00:00:00 ◼ ► So, Mike, it's been a while. It's been quite a long while since the last show. We recorded early and now we're recording late. And you had just announced your big news on the last episode. I felt quite relieved for you because it was finally in the public. So how has that experience been? The secret's out. There's a baby on the way.
00:00:21 ◼ ► Yes, it feels wonderful. I mean, I will go back to what you mentioned before. So we recorded the yearly themes episode two months ago now.
00:00:34 ◼ ► But we recorded before I went on vacation. And so like that was really difficult for me because I'd finally spoken it on a podcast.
00:00:43 ◼ ► Oh, I didn't even realize this part for you. Right, right. Okay. You got like the podcast recording emotional release, but then I had to sit on it. I didn't even think about that. I'm sorry. That's very funny.
00:00:57 ◼ ► And it was killing me. It made it so tough. I was so desperate to get the episode out. There are many times and I think a lot of people that ever produce anything that is like to be enjoyed by others.
00:01:11 ◼ ► If you're working on something for a long time or you've had something in your mind for a long time, when you put it out to the world, the response is never going to be as good as you imagine it could be. Right.
00:01:23 ◼ ► I think I've spoken about this on the show in the past. Like there are these things where like we've had it with like episodes of the show where like I've worked really, really hard on them for weeks. And then like I know they're great episodes. And you go like, here you go world. And no one says anything because they're just getting into it on their own time.
00:01:38 ◼ ► And or they just go, that was good. And then they just carry on with their lives. Right. You don't hear the response from everyone or even a tiny percentage. Well, this was one of those situations where I could not have had it go any better.
00:01:51 ◼ ► The outpouring of support and love was amazing. I kept crying for two days. I recorded with Casey on the day that the episode came out and that I kind of like posted about it. I actually recorded with him on that day.
00:02:09 ◼ ► Oh no. The two max feelings boys recorded together. I mean, I cried three times in one episode. It was great. I was just so pleased to be able to finally share this news. And it's been so great.
00:02:23 ◼ ► But now, like in the time since, I just feel so free that I can just talk freely about this thing that is like all I'm thinking about where it was like that for the prior six or seven months, but I couldn't talk about it.
00:02:39 ◼ ► And so that just feels good. I've had so many great pieces of advice from people and I will follow up on some of these as time goes on, like things that could be of interest.
00:02:51 ◼ ► I will actually talk about one of the next. I had a question that came in that I wanted to answer specifically while we were talking about baby stuff.
00:02:57 ◼ ► The best piece of advice that I got, and I got a bunch of times, is people just telling me, you will work it out.
00:03:04 ◼ ► Like when it comes to like how my schedule is going to work and how I'm going to fit this new thing into my life that I will want to be all of my time and like how will I balance everything.
00:03:14 ◼ ► And everybody just says, you'll just work it out. Like everybody works it out. You will work it out. It's going to be fine.
00:03:21 ◼ ► And that piece of advice just keeps coming up anyway, like in all manner of things. Like how do you feed a baby?
00:03:27 ◼ ► It's like you'll work it out. Like you just will work it out. Yeah, it's cool. I'm very, very, very pleased.
00:03:33 ◼ ► And I'm very thankful for listeners of this show and how supportive and wonderful everyone's been.
00:03:38 ◼ ► It's been a very good time. I mean, and we're not far away from the next moment, you know, really not very far at all now.
00:03:46 ◼ ► Yeah. Can I say that your countdown calendar is under 30 days to launch? Is that something I can say publicly?
00:03:51 ◼ ► There were a couple of things that I meant to mention in the last episode that I don't think I mentioned.
00:03:58 ◼ ► And they're not important, but they're just things I think are funny, like to close loops on things.
00:04:04 ◼ ► So one of the widgets that I had been hiding on my home screen was a Widget Smith countdown to the baby's due date.
00:04:12 ◼ ► That has now ticked under 30 days, which is when you see that number with a two in front of it, terrifying.
00:04:20 ◼ ► And at some point very soon, it's going to be a one and then it's going to be a single digit.
00:04:40 ◼ ► But as this number gets smaller, suddenly whatever variance for arrival date the baby is going to introduce
00:04:47 ◼ ► becomes every day a significantly larger percentage of the uncertainty of what's happening.
00:04:52 ◼ ► Yeah, so you're definitely within the like, baby could change this date by 25% at any moment.
00:05:09 ◼ ► And this was for a baby book that I've been reading that I want to recommend to expectant fathers
00:05:32 ◼ ► You know, it's just like looking at how these things work in the British health system.
00:05:37 ◼ ► And I've actually been reading it, not listening to it, like actually reading, reading it.
00:05:49 ◼ ► You know, he actually writes it kind of in a, what you can tell is his tone and his style and it's very easy going.
00:06:11 ◼ ► But to me, so important, these little pieces of information that I've been holding on to.
00:06:18 ◼ ► I actually have a baby book recommendation for you for a book that I haven't read, but I've just heard the author talk about.
00:06:24 ◼ ► This is going to sound like a strange recommendation, but the book title is called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.
00:06:42 ◼ ► And every time I've heard him talk about the book, it sounds significantly less like the book is really trying to convince you to have more kids.
00:06:50 ◼ ► The actual argument of the book, hey, there's a lot of ways that parents make their lives needlessly difficult in raising kids.
00:06:59 ◼ ► And he's tried to like hammer home the point of like sort of like you were saying that it's like if you'll work it out is something that seems to resonate with you.
00:07:08 ◼ ► I'm imagining some of this advice might also be a similar kind of thing of like, hey, you don't need to worry about this as much as you do.
00:07:16 ◼ ► His core point is like, oh, most parents probably don't have more kids because they're like way, way, way overcomplicating each kid.
00:07:29 ◼ ► So I haven't read the book myself, but I've heard him talk about it and I've heard him talk about other things.
00:08:01 ◼ ► But I was thinking about like how, you know, for me, one of the things that I love about time tracking is how it also relates to my theme.
00:08:07 ◼ ► And that in the last few years, I've been creating a time tracking category that is focused around my theme.
00:08:25 ◼ ► And when I started thinking about that, I started thinking about like what are ways in which this could actually be part of a better system for me.
00:08:35 ◼ ► And so I'm actually going to couple this with a baby focus mode, which I thought would be pretty cool as a way to try and help me with a couple of different things.
00:08:45 ◼ ► So I've created a focus mode and activating this focus mode will start a timer-y timer for family, which is a category I've had for a couple of years now.
00:08:59 ◼ ► And I want to try and like do this for at least a year because I want to see how kind of my year of fatherhood impacts my year-over-year comparison when we get to this next year.
00:09:33 ◼ ► And because part of it is it will activate baby home screens, which have totally different apps and widgets on them.
00:09:47 ◼ ► So while I wasn't necessarily thinking about time tracking baby time, I am thinking more about having my device set up in a specific way.
00:09:57 ◼ ► So now I'm like, well, when I actually enable that focus mode, why not just also set a timer at the same time and just see how it goes?
00:10:13 ◼ ► And at least in my own system, I feel like when you're time tracking, there's some small number of people who are at like the top tier priority in your life where it makes sense for them to have their own category of timer.
00:10:27 ◼ ► And sometimes it can make sense to have like separate categories of timer like for that person.
00:10:32 ◼ ► Are you spending time with them or are you just like spending quality time or whatever?
00:10:36 ◼ ► So when you talk about time tracking the baby and you talk about year of fatherhood, I just want to like plant this idea maybe a little bit that there's two separate things here.
00:10:48 ◼ ► And maybe there's a way where it makes sense like there's a top level timer for interacting with your baby.
00:10:56 ◼ ► But like when you talk about year of fatherhood, right, there's also going to be some kind of admin side or like things that you are doing, which are new fatherhood responsibilities that aren't actually interacting with the child.
00:11:13 ◼ ► I don't know if it really makes sense, but it's just kind of funny to me to imagine a baby not having a top level timer.
00:11:24 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm going to think about that because like my family timer right now is mostly an administrative timer.
00:12:03 ◼ ► I think it kind of threw me because when you mentioned there's the focus mode, I'm imagining like, ah, you're going into room.
00:12:21 ◼ ► So but I guess that sounds very different then from all of the other ways that you do use timers, right?
00:12:42 ◼ ► You think about it, but I feel like you are implicitly moving in my direction of like you're starting the timer when you're looking at the baby.
00:13:02 ◼ ► If you create content online, I'm pretty sure you've had thoughts about diversifying your income.
00:13:07 ◼ ► Or maybe you're just getting started and you want to engage with those early members of your audience, the people that are there to support you from day one.
00:13:14 ◼ ► Whenever to stage your app of content creation, Memberful is the best way to diversify your revenue stream and connect directly with your audience.
00:13:22 ◼ ► Memberful lets you offer membership perks and exclusive content to your loyal followers, giving you full control over who has access to your blog, your newsletters, online courses, podcast episodes, private community chats, and more.
00:13:36 ◼ ► Memberful seamlessly integrates to the tools you're already using, like WordPress, MailChimp, Google Analytics, and Discord so you can start monetizing your content without changing your existing workflow, all while building and maintaining a close relationship with your community.
00:13:49 ◼ ► Something that's so great about Memberful is that it allows you to build a closer relationship with your audience and foster a sense of community.
00:13:56 ◼ ► It does this through private Discord chats, forums, discussion groups, and exclusive events.
00:14:01 ◼ ► We have been using Memberful here at Relay for, I mean, honestly, I've forgotten how long.
00:14:06 ◼ ► I mean, we revamped our membership program five years ago, but we were using them way before that too.
00:14:18 ◼ ► So the whole program, so the ability for us to sign up members, for them to be able to pay for our content, to generate the RSS feeds that then they can subscribe to and get that bonus content, and also to enable our Discord and everything else.
00:14:39 ◼ ► And for our listeners, it gives them the ability to listen to their show and get exclusive content in the way that they want to.
00:14:48 ◼ ► Whether you're launching, growing, or switching, Memberful is committed to providing exceptional support at every stage of your journey.
00:15:01 ◼ ► You're gaining a trusted partner, ready to offer personalized guidance from setup to strategy.
00:15:42 ◼ ► probably very bad theme to try to jump into the opposite of for the first month of the year.
00:15:56 ◼ ► I would need to become a real problem child for my parents, which would be weird as a way to start the year.
00:16:08 ◼ ► This is me, once again, doing a strange thing with a theme as a, like, mulling it over.
00:16:13 ◼ ► But, so I had this experience, right, of this past year, how did I get to my theme being, like,
00:16:23 ◼ ► It's because I was doing all this traveling last year and I was just, like, really nailed down, like,
00:16:29 ◼ ► ah, this thing with, like, I've got my lists and I've got my systems and the part of this that I want to continue to expand on
00:16:37 ◼ ► after doing a bunch of simplification is I want to focus on, like, this daily routine thing.
00:17:15 ◼ ► And what I was kind of thinking of was it's sort of like cleaning a room or trying to tidy up a room, right?
00:17:22 ◼ ► If you go into your room and you're like, I'm going to clean this room, you can do that.
00:17:31 ◼ ► If you're trying to do that part of it, you want to take everything out of the room first.
00:17:39 ◼ ► And so I felt like in one way or another for a very long time in my life, like, I don't even know exactly how long.
00:17:58 ◼ ► And I thought, I think if I really want to do this right, I'm actually going to take this, like, holiday time and intentionally say,
00:18:07 ◼ ► you know what, I am not going to do any of this and kind of give myself a bit of mental space to rethink the whole thing.
00:18:17 ◼ ► It's like a kind of taking everything out of the room and thinking about it again from the start.
00:18:31 ◼ ► And it actually was very strange at first because I am so used to, like, again, people know.
00:18:40 ◼ ► It's like everything I'm doing, it's like, ah, I start a little timer of, like, ah, okay, what am I doing right now?
00:18:52 ◼ ► And so at this point in time, it's like, ah, I haven't time-tracked anything for five weeks or so.
00:18:59 ◼ ► And it's just been very interesting to, like, make a certain kind of space in my life to try to re-evaluate from scratch what do I think I want this to be.
00:19:11 ◼ ► Just from your initial description, it feels like it would work specifically for the theme that you have created for yourself, which is routines.
00:19:32 ◼ ► So if we say, like, the year of less, well, you shouldn't add more, right, before doing that one.
00:19:42 ◼ ► And the way that you have set your themes a lot of the time is your theme is a response to a way in which the previous year has gone.
00:19:57 ◼ ► But in this particular theme that you're creating, which is, like, it's time to, you know, like, get more routine in place and, like, really, like, work out what the best routines are for me.
00:20:21 ◼ ► I don't know how well it would work even for some of the other things that you've done before.
00:20:38 ◼ ► But I'm trying to think of, like, off the top of my head other examples of things that it might be good to anti-theme.
00:20:46 ◼ ► But as a result of this, I came to a pretty big decision in the way that I'm actually going to be running these things and, like, a really big change.
00:20:57 ◼ ► And I genuinely think I could not have done it without, like, stopping everything, taking some time off from, like, running all of the checklists and using all of those tools and just, like, kind of being more like a normal person.
00:21:41 ◼ ► So it's like, that's very easy to be using all of my normal tools and to be doing all of that kind of stuff.
00:21:47 ◼ ► But over the past many years of, like, doing this job and being in business, it's like, you know what's happened over this time?
00:22:11 ◼ ► And I have didn't quite realize that I was very, very resistant to truly taking on board the idea of, like, hey, buddy, you started doing all of this work just as a single person who didn't work with anybody.
00:22:36 ◼ ► You actually need to readjust, like, what you're doing to recognize the fact that, like, ah, you work with a ton of people.
00:22:47 ◼ ► And so what I ended up doing is I was talking with, like, my admin team and I was talking with my chief of staff and was going through, like, and thinking things through.
00:22:56 ◼ ► And what I've decided to do, it's been a big process, but in the past couple weeks, I've been moving everything over to one task manager to rule them all, which is going to be Asana.
00:23:14 ◼ ► It's, like, what I realized had happened is, like, I basically got OmniFocus as perfect as it could be for a one-person team at exactly the point in time where then I realized, like, this is not really my life anymore.
00:23:33 ◼ ► And my chief of staff happens to be, like, incredibly good with Asana from previous experience.
00:23:39 ◼ ► She was showing me a couple of things, and I was completely sold on, oh, this is the thing that I need to do going forward.
00:23:49 ◼ ► And so I am building back up all of my routines and, like, how am I going to be keeping track of everything through a tool where I'm just acknowledging the fact that I cannot work in a tool where it is just me going forward if I'm continuing to have the number and size and complexity of projects that I'm working on.
00:24:31 ◼ ► So here's my pitch for what is the thing that's unique here and what kind of problem is this solving?
00:24:39 ◼ ► So there's a feature in Asana that was the main thing that really sold it to me, which is you can put tasks in Asana.
00:25:02 ◼ ► What that allows is that if you have a project and multiple people are working on that project, it doesn't need to be the case that all of the people who are assigned tasks can see the higher levels of what that project is.
00:25:19 ◼ ► You can have it be like this task is connected to multiple projects and also it exists as a subtask of other things.
00:25:28 ◼ ► But you don't have to necessarily share, like, ah, here's the whole project with the whole team.
00:25:36 ◼ ► And those two things have really, really changed the way that I think about what am I doing here.
00:25:58 ◼ ► And I can simultaneously have all of these little, like, daily routine tasks be connected to higher level planning projects for me.
00:26:17 ◼ ► And I can have, like, these subtasks that are assigned to me that nobody else can see them.
00:26:26 ◼ ► But also if those higher level projects have things that people I work with need to be able to do, they can be connected to that.
00:26:36 ◼ ► I can see the whole scope of the project from, like, the smallest details of what I need to be working on to the highest level of things.
00:26:52 ◼ ► And so once I saw, like, this is the thing you can do, I really felt like, oh, this is an answer to a problem that has been a minor frustration for years.
00:27:10 ◼ ► I've had multiple checklists and, like, lots of times in OmniFocus I have a thing which is, like, go look over here at that other thing.
00:27:24 ◼ ► And I think Asana is the tool that, more than anything I've ever seen, gets it the closest.
00:27:33 ◼ ► What I think is the genius thing is, we've talked for years about these kind of collaboration tools.
00:28:08 ◼ ► You can even do things like the lists can have, like, different colors and different names for each of the users.
00:28:21 ◼ ► I can do, like, all of my crazy stuff for my personal routine and, like, the way I want to run things personally.
00:28:27 ◼ ► But that doesn't mean that, like, ah, my animator has to be okay with, like, the way that I have set up all the lists.
00:28:34 ◼ ► Because it's like, no, the tasks that he's getting can be on his dashboard the way that he wants to see them.
00:28:49 ◼ ► And we don't have to have this, like, minor frustration of, like, ah, but that's not the way I would want to do it.
00:29:03 ◼ ► If you're looking to change your fitness level, it can be hard to know where to get started.
00:29:08 ◼ ► That's why I'm pleased to let you know that FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan just for you.
00:29:19 ◼ ► They're adapting as you improve so each workout will be challenging, pushing you to make the progress that you want.
00:29:25 ◼ ► Superior results are achieved when your workout program meets you exactly where you are.
00:29:30 ◼ ► When it's tailored to your body, your experience, your environment, and your goals, you're going to get the best results.
00:29:48 ◼ ► They have been fine-tuned by certified personal trainers, and they have incredible instructions to make sure you're learning the movements the right way.
00:29:55 ◼ ► They have over a thousand demonstration videos to help you get the best out of your workout.
00:29:59 ◼ ► Your muscles improve when they work together, so overworking some while underworking others will negatively impact your results,
00:30:05 ◼ ► which is why FitBod tracks your muscle fatigue and recovery to design a well-balanced workout routine.
00:30:09 ◼ ► This also means you're never going to get bored as the app mixes up your workouts with new exercises, rep schemes, supersets, and circuits.
00:30:19 ◼ ► You can stay informed with their progress tracking charts, their weekly reports, and sharing cards.
00:30:23 ◼ ► It also integrates with your Apple Watch, Wear OS, SmartWatch, and apps like Strava, Fitbit, and Apple Health.
00:30:30 ◼ ► I think Gray has given it his app of the year multiple times in State of the Apps episodes because it's not just a great app, but it's also what you get out of it.
00:30:56 ◼ ► 25% of that yearly plan is an incredible deal and will be a wonderful commitment to your year of health if that's your yearly theme for this year.
00:31:18 ◼ ► I've had Asana in the background as like, oh, my chief of staff has been using Asana to like sort of keep track of her work within Gray Industries and stuff that I need to do.
00:31:37 ◼ ► And it's one of those times where the moment I saw it, I really did feel like, oh, any system when I'm planning things, if I can't share that subtask with the person who actually needs to work on it from the place where planning occurs.
00:31:58 ◼ ► Like this is now a required feature as I feel like this is solving a bunch of the problems of like, where are projects?
00:32:09 ◼ ► It's allowing the planning phase and the high level phase to exist all the way down to the granular level action phase.
00:32:19 ◼ ► And that's always been my frustration with having tools like Notion plus whatever is it's like, oh, we do like company planning in Notion.
00:32:32 ◼ ► And I always feel like those documents become dead very fast because somewhere else you're actually doing the like, here's the real work.
00:32:44 ◼ ► And every day that the real work happens where you're not also going back to those higher level documents, those documents just become more disconnected from reality.
00:32:57 ◼ ► But the Asana stuff, I was just able to see like, oh, this allows me much better to connect the high level to the low level and also assign out those tasks.
00:33:14 ◼ ► It's like I've got this database of like both the highest level tasks and the most mundane routine level tasks.
00:33:36 ◼ ► Like I needed a tour of like convince me on this because it just didn't look that different from like 10,000 things that are kind of like this.
00:33:44 ◼ ► If you're using one of these tools already, you probably go there and you're like, yeah, OK.
00:34:18 ◼ ► So that makes sense why when I did a little bit of Googling while you were talking, there are many integrations to bring the two together, like to bridge them so you can have your Asana tasks in your Notion database.
00:34:34 ◼ ► My plan going forward and like we're already working on this is like my company Notion should be as much as possible.
00:34:40 ◼ ► Like we're turning this into actionable items in Asana because otherwise, if you're not taking action, like what is this?
00:34:59 ◼ ► You can share documents with a person, but you have to share them at the document level.
00:35:09 ◼ ► But Asana is kind of like imagine you could have a document in Notion, but you could just select one paragraph and share that single paragraph with some other person.
00:35:28 ◼ ► But what I mean then is like you can have the whole plan visible at the highest levels.
00:35:34 ◼ ► So you can always be aware of like what are we trying to achieve all the way down to how does that translate into an actual action?
00:35:47 ◼ ► But then you can pick any one of those lines and like that line is just shared with some other person.
00:36:18 ◼ ► Not dependent on things coming before or maybe that's when they only see the tasks and things that happened before.
00:36:23 ◼ ► But I would see them all, see them all being worked on and pick off the things that I need to from my list which I can see is mine to do.
00:36:40 ◼ ► Like I'm just seeing the things that you have assigned to me and or given me access to.
00:36:44 ◼ ► There's also a really nice little bonus if you make like a project template to say like, okay, every time we do a core text, right, it's basically the same thing.
00:37:07 ◼ ► But I think the framing is very different when you have a database where someone can quickly see like I've been assigned these three tasks and here are the people who are blocked until I have finished this task.
00:37:22 ◼ ► So like you have some work that you want to do or you have a job, you know, you need to do, but your task is being blocked by somebody else.
00:37:31 ◼ ► This is a corporate way of doing it because then you will go bug that person to get their work done.
00:37:37 ◼ ► And this is the kind of thing where like I know to listeners sometimes this can sound silly, but it really does matter.
00:37:44 ◼ ► And I've even thought about it with this show of like what is part of this problem that I feel like I'm trying to solve here.
00:37:50 ◼ ► I'm trying to solve like all of the task managers I have used have been entirely like what am I doing focused.
00:37:57 ◼ ► But the moment I'm interacting with other people, including you, including Cortex Brand, including my own company, very often like I'm the person who's blocking others because I'm like the center person for a lot of this.
00:38:16 ◼ ► And it's especially not immediately obvious to me unless I go and like check communication channels.
00:38:23 ◼ ► Oh, am I going to go look in Slack to see if I am the person who's like blocking the Cortex episode from going up?
00:38:34 ◼ ► It's like I have to go to this like talky talky Slack channel where everybody's talking and then parse sentences out to be like, ah, is the person done?
00:38:55 ◼ ► But the thing that I'm trying to collapse down into is automatic notifications that like you're the person blocking a thing without having to go somewhere else and like discover that piece of information because there's a chat in Slack.
00:39:23 ◼ ► Because you can people can stay in a sort of work mode without having to switch out into like check in things to see like did the emails come in about whatever?
00:39:34 ◼ ► It's like, no, no, no, if it's an actionable task, it will be checked off by the other person.
00:39:42 ◼ ► It's funny because I think one of the ways that you're positioning this conversation is like, listener, you don't know what I'm talking about here.
00:39:54 ◼ ► I think the majority of our listeners, this is how they work because they're working inside of modern corporations.
00:40:08 ◼ ► And in that time period, what's changed for us is we have gone from essentially individuals working with other individuals to building teams of our own.
00:40:41 ◼ ► I think is maybe the sticking point in the year of people is just that I feel like there is more people management that is needed.
00:40:49 ◼ ► And I'm not sure that I'm doing a very good job of communicating to everyone what's needed and when.
00:41:02 ◼ ► Like I maybe want to be doing something else rather than saying to someone, hey, that project, you've got to get that done by Friday.
00:41:07 ◼ ► Like that needs to be done by Friday because otherwise this can't happen and this can't happen.
00:41:16 ◼ ► But at the same time, it then means that the thing that I need isn't done and then I get frustrated because it wasn't done.
00:41:22 ◼ ► If I communicated to somebody what the deadline was for this project, then they would have been able to make it work.
00:41:46 ◼ ► Yeah, I think that that's a good way to think about it is it's like a small corporate team.
00:42:05 ◼ ► Cortex Brand was actually a large reason why this was on the back of my mind because we had a conversation about kind of doing like the high level like restructuring of like
00:42:16 ◼ ► who's in charge of what for Cortex Brand is a conversation that we had and it kept really like gnawing at the back of my mind.
00:42:33 ◼ ► This is again is what I feel like is this problem often with like you have your planning documents and then separately like a bunch of people are doing things.
00:42:52 ◼ ► But at this point, what it's you and me and like people working for Cortex Brand and people working for me, there's just too much.
00:43:01 ◼ ► And all of this came up like even within my own team where because I had stuff in my personal task manager.
00:43:08 ◼ ► It's like, oh, I ended up accidentally blocking a bunch of stuff from my team because like they didn't realize like, ah, he's doing this kind of stuff.
00:43:25 ◼ ► I feel like a poor Mike in some ways where I think like you have been trying to nudge me a little bit sometimes towards these tools.
00:43:34 ◼ ► And it's like, ah, I had to do it in the most gray way of like, I'm going to go wander off, you know, into this cave and just think for 30 days and come back and then be like, hey, Mike, did you know it's a good idea to use a shared task manager?
00:44:16 ◼ ► Asana is in your future precisely because I care about you, Mike, and I care about Cortex Brand.
00:44:24 ◼ ► If you care about something and it's not in your to-do manager, it doesn't exist and you don't really care.
00:44:56 ◼ ► ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high-quality in-network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment.
00:45:05 ◼ ► We're talking about booking in-network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty.
00:45:15 ◼ ► You can filter for doctors who take your insurance, are located nearby, are a good fit for any medical needs you may have, and are highly rated by verified patients.
00:45:24 ◼ ► Once you find the right doctor, you can see their actual appointment openings, choose a time slot that works for you, and click to instantly book a visit.
00:45:31 ◼ ► Appointments made through ZocDoc happen fast, typically within just 24 to 72 hours of booking.
00:45:59 ◼ ► Stop putting off those doctor appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash cortex, where you can find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today.
00:46:25 ◼ ► And I do want to go through something we always go through in January as we compare my year of time tracking, like year over year, and see how things have changed.
00:46:40 ◼ ► The last time we spoke about this was five years ago, like in an episode that I remain proud of, which is our Productivity 101 episode.
00:47:11 ◼ ► It's because I remember it's like, ah, that first year of lockdown, I was like, this is great.
00:47:16 ◼ ► Well, look, I have heard this more and more in the last 12 months or so, that there is like a feeling amongst people of how simple that time was and like how we could like really, everybody, people got a lot of work done.
00:47:32 ◼ ► Now, I am not someone who looks back fondly on lockdown, because if you will remember, I had in February of 2020 decided I didn't want to work at home anymore and signed a lease on a studio.
00:48:00 ◼ ► For me, again, the difference between the two of us is for me, time tracking is much more about a tool of intentionality.
00:48:11 ◼ ► That is my main focus is I like to press the button because I always feel like this is me deciding.
00:48:31 ◼ ► Like, I like to do that to just be like, I am deciding because I feel like it helps keep me focused because what I don't want to have to do is feel like, oh, I didn't do that thing.
00:48:45 ◼ ► So, that's the primary thing that time tracking has always served for me, and it is the reason why I've always done the thing of, like, if I'm time tracking at all, I am time tracking everything because I'm using it to help with the decision point between activities.
00:49:03 ◼ ► I have to really think about it for a second because I'm also going to press a button that says, like, yes, I'm doing that thing.
00:49:10 ◼ ► So, for me, it's always been less about the looking at the data over time in the way that it is for you.
00:49:22 ◼ ► Like, I do look at the data, but I'm much more interested in it as a tool of intentionality.
00:49:34 ◼ ► I mean, again, we've just gone through how I haven't been doing it for the last, like, month or so, which is just has been very interesting.
00:49:42 ◼ ► I'm glad to have taken the time off in some sense to give my brain some space to think about it.
00:49:49 ◼ ► I am going to come back to time tracking, but I don't actually know what that form is going to be.
00:50:07 ◼ ► Up until a month ago, time tracking everything then stopped completely because there's only two modes, do all of it or do none of it.
00:50:21 ◼ ► And while I was happy to have space to kind of be freer in the anti-theme time, it is noticeable that, like, ah, but I am less intentional.
00:50:36 ◼ ► It's funny to me that you mention intentionality because I only track when I am actively doing something.
00:50:44 ◼ ► And for me, that is intentionality because I don't track the time, which is unintentional.
00:51:00 ◼ ► That if I have started something, I'm working on that thing or I am doing the related thing.
00:51:20 ◼ ► There is enough time in my life where I would just be filling it with what would essentially be the same thing, which is like, hey, I'm not working right now.
00:51:39 ◼ ► But for me, really, time tracking is a system that I use to track my work, not my life.
00:51:48 ◼ ► The thing that I do look at, right, is what do I always feel is this dangerous time is the kind of like indecisive time for me.
00:51:57 ◼ ► And the reason that I track is because I do have a specific timer that I always call the loading timer of like thing is done, but I haven't decided what I'm going to do next.
00:52:11 ◼ ► It's like I'm kind of like on a break and just thinking for a minute about what am I going to do next.
00:52:15 ◼ ► And I use that timer also for things just like any activity that's like between two other activities.
00:52:22 ◼ ► It's like, oh, it's like it's the shower or I'm getting ready in the morning or I'm shutting down at night.
00:52:28 ◼ ► But the primary reason for that is I do keep an eye on that one because I always feel like this time should be relatively short.
00:52:36 ◼ ► And it's just like I always want to have an idea of like how much time did I spend today in between things and just keeping an eye on like,
00:52:47 ◼ ► But it's like I think it's sort of the same thing of like that is the closest I come to like the accountability is like keeping an eye on that sort of thing.
00:52:55 ◼ ► But that doesn't work unless you have really built the reflex to like do that without thinking about it.
00:53:04 ◼ ► And my asterisk is I have over time added in some non-work stuff and it tends to be related to themes or bigger things that I'm tracking in my life.
00:53:14 ◼ ► Like adding in a weekend timer, for example, for tracking what I consider a weekend activity.
00:53:20 ◼ ► But they are still for me like it's a focus thing that's happening that I am intentionally doing.
00:53:26 ◼ ► And if time is not tracked, then it is unintentional time, sleep, rest, whatever it might be.
00:53:51 ◼ ► For me, in the thing that I'm doing, I just don't find it useful to have a lot of the metadata.
00:54:03 ◼ ► I don't really care about like tracking each individual project and like how much time did that project take up versus the other one.
00:54:19 ◼ ► I still don't have a distinction between like Cortex the podcast and Cortex brand for my like timers.
00:54:47 ◼ ► So I think that probably is a byproduct of just doing the time tracking all the time, that if it was also very metadata heavy, now it's just like way too much to keep track of.
00:55:13 ◼ ► So basically all of my timers are what is deemed are projects in the system that I have.
00:55:20 ◼ ► And I only ever start project timers, except for the podcast related timers that I have.
00:55:33 ◼ ► Like they might have a writing timer and they would type a description of what are they writing?
00:55:43 ◼ ► I want to press one button by and large to start my timer and then one button to stop it again.
00:55:49 ◼ ► Or like I type the first letter of the name of the timer into Timery and then tap the thing,
00:56:24 ◼ ► So if the next update hasn't come out by the time this episode's out, it's coming soon.
00:57:00 ◼ ► But that was a byproduct of some other things that I was doing at the time and some ways that I'm working.
00:57:04 ◼ ► And so this is another one of these create space kind of moments where it's like, oh, the reason I needed offline ability to start timers is not the case anymore.
00:57:14 ◼ ► And so whenever it is that I go back to time tracking, I'm just going to start fresh and reassess.
00:57:25 ◼ ► I could just put, as I had a little pie chart widget for what does my day look like on my Mac?
00:57:31 ◼ ► And then a little thing that's just like a bar chart of like, how many hours did I spend doing X today?
00:57:48 ◼ ► I think at this point for me, time tracking kind of serves two purposes, which is one is the intentional thought of like, hey, I'm working right now.
00:58:12 ◼ ► And it can be helpful to have that reminder that there is work to be done and that I should think about it.
00:58:18 ◼ ► But over time, it has become incredibly important for me with thinking about my yearly theme and how I want to spend my time.
00:58:32 ◼ ► I could try and give reasons for why things may have gone the way that they have gone, but there's nothing I can do about it.
00:58:39 ◼ ► And I have made so many decisions for my yearly themes based on looking at my time tracking data and or the data can be used as a way to help me answer a question of a feeling.
00:59:01 ◼ ► I remember when I started time tracking, one of the really great things for me was sometimes I would finish a work day and be like, man, I am exhausted today.
00:59:21 ◼ ► Where, especially with the way that I track, where I may be out of the house for the same amount of time each day, but one day I might track five hours and one day I might track nine hours.
00:59:37 ◼ ► But my pitch is always to people, like, if you haven't time tracked, you need to try it in whatever form for, like, two weeks and you will be very surprised.
00:59:48 ◼ ► Everyone is very surprised when they actually start to track their time because your brain just cannot keep good track of what is really occurring.
00:59:59 ◼ ► And, like, that thing that you've said right now, like, I have definitely had that experience, which it sounds so dumb of, like, you get to the end of the day and you go,
01:00:08 ◼ ► And then you look at your time tracker and you go, oh, because today was a wildly productive day.
01:00:14 ◼ ► Or even the reverse of, like, oh, you get to the end of the day and you feel like, ah, I feel, like, overwhelmed and kind of stressed.
01:00:20 ◼ ► And then your time tracker is like, yeah, bro, because you didn't get anything real done.
01:00:30 ◼ ► And humans just are just so bad at doing an objective evaluation of how their day went.
01:00:35 ◼ ► I just feel like for everyone it's a great tool, but especially if you are self-employed in any context.
01:00:45 ◼ ► Like, you have to do this sometimes to kind of calibrate yourself about what is really happening in your life.
01:00:55 ◼ ► Like, if you work a corporate job, an office job, or you're self-employed, maybe you have some kind of creative job.
01:01:04 ◼ ► If you are working a non-manual work, there is a period of your day, many periods of your day, where you're not actually working.
01:01:17 ◼ ► Maybe you're watching a YouTube video, or you're pretending to work, but you're listening to this show right now.
01:01:24 ◼ ► You can't just, like, walk into the office, start your work timer, and then at 5 p.m. end your work timer.
01:01:32 ◼ ► I mean, and I know this, because every year, whenever I share the data that I'm going to share, people are like,
01:01:38 ◼ ► And it's like, well, no, that's four hours of my eight hours where I am really fully engaged on a thing,
01:01:51 ◼ ► And, like, when are you actually truly putting the work in, that's what you should be tracking.
01:02:13 ◼ ► And one of the reasons that I like apps like Timery, but any app that will give you, like, widgets or things you can put on your home screen,
01:02:30 ◼ ► Maybe you want to do the way that I do, and you just track when you're actively working.
01:02:34 ◼ ► Or maybe you could have the kind of system that Gray does, but there's always a timer running.
01:02:54 ◼ ► And I bet you this before, but, like, one of the reasons I like having the always running tracker
01:03:06 ◼ ► It's like, if I sit down to write, it's very easy to kind of, like, bounce off of that.
01:03:12 ◼ ► And it's, like, sitting in front of the computer, it's like, I'm sort of thinking about it.
01:03:18 ◼ ► And it's like, ah, when I catch that that has happened, I have to stop the writing timer
01:03:33 ◼ ► You were just, like, doing the kind of, you were in front of the computer, nothing is really happening.
01:03:38 ◼ ► Like, if you are not willing to be honest about yourself with that stuff, like, you're not going to get something out of time tracking.
01:03:56 ◼ ► the moment I really catch myself going, like, oh, I haven't done anything for 20 minutes,
01:04:00 ◼ ► it's like, that timer is stopped and that 20 minutes is going into the black category of death.
01:04:07 ◼ ► That's another one of those things of, like, I'm not specifically looking at all of the numbers,
01:04:12 ◼ ► but I do want to see, like, my pie chart of the year has the least amount of black on it that it possibly can.
01:04:18 ◼ ► And, yeah, anyone who's working in knowledge work, if you haven't done the time tracking,
01:04:25 ◼ ► And having spoken to a lot of people in a lot of different areas in mental and creative work,
01:04:53 ◼ ► And if you're a creative and have never time tracked and never really come up to face that as a limit,
01:05:31 ◼ ► you can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything.
01:08:43 ◼ ► 233 hours of podcast recording in 2023, and you've got 386 hours of podcasting in 2024.
01:08:54 ◼ ► I think this happens every year where it is shocking how close some of these numbers are
01:09:06 ◼ ► I feel like I have been vaguely hearing from you for years about like cutting down podcast
01:09:13 ◼ ► And I mean, I'm going to just say like 10 hours less might as well be no hours less in between
01:09:42 ◼ ► I think I was just surprised because I knew that you cut some shows, but it just hasn't
01:10:18 ◼ ► I feel like you're using some very scary definition of minimum viable if you were going to cut it
01:10:25 ◼ ► And how many shows would I actually have to do to make an outsized amount of my revenue?
01:10:33 ◼ ► Actually, how many shows are you still doing now that you've done the, what's the total
01:11:08 ◼ ► In the past year, or let's say going forward, in 2025, how many podcasts will have at least
01:12:05 ◼ ► But if I had no choice and like had to start cutting stuff for some reason, there are more
01:12:13 ◼ ► The only reason I'm just asking about the top line thing here is because I don't know if
01:12:42 ◼ ► Whatever that number is, you don't have that number of hours that you didn't use this year
01:13:37 ◼ ► So straight away, you are, as I suggested, literally taking time from one of these categories.
01:13:52 ◼ ► I'm just simply remarking on the other thing that I was speculating about that you were like, no, no, no, that's not true.
01:14:00 ◼ ► Based on that, though, if we're going to use that line of thinking, it means when I have a baby, I can't work anymore, which is not accurate.
01:14:06 ◼ ► This is a luxury, like a choice that I'm making of taking an extended parental leave, which means I won't record podcasts.
01:14:35 ◼ ► I think I just, if I can ever take time from something to put it into something else, I always want to put more time into show prep.
01:15:09 ◼ ► Oh, actually, wait, so it's podcast editing, so you saved like 25, so you saved like, let's ballpark at like 75 hours on podcast editing.
01:15:22 ◼ ► And also, like, for me, getting rid of basically the last podcast that I edit, and I'll talk about why there's still 74 hours in a second, but getting rid of my last big editing project wasn't so much because I wanted the time.
01:16:02 ◼ ► I mean, I am always a big proponent of the fewer things you have to think about, the better.
01:16:07 ◼ ► And so, yes, even if you have tasks that are not necessarily hugely time consuming or they're straightforward or whatever, simply eliminating them is much more of a benefit than people think.
01:16:18 ◼ ► And I can definitely tell that, at least with this show, which is the one that we talk about all the time, is you are clearly in a much less stressful place since you gave up the editing of this show.
01:16:50 ◼ ► And I think you get the hours back, but there's some kind of like every time you eliminate something, you get the hours back.
01:16:58 ◼ ► Plus, you get some kind of 5% bonus in terms of mental clarity is kind of like what happens every time you can eliminate stuff.
01:17:09 ◼ ► So for me, podcast editing encompasses anything which is happening to a podcast after it was recorded.
01:17:17 ◼ ► I used to have a different tracker called podcast posting, which encapsulates some of this, but I kind of shrunk that down over time as I was doing a little less of that.
01:17:30 ◼ ► And it is, once we get the show back from our editor and you've taken your pass, it comes to me.
01:17:46 ◼ ► And just various things of getting the show ready, preparing the video version, lots of little things like that.
01:17:52 ◼ ► There are tasks in that bucket that could still be given to somebody else, but for the time being, I'm fine with it.
01:18:00 ◼ ► Especially the thing that takes the biggest chunk of time, which is listening to the final exploited episode.
01:18:10 ◼ ► I am tracking podcast editing time while I'm commuting home because I'm listening to our show.
01:18:22 ◼ ► Outside of that, the only show that I edit at all is The Pen Addict because it takes 15 minutes a week.
01:18:37 ◼ ► They come back from the editor and then I kind of put them together, upload them, and post them.
01:18:51 ◼ ► So that 70 hours difference is the last remaining Cortex editing going away because that wasn't a full year.
01:19:00 ◼ ► I think I only did like three quarters of the year of editing of Cortex and then for the last quarter, that was when we gave it away.
01:19:08 ◼ ► I actually kind of like that as a definition of anything you're doing to the show after it's been recorded but before it's published.
01:19:13 ◼ ► I actually think that's quite mentally clarifying of like, ah, that's all podcast editing and you're just including anything related to the show, including the posting.
01:19:24 ◼ ► Especially because a lot of the time, like for a lot of shows, like the editing went into posting and it was just like, it's just silly to change the timer.
01:19:51 ◼ ► So when I was tracking year of the weekend, which was the 23 theme, it was very much it kind of focused in a couple of areas, which was intentional weekend time on the weekend, right?
01:20:07 ◼ ► I am like purposely doing a thing that is like I want to do this on the weekend and it's a thing I want to do and I can only do it because it's Saturday or Sunday and so I'm going to do it.
01:20:16 ◼ ► Or when I would give myself an activity in the week because I was doing something on the weekend, you know?
01:20:25 ◼ ► So like if I'm working on Saturday, on Tuesday, I'm going to go play golf or something like that, right?
01:20:32 ◼ ► Now in 2024 and then also this is remaining in 2025, the only things I'm counting are that latter half, which is kind of now in two things.
01:20:43 ◼ ► It's either I was working on the weekend, so I'm giving myself some time off or I'm just going to give myself a day off.
01:20:50 ◼ ► And that now becomes weekend and so that's why I've had that drop, but I'm still tracking weekend things for that same thing.
01:20:56 ◼ ► Like I just had it this week where like actually I knew I was going to be working late a couple of nights at the end of the week.
01:21:08 ◼ ► And that is just the now it's become part of my way of working, which is I give myself time off when I know that there is extra work that's going to be happening as opposed to what I would do before, which was work and then also do the extra work.
01:21:26 ◼ ► It's essentially I could call this weekend could just be work-life balance because that's kind of what it is now.
01:21:45 ◼ ► It was that plus, hey, it's Saturday and I'm going to treat this Saturday like Saturday, you know, and like it was like a mindset thing too.
01:21:53 ◼ ► When it is your theme, it makes sense that you were intentionally doing it more and you're thinking about it more and you have more stuff that's just related to it.
01:22:02 ◼ ► I am happy to see, though, that you're like still tracking it as the intentional time off.
01:22:15 ◼ ► You know, I'm not quite doing the same thing, but my own version of this has always been I've got two trackers, which one is which called free, which is like totally free time that I'm giving myself in a way to not think about the time tracking and just do whatever.
01:22:30 ◼ ► And also a like novelty timer, which is like, I'm just doing something that is different from something that I've done before.
01:22:44 ◼ ► And I think I'm glad to see that since you are so work focused with your tracker, that you're also still keeping this around as like, ah, the theme lives on in my taking intentional time off.
01:22:55 ◼ ► The thing in my time tracking this year that I'm most miffed about, like I don't understand and I'm also frustrated with is that all of my Cortex brand numbers are down year over year and it just doesn't feel like that that was the case.
01:23:13 ◼ ► I actually feel like this is kind of a byproduct of some of the stuff that I was getting at with like Asana.
01:23:21 ◼ ► I think some of that is a result of like me not flipping tasks back to you fast enough.
01:23:27 ◼ ► Although also looking at this, there is one there, which I've really got my eye on, part of our like reorg.
01:23:42 ◼ ► Those are hours that I think Mike should be getting back in 2025 because I think that's getting folded under or at least at least a good portion of whatever you're trying to do.
01:23:51 ◼ ► Tracking there should get folded under like some of the stuff that I want to be taking a look at with Cortex brand going forward.
01:23:57 ◼ ► So I'm not exactly sure what you're using that timer for, but there may be a place where you're getting those hours back.
01:24:16 ◼ ► So maybe not as many hours to get out of that, but I should take some of those hours from you going forward.
01:24:21 ◼ ► And then the last couple of things that I wanted to mention at least, and this is anything else that you have.
01:24:26 ◼ ► It was funny to me that Podcastathon was about the same considering I didn't attend any of the meetings.
01:24:34 ◼ ► Most of the planning meetings I didn't do this year, Stephen took them over because of live events, which obviously shot right up there to 52 hours tracked where it did not exist in the previous year at all.
01:24:53 ◼ ► So it just didn't exist in the previous year and I figured that I would have less time in Podcastathon, but essentially the in-person time in Memphis this year was significantly more complex.
01:25:07 ◼ ► And so that was essentially three full days at St. Jude was what went into that timer along with the other little bits and bobs that I did.
01:25:21 ◼ ► And that was just weekly meetings with my assistant where we go through what I'm doing in the week and go through projects that she helps me with and stuff like that.
01:25:32 ◼ ► I feel like whenever you've mentioned it, it just sounds like that's working really well for you to just get like everyone's caught up.
01:25:56 ◼ ► I'm just always surprised at the ones that are like nearly identical, especially even as the numbers get smaller.