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Cortex

160: State of the Apps 2025

 

00:00:00   Welcome back to State of the Apps. State of the Apps 2025.

00:00:04   So every year on State of the Apps, we talk about the tools, the services,

00:00:09   the apps that we use to manage our work and our lives. This year,

00:00:12   we're changing from tradition.

00:00:14   We usually discuss our home screens to start off State of the Apps. Last year,

00:00:19   that lasted about four hours. So this year,

00:00:23   we're swapping it around. We're going to talk about the apps first,

00:00:27   then talk about our home screens second, because otherwise we just talk about

00:00:30   all the apps twice. So we're going to talk about our applications first,

00:00:34   and then we're going to share off our home screens together too.

00:00:37   Luckily, iOS hasn't made any home screen relevant changes this year.

00:00:42   There's no additional customization options or anything like that.

00:00:45   So we're just going to start off straight with the apps.

00:00:49   So start off with the cornerstone category, which is productivity,

00:00:54   and the base of all productivity systems is the to-do apps that we use.

00:00:59   I'll say for me, I don't really have any significant change here,

00:01:03   and I am actually more interested to learn about what you're doing.

00:01:06   So I'm going to run through mine real quick.

00:01:08   So I am using a variety of apps in productivity and in

00:01:14   my to-do management. So I use Todoist,

00:01:17   which is for all of my personal and professional tasks.

00:01:19   Todoist is just a task search, just for me.

00:01:23   I don't share anything in Todoist. It has those features,

00:01:25   but it's not what I'm looking for. And I keep my task management very simple.

00:01:30   Everything has a due date. Everything has a project that it's assigned to.

00:01:34   And I just keep that very simply. I use reminders for family tasks.

00:01:39   These are shared between me and my wife. This has been great.

00:01:43   We started using reminders this year. We were using Trello before,

00:01:46   and I didn't like using Trello for this,

00:01:48   but last year Apple brought like a column view to reminders,

00:01:51   and we were able to move over to that. And that has been much better for the both of us.

00:01:55   Can one person use it in the column view and one person use it in the list view

00:01:58   if you're sharing, or do you both have to have it the same way?

00:02:00   Yes, you can choose. It's just the way it lays out the same information.

00:02:05   It's like, for example, I have it columns on my iPad and list view on my iPhone.

00:02:09   Because that is easier for me.

00:02:12   And we're just very good at just assign tasks to each other.

00:02:14   It has an assigning function. Reminders is getting pretty good.

00:02:19   I couldn't use it as my task manager because I just feel like some things require too many taps.

00:02:25   Even the natural language stuff, it will understand it,

00:02:28   but it still requires a little bit of poking to get it to do what you want with certain due dates and stuff.

00:02:34   But for a family task system, I'm very happy with it.

00:02:38   Yeah, reminders is perfect for that.

00:02:40   Like, it's clearly gotten better over the years.

00:02:42   Like, it's inching closer to being something that could be the main person's to do app.

00:02:47   But I use it for the same thing as like family shared stuff.

00:02:50   And you basically can't beat it for that. It's the best for shared lists.

00:02:54   I think if you've never used a task management system before, reminders would be perfect.

00:02:59   I think it's difficult if you're moving from something else.

00:03:02   Yeah, yeah.

00:03:03   If it's just for a solo individual.

00:03:04   And, you know, like any shared reminder system, neither me or Idina is exactly happy with the way that reminders works,

00:03:12   because we both have our own ways of wanting to manage things, right?

00:03:15   And so like, that is kind of the issue there.

00:03:17   But I think this is much better overall than Trello was for this.

00:03:21   I still use things for large repeatable checklists of templates.

00:03:26   So I really like things as a checklist app.

00:03:30   It would not work for me still as my main to do app because of some of the ways it handles repeating tasks,

00:03:37   which is at this point just feels like something that they cannot or just will not change.

00:03:42   The main thing is if you have a repeating task, you cannot mark it as completed until the day that it's set,

00:03:48   even if you've done it sooner.

00:03:50   Oh, right. Yes.

00:03:51   I just don't want to live my life that way.

00:03:54   You know, like sometimes I like to do things sooner,

00:03:56   and I don't want the to do manager to just completely control my life that way.

00:04:01   But things is wonderful for me for checklists.

00:04:05   So I have templates that are made in shortcuts.

00:04:08   I have really great shortcuts support to basically just run a shortcut.

00:04:12   It duplicates like an archived project, essentially,

00:04:15   that you can kind of just set up projects however you want,

00:04:17   and it duplicates it and turns it into an active project.

00:04:20   And I have that for Cortex because there's lots of steps to posting the show.

00:04:24   And I keep my travel checklists and stuff like that in my packing lists, all the things, too.

00:04:30   And I really like it for that kind of stuff.

00:04:31   I'm still using Dew.

00:04:34   I can't imagine not using this application.

00:04:37   Dew for me is for like it's just personal stuff that is too simple to go into Dewist.

00:04:44   But things that I want to remember, like take medication, take out the trash,

00:04:48   call your mom, that kind of stuff.

00:04:50   And what I also like about putting tasks into Dew is the thing that it does so well,

00:04:55   like it will just keep reminding you until it's done.

00:04:57   And I really like that about it.

00:04:59   I'm still using Timery for time tracking, continue to do my time tracking every day.

00:05:04   And Apple Notes for all my notes, except Cortex in general.

00:05:08   Nothing for Cortex podcast or brand goes into Notes anymore, which is new.

00:05:12   And I'm going to talk about that a little bit later on in the show.

00:05:14   But essentially, the foundation of my productivity system has remained the same

00:05:19   with some pleasant changes like in moving through reminders and stuff like that.

00:05:24   It feels like you have it nicely delineated what's for what.

00:05:28   It feels like you've got the good separation there for what kind of task goes in what place.

00:05:34   It works really well for me.

00:05:35   I know on the face of it, it seems kind of absurd.

00:05:38   I use like four different to do apps, but I really don't like to mix certain types of tasks together.

00:05:48   It doesn't work for my brain.

00:05:50   I like there to be as little into Dewist as possible.

00:05:53   And if I collapse all of this stuff into to Dewist, it would not be good for my mental stability.

00:06:00   I give all of these things are into Dewist, it would like double my task list and that would not feel good.

00:06:05   So I like having them separated this way.

00:06:09   I also don't want to share my main task list of anyone.

00:06:12   I don't want anyone to ever put things in there and I don't want to see anything that's related to anybody else.

00:06:18   So when we spoke last year, OmniFocus 4 was not out.

00:06:23   And you've been an OmniFocus user forever, essentially.

00:06:29   OmniFocus 4 is now out.

00:06:30   I'm wondering what your productivity system is looking like today.

00:06:35   Yeah, so I was quite concerned and quite in the wilderness last year because OmniFocus,

00:06:41   the thing that I've always said, it has this killer feature, several killer features.

00:06:45   But the main thing for me is the concept of defer dates, dates before which you cannot start a task.

00:06:51   And so those tasks are hidden from you until that date arrives.

00:06:54   I say it every year, it's just insane to me that this is not a part of every task manager ever, but very few task managers do it.

00:07:01   It's always been the killer feature for OmniFocus.

00:07:03   But yeah, it was getting quite rickety and concerning with them not updating the new version.

00:07:11   And then OmniFocus 4 did come out this year.

00:07:13   They had a little bit of a teething problem when it first arrived.

00:07:16   And I was still quite worried.

00:07:19   But at this point, I'm very happy with OmniFocus.

00:07:23   They have smoothed out all of the initial launch problems.

00:07:28   And I do see like, okay, like they're making changes, they're improving features, they're adding some new stuff.

00:07:36   I think like a lot of companies were going through this old like C++ to Swift transition and like they just got caught in that middle ground really bad.

00:07:45   But now that they're here, it feels like, okay, it's back on track.

00:07:49   I'm very happy with it.

00:07:51   And the thing that I've been doing with OmniFocus this year, which is just great, is that I actually have a kind of watch based productivity system now,

00:08:02   because of the way that OmniFocus works, where I'm almost always using a watch face that has like the big complication so I can see two to do items from OmniFocus.

00:08:12   And I've kind of reworked my whole system around, oh, I'm kind of like running through a checklist of the day, trying to go through like, what are the two things that are at the very top of the list,

00:08:22   and just like checking them off on my watch as I'm going through stuff.

00:08:25   And I just really like this.

00:08:27   It's a kind of funny way to use a hugely powerful and complicated to do manager.

00:08:35   But the purpose of that is to use all of that complication and their ability to sort and have very complicated repeating functions, different priorities for tasks,

00:08:44   and then have that just show up as at any particular moment, you should be doing one of these two things that you just see on your watch.

00:08:53   And when you do it, you just check it off and then move on to the next thing.

00:08:56   And I've repeated that with like widgets on my iPad and on my computer.

00:09:01   So I'm kind of always seeing like the top two things.

00:09:03   And I'm really just loving this as a system.

00:09:05   Like it's really fantastic.

00:09:07   So the top two things thing, is this like a complication on the watch face?

00:09:12   It's a complication on the watch face.

00:09:14   The middle one.

00:09:14   That wide complication.

00:09:16   Yeah.

00:09:16   Not the super wide one, but it's like the big one.

00:09:18   So I'm mostly using watch faces when I'm working that have that, like on the Ultra, right?

00:09:23   You can have the big complication in the middle.

00:09:25   That's what I'm using a lot.

00:09:26   OK, so it's like not in the app as such, but it's that they're always viewable to you.

00:09:30   And then you would open the app to check them off?

00:09:33   Yeah. So when you tap it, it opens the app and then I can check them off as I'm going through there on the watch.

00:09:38   And I don't know, this is just one of these things.

00:09:40   Sometimes you find a really good rhythm.

00:09:42   Yeah.

00:09:42   This is the thing with the to do apps always, right?

00:09:44   To do apps aren't the work.

00:09:46   They're the representation of the work.

00:09:48   But it's very easy to get caught in a kind of managing the tasks mode, which is always just frustrating.

00:09:55   And so this is kind of a nice way where I really never have to have the actual OmniFocus app open anymore.

00:10:03   I'm almost entirely interacting with it through widgets, mainly on my watch, sometimes on the phone or iPad or computer.

00:10:11   But I'm basically never using the app.

00:10:14   And I feel like this is partly possible because of a lot of the backend improvements they made in the upgrade to OmniFocus 4.

00:10:21   And like it just it syncs very well.

00:10:23   I could not be happier with this way of running through like, what am I going to do every day?

00:10:27   Are you doing anything to your tasks to try and get the right two to be at the top?

00:10:35   So, yes, that's just a result of a lot of the other thing that OmniFocus has as the main feature for me, which is their perspective system,

00:10:44   which is really just a system that allows you to have very complicated logical statements about which tasks do you want to appear in this list.

00:10:55   Is that the same as contexts in the GTD parlance?

00:10:59   No, just yeah, no, just forget that at all.

00:11:01   Like, this was great for the Middle Ages before we had computers.

00:11:05   But now that everything's a computer, like GTD is just completely unhelpful.

00:11:08   What I mean by this is the perspective allows you to say, the tasks that I want to appear in this list should only appear if they're on this list,

00:11:19   and they're tagged with that, but not this, and also this, but excluding here, and if it has this property, and the note field is blank,

00:11:30   or the note field contains just this word.

00:11:33   They allow you basically arbitrary complexity with nested if/then statements, which is just really powerful.

00:11:41   Like, you know, like Reminders smart lists, they let you set filters, but you have a very limited number of things you can do with those filters.

00:11:49   The perspectives is, oh, you can have as many filters, they can be nested, and the nesting is really what makes it quite powerful.

00:11:56   In addition, OmniFocus has the concept of just show me the top thing that's available from a list.

00:12:03   So you can also do complicated interactions like make me a list that's composed of these other lists, but only show me the top item from each of those lists.

00:12:12   So what is it that I'm trying to achieve, right?

00:12:14   The thing that I'm trying to achieve with a task manager, and why I'm so fussy about defer dates in particular, and these kinds of sorting abilities,

00:12:23   is because the core thing to me that a task manager from heaven should do is it should only show you exactly the thing that you can and should be doing right now.

00:12:39   And you shouldn't be able to see things that you can't do.

00:12:43   And I also feel like you shouldn't be seeing lots of things that you're not currently doing.

00:12:51   So that's why I really like this widget thing of basically compress everything within my system down to what are the top two things I should be doing right now.

00:13:04   And two feels like it's the perfect number, because it's like if I'm not doing that, I should be doing this.

00:13:10   And so that's how I kind of go through the list.

00:13:13   But my frustration with a lot of task managers is that even if they have good sorting systems, like I don't like the thing where many of them in the sidebar, they'll still show you, "Oh, here's all of your lists."

00:13:26   And I just don't like that.

00:13:28   I don't like seeing like all of the areas of responsibility in my life and all of the projects, even if the actual list that I'm looking at only contains a couple number of items.

00:13:37   So that's why this system is working great for me.

00:13:42   It's a really powerful to-do manager, but I can use that power to actually make the whole thing disappear and just compress down to two items.

00:13:52   And I should always be doing the one on the top or the one on the bottom.

00:13:56   And I've yet to run into a situation where if an item comes up on that list and I think, "Oh, I shouldn't be seeing that right now."

00:14:04   I can figure it out through modifying the perspectives to make sure like, "Oh, that doesn't happen again.

00:14:10   I won't see that at this time.

00:14:11   I'll see that at a later time."

00:14:13   So that system is just working for me beautifully.

00:14:15   Very complicated, but like effective is how I would label that.

00:14:21   I am really happy to put a lot of work in to set something up.

00:14:28   Yes.

00:14:28   If it's going to then be exactly what I want later.

00:14:34   And so that's what I feel like I did this year with OmniFocus is I put a lot of work into trying to think about, "Okay, how is this going to be the thing that is exactly what I want?"

00:14:44   And it basically is that way.

00:14:47   And no surprise here, I also have a series of shortcuts so that whenever I have to input something into the to-do system, when I input it, it asks me what kind of task is it?

00:14:57   And then it just automatically gets filtered to where it needs to go so that it also just works within the system.

00:15:02   So if it required constant fiddling, this would be worthless.

00:15:07   That would be against the whole purpose of it.

00:15:10   But it's like a half-life curve of the initial work was a lot to get it set up the way that I want.

00:15:14   And then as each day goes on, like, "Oh, the amount of work goes down and kind of the payoff goes up and up and up," which is exactly how I feel like, "Ah, the best of software."

00:15:22   That's exactly how it should be.

00:15:24   With this watch-based system, which seems accurate, how is task entry occurring?

00:15:30   Are you entering them on the watch too, or do you get another device?

00:15:34   No, so entry I'll do on the phone.

00:15:36   So I have a shortcut on the phone where I can just pop it in and then say into Siri.

00:15:40   And then it just asks me, "What kind of task is this?"

00:15:42   And then it goes right into the system.

00:15:43   Because I assume that considering the perspectives, task entry requires some metadata to be able to effectively show where it's meant to.

00:15:56   Exactly.

00:15:57   If you want the perspectives to work well, there has to be metadata that those perspectives are filtering on.

00:16:02   So that means what project is it in or what task does it have or what date does it have?

00:16:06   Is it flagged or not?

00:16:07   Is there anything in the notes?

00:16:09   These are the main tools you have to add data to a task.

00:16:13   And so, again, if I had to do this all the time, I would never bother doing it.

00:16:18   But you can create a shortcut that just says, "Oh, do this."

00:16:21   And shortcuts is pretty good because if there's certain words or phrases that is being looked for in a note, you could have shortcuts add those in based on a set of questions it could ask you.

00:16:30   Right?

00:16:30   So if there was a special word that would highlight it in a particular perspective, shortcuts could pre-fill that for you based on some buttons that you would press.

00:16:40   Yeah, that's exactly what it does.

00:16:42   Even have it do just the little things.

00:16:44   It's like if I need to get back to someone, someone sends me a text message.

00:16:47   I can't reply to them now.

00:16:48   I can just enter the person's name, but then it will fill into my system of like, "Reply to this person's name."

00:16:55   And then it goes into the whole system where it's supposed to be sorted.

00:16:57   So I just like that kind of thing also.

00:16:59   It's like, "Ah, everything is filtered as well in the way that I want it to look exactly on my list."

00:17:04   So it's very nice.

00:17:06   It's very satisfying.

00:17:06   But there is something funny about like, you're not a great texter.

00:17:09   Oh, no, no, no, I'm terrible.

00:17:11   Although you have been pretty good recently, but you with me at least, you're not a great texter.

00:17:15   But it's funny to me that you have like a whole system in OmniFocus that like will help you pre-fill to reply to text messages.

00:17:23   I just find that funny.

00:17:25   I can imagine that this is like a project of a thousand unchecked tasks, many messages not replied.

00:17:31   It's actually the reverse.

00:17:34   I only do that when it's like, "Oh, I really need to get back to this person."

00:17:37   Yeah.

00:17:37   That's when it like sorts right to the top of like, "You really need to reply to Mike about whatever.

00:17:41   You can't do it now for whatever reason."

00:17:44   No, I get it.

00:17:45   You would only ever do this if it was very urgent, right?

00:17:49   Most of the time.

00:17:50   You get back to me in a month.

00:17:52   I mean, I guess in theory, you could set up a system because Shortcuts has a trigger based on text messages.

00:17:58   You could set up a system that automatically created it to do every time someone sent you a text message to reply to them.

00:18:03   That is technically possible.

00:18:06   I'd never considered that.

00:18:08   That is hilarious.

00:18:11   If I can ever get my hands on your phone for 20 minutes, you know, that's the one thing I'll do.

00:18:16   So I feel like I basically have back what I want, which is like the one true to-do system.

00:18:23   I'm really happy with the way that it works.

00:18:25   I'm using reminders in the way you are with like a couple of small family shared lists.

00:18:29   Like it's not a big deal.

00:18:30   But you have actually piqued my interest with the thing that you said about with things because it has been on my mind of like,

00:18:39   "Oh, I like the way this system works with OmniFocus so much that I don't love when it's the big project time that I'm loading something up and like I'm actually working on this thing."

00:18:52   And it's mainly like, you know, very big video projects I'm working on.

00:18:56   Like they're becoming complicated things.

00:18:58   And I'm aware like, I feel like this should live somewhere else now, because OmniFocus can just have a task that says like,

00:19:05   "work on the video."

00:19:06   And it kind of points me to where I'm supposed to be.

00:19:10   But I have been feeling like, "I need something else for those projects."

00:19:15   Maybe like I could look at things because just like you, I want to have each tool doing what it's supposed to be doing.

00:19:24   And OmniFocus is perfectly serving, "tell me what to do now."

00:19:30   But that's slightly different from, I'm working on a thing that has a lot of complex interdependencies or reminders to myself that I need to think about.

00:19:40   But none of it's time sensitive, but I'm working on it in the moment.

00:19:43   It's much more like project files or something.

00:19:45   So I might take a look at things for, "Oh, is this where these things go in the future?"

00:19:50   I don't know.

00:19:51   So anyway, you piqued my interest with that, Mike.

00:19:52   Yeah, a little bit more detail I'll give on that.

00:19:55   So things basically has the ability for you to create a project that you assign no date to, and it goes into what they call the "someday list."

00:20:02   But they have the ability for you in a shortcut to just duplicate a project that would be in your "someday list" and set a date to it, make it an active project as such.

00:20:13   What I like about this compared to other systems I've used in the past, so I used to use OmniFocus for this, I used to use things before they had this function for this.

00:20:22   And you would, in a shortcut, essentially put all of the tasks in in some way, you know, maybe like a plain text list that gets turned into like a list that you would check off.

00:20:31   But what I like about this system is I can go into things at any point and amend the kind of "someday project," right?

00:20:41   To add anything new or make any amendments.

00:20:44   So then the next time that I duplicate it, it's now an amended list.

00:20:47   Right.

00:20:48   You're iterating on the project list.

00:20:49   Yeah.

00:20:50   Right.

00:20:50   It's got this like a base thing that it pulls from.

00:20:53   Like I've thought, you know, about I could do this thing and I thought about doing this, like I have like one packing list, but really I need a packing list for weekends and a packing list for weeks.

00:21:05   Right.

00:21:06   Because if I'm doing an overnight trip or a weekend trip, it's very different what I'm going to need.

00:21:10   Also, am I going to America or am I going to Europe?

00:21:13   That's going to mean different electronics, stuff like that.

00:21:16   I've been thinking about doing something like that for my travel checklists, but I really like things for this stuff and the app is really nice to use.

00:21:23   And it works really well for these very, very long lists.

00:21:26   And you can put everything into categories as well, which I really enjoy.

00:21:30   So like everything can be under certain headings, which I use a lot for the Cortex ones.

00:21:34   So I have like audio production, video production, posting, all that kind of stuff around their own headers.

00:21:39   Because if you're just duplicating the project, it maintains all of that information.

00:21:43   I'd make a suggestion though with the travel packing stuff in particular.

00:21:46   What I've always done with checklists like that, if you have similar but not identical things, right?

00:21:51   Because with the travel, there's so much overlap.

00:21:53   I think it's a better idea to try to keep a single list, but I put just like text if statements basically in that list.

00:22:03   So you say something like, "I'm packing my toothbrush and I'm packing my underwear and I'm packing my socks or whatever."

00:22:09   But then I would have an item that would say like, "If abroad, pack passport."

00:22:13   And then you can have something more generic, right?

00:22:15   Like, "Oh, if it's hot, pack your shorts. If it's cold, pack your coat."

00:22:19   Right? I think the problem with the packing list is there are things you're going to want to iterate and change for every trip.

00:22:27   And then you're changing it in three places.

00:22:28   And I feel like you're never going to keep it in sync.

00:22:30   So I would suggest trying to have it as one.

00:22:32   But just make basically if notes to yourself that you get a free check if you don't need to do them as you're going through the list.

00:22:39   Do you have any more apps for the productivity category?

00:22:41   The last things I would just say for productivity for me is I'm still using Timelines as my time tracker.

00:22:47   I initially started using this because I was trying to do a bunch of stuff where I wanted to be able to track time offline.

00:22:53   And this was the only one that did it in the way that I like.

00:22:56   I'm not quite doing that same thing anymore.

00:22:59   That was an experiment that I realized was more trouble than it was actually worth.

00:23:02   But I actually quite like the way that Timelines displays data.

00:23:05   I like some of their widgets.

00:23:07   I like some of the just the way that it looks and the way that editing things are.

00:23:10   And I got kind of used to it.

00:23:11   So I'm sticking with Timelines for keeping track of all of my time tracking.

00:23:16   And then the only other thing which I feel like is sort of adjacent to this is the things that I use for timers.

00:23:24   So this is like what you're talking about with Do.

00:23:27   Like Do has timers and it reminds you.

00:23:29   It is remarkable to me.

00:23:32   I've been trying to find a timer that has a number of features but basically nobody has all of them.

00:23:40   So it's a timer that I want to be able to like when I start working as we discussed I think on the last episode about like units of time that you're working.

00:23:49   When I start working it's like I want a one hour and 22 minute timer to start when I'm beginning a writing session.

00:23:56   I want that to happen automatically.

00:23:58   And then when I take a break I want a seven minute timer to start.

00:24:02   But it has to have shortcut support because when I start the break timer I want it to automatically stop the writing timer so that that one doesn't just go off.

00:24:13   And then like very quickly you realize there's a couple of complicated interactions.

00:24:16   If you want everything to be automatic it has to have good shortcut support.

00:24:20   I want it on all platforms and I want it to have the thing that Do does where it will keep bugging you.

00:24:29   And looking around it's like last year I was using an app called Just Timers to try to accomplish this but it got just worse at the syncing feature.

00:24:40   I just found increasingly over time it was not syncing across devices so if I started on one device it wouldn't sync changes on the other and then you'd get like timers going off like this was no good.

00:24:49   Do I was like so excited and then so crestfallen because Do this year finally added shortcut support for timers.

00:24:59   I was like ah that's great this is exactly what I want but they only added the ability to start timers with shortcuts.

00:25:06   There's no ability to stop a timer with shortcuts.

00:25:09   So I was like ah it's brutal.

00:25:11   I immediately emailed them like please get that the ability to stop.

00:25:15   You're like the app I've wanted to use for years but I can't.

00:25:18   So in the meantime the only other app on the whole of the ecosystem and I have looked everywhere that does it is an app called Multi Timer.

00:25:28   That's the one that will have all of these features.

00:25:31   Each platform if you use the iPad app on your computer.

00:25:35   Shortcut support repeating alerts and it syncs across all of devices.

00:25:40   So that is my current timer of choice.

00:25:43   But I will say I will switch to do in a heartbeat if they add the ability to stop timers via shortcuts.

00:25:50   Communications and team.

00:25:52   This is the category I've been the most excited to talk about and is I think where I have the most to say this year.

00:25:57   Oh good.

00:25:58   This is my least favorite category.

00:26:00   I hate it so much.

00:26:01   Fill me with joy Mike.

00:26:02   Because in the year of people you have the year of team apps.

00:26:06   That's what happens.

00:26:07   When your yearly theme is the year of people it means you're working with people.

00:26:11   People need to be communicated with.

00:26:13   Do they?

00:26:14   Can't you just every once a month set up a reminder that says you really need to reply to someone and just leave it at that?

00:26:20   You can do that but then you probably shouldn't have year of people as your yearly theme.

00:26:24   OK true.

00:26:25   You know.

00:26:25   All right tell me what you've been up to.

00:26:27   What are you doing over there?

00:26:28   I'm going to start off with email because I think you know obviously this year I've been on an email journey where a number of months ago you suggested that I absolutely upend everything about my email system.

00:26:39   And so now I have no notifications for email anywhere that has remained.

00:26:44   So great.

00:26:45   And it has made me so happy.

00:26:47   I realized I didn't need it.

00:26:49   Yay!

00:26:50   Imagine that.

00:26:51   Imagine that.

00:26:52   So that's been fantastic for me.

00:26:54   And I have kind of a new process a process that is kind of embedded over time.

00:26:58   My plan was to do no email on my iPhone.

00:27:01   That hasn't remained exactly true but it is significantly better than before.

00:27:06   So on my iPhone I use the Apple Mail app.

00:27:09   And what I'm doing really is I'm a few times a day I'm checking in on it and doing some triage.

00:27:14   But it is nowhere near as much as I was doing before.

00:27:18   And I'm nowhere near as aware of my emails as I was before because I'm not getting notifications to drag me in.

00:27:24   Like I'm checking email more on my own terms than it saying its terms on me.

00:27:28   That has been a really great balance for me.

00:27:31   And I would say like the Apple Mail app actually has gotten a bunch of improvements in the exact time that I've wanted them.

00:27:38   Most of them powered by our friend Apple intelligence.

00:27:41   So I actually really like the way that it's working for me with mail where you know when you go to the inbox it doesn't just have any more like over and over and over again.

00:27:52   Like hi Mike how are you is the beginning of every email is the preview.

00:27:56   It's summarizing the contents of the email and giving it that to me is the preview instead in the in the actual email inbox which I find to be quite useful.

00:28:03   It helps me triage faster.

00:28:05   And actually as we're recording this iOS 18.2 just came out and brought with it the automatic sorting of email as well.

00:28:14   Oh I forgot that was a separate feature because I've been using the beta as well.

00:28:20   And I agree that summary thing that they're doing is for another show there's places I really loathe it.

00:28:27   But in email like this is where it belongs and I've actually found it it's actually really quite helpful and genuinely is useful for speeding things up.

00:28:35   But it like it selects a couple of messages to show you at the top and I thought that's what the priority sorting was but that's it's like a separate feature.

00:28:42   Those are priority messages.

00:28:44   Oh OK.

00:28:45   The priority messages feature is really hit and miss for me.

00:28:48   It rarely if ever shows up I don't know why but this is like it's automatically categorizing emails of like kind of dealing with people,

00:28:56   newsletters and promotions like that kind of stuff like you get in Gmail or Apple is doing this themselves now in the mail app which is really interesting.

00:29:04   However it seems that it's only on the iPhone which is terrible.

00:29:09   Oh what's the worst place to put it?

00:29:11   It's not on the iPad.

00:29:13   But anyway on my iPhone primary transactions updates and promotions is how they separate it and I actually like it.

00:29:20   I think that is a good system for me but I want it everywhere.

00:29:25   Otherwise what's the point?

00:29:26   But anyway I'm rarely doing anything on my iPhone other than kind of like triaging mail or if there is an email that is like urgent that was popped into my mind.

00:29:36   I'll just grab my iPhone and do that.

00:29:38   But the biggest difference and the thing that has made the most long lasting impact is just getting rid of the notifications because it is much more that like email is the thing that I do when I want to rather than me being aware of everything.

00:29:52   And I have not had in the say the six months I've been doing this I have not had one bad thing happen because of this.

00:29:59   Fantastic.

00:30:00   So good.

00:30:02   I'm so glad to hear this.

00:30:03   On my Mac and on my iPad I'm still using Spark which was the email app that I was using before because this is where like if I'm going to be actually doing the email that's where I'm going to do it.

00:30:13   But I'm thinking I'm just going to move to mail.

00:30:16   I mean yeah like what would be the features that would prevent you from doing so on Spark?

00:30:19   Well so there's kind of two areas.

00:30:21   One is the team sharing stuff right so having the features to be able to really easily share email with others have in line communication and conversations.

00:30:29   And then also just some fiddly little features like the Apple mail app automatically goes to the next message and marks it as read once you've archived an email.

00:30:38   So you archive an email and it will go to the next email and just open it.

00:30:41   I don't want it to do this.

00:30:43   I want it to not select the next email because I leave emails unread as a system of dealing with them right.

00:30:53   Lots of email applications, third party apps have a setting for this because it's something a lot of people want. Apple has no setting for this.

00:30:59   So I have an email open, I archive that email, it immediately opens the next email.

00:31:03   It's like that's not what I want you to do.

00:31:05   But it's what it does.

00:31:07   Now maybe I'll just say whatever and get on with it.

00:31:11   Basically for me at this point I'm not really using the team communication stuff in Spark anymore.

00:31:16   This is like something that I've realised in reflecting in this episode.

00:31:21   If Apple added the categorisation stuff to the other apps it would be really easy for me to make that switch because Spark does it too.

00:31:30   And I actually really like the way that Spark does it.

00:31:32   But now if I was to move away to just Apple's mail app on the two platforms where I'm actually dealing with my email there's no categorisation happening.

00:31:40   It's just going to be one singular list because for a reason I cannot fathom right now Apple's only got it on the iPhone.

00:31:46   So we'll see.

00:31:48   I mean basically at this point I feel like I don't need the team sharing features anymore.

00:31:52   Like I very seldom actually do the email sharing because I've gotten to the point where I get less and less and less involved in the sales.

00:32:02   Kerry at Relay is doing all of the sales.

00:32:04   I could at this point just be forwarding her email.

00:32:07   I think this might be a thing where like when I mention it to Kerry she'll be like "oh yeah we don't really do that anymore".

00:32:12   And maybe she'd be happy because she wouldn't have to use Spark anymore either if she doesn't want to.

00:32:16   So this might be a thing that I'll do.

00:32:18   Apple will make this easier for me if they give me parity across the different applications.

00:32:23   But I might just do it anyway.

00:32:25   I never really thought about that it opens the next message and marks it on red.

00:32:27   But you know they also have the new like remind me feature.

00:32:31   I don't know if that would help with like why you're leaving things open because I've been surprised at how useful that is.

00:32:37   It is crazy to me that remind me in 15 minutes remind me an hour and remind me in three hours are the default options.

00:32:46   Then you have to go into a sub menu if you want to pick anything else.

00:32:49   It's just crazy.

00:32:50   I don't think that feature is what I want.

00:32:51   I mean really it's just like this has been how I've always handled email.

00:32:54   Like I have a bunch of email in my inbox.

00:32:57   Some of it is unread.

00:32:58   Some of it is read.

00:32:59   The stuff that is read is like you know I'm waiting on someone to get back to me.

00:33:03   And it's almost like a reminder that I'm waiting on that person to get back to me.

00:33:06   And if it's unread then I am the person who needs to get back to someone.

00:33:10   OK right.

00:33:11   Yeah so that's not helping you at all.

00:33:12   No.

00:33:13   And so what I would do if I was to move to mail is just get back into the system that I've had with many email apps over the years where I just mark it as unread again.

00:33:22   Just like go back to the list.

00:33:24   Just every single time do that.

00:33:27   But look if I was to change email app then maybe I would develop some new habits again.

00:33:33   But I wonder maybe by the time we do this next year I've moved on to the mail app.

00:33:40   But then team communications and sharing stuff with teams.

00:33:45   I have nothing new to say about Slack but it's still the app that I use.

00:33:49   Great I could say the same thing.

00:33:50   Slack I have nothing new to say.

00:33:53   It's still the app that I use.

00:33:55   It just is what it is now.

00:33:56   It is what it is.

00:33:58   It's like in previous times I would just say I use an email app and kind of move on from it.

00:34:02   Slack is essentially that now.

00:34:04   I have nothing novel to say about it that I haven't said in the past.

00:34:08   It allows for teams to get together and it allows for communication.

00:34:12   At this point though really just.

00:34:15   OK so I have got things to say.

00:34:17   What's happening.

00:34:18   I still just cannot believe that they don't have just like the one overview of everything.

00:34:25   All of the Slack that I'm in.

00:34:28   My life would be so much happier if I didn't have to just keep moving between one Slack and another to see if there's anything in there for me.

00:34:35   Or to see what is in each.

00:34:37   Right.

00:34:37   You know you've got a badge on one Slack but is it a new message or is it a message you just haven't dealt with yet.

00:34:43   And you have to switch to that Slack to actually find that information out.

00:34:46   Well like what I would like is one dashboard where I can just see all of the communications for both Slacks that I need to say.

00:34:52   But I don't think they're ever going to do it.

00:34:56   You're never going to get it.

00:34:58   Never going to happen.

00:34:59   So let's move to brighter pastures and talk about something that has actually been very useful for me in the last year which is Notion.

00:35:05   OK.

00:35:06   You're part of the Notion nation.

00:35:07   I am in it now.

00:35:09   There is no going back now.

00:35:10   So this has become more and more and more important for me over the last year when it comes to working with other people.

00:35:18   Which has been the thing that has been my focus this year.

00:35:21   It's been my theme is to work with people.

00:35:23   And since we recorded the apps last time I'm working with like four more people in Cortex brand.

00:35:29   And so that is requiring a lot of sharing of knowledge recording things and making them available for the people that need them.

00:35:38   This has come from email content planning to social media content planning to branding communications and to having agendas and notes for meetings and calls.

00:35:48   Notion at this point is essentially the complete home for everything to do with Cortex brand.

00:35:54   As always I think I could probably still be using it more efficiently than I am but it is a process and I think I get better all the time at understanding where things go how they should be laid out.

00:36:03   And my assistant has been really helpful in helping me kind of wrangle this.

00:36:09   She's one of these people that lives in Notion and really understands how to use Notion.

00:36:13   She's been helping me a lot of making things look good.

00:36:15   And you know sometimes I'll be like I can't get it to do this thing.

00:36:19   She's like let me work out how to do it for you and is making it work.

00:36:22   One thing that I really love is every week we go through a Cortex brand all the products that we have and like where they are and like what's going on with them and it's laid out in this really nice cab and board of like this is an idea this is in production.

00:36:34   But that doesn't tell the whole story like an item that is in production could mean a lot of things over a long period of time.

00:36:41   So then if you click into each item it takes you to a page for it where it has a bunch of documents but also at the top something that she built was like a status log.

00:36:51   So every week we'll click the button and take notes on what's new and that will just be the like where is this what has happened in the last week for this item.

00:37:02   And you can go through and look at the status log over history which is just it's just like a really nice way that anyone can go into our projects area and they can get an overview of any product of what has been the most recent updates for it.

00:37:14   So I really like this kind of system I like that projects appear as these little cards but then when you click into them is actually everything you could ever need to know about this product.

00:37:25   I just think it's like a really nice system.

00:37:28   I know that there are more project management like features of Notion and I want to continue like moving through some of those things as they naturally come up.

00:37:38   It's been really helpful for me to be able to work with someone who really understands this and can kind of help me out but I also know that if there is one thing that you can just get more information about at any time you just go to YouTube and you just type in Notion and like you'll be fine right like it's out there.

00:37:54   There is no shortage of tutorials on Notion.

00:37:57   I have never sought them out but they still seek me out on YouTube.

00:38:01   YouTube is absolutely convinced like I am a person who needs more Notion in my life.

00:38:06   I have never watched one of these but you have so many to recommend you just keep trying YouTube.

00:38:11   It's also where everything to do with Cortex goes now.

00:38:16   So we have our content calendar.

00:38:19   Our content calendar has actually just become where the show notes live for the show.

00:38:25   So if I have a link or an item that pops up I can just save it from the share sheet on any of my devices and it will go into Notion and you can categorize it a little bit that way.

00:38:34   So every topic for the show is like its own individual card and we can add our notes to it and we can move them around from episode to episode.

00:38:42   Like I really like this system again it's like another Kanban board.

00:38:45   It's really good for the content planning of the show.

00:38:48   We have every episode for like the next 12 months they all have their own individual thing and so like we could be like also when is state of the hardware going to be.

00:38:56   We can put that in there when is yearly themes going to be.

00:38:58   We can put that in there and it really helps me just to get this one big overview of.

00:39:02   These are the big milestones for the year like the tentpole episodes and then I have these other ideas for content where can we fit those in.

00:39:10   I really like this as a system it's working very well for thinking about the show on a longer term.

00:39:17   I really like it for that rather than just a Google doc with a bunch of headings that just go into infinity.

00:39:21   Yeah I do have to say I'm not such a Notion head person but the way we're doing the podcast here I feel like it's such a huge improvement in the system from before.

00:39:31   And for anyone who has content that they're planning I feel like you should be doing something like this.

00:39:37   It's just much better to be able to look at it in this way and have all the topics broken down and it's helped us avoid a little bit of the stack September problem of spacing things out.

00:39:45   It's been really really good.

00:39:47   Like I was again I just always want to mention it because I was sort of dubious at the start because I'm not a huge fan of Notion but this is really really proven its worth as a way to organize this kind of stuff.

00:39:57   We've also started using Notion with the connector podcast too.

00:40:00   Oh have you?

00:40:01   Yeah Stephen's managing that one and he's done a really good job.

00:40:03   Like there's a page for every episode and they have templates with the typical format of the show but then like various games and predictions that we play on the show also have their own places in the Notion sheet.

00:40:13   It's working very well for that show.

00:40:16   I don't treat it exactly the same like I still put some like prep for connected in my Apple notes that I keep for my other shows like all of my other podcasts have their own Apple notes and I save links that I find around the web to those notes.

00:40:30   I'm not doing that for context anymore because it's just like a different flow of preparing for the show because the show is not really focused so much on what is happening in the news impacting the show where my other weekly shows are it's like more news focus.

00:40:43   So as I find links online I just save them to triage them later on and I go through and build what I want to talk about on each week's episode that way.

00:40:51   But just as a we're all sharing it amongst the three of us we can all see it and go into the topics at any time and we also have just like everything else related to the show is all within the Notion.

00:41:01   So for the year of people Notion has been the absolute biggest impact I think helping me to work with a growing number of people all on the same items all at one time.

00:41:16   It really is like the tools for that now I think and they've done a good job with it and I like it I like using it I think as well of these kinds of applications these like team focused applications.

00:41:29   It is the most responsive on my iPhone like with the iPhone app of any of these things that I've used I think they do a really good job of it for as much as these web backed technologies effectively can be done.

00:41:42   I think notion does a really good job. How do you feel like you avoid the problem we were talking about with just a shared to do list because this is always the issue for me with notion is it feels like oh it's hard to share a to do list with people because people don't write or consume information in the same way.

00:42:00   Like this is why I have an issue with it is it just feels like notion is that times a billion it just feels like it's such a bigger problem but it feels like you don't have that same kind of frustration with it in the way that you're using it I'm just kind of curious if there's anything in particular you're doing to achieve that.

00:42:14   Well one there are no tasks we don't have any tasks for people in motion it really is just text documents in some ways.

00:42:23   As well like within the team that I'm working in I'm kind of setting the direction for how I want this stuff to be laid out so like it's working for me you know what I mean like this might be a better question for everybody else like is it working for them you know.

00:42:37   Okay right King Mike has no problem.

00:42:40   Like is decreeing how it goes because it started with this is all of my information organized the way I want it to be right like that was the starting structure and then we're building on it from there.

00:42:51   And it sounds bad I guess but it's just like at the moment a lot of this stuff is existing in my head and so it's just forming the structure that makes the most sense for me that will naturally change as time goes on but as of right now I think it's still.

00:43:06   Too fresh for it to have adapted into a system of its own so it works for me because like what everything is just individual pages and stuff is organized in outlines which is kind of how I think.

00:43:18   Outside of that it's a lot more of like finished work you know so like hey here's an email that I worked on you just share it and then you can mock up together as you know comments and stuff like that outside of that I think it's the structure is fine.

00:43:32   One thing I'll say actually there's there is a lot of structure that works for the way that my assistant works and I just don't interact with it that way right right okay.

00:43:42   We have like a dashboard which has like a bunch of stuff I never use that but like I know she uses it because it helps her jump to where she needs to be.

00:43:49   Well, I just have a bunch of favorites of the things that I'm in often or just searching for files so it's pretty flexible in that way like I think.

00:43:57   The benefit of something like a notion over say to do list is to do is can only really surface its content to you in the way that it can as limited view ways in which it can show you that content.

00:44:09   Everything in notion is just a series of databases where you can have lots of different views to show off the exact same set of data.

00:44:17   And so people could just set them up the way that they want to it's all just a list of pages essentially right like.

00:44:23   Pages within a database like data within a database and do you want to see this as a list do you want to see this as a Kanban board do you want to see this as a gallery like you can choose any way to show off this information and I think people just pick the way that works best for them.

00:44:38   Hmm maybe that's why maybe everybody's just got their own way of looking at things with that using the notion and they're all happy with it because it works for them.

00:44:46   Couple of other tools that are new for working with people so figma.

00:44:51   Which is a design tool figma I have no idea how to make anything in figma but people share their work with me and it's really great it's like an infinite canvas for design.

00:45:03   Most of the stuff I'm seeing is like web design stuff or branding stuff really as a person who is interacting with figma I'm mostly just having work shown to me.

00:45:13   From the designers that we work with what I like about it as somebody who is looking at figma in that way is say you're on a call with someone and you're in the figma board which doesn't need to be shared because everybody's just looking at it in a URL right so in the web.

00:45:28   Somebody has the ability to become the presenter yes yeah and then it just follows their cursor around like you're looking at the web page you've not done anything new you're not sharing a screen but now this person is in control and so the view just follows them around the kind of infinite canvas I think it's really clever how they do that.

00:45:47   Yeah I use that feature this year I've started using figma and that is very cool like it just works quite intuitively the way you want it to it's kind of amazing how it's just a really like super lightweight screen sharing it's barely even that but.

00:46:02   The ability for someone to just say oh let me take control of let me just show you a bunch of things on this board is really good it just it works so well.

00:46:10   I like that a lot of used can for a little bit as well this is mostly for taking our assets and laying them out for social posts.

00:46:18   Canvara started to go very heavy into generative AI which is interesting it's not what we're using it's to take the templates that we have for some of our social posts but I think we're going to start moving that over to figma now as well.

00:46:30   But these are tools that I've been using this year of like people are laying out things from a design perspective and they want to get my input on my approval on them so we can post them and so these are tools that I've been using to like collaborate with people with these kinds of assets.

00:46:44   Couple of little bits vision pro spatial persona calls.

00:46:50   Is the thing me and you have done few times it's the absolute best way to conduct a meeting but high barrier of entry despite my great protestations I have been convinced to do this this year and.

00:47:04   Yeah I can't agree with you more it is the best way to communicate with someone remotely just like no questions it's all of the good things about what we were doing with the quest without.

00:47:19   Really any of the bad things but the good things are so much better I couldn't have been a more doubtful person about this system right from the start I could not possibly have been more resistant but I am completely convinced.

00:47:32   The meetings that we have done in those vision pro calls.

00:47:36   Like with the quest it always felt like oh you and me had a meeting somewhere right in this virtual environment where I was a pretty cowgirl.

00:47:47   But when we do those calls my brain forgets that you aren't there that's much more the way it is it's like oh Mike is sitting across the table from me which again is the big difference there of like oh Mike can be placed in physical space in a location that makes sense.

00:48:08   And obviously when we're having the calls I know what we're doing it doesn't have that same kind of illusion that the quest did of like oh this is real I'm aware that it's a vision pro call but it's in the memory of it it feels like you came over and we had a meeting it's unbelievable.

00:48:26   It's the absolute closest thing to real life.

00:48:30   Yeah it really is I know it sounds bananas to say that but like it absolutely is like the sense of presence that you have is incredible sharing documents have been that screen and you're looking at each other looking at the document pointing at things and it like being able to follow the eye line like it.

00:48:48   If you're thinking to yourself like what is the vision pro for like this is for me the absolute key thing that it's for now it should do more right like this isn't enough for the price tag but if you're looking for a concrete thing of what this product does better than anything else.

00:49:06   It is meetings it is the absolute very best telepresence product it is better than any video calling solution because it's just more comfortable for you as a person because you don't have to think about being on camera you know get distracted by the image of yourself.

00:49:22   Which is something I do get distracted by like how do I look how am I sitting right now like I find it to be very tiring and the technology of division pro is easier for me from an eye strain perspective and I don't get headaches like I would with the quest pro.

00:49:37   It is absolutely born on the very best way to have a meeting with somebody not in the same room.

00:49:44   I didn't really think about that way because of course 99% of my use is using it functionally as an external monitor for my Mac which I love like and I think even that is great.

00:49:54   But you're totally right this is actually.

00:49:56   The thing that it does the best and it does it best by a huge margin the biggest problem of course I wish I had more people that I could do this with because I would hold.

00:50:06   Every virtual call this way if I could.

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00:52:38   I have a lot of stuff for communication and team.

00:52:42   I have very little.

00:52:43   And I have very little when it comes to writing and research why don't you take it away.

00:52:47   Yeah I have things to say about writing and research.

00:52:49   I'm just realizing in this moment I feel like as we're coming towards you know the end of this year and it's not like this state of the apps.

00:52:55   I just feel very happy and confident in all of the software that I'm using and it's like I feel like the system is going pretty well and it's because I've got the to do system that I want is doing what I want.

00:53:08   And Obsidian is just one of those tools that the more I use it the more I love it.

00:53:14   It is just the absolutely perfect writing system for me.

00:53:19   And it's a funny thing to say because as much as I kind of resist Notion like there's something about Notion that just doesn't quite work for me.

00:53:27   Obsidian is very Notion like.

00:53:31   It's just the devil is in the details.

00:53:33   It's the same kind of thing like oh you just have a billion different documents and you have different ways of looking at those documents or connecting those documents or making like lists and sub lists of lists.

00:53:41   But the thing about Obsidian that why is it so good and why is it again a piece of software that the more you invest into it the more you get out of it is because.

00:53:53   It has this whole ecosystem of additional plugins and tweaks and just a million settings.

00:54:02   And so you can get it to work exactly the way your brain wants things to work.

00:54:08   And that to me is just so critical because it's kind of like with the to do manager where I'm trying to achieve something the to do manager should tell me just the things that I can do right now and not give me too many options.

00:54:22   The key thing for me with Obsidian is.

00:54:26   I need when I'm working on a script especially if it's a big and complicated script I need to be able to just focus on this one thing.

00:54:34   But I also really need to be able to when I have a thought about something else some related project or some unrelated project.

00:54:44   I need to be able to very quickly get to like oh I had a thought about the bonus video that I'm working on for that script.

00:54:52   I need to instantly be able to like get out of the script that I'm in into the bonus video get like straight to the section where I've thought about the thing.

00:55:00   Add what just came back into my head and then get right back to where I was on the previous script and I need to be able to do that in like half a second with a couple of keyboard shortcuts.

00:55:11   And that is the thing that Obsidian is just killer at like with a couple of tweaks with a couple of plugins is like you can get.

00:55:19   It to do just this like boom boom boom hit a couple keys type of thing dump your sentence and jump exactly back to where you were and.

00:55:27   It's one of those cases where the speed really matters because to me it's all about don't break flow.

00:55:34   If it takes more than a couple seconds to get and find the thing you're breaking your flow on the main thing that you're working on and so that's why it's just like absolutely invaluable to me.

00:55:46   And then on a higher level when I'm not doing the like the core writing work when I'm doing what I'm thinking of as like fact checking and review working of a project.

00:55:55   There's a similar thing where like with just a couple of buttons I can now turn it into a kind of.

00:56:01   Overview of this project like here's the script here's a file with all of the cut sections from the script here's a file with questions that you need to answer about this script here's like the project file for everything that's related to this project.

00:56:16   And I can see them all at once and like arrange them exactly the way that I want so.

00:56:20   I think if you work with text a lot even if you're not doing writing stuff but if you deal with a lot of text you just have to give Obsidian a try and.

00:56:31   When you load it up if you at any moment think I wish I could do this this way.

00:56:36   The answer is you can like I guarantee you there's a way that you can do it you just need to look around like someone's made a plug in for it if someone hasn't made a plug in for it.

00:56:46   You can generate your own CSS to inject into the program to be like I wanted to work this way it's like no one wrote a plug in but I can hack together some CSS to make this work you can do it it is just.

00:56:57   Unbelievable how flexible this program is so Obsidian is perfection and I could not possibly be happier with it the only other place with like writing stuff down or with notes is I feel like I'm in a little bit of a rethink of what I'm going to do with.

00:57:10   Apple notes because I feel like I must have been a really big dummy but I never realized that the Apple notes quick note system syncs across devices.

00:57:21   I swear that it didn't used to but I only just realized like a couple months ago like oh the quick notes thing sinks everywhere like it's just the same.

00:57:29   It always has but you can lose it because it saves it into like a separate place sometimes.

00:57:34   Okay what do you mean it saves it into a separate place.

00:57:36   In notes if you go out to the main kind of folder section you have quick notes and shared and then notes that I think it's easy to miss it sometimes but no quick notes to share everywhere.

00:57:48   Okay so all right maybe that's why I just missed it because I was always looking at the list of folders or whatever but I have been kind of thinking.

00:57:55   Notes is another one of these apps like it's just gotten better and better and better over the years and I've been watching more and more people.

00:58:03   Use notes as what I almost feel like is a kind of pseudo file system like it seems like that's what lots of people are using notes for is just a kind of filing drawer of information that they want access to.

00:58:18   And I've always just used actual files and folders on my computer for a long time to do this but I've been thinking.

00:58:24   Oh if quick notes can be the thing that I've been using notes for for years as just this is the inbox of I just want to write something down I don't know where it goes.

00:58:35   I've just been using the whole of notes for that for forever.

00:58:39   But I think the thing that I'm trying to solve is I probably have too many non actionable things that are in Obsidian like reference files in some way.

00:58:51   And I think I would prefer to get those out of there and go somewhere else.

00:58:56   So I think maybe by next year what I'll start doing is just taking everything that is static in some sense and slowly moving it over into Apple notes because this feels like I see everybody else do this and I think it is clearly what Apple notes is designed to do very well like go to this one place to find all the information.

00:59:16   What are you laughing at Mike?

00:59:17   Their notes.

00:59:18   That's what notes are.

00:59:20   That's what they are.

00:59:21   I see everybody using these pieces of text.

00:59:26   Yeah they're using these text things like it's interesting.

00:59:28   Very peculiar.

00:59:29   Yeah it's like Mike they're putting like reference information on these notes.

00:59:33   Weird.

00:59:33   Like in school.

00:59:34   Weird.

00:59:35   You're supposed to take notes.

00:59:37   It's like those notes?

00:59:38   And then you go back to them like I wonder if that's why Apple called it Apple notes is that's like what they're trying to harken back to is the concept of notes in school.

00:59:46   I mean I still use Apple notes for all my notes as I mentioned earlier and it's like all my show prep goes in there but if I have ideas about things as long as it's not called text brand it goes in Apple notes.

00:59:57   But that's also stuff like I'm at a restaurant got to order at the bar I'll take everybody's order and Apple notes go up do a bit delete it you know what I mean?

01:00:06   But I also just keep I have like 800 notes on my Apple notes because I don't really delete stuff because I feel like it doesn't really need it and I then have this searchable list of stuff over time.

01:00:18   I'm a big fan of Apple notes.

01:00:19   I actually do have a couple of other things to talk about in a writing context.

01:00:24   It's just not like you are all really and I apologize to all the writers out there because the things I'm going to talk about you're just not going to be happy about.

01:00:33   Let's talk about chat GPT.

01:00:35   It's funny I was trying to think like where do we talk about the AI stuff and I guess this is probably the most relevant section.

01:00:42   Okay so tell me about chat GPT.

01:00:44   Last year I remember last year we were like shall we set up an AI category and the decision was no because these things will just be part of different workflows which is the way that it is.

01:00:54   So like chat GPT for me I use with text right essentially and like the places that I'm working on text I am likely to use it in some form.

01:01:05   Now I don't use chat GPT to be like hey write this thing for me but I use it in two ways which is one to take my text and do something with it or I use it in place of Google more and more.

01:01:20   So with the Google thing it's like basically if I have any search that I want to do that I don't already know how to get the answer for and Google is just the leapfrog step then I will go to chat GPT.

01:01:35   So like for example if I wanted a recommendation for a toaster I want to buy a toaster I would go to chat GPT and ask that question.

01:01:46   Because what it's going to do is read 20 top 10 lists and collect that information from me.

01:01:52   Where I know if I go to Google it's going to take me ages right.

01:01:57   Now you're the chat GPT if you go to Google like a sucker.

01:02:00   Yeah and what I do is I will use what it gives me as the starting point to then do a little bit of my own research and read up about some stuff but it helps me jump a bunch of steps.

01:02:09   But like for example if there was a toaster reviewer that I liked I would go to Google and just type in toaster and the name of the reviewer of the toasters.

01:02:18   You know what I mean?

01:02:19   Oh hmm.

01:02:20   That's like the difference where like for Google I'm just using it as a leapfrog as a way to get to the thing that I already know exists.

01:02:26   You just crystallized a change in my own behavior that I didn't have a word for but yes that is exactly what it is.

01:02:32   It's using Google to get me to a thing that I already know that I want to go for.

01:02:36   That's the only thing I'm using search engines for now.

01:02:39   Boy that's a really good crystallization of the behavior change.

01:02:42   Because all of these AI tools if they're connected to the internet they're better at searching than Google is.

01:02:47   And I'm sure that's the same for Gemini but I'm just not really interested in Gemini I can't put my finger on it I'm just not.

01:02:52   I think it's really it's just that they were light and chat GPT for me is just as good so it's what I'm using right now.

01:02:58   But for my own text typically what I would do is like I was actually doing this today I was writing an email that we're going to send to the Cortex brand newsletter like the mailing list about the subtle line of products.

01:03:10   Like the subtle range of products that we're putting on sale.

01:03:12   And I wrote out what I wanted and I just wanted to run it through chat GPT to be like can you improve the grammar of this and it did that.

01:03:22   And there was one sentence that I didn't like and so I took that sentence and I rewrote it myself and then put it through again and we kind of worked together in a way to nail down the wording that I wanted.

01:03:33   And that's typically what I do and for me something that works very well is I'm just like check this for grammar rewrite if you need to don't change my style and tone.

01:03:43   And that for me is just like a very good shortcut to get something that still feels like I wrote it but is improved.

01:03:51   And then from there I will send it and work with the people that we work with to copy edit it and all that kind of stuff.

01:03:58   But I like to get something in a halfway done state before I'm passing it on to the people that I work with so I make sure that I've kind of got what I want down.

01:04:07   And so I like that I've been playing with some because Apple have their own writing tools now right.

01:04:11   And they're pretty good at proofreading for rewriting the pre-canned options that they have are way too enthusiastic.

01:04:21   Now what they have just added again in 18.2 which has just come out when we're recording this is the ability to describe the change that you're looking for.

01:04:29   Which I think might be able to get me some better results so I'm going to play around with that a little bit more too.

01:04:33   I've been trying out a new kind of combo of tools for helping me get information from podcasts.

01:04:41   Which is a combo of Descript and Claude from Anthropic.

01:04:46   So for example for this episode I wanted to get a list of every app that we had spoken about.

01:04:54   Now I have our show notes but I wanted just a text list of all the apps broken down into the categories of exactly when we mentioned them.

01:05:02   And so I was able to use Descript to create a transcript of the show.

01:05:06   And I took that file gave it to Claude and was like give me a like basically that I want a list of all of these things broken down into the categories that we spoke about in the show.

01:05:16   And it did a pretty good job of doing that I shared that list of you.

01:05:19   What I found funny was I also gave it to ChatGPT and ChatGPT failed hard.

01:05:24   It got like half of the apps that we mentioned and I found that really interesting.

01:05:29   And I'd heard from people like you and some other friends like Claude is actually particularly good at this kind of thing.

01:05:34   And I've been happy with that so like I've also used it on the last episode to help me pick a title for the show.

01:05:42   Where I gave it the transcript and was like help me pick a title for this episode based on something we said and it gave me like 20 options and I was able to use that to pick one.

01:05:50   So I'm using some of these tools to help extract information from the podcast which is otherwise complicated to do because there's a lot of words in these podcasts.

01:05:58   Yeah Claude is really good at the word stuff like it's an interesting trade-off between the two of them.

01:06:03   Claude is clearly smarter than ChatGPT I think by quite a lot.

01:06:09   But Claude doesn't have any access to the internet.

01:06:11   That makes my usage a bit very difficult because I really like to use these tools as like a way to grab internet stuff and it doesn't do any of that.

01:06:19   Which is like so most of the things that I ask Claude to do the answer is usually I can't do that for you.

01:06:24   And so I'm like what am I supposed to use this for? And this is one of them.

01:06:28   Right yeah then you have to go to the one that's wearing a dunce cap which is ChatGPT and be like can you just search these things for me?

01:06:34   I was like oh ChatGPT when it came out like oh this is amazing.

01:06:38   And now every time I go back to it it's like I do use it because it's connected to the internet and it's useful for a ton of those tools.

01:06:43   But I'm just so aware of like you are much dumber than Claude.

01:06:48   I also wanted to mention a couple of things on creative work that aren't writing.

01:06:53   So just a couple of apps that I've been using.

01:06:55   I've really been liking Apple's Freeform app for some product design stuff.

01:07:00   Because it is essentially a very simple infinite canvas app.

01:07:04   And if I'm brainstorming product ideas with my iPad and my Apple pencil I can kind of draw things, draw arrows and then draw something else and just go on forever and ever and ever in this infinite canvas right?

01:07:16   I find it to be a very simple tool but a good one at helping me kind of sketch and brainstorm and bring in imagery and web page stuff and mixed media.

01:07:26   I like it. It's very simple. I've tried some more complicated apps.

01:07:29   I was going to say if you're already using Figma why aren't you using Figma? It's the same thing.

01:07:34   Well because I don't understand how to use Figma.

01:07:36   Okay because it's too complicated. I mean it does look pretty complicated.

01:07:38   And also I really want something I can sit and use my Apple pencil.

01:07:41   Oh of course right right right.

01:07:43   And so that's what I want. It's just to sit and just sketch with my Apple pencil and make notes with my Apple pencil.

01:07:48   And I've used a few different apps. Like there's an app called Concept which is pretty good but it's more complicated that I want.

01:07:53   Freeform is where I've been landing.

01:07:56   And I've had a few things that I've been using Freeform for recently and I really like it.

01:08:00   It does a good job and works really nicely and I love the new Apple pencil pro.

01:08:04   It's got like the little shortcuts and all of the different ways you can squeeze it to get the tools and stuff.

01:08:09   And I found that to be a really cool combo.

01:08:11   Do they have a dark mode yet? I opened it up once to take a look at it and saw there was no dark mode.

01:08:15   And I thought I can't look at this and this white piece of paper.

01:08:18   I'm out of here.

01:08:19   It's like I can never use this until they have a dark mode.

01:08:22   I don't know honestly. I'll have to check.

01:08:24   And for photos, so like taking pictures of products, putting them on social media and stuff.

01:08:30   For a long time my photo editing app of choice is an app called Darkroom.

01:08:34   I really like Darkroom.

01:08:36   It gives me all of the functions that I need in a way that's very simple for me to understand of being able to change brightness and exposure contrast, sharpness and play around with color in the photos that I take.

01:08:47   And I usually run basically every photo that I publish to my personal Instagram.

01:08:52   I use Darkroom for that, but I've been using it a bit more for product stuff.

01:08:56   And similarly, I've been pairing this with a camera application called Halide.

01:09:00   They have a new feature called Process Zero where it's essentially skipping any of Apple's processing that it does to imagery, which sometimes can be really helpful for me to just get like, let's just get a flat image here and then I can edit it a little bit more to my own desire and tastes in Darkroom.

01:09:21   Now what I will say is the new feature that Apple added with the iPhone 16 line, the new photographic styles has also made it much easier for me to get the imagery looking the way that I want to because they allow you to kind of go in and tweak things a bit more.

01:09:36   But sometimes I just like to start with an absolute flat base and that's what Halide gives me because it's essentially stripping out any of the computational photography stuff and then I can kind of edit from there.

01:09:47   So I've been liking that combo too.

01:09:49   I think in future Mike for this section, right, we should be calling it not the writing and research section.

01:09:54   I think this is the creativity, creation and research section.

01:09:59   Oh, that's good.

01:09:59   That's what this is because also Mike, that's where we talk about the AI because it is also the AI doing creativity, creation and research.

01:10:10   You know what, actually, if we're calling it that, I'm just going to run through a couple of other things real quick.

01:10:14   I record all my podcasts using Audio Hijack, Audio Hijack is an incredible application that has really, really strong tools for how to manage audio streams and record them all separately.

01:10:25   It's an incredible application.

01:10:26   I love it.

01:10:26   I use Logic Pro.

01:10:29   We both use Logic Pro for editing podcasts and I'll pick two more apps.

01:10:34   One is an app called Fission.

01:10:37   Fission is an app that I've ever found before where you can open an MP3 and edit the MP3 and save the MP3 without needing to re-export stuff.

01:10:46   I don't know how they do it but it's really good.

01:10:49   Wow, that's impressive.

01:10:50   Okay, interesting.

01:10:50   And then we add chapters to all of our podcasts and we use an app called Forecast to do that.

01:10:56   It's a really great way to do that.

01:10:58   So there are a few applications that I use for my main creation work which is podcasting.

01:11:02   There we go.

01:11:02   New section created.

01:11:04   So just like you said you didn't have anything to say about the writing and research category,

01:11:09   you want to do entertainment apps next and I will also let you take the floor here because

01:11:14   because of some theme year of small improvement stuff being busy out in the west,

01:11:20   I have had an insane year of near zero entertainment content consumption.

01:11:26   Like, almost nothing.

01:11:29   Excluding the one thing I'll say which is I use Overcast for podcasts and Feedbin plus Unread for some RSS stuff.

01:11:36   And that is it.

01:11:38   That's my only apps in the entertainment section for this year.

01:11:40   So go Mike, what are you using?

01:11:42   I'm going to recommend Marvel Unlimited.

01:11:44   I spoke about reading comics in a previous episode and this is how I do it.

01:11:47   I think it's an incredible service with so much incredible content.

01:11:51   If you want to get started with comics, it's a great place to start.

01:11:55   I will recommend Bellatro which currently is my game of the year and it is recently available on the iPhone.

01:12:03   The easiest way to describe this, which is a way that doesn't accurately describe the game,

01:12:07   it is a poker roguelike.

01:12:09   Oh, I think I've seen people talking about or playing this.

01:12:13   It feels like it's one of these phenomenon games.

01:12:15   Yeah, it came out earlier this year on Steam and Switch and immediately became like people loved it

01:12:21   and then Apple was able to get them to bring it to the iPhone.

01:12:24   It's on the iPhone and on Android, but it's also an Apple arcade too.

01:12:28   So bravo on Apple for doing that.

01:12:30   You essentially play a bunch of poker hands.

01:12:32   If you've never played poker before, it's fine.

01:12:34   Like I'd never played poker before.

01:12:36   That does a great job of explaining to you like the hands.

01:12:39   But what you're doing every round, you have to get to a score to advance through the game.

01:12:45   But you pick up joker cards that give different abilities to the way that the cards are scored.

01:12:53   Like if you play such and such hand, your score is multiplied by X.

01:12:57   You know, you finish your hand and it can be the whole score can multiply by Y.

01:13:01   Like it can get really complicated and interesting.

01:13:04   And one of the ways to win is to get different ability cards that

01:13:07   all kind of interact with each other in some way to boost your overall score.

01:13:11   I love this game.

01:13:12   It's so much fun and it's impossible to explain.

01:13:15   But if you have Apple arcade, try it for sure.

01:13:17   Even if you don't like it's on a bunch of platforms, it really is an excellent,

01:13:22   excellent game in general and an incredible game for the iPhone.

01:13:26   Does it make you want to play poker in real life, Mike?

01:13:28   No, but I feel like I could now.

01:13:30   Okay.

01:13:30   Yeah, because I kind of understand how to play poker now.

01:13:33   Like I've just over the time of playing it this year, I now understand poker hands.

01:13:37   Like I know what they are and the game.

01:13:39   It just does a good job of like its simplicity will eventually help you become a poker player.

01:13:45   But I've never played a game of poker.

01:13:47   I could.

01:13:48   I would, but I am not really particularly interested in doing so.

01:13:52   I'd like to imagine you sitting down and going, how many points for this joker?

01:13:54   I know it's like, I won't multiply the score.

01:13:58   Come on, what's going on?

01:13:58   This is boring.

01:13:59   Delta was an app that came out earlier this year, which is an emulator for the iPhone

01:14:07   for various Nintendo systems.

01:14:09   If you have somehow got ROMs, which you can acquire many ways, but a way that I have them

01:14:17   is with a little tool called the GB operator, which is like a little device I could plug

01:14:21   into my Mac and I can rip my old Game Boy games of which I have in a big box.

01:14:26   I was able to go through a thing at my mom's house and find all my old Game Boy games and

01:14:31   rip them with my GB operator and then play them on my iPhone.

01:14:34   An incredible thing to occur in this year of 2024.

01:14:38   So Delta is a fantastic app that has been in development for, I think 10 years and was

01:14:43   kind of under the radar.

01:14:45   It couldn't be on the app store, but because of real changes in the EU, Apple allowed emulators

01:14:49   onto the store and Delta is just like an app which has been made of care and love.

01:14:54   And if you happen to have ROMs of games, you can play them on your iPhone with Delta.

01:14:58   And then the last one that I mentioned, if you want to track the video games you're playing

01:15:03   or want to play, I use an app called Game Track to do that.

01:15:06   And it does exactly that.

01:15:08   Helps you search through different games across various platforms.

01:15:11   You can save them to lists, you can save them to collections, you can rate those games once

01:15:15   you've completed them for your own lists and stuff like that.

01:15:17   So you can keep a good history of all the games you've played.

01:15:20   Ah, so it's a reading list for your games.

01:15:22   That's a good idea.

01:15:23   Yeah.

01:15:23   And so it helps me when I hear somebody mention a video game, but it's in early access and

01:15:28   it's coming out whenever I can just save it to Game Track and I'll get to it when I want

01:15:31   to.

01:15:32   And this also has cool widgets that you might see later on in the show.

01:15:35   This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Tip Top.

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01:16:47   Our thanks to Tip Top for their support of this show and all of Relay.

01:16:52   Alright, I feel like we're starting a new tradition here on State of the Apps because

01:16:55   now I have a section where you have nothing that you want to add.

01:16:58   So I did want to mention just a bunch of health apps together because I'll talk about it

01:17:02   more in the theme episode, but again, year of small improvements and a lot of health

01:17:06   stuff that I was working on this year.

01:17:08   And so just wanted to quickly run through the things that I've liked.

01:17:12   The Tip Top one for me, I mentioned it a lot, but it really is such a big deal.

01:17:17   Also, I know that they're a sponsor of Cortex, I believe a sponsor of this very episode.

01:17:22   So you may or may not have already heard or will soon hear an ad from Fitbod.

01:17:26   Yes, they are a sponsor of this episode.

01:17:28   Yes, this is my exercise app of choice.

01:17:30   I always say it, I feel like it is the single most life-changing app.

01:17:34   And this year, because I was traveling a lot and like going out west and I was like switching

01:17:39   hotels and different locations, like it's just been a lot of travel.

01:17:42   The killer feature for me is like what is hard about exercising when you're changing

01:17:48   locations is you have different equipment in different places.

01:17:50   Like Fitbod's ability to just give you a workout and then you can quickly swap something

01:17:56   out because like where you are doesn't have the machine or even you're just at the gym

01:18:00   and someone else is on the machine.

01:18:02   For someone like me, again, I just feel like that is hugely vital.

01:18:06   Like I get really frustrated if like an app tells you like, oh, you need to do these things

01:18:10   for exercise but then you're like waiting on a guy to finish on the machine or they

01:18:14   don't have it.

01:18:15   I just hate that.

01:18:15   So I just really love Fitbod and I made a ton of progress this year.

01:18:21   And the main reason is because it just like makes it very, very easy to swap out exercises

01:18:26   or even like the muscle group sometimes.

01:18:28   It's like I went for a long hike last night and I don't want to do quads first thing

01:18:31   in the morning.

01:18:32   It's like no Fitbod.

01:18:33   I'm going to do biceps instead of quads and then just like reworks the whole thing.

01:18:36   Fantastic.

01:18:37   Speaking of which, AllTrails best hiking app also by a mile.

01:18:41   Like Apple's introduced a bunch of trail stuff this year but I just think it is nowhere

01:18:45   near as good as AllTrails.

01:18:47   Incredibly good at filtering out what kind of hike or walk you want to do basically anywhere

01:18:53   in the world.

01:18:54   You can be like, I'm looking for a two mile easy walk with a scenic view.

01:18:59   What's the nearest one to me?

01:19:00   And like AllTrails will find it.

01:19:02   Download it offline on the watch.

01:19:04   Really good.

01:19:06   I've also for this year for the first time ever been successfully tracking food and I

01:19:12   entirely credit it to the app FoodNoms which I feel like hits for me two things.

01:19:18   It is a really, really simple food tracker.

01:19:22   It has shortcut integration and it allows food to be fuzzy in a way.

01:19:29   So you can say like I'm at a meal at a restaurant.

01:19:31   I don't know exactly what this is but let's just say these values are like plus or

01:19:36   minus 25 percent whatever is put in.

01:19:38   So I built a bunch of shortcuts to make things really quick for me to track with FoodNoms.

01:19:43   Didn't they just they just added an AI thing that I thought looked really interesting.

01:19:47   Yeah so I was going to say like that's the next thing.

01:19:50   So the AI was the final bit that actually got me here because I've tried food tracking

01:19:55   before and just like with the exercise right.

01:19:59   It's very frustrating when you're trying to do something regularly and then you can't

01:20:04   do some small part of it and it always makes me feel like I just want to give up on this

01:20:07   whole thing.

01:20:08   And so for like when someone cooks me a meal I can just take a picture of it and do a quick

01:20:15   description to FoodNoms and then the AI will create its best guess at the list of like

01:20:19   what does it think this is going to be.

01:20:21   But you can also mark like this is uncertain whatever but just log it.

01:20:25   And I feel like that solves the problem for me of I just hate when people are doing food

01:20:30   tracking and they say things like they're like oh you just learn after a while like how

01:20:34   many macros are in like a meal like you can just look at a burger and now and I just hate

01:20:40   it like I think that's a kind of Stockholm syndrome where I don't even know what like

01:20:44   people are just fooling themselves that they're great at this task.

01:20:48   And I just I find it very annoying and so to be able to mentally offload this onto the

01:20:53   AI and just be like hey you guess I actually don't even really care that much how accurate

01:20:59   you are and also this can be logged as like this is an uncertain amount of food just factor

01:21:04   that in that's made all the difference in the world.

01:21:06   And then sleep wise I've been using two other things.

01:21:10   I've been using an app called Autosleep again which is on my watch.

01:21:14   This is one of those apps that tries to wake you up like just when you are ready to wake

01:21:17   up.

01:21:18   I would be really curious though if any listeners have like found any other app that does this

01:21:22   because it blows my mind that Autosleep seems to be the only app that tries to wake you

01:21:28   up at the good moment that doesn't do the thing where it requires like all of the permissions

01:21:34   on your phone.

01:21:35   Every other app I've ever looked at they're like hey can we just record you all night?

01:21:39   And it's like no no app I don't want to run an open microphone all night while I'm sleeping

01:21:46   not going to happen.

01:21:47   So Autosleep I think is very complicated but it's the only app that I found that does

01:21:54   this but I would be looking for like if anybody knows a simpler one that can do the same thing

01:21:58   and that would be great.

01:21:59   I'm not recommending something for you but I use sleep++ for tracking my sleep data.

01:22:06   Like I'm not so interested in something that's going to wake me or anything like that but

01:22:11   I wear my watch when I sleep for sleep tracking just to see how I have slept and I really

01:22:16   like the way that sleep++ interprets this information and the readiness scores that

01:22:20   I get can help me kind of understand like how prepared am I for the day.

01:22:24   So I use sleep++ for that but I'm not looking for anything more complicated.

01:22:28   In fact I've always been put off by Autosleep's complication.

01:22:31   That application is way too much for me and I like sleep++ in its clarity and simplicity.

01:22:38   It's interesting that you mentioned that though because the last thing I feel like this straddles

01:22:42   the line between state of the apps and state of the hardware but I'll mention it because

01:22:45   it's had a huge impact is I have a whoop now and I'm running the whoop app for exactly

01:22:51   that thing which is the readiness score and for years I have complained about the Apple

01:22:57   Health stuff and I still feel that they do this where Apple Health never has an opinion

01:23:03   on anything and it's so frustrating.

01:23:06   Even all the new health stuff that they've added in you realize very quickly like it

01:23:10   doesn't have an opinion on anything it just states something and you have no idea like

01:23:14   is that good is that bad oh I've been above my average training load for the past three

01:23:19   days is that good or like Apple Watch has no idea.

01:23:24   Yeah I mean like for me I've been below mine and I don't know why like I don't have

01:23:30   anything that's changed so why am I below now like I'm very confused by it to be honest.

01:23:37   The training load thing I thought was going to be cool I don't understand what's happening.

01:23:40   But still the whole point with the Apple one to me is all they will ever say is something

01:23:44   like oh you've been under for four days in a row if you're under for too long you can

01:23:49   start to have negative health consequences.

01:23:51   It's like ah it's cool Apple how long is too long?

01:23:54   So what I like is that the whoop is very opinionated.

01:23:58   It just explicitly tells you you're doing too little you're doing too much this is the

01:24:04   optimal amount and they also do the thing that I feel like it is almost criminally negligent

01:24:10   that Apple doesn't do which is they straight up make correlations with your sleep from

01:24:15   all of your health data.

01:24:16   So whoop will just like suck in all of the health data and then tell you this affects

01:24:20   your sleep here's how much like when you do this you sleep this much better when you do

01:24:26   this you sleep this much worse which is like Apple knows this information and it drives

01:24:31   me crazy they don't do it.

01:24:32   But so I've been using the whoop and I will say right after the Fitbaud it has got to

01:24:39   be the second most impactful app in a sense that I have used simply for its sleep tracking

01:24:46   and meaningful actionable recommendations about what you should do or just telling you

01:24:54   days that you should take it easy and why.

01:24:56   Very very surprised how good data based recommendations can really be when you listen to them.

01:25:04   Are you wearing it on your wrist?

01:25:06   No intolerable.

01:25:07   I tried to put it on my wrist and I hated it I hated it so much.

01:25:12   Just absolutely awful.

01:25:14   I think it looks kind of dorky to be wearing too like a watch and a thing on a wrist.

01:25:19   Yeah I was wondering if you were wearing it on the Apple watch so you're still wearing

01:25:22   an Apple watch and then you're wearing it in one of the I just found the hundreds of

01:25:26   ways in which you can wear a whoop band like they have like a million items.

01:25:31   Don't make me roll my eyes because they really like to oversell that.

01:25:34   The only actual practical alternative is that they sell a bicep band.

01:25:41   Okay.

01:25:42   It's not the bicep sleeve for anyone listening but the bicep band is what you want.

01:25:46   If you don't want to wear it on your wrist that is the only other real option.

01:25:50   If you don't want to do like all the weird things like do you want to go all in on whoop

01:25:54   underwear it's like no I really don't.

01:25:56   Yeah that's what I saw and I was like that's an interesting I don't know if I want to change

01:26:00   my underwear.

01:26:01   Yeah I don't want to change my underwear for a health tracker yeah and I don't want my

01:26:05   underwear to say whoop in real in big letters it's like no no thank you but this is what

01:26:10   I will say it is a testament to how actionable and how useful its recommendations are that

01:26:16   I'm willing to add another wearable into my life.

01:26:20   That is a very high bar and it's really hitting it.

01:26:23   And so then the last thing I'm just going to include in health which is not exactly

01:26:27   a health app but it's the way that I used it it's an app called Charti and Charti's

01:26:33   main goal is a app that works with shortcuts to create charts and I feel like this is one

01:26:40   of those apps that I've been looking for for years and didn't know it because I was

01:26:45   able to use this this year to create a bunch of charts to track and display health markers

01:26:53   I cared about in exactly the way that I want to see them without having to go into a bunch

01:26:58   of apps to check a bunch of things.

01:27:00   So Charti was just hugely useful this year in making sure am I staying on track with

01:27:07   like all of these different targets and being able to see the data in exactly the way that

01:27:11   I want to see it not the way that each of the individual apps wants to see it.

01:27:15   So how is the information getting in?

01:27:17   So you have to write a shortcut to get the information into Charti.

01:27:21   So it's not a simple app like you have to be pretty good with shortcuts to be able to

01:27:26   use Charti but I also feel like anyone listening who is pretty good with shortcuts you should

01:27:33   totally check out Charti because you will immediately find a hundred things that you

01:27:37   want to do with it.

01:27:38   For me the use case was particularly health where I've had a lot of those frustrations

01:27:42   with the Apple stuff and like all of these apps want to be their own walled garden but

01:27:47   Charti was the way I could say like no no no pull from this database and just create

01:27:53   four charts and on those four charts I want four lines each that are showing the exact

01:27:58   things and I can just see in one spot everything exactly the way I want to see it.

01:28:02   But with this shortcut that you've built there is an element of automatic stuff going

01:28:06   on you're not like manually entering a piece of data?

01:28:09   No no no I'm not manually entering anything so it's pulling my weight, it's pulling

01:28:14   data from the blood glucose monitor, it's pulling from like the VO2 max that Apple's

01:28:18   measuring all that kind of stuff and then throwing them into charts in the way that

01:28:22   I want to see them.

01:28:22   Because I guess it's all in health kit isn't it so it's a good combo.

01:28:26   That's my rules like anything that I'm using it has to work with health kit because

01:28:29   then I can get it to work with Charti and see it the way I want.

01:28:33   Alright and that's the end of health for me.

01:28:34   Boom done.

01:28:34   Lightning round.

01:28:36   Oh is it lightning round time already?

01:28:38   It's lightning round time but don't forget we haven't done home screens yet.

01:28:41   Alright so don't say already alright we're not there yet.

01:28:47   Home screens are gonna be real fast.

01:28:49   I'm gonna start the lightning round with the most boring lightning round pick ever

01:28:53   but it is an app that I value for one very specific thing.

01:28:56   Adobe Acrobat.

01:28:58   Wow.

01:28:59   That's like recommending Microsoft Windows.

01:29:04   Okay please tell me more about Adobe Acrobat.

01:29:07   So we make paper products at Cortex brand and what I want to be able to do sometimes

01:29:14   is print off a page layout in the exact size that it has been designed in.

01:29:21   That is harder than you might think.

01:29:25   It doesn't seem like it should be.

01:29:26   Lots of applications want to scale the artwork or whatever to fit the page size that is coming

01:29:34   from the printer.

01:29:34   Look I'm sure there's a way to do this with Apple's preview app.

01:29:38   I have tried many ways and couldn't do it but with Adobe Acrobat I can open a file and

01:29:42   I can print it in the exact size that I need and it makes my life so much easier.

01:29:47   I already subscribed to Creative Cloud for Adobe Audition and Photoshop so I get Acrobat

01:29:54   and it saves my bacon.

01:29:56   It's very easy and clear to understand how to get it to do what I'm looking for.

01:30:01   Where I'm sure other apps do this but I can't understand how to get them to do it.

01:30:06   But Adobe Acrobat labels all their printing stuff very simply of just saying this will

01:30:11   be an actual size or it could be scaled size and they have lots of functions and lots of

01:30:16   options for print preferences.

01:30:18   So Adobe Acrobat is my first one.

01:30:20   Wow it's amazing how two words can have such a feel.

01:30:23   If anything I was just really excited to pick something so boring.

01:30:28   Like I've really been looking forward to saying my first lightning round pick in the

01:30:33   apps 2025 is Adobe Acrobat.

01:30:36   Great.

01:30:37   I'm happy you're happy.

01:30:39   One and only pick.

01:30:42   No I got lots more.

01:30:42   I got lots more.

01:30:43   Okay I'm going to recommend an app called Power Photos.

01:30:47   This is for the Mac.

01:30:48   I got a bigger iPhone hard drive this year because I want to do the thing that you do

01:30:52   which is I thought I want my whole photo library on my phone.

01:30:55   It's annoying to have your phone do the thing where it downloads photos.

01:30:59   So I was like great I'm just going to like upgrade the size and I'm going to get a new

01:31:02   phone and I went to download everything and I realized that my iPhoto library was ginormous

01:31:09   in a way that I did not know and I thought what the heck is taking up all this space.

01:31:13   It turns out in photos you cannot sort by size of item and so Power Photos is a utility

01:31:21   that lets you sort your photo library by hard drive size of item and so what that allowed

01:31:29   me to do was discover like oh these are the videos that I accidentally shot in raw.

01:31:36   Here's a bunch of photos where I didn't realize they were in raw or like here's a hugely

01:31:42   long screen recording I had done for a video that didn't need to be in photos.

01:31:46   Here's a 24 hour like video of me driving through the desert or whatever nonsense yeah.

01:31:52   I found several videos that were hundreds of gigabytes in size and it was like ah right

01:31:59   deleting one of these is the equivalent of deleting 10 billion photos so Power Photos

01:32:05   lets you figure out what's taking up all the space in your photo library and sort from there.

01:32:10   We live in a world of fractured social media that's where we are today.

01:32:14   There are multiple services and if you are a professional who posts things like your

01:32:20   work or whatever on social media these days cross posting from one to the other service

01:32:26   can take forever.

01:32:26   I am now using an app called Croissant.

01:32:30   That's like cross posting Croissant that's the the pun of the app I think which enables

01:32:36   me to be able to post multiple services at the same time for me namely these days is

01:32:40   Mastodon and Threads this was incredibly helpful during the St. Jude Podcastathon where I was

01:32:48   posting things that we were doing and updates for the event over the 12 hours without needing

01:32:53   to post once and post in the other place I could just post them all with media from this

01:32:57   one application.

01:32:58   I can post from multiple accounts too so you know if I want to post to the Cortex brand

01:33:03   Threads account I can do that without needing to open Threads and log into the different

01:33:06   service so if you manage multiple accounts on the same services or you manage multiple

01:33:13   accounts on different services or if you just want to be able to post to the services it

01:33:18   supports without seeing your timeline Croissant is the app for you.

01:33:22   All right I'm going to do two little Safari extensions that I like.

01:33:27   The first one is called Focus.

01:33:29   This is an extension for YouTube that allows you to I originally got it just to be able

01:33:34   to block shorts but it has a bunch of good options for ability to block just things that

01:33:40   you find annoying on YouTube.

01:33:42   It can hide the recommendation videos it can change the way that your home screen looks

01:33:47   just a couple of these little tweaks where this is the kind of thing once you hide it

01:33:50   and then you completely forget that this isn't the way YouTube looks until you use someone

01:33:54   else's computer and you're like ah it's horrible so Focus makes YouTube much nicer.

01:33:58   And then I'll just mention Dark Reader is the best dark mode extension for Safari by

01:34:05   a mile.

01:34:05   I've been using it for years and I don't think I've ever mentioned it but it's just really

01:34:09   good at being able to turn absolutely every web page dark and has like very quick settings

01:34:15   for the whitelist stuff and different options of methods to try if something isn't working

01:34:19   so Focus and Dark Reader are two Safari extensions I really like.

01:34:22   I don't know what language you're speaking.

01:34:30   I'm speaking Romanian because my pick is Duolingo.

01:34:33   I've finally given into something I should have done a long time ago.

01:34:38   My wife was born in Romania.

01:34:40   I'm learning Romanian.

01:34:41   I'm learning it very slowly because it's you know it is Duolingo but I'm picking it up

01:34:46   you know I'm picking up animals and colors and numbers and basic things and I've been

01:34:51   pretty happy I'm on like a 300 day streak now.

01:34:54   Duolingo is just great like it's just a great app it's a great way to learn a language.

01:34:58   In fairness to myself the Romanian course is not is only a couple of years old.

01:35:03   I tried it when it first came out and it was not very good like it wasn't a very advanced

01:35:08   course but over the years they have enhanced it and made it closer to some of their other

01:35:14   courses.

01:35:14   My brother's learning French and honestly it's hilarious it's like he uses a different

01:35:18   application like the amount of things that are like different features that in the language

01:35:22   is where they put a lot more effort into is very funny but for me it's good and I'm working

01:35:27   my way through it and I'm picking up some words and I'm remembering some words and I'm

01:35:32   really surprised over this time period where sometimes I feel like nothing is going in

01:35:36   but I can look at a sentence and translate it.

01:35:40   You know what I mean like on the day-to-day basis I don't really know how much I'm learning

01:35:44   but over the aggregate of this time I am learning another language.

01:35:49   They're very good at doing what they do and I never expect to be even conversational by

01:35:56   doing this but I'm at least picking up stuff and I think that's a good thing.

01:36:00   Well I'm going to look forward to Cortex 50 Romanian edition.

01:36:04   Apple's introduced their window management system this year for macOS and I feel like

01:36:11   if you have basic needs that's perfectly great. I just want to recommend Mosaic.

01:36:16   This is something that I use instead to manage my windows and it's again one of those apps

01:36:21   I just kind of forget that it isn't directly built into the system like arbitrary placement

01:36:27   of all windows but I really recommend if you've never used one of these things like give Apple's

01:36:33   system a try of like oh how can I put the windows in exactly where I want them to go on my Mac

01:36:38   but if you feel like you want more than four spaces Mosaic is just really good.

01:36:43   It's one of these very very flexible window placement systems and it makes me feel like

01:36:49   an incredible computer user just to be able to like open up a bunch of stuff and boom boom boom

01:36:53   fit like three windows exactly pixel perfect where I want them on the screen.

01:36:58   I love doing a kind of like two-thirds of the screen and then divide the remaining

01:37:02   third of the screen into again a two-third and one-third section.

01:37:06   When you get into the habit of using the computer like that it's just a really really big

01:37:10   productivity bonus so I'm going to recommend Mosaic as a window manager.

01:37:14   I'm going to recommend Widgetsmith which I think I might do every year because it just continues

01:37:18   to get more and more functionality. This year Apple added the ability for apps to be able to

01:37:24   put things in control center so you can customize your control center layout and Widgetsmith has

01:37:29   done a good job of adding a bunch of functions into their shortcuts to get into different apps

01:37:34   and also to use tools inside of Widgetsmith so you can have some customization there which I

01:37:38   really like as well as then being able to add those same actions to a widget that can go on

01:37:43   your home screen which is also really cool so being able to put those in both places.

01:37:47   And also with this they've added a bunch more themes and options to essentially replace the

01:37:54   icons on your home screen with icons that you can use from the app or that you can get from

01:37:59   like icon packs online so if you really want to go full into absolute home screen customization

01:38:08   you can check out these new things in Widgetsmith. They've done some great work over there.

01:38:12   It's like a silly one but I realized once I put it in control center I actually quite like it.

01:38:16   Widgetsmith added a little icon for a mirror.

01:38:18   No no this is funny so Widgetsmith is made by our friend David Smith and I had lunch with

01:38:23   Dave a couple weeks ago and I asked him how it goes and he goes the mirror has been so popular.

01:38:28   Oh really? That's interesting.

01:38:30   And so as you started talking about it I knew you were gonna say mirror.

01:38:33   Like here's the dumb thing right I have a selfie camera that I can get to very fast.

01:38:39   There's something psychologically different about the little mirror button that makes me actually

01:38:46   use it sometimes in a way that I would never use the selfie camera. I don't know what it is but

01:38:53   that's amazing to hear from Underscore that it's been really popular because I felt drawn to it

01:38:58   immediately. I was like oh let me put this in control center. All right well then I guess I'll

01:39:04   recommend I have another mirror related recommendation for the lightning round.

01:39:09   I was going to recommend HandMirror for when you don't have your Apple Vision Pro do a call with

01:39:16   just mic and you're doing a regular FaceTime resume call. HandMirror is just a little menu

01:39:22   bar app that basically just does exactly what Underscore's mirror does. It just turns on the

01:39:28   FaceTime camera for a second lets you check the placement of the computer just see how things look

01:39:32   make sure you have stuff in or out of frame that you want to have in or out of frame. It's always

01:39:36   kind of amazing to me when I open up FaceTime and realize you can't actually see what the other

01:39:41   person will see and so that's when I pop open HandMirror just to double check.

01:39:45   That is a menu bar app right and I will now recommend a menu bar app iStamp Menus.

01:39:51   iStamp Menus has been around forever and it gives you the ability to get a bunch of information about

01:39:56   what your system is doing along with other things. I use it to mostly monitor web traffic

01:40:02   for uploading large files to Dropbox to make sure they're actually uploading because the Dropbox app

01:40:08   over time has become less reliable letting me know if something is actually uploading or not

01:40:12   and with iStamp Menus I can see my up and down speed for my internet and so I can see like is

01:40:19   anything actually uploading to Dropbox and at what speed is it doing so. Next I'm going to recommend

01:40:24   Overlap. This is just a simple little utility app. It is another one of these time zone comparer apps.

01:40:31   It just looks really nice. It's very simple and it does a nice thing though which is it allows you

01:40:37   to set the available known times for another city differently and so when you're dragging the time

01:40:44   bar back and forth trying to see when everyone lines up if you know right you're trying to have

01:40:49   a call with someone in Cairo and you know like they're just generally available at these times

01:40:53   you can set that in the app and try to like overlap when are two or three or four different time zones

01:41:00   best for everybody so just a little utility. I really like it and it's quite pretty. It's so

01:41:04   weird that it is made by the Moleskine people. I don't even know quite know why that's strange

01:41:09   but it does feel like why did the Moleskine company decide to make an app? They make a few

01:41:14   apps. But they're notebook apps the other apps right? I just like I just don't know why they make

01:41:17   notes. Well some of them are but not not entirely. Are they not? Like some of them are like digital

01:41:22   tools for drawing right or digital tools for journaling. They make a calendar app called

01:41:26   time page too. Very interesting that they did that but I'm gonna pick a weird one. It's not really an

01:41:33   app. It's an Apple watch face. The state of the apps Mike? It's not the state of the watch face?

01:41:40   Look I picked Adobe Acrobat all right. You get a free pick because of that? Yes. The Apple

01:41:45   watch photos face is incredibly good. So this is a new thing for watchOS 11. It's building on the

01:41:52   technology that they built for the lock screen like the photoshop or lock screen. So you can say

01:41:57   like give me photos of select people that you have in your photos library and you can also choose

01:42:04   pets or you can choose nature or cities and every day it loads a new selection of photos and every

01:42:11   time you look at your watch face it's to a new photo and using advanced machine learning it

01:42:17   lays out the clock into a readable space but also does that thing where it might hide some of the

01:42:22   time behind an image. You know like it might hide it behind a mountain or whatever. This watch face

01:42:28   is incredible. It makes me feel differently about my Apple watch because it makes me when every time

01:42:32   I look at my Apple watch it's something nice to look at like a little memory or a picture of my

01:42:37   wife or a picture of a building or a picture of the ocean or something. This is now the only watch

01:42:42   face that I use. Oh really huh? Yeah and it has two complications. I have a weather complication

01:42:47   and a calendar complication because it's just a little bit of joy in my day every day. Like

01:42:54   seriously I absolutely love this watch face and I'm advocating for everybody to try it. Like this is

01:42:59   something I never thought that I would want to have like a photo on my Apple watch but this is

01:43:05   to me just a nice thing to look at every time which makes me feel more like it's a watch in a way

01:43:13   because what I've always liked about watches is they look nice but I've never really been happy

01:43:17   with the design of Apple's watch faces and this is like well you know what this if I decided to

01:43:22   take a photo or something I'd probably like to look at it so let me look at my my photos. It's

01:43:27   really incredible. I recommend everybody give it a go. All right I'm gonna recommend what is barely

01:43:33   an app. It's a teeny tiny utility created by Marco that I know he's completely forgotten about but I

01:43:40   still love it and it's his little utility called Quitter and it's just a menu bar tool and all it

01:43:45   does is you can tell it when to quit an app or to more importantly hide an app after a certain

01:43:51   amount of time. I really really love and recommend this as a utility as a way to kind of gently reset

01:43:59   your computer slowly at a cadence that you like. So I basically have a rule for every single app on my

01:44:07   Mac of like when this should either be closed or hidden so that when I return to the computer I

01:44:12   feel like I'm kind of always coming back to a fresh computer or a computer that has like

01:44:17   gently readjusted itself back into what I should be doing at that point in time so

01:44:22   Quitter. My final recommendation on lightning rounds is an app called ShareShot. What it does

01:44:28   is you can take a screenshot of a device and you can run it through this app. They have a bunch of

01:44:33   shortcut actions and you can frame it inside of the device that it is right so you can make it

01:44:38   look like an iPhone look like an Apple watch look like a Mac and it also has a bunch of options to

01:44:45   be able to change the way the backgrounds look and stuff like that so every image for the home screens

01:44:53   that we're going to be sharing this episode are framed using ShareShot this year. Very nice and so

01:44:58   for my last lightning round recommendation I'm going to drop this pretense this charade that

01:45:05   I've been doing every year where I'm like I don't have an app of the year but if I were to have an

01:45:09   app of the year it's this. Finally! And the reason I'm doing it is because this little lightning round

01:45:15   recommendation really is my app of the year. I cannot even pretend. It is called Logger and a lot

01:45:24   of things I have mentioned today like relate to automation and I've mentioned shortcuts a lot

01:45:28   and it is entirely because of this app Logger. It allows you to put in basically system messages

01:45:37   to yourself about what a shortcut is doing instead of having to use QuickLook which is what most

01:45:44   people do when they when like you're trying to build a shortcut and you think oh something's

01:45:47   gone wrong and I can't figure out what it is you put in QuickLook to try to figure out what is

01:45:51   happening at each step Logger is basically an automated QuickLook that writes to a separate file

01:46:00   so you can have like on a traditional computer basically a terminal output of what all of your

01:46:07   shortcuts are doing at every single one of their steps and exactly where the problem is. I cannot

01:46:13   even begin to tell you how many more and way more complicated shortcut apps I have made

01:46:21   this year because of Logger. It has so rapidly become one of the most critical apps on my whole

01:46:29   system I cannot even believe it. So if you don't use shortcuts this is completely worthless to you

01:46:36   but if you make even mildly complicated shortcuts you have to be using Logger and it will just

01:46:43   completely unlock your ability to be able to make much more complicated shortcuts because you can

01:46:49   always know exactly what's happening and exactly where things are going wrong. So Logger is my app

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01:49:15   their continued support of this show and Relay. We've made it to home screens. Oh home screens

01:49:21   right right how complicated can it be? So as like last time my home screens are broken down into

01:49:27   a selection of focus modes too they go together so we will start off with my what I call my standard

01:49:35   or my regular home screen which pops up in a couple of different places so this is the same

01:49:41   home screen for no focus mode or for do not disturb I just have the same ones here so.

01:49:48   Mike you just you just hurt me so much with these things. What were you expecting?

01:49:51   It's not gonna be different all right like it's gonna look the way it's gonna look and that is

01:49:57   how it's looked okay. You gotta make it look different. No. How is it it all looks the same.

01:50:04   Yes it is pretty close to the same as has been previous years. I just feel like I've just opened

01:50:12   up a notion page with like 40 identical screen. Don't look down yet no you're just looking at the

01:50:19   top one no spoilers. I had to see if anything was different. No the homes look my home screen

01:50:26   background is the same one it will always be the same one I like it like that it makes me happy

01:50:33   what changes is the apps and widgets I don't need a different image to tell me that I'm in a

01:50:39   different focus mode I don't need to be told that I'm in a different focus mode the context in my

01:50:44   life suggests the focus mode has changed right it's like I know when I'm recording my phone doesn't

01:50:49   need to tell me that I know when it's the weekend but the home screen of my phone does not need to

01:50:54   tell me that the same for when I'm traveling or when I'm on vacation no because I I know based on

01:50:59   where I am what I'm doing I don't need a picture to tell me this and if anything well the apps will

01:51:06   tell me let's move on from the visual of the background to talk about what apps I'm using so

01:51:14   there is a lot of stuff that is similar here but there is one big change on my main home screen

01:51:20   I no longer have the camera app on my home screen oh oh on the actual oh yeah right I've replaced it

01:51:28   with photos now because I have a whole button on my iPhone for the camera now there is no quicker

01:51:36   access to the camera than my friend camera control where no matter what I'm doing on my iPhone at any

01:51:41   point I can just press that button the camera control button and open the camera so now I have

01:51:46   the photos there on my home screen instead so I can get to my photos whenever I want instead of

01:51:51   what I did before which was press camera and then press the little button to go to the photo library

01:51:56   that's been the biggest change outside of that on my main home screen everything is the same I have

01:52:01   a bunch of widgets like fantastical and carrot and dew and timere and then the general apps that I

01:52:06   use on my second page is where the most change will be where I have my Duolingo widget there

01:52:13   the Duolingo widget is fantastic it's a bit of a meme the Duolingo widget because okay if you've

01:52:19   not done your Duolingo for the day the widget gets increasingly unhinged oh really huh like sometimes

01:52:27   the bird's face is melting or like the birds open its mouth and there's another tiny bird coming out

01:52:32   like basically what they're doing is very clever they're making it so unmissable that it is another

01:52:39   reminder that you need to do your Duolingo they're doing bird body horror yes essentially it's doing

01:52:45   that on the top left I have a stack of Notion widgets now to get into a bunch of my frequently

01:52:51   used Notion oh one thing that has changed obviously there's no email in my doc that's been

01:52:56   replaced by Notion as well oh yeah how refreshing of course Notion is there as well but I like having

01:53:03   the two things there because the widgets help me jump quickly and it also helps me jump quickly

01:53:07   between like the Cortex Notion and the connected Notion for those two so it helps you jump between

01:53:12   those I have a stack of Widgetsmith widget photo stuff so it's pulling from different albums of

01:53:18   mine and also like an on this day widget that I really like from Widgetsmith the very center I

01:53:24   have a selection of widgets I have a widget in that stack there's like a stack of widgets one is box

01:53:31   box which is my f1 widgets because I like to see what's going on with my f1 races along with a

01:53:37   Widgetsmith time zone calculator so I can just see the different times and different time zones that

01:53:43   I'm working with I have a new time zone there which is Adelaide Australia because the guys

01:53:49   that we're working with some of the branding stuff at Cortex brand are in Adelaide oh of course

01:53:54   right right yeah of course so that's that's a new one for me which is the most complicated because

01:53:58   it's a different day that's it's always very complicated for me to work that out so I'm happy

01:54:02   to have that boo right of course it's very confusing also in that stack are like you know I

01:54:08   have a couple of countdown widgets for Widgetsmith so like it will show me a photo like of my next

01:54:13   vacation destination and I can tap it and it slides up and shows me how many days that that's

01:54:18   going to be and then my final page this is new so I had a bunch of widgets that I consolidated

01:54:26   recently there was some stuff that I had that like I didn't really need anymore but the widgets I

01:54:30   wanted to keep were my game track widgets which I mentioned earlier so it's a stack of game track

01:54:35   oh there's game track okay so it's like the games I have in progress and the games on my wish list

01:54:40   so it's like a stack of widgets that moves through and then I have basically had that widget on its

01:54:45   own essentially on the page and I was like ah I needed to mix some stuff up so I've been using

01:54:51   an app for a number of years now called Peak which does some really nice fitness widgets and I was

01:54:56   using a small square one but I've made a medium one with a bunch of different elements in there

01:55:01   so I can see my activity rings my steps how many hours I slept and my workout information for the

01:55:06   day and then I've kind of like I'm not sure what else to do so I've just I'm playing around for a

01:55:12   couple one is the vitals widget from Apple Health which I do actually think I like like this is

01:55:17   something where it's like oh they are actually giving me some information which is good like I

01:55:22   actually quite like the vitals feature and I think the widget looks visually nice I actually agree

01:55:26   like that is the useful thing that is the only place where they sort of have an opinion yeah but

01:55:32   it is useful to say like these two are out of whack based on the last 28 days so yeah I use

01:55:36   that too that is good I had this in a stack with the training load widget but I as I mentioned

01:55:41   in the show I don't really think I like the training load feature so I removed that one

01:55:45   but I'm keeping the the health vitals one for now next to it is the Apple books Apple books widget

01:55:53   which is obviously a weird one for me please tell me more I'm reading a book right now that

01:55:58   I can't talk about yet oh okay but fair enough I will explain more later about what this book is

01:56:04   but this is serving as a reminder for me to continue reading that book because it is obviously

01:56:10   not normal for me to think about reading a book so at the moment I like a visual reminder to remind

01:56:15   me to keep knocking my way through this book so this is my regular home screen all done and I

01:56:21   mentioned earlier like my watch face now is just the photos watch face and I've included an image

01:56:26   here where you can get an idea for this watch face so there's a picture of Adina on vacation

01:56:31   and it's put the time next to her and I got my complications looks really good it's really fun

01:56:35   really really fun I then have my recording home screens which are essentially the same it's the

01:56:41   same it just changes the lock screen to a photo shuffle and also changes my complications on my

01:56:47   lock screen my lock screen widget so on my main one I have Cara and I have a step counter and

01:56:53   timery and then on the recording home screen lock screen wait the recording lock screen I have

01:57:00   timery to show me my current timer because it was you know it's related to what I'm recording and

01:57:06   then also the time zones of my co-hosts so that's helpful for that if we move on to weekend not a

01:57:13   lot of visual change obviously as you know but there's there's less screens here so I kind of

01:57:17   condensed it down a little bit I had the Sonos one on there because I listen to more music on my Sonos

01:57:22   system at home on the weekend and it's really just about condensing stuff like on the Dew one

01:57:28   if I scroll through that it goes to reminders widget right because that's when I will do most

01:57:32   of my family related tasks will be on the weekend so I'll be doing those there but then we move over

01:57:40   and it's just like Duolingo, Peek and Widgetsmith and Game Track again I have a sleep home screen

01:57:46   which has just a bunch of things that I might want to specifically do at night so I have like a

01:57:51   home widget there which you turn off the bedroom lights as well as apps that I might want for

01:57:56   content like Audible for audiobooks or YouTube for YouTube videos and also Clock because you know

01:58:02   gotta put my alarm on because I'm a manual alarm setter I don't have like a daily alarm like I like

01:58:08   to change my alarm based on what's happening the next day so I set those manually and then again

01:58:15   not a lot of this is very new travel I have some travel focus stuff like Tripsy and Flighty and

01:58:21   Find My on my home screens there because you know I want to know where my next flight is and all

01:58:27   that kind of stuff I do still have a travel watch face which uses the Flighty complications yeah

01:58:34   it's great however I've really liked the new widgets that are in watchOS 11 and the way that

01:58:43   they surface and also like the live activities and stuff like I've been liking the way that widgets

01:58:49   work and look on watchOS 11 to the point where I don't really feel like I need as many complications

01:58:55   anymore because I think the system is doing a much better job of showing me what I need when I need

01:59:00   it more than I've seen before so like when I have a flight going on I don't really need it on my home

01:59:06   screen because it just shows up on my watch like the Flighty app is surfacing the widget and

01:59:11   showing that to me as well as any live activities that might have running so I don't really need the

01:59:17   watch face to be so specific anymore I feel like I tried to work with those live activities but I

01:59:22   just eventually just found it too frustrating but this is a case where I value the consistency of

01:59:29   the watch face and I just yeah it's like running a timer or whatever it's like I don't like oh now

01:59:34   the timer is the thing on my watch I feel like no no I'd rather just have it be the same all the time

01:59:38   I understand that but I have kind of given myself into the smart stack system and I have been

01:59:43   surprised that it is a lot more of what I want when I want it I honestly think I could get used

01:59:49   to it if it would just not have that clock at the top and it would instead show me two of those

01:59:56   things right I think if it would just show me two of them right from the start I could get used to

02:00:00   it but the fact that it's functionally only showing me one feels like it's blocked off too much of the

02:00:06   screen that I would use for something else and has given me nothing it just feels like I've like

02:00:11   someone else's watch has appeared on my wrist it's like I don't want that it's very odd what is weird

02:00:17   is when you scroll to get to you still see the time and the date let's start there yeah I might

02:00:23   use it if they just started there I agree with you yeah I don't need the big time just give me the

02:00:28   little time and give me more of the widgets rather than needing to do the scrolling all the time

02:00:32   and then my last one is my vacation one which yeah I don't really feel like I have a lot of

02:00:39   interesting things going on my home screens this year to be honest I feel like they are essentially

02:00:44   pretty much the same as they have been in the past which I guess is a good thing there's some

02:00:48   stability there well it's a bit like with state of the apps in general right the thing that should

02:00:53   happen as we do this for years is it shouldn't be every year everything changes right because that's

02:00:59   just wild right if everything's changing every year it means you're you're wasting an enormous

02:01:04   amount of time on transition costs that's what that would mean well I do feel like I've had

02:01:08   pretty big changes to some of the categories but essentially the home screens have remained

02:01:14   pretty stable for me so like you know like I've had stuff like my email stuff has changed and

02:01:19   that's massive but that only changes one icon on my home screen right but like it's a huge

02:01:23   system change for me or like using notion but again it's like I'd started using notion last

02:01:28   year but now I'm way deeper into it and a lot of these other tools like the AI tools or whatever

02:01:33   they're not home screen worthy right right of course these are like functional things that I'm

02:01:38   using when they need them but they're not daily basis type stuff you know so that's my home

02:01:43   screens okay I'm gonna send you something it might need a little bit of explanation

02:01:49   what I've got like a flow chart now okay so I made a flow chart basically you actually did make a

02:01:56   flow chart it's not a proper flow chart this is the simple I had a worse version than I realized

02:02:00   I could condense it down okay okay so let me explain high level what I've been thinking about

02:02:06   right I think there is some high level thinking to occur here that's for sure so focus modes are

02:02:12   great but I was trying to solve some frustrations I've had with focus modes than like the way the

02:02:19   phone looks and works this year that I feel like I finally solved but so one of the frustrations is

02:02:24   it's like oh if I'm exercising is the easy example there's two different modes in which I'm

02:02:30   exercising and one of those modes is like oh it is the morning this is part of my morning work routine

02:02:36   and I'm using exercise as a break and I'm gonna go back to work and so that is what I think of as

02:02:44   like I'm exercising in a closed mode I don't want to be interrupted by anyone this is just a like

02:02:51   functionally it's a break but other times if I'm like in the afternoon and I'm exercising

02:02:58   that's an open mode where oh if someone wants to call me this is actually a perfect time or if I

02:03:03   get a text message from someone it's a time that it's okay to get those kinds of things or

02:03:08   interruptions because I'm not working I'm available in some sense but in both of those scenarios the

02:03:14   same thing is happening I'm focusing on my health I'm doing exercise stuff and so I would want my

02:03:20   phone to look the same but there's no way in Apple to separate what do you want to have happen with

02:03:30   notifications from the focus modes which I feel like is just a thing I had not correctly

02:03:36   internalized like you can't through shortcuts change anything about the way notifications reach

02:03:41   you you can only do that through focus modes which is intrinsically tied to how does the phone look

02:03:49   so what I did was I thought about okay what are the main different times in my day what are the

02:03:56   main different kinds of things that I'm doing and the ways that I want my phone to look

02:04:00   which of these scenarios are closed I don't want anyone to reach me which of these scenarios are

02:04:09   open it's perfectly fine to be getting notifications and which of these scenarios have

02:04:16   two different versions of this like exercise sometimes it's closed sometimes it's open and so

02:04:22   I divvied up my day and then from there worked to make all of the different focus modes that I would

02:04:32   need I've just realized now there are so many focus modes so I have tricked Apple's system into

02:04:38   giving me more focus modes than it should because the limit is 10 but I've squeezed out 12 because

02:04:46   you can fill it up with focus modes and then you can get an 11th if after you fill up your

02:04:52   focus mode list you go into the sleep app and tell it you want to use sleep it'll then create

02:04:57   an 11th focus mode which you're otherwise not allowed to have and with this new system when

02:05:03   they introduced the reduce interruptions focus mode they added that onto my list and so I got

02:05:09   a 12th so I have 12 focus modes which turns out to be exactly the number I needed I can't have

02:05:15   one less well lucky you so what you're looking at here is a chart of each row is a focus mode

02:05:24   and my feeling here is like well the way I want my phone to be is I want my phone to look different

02:05:32   in each scenario so it's obviously like it's a visual cue about like what am I doing what's

02:05:37   going on what's happening and also I just don't ever want more than one page on my phone I want

02:05:46   the lock screen and I want one home screen and that's it I never want to swipe back and forth

02:05:52   between anything else so I just went through my phone and created every single focus mode I

02:05:59   created one phone home screen to go with it one watch screen to go with it and then if you look

02:06:07   at the open and closed box in the middle I just have two lock screens there because some of the

02:06:14   lock screens are ever so slightly different for the different focus modes but I genuinely think

02:06:20   it is really not quite worth like going through every one of these screens like it's just kind

02:06:25   of insanity there's a lot of similarities between them but that's exactly it like because they're

02:06:30   supposed to be similar so I actually feel like this year it's not about the screens in a sense

02:06:38   it's about how did I think of dividing up my day it's like what are the different modes you're in

02:06:43   it's like there's sleep totally closed mode Mars right red background there have sleep related apps

02:06:51   I've got the core work which is my blue that's again closed I don't want anyone to interrupt me

02:06:58   I just have omniFocus there and I've got my time tracker there and you can see I have my watch face

02:07:02   that now shows like here's the two items that I can see from omniFocus of what I'm supposed to do

02:07:07   and then I have do not disturb is one of the default focus modes and that's what I use for

02:07:14   recording okay that is the true no interruptions focus mode like no app no calls not under any

02:07:23   circumstances do not disturb is the only one that's like absolutely nothing will interrupt

02:07:28   me while that's happening so I use that for recording podcasts and then I have a mode that I

02:07:34   call transition or I call it loading because this is where I'm using my timers like what am I doing

02:07:39   during the day and I always feel like the danger zones are when you're between doing two tasks

02:07:46   and so I did like to just set up my watch looks different so it's a kind of visual reminder like

02:07:51   you're in between two different tasks you're in the transition time now like you should be looking

02:07:55   at your task list and figuring out what you're going to do next that's why omniFocus is on my

02:08:00   watch when there's the transition mode but this is the one that was actually key for why I decided

02:08:05   to set up the system because I go into this loading transition mode all the time like basically

02:08:11   after every single task it's the kind of thing when I'm taking a break that's transition mode

02:08:17   but I take breaks in the afternoon and I take breaks in the morning and so I created these two

02:08:22   identical looking modes because when I flip the break timer in the morning and my break focus

02:08:29   mode turns on I don't want at that moment to get like a text message from someone because I'm still

02:08:35   working but then in the afternoon the behavior is different like I flip on the loading timer or the

02:08:41   break timer and then the open version of the transition focus mode comes on and then people

02:08:48   can message me while that's happening or I can get a notification that like an important email came in

02:08:53   or whatever basically near identical to that but slightly different is driving I feel like driving

02:09:00   is the same kind of thing it is a transition time you're not where you were you're not where

02:09:04   you're going you're in between and it has the exact same problem if I'm driving in the morning

02:09:10   I'm still in work mode I don't want anyone to get in touch with me but if I'm driving in the

02:09:14   afternoon I do want people to get in touch with me so I made the same thing open closed versions

02:09:20   of driving and then I've got a bunch of driving related apps on my one home screen there health

02:09:25   I already talked about and then the last three are the like pure open modes where they're just open

02:09:31   all the time and that is like it's the weekend I'm traveling or there's a mode that I just call

02:09:38   open which is I'm intentionally turning on the phone so that like anyone can reach me come get

02:09:45   me world yeah and that is the only one where there's a shortcut that watches for when do I go

02:09:50   into the pure open mode and the only setting that you can change with shortcuts is the will an

02:09:58   unknown caller ring the phone setting so if I go into the pure open mode that's the only time I can

02:10:05   get a call from an unknown number which is very useful to do right like you know you're going to

02:10:09   get a call from the handyman but the handyman isn't in your contact book or whatever oh that's

02:10:13   pretty that's what I use the open mode for it's like I leave the phone in this mode and now I

02:10:18   know I'm waiting for a call but I don't know what the number is or like I've called the bank because

02:10:23   there's some problem and they're going to get back to me put it in open mode then I get calls from

02:10:27   unknown callers otherwise it's like just people in my contact book who can contact me and message me

02:10:32   so that's the system that's what my focus modes home screens look like and uh complicated image

02:10:38   will be in the show notes for the listeners yeah I have a few questions oh do you okay in the closed

02:10:45   sleep home screen is that the whoop morning energy fade relax is that like a whoop thing what is that

02:10:54   widget oh no it's something I didn't mention in lightning round it's an app called endle which I

02:10:59   like it's one of these like music ones I think it's really good they're trying to do a thing

02:11:04   which is a kind of autoplay where you can listen to it just continuously and it kind of tries to

02:11:12   guess how to vary the intensity of the music over the course of the day okay I think they actually

02:11:17   do a really good job but the reason I have the widget there is because you can also use it as a

02:11:23   kind of alarm clock which is something I was trialing and I do think it's pretty good where

02:11:28   play music is not correct but like it's making white noise in a way overnight and then it slowly

02:11:33   modifies the sound of that white noise to try to wake you up at a certain time so the widget's just

02:11:37   a fast way to get to that app to set a different time for the alarm in your core which is the main

02:11:42   working one right in the closed area the big widget you have in the middle what is that that's

02:11:48   timelines that's my time tracker okay that's a widget for timelines it looks pretty nice that

02:11:51   widget yeah that's why I say I like it they display the data in like interesting and pleasing ways so

02:11:57   that's kind of why I've kept it there but that's the only time I kind of want a little real tracker

02:12:02   of like what have I done today when I'm in the core mode so it's it is actually quite motivating

02:12:07   to make sure like oh in the first half of the day that pie chart should look good it shouldn't be

02:12:11   filled up with a bunch of dumb time a few of your watch faces they have the focus mode indicator

02:12:16   which we both said we don't like just what they wouldn't do but some of them are set on the right

02:12:20   they're not in the middle what is going on there the reason it's set on the right is because that's

02:12:24   the ultra watch face right and there's supposed to be space for three circles on the top but I've

02:12:29   just disabled all of them so the only place they can put it is on the right and it just looks awful

02:12:34   oh okay my right it's the same face as the ultra watch right but they don't have space for it so it

02:12:41   goes on the side I hate it I've not used that watch face whatever watch face that is it's doing that

02:12:46   I've not used that it's really weird that it's doing that gross you can see it again on the

02:12:51   sleep watch it's the same thing at the top right it's just I have a complication that's in the

02:12:56   middle so you can see that the little bed is off center yeah it's wild to me that it does it

02:13:01   sometimes I hate it but again we've complained endlessly like the fact that that indicator is

02:13:06   there is just so ugly and so unnecessary I hate it I hate it hate it hate it apple please get rid of

02:13:11   it what are these shortcuts do in your doc you got a little teacher's cap business cards and a

02:13:17   baseball cap what are they doing okay so uh the one in the middle the index cards that's my input

02:13:23   into my to-do system so that I press asks me for a task then it asks me what kind of task it is and

02:13:29   it filters everywhere appropriately okay so the other two the graduate cap that is a shortcut to

02:13:37   get me to claud and the baseball cap for a little boy who doesn't know as much as someone who went

02:13:44   to university is to get me to chat gpt oh man that's good I like that a lot it's one of these

02:13:53   funny things I kind of realized like oh these are the apps I'm hitting almost all the time like they

02:14:00   just deserve to be in the doc right I never know when it is I'm going to use them the only minor

02:14:04   thing is I kind of wish I could get rid of them for the core because I do have this rule for myself

02:14:09   like just don't use any ai basically before noon I feel like it's bad for the thinking process but I

02:14:15   wouldn't really do it on my phone like I'm mostly working on my computer in that mode anyway so

02:14:20   I don't mind that but I realize basically every other time the number of times I open my phone

02:14:24   and the thing I want to do is ask one of these two things a question is extremely extremely high

02:14:30   that's why they got promoted into the doc the open and closed is one thing I'm confused about like

02:14:37   it's like drive drive open health health open transition and reduce interruptions so like how

02:14:42   do they work together so the reason it has to be reduced interruptions is because that's the extra

02:14:47   focus yeah that I got from apple but I can't rename it okay it has to be called reduced

02:14:51   interruptions but you've said it to do different things what reduced interruptions should be is

02:14:56   really transition open that's what I would want to name it if I could but I just can't because

02:15:02   they won't let you rename it and if I delete it then I'll just lose that that extra focus mode

02:15:05   and I'll be down to 11 so the transition one is like it's when you move from task to task

02:15:10   but in the regular transition it's not nothing's going to come through nothing's going to interrupt

02:15:14   me yeah but then reduce interruptions you're letting apple intelligence decide what's important

02:15:18   to alert you that's exactly right yeah okay that makes sense again basically that's that's most of

02:15:22   the time I'm taking a break right I'm getting up and like we discussed before I've been doing some

02:15:28   writing I'm going to take a break I'm doing some mindless tidying of the house maybe for 10 minutes

02:15:34   but what I don't want is to get a phone call then because really I'm just giving my brain a break

02:15:38   and then I'm gonna go right back but then if I'm doing the same thing if I'm working in the

02:15:43   afternoon and I take a little break I have found it useful so far like the reduced interruptions

02:15:48   is pretty good like actually figuring out oh you would you want this now or you don't want this

02:15:52   now so that's the way that I'm using those two don't think I have any more questions well I mean

02:15:56   Mike I think the chart answers all the questions how could it not yeah answer some ask some more

02:16:02   but then also answers them you know I mean I'm sure all of our listeners will agree when they

02:16:07   click the image in the show notes it's entirely self-explanatory