ◼   ► but not for mere mortals.

00:29:06 ◼   ► It's so complicated.

00:29:08 ◼   ► I would say if you want to have a table

00:29:11 ◼   ► do any automatic calculation for you,

00:29:15 ◼   ► don't try and do this in Obsidian.

00:29:16 ◼   ► - Mike's advice is actually probably better.

00:29:18 ◼   ► I would agree with that.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Even if you, or perhaps especially if,

00:29:23 ◼   ► you're thinking, "Oh, I have the technical skills

00:29:25 ◼   ► "to be able to pull this off."

00:29:26 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, no, don't.

00:29:29 ◼   ► - It's not worth it.

00:29:30 ◼   ► - You will be much more rewarded with something like numbers

00:29:32 ◼   ► and what you just said there--

00:29:33 ◼   ► - Or Excel, like whatever.

00:29:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, whatever, we don't need,

00:29:36 ◼   ► we only have spreadsheet wars, you know,

00:29:38 ◼   ► even though numbers is obviously way more beautiful.

00:29:40 ◼   ► - Oh, easy.

00:29:41 ◼   ► - It's like, you know, numbers is the bell of the ball.

00:29:42 ◼   ► - No one's arguing that, right?

00:29:44 ◼   ► Like, it's very, like Excel is more powerful,

00:29:46 ◼   ► numbers is prettier.

00:29:47 ◼   ► like that's it, there is no argument to be had there.

00:29:50 ◼   ► - I mean, I will actually argue

00:29:52 ◼   ► if Excel really is more powerful.

00:29:53 ◼   ► I'm doing some pretty crazy things with numbers, but.

00:29:56 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:29:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:59 ◼   ► - But yeah, like I use, just for the regular formatting,

00:30:02 ◼   ► I use the advanced table thing in Obsidian, but yeah.

00:30:05 ◼   ► You're also, like you said,

00:30:06 ◼   ► if you're working with actual numbers at all,

00:30:09 ◼   ► you want to give yourself the option of,

00:30:12 ◼   ► hey, let me just look at this in a chart

00:30:13 ◼   ► and see if it makes more sense,

00:30:15 ◼   ► And you want to make that real easy to be able to do.

00:30:17 ◼   ► So yeah, this is totally a like,

00:30:20 ◼   ► Obsidian is a great tool,

00:30:22 ◼   ► but you always want to use the right tool for the right job.

00:30:25 ◼   ► And beyond displaying just text in a table,

00:30:29 ◼   ► Obsidian is not the tool for that,

00:30:31 ◼   ► like an actual spreadsheet

00:30:32 ◼   ► is what you should be doing spreadsheets in.

00:30:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is one of those things where,

00:30:36 ◼   ► similarly to how I do it with craft,

00:30:39 ◼   ► I will impress on the developers of Obsidian

00:30:42 ◼   ► to make a good way to handle basic tables.

00:30:46 ◼   ► I think this is an important thing to have.

00:30:48 ◼   ► I would love to see them try and do something better

00:30:50 ◼   ► than markdown tables.

00:30:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a tough call.

00:30:54 ◼   ► If they were gonna do something,

00:30:56 ◼   ► it would have to be like Canvas.

00:30:58 ◼   ► It would have to be some layer on top

00:31:00 ◼   ► of what's actually happening.

00:31:01 ◼   ► I think asking to do it in the notes

00:31:04 ◼   ► is asking to figure out something

00:31:05 ◼   ► that's better than markdown tables.

00:31:07 ◼   ► - To the file, it can look like a markdown table.

00:31:10 ◼   ► But to the user, there can be a user interface.

00:31:13 ◼   ► - Oh, I see what you're saying, right?

00:31:15 ◼   ► - I think they should build a user interface

00:31:17 ◼   ► for markdown tables, which is seamless within the note,

00:31:20 ◼   ► but ultimately it's just writing a markdown table.

00:31:22 ◼   ► - Okay, right, yeah, I see what you're saying.

00:31:24 ◼   ► All right, I agree with that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:31:26 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:31:26 ◼   ► I thought you were like,

00:31:27 ◼   ► they need to reinvent markdown tables, but better.

00:31:30 ◼   ► And I think, oh, within the confines of text,

00:31:32 ◼   ► that feels like just an impossible task.

00:31:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you can do, like, just all the basics.

00:31:36 ◼   ► It doesn't have to do anything wild.

00:31:38 ◼   ► But like, just the ability to have a table

00:31:40 ◼   ► and just having some basic calculation on that table

00:31:42 ◼   ► of like subtracting a minusing,

00:31:44 ◼   ► they could build a UI for that

00:31:47 ◼   ► and it could still just look like a markdown table

00:31:50 ◼   ► on the back.

00:31:51 ◼   ► But anyway, I love Obsidian.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Like I get it now.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Like the thing about Obsidian

00:31:56 ◼   ► is I think you need to have a reason first

00:31:59 ◼   ► because the app is so daunting coming to it.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And I think it is their need.

00:32:03 ◼   ► And I think that is,

00:32:04 ◼   ► I think what they are doing is changing that.

00:32:07 ◼   ► I think they want to change that.

00:32:08 ◼   ► to make the app a little easier to onboard,

00:32:11 ◼   ► I think is pretty important for them going forward,

00:32:14 ◼   ► I would expect, right?

00:32:15 ◼   ► So anyone can use it for anything.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Because I think it is really, like it is inherently simple,

00:32:20 ◼   ► but it looks so scary, right?

00:32:23 ◼   ► Like, especially when you,

00:32:25 ◼   ► if you do any Googling about Obsidian, it's too much.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Like if you go to YouTube and you just type in Obsidian,

00:32:32 ◼   ► you're met with too much, right?

00:32:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:35 ◼   ► Here's how I learned to look after a baby using Obsidian.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Right, it's just like, no, this is,

00:32:40 ◼   ► I just want someone to tell me this is a Notes app.

00:32:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I completely agree.

00:32:44 ◼   ► There's a kind of wacky content world around Obsidian,

00:32:48 ◼   ► which is not helpful for a new user.

00:32:50 ◼   ► My personal favorite trope of all of these is,

00:32:52 ◼   ► hey, let me show you my mind map thing with a thousand.

00:32:55 ◼   ► I was like, nobody needs this.

00:32:57 ◼   ► This tool is helpful to no one.

00:32:59 ◼   ► It just looks cool.

00:33:00 ◼   ► - 'Cause like Notion has the same problem,

00:33:03 ◼   ► but Notion has more like external marketing

00:33:07 ◼   ► than Obsidian does. - Yes, yes.

00:33:08 ◼   ► - So they tell their story a little bit

00:33:11 ◼   ► just like clearly on its own

00:33:12 ◼   ► and then you can go and dig in.

00:33:14 ◼   ► And like, look, just Obsidian is coming

00:33:17 ◼   ► from a different area, right?

00:33:18 ◼   ► Like Notion took VC funding, right?

00:33:21 ◼   ► Like Obsidian's coming at this from a different area.

00:33:24 ◼   ► But I think that they can get to it

00:33:26 ◼   ► because the app to me now is very approachable.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Like there's just some,

00:33:31 ◼   ► like when you set it up for me,

00:33:33 ◼   ► That setup process was too complicated, I think.

00:33:37 ◼   ► That was pretty daunting to me,

00:33:39 ◼   ► 'cause it felt like they were asking me

00:33:41 ◼   ► to make some decisions,

00:33:43 ◼   ► and I didn't know why I needed to make them.

00:33:45 ◼   ► Like, where would you like to store your vault?

00:33:47 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know, man, you tell me.

00:33:51 ◼   ► - That's the kind of thing that is very easy

00:33:53 ◼   ► to kind of overlook when you're making an app.

00:33:55 ◼   ► It's like, oh, you realize, this is like,

00:33:59 ◼   ► again, I think about this a lot

00:34:01 ◼   ► whenever I'm writing a script is you think about,

00:34:04 ◼   ► what's the first time you've introduced a word?

00:34:08 ◼   ► And you have to have prepared the person

00:34:11 ◼   ► to be able to understand the new word,

00:34:14 ◼   ► if it's a technical word.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And this kind of mistake is just so easy to make,

00:34:18 ◼   ► where I say, "Oh, where do you wanna put your vault?"

00:34:20 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, I'm sorry,

00:34:21 ◼   ► this is the first time I've heard the word vault.

00:34:23 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:34:24 ◼   ► What is that?

00:34:25 ◼   ► I need to know what it is to be able to make this decision."

00:34:29 ◼   ► And it's like just little language smoothings,

00:34:31 ◼   ► like where do you wanna keep all your Obsidian files?

00:34:33 ◼   ► Like that's what they wanna know,

00:34:35 ◼   ► but there's a technical term that's vault.

00:34:37 ◼   ► And even for me as a very experienced Obsidian user,

00:34:42 ◼   ► you saw that because I hadn't set it up in a while.

00:34:46 ◼   ► - I think we took three goes at it.

00:34:48 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:34:49 ◼   ► - I don't think it was,

00:34:50 ◼   ► I think it was multiple attempts at setting it up.

00:34:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, even for me, there was stumbling blocks

00:34:56 ◼   ► because it's like, oh, I wanna set this up for Mike

00:34:58 ◼   ► in a particular way, and it's like,

00:35:00 ◼   ► "Oh, but I can't quite do this immediately."

00:35:02 ◼   ► And because of those stumbleings, I still felt bad.

00:35:05 ◼   ► I left you, and I didn't do the main thing

00:35:08 ◼   ► that I wanted to do, which I recommend for anybody

00:35:10 ◼   ► who is going to try Obsidian, is the first thing

00:35:13 ◼   ► you need to do is install that minimum theme.

00:35:16 ◼   ► The minimal theme just calms the whole thing down

00:35:20 ◼   ► and gives you options for, "Ooh, I wanna tweak it

00:35:24 ◼   ► "on how it's gonna look a little bit."

00:35:26 ◼   ► And how it looks a little bit is the very first thing anyone coming to a text

00:35:32 ◼   ► processor is like going to want to do, right?

00:35:34 ◼   ► Like for user onboarding, what do people want?

00:35:38 ◼   ► They want colors and they want their fonts and they want them right away.

00:35:42 ◼   ► And like, that's what this like helps do.

00:35:45 ◼   ► And I felt bad cause I, because we've gotten kind of like, oh man, that we ran

00:35:49 ◼   ► out of time and I was trying to set you up with it, I forgot.

00:35:51 ◼   ► It's like, oh, I have to, I have to flip Mike over to the easy one.

00:35:55 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh no, I left him on just the standard theme," which is like, it's fine,

00:36:00 ◼   ► but it can be easier and it can just look calmer and less intimidating.

00:36:04 ◼   ► The designer of the minimal theme, Stefan Ango, who is now the CEO of Obsidian.

00:36:10 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't know that.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Okay, that makes sense.

00:36:12 ◼   ► So, Stefan had been doing things for years in tech and design and product design and stuff.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Right.

00:36:18 ◼   ► And he was working with them and now is the CEO of the company.

00:36:21 ◼   ► It's like, this is what I mean about,

00:36:23 ◼   ► I think that they're starting to change a little bit

00:36:26 ◼   ► in the sense of like, okay,

00:36:27 ◼   ► we've built this incredible thing.

00:36:29 ◼   ► How do we now make it usable and workable for everyone?

00:36:34 ◼   ► And so I think this is in the case of like,

00:36:36 ◼   ► okay, we're bringing in a CEO

00:36:38 ◼   ► and turns out it's the guy who made the app look best.

00:36:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:43 ◼   ► - Stefan, set your theme as default, right?

00:36:46 ◼   ► Let's just do that right now.

00:36:48 ◼   ► - I feel like they're probably gonna move

00:36:50 ◼   ► in that direction, right?

00:36:51 ◼   ► That does seem quite likely if that's the way the org chart goes.

00:36:54 ◼   ► He's obviously gonna be like, "All right, gang, we need to, we need to tidy this one up, gang."

00:36:58 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:37:00 ◼   ► I think that the, like, one of the reasons I was pushing this on you and, and why I've kind of raved

00:37:05 ◼   ► about Obsidian since I found it is, it's just for the right kind of person, this is exactly the tool

00:37:12 ◼   ► that they need that will really change things for them, but it is hard to get into.

00:37:20 ◼   ► But also it has the feature of like some of the things that do make it tricky to get into like,

00:37:25 ◼   ► yes, you can round off the corners. But ultimately, the way it's made is also why it's the perfect

00:37:32 ◼   ► tool for so many things. So it's like it exists in this in this tricky world. And it always just

00:37:37 ◼   ► makes me think of this Linux program Emacs, where it's the same thing of like, man, this tool,

00:37:42 ◼   ► it's a text based tool, it can do anything. And it's like, and it's just like the right answer to

00:37:48 ◼   ► to a lot of problems if you are a certain kind of person

00:37:51 ◼   ► working with text.

00:37:52 ◼   ► This is why I was really pushing it.

00:37:54 ◼   ► Like when I heard you talking on Upgrade Plus

00:37:56 ◼   ► and you were complaining about like trying to do

00:37:58 ◼   ► this kind of thing and it wasn't craft,

00:38:00 ◼   ► it was Apple's thing, right?

00:38:01 ◼   ► Well, what's it called?

00:38:02 ◼   ► It's called Freeform?

00:38:03 ◼   ► - Freeform, yeah.

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, Freeform.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I was like, listening to you in that conversation,

00:38:08 ◼   ► I was like, I know that you want Obsidian.

00:38:10 ◼   ► Like I know this is the answer to your problems, Mike.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Like let me come over and knock on your windows

00:38:14 ◼   ► and set this up for you and try to walk you through it.

00:38:17 ◼   ► So I'm just really happy that it's worked out for you.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And I think also, now you can understand over the years

00:38:25 ◼   ► some of what my complaints have been about with writing apps

00:38:28 ◼   ► and why Obsidian is such an answer to that.

00:38:31 ◼   ► And it's this ability to be like,

00:38:33 ◼   ► I've got these three documents on my screen.

00:38:35 ◼   ► The script is in the center, and I have two auxiliary files

00:38:38 ◼   ► on either side.

00:38:39 ◼   ► And the ability to jump in and out of all of those

00:38:41 ◼   ► and just move stuff around, it's so good.

00:38:44 ◼   ► It's just killer.

00:38:46 ◼   ► I've been trying to think about a way to explain

00:38:49 ◼   ► the difference between Obsidian

00:38:51 ◼   ► and something like Notion or Craft.

00:38:53 ◼   ► And I feel like the closest analogy I can come to,

00:38:57 ◼   ► and I'm still not there with it,

00:38:58 ◼   ► is like Craft, Notion, they're like Swiss army knives.

00:39:02 ◼   ► They've got a ton of tools and all of them are good enough

00:39:07 ◼   ► and they will get you through a thing.

00:39:09 ◼   ► But Obsidian is like a really good pocket knife.

00:39:14 ◼   ► it really should be used for just one thing,

00:39:16 ◼   ► but you can use it for some other stuff if you want to.

00:39:18 ◼   ► You can tighten a screw with it, you'll find a way.

00:39:20 ◼   ► You shouldn't, but you can.

00:39:22 ◼   ► But for the things that it's supposed to be,

00:39:24 ◼   ► like text, it's the best.

00:39:26 ◼   ► So I'm not settled on that,

00:39:27 ◼   ► but it's kind of a way I've been thinking about it is,

00:39:30 ◼   ► don't try and make it do too much,

00:39:33 ◼   ► but it can do that one thing so good.

00:39:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I even will say,

00:39:38 ◼   ► I learned something from you with Obsidian,

00:39:41 ◼   ► just in the fact of it's text,

00:39:43 ◼   ► And I also put the asterisk of, for certain image problems,

00:39:48 ◼   ► it's also really good now because of Canvas.

00:39:51 ◼   ► And I would have just completely ignored the Canvas feature

00:39:54 ◼   ► if that hadn't been the thing that you were attracted to.

00:39:57 ◼   ► So I played around with it a little bit,

00:39:59 ◼   ► be like, "Oh, this is what Mike wants to use.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Like, I should just know this a bit before I go over there

00:40:03 ◼   ► and try to set him up with Obsidian."

00:40:04 ◼   ► Like, trying to learn it with him would be a bad

00:40:08 ◼   ► and unconvincing look. - So how do you use this?

00:40:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know. - I don't know.

00:40:10 ◼   ► - Let me just start doing stuff.

00:40:11 ◼   ► - You tell me.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Yeah, so I, like I, because of you, I tried it and like, oh, okay, I see how this works.

00:40:19 ◼   ► It was the same thing of, ooh, I've used a lot of tools like this.

00:40:23 ◼   ► This is just much better.

00:40:25 ◼   ► But ultimately, like, oh, my brain doesn't really work like this.

00:40:27 ◼   ► I deal with lists of texts.

00:40:28 ◼   ► I don't deal with visual information like rearranged.

00:40:31 ◼   ► But of course, once you have something like that in the back of your mind, it's just waiting

00:40:35 ◼   ► for the moment that it's useful.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And like, joke was on me, it turned out that the video that I'm currently working on, the

00:40:41 ◼   ► best of all possible tools to use for was canvas. It's like, I've got 50, 60 images,

00:40:49 ◼   ► and the whole video is like, arranging these in a certain way. And I was originally like,

00:40:53 ◼   ► Oh, God, this is this is such a pain to write. And I realized, oh, no, I can just open a

00:40:58 ◼   ► canvas that's half of my screen. So that as I'm going through the script, I can keep rearranging

00:41:04 ◼   ► the images for how they're going to be displayed in the video. I was like, Oh, my God, this

00:41:08 ◼   ► This is great! This makes it so much easier and helps visualize what is it going to look

00:41:13 ◼   ► like as I'm talking through these things. What's the order going to happen?

00:41:17 ◼   ► I don't think I ever would have done that if you hadn't mentioned that you were interested

00:41:20 ◼   ► in Canvas. I also have to thank you for letting me help you get it started.

00:41:25 ◼   ► No worries.

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00:43:56 ◼   ► We're approaching the end of the first quarter of the year.

00:43:58 ◼   ► - You know what's coming up, Mike?

00:43:59 ◼   ► - What?

00:44:00 ◼   ► - It's the spring equinox.

00:44:02 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:44:03 ◼   ► - It's a season change.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - It's not the first quarter of the year.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Spring is the way, Mike.

00:44:08 ◼   ► - Okay, you live by the tides

00:44:11 ◼   ► and I live by the Gregorian calendar, right?

00:44:13 ◼   ► That's the differences between the two of us.

00:44:15 ◼   ► But anyway, how is the spring equinox period treating you

00:44:19 ◼   ► with your yearly theme?

00:44:20 ◼   ► - All joking aside, I do seriously think

00:44:22 ◼   ► that the seasons are important

00:44:24 ◼   ► because you can see them coming.

00:44:26 ◼   ► The days get longer and it is a good time to reassess.

00:44:30 ◼   ► - I mean, every day I look at a calendar,

00:44:31 ◼   ► like I don't really know, I don't understand.

00:44:34 ◼   ► That is like more definite.

00:44:36 ◼   ► - No, I disagree.

00:44:38 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it's just because your relationship

00:44:40 ◼   ► with a calendar is very different.

00:44:42 ◼   ► My relationship with a calendar is the teeny tiny

00:44:45 ◼   ► fantastic-al icon in my menu bar that just says nine,

00:44:49 ◼   ► 10 or 11 and I very rarely look at the actual full calendar.

00:44:54 ◼   ► So I can and frequently do forget what month of the year it is.

00:44:58 ◼   ► Like I know where we are within the month,

00:45:01 ◼   ► but it's easy to forget like, wait, is it February?

00:45:03 ◼   ► - Just take a look out the window, you know what I mean?

00:45:05 ◼   ► Look at your sundial and then you'll work it out.

00:45:07 ◼   ► - But that's just it.

00:45:08 ◼   ► Over the course of three months,

00:45:09 ◼   ► you can see the seasons changing.

00:45:11 ◼   ► And that's Mike, how you know time is passing.

00:45:14 ◼   ► - Okay, whatever you say, man.

00:45:17 ◼   ► - So I do think it's an interesting time

00:45:19 ◼   ► to like just assess, right?

00:45:20 ◼   ► Where are we with themes?

00:45:23 ◼   ► I do always feel like, because we could check in on themes every month if we wanted to, but we don't.

00:45:27 ◼   ► It's too much. Every month is too much.

00:45:29 ◼   ► But I do feel like earlier in the year is a good check-in point rather than later in the year.

00:45:34 ◼   ► Because we're still in the period of time where it's embedding, and I think it's helpful to take this time period to make sure that we're on the right track.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Because you've still got so much left ahead of you that if you've gotten off course by March, you want to fix that sooner rather than later.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good point to make that on a graph of the year

00:45:56 ◼   ► I feel like you should be very cognizant of the theme at the beginning and it sort of trails off

00:46:02 ◼   ► And then you're more cognizant towards the end of like how much are you paying attention?

00:46:07 ◼   ► Because like you said you're trying to establish something.

00:46:10 ◼   ► I love graph of the year again calendars

00:46:12 ◼   ► No, no, I'm like

00:46:14 ◼   ► If there was a way to lay out the seasons with some kind of number system

00:46:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:20 ◼   ► - Maybe.

00:46:21 ◼   ► - You know what's really funny?

00:46:23 ◼   ► I didn't realize, you can't see me now,

00:46:26 ◼   ► but I drew with my hand the graph,

00:46:30 ◼   ► which is when you lay out when does the sun rise

00:46:33 ◼   ► and set over the course of a year, right?

00:46:35 ◼   ► You can do those little solar graphs

00:46:37 ◼   ► of how much daylight is there.

00:46:39 ◼   ► That's what I drew with my hands.

00:46:41 ◼   ► I was like, oh, I think how beautiful

00:46:43 ◼   ► this inverse symmetry is, that the graph

00:46:46 ◼   ► of theme cognizance is exactly inverse

00:46:49 ◼   ► to the graph of the sunlight right over the course

00:46:51 ◼   ► of the year.

00:46:52 ◼   ► - You work inside a lot of the time inside

00:46:54 ◼   ► of a just pitch black box.

00:46:57 ◼   ► - That is true.

00:46:57 ◼   ► - But yeah, the sun is so important.

00:46:59 ◼   ► - It's not pitch black.

00:47:00 ◼   ► I set my hue lights so that it's mimicking

00:47:03 ◼   ► Arctic Aurora at very low light.

00:47:05 ◼   ► So it's blue and green in here.

00:47:07 ◼   ► - So what you're saying is you're creating

00:47:09 ◼   ► your own seasonal environment now,

00:47:12 ◼   ► which is divorced from the actual season.

00:47:14 ◼   ► - Yes, that's true.

00:47:15 ◼   ► My actual work day is like the midnight sun in Antarctica, yes.

00:47:19 ◼   ► That's what my actual experience is.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Just had to run the same page.

00:47:27 ◼   ► I feel like you're needlessly throwing me off track here, Mike.

00:47:31 ◼   ► With your calendars and your numbers.

00:47:34 ◼   ► Calendar-sh-malendar.

00:47:35 ◼   ► So how is the year of work treating you?

00:47:38 ◼   ► I was trying to think about past years and past themes and I was looking at stuff and

00:47:44 ◼   ► I don't think I have felt as good about a theme at this point in the year as I do now.

00:47:53 ◼   ► I'm just extremely happy about how things are going.

00:47:57 ◼   ► And for me, the biggest thing that has like kicked in just just really in like the last

00:48:02 ◼   ► three weeks I can suddenly feel it is, hey, your theme is year of work.

00:48:09 ◼   ► You got to work on your work.

00:48:11 ◼   ► And you got to work on your health.

00:48:13 ◼   ► And when you work on your health, it doesn't happen immediately.

00:48:17 ◼   ► It takes a little while.

00:48:18 ◼   ► And I'm just feeling great.

00:48:20 ◼   ► It's like I've lost weight, I've put on muscle mass, I've been doing aerobic exercises, and

00:48:26 ◼   ► it's like suddenly it's really all starting to pay off.

00:48:30 ◼   ► And it just feels really nice.

00:48:33 ◼   ► It's also making it so clear to me how unwell I was last year and had this like weird inability

00:48:40 ◼   ► to recognize it.

00:48:41 ◼   ► It's like, "Ah, right, I'm physically coming out of that."

00:48:45 ◼   ► And it's fantastic.

00:48:46 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, yesterday I was really trying to push writing a script and trying to get it done."

00:48:52 ◼   ► And without even thinking about it, I noticed like,

00:48:55 ◼   ► "Oh, I time tracked that I did three hours walking on a treadmill,

00:49:00 ◼   ► talking out loud and typing the entire time."

00:49:03 ◼   ► And it's like, "I physically would not have been able to do that at any point last year."

00:49:08 ◼   ► Fantastic!

00:49:09 ◼   ► The health is now also helping the work part of this.

00:49:12 ◼   ► This is exactly how I hoped it would go, and it's going that way, and suddenly I can really feel it.

00:49:19 ◼   ► I've made a little tweak to my schedule, which I kind of can't believe that I'm now this person.

00:49:24 ◼   ► But so in the past, when I think about how things have gone with exercise, it's like,

00:49:29 ◼   ► "Oh, we've talked about how neither of us like exercise, and I still don't like exercise."

00:49:35 ◼   ► But you gotta do it. And an extremely effective thing which really turned the corner for me on this was the first five minutes of exercise.

00:49:45 ◼   ► Like you get up, you're just gonna do five minutes. I open Fitbod, sponsor of the show sometimes.

00:49:51 ◼   ► Basically every episode.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Yeah, basically every episode.

00:49:54 ◼   ► But, you know, we love 'em.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Yes, we do love them. I don't give App of the Year awards, but I did give App of the Year to Fitbod one year.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And I still maintain it as one of the most life-changing apps that I've used.

00:50:05 ◼   ► Sponsorships aside, that's why they sponsor us.

00:50:08 ◼   ► We love it. You should totally sign up for it.

00:50:10 ◼   ► But I loved it because it just told me,

00:50:13 ◼   ► "Look, here's your most under-exercise muscle group.

00:50:16 ◼   ► Here's one exercise you could do with it right now."

00:50:19 ◼   ► And I'm a big fan of this,

00:50:21 ◼   ► like, what's the minimum amount you can do to achieve something?

00:50:25 ◼   ► And I did that for a long enough time

00:50:28 ◼   ► of like just do the one thing five minutes, the most effective thing, this is the minimum

00:50:34 ◼   ► viable amount of exercise. It eventually got under my skin and I developed a work routine

00:50:40 ◼   ► which was okay I'll do five minutes of exercise, I'll do a bunch of writing and then later

00:50:44 ◼   ► in the day I will do my real exercise which should be like 25 minutes so I'm getting

00:50:48 ◼   ► 30 minutes in the day. You know, well of course many days you find reasons to like not do

00:50:54 ◼   ► the full exercise later. It's like oh I took so long getting started with writing

00:50:57 ◼   ► are like, "Oh, now we have to do this other thing."

00:51:00 ◼   ► But this year, the routine of exercise was established well enough.

00:51:04 ◼   ► I thought, "You know what?

00:51:05 ◼   ► I'm going to try to be one of these people who gets up and does their 30 minutes of exercise

00:51:09 ◼   ► first thing in the morning."

00:51:12 ◼   ► I don't think I could have done this years ago, but it's enough of a routine now that

00:51:16 ◼   ► now I've been doing this all year.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I can see why tons of people recommend this as a schedule, as like, "This is what you

00:51:23 ◼   ► should do.

00:51:24 ◼   ► any work, just do 30 minutes of exercise.

00:51:27 ◼   ► I'm more shocked than anyone else that I am now one of those people, but that's what I've

00:51:32 ◼   ► been doing all year and it's been working great.

00:51:36 ◼   ► I think if I'm going to try to make the pitch to people who don't want to do this, depending

00:51:42 ◼   ► on the kind of work you do, one unexpected benefit that I didn't quite realize is the

00:51:49 ◼   ► 30 minutes of exercise in the morning can serve two functions. It serves the wake up

00:51:55 ◼   ► function, right? So like you can't just leap out of bed and get straight to work. You need

00:51:59 ◼   ► some transition time to wake up. And I force myself that I'm not allowed to listen to audiobooks

00:52:06 ◼   ► or podcasts or anything while I'm doing that. So it's got to be, if I'm listening to something,

00:52:10 ◼   ► it's like music without lyrics. That's the only thing.

00:52:13 ◼   ► - You're in the worst possible environment.

00:52:16 ◼   ► - No, my-- - Wake up,

00:52:17 ◼   ► immediately go to work, don't listen to podcasts.

00:52:19 ◼   ► I'm just saying it for me.

00:52:20 ◼   ► - Right. (laughs)

00:52:21 ◼   ► - Wake up, immediately go to exercise,

00:52:23 ◼   ► don't listen to any podcast.

00:52:24 ◼   ► It's like, ah! (laughs)

00:52:27 ◼   ► - There's actually, there's one step that happens

00:52:28 ◼   ► before that, of course, which is wake up, make coffee,

00:52:31 ◼   ► is actually the first thing that I do

00:52:33 ◼   ► before brushing teeth, right?

00:52:34 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like, oh, you can brush your teeth

00:52:36 ◼   ► while the coffee's brewing.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Bring coffee to exercise area, start exercising.

00:52:41 ◼   ► It gives the coffee time to actually kick in,

00:52:43 ◼   ► to like start waking you up,

00:52:45 ◼   ► 'cause it takes kind of like 20 minutes

00:52:46 ◼   ► for coffee to actually be effective.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And then by not listening to anything with words,

00:52:52 ◼   ► it's been a way to kind of trick my brain

00:52:55 ◼   ► into being just a little bit bored.

00:52:58 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, well, you know what we need to do, Brian?

00:53:00 ◼   ► We need to think about that script.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Ooh, how could we say that thing better?

00:53:03 ◼   ► Or like, ooh, do you have some kind of solution

00:53:05 ◼   ► to the problem from yesterday

00:53:07 ◼   ► that we were trying to write about?

00:53:08 ◼   ► So I've just discovered like, boy,

00:53:10 ◼   ► This is a fantastic on-ramp into going into work after the exercise.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And so it's a small change in my routine, but it's been really good and I'm just so happy about it.

00:53:23 ◼   ► And yeah, the like work on your health thing.

00:53:27 ◼   ► I think I was kind of a little scared, like, oh, have I just permanently damaged my health from last year?

00:53:35 ◼   ► And so that's also why I'm so high on this.

00:53:37 ◼   ► is like, "Oh no!"

00:53:39 ◼   ► Like I was just able to turn this around

00:53:41 ◼   ► and it's so good.

00:53:42 ◼   ► But there's another part of this,

00:53:44 ◼   ► which more Texans will know about,

00:53:46 ◼   ► because I mentioned it offhandedly

00:53:48 ◼   ► in one of those post-show discussions.

00:53:51 ◼   ► Now, you know, Mike, I've long had a problem.

00:53:54 ◼   ► I want to work outside of my apartment.

00:53:58 ◼   ► I have an office at home,

00:53:59 ◼   ► but after three years of COVID,

00:54:01 ◼   ► I need someplace to go that's not where I live

00:54:04 ◼   ► all the time, 24 hours a day.

00:54:07 ◼   ► As the sort of person who goes outside so rarely that he can mark the passage of the seasons by noticing when the sun stays up longer suddenly when he's out.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Like, oh, it's actually quite different.

00:54:17 ◼   ► So in a rare set of circumstances, the gods smiled upon Grey.

00:54:23 ◼   ► They didn't completely solve his problem.

00:54:25 ◼   ► But I was able to acquire not an office, but a parking spot.

00:54:34 ◼   ► a parking spot that is a garage in the basement of my building.

00:54:40 ◼   ► And originally I was thinking, "Oh, we'll get this thing as storage space for

00:54:47 ◼   ► Christmas decorations and things."

00:54:49 ◼   ► But I eventually realized it dawned on me.

00:54:51 ◼   ► I was like, "No, no, no.

00:54:52 ◼   ► This can be a little gym in the basement of my building.

00:54:55 ◼   ► No, wait, it can't just be a gym.

00:54:58 ◼   ► It can be a tiny little office for me."

00:55:01 ◼   ► And so what I have done in this like cinder block prison environment is I took a bunch of Christmas decoration boxes, I stacked them up in a corner, I grabbed an old laptop, I grabbed my old LG monitor, I put them on there.

00:55:18 ◼   ► And it's like, now I have a standing desk.

00:55:21 ◼   ► And the most important feature of this standing desk is that it is not in my actual apartment.

00:55:28 ◼   ► So I can "commute" every morning with my mug of coffee into the basement parking spot

00:55:35 ◼   ► garage.

00:55:36 ◼   ► I can close the door.

00:55:38 ◼   ► I can have privacy.

00:55:40 ◼   ► And I can like exercise down there.

00:55:42 ◼   ► And then once I'm done exercising, I can stand up and go to work at this little standing

00:55:47 ◼   ► desk that I've made and I'm absolutely loving this. Like, it's not a perfect solution, it's

00:55:53 ◼   ► not an office outside of the house, it probably will be unworkable once summer rolls around

00:55:59 ◼   ► and it's way too hot.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I am full of that.

00:56:03 ◼   ► I am extremely aware of like, "Ooh, this might just be a six months of the year kind of solution,"

00:56:08 ◼   ► but for right now, it's just a great 80% solution and it just feels like, "Ooh, year of work,

00:56:16 ◼   ► Everything is coming up gray.

00:56:18 ◼   ► Windows?

00:56:19 ◼   ► No.

00:56:20 ◼   ► Right?

00:56:21 ◼   ► There's no windows.

00:56:22 ◼   ► No.

00:56:23 ◼   ► There's no, there's no, there's a door.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And then there's cinder blocks.

00:56:25 ◼   ► There's no windows.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Ventilation in general?

00:56:28 ◼   ► What's the air like in there?

00:56:29 ◼   ► Uh, it's not great.

00:56:31 ◼   ► Um, but what...

00:56:34 ◼   ► So the other two things that are in there is there is an air filter, which was extremely

00:56:41 ◼   ► grumpy when I first turned it on, like "air quality down here is terrible" and it took

00:56:46 ◼   ► a long time for that air filter to be like "you can breathe in this".

00:56:49 ◼   ► Geoff - It's like four weeks to "okay".

00:56:51 ◼   ► Michael - As is often the case with air filters and air quality monitors, you go like "oh,

00:56:56 ◼   ► what could possibly be wrong with this air?" and then the filter tells you everything.

00:56:59 ◼   ► Everything is wrong with this air, like you shouldn't be breathing this. And yes, you

00:57:02 ◼   ► know, if like someone else parks in an adjacent spot, that air filter kicks in real fast.

00:57:07 ◼   ► I was like, "No, no, no, this is no good."

00:57:09 ◼   ► But it's fine.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And also, I did take your suggestion

00:57:13 ◼   ► from the previous episode,

00:57:15 ◼   ► and we did get the new Roomba, which is very exciting.

00:57:17 ◼   ► - Oh, good.

00:57:19 ◼   ► - Yes, but our old Roomba retired now,

00:57:23 ◼   ► downstairs in the basement in this parking garage.

00:57:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:27 ◼   ► And so, like,

00:57:29 ◼   ► I renamed him Groomba for garage Roomba.

00:57:35 ◼   ► - Naturally.

00:57:35 ◼   ► - Naturally.

00:57:37 ◼   ► And Grumba is set to try and clear the garage every single day because, you know, like since

00:57:45 ◼   ► cars park down there, it's like impossible to keep clean. And so Grumba goes out. I do just wonder,

00:57:51 ◼   ► like, I don't think anyone in the building has like caught what's happening here. But man,

00:57:56 ◼   ► let me tell you, like Grumba's running. It's real loud, like in this environment.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Just to confirm, because I think it's important for the picture painting in people's minds,

00:58:04 ◼   ► it's a private garage, you're not just occupying a space

00:58:07 ◼   ► in a everyone can see you kind of garage, right?

00:58:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, it has a door that can close.

00:58:13 ◼   ► - Can you imagine, it's just an underground car park?

00:58:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:17 ◼   ► You set up a computer down there,

00:58:19 ◼   ► you're just working out in the morning.

00:58:21 ◼   ► Hi, Bill!

00:58:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, one of the things is,

00:58:26 ◼   ► I do kind of not want other people in the building

00:58:30 ◼   ► to know what I'm up to down there.

00:58:31 ◼   ► - Oh, for sure.

00:58:33 ◼   ► Right? Like I would, I would much prefer that.

00:58:35 ◼   ► So say for example, Grumba running is like not exactly a real low key move,

00:58:41 ◼   ► but is required so that I can breathe.

00:58:43 ◼   ► It's also alarming because I can see when Grumba is running, my air quality

00:58:48 ◼   ► thing can send up a little alert, like, "Oh, the air is terrible down here

00:58:51 ◼   ► because he's kicking up all the dust, right, for the team to take care of."

00:58:55 ◼   ► But okay, what I've been scheming about, I haven't figured out if

00:58:58 ◼   ► there's a workable way to do this.

00:59:00 ◼   ► But I'm like, can I figure out a way to like stick a camera on this door so I can just

00:59:06 ◼   ► see what's on the other side?

00:59:08 ◼   ► And then if someone else is parking their car, I can just be real quiet until they

00:59:13 ◼   ► leave.

00:59:13 ◼   ► That's like on my list of potential like garage home improvements.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I don't know if that's going to work out.

00:59:18 ◼   ► I think probably not, but I've been, I've been scheming about it because I am dreading

00:59:24 ◼   ► the day when some neighbor knocks on the door and is like, what are you doing?

00:59:30 ◼   ► And it's like, uh, nothing, right?

00:59:33 ◼   ► Is that a computer behind you?

00:59:34 ◼   ► No.

00:59:35 ◼   ► Is that a Roomba running on the floor?

00:59:37 ◼   ► No, definitely not.

00:59:38 ◼   ► Who would do that?

00:59:40 ◼   ► So yes, this is why I say it is not a perfect solution, but the timing was just perfect.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Like we got access to this space in January.

00:59:49 ◼   ► It dawned on me that it could be more than just a storage space and I set it up and I've been using it and I love it.

00:59:58 ◼   ► So that's how year of work is going for me so far.

01:00:01 ◼   ► So I'm assuming that the secret garage office, Gruffis, has been helping you with the work, right?

01:00:09 ◼   ► Like, is the part that you're saying, right?

01:00:11 ◼   ► Like, you feel like you're on top of work because of this additional space?

01:00:16 ◼   ► Yeah, totally.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Like, it's always advantageous to change locations.

01:00:22 ◼   ► I've always just been a huge fan of that.

01:00:25 ◼   ► And this also feels like a way to kind of start afresh.

01:00:30 ◼   ► My upstairs office, from which I am talking to you right now, is lovely,

01:00:34 ◼   ► but it still just has the problem that it is in the house.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And there's just always gonna be distractions, right?

01:00:40 ◼   ► There's deliveries or there's dogs or there's something going on.

01:00:44 ◼   ► And this way, it's just easier to be downstairs.

01:00:49 ◼   ► And it also gives the clear signal to my brain of,

01:00:54 ◼   ► "Hey, we're going down here and this is what we're here to do."

01:00:58 ◼   ► And on a personal level, I'm finding it just a, a funny kind of throwback

01:01:03 ◼   ► because this is also the way that I started the YouTube channel years ago

01:01:10 ◼   ► was in this little apartment that we rented in the city, it was, it was

01:01:15 ◼   ► too small to work in, but there was a boiler room in the basement that nobody used.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:01:22 ◼   ► I remember talking to you about this.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Yes, it was like this boiler room and it was like a terrible environment, but it was a place where I had enough space to stand up, walk back and forth a few paces.

01:01:35 ◼   ► No one was down there so I could talk out loud and like that is where I wrote the scripts.

01:01:39 ◼   ► And I feel like I'm developing a theory that work environments that are slightly uncomfortable are actually very conducive to being serious about work.

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01:05:00 ◼   ► So how's your theme going Mike?

01:05:03 ◼   ► Like how our themes are kind of similar to each other right?

01:05:08 ◼   ► of work, year of weekend. We're on the same page, fully aligned. This is the best I've

01:05:14 ◼   ► done ever.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Oh good.

01:05:16 ◼   ► At the start of a year.

01:05:17 ◼   ► I'm really happy to hear that.

01:05:18 ◼   ► I feel right now that I am all in on year of the weekend. What I think is helping us

01:05:23 ◼   ► both of this is some of the things we've had in the past, they just naturally would take

01:05:30 ◼   ► a longer period of time to see benefit.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Oh, that's a good point.

01:05:34 ◼   ► we're doing right now you can see it like mine is weekly if I'm taking time

01:05:41 ◼   ► every seven days to take time off I'm if I'm being successful at that and just

01:05:47 ◼   ► actually trying to do what I promised myself I would do I'm seeing the

01:05:52 ◼   ► benefits every single week mm-hmm so it's been really nice you know I've done

01:05:56 ◼   ► a few things I created the weekend entry and Timery that you suggested that I do

01:06:01 ◼   ► do. I'm not tracking like beginning of Saturday to end of Sunday but it's

01:06:06 ◼   ► purposeful things that I'm doing in that period. So like for example I went and

01:06:11 ◼   ► spent some time with some friends last Thursday but tracked it as weekend time

01:06:15 ◼   ► because it matches in my mind for what the year of the weekend is. I've really

01:06:20 ◼   ► been just keeping it front of mind making sure I take the time if I'm

01:06:23 ◼   ► working on the weekend, taking time off next week like for I'll be working this

01:06:28 ◼   ► weekend I'll be editing this show on either Saturday or Sunday so I've

01:06:31 ◼   ► already marked off next Thursday as a weekend day. I don't have to do

01:06:36 ◼   ► anything on those days like they're just like rest days. I might play some video games, hang

01:06:40 ◼   ► out at home, like that's just gonna be a nice relaxed day. In general I feel like

01:06:44 ◼   ► I've been doing a better job of spending time with friends which is something I

01:06:47 ◼   ► really wanted to do. I've been spending a bit more time at home but the home stuff

01:06:51 ◼   ► is still up in the air. We have been really kind of like held back on being

01:06:56 ◼   ► able to do the home improvements that we're wanting to do, because we want to

01:07:00 ◼   ► decorate, but we needed to do some work in the bathroom, which should be starting

01:07:04 ◼   ► in the next few weeks, and then once that's done, everything else can start

01:07:07 ◼   ► falling into place. I'm excited about that, because then we can start moving that

01:07:11 ◼   ► part forward. Similarly to you, actually, I've been very happy with my progress

01:07:15 ◼   ► with what I am doing in health this year. So I'm continuing to do everything I was

01:07:21 ◼   ► doing before, but I'm picking up some new things. So I have a new hobby that I'm

01:07:25 ◼   ► trying out which is golf. Oh wow. Yep. That is a real

01:07:31 ◼   ► Curb Your Enthusiasm style hobby. There's a good reason

01:07:34 ◼   ► for this though about how it lines into my year of the

01:07:36 ◼   ► weekend. So, I have some friends that I grew up with

01:07:39 ◼   ► and we just so happened to have moved very close to each

01:07:42 ◼   ► other like three of us and we went out and had dinner

01:07:46 ◼   ► together and we're trying to do this more often now. They

01:07:49 ◼   ► both play golf, love golf. And so I thought, well, this is a

01:07:55 ◼   ► good thing for me to try as a way to give us more excuses to spend time together. And

01:08:01 ◼   ► so I've been taking golf lessons and I am loving it.

01:08:07 ◼   ► JAYLEE: Wow, you're really heading pro. Golf lessons.

01:08:11 ◼   ► MATT: Well, I feel like this is a thing that I would not just want to go to a golf course

01:08:15 ◼   ► and just start smacking balls around. Like, that's not going to end good for anybody.

01:08:20 ◼   ► - You're like learning the difference between the like,

01:08:22 ◼   ► the woods and the irons, coppers and putters and things.

01:08:27 ◼   ► - The coppers, the coppers are really important.

01:08:29 ◼   ► But just like how to hold a golf club,

01:08:31 ◼   ► like the posture, like it's very complicated.

01:08:34 ◼   ► It's a very complicated thing to do even okay.

01:08:37 ◼   ► I had mentioned I wanted to do this.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Adina bought me a golf lesson for my birthday.

01:08:41 ◼   ► And so I did that lesson

01:08:42 ◼   ► and I've been doing some lessons now.

01:08:44 ◼   ► And this is one of those things where,

01:08:47 ◼   ► so like I'm on my way to my lesson

01:08:49 ◼   ► and I'm thinking, I'll take next week off.

01:08:52 ◼   ► I won't do a lesson next week.

01:08:54 ◼   ► I'll do it in a couple of weeks time.

01:08:55 ◼   ► Halfway through the lesson, I'm like,

01:08:57 ◼   ► I'm coming back next week.

01:08:59 ◼   ► So like, it's got that kind of like hold on me.

01:09:01 ◼   ► It's just like an interesting activity

01:09:03 ◼   ► because it's a thing that you sometimes can just hit a ball

01:09:06 ◼   ► and it goes straight and it flies far and you're like,

01:09:08 ◼   ► I'm the best ever.

01:09:09 ◼   ► And then you hit something else

01:09:10 ◼   ► and it just smacks straight into a wall.

01:09:12 ◼   ► But like, it has that kind of excitement too.

01:09:14 ◼   ► It's fun, like I'm enjoying it.

01:09:16 ◼   ► It's keeping me active too.

01:09:18 ◼   ► It's like another thing, right?

01:09:19 ◼   ► It's like an additional thing that I'm doing,

01:09:21 ◼   ► which is working out different muscles.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And sometimes, like if you, you know,

01:09:26 ◼   ► I'm doing these lessons at a driving range, right?

01:09:28 ◼   ► So you're just like hitting the balls.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Do it for an hour, it's like sometimes like,

01:09:31 ◼   ► wow, that was a workout.

01:09:33 ◼   ► Like you can feel it.

01:09:34 ◼   ► - Isn't it very asymmetrical though?

01:09:36 ◼   ► I feel like this is, it can't possibly be symmetrical,

01:09:41 ◼   ► right, 'cause you have like a favored hand

01:09:43 ◼   ► in the way you're turning, right?

01:09:44 ◼   ► - Oh, I mean, yeah, I'm not using this

01:09:45 ◼   ► as a way to build muscle,

01:09:46 ◼   ► but just like a cardiovascular kind of thing, right?

01:09:48 ◼   ► - Okay, okay.

01:09:49 ◼   ► - There's just a lot of movement in the body.

01:09:50 ◼   ► And also if you actually go and play golf,

01:09:53 ◼   ► like I went with my friends, they were playing

01:09:56 ◼   ► and I just went with them to see what it was like.

01:09:58 ◼   ► And I did like 14,000 steps.

01:10:00 ◼   ► Right, so like it's the mixture of these two things

01:10:04 ◼   ► of like, yeah, you're not like running,

01:10:06 ◼   ► you're not like doing a lot of hard hitting stuff,

01:10:08 ◼   ► but if you know, just there is some muscle work in it,

01:10:12 ◼   ► but then there's also just a lot of cardio work in it.

01:10:14 ◼   ► So like, it's an interesting activity.

01:10:17 ◼   ► I'm not doing it for health benefits,

01:10:19 ◼   ► but it's just something that I'm aware of

01:10:21 ◼   ► is like another kind of physical activity

01:10:23 ◼   ► that I'm bringing into my life.

01:10:25 ◼   ► But then the other change kind of like

01:10:27 ◼   ► on the health perspective for me is,

01:10:29 ◼   ► I now walk for an hour every day,

01:10:31 ◼   ► which is just like not a thing I was doing before.

01:10:34 ◼   ► And it was like a choice that I made,

01:10:36 ◼   ► like my new commute, I can either change trains

01:10:39 ◼   ► or walk for 25 minutes.

01:10:42 ◼   ► - Oh, that is a very good decision.

01:10:44 ◼   ► And so I walk every day.

01:10:47 ◼   ► And one of the great things now is,

01:10:50 ◼   ► we're in our previous place.

01:10:51 ◼   ► As it got later into the evening, if I was working late,

01:10:56 ◼   ► I would typically take taxis home

01:10:58 ◼   ► because the commute was longer, it was more complicated,

01:11:03 ◼   ► and I just found it frustrating.

01:11:05 ◼   ► But now this commute is much simpler to do.

01:11:08 ◼   ► It's actually a shorter distance on the trains,

01:11:10 ◼   ► even though it takes around the same time

01:11:12 ◼   ► 'cause I'm doing this walk.

01:11:13 ◼   ► So I never take taxis home now.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Pretty much no matter how late I work.

01:11:17 ◼   ► I was in the studio until 10 o'clock last night and I still took the train.

01:11:20 ◼   ► So I'm getting like an extra 50 minutes of exercise, like walking, but like enough exercise

01:11:27 ◼   ► that my Apple Watch says, "Hey, you working out?"

01:11:29 ◼   ► Like I get that every day now.

01:11:31 ◼   ► And so like, I feel like I've now got this additional base level of just general exercise

01:11:36 ◼   ► that I didn't have before on top of then the other things that I'll do in the gym using

01:11:42 ◼   ► doing the golf stuff, like these are just like additional things on top. So like I'm

01:11:45 ◼   ► pretty happy with what I'm doing there, even in just like simple decisions that I'm making.

01:11:51 ◼   ► So that's nice. And presumably when you're doing the walk into work in the morning, you're

01:11:55 ◼   ► not listening to anything, just silence. So you can start thinking about how the day is

01:11:59 ◼   ► going to go.

01:12:00 ◼   ► No, you see, I do the exact opposite. For me, listening to podcasts is important. And

01:12:02 ◼   ► this gives me an easy way to make sure I'm keeping up with stuff and get taken in information.

01:12:10 ◼   ► - Something I'm pretty good at,

01:12:12 ◼   ► which is just maybe different from how our brains are,

01:12:16 ◼   ► like I could be listening to something

01:12:17 ◼   ► and it will spark an idea and I'm very good at like,

01:12:20 ◼   ► stop listening and my brain will just go.

01:12:23 ◼   ► Like I'm completing my own thought here for a while.

01:12:26 ◼   ► And then that will sometimes spring into something

01:12:28 ◼   ► where I'll then make a note, write something down

01:12:31 ◼   ► or I have an idea for something.

01:12:32 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't have that like free brain time or whatever.

01:12:37 ◼   ► But for me, it's more important to take in information,

01:12:41 ◼   ► I think, with the stuff that I'm doing,

01:12:43 ◼   ► which is current information

01:12:44 ◼   ► rather than having that empty space.

01:12:46 ◼   ► I've still got a few things I need to work on.

01:12:49 ◼   ► The balance in my calendar,

01:12:51 ◼   ► what I was thinking of like smarter scheduling.

01:12:53 ◼   ► So making sure that I'm compacting days together

01:12:57 ◼   ► rather than like one podcast on this day,

01:12:59 ◼   ► one on the next day.

01:13:00 ◼   ► I'm still working on that.

01:13:02 ◼   ► That's gonna be a slow moving process, which I knew,

01:13:05 ◼   ► because it involves other people

01:13:07 ◼   ► and trying to like, climb myself together.

01:13:09 ◼   ► - Yeah. - But yeah,

01:13:09 ◼   ► outside of that, I'm very happy with the progress

01:13:12 ◼   ► that I've made so far on the year of the weekend.

01:13:14 ◼   ► - Oh good, well, I'm very happy for both of us.

01:13:17 ◼   ► - We're pros now, man. (laughs)

01:13:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually think it's what,

01:13:21 ◼   ► it's exactly what you said, that these are,

01:13:24 ◼   ► we both happen to have picked themes

01:13:26 ◼   ► in which it is just much easier,

01:13:28 ◼   ► much sooner to see progress, so.

01:13:31 ◼   ► Perhaps these are also good beginner themes for people,

01:13:34 ◼   ► if they're trying to think of something.

01:13:35 ◼   ► - I think they are.

01:13:35 ◼   ► - And I also like, these are working for us this time.

01:13:39 ◼   ► I don't necessarily think that this is how

01:13:42 ◼   ► I would always want to have my theme

01:13:44 ◼   ► to be so measurable like this,

01:13:46 ◼   ► because sometimes it does need to be something

01:13:49 ◼   ► that is way bigger in scope.

01:13:51 ◼   ► But like, look at you last year, right?

01:13:53 ◼   ► The year is like new decade, right?

01:13:55 ◼   ► Like sometimes you need that,

01:13:57 ◼   ► even though it's complicated to measure it

01:13:59 ◼   ► week to week, season to season.

01:14:01 ◼   ► It takes an entire year of reflection sometimes

01:14:04 ◼   ► to see if you've actually made the progress that you want.

01:14:07 ◼   ► But sometimes there are these kinds of themes

01:14:09 ◼   ► where it is easier to measure it on a week by week basis.

01:14:14 ◼   ► And that's just where we both happen to be right now.

01:14:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was totally what I just needed this year.

01:14:19 ◼   ► I was like, I need to be clocking hours, go.

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01:16:50 ◼   ► (chime)

01:16:51 ◼   ► Shall we do some Ask Cortex, Mike?

01:16:53 ◼   ► - Yes, we should.

01:16:53 ◼   ► I would like to remind Cortex-ins

01:16:55 ◼   ► that they can send in feedback now

01:16:57 ◼   ► over at cortexfeedback.com,

01:16:59 ◼   ► which is our new fancy feedback form,

01:17:01 ◼   ► and people can send in their questions there,

01:17:03 ◼   ► as many of the people did

01:17:04 ◼   ► that we're gonna talk about today.

01:17:06 ◼   ► - Tavis asks, "What does Gray do

01:17:09 ◼   ► on the backend of Cortex brand?"

01:17:11 ◼   ► You guys talk a lot about all the incredible work

01:17:13 ◼   ► that Mike does behind the scenes.

01:17:15 ◼   ► I'm interested to hear how much input Gray has

01:17:17 ◼   ► in the process.

01:17:19 ◼   ► - This is a very good question.

01:17:21 ◼   ► And I think is actually something worth highlighting.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Maybe you would want to hear it,

01:17:26 ◼   ► like what I think about this, I don't know.

01:17:28 ◼   ► - Like quite legitimately,

01:17:29 ◼   ► I'm not sure how you're going to answer this question.

01:17:32 ◼   ► So I also would like to know,

01:17:34 ◼   ► what does Grey do on the backend of Cortex brand?

01:17:36 ◼   ► - So the backend part is interesting

01:17:38 ◼   ► because you could say on the front end part,

01:17:41 ◼   ► obviously Grey has a huge impact.

01:17:42 ◼   ► You know, you've made videos about the journal,

01:17:44 ◼   ► which is huge for the business

01:17:46 ◼   ► because it's putting the products out

01:17:47 ◼   ► to a wide scope of people.

01:17:50 ◼   ► Similarly with the video, right?

01:17:52 ◼   ► I made the video, but you 100% helped me shape it,

01:17:57 ◼   ► especially at the end, right?

01:17:58 ◼   ► So the output side of it, I think people can see,

01:18:02 ◼   ► but the backend side of it, we only ever talk about me.

01:18:06 ◼   ► Right?

01:18:06 ◼   ► We talk about me designing, me managing the process,

01:18:10 ◼   ► but there's still a bunch of other stuff.

01:18:12 ◼   ► So one thing is, Gray is an absolute sounding board for me

01:18:17 ◼   ► with my thoughts, right?

01:18:18 ◼   ► So we have a meeting every month, at least once a month,

01:18:21 ◼   ► where we get together and talk about everything

01:18:24 ◼   ► that we're thinking about, all of the ideas that we have,

01:18:26 ◼   ► and we kind of talk through everything.

01:18:29 ◼   ► And we are equals in these conversations.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And very frequently, you'll push me, I'll push you.

01:18:35 ◼   ► So there's a lot of back and forth in that.

01:18:37 ◼   ► And while we talk about me as the product designer,

01:18:41 ◼   ► I need you and your input to shape the products.

01:18:46 ◼   ► So like, for example, we mentioned this, right?

01:18:48 ◼   ► Psychic Notepad was gonna be very different.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Like it was just gonna be a dot grid.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And I don't think the product would have worked

01:18:57 ◼   ► so succinctly as the first iteration of this

01:19:01 ◼   ► without you pushing on me to keep working on it

01:19:04 ◼   ► until we came up with the adding of the to-do list section.

01:19:09 ◼   ► So I think that's really important for me in my design.

01:19:12 ◼   ► The other thing is, this was just my idea.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Our next product is your idea.

01:19:19 ◼   ► So that's where it's gonna change a little bit, I think.

01:19:25 ◼   ► I will be helping with the manufacturers,

01:19:27 ◼   ► but when it comes to the actual conception

01:19:29 ◼   ► and design of the product, it's your product.

01:19:31 ◼   ► So I think that will change things.

01:19:32 ◼   ► So whenever we talk about this next one,

01:19:35 ◼   ► it's all on you, right?

01:19:36 ◼   ► To tell people why they need it.

01:19:37 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:19:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's totally fair.

01:19:41 ◼   ► We talk about what you do

01:19:43 ◼   ► because you're the chief product designer.

01:19:45 ◼   ► And like that is just the more interesting

01:19:49 ◼   ► part of the business to talk about.

01:19:51 ◼   ► - One other thing that you have been incredibly helpful on

01:19:55 ◼   ► and has been a massive help for this business

01:19:57 ◼   ► is all of the business infrastructure.

01:20:00 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:20:00 ◼   ► - We are able to and take advantage of

01:20:03 ◼   ► some of the things you set up with Gray Industries,

01:20:05 ◼   ► which takes an incredible amount of pressure

01:20:08 ◼   ► off both of us in how we run the business.

01:20:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is also fair, yes.

01:20:12 ◼   ► There's like a lot of the foundational infrastructure

01:20:15 ◼   ► of the company was basically copy pasted

01:20:18 ◼   ► from Gray Industries stuff.

01:20:19 ◼   ► But that's also just like not very interesting to talk about.

01:20:23 ◼   ► - No, but it's incredibly helpful and important, right?

01:20:26 ◼   ► Because we're able to just use all of that infrastructure

01:20:30 ◼   ► that you already use to help make our business run too.

01:20:34 ◼   ► - That is true, and I do like infrastructure.

01:20:36 ◼   ► Mike knows that I'm secretly pushing

01:20:38 ◼   ► for more infrastructure right now,

01:20:40 ◼   ► and he's pushing back on that.

01:20:41 ◼   ► - He loves infrastructure.

01:20:43 ◼   ► Let me tell you, everyone.

01:20:44 ◼   ► - I pitched Mike a big infrastructure project,

01:20:46 ◼   ► and he was very, "Whoa."

01:20:48 ◼   ► - Very upset.

01:20:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:20:52 ◼   ► That's what's really going on, we'll see.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Colton wants to know,

01:20:55 ◼   ► either of you still using a Wacom tablet

01:20:57 ◼   ► as another pointing device?

01:21:00 ◼   ► If so, which one would you recommend?

01:21:02 ◼   ► - For me, this is a fast answer.

01:21:03 ◼   ► No, I basically stopped doing this after I transitioned

01:21:07 ◼   ► to working with an animator.

01:21:10 ◼   ► For me, the Wacom tablet was entirely about animation

01:21:13 ◼   ► and I essentially don't do that anymore

01:21:17 ◼   ► except for like very minor tweaks here and there.

01:21:19 ◼   ► So yeah, I've retired my Wacom tablets,

01:21:23 ◼   ► I've hung it up and that's it, no more for me.

01:21:25 ◼   ► - Cool, well, this is good, I still do.

01:21:28 ◼   ► For me, it's similar to you in a way of like,

01:21:31 ◼   ► I use it just for audio editing.

01:21:33 ◼   ► So I have two desks right in my studio.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I have the one where I do my recording

01:21:39 ◼   ► and then I have the one where I just do regular work.

01:21:42 ◼   ► On the regular desk I have a mouse and a Magic Trackpad.

01:21:47 ◼   ► So I'm using the Logitech MX Master 3S.

01:21:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, great mouse.

01:21:53 ◼   ► - This is the one with the silent clicking.

01:21:55 ◼   ► - Oh, it's, I'm sorry, this is a different model then.

01:21:58 ◼   ► I didn't know it has silent. - The 3S.

01:21:59 ◼   ► - Oh, S for silent. - The S is for silent.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I'm gonna get so great, I'm gonna put my mouse

01:22:04 ◼   ► up to the microphone now and click it three times, all right?

01:22:07 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:22:08 ◼   ► - Did you hear that?

01:22:11 ◼   ► - Barely.

01:22:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's incredible. - I know that sound, yeah.

01:22:13 ◼   ► Okay, huh.

01:22:14 ◼   ► - It is a very good mouse, the clicking is silent,

01:22:16 ◼   ► it's wonderful.

01:22:17 ◼   ► - Ah, you open up an Amazon, all right.

01:22:19 ◼   ► - It's worth it, it's great.

01:22:20 ◼   ► It's the MX Master 3 with a silent click,

01:22:23 ◼   ► like that's what it is.

01:22:24 ◼   ► And for when I'm recording, perfect.

01:22:27 ◼   ► And the trackpad I use for panning around

01:22:31 ◼   ► and gestures and stuff like that.

01:22:32 ◼   ► So I have that on my second desk,

01:22:35 ◼   ► that's what I have on there.

01:22:36 ◼   ► And then on my recording desk, I have a trackpad,

01:22:39 ◼   ► a mouse, and the Wacom Intuos Pro Wacom tablet.

01:22:44 ◼   ► And I use it just for editing.

01:22:46 ◼   ► So when I'm in Logic, that's how I do all of my editing.

01:22:49 ◼   ► It's very comfortable for me.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Now it's how I'm used to doing things too, right?

01:22:53 ◼   ► So for example, if I ever needed to edit somewhere else,

01:22:57 ◼   ► having a Wacom tablet is super important for me.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Not that I really do anymore,

01:23:02 ◼   ► but I did have to do some editing last year at home,

01:23:07 ◼   ► and I luckily had my old Wacom there

01:23:09 ◼   ► so I could just break that one out,

01:23:11 ◼   ► 'cause I'm just so slow doing it otherwise.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the one I recommend.

01:23:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think I sort of forgot

01:23:16 ◼   ► that one of the other reasons I gave up

01:23:18 ◼   ► using a secondary pointing device was

01:23:19 ◼   ► I did use to use it for the audio editing,

01:23:22 ◼   ► but I just made a real effort to,

01:23:25 ◼   ► I'm gonna become super fast with keyboard shortcuts

01:23:28 ◼   ► for the audio editing and kind of change my workflow.

01:23:31 ◼   ► So that was the other reason I could give that up

01:23:33 ◼   ► is I did use the, like I completely forgot

01:23:34 ◼   ► how much I used to use the pen for that.

01:23:36 ◼   ► But it's hard to beat keyboard shortcuts

01:23:39 ◼   ► and so I just transitioned to that

01:23:41 ◼   ► while I was offloading animation work

01:23:43 ◼   ► and it's like, oh, I don't actually need this tool

01:23:45 ◼   ► anymore for myself.

01:23:46 ◼   ► - Unknown Mist asks, do you like and or use

01:23:50 ◼   ► the swipe typing feature on iOS?

01:23:52 ◼   ► - I want to love it.

01:23:54 ◼   ► I really do, but I feel like it still misses too much to be annoying, and like one miss

01:24:04 ◼   ► in a sentence really can throw off the whole reason to use it in the first place.

01:24:11 ◼   ► I want to use it, I do try to use it sometimes, and I almost always like—it just doesn't

01:24:15 ◼   ► stick.

01:24:16 ◼   ► It's not actually a huge win.

01:24:19 ◼   ► And I've also—I'll just like, since this is typing on a keyboard stuff, I don't know

01:24:23 ◼   ► if I turn this feature off, what is it called?

01:24:26 ◼   ► Is it the keyboard clicks?

01:24:28 ◼   ► - Oh, like the haptic thing?

01:24:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I think I had turned this off on my phone

01:24:32 ◼   ► where the keyboard makes a little haptic sensation

01:24:35 ◼   ► when you type the keys.

01:24:37 ◼   ► I recently rediscovered this,

01:24:38 ◼   ► 'cause I use someone's phone, I was like, "What is this?"

01:24:40 ◼   ► And then I realized, "Oh, I can turn this feature on."

01:24:43 ◼   ► I really like the keyboard with the haptics on,

01:24:47 ◼   ► and I think it makes it,

01:24:48 ◼   ► I don't know if it's just psychological,

01:24:49 ◼   ► but it feels like it's more accurate,

01:24:51 ◼   ► and I'm better able to type with a tiny bit

01:24:54 ◼   ► of physical feedback from the keyboard.

01:24:56 ◼   ► So that has also not helped me with the swiping.

01:24:59 ◼   ► It's like, "No, no, I wanna feel the little

01:25:01 ◼   ► "satisfying clicks while I'm typing to someone."

01:25:03 ◼   ► Do you use it?

01:25:04 ◼   ► - The swipe typing I use basically exclusively on my iPhone.

01:25:09 ◼   ► I use it all the time, I love it.

01:25:13 ◼   ► Yes, it causes errors, but I was making errors anyway before.

01:25:17 ◼   ► Me and Autocorrect have never really been good friends,

01:25:20 ◼   ► but I rely on it constantly anyway,

01:25:22 ◼   ► it makes lots of errors for me.

01:25:25 ◼   ► I have like a weird thing,

01:25:26 ◼   ► I don't know where this comes from with the haptics.

01:25:29 ◼   ► As I say this out loud, I know how weird this sounds,

01:25:31 ◼   ► I wished I had an answer for this.

01:25:33 ◼   ► It makes me feel nauseous.

01:25:35 ◼   ► - That's weird. - I know.

01:25:36 ◼   ► - That's very weird. - Right?

01:25:38 ◼   ► I don't know why.

01:25:39 ◼   ► I tried it for a while

01:25:40 ◼   ► and it made me feel really uncomfortable.

01:25:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, don't do that then.

01:25:43 ◼   ► - And now I can't use it.

01:25:44 ◼   ► This is one of those things where I feel like maybe

01:25:48 ◼   ► When I first tried it, I was maybe unwell,

01:25:51 ◼   ► and now it's like locked in my brain.

01:25:54 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:25:55 ◼   ► - And now I can't get it out.

01:25:56 ◼   ► Like I just thought about turning it on

01:25:58 ◼   ► and it made me not feel good.

01:25:59 ◼   ► So like that feature is gone for me

01:26:01 ◼   ► for completely like irrational, unknowable reason.

01:26:05 ◼   ► Brains, man.

01:26:07 ◼   ► - RIP haptics.

01:26:08 ◼   ► - I know, right. - Brains are weird.

01:26:09 ◼   ► - But I used the swipe typing anyway,

01:26:11 ◼   ► so I don't need the haptics.

01:26:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also I forgot, I do use it in one scenario,

01:26:15 ◼   ► which is on my iPad with the pencil.

01:26:17 ◼   ► I do love it for that.

01:26:18 ◼   ► And I feel like I actually kind of forgot

01:26:21 ◼   ► that that is the place that I use it all the time.

01:26:23 ◼   ► That to me is really good.

01:26:24 ◼   ► And I think the pencil makes it just precise enough

01:26:26 ◼   ► that it gets over it.

01:26:27 ◼   ► But yeah, on my phone I never use it.

01:26:28 ◼   ► - So to actually to kind of like wrap these two questions

01:26:31 ◼   ► in together, do you still use the Apple Pencil

01:26:33 ◼   ► all the time on your iPad?

01:26:34 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:26:36 ◼   ► That's the primary interface for the iPad, easily.

01:26:38 ◼   ► And so I always float the keyboard

01:26:41 ◼   ► as the little mini iPhone size keyboard

01:26:43 ◼   ► whenever I'm using my iPad.

01:26:45 ◼   ► And then I use the pencil to swipe type on that.

01:26:47 ◼   ► And I find that that's pretty fast.

01:26:48 ◼   ► - So for me, considering that my only iPad

01:26:51 ◼   ► that I use now is an iPad mini,

01:26:54 ◼   ► I don't use the Apple Pencil anymore.

01:26:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can see that on the mini, it's small enough.

01:26:57 ◼   ► - It's as big as it, it just feels ridiculous.

01:27:01 ◼   ► You know, like it doesn't work the same for me.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Like it does work, but it's just not what I wanna do.

01:27:07 ◼   ► - It's also like, oh yes, you're down to a mini

01:27:10 ◼   ► and my iPad is 80% a magic machine

01:27:14 ◼   ► And it does feel a little bit like, oh, how far the iPad has fallen.

01:27:19 ◼   ► - Yeah. - That's the way things go.

01:27:20 ◼   ► - I mean, yes, but it's not like it's a bad story, really.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Like, for me, the iPad has fallen because the Mac is so good.

01:27:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:27:30 ◼   ► - The iPad never changed.

01:27:32 ◼   ► I mean, that's actually part of the problem.

01:27:34 ◼   ► But like, it wasn't really anything the iPad did for me.

01:27:37 ◼   ► It was just like, the Mac just became unavoidable

01:27:41 ◼   ► because of how great it was becoming,

01:27:43 ◼   ► including the MacBook Air, which actually,

01:27:45 ◼   ► when you came over, you saw the M2 MacBook Air

01:27:48 ◼   ► for the first time, right?

01:27:49 ◼   ► My MacBook Air. - Yeah, yeah.

01:27:50 ◼   ► I was super impressed with it.

01:27:51 ◼   ► I really loved it. - Yep.

01:27:53 ◼   ► Perfect machine.

01:27:54 ◼   ► - You're always making these assessments,

01:27:55 ◼   ► but I am very aware of like, oh, iPad.

01:27:58 ◼   ► You haven't changed.

01:28:00 ◼   ► Third time was not the charm for multitasking,

01:28:03 ◼   ► and in the meantime, Apple's just gone all in

01:28:06 ◼   ► on the laptops, and like, honestly,

01:28:10 ◼   ► I'm happy about the way it's gone.

01:28:12 ◼   ► like I think the Mac being good,

01:28:14 ◼   ► even if it's not the most popular system,

01:28:17 ◼   ► like it's the most important system that it's really good,

01:28:20 ◼   ► aside obviously from the iPhone,

01:28:21 ◼   ► like it matters that Macs are healthy and good.

01:28:25 ◼   ► And so I've been very happy to see

01:28:27 ◼   ► how well those things have gone.

01:28:28 ◼   ► But yeah, it does mean, unlike iPad,

01:28:31 ◼   ► you're for loading up Magic the Gathering,

01:28:33 ◼   ► that's what you're for.

01:28:34 ◼   ► - Yep, for me it's video, reading news,

01:28:39 ◼   ► maybe a little social media,

01:28:41 ◼   ► check in the occasional email.

01:28:44 ◼   ► Honestly, I use my iPad now,

01:28:46 ◼   ► how people just use their iPads.

01:28:49 ◼   ► That's what iPads are actually made for, really.

01:28:52 ◼   ► And that's what I use it for.

01:28:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause my second biggest use is RSS reading.

01:28:56 ◼   ► And it's like, yes, ah, that was the original demo

01:28:58 ◼   ► back in the day, like you're gonna read the news.

01:29:01 ◼   ► And it's like, ah, yes, now I'm reading some articles

01:29:02 ◼   ► through RSS on my iPad.

01:29:04 ◼   ► - This episode of Cortex is brought to you

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01:31:01 ◼   ► of this show and Relay FM.

01:31:04 ◼   ► Tim asks, "In one of the early episodes of Cortex,

01:31:07 ◼   ► Gray said that certain songs get stuck in his head

01:31:10 ◼   ► and he listens to them on a massive repeat loop.

01:31:13 ◼   ► On that episode, it was Rachel Planton's 'Fight Song.'"

01:31:17 ◼   ► Man, every time I hear that song,

01:31:19 ◼   ► that was stuck in his head.

01:31:20 ◼   ► "My question is, does Gray still do this?

01:31:22 ◼   ► And if so, what song is currently on loop?"

01:31:25 ◼   ► - Wow, "Fight Song," that was like 100 songs on loops ago.

01:31:29 ◼   ► It does still make it back into the rotation.

01:31:31 ◼   ► "Fight Song" is surprisingly good.

01:31:33 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:31:34 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, I don't think I could not do this.

01:31:37 ◼   ► This is just a foundational part of the way I work

01:31:39 ◼   ► is listening to something on repeat,

01:31:42 ◼   ► which I also just realized now is a song that can be heard

01:31:45 ◼   ► on repeat playing behind the door of a parking spot

01:31:50 ◼   ► in the basement of my building.

01:31:52 ◼   ► - So I went through this thing recently

01:31:54 ◼   ► when for the video of the psychic notepad,

01:31:58 ◼   ► I went back and listened to some of the saga review

01:32:02 ◼   ► in your office many and many episodes ago

01:32:06 ◼   ► where you had an office and you were upset

01:32:08 ◼   ► at somebody who was in the office next to you

01:32:10 ◼   ► 'cause they were there when you were there

01:32:12 ◼   ► and they would write things on the whiteboard

01:32:14 ◼   ► and I wanted to hear you say what they were

01:32:17 ◼   ► so I could write them down on the psychic notepad

01:32:19 ◼   ► for one of the shots so it just had to work.

01:32:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, yes, yes.

01:32:23 ◼   ► - There's a lot of Easter eggs in that video by the way.

01:32:25 ◼   ► That's one of them.

01:32:26 ◼   ► And in one of those episodes was the moment

01:32:28 ◼   ► where I came to the realization

01:32:31 ◼   ► that when you were complaining about him,

01:32:33 ◼   ► you were recording the audio for the Rules for Rulers video.

01:32:37 ◼   ► So he was listening to you talking about like stamping down

01:32:40 ◼   ► the infrastructure of society or whatever, like out loud.

01:32:45 ◼   ► And this is reminding me of that, which is like,

01:32:48 ◼   ► oh, you know, I'm just trying to keep myself to myself.

01:32:51 ◼   ► But yet nevertheless, there's a Roomba going on in there,

01:32:53 ◼   ► an air purifier and some song on repeat

01:32:56 ◼   ► for five hours a day.

01:32:57 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:32:58 ◼   ► So I like the current one, I have kind of a playlist that I'm rotating through, but

01:33:03 ◼   ► I do, I have this thing which is like, songs match videos, and oftentimes that match doesn't

01:33:11 ◼   ► make any sense to an external person.

01:33:13 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense to me, but it's just like, oh Britney Spears, I want to go,

01:33:17 ◼   ► just like matches this video that I'm working on, like great, let's do that.

01:33:21 ◼   ► But the thing that I'm currently working on is like an America topic.

01:33:26 ◼   ► And I do find that America topics, I want songs that have kind of like an America sound,

01:33:33 ◼   ► and I don't always know even know what that means, but-

01:33:35 ◼   ► For Springsteen.

01:33:36 ◼   ► That's what that means.

01:33:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I know that like, I know that's what people would think, but it's not quite right.

01:33:42 ◼   ► So when I said earlier in the show, like I was I was walking and talking for three hours

01:33:46 ◼   ► in a row.

01:33:47 ◼   ► I happen to know that was that was yesterday.

01:33:50 ◼   ► And I had "Bury My Bones" by Whiskey Myers on repeat the entire time for three hours.

01:33:57 ◼   ► And I will again remind people, like, that sounds like water torture, but there is a

01:34:02 ◼   ► way in which, like, I just, I can't describe it.

01:34:06 ◼   ► I'm not processing the song in the way that you normally listen to it.

01:34:10 ◼   ► It's something about, like, the fact that it is on loop keeps me on loop, and I'm just

01:34:14 ◼   ► like working working working working working working.

01:34:16 ◼   ► So I have a normal playlist of like intensely repeat songs that I go back to a bunch.

01:34:21 ◼   ► I've always said it's like "Parado #2" in violin D minor is the reigning champ of that

01:34:26 ◼   ► list.

01:34:27 ◼   ► But for America stuff, I have a list and I'm actually going to look for suggestions for

01:34:32 ◼   ► the listener.

01:34:33 ◼   ► So my America working playlist, and sometimes driving in America playlist, is called "Crazy

01:34:40 ◼   ► country songs. And it's songs that are in the country genre, but they're... you can

01:34:47 ◼   ► find country songs that are like kind of jokes on country songs, but the key thing here to

01:34:53 ◼   ► me is they can't be making fun of country songs. They have to also be genuine country

01:34:59 ◼   ► songs. So on my list here as an example, from the Far Cry soundtrack, there's a song called

01:35:06 ◼   ► called "Keep Your Rifle By Your Side" and is like a crazy cult singing about why they

01:35:10 ◼   ► need to keep their guns by their side. It is very America sound, it's like it's on

01:35:14 ◼   ► my crazy country list. I've got "Rednecker" by Hardy, which is a song about like who's

01:35:21 ◼   ► more of the redneck? There's a song called "Beer Never Broke My Heart" by Luke Combs,