Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► It is that time again, tradition rolls around. Believe it or not, we have hit that point in 2020

00:00:06 ◼   ► when we do our back-to-back episodes of tradition beginning with State of the Apps. Can you believe

00:00:13 ◼   ► it? We're here already. I cannot. State of the Apps is the official beginning of the end of the year

00:00:20 ◼   ► and I was completely shocked when we were talking about scheduling for the remainder of the year and

00:00:25 ◼   ► and you're like oh we've got to do state of the app soon like no we don't it's the first half of

00:00:30 ◼   ► 2020 it can't be time for state of the app nope november december they're here you know it was

00:00:37 ◼   ► kind of funny to prepare for this i listened to last year's episode and there are just

00:00:44 ◼   ► whole categories of applications we're not going to talk about yeah wiped out like the amount of

00:00:50 ◼   ► time that we spent talking about like travel travel apps yes yes gone

00:00:57 ◼   ► when i was i did the same thing i listened to the uh last year's state of

00:01:01 ◼   ► the apps and it's it was funny to me how

00:01:06 ◼   ► even in an episode that in theory is like really self-contained of like oh

00:01:11 ◼   ► what what applications do you use on your phone and computer to get work done

00:01:16 ◼   ► There were so many times I was like, "Oh, young, naive Gray who doesn't know what's coming down the pipe!"

00:01:23 ◼   ► Right? Like, that happened numerous times. And yeah, like, the travel apps category, and even today

00:01:32 ◼   ► when I was going through some of the apps on my phone to make sure I have stuff for the lightning

00:01:36 ◼   ► round and like, "Oh, what are some apps that might not immediately pop to mind? Like, let me dig

00:01:40 ◼   ► through all the folders and see what's there." I almost thought, "Oh, I should create a category of,

00:01:45 ◼   ► like "Apps that I deleted because I'll never need them again" and it's like RunPee, the

00:01:52 ◼   ► app which tells you when to go to the bathroom in a movie theater is like "That's never

00:01:57 ◼   ► getting installed on my phone again, like goodbye RunPee!"

00:02:01 ◼   ► Like we were comparing our air miles.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Yes, yes, we compared our air miles.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Using Flighty.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Yes, well actually I mean I guess in theory we could compare air miles again for this

00:02:15 ◼   ► year it's just the numbers would be really small.

00:02:18 ◼   ► Well, actually you know what though, Grey? Mine are not as small as I would have thought.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Which is kind of weird. So last year... So this is using an application called Flighty,

00:02:31 ◼   ► which otherwise we were not going to talk about today but is an app that we both really

00:02:34 ◼   ► like but it's for tracking flights, which is not a thing that neither me or Grey are

00:02:38 ◼   ► doing. That doesn't mean nobody's doing them, of course some people are still flying, so

00:02:42 ◼   ► you are looking for a flight tracker you can go for it. So in 2019 I racked up 47,679 miles

00:02:51 ◼   ► flown around the world. In 2020 I did 16,985. Oh okay so what were your flights that you got in?

00:03:00 ◼   ► Well so I went to LA which definitely helped. Right of course. And then I had multiple trips

00:03:09 ◼   ► to Romania so we had to go back and forth from Romania a few times and that ended up

00:03:16 ◼   ► racking up some flights there so it wasn't a lot but I was surprised to see that it was

00:03:22 ◼   ► like I don't know a third just over a third.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Right okay let me uh oh all right I forgot about one.

00:03:29 ◼   ► So in 2019 my vastly less impressive number was 23,000 miles or my 0.9 times around the

00:03:38 ◼   ► world that I was determined to keep under one, but I am quite shocked that my 2020 numbers

00:03:44 ◼   ► were 0.4 times around the world at 11,000 miles. I forgot I did one business trip to

00:03:52 ◼   ► Germany in January, and then the one real trip that I did was I went out to Colorado,

00:04:00 ◼   ► good old Denver, Colorado to the weed research lab.

00:04:03 ◼   ► The weed place.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Yes, and so I went there, I flew back, like that's added basically what all of the miles are.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And then I arrived home on late February and went immediately into lockdown.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Didn't expect we would actually talk about Flighty.

00:04:21 ◼   ► If you are traveling, Flighty is a great app to track your flights, but don't fly.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Hey Gray, I wanna do a bet with you now, because now when it comes to November 2021,

00:04:33 ◼   ► we're both gonna listen back to this episode right?

00:04:35 ◼   ► right

00:04:36 ◼   ► so 2021's flighty stats

00:04:40 ◼   ► higher or lower than 2020 what do you think?

00:04:45 ◼   ► I'm gonna bet higher

00:04:47 ◼   ► ooh bold

00:04:50 ◼   ► I'm gonna bet higher that's that's my bet

00:04:53 ◼   ► okay I'm gonna go okay I'm gonna go with higher too for one reason

00:04:58 ◼   ► which is if we are able to start taking long haul flights again, i.e. that we feel comfortable to do

00:05:06 ◼   ► it, we have a pretty big first massive vacation planned that if we do it we'll be going to Hawaii

00:05:15 ◼   ► again. Oh yeah, okay right. So that's gonna wrap those miles up. So you know for sure.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Right. Yeah we've decided like we were gonna wait because we went to Hawaii for our honeymoon

00:05:24 ◼   ► and we were gonna wait for our fifth anniversary to go back.

00:05:27 ◼   ► But then, you know, having not been able to go anywhere for a long period of time

00:05:31 ◼   ► and we'll continue to not be able to go anywhere for a long period of time,

00:05:34 ◼   ► we decided that our first big vacation is gonna be going to Hawaii again.

00:05:39 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't know that. I think that's a good decision.

00:05:41 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I think that's a really good decision.

00:05:43 ◼   ► - That, like, we want to repeat our best vacation.

00:05:46 ◼   ► - I approve of this 100%. For me, Hawaii is a horrible nightmare land

00:05:52 ◼   ► that I never want to go to, but for every other person on earth, Hawaii never fails to disappoint.

00:06:00 ◼   ► So like, I think that's a really good call to not wait.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Well technically, Hawaii doesn't disappoint you either,

00:06:06 ◼   ► because you know what you're gonna get and you don't like it.

00:06:09 ◼   ► It still feels disappointing, but yes. Yeah, if the world had been the way it was,

00:06:16 ◼   ► I think it would be right to like save that special location, but that's a good call to do.

00:06:22 ◼   ► I'm really happy to hear that. I think that's a good decision.

00:06:24 ◼   ► So that will be like, that will be our first major vacation.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Like genuinely we're hoping that we'll be able to take some kind of trips in Europe before,

00:06:32 ◼   ► a bigger jump as that, but we'll see. So I think if we look at this as like our optimistic view

00:06:39 ◼   ► going into 2021, then I would say that mine would be higher too because we're looking to make a

00:06:45 ◼   ► very long haul flight.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like my calculation here is not exactly optimism, but it's regression toward

00:06:55 ◼   ► the mean.

00:06:57 ◼   ► And so I figure this year has got to be the lowest number of air miles I have flown.

00:07:03 ◼   ► I mean, maybe since I moved to London.

00:07:07 ◼   ► That might not be literally true, but it's very close.

00:07:09 ◼   ► It's got to be one of the longest periods without you going home, right?

00:07:13 ◼   ► Oh yeah, for sure.

00:07:14 ◼   ► So that's the only thing I'm trying to think of is maybe my first year of teaching, I might

00:07:23 ◼   ► have gone home once and that would make it the least year.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Just when you're trying to do like calculations, you've always got to figure out what's the

00:07:33 ◼   ► base rate and it's like the base rate of flying this year is the lowest it's been in a long

00:07:38 ◼   ► time.

00:07:39 ◼   ► So just like knowing nothing else, the smart bet is the motion of this number will go back

00:07:44 ◼   ► to what the average is. And I do also think like if I'm going to fly at all, the probability

00:07:53 ◼   ► of a long haul flight being in there would be extremely high. And so one trip to the

00:07:58 ◼   ► West Coast blows a trip to Colorado out of the water. So I think I'm betting on being

00:08:02 ◼   ► higher.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Right, I get it because if you're going to take the risk, you're more likely to take

00:08:07 ◼   ► the risk to see your mum and dad than you are to like go have a meeting in New York

00:08:12 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly. Or just like business trips in Europe I'm not gonna do, but if I'm going

00:08:19 ◼   ► to get on a plane, the question of "Is that plane going to America?" is almost certainly

00:08:24 ◼   ► like 100% is the probability of like, if I'm getting on a plane, where is my destination?

00:08:30 ◼   ► That's my thoughts about it. I'm really glad that you asked this because this does make

00:08:34 ◼   ► me feel slightly more optimistic and I hadn't quite thought about it in this way, but yeah,

00:08:39 ◼   ► I feel very solid that the safe bet for both of us is more.

00:08:43 ◼   ► The only way is up, baby!

00:08:45 ◼   ► The only way is up.

00:08:47 ◼   ► This concludes the travel section of the State of the Apps.

00:08:50 ◼   ► The unexpected travel section!

00:08:52 ◼   ► Oh dear.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Alright, before we get into the rest of the State of the Apps, including explaining what

00:08:57 ◼   ► State of the Apps is in case you have no idea what we've been talking about up until this

00:09:01 ◼   ► point, I want to give everybody a reminder about CortexMerch.com.

00:09:06 ◼   ► CortexMerch.com.

00:09:08 ◼   ► The subtle tee and subtle sweater are available until December 1st.

00:09:15 ◼   ► you want to get one of the very tasteful, classy embroidered t-shirts that we make,

00:09:22 ◼   ► or sweaters, you can get them now in a selection of new colours. We have the original blue,

00:09:29 ◼   ► a new black option and a red or burgundy option for the t-shirt and sweater. These are available

00:09:35 ◼   ► until December 1st and then they'll be gone again for a while. So if you want to grab

00:09:41 ◼   ► grab one, I put my order in for mine. I'm excited to get my colors in so it no longer

00:09:45 ◼   ► looks like I wear the same sweater every day.

00:09:47 ◼   ► L: Yes, and this reminder to the listeners, Myke, is also gently reminding me because

00:09:53 ◼   ► I always forget until the last second of like, "Oh god, I've got to put in order!"

00:09:57 ◼   ► M: Yep, I did mention to Gray earlier that I would not be doing what I did for him last

00:10:01 ◼   ► year which was to put them back on sale three weeks later purely so he could buy them again.

00:10:07 ◼   ► That is not going to happen for Grey nor anybody else.

00:10:11 ◼   ► So if you want a subtlety, you can go and get them.

00:10:14 ◼   ► But it is worth noting that cortexmerch.com, we do have a selection of products that are

00:10:18 ◼   ► always in stock.

00:10:20 ◼   ► These are our original lines.

00:10:21 ◼   ► So it's the original logo tee, the original hoodie, which is a fantastic hoodie.

00:10:26 ◼   ► So yeah, you can go and get those at any time.

00:10:28 ◼   ► We have a small number of pins available as well.

00:10:30 ◼   ► So that stuff's available at cortexmerch.com at any time.

00:10:34 ◼   ► But if you want to get the subtlety or subtle sweater, you only have until the first of

00:10:37 ◼   ► December to do it.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and the sweater is great.

00:10:40 ◼   ► When I crank my office down to freezing levels of air conditioning, I'm often using one

00:10:45 ◼   ► of the subtle sweaters to keep me alive in my frigid working temperatures.

00:10:50 ◼   ► I love it.

00:10:51 ◼   ► This is very interesting to me.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Why do you bring the temperature down and then just put more clothes on?

00:10:58 ◼   ► Myke, look, aren't you the one who was saying like, "Oh, you need the bedroom cold because

00:11:03 ◼   ► that's what the duvet is for."

00:11:05 ◼   ► It's the same philosophy, right?

00:11:07 ◼   ► That's what the subtle sweater is for.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Working in freezing cold conditions.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Look, if it means that more people will buy sweaters, then I won't endorse this thinking, but I'm still not completely on board with it.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Yeah, so anyway, in my closet, I've got eight of the blue subtle sweaters, I think, and now I'm gonna pick up some of the black and burgundy, so there's also a little bit of variety in my life.

00:11:32 ◼   ► So this is our fourth year for State of the Apps. This all started many years ago

00:11:39 ◼   ► when you wrote a blog post and then we ended up turning it into a regular feature on the podcast,

00:11:46 ◼   ► where we take a look at the applications that we use mostly to get our work done. We talk about

00:11:52 ◼   ► what we like about them, what we don't like about them, and how sometimes, and this year will

00:11:56 ◼   ► definitely be one of those times, how trends in our working lives affect the tools that we use.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Last year we started a tradition of sharing our home screens at this time.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Now that would have been when we would have shared our home screen but we spoke

00:12:11 ◼   ► about it recently with widgets and showed off our iPhone home screens in the

00:12:14 ◼   ► concept of widgets. But I thought what we could do this time is show off our iPad

00:12:18 ◼   ► home screens which I think is more useful for this anyway because there's

00:12:21 ◼   ► typically more apps on show and we can't pollute them with widgets as we maybe

00:12:26 ◼   ► would want so shall we who wants to go first I think I should go first okay

00:12:33 ◼   ► because here's the thing with with iPad stuff is as you correctly last year

00:12:40 ◼   ► pointed out there's really only two ways to run an iPad there's the boring way

00:12:46 ◼   ► and there's the exciting way you go the exciting way yeah and I go the boring

00:12:52 ◼   ► boring way. So I'm sending you a screenshot that I took this morning on my research iPad,

00:13:00 ◼   ► which is the more interesting of the two iPads.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Whoa, whoa. What has happened to you this year?

00:13:07 ◼   ► What do you mean? The background.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Oh, no, I feel like this is this is still the same.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Do you mean the same as what? I guess I don't know if I've shared the research

00:13:16 ◼   ► iPad screens. I don't know. I often like to try to have something that's more interesting

00:13:22 ◼   ► on the research iPad.

00:13:23 ◼   ► It was like a winter scape last year.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, okay. I know exactly the wallpaper, I know what the situation was.

00:13:31 ◼   ► Yes, that was also, I think it's because I was in a location as well where I was like

00:13:35 ◼   ► "Ooh, I want to feel all wintry, let me have a winter background."

00:13:38 ◼   ► Were you on location for that episode?

00:13:40 ◼   ► I think I must have been, or I may have recently been, which is why I had the iPad wallpaper

00:13:45 ◼   ► that way. I don't know exactly.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Yes, the wallpaper that Myke seems to be completely shocked by is just one of the standard Apple

00:13:52 ◼   ► wallpapers that they have for iPads, which just is some blue paint swirls with a little

00:13:59 ◼   ► bit of - with a dash of orange - is it space orange?

00:14:02 ◼   ► Who knows - on the screen.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And I don't know, for the research iPad, which is the one that I do like actual real work

00:14:10 ◼   ► on. I do like to have it be visually obviously different from the other and I don't know

00:14:18 ◼   ► research is I mean I say research iPad but it is still creative work in some sense so

00:14:25 ◼   ► I feel like it's a thematically appropriate wallpaper.

00:14:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Your ear reaction was way overblown.

00:14:31 ◼   ► It was surprising. I expected to see either I don't know a really dark screen or a winter

00:14:37 ◼   ► landscape again.

00:14:38 ◼   ► So I'm going to share my iPad with you now.

00:14:41 ◼   ► And then I think we should talk about our categories of apps

00:14:45 ◼   ► and then maybe we can come back to seeing if there's anything on these

00:14:49 ◼   ► that that we still want to ask questions about.

00:14:52 ◼   ► OK, show me what you got, Myke.

00:14:54 ◼   ► All right. This should be very familiar.

00:14:57 ◼   ► I don't think my iPad changes very much.

00:15:01 ◼   ► OK, I've got the mic iPads.

00:15:03 ◼   ► You have your your wallpaper wallpaper again.

00:15:06 ◼   ► The one I really like there.

00:15:08 ◼   ► The photo of a wallpaper with the leaves, looks nice.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Looks less nice on the iPad, but that's mostly again,

00:15:14 ◼   ► the iPad's fault for iPads.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Don't let you make things look nice.

00:15:18 ◼   ► - Nope.

00:15:19 ◼   ► - It's not the wallpaper's fault, it's the iPad's fault.

00:15:21 ◼   ► - The way to make an iPad look nice is to do what you did,

00:15:23 ◼   ► but I don't, it's well known.

00:15:25 ◼   ► I like app icons on my home screens, you know?

00:15:28 ◼   ► - Yes, and without a doubt, the thing that I'm doing

00:15:30 ◼   ► is completely kneecapping the functionality

00:15:34 ◼   ► of the iPad for aesthetics.

00:15:36 ◼   ► So yeah, yours is vastly more functional.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Boy, like, okay, so you have a ton of icons as normal.

00:15:42 ◼   ► There is one that catches my eye immediately,

00:15:45 ◼   ► which is you have YouTube Studio on your home screen.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - Oh my God, are we doing this again?

00:15:50 ◼   ► - Did this happen again last time?

00:15:51 ◼   ► - Didn't you say you listened to the last episode?

00:15:54 ◼   ► - I did, did you talk about YouTube Studio?

00:15:55 ◼   ► - You said to me last year, "YouTube Studio?

00:15:59 ◼   ► "Why do you have that?"

00:16:00 ◼   ► And I said to you, as I said last time,

00:16:03 ◼   ► "Gray, I operate our fantastic YouTube channel from YouTube Studio, which is the Cortex YouTube

00:16:09 ◼   ► channel, where you may think as you're listening to the show, why would I want to subscribe

00:16:13 ◼   ► to the Cortex YouTube channel?"

00:16:15 ◼   ► Well whilst we do upload the audio of the shows to our YouTube page, we also upload

00:16:20 ◼   ► the wonderful Cortex animated series by HM Putek, which you should definitely go and

00:16:24 ◼   ► consume because those videos are absolutely fantastic.

00:16:28 ◼   ► So you should go and watch those.

00:16:30 ◼   ► So yes, you can try and maybe palm this off as good promotion for our YouTube channel.

00:16:34 ◼   ► No, it was not intentional at all.

00:16:35 ◼   ► But you did this exact same thing last time.

00:16:38 ◼   ► I feel like my brain must be completely resistant to the YouTube studio there, because I guess

00:16:45 ◼   ► whenever I see it, I think about, "Oh, Myke doesn't do those fun vlogs anymore, so why

00:16:50 ◼   ► is there a YouTube studio?"

00:16:51 ◼   ► That's just what pops into my head every single time.

00:16:54 ◼   ► I just like how predictable you are, I guess.

00:16:57 ◼   ► And it was like, again, it was not, you said, "Oh, that really sticks out to me.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Why do you have YouTube studio there?"

00:17:03 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I mean, that shouldn't be surprising.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Humans are deterministic systems and if presented with the same input, they're going to give

00:17:09 ◼   ► you the same output.

00:17:10 ◼   ► So that's not remotely surprising.

00:17:13 ◼   ► So we'll do this again next year, I guess.

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00:18:48 ◼   ► of this show and Relay FM.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Alright, shall we start jumping into some of our categories?

00:18:54 ◼   ► Sure.

00:18:55 ◼   ► So we typically break this down into two large sections being productivity applications and

00:19:00 ◼   ► writing and research applications and we also do a lightning round and we may touch on some

00:19:05 ◼   ► other things there and we mostly focus on these areas because these are the typical

00:19:09 ◼   ► areas where we have some level of overlap in our work.

00:19:14 ◼   ► So productivity obviously is a thing that we're thinking,

00:19:18 ◼   ► look at a lot and one of the big changes

00:19:21 ◼   ► in my productivity system this year is my move to OmniFocus.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I'm curious for a little bit

00:19:28 ◼   ► of a retrospective here because I mean again,

00:19:31 ◼   ► like spoiler alert, I'm still using OmniFocus.

00:19:34 ◼   ► I'm sure no one is surprised by this piece of information.

00:19:37 ◼   ► So I'm just curious what your experience has been with this

00:19:42 ◼   ► and what you think of it as the relative noob

00:19:46 ◼   ► to this app of the two of us.

00:19:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I had used OmniFocus in the past,

00:19:51 ◼   ► but I came back to it about six months ago.

00:19:54 ◼   ► This is something that more Texans already know

00:19:56 ◼   ► if you subscribe to Moretex.

00:19:58 ◼   ► I spoke about it when I switched back in June.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And at the time, the reason that I made the switch

00:20:06 ◼   ► was because I wanted to try something new out and OmniFocus had been recently

00:20:11 ◼   ► updated and I liked the visuals of it. Uh,

00:20:14 ◼   ► and our friend Federico had been working with his partner,

00:20:18 ◼   ► Sylvia on a selection of custom icons for OmniFocus,

00:20:23 ◼   ► cool perspective icons.

00:20:24 ◼   ► So you could like change the iconography inside of the application and all of

00:20:28 ◼   ► that just seemed really nice to me. So I thought, all right, I'll give it,

00:20:31 ◼   ► I'll give OmniFocus a go again.

00:20:33 ◼   ► And I was also looking to rebuild kind of my organization system for tasks.

00:20:38 ◼   ► And I figured if I was going to do it, I might as well do it in a new application.

00:20:43 ◼   ► You know, like wrap all of these things up in one.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:46 ◼   ► And ultimately the system that I ended up with was having still two kind of buckets,

00:20:52 ◼   ► but standardizing them more across my time tracking and my task management.

00:20:59 ◼   ► So to kind of give that a little bit more context, I have like these large

00:21:03 ◼   ► tasks that I do, and then sometimes we'll add tags to those tasks, right?

00:21:08 ◼   ► Like that's typically what I'll do.

00:21:09 ◼   ► So I'll have a project and then I'll add a tag and the tags in my time tracking

00:21:14 ◼   ► system are just the names of the shows that I do, everything else is a project.

00:21:18 ◼   ► Right?

00:21:18 ◼   ► So sponsors is a project, membership is a project, podcast recording is a project.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And if a show is directly related to that project, I'll tag it with that.

00:21:28 ◼   ► and that was what I thought I wanted to go with.

00:21:30 ◼   ► This ended up being annoying to do in OmniFocus

00:21:35 ◼   ► because it was too many taps to get anything done.

00:21:38 ◼   ► So what I ended up doing was,

00:21:40 ◼   ► 'cause this was where OmniFocus actually came to help me

00:21:43 ◼   ► a little bit here, where I realized

00:21:46 ◼   ► I don't need projects and tags,

00:21:48 ◼   ► I need perspectives and tags.

00:21:49 ◼   ► So this is the great thing that OmniFocus does,

00:21:53 ◼   ► is basically allows you to create saved searches or filters

00:21:57 ◼   ► with lots of parameters and then you can name them and save them.

00:22:00 ◼   ► And they look like basically big buckets that you can put tasks into.

00:22:05 ◼   ► And then with the added benefit of allowing some tasks to appear in multiple

00:22:09 ◼   ► perspectives, which I really like.

00:22:11 ◼   ► So what I have now is everything has tags, everything's tags.

00:22:15 ◼   ► So I'll have all of my kind of big projects are tags.

00:22:19 ◼   ► All of my regular projects are tags.

00:22:21 ◼   ► All of my shows are tags, right?

00:22:23 ◼   ► And then I will just add multiple tags per item, depending on what it is that I'm doing.

00:22:28 ◼   ► And then if I want to drill down into just specific areas,

00:22:32 ◼   ► I've created a selection of perspectives that filter out those tags and show me tasks.

00:22:37 ◼   ► So, for example, I have a cortex perspective

00:22:41 ◼   ► and I have a cortex plus cortex brand perspective,

00:22:45 ◼   ► because sometimes I want to see the tasks that are for the show

00:22:50 ◼   ► and for our company. Right.

00:22:53 ◼   ► and so I can see them all in one place which would have been tricky to do

00:22:57 ◼   ► in other applications I think. So OmniFocus has been really good for that.

00:23:01 ◼   ► So I like the organization of it. I've always really loved the forecast view.

00:23:07 ◼   ► I know that this isn't a thing that you use but I've always really loved OmniFocus's forecast view

00:23:12 ◼   ► and I'm happy to have that back because it kind of works the way that I would like it to work.

00:23:17 ◼   ► I vastly prefer the OmniFocus iOS apps to the macOS app, visually and functionally.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I can understand that.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Not a big fan of the OmniFocus Mac app. It honestly feels like a different application.

00:23:29 ◼   ► The iOS and iPad app feel the same, but the Mac app feels like another company made it.

00:23:36 ◼   ► It's really weird to me. So I don't use the Mac app very much. Mainly the Mac app is just,

00:23:43 ◼   ► I check things off or I add something if I've forgotten to add something before, you know,

00:23:47 ◼   ► like something just pops into my head and I have to add it now, but most of this stuff is done on iOS.

00:23:52 ◼   ► But I actually do not use the OmniFocus task entry UI on any of my platforms.

00:23:59 ◼   ► So on the Mac, I use the quick entry function.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Oh good, okay.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Which you told me to do and that's definitely the way to add tasks on the Mac.

00:24:08 ◼   ► going into the app and selecting new task, it's too many clicks for me to get something added.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Yeah, it's quick entry or bust on the Mac for sure.

00:24:17 ◼   ► And then I created a shortcut to do this on iOS. I basically created my own quick entry,

00:24:23 ◼   ► which I really like that shortcut. It works really, really well for me.

00:24:27 ◼   ► So all it does is it says like, what's the name of the task? When is it due? What tags do you want

00:24:33 ◼   ► on the sign and that's it and it's really quick and with the way that

00:24:38 ◼   ► shortcuts works with this kinds of stuff now on my iPhone it's nice and quick to

00:24:42 ◼   ► do and on my iPad I can do it all just from spotlight and it never leaves the

00:24:46 ◼   ► app that I'm in so that really works for me so I would say that I am mostly happy

00:24:54 ◼   ► with OmniFocus mm-hmm but at the same time todoist has been getting really

00:25:01 ◼   ► good. What does really good mean? Like what have they added? They've been adding

00:25:04 ◼   ► lots of features. Their widgets are amazing. They've created a lot of really

00:25:08 ◼   ► clever widgets. Like for example there's one widget that you can configure that

00:25:12 ◼   ► you tap it and it will open to the task entry with a bunch of preset things

00:25:18 ◼   ► filled in for you. Hmm. So like you could say like you had a

00:25:23 ◼   ► widget that was for cortex tasks or whatever you could tap it and it will

00:25:27 ◼   ► pre-filled projects and tags and all that kind of stuff, all pre-filled.

00:25:30 ◼   ► They've also created their Kanban system now that's in the application.

00:25:36 ◼   ► So being able to see your projects is in a Kanban view.

00:25:41 ◼   ► So Todoist is doing a lot of things.

00:25:44 ◼   ► So I don't know, I would be surprised if I get through all of 2021

00:25:50 ◼   ► without trying out Todoist again.

00:25:52 ◼   ► But at the moment, I feel pretty comfortable with my OmniFocus usage.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it's interesting about adding a Kanban view, because that is one thing.

00:26:04 ◼   ► I'll usually do it on the Mac app, but rearranging a bunch of projects is always a little bit...

00:26:11 ◼   ► It's not that it's clunky on OmniFocus, but there's something about just seeing the list of things

00:26:19 ◼   ► where it doesn't quite work mentally for me sometimes,

00:26:21 ◼   ► and I'm trying to think about like, which of these projects am I focusing on?

00:26:24 ◼   ► And it is the thing where sometimes I think like,

00:26:27 ◼   ► the writing app I talked about last year that I switched away from Scrivener

00:26:31 ◼   ► has this feature where it's like, oh, you can have a list of things,

00:26:33 ◼   ► or you can see them as a bunch of cards, and you can rearrange the cards,

00:26:37 ◼   ► and when you're done rearranging the cards,

00:26:39 ◼   ► the list will show the way that it's been rearranged.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Like, I imagine that's the kind of thing that Todoist is doing,

00:26:46 ◼   ► Like you can have a list and then you can rearrange it in a Kanban system

00:26:49 ◼   ► and then still see it back as a list.

00:26:51 ◼   ► - Correct.

00:26:53 ◼   ► - As dumb as it sounds, what's the difference between looking at a list

00:26:57 ◼   ► versus looking at a bunch of squares with the same names as the things on the list?

00:27:01 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know, it's just different in my brain.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And that is one thing that I do wish sometimes with OmniFocus.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Like, I just like to rearrange these things in a different way.

00:27:10 ◼   ► So I think that does sound like a pretty good feature for Todoist to add.

00:27:13 ◼   ► I still use things for some large projects like posting cortex. It's still still what I use things for right?

00:27:21 ◼   ► And I'm never gonna give you up

00:27:23 ◼   ► Never gonna give it up never gonna let it down never gonna run around

00:27:29 ◼   ► When expecting that way

00:27:37 ◼   ► No, no, there wasn't I don't think I could have gotten the rest of the lyrics off the top

00:27:41 ◼   ► - So I could get it started, that's all I could do.

00:27:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, for the things that I used you for,

00:27:46 ◼   ► like take your pills, call your mom,

00:27:50 ◼   ► like they're just the types of things

00:27:52 ◼   ► that they're such low level tasks

00:27:56 ◼   ► and the way that I want to be alerted about them

00:27:59 ◼   ► is so different to any other task in my life,

00:28:03 ◼   ► that idea of tell me and they keep telling me

00:28:06 ◼   ► until I mark it complete, it's perfect

00:28:09 ◼   ► and the application is just nice and it's updated enough.

00:28:13 ◼   ► And you know, I'm never gonna find something I think

00:28:16 ◼   ► that's gonna do what I want for me in that way better.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Because sometimes you get to a certain point

00:28:22 ◼   ► of an application where you and the app,

00:28:26 ◼   ► you are completely in sync with what's going on.

00:28:30 ◼   ► So you have a thing you wanna do, you find an app for it.

00:28:34 ◼   ► And then as the app is updated over time,

00:28:36 ◼   ► the way that you're doing that work

00:28:38 ◼   ► just goes hand in hand with the way that the app is evolving.

00:28:42 ◼   ► So at a certain point, so many things have to happen

00:28:46 ◼   ► for a competitor to want to move you away.

00:28:48 ◼   ► It has to one, completely match your current system,

00:28:52 ◼   ► and then two, offer you something

00:28:54 ◼   ► that you didn't know you wanted,

00:28:56 ◼   ► and that's really difficult.

00:28:58 ◼   ► And so an application like Dew,

00:28:59 ◼   ► which is in essence so simple,

00:29:02 ◼   ► but that can be the difficult thing

00:29:04 ◼   ► of trying to move you away

00:29:05 ◼   ► because if something's super simple,

00:29:07 ◼   ► its feature set is just pure, right?

00:29:11 ◼   ► And it's not a complex task, so you don't really feel the need to

00:29:15 ◼   ► want to move away, and that's where I am with Dew at this point. I just don't think that anything's

00:29:19 ◼   ► ever going to shake me for the tasks that I use that for. It's very simple stuff.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And that's the same split that I have

00:29:27 ◼   ► you know, but again, still using OmniFocus for basically everything. Dew

00:29:31 ◼   ► is great for the harass me reminder stuff. I don't use things

00:29:35 ◼   ► for a separate big project.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Every once in a while, if I want to kind of like, I don't know, brainstorm a little bit

00:29:43 ◼   ► about a project, I'll boot up things as like a clear piece of paper in a way, but I don't

00:29:48 ◼   ► really use it as an actual app.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I think maybe the thing that's different this year as compared to last year is that with

00:29:56 ◼   ► the redesign of reminders on iOS, that my default recommendation for people would be

00:30:03 ◼   ► to use that.

00:30:04 ◼   ► If I don't know anything about a person, I think I'd say like, oh, go with reminders,

00:30:08 ◼   ► use that as the default app and you will or won't very quickly run into limitations.

00:30:14 ◼   ► And then based on what you feel are the limitations of that, you can figure out what to do app

00:30:18 ◼   ► would work best for you.

00:30:19 ◼   ► But yeah, I think like, for most people looking to try a task management kind of app, I would

00:30:26 ◼   ► say like, just start with the inbuilt reminders.

00:30:28 ◼   ► It's much better now and is probably a good solution for at least 50% of people.

00:30:35 ◼   ► So when it comes to note-taking, I feel like I gotta ask you first.

00:30:40 ◼   ► No!

00:30:42 ◼   ► And again, having gone through what we've been through over the last few months, I can't

00:30:48 ◼   ► believe that note-taking has been a thing that we've spoken about multiple times in

00:30:52 ◼   ► state of the apps and you had your answers for it but I still didn't know your note-taking secret.

00:31:00 ◼   ► B: There was no note-taking secret. This again is just human communication is hard and when I was

00:31:09 ◼   ► listening to last year's episode having gone through the ticoy incident this year

00:31:14 ◼   ► and then having had our discussion about notes, what even are they? It was also clear

00:31:21 ◼   ► a number of times in that conversation where it's like, "Myke is not hearing what I'm intending to be

00:31:29 ◼   ► saying with this sentence." And so, it's just funny to listen to that and think like—

00:31:33 ◼   ► You know, it can't go the other way that you weren't hearing what I was saying either,

00:31:38 ◼   ► you know? It's not just on me.

00:31:39 ◼   ► No, no, no, no. I don't mean that it's on you. What I mean is like, we'll get to it later,

00:31:43 ◼   ► but in particular when I'm talking about Ulysses in that, it's like, "Oh, I'm clearly just talking

00:31:48 ◼   ► in my mind, the way that notes are weird for me, but none of this is being communicated to Myke.

00:31:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:55 ◼   ► Right. Like that, that's what I mean by that. Not like you're failing to understand.

00:31:59 ◼   ► The conversation is actually almost completely absent the concept of notes as people think of

00:32:07 ◼   ► them. But there were still times where I was like discussing this and I know now like, oh,

00:32:13 ◼   ► Oh, I see where this got totally messed up.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Okay, so the note taking--

00:32:19 ◼   ► - Saga, quest. - Situation.

00:32:22 ◼   ► Situation, yeah.

00:32:23 ◼   ► Oh!

00:32:24 ◼   ► - Oh, it's going well then.

00:32:26 ◼   ► - No, no, I just assumed that you would go first

00:32:29 ◼   ► and then I could try to plan this better.

00:32:32 ◼   ► But okay, so I've been using Obsidian,

00:32:37 ◼   ► which I've mentioned on the show a few times.

00:32:40 ◼   ► And again, I really love it.

00:32:45 ◼   ► I really, really do.

00:32:46 ◼   ► And I'll say again, I am not in the business

00:32:50 ◼   ► of giving App of the Year awards.

00:32:52 ◼   ► That's something you do.

00:32:54 ◼   ► That's something the upgrade-ies do.

00:32:55 ◼   ► Like, I just, this is not a category

00:32:57 ◼   ► that really exists for me.

00:32:59 ◼   ► But if I was giving an App of the Year award,

00:33:03 ◼   ► 100% it would go to Obsidian.

00:33:05 ◼   ► No question about it.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Like, I think it's...

00:33:09 ◼   ► What are you laughing at there, Myke?

00:33:10 ◼   ► I have no doubt that it is a good app.

00:33:14 ◼   ► I know not only do you love it, our friend, David Sparks loves it as well.

00:33:19 ◼   ► But when I look at it, I can't conceive of it.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Well, I mean, this again is we're, we're brushing up another, like human

00:33:32 ◼   ► communication is hard and brains are different situation because again,

00:33:36 ◼   ► This is an app that is based entirely on words and writing.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Like endless just words and writing.

00:33:43 ◼   ► This is the only thing that the interface even is.

00:33:45 ◼   ► It's like, do you like words?

00:33:47 ◼   ► Great, we got a lot of them over here at Obsidian.

00:33:49 ◼   ► Like that's all this is, is just a bunch of words.

00:33:52 ◼   ► There's a bigger question here, which is a bit like,

00:33:55 ◼   ► what is the note system that I have?

00:34:02 ◼   ► I don't yet have a good notes system

00:34:07 ◼   ► in the way that people mean this.

00:34:08 ◼   ► Okay.

00:34:09 ◼   ► Right, I can't say like, oh, here's how I make my notes.

00:34:12 ◼   ► But still, the reason that I love Obsidian

00:34:15 ◼   ► is for all of the projects since the Ticoi incident,

00:34:20 ◼   ► I've been using it to try and write notes on those topics.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And Obsidian, again, allows incredibly free

00:34:32 ◼   ► form writing where, again, in my head, I think it makes sense to think of it as just like

00:34:37 ◼   ► the closest you can get digitally to sitting at a table with a bunch of index cards and just

00:34:44 ◼   ► writing on those index cards in whatever order and rearranging them. Like the user interface

00:34:49 ◼   ► is fantastic for allowing you to just rearrange a bunch of these cards and to make it trivially

00:34:55 ◼   ► simple to make new cards and also to make little connections between the cards. I think many people

00:35:01 ◼   ► who use the app get totally derailed by the connections and focus on that part of it too much,

00:35:08 ◼   ► but the connections are still useful for being like "oh yeah this thing goes to here and that

00:35:13 ◼   ► thing goes to there." So I still don't have a clear system for the notes, but one of the ways

00:35:22 ◼   ► that Obsidian has proved really useful to me is as the app which can help prime the pump of writing.

00:35:32 ◼   ► And so, you know, often the hard part with writing is getting started with it. And so this is like,

00:35:42 ◼   ► one of the tricks that I use for myself is, it's one of the reasons why I talk stuff out loud a lot,

00:35:47 ◼   ► is because it can be hard to sit down at a computer and just open up a script and be like,

00:35:53 ◼   ► "Okay, I'm gonna work on this script." And then you go, "Oh, well, where exactly? What am I gonna--"

00:35:58 ◼   ► You can get derailed by these little details, but if you tell yourself,

00:36:01 ◼   ► just start reading it out loud from the top. Within seconds, you're gonna find things that

00:36:06 ◼   ► you're like, "Oh, this needs to be changed, this needs to be smooth," or whatever.

00:36:09 ◼   ► But in order to do that, you have to have a relatively coherent script to be able to

00:36:14 ◼   ► read it out loud. It takes a while to get to the point where there's like readable paragraphs.

00:36:20 ◼   ► So before that stage, Obsidian is really useful because I can use it in the similar situation

00:36:28 ◼   ► where I sit down and I go, I don't have to write a script. What I am going to do is I'm just going to

00:36:34 ◼   ► add some information on this little pile of index cards that I have that's related to whatever this

00:36:42 ◼   ► topic is. And so that is extremely useful to me to be able to say like, "Okay, I'm working

00:36:50 ◼   ► on Project Rosalyn, here's the five index cards that I have on it, just open them up

00:36:56 ◼   ► and add stuff to this." Or like, there's a way in Obsidian where you can mark little

00:37:02 ◼   ► like to-do boxes, and so sometimes I'll add like a little to-do which says, you know,

00:37:08 ◼   ► find more information about this or like here's this document that you need to read.

00:37:12 ◼   ► So it's a useful way to start quote like "writing a project"

00:37:19 ◼   ► without the intimidation of "I am working on the script" and then very frequently what happens is within an hour of doing this,

00:37:29 ◼   ► I tend to naturally then transition into writing the actual script because it's a bit like, "Okay,

00:37:35 ◼   ► "Hey, I've been booting up all this information in my brain, and there's some things that

00:37:40 ◼   ► I want to start writing that are going to be the actual script."

00:37:44 ◼   ► So this is why Obsidian has proved tremendously useful to me, even without having yet settled

00:37:52 ◼   ► on what are like the formal rules for how this is supposed to work within my system

00:37:59 ◼   ► relating to notes.

00:38:00 ◼   ► So that is why I absolutely love it.

00:38:03 ◼   ► And it is also why in some sense the note-taking quest is still a failure.

00:38:08 ◼   ► I haven't accomplished that part, but I'm still in a much more useful place than I was

00:38:13 ◼   ► before.

00:38:14 ◼   ► I think fundamentally I still don't understand what you consider "a note" to be.

00:38:21 ◼   ► Um, okay, so I guess what I would say here is that the distinction for what goes into obsidian is they are much more purely factual statements.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Right, okay, but yeah, yeah, yeah, so this is what I need to understand. I think we're going back to atomic notes again.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Which is fine, but I still just want to get it, right? So when I call something-

00:38:50 ◼   ► - Which is fine, but you're exhausted.

00:38:52 ◼   ► - When I call something a note, right?

00:38:54 ◼   ► So like I have a note called Cortex Follow-Up, right?

00:38:58 ◼   ► And in that note goes links, thoughts, bullet points, lists,

00:39:03 ◼   ► all kinds of stuff, right?

00:39:06 ◼   ► But it is related to anything to do with follow-up

00:39:10 ◼   ► for the show.

00:39:11 ◼   ► And then when I sit down to start prepping the show

00:39:16 ◼   ► and putting things into our Google doc,

00:39:18 ◼   ► I refer to the Cortex follow-up note

00:39:22 ◼   ► that I have in Apple Notes,

00:39:23 ◼   ► and that's kind of where I get all my information from.

00:39:26 ◼   ► But it kinda sounds like

00:39:31 ◼   ► that's not what a quote note is for you,

00:39:36 ◼   ► like it's something different.

00:39:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, so what you're saying,

00:39:39 ◼   ► like the word I would use to describe that

00:39:41 ◼   ► is I would say that's a list,

00:39:42 ◼   ► like that's a running list of things.

00:39:44 ◼   ► - But it can also be paragraphs of text though.

00:39:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I understand that,

00:39:49 ◼   ► but when I look at our show notes,

00:39:51 ◼   ► which we call show notes,

00:39:53 ◼   ► that in my brain is much more like,

00:39:56 ◼   ► here's a list of things.

00:39:58 ◼   ► And we may discuss some of these things, we may not,

00:40:01 ◼   ► but they're all headers

00:40:03 ◼   ► for jumping off points of conversations.

00:40:05 ◼   ► - Right, but my notes app also includes things

00:40:09 ◼   ► that don't look like that, but I still consider them notes.

00:40:12 ◼   ► So I might have larger pieces of text

00:40:15 ◼   ► which are relating to a project that I'm working on, like, it's quite different.

00:40:20 ◼   ► >> Mm. Yeah. So when I'm talking about notes in the context of writing a script,

00:40:30 ◼   ► what I mean is really, here are all of the factual building blocks

00:40:37 ◼   ► out of which a piece of writing can be constructed on top of.

00:40:42 ◼   ► Like, that's the distinction.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Right, okay. And you see though, it's still not there. What is the minimum amount of text

00:40:51 ◼   ► that you would consider to be, quote, a note?

00:40:54 ◼   ► I mean, a single sentence could be a note.

00:40:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:59 ◼   ► This again is-

00:41:00 ◼   ► Why, okay, why would you create a single note for just one piece of text? Why would it not go

00:41:08 ◼   ► with something else?

00:41:11 ◼   ► So the reason for that is because you don't know ahead of time which index cards are going to have

00:41:17 ◼   ► lots of stuff on them and which aren't. This also goes back to the whole concept of talking about

00:41:23 ◼   ► writing in terms of outlines where it always seemed ridiculous to me like, "Oh, you just

00:41:27 ◼   ► outlined the project before you write it." It was like, "Yeah, great, thanks. That helps me not at

00:41:31 ◼   ► all because all I need to do is know the structure in advance of the thing that I'm trying to create,"

00:41:37 ◼   ► which is the hard part. And so it's the same way with notes where I don't know in advance

00:41:43 ◼   ► which of these notes are going to end up being bigger and which are going to be smaller.

00:41:49 ◼   ► And lots of them end up being just a single sentence or two.

00:41:53 ◼   ► - But that's just through pure happenstance. Every note that you create has the possibility

00:41:59 ◼   ► to be more, but it's just this note just ends up being this one thing. So a note could be,

00:42:04 ◼   ► for example, this statue or this treaty, but it turns out you only needed one thing on that,

00:42:12 ◼   ► but you thought when you set it up maybe there's more to this.

00:42:15 ◼   ► B: Yes, exactly. So like I'm just, I'm clicking through my Obsidian thing right now and it's like

00:42:19 ◼   ► I have a note which is titled "The Senate Nuclear Option" and then the entire piece of information

00:42:26 ◼   ► on here is "A procedural move to reduce the number of votes needed from a supermajority to a simple

00:42:31 ◼   ► majority. The end, right? And the re- like the reason that never got expanded is because I

00:42:37 ◼   ► realized very quickly, "Oh god, this is awful and so boring and so complicated that I do not wish to

00:42:45 ◼   ► put any more information about this, like, in a script that I'm going to end up writing." It's

00:42:51 ◼   ► like, if this thing gets mentioned, this is about the level of detail that I actually care to ever

00:42:58 ◼   ► And in the final video that I did on this topic, I don't have, I never even mention this level of detail,

00:43:05 ◼   ► which is my note on what the Senate nuclear option is.

00:43:08 ◼   ► I just reference it in passing and move on.

00:43:11 ◼   ► But I don't know in advance that I'm only going to want this one sentence, right?

00:43:18 ◼   ► This could end up being like a multi paragraph thing.

00:43:21 ◼   ► So that's why they can end up being small.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And it seems sort of ridiculous to have a bunch of things that are a single sentence,

00:43:27 ◼   ► But again, this is where Obsidian is really good, where, you know, like on a full-screen iMac, I can open up the app,

00:43:35 ◼   ► and I can easily have 16 of these little index cards all open at the same time and see them all quite easily.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And that is one of the really nice features of this, and it's why I keep saying it's like having a bunch of index cards.

00:43:50 ◼   ► And so when I'm like priming the pump, I can open up Obsidian, have a bunch of these little notes around,

00:43:59 ◼   ► and very naturally feel like, "Let me expand on this one," or "Let me look into this one a bit more and start adding some information to it or not,"

00:44:08 ◼   ► and like, that's the way to like, prime the pump for writing, of getting started, of like,

00:44:14 ◼   ► "Oh, maybe this one does need me to investigate it a bit more," or, you know,

00:44:18 ◼   ► Maybe this one I can see I left a task for future me to fill in a detail about this

00:44:23 ◼   ► So I'm starting to get this more now

00:44:25 ◼   ► The difference between the two of us. It's not fundamental. It is organizational

00:44:31 ◼   ► so

00:44:33 ◼   ► If I was doing what you were doing, right if I was right doing a video script or whatever. I

00:44:39 ◼   ► would have a note and a bunch of headers in that note and

00:44:44 ◼   ► I would add information to the headers

00:44:48 ◼   ► That's just how I would work.

00:44:50 ◼   ► Previously I've struggled to understand what you even

00:44:53 ◼   ► kind of meant about recording the information.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I feel like I can get that more now, and I can see that

00:45:00 ◼   ► we will be recording typically similar types of information, we would just store them differently.

00:45:05 ◼   ► Where like, it would be madness for me personally

00:45:08 ◼   ► to have so many "notes" related to one thing

00:45:12 ◼   ► where I would have one note, not one note,

00:45:16 ◼   ► I would have a singular note where I would keep all of the information in it and would move it around.

00:45:24 ◼   ► Yeah, you're totally right, and I think this also gets to the thing we were talking about last time with Notes

00:45:30 ◼   ► about this concept of, oh, there's different apps for different people, and a huge amount of what they're about is how they structure things.

00:45:38 ◼   ► And so the way you're talking about it sounds to me much more like you are creating a thing that would be more like a traditional outline,

00:45:47 ◼   ► but you're just growing it in a more organic way, and then that feels like, yes, if you're doing that, then Rome or Notion might be more the tools that you would want to use.

00:45:57 ◼   ► They sort of, in their interface, are biased more in that direction than something like Obsidian is.

00:46:03 ◼   ► Okay, what's that "ehh"?

00:46:05 ◼   ► Well, in theory, yeah, but they won't get out of my way.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, forget that part of it, but like, what you're talking about for this sort of thing,

00:46:16 ◼   ► you could reproduce on a single piece of A4 paper, like you're writing headings and subheadings, right?

00:46:22 ◼   ► Whereas when I'm working on it, if someone gave me that A4 paper, I'd immediately want to cut it up into lots of smaller segments

00:46:30 ◼   ► and move it around and be like, I don't need this whole piece of paper.

00:46:34 ◼   ► In fact, I don't want the restriction of the whole piece of paper.

00:46:37 ◼   ► I want lots of little pieces of paper that are each going to contain smaller bits of information

00:46:43 ◼   ► that I can move around or group together over here or group together over there.

00:46:48 ◼   ► Which I think puts you, weirdly, more in this new school of "content blocks" than me.

00:46:56 ◼   ► Yeah, for sure. For sure it does.

00:46:58 ◼   ► And the other thing that's just different here, which again is a new addition to the workflow since the T-Coy incident,

00:47:04 ◼   ► is the process of explicitly creating a bunch of these little notes as an intermediate step between the primary sources and the script.

00:47:17 ◼   ► That's part of what's new here and why I think of this as like priming the pump.

00:47:22 ◼   ► Because you are taking the information and putting it into your system rather than when you write the script trying to rely on remembering something from the original document.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Yeah, or like, yeah, like I used to have, you know, Evernote is open next to my writing app and it's like, okay, I'm just skimming through or I'm looking at the highlights or whatever.

00:47:38 ◼   ► So that's why Obsidian is existing as this layer between primary source and script.

00:47:45 ◼   ► And it's also why I don't have a system because I'm also treating it quite fluidly.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Like I'm just, I'm not bothering with a lot of the heavy burdensome stuff about like,

00:48:00 ◼   ► "Let me link every note to the exact primary source and put it in a taxonomy of hierarchy."

00:48:05 ◼   ► It's like, I don't mean to do that.

00:48:07 ◼   ► And also that's too heavyweight when I haven't really decided what the system is.

00:48:14 ◼   ► So again, that's why this is just like a virtual stack of index cards that I'm rearranging and

00:48:18 ◼   ► writing sentences on. And where are those sentences coming from? They're coming from me reading the

00:48:24 ◼   ► primary sources and then immediately adding something to an index card. And that's also why

00:48:30 ◼   ► the index cards have variable sizes, because they don't know in advance

00:48:33 ◼   ► which are going to be big ones and which are going to be small ones.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Is the text only entered into Obsidian or do you put text in another way and organize it in Obsidian?

00:48:44 ◼   ► I'm writing directly into Obsidian. Again, it's a Mac only app. I'm just having it open on my Mac

00:48:48 ◼   ► and I'm entering the text in there directly. That's the way this happens.

00:48:51 ◼   ► But how does that work with the "research iPad"?

00:48:54 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, so the

00:48:57 ◼   ► All right, so there is an additional app

00:49:01 ◼   ► here, which is which is on my list, which is a I feel like an oldie but goodie, which is

00:49:06 ◼   ► is OneWriter, which is a Markdown app for iOS.

00:49:11 ◼   ► And just by happenstance, the way OneWriter happens

00:49:16 ◼   ► to work with Dropbox and Markdown files

00:49:20 ◼   ► lines up perfectly with Obsidian,

00:49:22 ◼   ► so that if I need to add something to a note

00:49:27 ◼   ► that is in my Obsidian database,

00:49:30 ◼   ► which really is just a bunch of Dropbox files

00:49:32 ◼   ► that are all Markdown files, and I am on my iPad,

00:49:36 ◼   ► I can use one writer to add to any existing index card that's there.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Right. That makes sense.

00:49:43 ◼   ► I don't do that a lot, but every once in a while I do that.

00:49:47 ◼   ► And it's nice to be able to have as an option.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Yeah. I know I would really be adverse to a note-taking tool,

00:49:54 ◼   ► which is an idea tool sometimes, as well as research tool that I could only access from one of my machines.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Yeah. And again, it is the biggest frustration by far,

00:50:05 ◼   ► but it shows like how much I like this app that I'm willing to put up with it.

00:50:09 ◼   ► When I say my, so when I say research iPad, I do mean this in a slightly

00:50:16 ◼   ► different sense, which is just that maybe like investigation iPad might be a

00:50:21 ◼   ► better word for this, but I use that a lot for the like the more exploratory

00:50:29 ◼   ► phase of looking into projects or just trying to find stuff.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And so I'll often have like a Safari window on that research iPad, which has 40 tabs open

00:50:41 ◼   ► that are related to some video project, for example.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And I try really hard to keep all of that, like, whenever I'm investigating something,

00:50:54 ◼   ► to explicitly take the research iPad, like, find the Safari window that's related to this project,

00:50:59 ◼   ► and like expand from there.

00:51:01 ◼   ► And then there's another phase which is when I'm priming the pump, kind of like going through those tabs,

00:51:10 ◼   ► adding stuff into Obsidian and trying to like close them down.

00:51:14 ◼   ► So you have like expansion and contraction.

00:51:17 ◼   ► There is one thing, I don't think this is possible, but I would love to know if anybody has figured out a way

00:51:23 ◼   ► that you can not have like iCloud tabs,

00:51:26 ◼   ► but is there any way to force Safari

00:51:30 ◼   ► to maintain state across different devices?

00:51:33 ◼   ► Like I would always want Safari on my Mac

00:51:36 ◼   ► to be the same tabs and things as Safari on my iPad.

00:51:40 ◼   ► - That is the world you're never,

00:51:42 ◼   ► I can't imagine you're ever gonna get.

00:51:43 ◼   ► That sounds wild.

00:51:45 ◼   ► - I know you say that,

00:51:46 ◼   ► but I have this feeling in the back of my head of like,

00:51:50 ◼   ► surely this is accomplishable with JavaScript or something.

00:51:53 ◼   ► Like there's a way in which if I just run a script

00:51:58 ◼   ► or a shortcut before I open,

00:52:00 ◼   ► can I like force sync Safari to always be the same?

00:52:04 ◼   ► I don't know if I can, but I feel like if that's possible,

00:52:08 ◼   ► if anyone can figure out a way to do it,

00:52:11 ◼   ► I am willing to run a shortcut or a script

00:52:14 ◼   ► before I launch Safari on any device,

00:52:16 ◼   ► if it can force state across all devices.

00:52:21 ◼   ► - All right, if you're willing to do that,

00:52:23 ◼   ► I'm sure there's a way to do it.

00:52:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, now it feels like it might be tantalizing.

00:52:28 ◼   ► - Well, 'cause I thought you were just talking

00:52:29 ◼   ► about some like mirrored syncing system,

00:52:33 ◼   ► where it automatically does it for you.

00:52:35 ◼   ► - I don't expect this is something Apple's ever gonna do

00:52:37 ◼   ► and Apple would be the one who would need to do it.

00:52:40 ◼   ► But I just wonder, it's like,

00:52:42 ◼   ► there's gotta be a way with JavaScript

00:52:43 ◼   ► that I can read the state of all of the tabs

00:52:45 ◼   ► like save them into a bookmark folder and have that folder opened up on another device or whatever.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Like there's got to be a way to do that.

00:52:51 ◼   ► That seems more possible.

00:52:53 ◼   ► But so yes, there we go.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Notes.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Obsidian.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Love it.

00:52:58 ◼   ► It's great.

00:52:59 ◼   ► It's great for priming the pump.

00:53:01 ◼   ► If anyone out there is a writer, I feel like this is a sort of like just a new tool to look for in your own workflow,

00:53:11 ◼   ► which is not that you're writing,

00:53:13 ◼   ► but that you're a pre-writing tool.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Like maybe that's just a thing to keep an eye out for.

00:53:17 ◼   ► And I feel like Obsidian is this kind of thing

00:53:21 ◼   ► that I didn't know could exist in the workflow

00:53:23 ◼   ► and has proved extremely helpful.

00:53:25 ◼   ► So, App of the Year, even though I don't give App of the Year.

00:53:29 ◼   ► - I still use Apple Notes, as I mentioned,

00:53:31 ◼   ► for basically all of my note taking.

00:53:34 ◼   ► - Now, Myke, what do you mean by a note?

00:53:37 ◼   ► - I already told you.

00:53:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:38 ◼   ► You can try and make this joke already,

00:53:39 ◼   ► but I have already told you in the episode.

00:53:42 ◼   ► And somebody asked recently, I think it was on Reddit,

00:53:45 ◼   ► how I organize my notes,

00:53:47 ◼   ► because like Apple Notes has folders and stuff.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I don't do this.

00:53:51 ◼   ► So I don't really have any organization structure

00:53:53 ◼   ► to my notes.

00:53:54 ◼   ► They're just sorted by modification date,

00:53:58 ◼   ► which most of the time is all I need.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Like I am typically only really adding them or moving

00:54:03 ◼   ► from about six or seven notes at a time.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Like that's what I'm going into most.

00:54:09 ◼   ► So most of the time I open notes and what I want is within view.

00:54:13 ◼   ► But other than that, I just search to get what I need.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Can you give me a couple of examples of what you mean by the six or seven?

00:54:18 ◼   ► Like what, what, what are your most frequent notes that you're willing to share?

00:54:22 ◼   ► So right at the, I'll give, I'll actually give you a rundown now.

00:54:25 ◼   ► So I have Cortex followup 2021 yearly theme upgrade, follow up connected,

00:54:32 ◼   ► follow up streaming gear research, MacBook pro thoughts, upgrade is 2020.

00:54:38 ◼   ► Panatic follow-up like that's my list as it's going down right okay, and so in here are notes

00:54:45 ◼   ► I use every single week

00:54:46 ◼   ► Which is all of those follow-up notes that that's basic but for me that just means like it is where all the links go

00:54:53 ◼   ► All the additional thoughts go where I write out some basic ideas for topics for shows every week

00:54:57 ◼   ► Then there's also in there some like projects right so like looking into different gear for streaming and the MacBook Pro one is a good

00:55:06 ◼   ► example of like if I have a new product that I am taking notes on to talk about

00:55:10 ◼   ► on a show I'll just create a note for that product throw all of my stuff in

00:55:14 ◼   ► there about that product and then we'll massage it and take it out to put into a

00:55:20 ◼   ► show document somewhere. So that's kind of the typical way of like

00:55:25 ◼   ► it's from the top down is the stuff that I'm using frequently or the stuff that

00:55:31 ◼   ► is important for right now, but if I need something later,

00:55:36 ◼   ► I'll just search for it, because it's very easy for me

00:55:40 ◼   ► to find what I'm looking for by search,

00:55:42 ◼   ► because I label things in a way that I need,

00:55:47 ◼   ► and/or just being like, oh, I'm sure I made a note about X.

00:55:51 ◼   ► I would just search for that thing and I'll find it.

00:55:54 ◼   ► So I don't use folders or any kind of structure like that,

00:55:57 ◼   ► because for notes, for me, it's just not a thing

00:56:00 ◼   ► that I need.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Yeah, it doesn't sound like you have enough notes that it makes sense to start to subcategorize

00:56:06 ◼   ► them.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I have like the best part of eight or nine hundred notes in my notes archive,

00:56:12 ◼   ► but they're not all being used frequently enough.

00:56:15 ◼   ► But they're all there in case I need them.

00:56:17 ◼   ► Okay, the number is two orders of magnitude larger than I was expecting.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Okay, but search does the job for you.

00:56:25 ◼   ► Like I have notes going all the way back to 2015 in here.

00:56:28 ◼   ► I have 11th of October 2015, Notes from Lunch with Grey.

00:56:35 ◼   ► E-Myth revisited.

00:56:36 ◼   ► He's in there.

00:56:37 ◼   ► He told me to read that back in October of 2015.

00:56:43 ◼   ► Okay.

00:56:44 ◼   ► All right.

00:56:45 ◼   ► So, you know, it's all in there.

00:56:47 ◼   ► So if I searched, you know, if I ever wanted to be like, "Oh, what was that book Grey

00:56:51 ◼   ► recommended?"

00:56:52 ◼   ► I would find it.

00:56:53 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:54 ◼   ► Okay.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Notion for a few things that I want to separate out.

00:56:59 ◼   ► So everything Cortex brand related goes into Notion.

00:57:04 ◼   ► And there's a little more organization to it

00:57:06 ◼   ► because that's what Notion demands.

00:57:09 ◼   ► - Right.

00:57:10 ◼   ► - So everything is a little bit more organized there

00:57:11 ◼   ► into like categories and then notes

00:57:14 ◼   ► inside of those categories.

00:57:15 ◼   ► And also for some like mechanical keyboard related stuff

00:57:18 ◼   ► I've started to use Notion,

00:57:20 ◼   ► but Notion isn't the app that I want to use for this.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Can I just ask, are you using it like a database?

00:57:26 ◼   ► Is that the--

00:57:27 ◼   ► - For the keyboard stuff.

00:57:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, so you're using it as like a record

00:57:30 ◼   ► of here's the 100 keyboards that I own

00:57:32 ◼   ► and the components that went into them.

00:57:34 ◼   ► - I have inventory in there now,

00:57:35 ◼   ► and my ultimate thought is to try and have information

00:57:40 ◼   ► related to the products saved inside of there,

00:57:42 ◼   ► but I haven't really started to do that yet

00:57:45 ◼   ► because Notion still just doesn't feel

00:57:47 ◼   ► like what I'm looking for.

00:57:49 ◼   ► The app that I wanna use is an app called Craft.

00:57:52 ◼   ► okay i haven't heard of this. So this is a new entrant on the scene

00:57:56 ◼   ► it's like all of these other things that you've seen in that it's new and it's

00:58:01 ◼   ► got backlinks and it does stuff by content blocks and all that kind of stuff

00:58:07 ◼   ► everybody's thinking about notes? Because I'm thinking about notes. No it's not

00:58:11 ◼   ► that's not the reason but okay

00:58:13 ◼   ► but craft

00:58:14 ◼   ► it is the reason

00:58:15 ◼   ► for iOS and MacOS is actually a native application

00:58:20 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

00:58:21 ◼   ► Which imagine if, imagine such a thing

00:58:23 ◼   ► when it comes to notes in 2020.

00:58:25 ◼   ► That is a big advantage right away.

00:58:28 ◼   ► It's designed really nicely, it has collaboration.

00:58:31 ◼   ► This is one of the applications that I was trying out

00:58:34 ◼   ► in my real-time collaboration quest,

00:58:36 ◼   ► but it still didn't do the thing.

00:58:38 ◼   ► No, it wouldn't be instant.

00:58:40 ◼   ► But this has like split view and multi-window support

00:58:43 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff on the iPad.

00:58:46 ◼   ► The only thing craft is missing for me right now

00:58:50 ◼   ► is the ability to create a table.

00:58:52 ◼   ► You cannot create tables in craft.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I understand they are working on it.

00:58:57 ◼   ► Once they add this feature,

00:59:00 ◼   ► I'm most likely going to move my keyboard stuff

00:59:02 ◼   ► over to craft.

00:59:03 ◼   ► So I'm keeping my eye on it.

00:59:05 ◼   ► It's a really nice looking application.

00:59:07 ◼   ► It's quite promising.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And who knows, like I might move more and more over to it.

00:59:12 ◼   ► It's got some really nice features

00:59:14 ◼   ► and it does stuff in a way

00:59:16 ◼   ► that I think makes a lot of sense for how I work.

00:59:18 ◼   ► and it's nicely designed and it's got a lot of modern

00:59:22 ◼   ► iPad and iOS features in it, which I think is really cool

00:59:26 ◼   ► and rare for applications in this space, honestly.

00:59:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, it looks really nice,

00:59:31 ◼   ► just looking at the screenshots of it.

00:59:32 ◼   ► - But they've got a lot of the features

00:59:34 ◼   ► that people want these days, you know?

00:59:36 ◼   ► So like, it's got backlinking and all that kind of stuff.

00:59:38 ◼   ► It's got collaboration, you know?

00:59:40 ◼   ► You can share stuff on the web

00:59:43 ◼   ► as well as just using it in the app.

00:59:45 ◼   ► So there's a lot of cool stuff in there,

00:59:47 ◼   ► but it's just, it's missing something

00:59:49 ◼   ► which is pretty important for me for the use that I want.

00:59:52 ◼   ► Because I wanna start this keyboard

00:59:56 ◼   ► kind of note taking thing with,

00:59:58 ◼   ► I have two tables, an inventory and a outstanding products.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Like stuff I've bought but hasn't arrived yet.

01:00:07 ◼   ► Like that's where it's beginning.

01:00:09 ◼   ► And then from there, I wanna be able to be like,

01:00:11 ◼   ► all right, so this is all the information I have

01:00:12 ◼   ► about this keyboard and this type of key switch

01:00:15 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff.

01:00:16 ◼   ► So, but yeah, so that's why I'm keeping my eye on.

01:00:20 ◼   ► I hope that come 2022 State of the Apps,

01:00:22 ◼   ► I will have more to say on craft,

01:00:24 ◼   ► but I've not really been able to give it

01:00:26 ◼   ► the full on test yet because I keep falling down

01:00:29 ◼   ► a pretty early hurdle for me.

01:00:31 ◼   ► - Right, okay.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Yeah, that looks like one to keep an eye on.

01:00:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:00:35 ◼   ► - It also gave me a slight heart attack

01:00:36 ◼   ► when you say 2022 State of the Apps,

01:00:39 ◼   ► but then I remembered that, yes, it's like cars.

01:00:42 ◼   ► It's numbered for the year ahead,

01:00:44 ◼   ► not the year that we're currently in.

01:00:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that was your choosing, not mine.

01:00:48 ◼   ► - Yes, no, I know, yes, yes.

01:00:51 ◼   ► - I would much prefer to call this

01:00:52 ◼   ► the 2020 State of the Apps,

01:00:53 ◼   ► 'cause that makes more sense to me.

01:00:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, but my whole reasoning is like,

01:00:58 ◼   ► no, but you have to, people then when they find it,

01:01:00 ◼   ► they're gonna think it's a year old, right?

01:01:02 ◼   ► And so you sort of sneak it in like,

01:01:04 ◼   ► oh, this is State of the Apps for 2021.

01:01:07 ◼   ► - This is current.

01:01:08 ◼   ► - It just got posted yesterday, guys.

01:01:09 ◼   ► (chime)

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01:02:50 ◼   ► Email.

01:02:51 ◼   ► - The wheel.

01:02:52 ◼   ► - So last year your answer was, "I'm not doing it."

01:02:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:02:57 ◼   ► - No, that wasn't, no, no.

01:02:59 ◼   ► - It basically was, Greg.

01:03:00 ◼   ► - No, no, oh, okay, well, okay.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Yes and no.

01:03:04 ◼   ► The thing that I found charming

01:03:05 ◼   ► listening to last year's episode

01:03:07 ◼   ► was the part where I said,

01:03:09 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm going to, for next year," the 2020 that has passed now, "for next year, I've got some

01:03:14 ◼   ► some thoughts and some some big plans for email and there's a way that I'm going to be using email

01:03:19 ◼   ► a lot more." And that was contingent on a couple of projects that would have involved a bunch of

01:03:26 ◼   ► people and travel and none of that happened. So the number of times I've seriously opened my email

01:03:34 ◼   ► app in the past year might be under a dozen so email is a thing that I continue to do my absolute

01:03:41 ◼   ► best to ignore and I just use the default mail app and I have I have nothing interesting to

01:03:47 ◼   ► contribute on this topic but that is not the world you live in. I was expecting you were going to be

01:03:53 ◼   ► like "ah I'm on top of my email" did I have a fever dream where you told me you were on top of your

01:03:58 ◼   ► email then? Why did I think that was the case?

01:04:02 ◼   ► I think it might have been a fever dream or maybe one of the times this year I got down

01:04:06 ◼   ► to inbox zero I just dedicated a day to it who knows.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Maybe you then said like I got it I'm on it now and then I just assumed that you were

01:04:15 ◼   ► back any email. Yeah like this is my quarterly email review.

01:04:22 ◼   ► My word Gray. I'm still using Spark.

01:04:27 ◼   ► It's gonna take, you know I was talking earlier about like how workflows shift

01:04:33 ◼   ► with application? It's like a lot to get me away from Spark now because of the

01:04:37 ◼   ► sharing. Right, the commenting on emails with team members thing? Yeah the

01:04:42 ◼   ► team sharing features, like robust team sharing features, are now table

01:04:47 ◼   ► stakes for me. And also for me to now want to move email application, I have to

01:04:53 ◼   ► convince somebody else to move email app as well.

01:04:56 ◼   ► - Ah, yes, yes.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Now it's a decision for the two of you,

01:05:01 ◼   ► not just the one of you.

01:05:02 ◼   ► - I have to be able to make a real good case

01:05:05 ◼   ► to suggest that me and Carrie move email apps.

01:05:09 ◼   ► So I don't think that that's likely.

01:05:13 ◼   ► The only thing that I have my eye on

01:05:15 ◼   ► and I have just one eye on it and it's not,

01:05:19 ◼   ► you know, it's just Glancing, is an app called Hey,

01:05:22 ◼   ► which is like a new take on email,

01:05:26 ◼   ► which I kind of don't like.

01:05:28 ◼   ► I also don't like that it's just their service

01:05:31 ◼   ► and that's the only email that you can have in that service.

01:05:34 ◼   ► So you either go all in or you don't, right?

01:05:37 ◼   ► Because I have one email app that has my personal email

01:05:41 ◼   ► and my business email,

01:05:43 ◼   ► and I have like two business email addresses,

01:05:46 ◼   ► and they all go into the one app, which is Spark.

01:05:49 ◼   ► But with Hey, all of those have to be either

01:05:52 ◼   ► at hey.com email addresses,

01:05:54 ◼   ► or they're enabling domain kind of email soon.

01:05:57 ◼   ► So you could have like mike@relay.fm, right?

01:06:01 ◼   ► I could have that in there,

01:06:02 ◼   ► but it would be instead of a Google email address,

01:06:06 ◼   ► it would be a Hey maintained email address.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Apprehensive.

01:06:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you have every right

01:06:13 ◼   ► to be apprehensive over that.

01:06:14 ◼   ► That's a problem.

01:06:16 ◼   ► - Because I'm very confident Gmail is gonna exist

01:06:19 ◼   ► forever right like i know google have a pretty bad reputation of killing products but i think

01:06:25 ◼   ► there are three that are going to stick around google search gmail youtube yeah i feel confident

01:06:32 ◼   ► in those three so yeah i don't know i i don't know i know people that have gone all in on

01:06:39 ◼   ► hay and they love it and they keep telling me how great it is and how it's changed their

01:06:43 ◼   ► approach to email, but I just, I don't know.

01:06:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, the longevity worry is a very legitimate worry

01:06:52 ◼   ► for something like email.

01:06:54 ◼   ► - And also just like a big disruption,

01:06:58 ◼   ► this is a big disruption, like you are going in and saying,

01:07:02 ◼   ► I am moving my domain now.

01:07:05 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

01:07:06 ◼   ► - And you've got to hope that goes well,

01:07:08 ◼   ► because if email gets lost, it's gone, right?

01:07:12 ◼   ► And I just, I just, yeah, it's going to take a lot for me to, to want to do that.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Communication applications.

01:07:19 ◼   ► There's Slack.

01:07:20 ◼   ► There's just the Slack, right Myke?

01:07:22 ◼   ► Slack is, uh, it is Slack now and there's kind of no way they can get away from it.

01:07:30 ◼   ► This is what they are.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Slack, you know, it was supposed to be the cool thing that got rid of email.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And do you know what?

01:07:38 ◼   ► It did do that, but it just replaced it with Slack though.

01:07:42 ◼   ► That's the problem.

01:07:43 ◼   ► And so many years in, it is a fantastic tool,

01:07:47 ◼   ► but that fantastic tool has just filled the same hole.

01:07:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, without a doubt.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Slack feels like a giant lumbering blob

01:08:01 ◼   ► of a business monster in a way that many of these tools do.

01:08:05 ◼   ► And their cutesy sound effects can't cover that up anymore.

01:08:10 ◼   ► It just doesn't work.

01:08:10 ◼   ► - And you know what?

01:08:11 ◼   ► totally fine, right? Like it's doing its job. It's the business communication tool and that's

01:08:17 ◼   ► perfectly fine. But this idea that we all had that Slack was going to save us from a

01:08:22 ◼   ► thing we didn't like, just has not held out. And it's just, this is where the business

01:08:28 ◼   ► communication happens. Like business communication, which is much easier to manage because instant

01:08:34 ◼   ► messaging is better than email, just fundamentally, for the low barrier to entry and the speed

01:08:41 ◼   ► at which communication can occur, it's all so much better than email.

01:08:47 ◼   ► But you know, it's just the new way that we communicate in business settings is Slack

01:08:53 ◼   ► or Teams, right? You can just like find and replace here for Slack or Teams, right? Like

01:08:58 ◼   ► whichever one you're using, it's the same thing because they're by and large the same

01:09:02 ◼   ► products.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing years on for me that Slack has done is that, yes, in some

01:09:07 ◼   ► sense it has replaced email, but the real value is the siloing for things. That is always

01:09:17 ◼   ► the problem with email. Email can be everything, right? It can be from anyone, and you can

01:09:23 ◼   ► have spam and all the rest of it.

01:09:24 ◼   ► At least with Slack, as you say, when I go into the company A, B, or C Slack, all I'm

01:09:31 ◼   ► I'm going to get is stuff related to what's happening inside of those companies.

01:09:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:35 ◼   ► Then, and that's a, it's a huge advantage and it is mind blowing to me.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Like how did I ever run my business in some ways before Slack?

01:09:44 ◼   ► Like, I think I remember having on iOS, like I used to use those thread

01:09:51 ◼   ► alert notifications all the time for design feedback and, and like working

01:09:57 ◼   ► with people for like, Oh yes, here.

01:09:59 ◼   ► I'm basically having an instant message conversation about, you know, custom

01:10:04 ◼   ► artwork that I'm having made in the form of an email thread.

01:10:08 ◼   ► And it was like, that was awful.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Uh, so like this Slack, you know, it is, it is what it is.

01:10:13 ◼   ► I'm very glad to have it.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Uh, and it has siloed all of that work communication into one

01:10:20 ◼   ► area where it can just exist.

01:10:21 ◼   ► And it is all better, but it's also, it's also not fun because

01:10:27 ◼   ► work isn't always fun and that's fine.

01:10:29 ◼   ► That's the way it is.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Discord, baby.

01:10:33 ◼   ► Let's all move to Discord.

01:10:35 ◼   ► Discord will be fun.

01:10:36 ◼   ► That's where the fun communications happen then.

01:10:38 ◼   ► Yeah, Discord is for the cool kids.

01:10:40 ◼   ► I am very aware of this,

01:10:41 ◼   ► the fact that I really like Discord.

01:10:43 ◼   ► I like it for a bunch of social things.

01:10:45 ◼   ► And I have had this thought recently

01:10:46 ◼   ► that if I was starting a new project,

01:10:49 ◼   ► like a professional project, I would use Discord.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel the same way.

01:10:53 ◼   ► I do feel the same way.

01:10:54 ◼   ► It has a different set of tools.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Some of the things are easier.

01:10:58 ◼   ► some of the things are harder, but I just, I really like the overall application.

01:11:03 ◼   ► I like the way it works. I like how easy it is to jump from discord to discord.

01:11:08 ◼   ► I like that I don't have to create a new login every time I want to join a new

01:11:12 ◼   ► discord or create one. Um, I like how,

01:11:15 ◼   ► I like the moderation tools that it has,

01:11:18 ◼   ► not even just from a community management perspective,

01:11:20 ◼   ► but like even a small group perspective,

01:11:23 ◼   ► like that things can be managed quite easily.

01:11:25 ◼   ► I love the bots and how many bots there are for discord and how open that is and

01:11:29 ◼   ► how you can have it do weird and wonderful things. I actually, you know,

01:11:33 ◼   ► depending on your, your outlook,

01:11:35 ◼   ► the fact that it doesn't have threaded messages can be a good thing or a bad

01:11:38 ◼   ► thing. I don't really like Slack's threads honestly, so I'm fine with that,

01:11:43 ◼   ► but you know, your mileage may vary. Discord is the new chat app,

01:11:48 ◼   ► but honestly that just might mean that in a year I would hate it,

01:11:54 ◼   ► But Discord is where I would go now.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:58 ◼   ► Well, again, this is the thing with Slack is going to save us from all the emails.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Like, yes, yes.

01:12:03 ◼   ► It doesn't save you from the work though.

01:12:05 ◼   ► Right?

01:12:05 ◼   ► Like the work still needs to happen.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Maybe Discord saves us from Slack though.

01:12:10 ◼   ► Right.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And then, but that's, that's the feeling is like, I think when people say this,

01:12:13 ◼   ► there's, there's sort of an implied it'll save me from the work.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Right.

01:12:19 ◼   ► And so you're like, oh, I'll use Discord.

01:12:20 ◼   ► It's more fun and there'll be less work.

01:12:22 ◼   ► It's like you still have to get the same amount of things done.

01:12:24 ◼   ► But I do think Discord has the advantage of having come along after Slack,

01:12:31 ◼   ► making design decisions,

01:12:33 ◼   ► seeing how Slack works. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff that's hard to pin down, but Discord does feel

01:12:40 ◼   ► smoother and less heavyweight in a lot of ways, and that's also the same reason I feel like

01:12:46 ◼   ► if I was starting from scratch today,

01:12:49 ◼   ► I would probably do all of my company communications on a Discord rather than on a Slack.

01:12:57 ◼   ► I actually think over the next couple of years there's going to be another boom in these

01:13:01 ◼   ► tools for so many reasons.

01:13:04 ◼   ► One, of course there's a market for it now because of remote working, but two, because

01:13:10 ◼   ► of the change in remote working, everyone's going to come up with their "We're better

01:13:15 ◼   ► than Slack and this is why" tool.

01:13:18 ◼   ► This was a thing that was around a few years ago because Slack was gaining prominence,

01:13:23 ◼   ► so people were like "we can build a better Slack" but I don't think there was a lot

01:13:26 ◼   ► of take up for it because everyone was like "we use Slack, what's the problem?"

01:13:31 ◼   ► But now I think these tools are so important that one, more people are using them so there'll

01:13:36 ◼   ► be more new takes on it, and two, there's investment.

01:13:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a really good point, I think you're right.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Obviously it takes a while for this stuff to get off the ground, but there's probably

01:13:46 ◼   ► a non-trivial number of remote teams

01:13:49 ◼   ► who are remotely working together

01:13:51 ◼   ► on their replacement for Slack,

01:13:52 ◼   ► like right now for sure.

01:13:54 ◼   ► Listening to this very podcast in the background, right?

01:13:57 ◼   ► Like 100%, that's the thing that's happening.

01:14:00 ◼   ► - It is 2020, so I've added a new communication app

01:14:04 ◼   ► to this list, Zoom.

01:14:06 ◼   ► I mean, I've used Zoom for years.

01:14:11 ◼   ► - Have you?

01:14:12 ◼   ► - But just not to the level that I use it now.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Can you explain something to me?

01:14:18 ◼   ► I do not understand, really, why

01:14:22 ◼   ► Zoom just completely exploded this year.

01:14:26 ◼   ► And it feels like, guys, we've had these tools all along and

01:14:30 ◼   ► I have just, I've had this real resistance to using

01:14:34 ◼   ► Zoom and get into these weird conversations with people sometimes like

01:14:38 ◼   ► "Why can't you just FaceTime me?" and they're like "No, let's do a Zoom call!"

01:14:42 ◼   ► "No, I don't want to.

01:14:44 ◼   ► I don't like or trust Zoom,

01:14:47 ◼   ► and I didn't like it from the moment I saw it."

01:14:49 ◼   ► But it's like, somehow this just instantly became

01:14:54 ◼   ► the thing that everyone uses,

01:14:57 ◼   ► and talks about like video chat was invented

01:15:01 ◼   ► the day Zoom showed up in March 2020.

01:15:05 ◼   ► - Well, Zoom's been around for a long time,

01:15:08 ◼   ► and it's been used in a lot of professional settings,

01:15:11 ◼   ► and it does some interesting stuff for like large group podcasts like Zoom can record, right?

01:15:16 ◼   ► For you. So I've done it in those kinds of settings. That's how I have been aware of Zoom

01:15:22 ◼   ► for a while because it was like a it has been a Skype replacement for some people that I work with.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Zoom worked because it had the lowest barrier to entry for joining a call.

01:15:39 ◼   ► It made it very easy to join calls. Zoom's real thing was that you could click a link and join

01:15:47 ◼   ► a call and you didn't need an account and you didn't need to download an app necessarily.

01:15:53 ◼   ► The way that it dealt with a lot of that stuff was much, much easier, I think,

01:15:58 ◼   ► than a lot of its competitors. Now unfortunately this ended up being a slight fall from grace for

01:16:07 ◼   ► Zoom because some of the ways that they were doing things to make them easy were not necessarily

01:16:12 ◼   ► secure and they have tightened up some of that stuff but at this point it doesn't matter because

01:16:19 ◼   ► Zoom has, because Zoom made it so easy for so many people, they have become the tool, right? So now

01:16:30 ◼   ► that they have actually done some work to make it harder to join a Zoom call because it's now more

01:16:36 ◼   ► correct in its security than it was before, it's now become the verb. So it doesn't matter now.

01:16:43 ◼   ► Zoom is the verb. So to video call someone in 2020 and beyond is to Zoom them.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Yeah. And that's just that. So I use Zoom. The one thing I like about Zoom is that

01:16:56 ◼   ► now everyone uses one application because before I would have calls with people and I had to have

01:17:04 ◼   ► Webex accounts, Zoom accounts, Google Meet accounts, Cisco accounts, like because you

01:17:10 ◼   ► would have a call and they would want to set up a call and it would be like join one of these

01:17:14 ◼   ► 20,000 different services at least now everyone has a Zoom account so we can all we can all agree on

01:17:21 ◼   ► Zoom. Not me, I am the final holdout. Yeah but you know by and large most people that work with you

01:17:30 ◼   ► already have a thing but so like if somebody if you're meeting with someone for the first time

01:17:36 ◼   ► What do you use then?

01:17:37 ◼   ► The hierarchy here is FaceTime and then Skype. That's the hierarchy.

01:17:42 ◼   ► Okay. Because again, the great thing about Zoom is it's available everywhere, right?

01:17:47 ◼   ► Yeah, which FaceTime obviously isn't, but I feel like I haven't run into anyone yet

01:17:53 ◼   ► who doesn't have one of those two. I guess way lower down, like one in a thousand is Google

01:18:00 ◼   ► Meet, but that's incredibly rare.

01:18:02 ◼   ► I hate that one. I don't know why though.

01:18:05 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:18:07 ◼   ► I don't have enough experience with it, but I have that same feeling with Zoom.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Like, I don't have good reasons, but I just feel viscerally repelled by Zoom.

01:18:18 ◼   ► And so, yeah, I try not to use it if I possibly can.

01:18:21 ◼   ► - I mean, I like it for the stuff that I use it for in the sense that it has good features.

01:18:25 ◼   ► It's easy for my family to all get on a call if we're doing something.

01:18:30 ◼   ► It's easy to do group calls and it can be recorded in case somebody misses it.

01:18:34 ◼   ► and it's all done automatically. You know, like it does the job. I can see why it's worked for people.

01:18:41 ◼   ► You know, like it's very specific set of features that it has worked very well for the pandemic

01:18:48 ◼   ► and everybody else had to catch up. If they caught up. You know, like Slack, I mean,

01:18:56 ◼   ► geez, just doesn't have these features. And it's wild to me, which is one of the reasons why teams

01:19:04 ◼   ► has done so well for Microsoft because Teams has all this stuff built into it

01:19:10 ◼   ► mm-hmm which is also kind of funny because Microsoft on Skype I always

01:19:15 ◼   ► forget that I forget that Microsoft on Skype now I think Microsoft forgot

01:19:19 ◼   ► because they built a whole new like the calling in teams is not based on Skype

01:19:25 ◼   ► it's not Skype it's teams chat that's crazy but I think my understanding is it

01:19:32 ◼   ► for what it needs to be is better than how Skype would deal with it.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Is there anything I've missed out from communication for what's going on in your world?

01:19:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll just add one more thing, which is a sort of follow-up from last year.

01:19:46 ◼   ► It sort of goes to your not liking threads on Slack.

01:19:50 ◼   ► So again, within my own company, there's this little bit of a distinction between

01:19:55 ◼   ► Slack is for communication, but there needs to be somewhere else for the actual, like,

01:20:03 ◼   ► information or tasks or like what needs to be done.

01:20:06 ◼   ► It's easy to just lose stuff in the stream of people talking for like, "What were the actionable items?"

01:20:12 ◼   ► or, you know, "What's that piece of reference material?"

01:20:15 ◼   ► And so last year I was using Dropbox Paper as this auxiliary layer to Slack,

01:20:22 ◼   ► where like tasks and things would go in there.

01:20:25 ◼   ► This is also one of these situations

01:20:26 ◼   ► where you're working with someone else.

01:20:28 ◼   ► So my assistant eventually said

01:20:31 ◼   ► she wanted to transition away from paper to Notion

01:20:34 ◼   ► for this layer.

01:20:36 ◼   ► - 'Cause she's an architect, right?

01:20:37 ◼   ► - She is totally an architect

01:20:39 ◼   ► and she is part of the Notion nation.

01:20:42 ◼   ► And so she wanted to transition to Notion.

01:20:44 ◼   ► And while there are things

01:20:46 ◼   ► that I still don't love about Notion,

01:20:49 ◼   ► Notion, it is obviously the vastly better tool for her, which makes it the vastly better tool

01:20:56 ◼   ► for me as well. And so all of the like, back end data for my company all exists in Notion.

01:21:07 ◼   ► When there are things that my assistant needs me to do, like that's in a task list in Notion.

01:21:12 ◼   ► And it is really nice, like Notion's ability to say, like, here's a task, you know, here's

01:21:16 ◼   ► the document that you need to sign, it goes right here and to have some additional information

01:21:21 ◼   ► about it.

01:21:22 ◼   ► This is where Notion does stand strong with its ability to like create like an arbitrary

01:21:27 ◼   ► database entry for almost anything.

01:21:30 ◼   ► And so like that ability of being able to collaborate and communicate with tasks is

01:21:35 ◼   ► really fantastic.

01:21:36 ◼   ► And then that is also where again, I have transitioned to a lot of the communication

01:21:42 ◼   ► between me and my animator is like, we will discuss things in Slack, but all of the actionable

01:21:50 ◼   ► items like this needs to be changed or this needs to be bigger or smaller or like, you

01:21:56 ◼   ► know, whatever, all of that exists in Notion as well.

01:22:00 ◼   ► So it's like, boom, here's a list of tasks that we can collaborate on, like adding and

01:22:05 ◼   ► checking off things.

01:22:06 ◼   ► So I just find it really useful to try to keep that in mind when you're working with

01:22:12 ◼   ► people, that like, where communication happens is a separate layer from information and task

01:22:22 ◼   ► tracking, and like, don't confuse those two, and if you do so, you do that at your peril.

01:22:29 ◼   ► So I used to use paper for it, and now I use Notion for it, which was not my decision,

01:22:34 ◼   ► but was a very good decision.

01:22:36 ◼   ► Fantastical 3 is still my calendar app of choice.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Well, Fantasti-

01:22:41 ◼   ► Version 3 is the new version of Fantastical that has come out in the last year.

01:22:45 ◼   ► It's a great update. It gave me the two features that I wanted the most.

01:22:49 ◼   ► The iPad version is basically the Mac version now, which looks-

01:22:52 ◼   ► It just looks exactly the same, so I have all the functionality I want.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And calendar sets are also available now, so you can group together calendars

01:23:00 ◼   ► and just check which ones you want to see at a specific time, which I really, really like.

01:23:05 ◼   ► Oh, the widgets are also fantastic.

01:23:07 ◼   ► I love FantasticOwl, have done for years,

01:23:09 ◼   ► and it got a lot better this year,

01:23:12 ◼   ► which I'm really happy about.

01:23:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, there's nothing more to say

01:23:16 ◼   ► than it's the best calendar app by a lot.

01:23:18 ◼   ► It's fantastic, that calendar.

01:23:21 ◼   ► - Oh, wow.

01:23:23 ◼   ► I wonder if that's why they called it that.

01:23:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:23:26 ◼   ► I've also been using a tool called Doodle.

01:23:29 ◼   ► I've included this in case you ask

01:23:31 ◼   ► from looking at my home screen.

01:23:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, what's Doodle?

01:23:34 ◼   ► It is a tool to get a bunch of people to agree on a time to have a call.

01:23:41 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

01:23:43 ◼   ► So as the person creating the Doodle, I say like these are the days I am available and the times

01:23:49 ◼   ► and I would send it out to eight or nine people and they can all go in and check what they want to do.

01:23:54 ◼   ► Fantastic Count actually has this feature itself.

01:23:57 ◼   ► Does it? Oh, I didn't know that.

01:23:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it's called proposed time, but I haven't really played around with that yet

01:24:02 ◼   ► And I have a friend who tried to use this recently

01:24:06 ◼   ► to send a thing to me and he ended up not making the call

01:24:11 ◼   ► because it didn't add it to his calendar

01:24:13 ◼   ► the way that he was expecting.

01:24:15 ◼   ► But Doodle is a thing that I use

01:24:17 ◼   ► and also it's not presupposing that people use calendars

01:24:19 ◼   ► the same way that I do.

01:24:21 ◼   ► I don't even know if the people I'm sending these to

01:24:25 ◼   ► even use a calendar at all.

01:24:27 ◼   ► Right, like I'm not gonna make that guess

01:24:29 ◼   ► 'cause people use their own tools differently.

01:24:31 ◼   ► this is just like, hey, here's the thing.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Now you can come to this meeting, however it is you were reminded of such things.

01:24:39 ◼   ► Right.

01:24:39 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

01:24:40 ◼   ► So, you know, cause it's like all you're doing is saying I'm also available at

01:24:44 ◼   ► these times and then when it's done, I then create an event.

01:24:48 ◼   ► So like, all right, great.

01:24:49 ◼   ► We're all going to meet at this time.

01:24:50 ◼   ► So.

01:24:50 ◼   ► Yeah, that's great.

01:24:52 ◼   ► I'll take a look at it.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I mean, again, this is one of these like mathematical things where you have two

01:24:57 ◼   ► people, it's not hard to arrange time, but the moment you have three people it's like,

01:25:02 ◼   ► it's exponentially harder and then four people and five people just explode so fast.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Right, and my issue is that the only thing I'm using this for is to arrange a monthly call

01:25:12 ◼   ► between 10 people. Oh my god. So that's why I started using Doodle.

01:25:17 ◼   ► It's amazing, it's even possible to arrange a call between 10 people.

01:25:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree. You remember when I said earlier about the fact that Zoom does recording and

01:25:28 ◼   ► that's good? It's because sometimes not all 10 people can agree.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Right, of course.

01:25:33 ◼   ► So the fact that Zoom can record those calls is great for the people that can't make it because

01:25:37 ◼   ► it is actually impossible to arrange a call that 10 people can make when the creator of the call,

01:25:44 ◼   ► that's me, only gives three days that they're able to do it on.

01:25:48 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

01:25:51 ◼   ► I'll just add a quick little thing here related to scheduling stuff, which is when we're talking

01:25:57 ◼   ► about widgets, David Smith's WidgetSmith has the time zone display on your phone, is what you were

01:26:04 ◼   ► using it for, to show you like, "Oh, here's the time zones in a bunch of different places."

01:26:07 ◼   ► And you asked why I still had calzones, and I hadn't thought about it at the time,

01:26:15 ◼   ► but one thing I do still really like calzones for is that when you open up calzones,

01:26:21 ◼   ► It lets you do this thing where you can slide the time zones around to see like,

01:26:25 ◼   ► "Oh, okay, when it's going to be 7 p.m. in London, you know, what time is it in LA?"

01:26:31 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:26:32 ◼   ► And so I still use calzones a lot for that.

01:26:35 ◼   ► And I don't think it will work.

01:26:36 ◼   ► Like just having the widget of what time is it now in another time zone is, is

01:26:42 ◼   ► actually not very often the thing that I want.

01:26:45 ◼   ► When I'm thinking about time zones, I'm often trying to do that mental calculation

01:26:49 ◼   ► of like, plus six hours a week from now, when is that for someone else? And so I use Calzones

01:26:55 ◼   ► for that a bunch for meeting scheduling and planning. In the Widdesmith app, there's a section

01:27:00 ◼   ► called Tools. And in Tools is a thing called Wild Time. And in that has a version, a simpler version

01:27:08 ◼   ► of what Calzones does. So that's what I do when I now want to work out a time. Can I get to that

01:27:13 ◼   ► in one tap? No. Okay well then I'm gonna, I mean look, they're both David Smith apps, so I'm gonna

01:27:22 ◼   ► keep using Calzones if it just takes me one tap to get to the thing because I feel like I just want

01:27:26 ◼   ► to open it and see it, but if he eventually abandons that in favor of his new favorite child

01:27:33 ◼   ► then you know I'll use the new system. The new favorite child just got a pretty cool update by

01:27:38 ◼   ► by the way, which is myth.

01:27:40 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I saw that roll in my updates, yeah.

01:27:42 ◼   ► - There's like themes now, which is really great

01:27:45 ◼   ► 'cause that's Dave leaning into what people

01:27:47 ◼   ► are using the application for.

01:27:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's definitely a good decision.

01:27:50 ◼   ► - Which is to make their home screens look nice,

01:27:53 ◼   ► and yeah, and so he's done more of that

01:27:55 ◼   ► and I really like that update.

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01:29:25 ◼   ► I wanted to include project management this year.

01:29:30 ◼   ► Okay, what are you thinking with this?

01:29:31 ◼   ► Well, I realized that I have a tool that I use for some stuff like this,

01:29:35 ◼   ► and also thinking maybe this is an area which I could use to some effect for other stuff.

01:29:42 ◼   ► Okay.

01:29:43 ◼   ► So Trello is the tool that I use for things that I would consider project management,

01:29:49 ◼   ► and there is one annual project where I manage through Trello and then one which is more ongoing.

01:29:54 ◼   ► So the annual project is the podcastathon. We arranged the podcastathon in Trello.

01:30:00 ◼   ► So this is shared between a bunch of people and effectively we're throwing all of our ideas in

01:30:05 ◼   ► there and then we're moving them around from column to column in Kanban system of how done they are

01:30:13 ◼   ► from idea stage to completion stage and if somebody needs to add things to it you can

01:30:19 ◼   ► assign them to it. You know Trello works pretty well for a project management in that kind of

01:30:23 ◼   ► a sense of like you have an item and it needs to move through a process to completion.

01:30:30 ◼   ► So we've to great effect actually have used Trello for this and then even for when it

01:30:35 ◼   ► comes to actually doing the like run of show for the Podcastathon event, we'll create

01:30:41 ◼   ► our columns and then move these ideas into each hour.

01:30:47 ◼   ► [

01:30:57 ◼   ► content that we will produce during the Podcastathon event.

01:31:01 ◼   ► And so then eventually, once all of the preparation for that content is complete, we can then

01:31:06 ◼   ► move it into its hour column of when it will appear during the eight hour event.

01:31:10 ◼   ► So that's a really interesting way to use a Kanban board.

01:31:12 ◼   ► I hadn't thought about that, but that's a great idea.

01:31:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't.

01:31:16 ◼   ► It wasn't my idea.

01:31:17 ◼   ► I think Stephen set it up that way.

01:31:19 ◼   ► It was very clever.

01:31:21 ◼   ► But that's something, you know, we use it for that.

01:31:23 ◼   ► I mean we also use Trello for like a few other things at Real AFM like we use it for our

01:31:28 ◼   ► Annual company goals and projects that we want to achieve throughout a year

01:31:32 ◼   ► We put into Trello if we were working on a high-level project of some description

01:31:37 ◼   ► We might use Trello for that and also me and Adina have been using it for setting up the studio setting up mega studio

01:31:43 ◼   ► Mmm from a high-level perspective

01:31:46 ◼   ► I really like Trello for this kind of stuff because it's like, you know, you can step back and see

01:31:52 ◼   ► how everything's moving through a process of completion and I really like that a lot and or if you have

01:31:59 ◼   ► lots of mini projects inside of a larger project

01:32:02 ◼   ► So like when it comes to setting up the studio

01:32:05 ◼   ► The studio is kind of cordoned off into different areas, right?

01:32:09 ◼   ► So like we have a lounge and then we have like three desks and each of those

01:32:13 ◼   ► Areas has lots of little things that need to be done for it to become complete that area

01:32:19 ◼   ► So, having a column for each of these areas and then all of the different tasks listed

01:32:27 ◼   ► in each column, it works really nice.

01:32:30 ◼   ► So I'm aware of the fact that this is very basic project management, so I don't know

01:32:35 ◼   ► if this is the thing that I need to or want to look into more, but for big tasks like

01:32:42 ◼   ► these, I have valued Trello this year for that.

01:32:46 ◼   ► Mmm, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

01:32:49 ◼   ► I'm kind of surprised that you don't manage your videos with a tool like this.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Because you are working with so many people now.

01:32:57 ◼   ► Trello is one of those tools that I have visited many times over the years.

01:33:02 ◼   ► And I've always been interested in Kanban systems.

01:33:06 ◼   ► I think there's something very nice about them.

01:33:08 ◼   ► And it fits with your index card, love.

01:33:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems like it should be right in the bullseye.

01:33:13 ◼   ► I also think there's, you know, back when I was, you know, working in the glass cube in the before times,

01:33:19 ◼   ► I think there's a reason that almost every company whose office I could peer into,

01:33:24 ◼   ► they had like a Ken ban board with a bunch of sticky notes that they were moving around, like,

01:33:28 ◼   ► it feels like it is the right tool for lots of things.

01:33:33 ◼   ► I've just, for me, never personally found it to be actually useful in the sense of,

01:33:43 ◼   ► I've used it a number of times, like I've tried using Kanban systems and Trello boards like for

01:33:49 ◼   ► video production process, but it's the only time it's this tool has for me felt like,

01:33:55 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm just playing with a task list, like I'm not really doing the thing, I'm just moving these

01:34:03 ◼   ► cards but I'm moving the cards after the fact." Like it just never felt useful. But with the

01:34:10 ◼   ► increasing number of people who are involved in the video production and the increasing

01:34:15 ◼   ► number of steps, particularly post-Ticoy incident.

01:34:19 ◼   ► This has been a thing that I've been talking with people about and I think it might make

01:34:27 ◼   ► sense to even just have like a very high level Kanban board to show like what videos are

01:34:34 ◼   ► in what stages.

01:34:36 ◼   ► So this is something that I just feel is investigating and is maybe a tool that I need to think about

01:34:41 ◼   ► in a different way where it's not like, "This tool isn't for me.

01:34:46 ◼   ► This tool is for creating clarity for the people that I work with."

01:34:52 ◼   ► Like where are the videos?

01:34:54 ◼   ► What looks like it's coming down the pike?

01:34:57 ◼   ► And so maybe this is something that should exist in the future.

01:35:01 ◼   ► The closest thing that I have to project management in that sense, which I think I've mentioned

01:35:06 ◼   ► before, but as in Slack, like I make a different channel for each of the videos and then I

01:35:12 ◼   ► explicitly number those channels so that everyone knows like you should be working on things

01:35:18 ◼   ► from one onward.

01:35:21 ◼   ► If like I put tasks or things to be done in multiple channels, like you always know which

01:35:26 ◼   ► one should happen first.

01:35:28 ◼   ► Yeah, that doesn't feel like the way to do it.

01:35:30 ◼   ► Yeah, but so the thing is, they're like, that is extremely high level, but it doesn't create

01:35:36 ◼   ► the concept of where in the process is this individual video.

01:35:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it feels like to me with that numbering thing, you have maybe started to naturally move

01:35:51 ◼   ► into needing a system like this. Like that some that you have now recognized that there needs to

01:35:59 ◼   ► be this like ordering and or progress. This is very normal I think for

01:36:05 ◼   ► adding a new tool or system that you've started to outgrow the process a little

01:36:10 ◼   ► bit or it's you're starting to like shoehorn something in, right? Or you

01:36:16 ◼   ► know or the other part which is what you're doing right here is you're using the tool

01:36:20 ◼   ► in a way that it's not intended to be used like so you're doing something to

01:36:23 ◼   ► Slack which that's not what Slack's for right which is what you were mentioning

01:36:28 ◼   ► earlier about like tasks in Slack?

01:36:31 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly.

01:36:32 ◼   ► - And moving them out to Notion now.

01:36:34 ◼   ► So yeah, it's maybe suggesting that,

01:36:37 ◼   ► even Notion could be.

01:36:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, Notion has everything inside of it.

01:36:41 ◼   ► There's Kanban boards inside of Notion.

01:36:43 ◼   ► So that may very well be the thing that happens,

01:36:46 ◼   ► is like, oh, there's a Kanban board

01:36:48 ◼   ► that just lives on a page in Notion somewhere.

01:36:50 ◼   ► Maybe that's what happens.

01:36:51 ◼   ► This is very in flux.

01:36:53 ◼   ► This is a thing that is also one of these areas

01:36:56 ◼   ► where I need to think about it because

01:36:59 ◼   ► the video production process is really fluid

01:37:04 ◼   ► and I'm always a bit cautious about

01:37:06 ◼   ► over structuring the video production

01:37:10 ◼   ► like a factory, like assembly line

01:37:13 ◼   ► is not really something that I want to do.

01:37:15 ◼   ► Like I do want to be able to be free to drop or pause

01:37:19 ◼   ► or delay projects and things like this.

01:37:21 ◼   ► So yeah, it's just something I'm in the middle

01:37:24 ◼   ► of investigating, but I think the way

01:37:25 ◼   ► have to think about it is like it's a tool that is clarity for others. It's not a tool

01:37:31 ◼   ► that's actually for me. We'll see. We'll see what happens in State of the Apps 2022.

01:37:36 ◼   ► All right, writing and research. Obviously these are two very different things for the

01:37:41 ◼   ► two of us.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Yes.

01:37:43 ◼   ► But things that we both do in our own way. So for me, research this year has really solidified

01:37:50 ◼   ► around RSS. It's stuck and I'm using Reader 5 now. I was using Reader 4 last year as a

01:37:56 ◼   ► new version of Reader, which is not vastly different, it's just like really, really beautifully

01:38:01 ◼   ► polished. The app added a bunch of features, but they're not features that I particularly

01:38:06 ◼   ► want but could be really useful for people in that you can now use Reader as your RSS

01:38:13 ◼   ► subscription tool via iCloud, which is very clever.

01:38:16 ◼   ► What do you mean it shares the RSS feeds over iCloud? It syncs them?

01:38:20 ◼   ► Yeah, so you can add them to reader and then reader syncs all of that to your other devices using iCloud

01:38:26 ◼   ► So you don't actually need to to have another service. Ah, okay, right, right. So I use like feed bin or feedly

01:38:33 ◼   ► I don't know what one I use but I use one of these services

01:38:36 ◼   ► Right. That just syncs with reader and it also like beefs up its read later support

01:38:40 ◼   ► So it has like a read later function inside of reader as well

01:38:43 ◼   ► so you can you need like an instapaper or something.

01:38:46 ◼   ► How do you think it compares to instapaper?

01:38:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:38:49 ◼   ► You've never used it? Okay.

01:38:51 ◼   ► I don't do that kind of thing.

01:38:54 ◼   ► Like I don't like have this thing where like I come across articles and I like send them

01:38:57 ◼   ► to a thing to read later because I don't use RSS for...

01:39:02 ◼   ► This sounds weird.

01:39:04 ◼   ► I don't use it for reading.

01:39:06 ◼   ► I know that sounds really strange.

01:39:08 ◼   ► Well, yeah, you must be you're skimming, right?

01:39:11 ◼   ► Like you're skimming, you're hunting,

01:39:13 ◼   ► you're looking for things, right?

01:39:14 ◼   ► That's what you're doing with RSS.

01:39:15 ◼   ► - Mostly I'm pulling stuff out and sending it to notes

01:39:18 ◼   ► to read later for actual,

01:39:21 ◼   ► when I sit down to do my research for a show.

01:39:24 ◼   ► I will read the occasional thing in Reader.

01:39:27 ◼   ► Like there'll be an article that I'll see

01:39:28 ◼   ► and I'll read that.

01:39:30 ◼   ► But I'm not really like as well known.

01:39:33 ◼   ► I'm not like this reading person.

01:39:34 ◼   ► So like I don't like come across an article.

01:39:36 ◼   ► I'm like, "Ooh, I must save that to read later."

01:39:39 ◼   ► Like I don't, this is not really a thing that I feel.

01:39:41 ◼   ► You know, like, oh, somebody shared this article on Twitter.

01:39:45 ◼   ► Must make sure I sit down with my morning coffee tomorrow and read it.

01:39:48 ◼   ► Like, I know that this is a very normal thing for many people, but it isn't for me.

01:39:53 ◼   ► So Reader is an absolutely excellent tool for me to, whenever I want to, go in,

01:40:01 ◼   ► see a bunch of headlines, maybe click through the occasional one to see if it's

01:40:05 ◼   ► something I want to, like I'll skim it.

01:40:07 ◼   ► Is this what I want to read more about?

01:40:08 ◼   ► yes, then I will use the share extension to send that out to Notes to add it to, say,

01:40:14 ◼   ► upgrade follow-up note. So then when I sit down to actually do my work for upgrade,

01:40:19 ◼   ► I have all my links, I open them all, read what I need. Right? So it's mostly a triage tool,

01:40:26 ◼   ► but it is the most effective way for me to ingest a vast amount of information in a short

01:40:32 ◼   ► period of time. I'm really glad that the RSS move for you has worked out. I almost feel

01:40:38 ◼   ► happy to know like RSS it isn't dead yet it's like it can still be done right a

01:40:43 ◼   ► professional can still rely on this protocol for what it was intended like

01:40:47 ◼   ► the ability to survey websites and collate them all in one place so I'm

01:40:52 ◼   ► really glad to know that that worked out. Yeah I'm very happy with it when it

01:40:56 ◼   ► comes to writing I mean the stuff that I write takes many different forms and

01:41:02 ◼   ► none of it is even close to what you do right and it's all very similar for me

01:41:07 ◼   ► So the app that I write the most in or the service that I write the most in is Google

01:41:12 ◼   ► Docs, right?

01:41:13 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:14 ◼   ► So the most writing I do on a weekly basis is outlines for podcasts.

01:41:20 ◼   ► And so that is all in Google Docs.

01:41:24 ◼   ► Before Google Docs, they live in notes as I explained earlier, but if I needed to write

01:41:28 ◼   ► a document, if I needed to write a blog post or if I needed to write something long form,

01:41:33 ◼   ► I'm still using Bear for that just because it works

01:41:37 ◼   ► and I've had Bear for years

01:41:39 ◼   ► and it's just a simple markdown app for me.

01:41:43 ◼   ► - I'm just curious, when you say write something long form,

01:41:46 ◼   ► do you have any examples this year

01:41:48 ◼   ► of the kind of stuff that you've written in Bear?

01:41:51 ◼   ► I'm just trying to imagine what that would even be.

01:41:53 ◼   ► - Sponsor copy is something that I would write.

01:41:55 ◼   ► - Ah, okay, that makes sense.

01:41:56 ◼   ► - And I don't do very much of that,

01:41:57 ◼   ► but I do it occasionally.

01:41:59 ◼   ► And if I'm going to do that, I will use Bear for that.

01:42:02 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

01:42:03 ◼   ► That seems like a good use of that tool.

01:42:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it's like, you know, it's not long.

01:42:07 ◼   ► There's a few hundred words or whatever,

01:42:09 ◼   ► and it's nice to have just a simple application

01:42:12 ◼   ► that I can easily format,

01:42:14 ◼   ► because the tool that we put our copy into reads markdown.

01:42:18 ◼   ► So it will be formatted for me to read

01:42:22 ◼   ► or for whoever's gonna read the ad

01:42:24 ◼   ► in a way that is clear and makes sense.

01:42:27 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:42:28 ◼   ► - Are you still on Ulysses?

01:42:32 ◼   ► - Oh, last year it was like, Ulysses is amazing.

01:42:36 ◼   ► The developers do whatever I want.

01:42:38 ◼   ► - No, no, okay, okay.

01:42:39 ◼   ► So the sigh, that sigh is because,

01:42:42 ◼   ► yes, I am still on Ulysses.

01:42:46 ◼   ► And yes, by far it's the best tool

01:42:50 ◼   ► for the kind of thing that I want to do.

01:42:53 ◼   ► Okay, the sigh is because I feel like there must be a,

01:42:58 ◼   ► like in app design land,

01:43:02 ◼   ► There must be a word or like a law for this sorts of phenomenon, but it's where you have an app and the app goes through a redesign.

01:43:13 ◼   ► And it, it always feels like the rule for app redesign always trends toward less information displayed or less options displayed at any particular point.

01:43:29 ◼   ► So just, it feels like the first version of the app can show you lots of things.

01:43:34 ◼   ► And then as time goes on, it's like the opposite of what you would expect that

01:43:37 ◼   ► later versions of the app show you fewer things.

01:43:40 ◼   ► And so I have this tremendous frustration with Ulysses right now, which is they did

01:43:46 ◼   ► an app redesign a couple of months ago where I was sort of horrified at something

01:43:52 ◼   ► they changed and I kept thinking like, well, any day now in the next point release,

01:43:57 ◼   ► They're going to add the ability to change this around and like, and they

01:44:00 ◼   ► just haven't and it's killing me.

01:44:02 ◼   ► So the very short version of this is in Ulysses, for anything that you're

01:44:08 ◼   ► writing, again, like my constant obsession with index cards, I can have a script.

01:44:12 ◼   ► It's displayed to me as a, as a single piece of writing, but I can

01:44:18 ◼   ► subdivide it into little sections.

01:44:20 ◼   ► And each of those little sections, I can add things that are not part of the

01:44:26 ◼   ► script in a sidebar, so I can add like an extra little comment to myself or like

01:44:31 ◼   ► here's a reference image or here's a little reference document or whatever.

01:44:35 ◼   ► There's like a little sidebar and that sidebar would also show things like how

01:44:41 ◼   ► many words are in the overall script that you're working on, how long will it

01:44:46 ◼   ► take an average person to read this out loud, which is of course very useful

01:44:49 ◼   ► information for me. And this is always great but Ulysses did this redesign

01:44:54 ◼   ► where I cannot understand, I can't understand why, but what used to be a single panel on the right

01:45:03 ◼   ► hand side, they decided to divide it up into little, like four little tabs at the top.

01:45:11 ◼   ► So if you want to know the word count, you can click on one of the tabs.

01:45:15 ◼   ► If you want to know how long it takes to read out loud, you can click on another tab to see

01:45:21 ◼   ► that piece of information.

01:45:22 ◼   ► Oh, that's weird.

01:45:24 ◼   ► If you want to see the note, like the comment that you have on this section of the script,

01:45:30 ◼   ► that's a fourth tab. If you have also included a picture that is related to this section of the

01:45:38 ◼   ► script, that is a fifth tab. And so all of the things that I used to be able to see at once

01:45:48 ◼   ► have now like pointlessly been divided into five different sections that you can't, there's no way

01:45:55 ◼   ► to see all of them at once. And I find it totally baffling. Like I cannot conceive of who this

01:46:03 ◼   ► redesign is for because in the old version, if you didn't want to see one of the sections, like you

01:46:09 ◼   ► had an option where you could just uncheck it and be like, don't show me read out loud time. I don't

01:46:13 ◼   ► care and you know you wouldn't have to deal with that and that like there's just there's no ability

01:46:18 ◼   ► to customize this sidebar it's infuriating and the thing that's really frustrating about it is like

01:46:24 ◼   ► you know so right now I have a script in front of me where I'm writing about a thing and there is a

01:46:29 ◼   ► reference photo for this particular section that I'm writing so I have to click on the attached

01:46:36 ◼   ► photos sections to see that photo so say then I finish like I'm looking at that image and I

01:46:42 ◼   ► I rewrite the little section.

01:46:44 ◼   ► And then if I move on to the next section,

01:46:48 ◼   ► the sidebar of course stays on the show reference photo tab,

01:46:53 ◼   ► which means that when I get to the next section,

01:46:57 ◼   ► if I have written a comment on that section,

01:47:00 ◼   ► the only way I can know is to manually click on the,

01:47:04 ◼   ► show me the comments section.

01:47:07 ◼   ► Right, which is infuriating.

01:47:11 ◼   ► And also keep in mind, one of the things I very frequently want to know is what's the word count, right?

01:47:18 ◼   ► Or how long is this going to read out loud?

01:47:21 ◼   ► So if I ever click to see that information, again, when I'm working on the script,

01:47:26 ◼   ► I won't know if I've left a comment on any particular section until I manually click on the comment section.

01:47:35 ◼   ► It is f***ing infuriating!

01:47:38 ◼   ► Like, and I, I really cannot conceive of why was this change made or like

01:47:45 ◼   ► who on earth requested this?

01:47:47 ◼   ► It's, it's baffling to me.

01:47:49 ◼   ► So my big sigh there is it's extremely hard for me to imagine switching

01:47:57 ◼   ► from Ulysses for a bunch of the reasons, the way that it works.

01:48:00 ◼   ► I really like it, but this redesign has been brutal and I was just so surprised.

01:48:08 ◼   ► Like I kept waiting for the next version to come out that would adjust this behavior.

01:48:14 ◼   ► And as far as I can tell, the app is like, no, this is great.

01:48:17 ◼   ► This is totally the way it's supposed to work.

01:48:19 ◼   ► So that is my real frustration right now with Ulysses.

01:48:24 ◼   ► And it's, you were talking before about the beautiful synergy with the way you

01:48:28 ◼   ► work with an app and you know, the two of you, you're of one mind and you're getting

01:48:32 ◼   ► things done.

01:48:32 ◼   ► Yes.

01:48:33 ◼   ► This was the part that I didn't mention about that.

01:48:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:48:36 ◼   ► And like, I felt this way with Ulysses and particularly last year, the big

01:48:42 ◼   ► request I made was specifically for the ability to use all of these amazing

01:48:48 ◼   ► sidebar features of adding notes and images and seeing information about what

01:48:52 ◼   ► you're working on, like while you're working on it.

01:48:54 ◼   ► And it's like, Oh, I had seven glorious months until this redesign, which just

01:49:00 ◼   ► destroyed all of the value in the sidebar.

01:49:03 ◼   ► So, again, I'm really frustrated with that, but Ulysses still, for me, is the best.

01:49:11 ◼   ► It's still the best because of the way that you can divide up text.

01:49:14 ◼   ► It's the best because of the way it's really easy to rearrange things.

01:49:17 ◼   ► They're very lightweight but powerful ways to just say, like,

01:49:22 ◼   ► all of these things go together and these things don't.

01:49:26 ◼   ► You know, to mark different parts of a script to say,

01:49:29 ◼   ► don't include this in the word count because this is like meta information, you know, like there's

01:49:34 ◼   ► just so many nice things about it. It's very hard to move away but it feels a little bit like

01:49:40 ◼   ► I had a perfect tool and then it got pointlessly hobbled which is just a frustrating experience so

01:49:49 ◼   ► Ulysses is still the app that I'm using to write my scripts.

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01:52:19 ◼   ► Lightning round time!

01:52:20 ◼   ► Lightning round!

01:52:21 ◼   ► You wanna go first?

01:52:22 ◼   ► Uh yeah, I was just trying to think of how to make a lightning... what I was trying to

01:52:26 ◼   ► think there is... yeah but lightning sound effect that's not an upgrade laser sound effect

01:52:33 ◼   ► right?

01:52:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:52:35 ◼   ► Yeah I was like...

01:52:36 ◼   ► Right? Like what's lightning sound like? I don't know. It's hard.

01:52:39 ◼   ► Does lightning have a s- yeah it does. Thunder is the sound lightning makes, right?

01:52:44 ◼   ► Yeah like it's like a crack!

01:52:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:52:47 ◼   ► Pow! Lightning.

01:52:48 ◼   ► Crack pow.

01:52:49 ◼   ► Whizzbang.

01:52:50 ◼   ► Does it whizz and bang?

01:52:51 ◼   ► Zoom. I don't know. Look, it's hard. This is lightning sounds. Lightning round! Wham bam!

01:52:57 ◼   ► Okay, do you want to alternate? Should we do it that way?

01:53:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:53:01 ◼   ► Let's alternate with stuff really quick. Okay, I'm not going to talk about it right now because

01:53:04 ◼   ► I've talked about it so much last year, but lightning round, Fitbod is my exercise app,

01:53:09 ◼   ► which I also believe is a sponsor of this episode.

01:53:11 ◼   ► - Correct.

01:53:12 ◼   ► - But I cannot possibly skip over it in a state of the apps without mentioning it.

01:53:17 ◼   ► Fitbod is my exercise app of choice.

01:53:20 ◼   ► I loved it last year, and boy did I not know how important it was going to be this year

01:53:26 ◼   ► in lockdown time.

01:53:28 ◼   ► So without exaggeration, Fitbot is definitely the app that has made the biggest physical

01:53:35 ◼   ► impact on my life this year.

01:53:37 ◼   ► If you're looking for an exercise app, this is my number one recommendation to everyone.

01:53:42 ◼   ► Love it.

01:53:43 ◼   ► I'm not going to say anything about it.

01:53:45 ◼   ► Because at this point you have already said something about it.

01:53:47 ◼   ► I've already said something about it and I don't want to cross those streams.

01:53:52 ◼   ► Right.

01:53:53 ◼   ► Twitch I'm going with.

01:53:54 ◼   ► I've been watching lots of Twitch streams as I've been getting further and further

01:53:58 ◼   ► into the mechanical keyboard hobby over the last few months and the twitch app

01:54:03 ◼   ► on iOS is fantastic because it does everything you want it to do and it also

01:54:10 ◼   ► has really great picture-in-picture support which is so needed for Twitch

01:54:15 ◼   ► oh yeah that's really nice because twitch streams are usually very long and

01:54:20 ◼   ► usually for lots of lots and lots of stuff that you would watch a stream for

01:54:25 ◼   ► it's not like must focus viewing. Right? Like you can, lots of, a very normal way

01:54:33 ◼   ► to use Twitch is in the background and quote in the background of an iOS device

01:54:38 ◼   ► is in picture in picture, right? So you can still glance at it when you want to

01:54:42 ◼   ► but you can also be doing other things and Twitch was one of the first apps

01:54:46 ◼   ► that I used that took advantage of the iPhone picture in picture and it works

01:54:51 ◼   ► It's great for that too.

01:54:53 ◼   ► So the app has everything you want it to have

01:54:56 ◼   ► and also really does a good job of integrating the things

01:55:01 ◼   ► that it should to make it great.

01:55:03 ◼   ► Looking at you, YouTube.

01:55:04 ◼   ► - It's crazy YouTube doesn't do picture in picture support.

01:55:10 ◼   ► - I cannot believe at this point

01:55:11 ◼   ► that they do not have it available on iOS.

01:55:13 ◼   ► I believe it is on Android,

01:55:15 ◼   ► but even if it's just for premium, right?

01:55:18 ◼   ► Because you can do background listening.

01:55:21 ◼   ► I know.

01:55:22 ◼   ► If you're a YouTube Premium subscriber, you know, they have said that they were working

01:55:27 ◼   ► on it, I believe, a long time ago, but I can't believe they don't have it at this point.

01:55:31 ◼   ► My assumption is the only reason they haven't done it is because the way that they serve

01:55:36 ◼   ► their ads as separate video files, I can imagine might mess up what iOS wants to do.

01:55:44 ◼   ► Right, but that's why just do it for Premium then, if this is your problem.

01:55:47 ◼   ► Oh yeah, no, I completely agree.

01:55:49 ◼   ► I completely agree, but I think they're like, "No, no, no, we're not gonna do this until

01:55:52 ◼   ► we can make sure that you see an ad picture-in-picture without us having to, like, swap out the files

01:55:58 ◼   ► or whatever."

01:55:59 ◼   ► So that's my guess, but it's infuriating.

01:56:01 ◼   ► It's absolutely infuriating.

01:56:03 ◼   ► Okay, lightning round.

01:56:05 ◼   ► I have first VR app recommendation for lightning round.

01:56:11 ◼   ► We talked about VR.

01:56:12 ◼   ► This is definitely my year of the VR.

01:56:15 ◼   ► There's the classics like Beat Saber, which everyone will love.

01:56:19 ◼   ► You gotta play Beat Saber.

01:56:20 ◼   ► - Have you played Beat Saber?

01:56:21 ◼   ► I don't know how to ask you this.

01:56:22 ◼   ► Have you played the Beat Saber in like 360 degrees?

01:56:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I've played it in that one.

01:56:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, super good.

01:56:28 ◼   ► If you've not tried that and you have a quest

01:56:31 ◼   ► and maybe you played Beat Saber a long time ago

01:56:34 ◼   ► on a different system or whatever,

01:56:36 ◼   ► in 180 and 360 degrees, it's a totally different game

01:56:40 ◼   ► and it's fantastic.

01:56:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is fun.

01:56:42 ◼   ► I also recommend, it seems like people might not like it,

01:56:45 ◼   ► but I've also really enjoyed the one-handed mode

01:56:48 ◼   ► sometimes like some of the songs I feel like it's, it's a fun, slightly different experience,

01:56:54 ◼   ► uh, doing it with just one saber instead of two sabers. But anyway, Beat Saber is not

01:56:59 ◼   ► my lightning round recommendation, even though it's played a surprisingly important role

01:57:03 ◼   ► in my life this year.

01:57:04 ◼   ► Why are you talking about it? If it's not your pick, just make it a pick!

01:57:10 ◼   ► No it's not, it's not the pick, it's this, we just gotta, we gotta side-d-route. My actual

01:57:14 ◼   ► pick for this lightning round is a VR game called In Death and it is fucking amazing.

01:57:24 ◼   ► It is a game where you are an archer and you are traveling through this weird infinite

01:57:32 ◼   ► church in heaven trying to clear it out from monsters and bad guys. It's just an incredible

01:57:40 ◼   ► VR experience. Like, they've designed everything really well. I have rarely met a game that

01:57:46 ◼   ► gets the difficulty ramp so perfect, where every time it feels like a challenge and the

01:57:53 ◼   ► game just slightly cranks up the difficulty with enemies. Whatever team did the, like,

01:58:01 ◼   ► graphic design memory constraints should deserve some kind of award, because it's like, they

01:58:05 ◼   ► They do not waste a single pixel or a single polygon.

01:58:11 ◼   ► Like it's the graphic quality is shockingly good given the limitations of the quest and

01:58:18 ◼   ► like the number of enemies that they can have on screen at once.

01:58:21 ◼   ► I've just rarely seen anything handle it so well.

01:58:24 ◼   ► And it is just super fun to be an archer who can teleport around.

01:58:30 ◼   ► Like the only downside is you learn how physically difficult it is to be an archer, but that's

01:58:36 ◼   ► also an upside.

01:58:37 ◼   ► S - Is it scary?

01:58:38 ◼   ► B - I mean I don't think it's scary.

01:58:41 ◼   ► You might find it a little scary, Myke, but I can say that if you just avoid what are

01:58:47 ◼   ► obviously portals to hell, then you can avoid most of the scary stuff.

01:58:52 ◼   ► S - Okay.

01:58:53 ◼   ► B - And you can still play it with like some enemies.

01:58:55 ◼   ► S - Alright, I'll try it out then.

01:58:57 ◼   ► I really mean it, it's just a very enjoyable VR experience, by far my favorite game on

01:59:05 ◼   ► the Quest that I've tried, and I've tried like everything on that store.

01:59:09 ◼   ► I have to mention it because otherwise it wouldn't be a state of the apps Timery for

01:59:13 ◼   ► Timetracking.

01:59:14 ◼   ► It's the best.

01:59:15 ◼   ► Yeah, of course.

01:59:17 ◼   ► What can we say?

01:59:18 ◼   ► We've used it for years.

01:59:19 ◼   ► It's amazing.

01:59:20 ◼   ► I just really want it to be on the Mac now.

01:59:22 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I guess I didn't even think about that, but of course it can be on the Mac.

01:59:27 ◼   ► As of right now, it is not on the Mac.

01:59:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I said it can be.

01:59:32 ◼   ► - It can be.

01:59:33 ◼   ► - It can be on the Mac.

01:59:34 ◼   ► - But it isn't yet still.

01:59:36 ◼   ► - With timing stuff, I'll quickly mention the timer

01:59:39 ◼   ► that I found last year, which I really like

01:59:41 ◼   ► and have integrated much more into shortcut stuff

01:59:43 ◼   ► is Just Timers.

01:59:45 ◼   ► It is an app that is just timers

01:59:48 ◼   ► with good shortcut supports.

01:59:50 ◼   ► And I've built this into just a ton

01:59:53 ◼   ► of my own time tracking shortcuts

01:59:54 ◼   ► to like start a 120 minute timer

01:59:58 ◼   ► or start a seven minute timer

02:00:00 ◼   ► when I also start tracking this time.

02:00:03 ◼   ► I really like it and I find it's a great companion

02:00:05 ◼   ► for time tracking.

02:00:07 ◼   ► - Air table.

02:00:09 ◼   ► So I've moved away from the old favorite

02:00:12 ◼   ► pipe drive sales management tool.

02:00:14 ◼   ► - Oh my goodness.

02:00:15 ◼   ► - We've moved everything to air table now.

02:00:18 ◼   ► - I'm shocked.

02:00:18 ◼   ► - So you know how--

02:00:20 ◼   ► - What about your tactile feedback?

02:00:21 ◼   ► - Well, okay.

02:00:23 ◼   ► pour one out for the great tactile feedback of, of pipe drive and it's button pressing.

02:00:27 ◼   ► I'm genuinely sad for you here.

02:00:29 ◼   ► You know how your assistant said, I would like to use Notion now?

02:00:34 ◼   ► Yes.

02:00:35 ◼   ► So my sales manager, Carrie, decided that she had used Airtable enough that

02:00:41 ◼   ► everything needed to live in Airtable and strongly recommended that we move

02:00:45 ◼   ► the final part of our sales management flow to Airtable away from pipe drive.

02:00:50 ◼   ► Basically it ended up being worthwhile to have just one database of all of our clients that can be displayed in the many different ways

02:00:57 ◼   ► The Airtable can display a database depending on what information you'd see which is really great

02:01:03 ◼   ► Except their iOS app is terrible. I hate it. I hate it so much. I hate it

02:01:09 ◼   ► So I use the website

02:01:10 ◼   ► the reason I hate it is Airtable's whole thing is like give us a bunch of information and

02:01:15 ◼   ► And our thing is you can view it in many different ways.

02:01:19 ◼   ► So you can view it as a spreadsheet, you can view it as a database, you can view it as a

02:01:23 ◼   ► like lots of filters, you can view it as a Kanban, our favorite word of the show.

02:01:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

02:01:28 ◼   ► But on iOS, none of these things work.

02:01:30 ◼   ► And they've always said like we're working on bringing them over for years and they've never done it.

02:01:35 ◼   ► So one of the great things about iPadOS is that you can use these complex websites now.

02:01:43 ◼   ► and so it's just a tab in Safari for me on iPadOS.

02:01:47 ◼   ► So it makes me so mad because what makes me mad is in the app, right, I'm going to open the app now

02:01:54 ◼   ► because I need to read exactly what it says just for the sake of it. "This view can't be displayed

02:01:59 ◼   ► in the iOS app yet. Please use airtable.com in a desktop browser to display and edit it.

02:02:05 ◼   ► Yet, yet, how many years has yet been a thing airtable?"

02:02:11 ◼   ► you know, yet is always true.

02:02:12 ◼   ► Just don't make an app if you're not going to bother adding the features to it

02:02:17 ◼   ► that make your service a thing that people want to use.

02:02:20 ◼   ► I don't use it on my iPhone at all, basically.

02:02:24 ◼   ► It's just on my iPad and on my Macs.

02:02:27 ◼   ► But this is one of those things where for her is such a great tool and the things

02:02:34 ◼   ► that Kerry has done with it make it, my frustration, not important.

02:02:40 ◼   ► because we do really have so much information all in one place now that is worthwhile.

02:02:47 ◼   ► But I hate the app.

02:02:51 ◼   ► Okay I'm going to lightning round a little app called Home Design 3D. Now it has a yellow icon.

02:03:03 ◼   ► The reason I'm mentioning this is because I'm going to find the exact link for you because the

02:03:08 ◼   ► The App Store is littered with absolutely garbage home design apps for like,

02:03:13 ◼   ► "Oh, how am I gonna lay out this room?"

02:03:15 ◼   ► Alright?

02:03:16 ◼   ► There's a million of them and most of them are terrible.

02:03:19 ◼   ► They're absolutely terrible.

02:03:21 ◼   ► But when I was planning what my new home office would be,

02:03:26 ◼   ► I realized at some point, like, I need to think about this with an actual app

02:03:30 ◼   ► that can lay out desks and arrangements and I can see it in 3D.

02:03:34 ◼   ► And everything was terrible until I found this one in particular.

02:03:37 ◼   ► So if anyone is trying to design a room in their house or their whole house,

02:03:42 ◼   ► let me save you a bunch of effort and just tell you which app to use.

02:03:46 ◼   ► It's called Home Design 3D, but they're all called Home Design.

02:03:49 ◼   ► So I'll give the actual link to Myke so he can put it in the show notes.

02:03:53 ◼   ► Okay.

02:03:53 ◼   ► I'm looking now and I don't think I can find it.

02:03:56 ◼   ► So I'm definitely going to need your help.

02:03:58 ◼   ► Oh, I guarantee you, if you search for Home Design, you're not going to find it.

02:04:02 ◼   ► Like that's why I'll give you the link.

02:04:05 ◼   ► Deliveries is one of the all-time great iOS apps for parcel tracking and it got a really nice visual update this year.

02:04:12 ◼   ► This has been an application I have really gotten a lot of use out of in 2020

02:04:18 ◼   ► because I have to get everything delivered now because I don't go out to buy things anymore.

02:04:23 ◼   ► Is Amazon an app? Can I pick Amazon?

02:04:27 ◼   ► If you wanna!

02:04:30 ◼   ► I'll tell you, I've opened the Amazon app more this year than the past five years.

02:04:35 ◼   ► Deliveroo is my next book.

02:04:37 ◼   ► Yeah, Deliveroo.

02:04:38 ◼   ► For sure.

02:04:39 ◼   ► So yeah, Deliveroo is a really, really fantastic iOS app.

02:04:44 ◼   ► Other quick little one is an app called DoubleTake.

02:04:48 ◼   ► This was demoed on stage at Apple last year, the year before, as one of their cool new

02:04:55 ◼   ► things that you can do with the new operating system.

02:04:57 ◼   ► It took a long time to actually come out, but it's the app that lets you shoot video

02:05:03 ◼   ► on two of the cameras at once on the iPhone.

02:05:07 ◼   ► Oh, double take by Filmic.

02:05:08 ◼   ► Okay.

02:05:09 ◼   ► Yes, double take by Filmic.

02:05:10 ◼   ► Did they never add this to the Filmic Pro app then?

02:05:14 ◼   ► So as far as I can tell, it is still not part of the Filmic Pro app.

02:05:18 ◼   ► Something bad happened there, didn't it?

02:05:20 ◼   ► That's what it feels like.

02:05:21 ◼   ► Because this was supposed to be a feature coming to Filmic Pro, and I guess it just

02:05:26 ◼   ► never did that.

02:05:27 ◼   ► This is also partly why I'm mentioning now is I feel like it just got spun off into its

02:05:32 ◼   ► own thing and many people might have forgotten this is even a thing that you could do because

02:05:37 ◼   ► it just never seemed to appear where it was supposed to.

02:05:40 ◼   ► But it does exist as an app and obviously this is a really edge case niche use but if

02:05:48 ◼   ► you want to record from two cameras at once you can do it and sometimes that's a really

02:05:53 ◼   ► useful thing to be able to do.

02:05:54 ◼   ► So double take lightning round.

02:05:57 ◼   ► I'm a simple man. I have simple needs. When it comes to Reddit, I use an app called Narwhal.

02:06:05 ◼   ► It's super simple and that's what I like about it and everyone says "Use Apollo!" and like

02:06:09 ◼   ► okay. Every time I download Apollo I feel like it's more than I want from Reddit. Because

02:06:16 ◼   ► every time I download it I'm like okay, this doesn't look like what I want it to look like

02:06:22 ◼   ► And I know I can get it to look like what I want it to look like, but at that point

02:06:26 ◼   ► I've just recreated narwhal again.

02:06:30 ◼   ► So I go back to narwhal every time.

02:06:32 ◼   ► It's really nice, it's really simple.

02:06:34 ◼   ► I don't use reddit very much.

02:06:37 ◼   ► I don't look at any of the popular subreddits, right?

02:06:41 ◼   ► Like I'm not, I don't like the front page or anything like that.

02:06:45 ◼   ► I just subscribe to a couple of subreddits and that's it.

02:06:50 ◼   ► And so Narwhal is all I ever need.

02:06:53 ◼   ► My next pick is going to be an app called Zero.

02:06:57 ◼   ► And Zero is maybe one of the simplest apps I've ever used.

02:07:03 ◼   ► It is just a timer that is specifically designed for fasting.

02:07:09 ◼   ► Many years ago, I successfully won the war on breakfast.

02:07:14 ◼   ► And breakfast was no more in my life.

02:07:16 ◼   ► and have been experimenting with expanding that battlefront to the war on lunch, which

02:07:22 ◼   ► we can all agree is the worst meal.

02:07:24 ◼   ► What, you're just planning one meal a day now? What are you doing?

02:07:28 ◼   ► Look, maybe, right? But if you are interested in fasting for whatever reason and you want

02:07:36 ◼   ► a little timer to keep track of it, it's a dead simple app but it's just nicely designed,

02:07:42 ◼   ► and so Zero is a fasting tracking timer.

02:07:46 ◼   ► If I'm looking at the right one, it doesn't look that simple.

02:07:49 ◼   ► It's got a lot of stuff in it, like coaching.

02:07:54 ◼   ► You don't need any of that stuff.

02:07:57 ◼   ► You want to give us money?

02:07:58 ◼   ► Great.

02:07:59 ◼   ► Now we can provide you with things that you almost certainly don't need.

02:08:02 ◼   ► You just use the app without any of the in-app purchase stuff.

02:08:05 ◼   ► Just a very nice little timer and it has a nice little widget to go along with it.

02:08:10 ◼   ► Peacock.