Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Two videos. You've returned. You've returned to YouTube. Six month break, two videos, three weeks apart.

00:00:07 ◼   ► You alright over there? You doing okay?

00:00:10 ◼   ► I was gonna say, was I ever away from YouTube?

00:00:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Uh, does six months count as away? You know, maybe it does.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Let's see if your Wikipedia page is, if they've moved it around again.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Oh, no, don't give those people the--

00:00:26 ◼   ► No, no, you're back. You're back. Educational YouTuber and podcaster. They switched it back around.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And everybody knows now. They know you're back to YouTube. I was very surprised by this. I was

00:00:37 ◼   ► surprised to see one pop up and then like another one like three weeks later. You're on a tear again.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Is it now going to be like four years until the next one?

00:00:46 ◼   ► Well, don't set up an expectation like on a tear. You're not doing me any favors or something like

00:00:52 ◼   ► that Myke. Look, it is as it always ever was. Videos. When do they come out? They come out

00:01:01 ◼   ► when they come out. They're not late, they're not early, they arrive on their publication

00:01:07 ◼   ► date. So there happen to be two, but you know, don't use phrases like "on a tear". It just

00:01:16 ◼   ► is what it is.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Well, I'm just going to say, you're doing a lot to set them up. You're like story for

00:01:21 ◼   ► another time you keep saying it you know like I'm just gonna say you're putting it out there

00:01:25 ◼   ► for people you know you're only you're only making your own bed here.

00:01:28 ◼   ► No I disagree I disagree look I was just I couldn't talk about the Indian reservations

00:01:32 ◼   ► in the second one and so I'm just I wanted to acknowledge that and then move right along

00:01:36 ◼   ► that's what story for another time is. Yep. You know you just sometimes you have to reference

00:01:40 ◼   ► a thing that people are going to ask about and that maybe you think you're going to make a video

00:01:44 ◼   ► about but then when the video actually gets published you're so exhausted with the topic

00:01:47 ◼   ► that you never get around to it. Maybe that's what happens sometimes with a story for another

00:01:52 ◼   ► time. It's like a release. It's like a release valve.

00:01:55 ◼   ► It's a release valve. Don't look over here. Look over there.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Yeah, or it's like a get out of one video free card that you can play on the table with

00:02:01 ◼   ► story for another time.

00:02:02 ◼   ► It's YouTuber Monopoly.

00:02:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:04 ◼   ► That's got to exist, right? That must exist. Did you see they have a millennials monopoly

00:02:09 ◼   ► now, where like you never own any property? This is real. They make it.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:02:16 ◼   ► It's real.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Oh, that's terrible. That's really terrible.

00:02:20 ◼   ► It's good, right?

00:02:21 ◼   ► That makes me so sad for your people.

00:02:23 ◼   ► It's so bad.

00:02:24 ◼   ► It's almost like I can't believe they made it, but it's true.

00:02:27 ◼   ► Like, it's a real thing.

00:02:29 ◼   ► There's no owning property.

00:02:32 ◼   ► And the actual tagline on the box,

00:02:36 ◼   ► it almost seems like this is a joke, but you can buy it.

00:02:38 ◼   ► It says, "Forget real estate. You can't afford it anyway."

00:02:41 ◼   ► That is the tagline on the box for Millennial Monopoly.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Oh god, it's so sad.

00:02:48 ◼   ► It's crazy, right?

00:02:50 ◼   ► I'm trying to find the bo- so like what happens when you- what happens when you land on Park Place?

00:02:53 ◼   ► I don't understand. You just- you just pay money all the time? Is that how that works?

00:02:56 ◼   ► You're paying rent.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And it's a quicker game.

00:02:59 ◼   ► So you what, you start with like a thousand dollars and whoever runs out of rent first is the first loser?

00:03:03 ◼   ► There's like- they've got exa- I'm looking at a Guardian article about it.

00:03:06 ◼   ► They have community chess cards like, "Your free web streaming trial expires. Pay the bank $40."

00:03:11 ◼   ► [snorts]

00:03:13 ◼   ► And instead of like, and it has like emoji icons and hashtags and stuff as the pieces instead of like top hats and whatever.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Oh it's so sad.

00:03:23 ◼   ► It is terrible, really.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Oh okay, but like, I mean some of this makes me angry right?

00:03:27 ◼   ► Because like one of these things is a week-long meditation retreat, pay $50.

00:03:33 ◼   ► I was like, but I was thinking of doing something like that, that sounds like fun.

00:03:36 ◼   ► It's kind of ridiculous really.

00:03:38 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like I'm not sure if they're doing it to troll everyone or not.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Like I can't work it out.

00:03:45 ◼   ► Like, so the, the, the, on the board, right?

00:03:48 ◼   ► You've got parents basement, friends couch.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Wait, wait a minute. Like Hasbro has made this.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it's real. You can buy it.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Yeah, no, like I was thinking it was a parody or something.

00:03:58 ◼   ► But no, so.

00:03:59 ◼   ► It looks like it though. But no, this is a legit, complete troll of people.

00:04:03 ◼   ► This may be the saddest thing we've ever discussed on the show.

00:04:05 ◼   ► It's terrible, right?

00:04:06 ◼   ► This may be the saddest thing we've ever discussed on the show.

00:04:08 ◼   ► It's terrible. I can't believe they made it, really.

00:04:11 ◼   ► And like... I don't know. I don't get them.

00:04:14 ◼   ► But anyway, so going back to your videos.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Right, so wait, how do we get off on this? Oh, right.

00:04:19 ◼   ► YouTuber Monopoly.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Surely that must exist. I agree with you.

00:04:23 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure how the mechanisms of that would work because you couldn't be scooping up

00:04:27 ◼   ► YouTube channels so you'd have to land on, I don't know.

00:04:30 ◼   ► No, each square is a different channel and while you're there, you're collabing.

00:04:36 ◼   ► Oh, perfect!

00:04:37 ◼   ► Right, so you have like, Hbgray square, the MKBHD square, the iJustine square, and they're all worth different amounts.

00:04:45 ◼   ► And it's not money, right? Like, it has their subscriber counts instead of money on the bottom.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Right, and that also makes perfect sense because you could, like the properties, you could group YouTubers together.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Do like a big collab thing.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Yeah, right, or like people who are in similar fields, they're the equivalent of a property.

00:05:02 ◼   ► So then when you get the collab of three edutubers and it's like boom now you can build hotels or whatever

00:05:08 ◼   ► Whatever the equivalent is. I like it.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Is that the phrase "edutuber"?

00:05:11 ◼   ► I've heard this phrase a lot recently.

00:05:15 ◼   ► I've been traveling and I just came back from what could be described as an "edutube conference"

00:05:23 ◼   ► ThinkerCon down in Huntsville, Alabama run by my friend Destin.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And yeah, I heard the phrase "edutuber" a bunch

00:05:31 ◼   ► Look, language sometimes it's like the waves of the ocean.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Like, that makes my skin crawl, that word, collab.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I have been hearing collab for so many years I don't even register it anymore.

00:05:43 ◼   ► I'm sure you've heard it an awful lot during your Edge YouTube conference, right?

00:05:47 ◼   ► I'm sure there were lots of people that wanted to collab with you during that period of time.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I genuinely think I've forgotten that collab was ever an abbreviation.

00:05:57 ◼   ► That I think in my mind is just the word now.

00:06:00 ◼   ► So like, do you start shortening it? Like, you're gonna do a lab? Like you just start shortening that word?

00:06:06 ◼   ► Yeah, that is what's going to happen. Yeah, you're gonna do a lab with someone.

00:06:10 ◼   ► But it's really nice to see your videos. I like that I have always enjoyed your videos,

00:06:16 ◼   ► but I like seeing a return to the kind of more traditional format, right? Which has been gone for a bit.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I mean, you didn't enjoy so much my path of wandering through a garden of death.

00:06:28 ◼   ► No, but even the death videos, like these ones are in the style of that, right?

00:06:33 ◼   ► Like, because you did your vlog, you did the dragon tyrant video, like they were more departures

00:06:39 ◼   ► from your typical style.

00:06:40 ◼   ► And whilst I enjoyed those, it's nice to have the more kind of traditional video back with

00:06:45 ◼   ► the kind of more recent added flair of the enhanced animation and stuff.

00:06:50 ◼   ► So yeah, they were really great.

00:06:51 ◼   ► I was pleased to see you make your return.

00:06:54 ◼   ► But I wondered if there was, I don't know, if there's anything different about those

00:06:57 ◼   ► videos that you wanted to touch on at all, like in the production process or anything

00:07:00 ◼   ► like that, I don't know.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, as much as I may deny it, I will also secretly acknowledge that yes, I

00:07:12 ◼   ► understand that these two videos are a return to form. And I don't mind after, we could

00:07:19 ◼   ► call it a break, but after a little while of not having videos up on the YouTube channel,

00:07:25 ◼   ► I don't mind having two in a row that I think are what people think of in their head as

00:07:32 ◼   ► like, quote, "traditional CGP Grey videos."

00:07:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Right?

00:07:37 ◼   ► Like, though I will firmly maintain the channel is mine and I can do with it whatever I like.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Of course.

00:07:41 ◼   ► Nonetheless, I can acknowledge that in people's heads, they have an idea of this is what a

00:07:46 ◼   ► traditional video is like.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Yep.

00:07:49 ◼   ► But yeah, so how much behind the scenes should I say?

00:07:54 ◼   ► Alright, let's have some behind the scenes here.

00:07:56 ◼   ► So one of the reasons why I particularly don't like you discussing about these videos as being on a tear is because...

00:08:05 ◼   ► Alright, I don't really have any control over what videos are made. Just to be clear.

00:08:14 ◼   ► No, no, that's not. They don't grow, right?

00:08:18 ◼   ► No, no, look, no, but let me elaborate.

00:08:23 ◼   ► You must have at least a little bit.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Well, no, I genuinely don't think that I do. In this sense, like, I don't-- I think I've written it somewhere

00:08:32 ◼   ► somewhere on the internet it exists as like the tagline

00:08:35 ◼   ► for my channel of like, "I make videos that are interesting to me." Like, this is the idea of the channel and

00:08:42 ◼   ► humans cannot control what they are interested in.

00:08:50 ◼   ► So that's why like when I've done videos that are different it's because like oh, I'm

00:08:54 ◼   ► Interested in life extension as a topic right now

00:08:56 ◼   ► And I find like I can't have it leave my brain and there's like oh and then this video appears

00:09:01 ◼   ► So I mean it in in that sense like I've been in a lot of situations where for example say another

00:09:09 ◼   ► Edutuber wants to collab and we please stop. I'm sorry another edutuber wants to lab with me

00:09:15 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, that was what I was looking for. Yeah. Thank you

00:09:20 ◼   ► And they'll suggest a topic of,

00:09:23 ◼   ► "Oh, here's a thing that we could do."

00:09:24 ◼   ► But I genuinely find it impossible

00:09:29 ◼   ► to create a video on a suggested topic

00:09:32 ◼   ► if it doesn't grip me in some way.

00:09:35 ◼   ► Because making these videos is a little bit

00:09:38 ◼   ► of a crazy process.

00:09:40 ◼   ► And so I've been in that situation a bunch

00:09:44 ◼   ► where it would be really advantageous

00:09:47 ◼   ► if I could create a video on topic X.

00:09:51 ◼   ► And I've tried, and those always just fizzle out into like, "Oh, this is terrible.

00:09:58 ◼   ► This is terrible, and it's boring, and it's not interesting, and it's not fun, and I just can't make it."

00:10:03 ◼   ► But so, it's like, I'm very glad that the videos that have gone up are a "return to form,"

00:10:10 ◼   ► But it really is mostly just that this topic gripped me a couple months ago,

00:10:18 ◼   ► and I could not let it go.

00:10:22 ◼   ► And it all started around this idea of,

00:10:26 ◼   ► "Hey, the Statue of Liberty is a national monument."

00:10:28 ◼   ► Like, what does that mean?

00:10:29 ◼   ► What does it mean to say that it's a national monument?

00:10:31 ◼   ► I know these things exist.

00:10:33 ◼   ► I don't know anything about them.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And I started researching them.

00:10:37 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, down the rabbit hole we go," right?

00:10:40 ◼   ► Like it starts to get very complicated.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And at one point I'm thinking,

00:10:44 ◼   ► "Hey, I sort of remember in high school something coming up about New Jersey wanting to steal the Statue of Liberty.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Like, what was the deal with that?"

00:10:52 ◼   ► And looking into these things.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And these two videos in my mind were basically created at the same time almost as one video.

00:11:04 ◼   ► That's why there are two in such a close approximation to each other.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, you were working on all this at the same time,

00:11:11 ◼   ► but it was too much for one, so it kind of got split into two.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Yeah, nobody wants a 20-minute long fast talking video like that.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Like, it would just be way too much.

00:11:22 ◼   ► But yeah, so it ended up being this, like, weird project that,

00:11:27 ◼   ► more than anything in a really long time, dragged me down into the depths of

00:11:33 ◼   ► research hell. Like, I was at the point where it was very interesting, but I was

00:11:40 ◼   ► even doing things like listening to the oral arguments at the Supreme Court case

00:11:44 ◼   ► in the 90s over Staten Island and Ellis Island and what was going to happen with

00:11:48 ◼   ► those two. It's very interesting to listen to because it's like, man, I've

00:11:52 ◼   ► never I've never listened to an oral argument in the Supreme Court before.

00:11:56 ◼   ► It's interesting that they have those recordings. I never thought about it. And

00:11:59 ◼   ► And it's also really interesting to hear that New York is clearly going to lose from like the first two minutes.

00:12:06 ◼   ► I don't know how the Supreme Court's supposed to work, I imagine that they are just neutral angels who just decide things in terms of righteousness,

00:12:14 ◼   ► but it sure seemed like they had pre-decided that New York was going to lose and were not very happy with that.

00:12:19 ◼   ► But anyway, it was interesting, like, going through all of this stuff and ending up in the process of trying to figure out which thing belongs in which video.

00:12:34 ◼   ► And I know when people watch the finished videos it can seem like it's obvious that, oh, the Statue of Liberty is a separate story that doesn't really have anything to do with federal land,

00:12:44 ◼   ► Federal Land, and Federal Land is a completely separate story that doesn't really have anything

00:12:49 ◼   ► to do with the Statue of Liberty. But when you don't yet know what the videos are, it's

00:12:55 ◼   ► not at all obvious. So it takes a long time to sort out these two parts and to say what

00:13:02 ◼   ► goes over here and what goes over there. But I don't think I've ever had two videos where

00:13:10 ◼   ► The script to the next one was so close to finish when I finished the first one.

00:13:17 ◼   ► But it was because it was like this Siamese twin of things that I just kept coming across

00:13:24 ◼   ► as like, "Oh, they're all related," and eventually settling on, "Here's the two constellations

00:13:28 ◼   ► of what this one should be about and what that one should be about."

00:13:33 ◼   ► So it seems like, I kinda get what you're saying, right?

00:13:36 ◼   ► like these things you have to be interested in them to make them so to be interested in them I

00:13:43 ◼   ► know for you begins with like the research because that's where I guess the story ends up being found

00:13:51 ◼   ► is like can you find enough interesting material to build from and so I guess it's that right like

00:13:57 ◼   ► if if the research doesn't work the videos won't work and I know that the research is like an

00:14:02 ◼   ► incredibly important part of it all for you.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Yeah, in some ways it feels like a little bit like mining, where you're digging around

00:14:13 ◼   ► and tons of stuff that you're working through is dirt, but you have to go through all of

00:14:21 ◼   ► it to try to find the things that are the little gems of like, "Oh, this is an interesting

00:14:26 ◼   ► piece of information."

00:14:27 ◼   ► I think I understand that.

00:14:28 ◼   ► Yeah?

00:14:29 ◼   ► where you do it really intensively, I do it every single week, right?

00:14:33 ◼   ► Like for all of the shows that I do is like, here's all of the news.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Right. Yes.

00:14:39 ◼   ► You've got to pick the things that are worth talking about.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And they could, and they're not always like completely obvious because sometimes

00:14:47 ◼   ► the biggest Apple related story of the week absolutely is the most boring thing.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Right? So for example,

00:14:54 ◼   ► there was a video about the iPads being bent by the guy who bends iPads and it

00:14:58 ◼   ► was everywhere, but I had literally no interest in discussing it, even though it was the biggest

00:15:02 ◼   ► story because there's no discussion. Like, congratulations, you bent an iPad. I feel

00:15:07 ◼   ► really happy for you, right? But it's not a story. But then you end up finding like,

00:15:12 ◼   ► oh, there was this little thing that was kind of interesting, maybe it's funny and we'll

00:15:15 ◼   ► talk about it instead.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Yeah, you also have, like, I have this problem too, but you have it in much more of an intense

00:15:21 ◼   ► way where when you're digging through the gigantic slush pile of the news, like, I imagine

00:15:26 ◼   ► you're also a little bit triangulating against what other people are going to talk about?

00:15:32 ◼   ► Like that thing of this story may be somewhat interesting, but by the time the discussion

00:15:40 ◼   ► goes up, it will have been talked to death and trying to be like, "Oh."

00:15:44 ◼   ► It's not just picking the story, it's picking the story and then trying to find an angle

00:15:49 ◼   ► which you hope is interesting and unique enough.

00:15:52 ◼   ► I do not envy you for that.

00:15:54 ◼   ► I know I don't always hit that, but I always am trying for it, right?

00:15:58 ◼   ► And I think a lot of the time we're able to, and like it's the same with this show as well,

00:16:01 ◼   ► like what can you find that's interesting to talk about in a specific thing?

00:16:06 ◼   ► And you just hope that you find it, right?

00:16:08 ◼   ► But it's all down to research.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's interesting the way different people work on this stuff.

00:16:19 ◼   ► And I don't know if I mentioned before on the show, but do you know the YouTube channel

00:16:25 ◼   ► Every Frame a Painting?

00:16:27 ◼   ► Yes.

00:16:28 ◼   ► So did you ever read their quitting YouTube article that they wrote?

00:16:32 ◼   ► No, I didn't know that was a thing.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Yeah, so find it for the show notes.

00:16:37 ◼   ► They wrote this long article about why they were stopping the YouTube channel.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Which made everybody sad because, like, they're...

00:16:48 ◼   ► For listeners who don't know, they did what I guarantee you've seen a million of on YouTube,

00:16:54 ◼   ► is these video essays about movies.

00:16:58 ◼   ► And I think almost every one of the video essays about movies channels can directly

00:17:07 ◼   ► point their lineage right back to every frame of painting, which I think solidified the

00:17:14 ◼   ► genre and also is unparalleled.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Their videos were so good and so interesting.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And in their article about leaving YouTube, one of the things that I find very fascinating

00:17:30 ◼   ► was they talked about their research process for doing this.

00:17:35 ◼   ► And I would always, I would aspire to this, although I could never possibly do it.

00:17:41 ◼   ► One of their rules was no internet sources.

00:17:45 ◼   ► So when they were researching videos, they wouldn't use the internet.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Like they wouldn't, they wouldn't type into Google to find out information about the movie

00:17:54 ◼   ► they were making an essay on.

00:17:56 ◼   ► They 100% went to the library to find books about things.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:18:02 ◼   ► And well, yes, but I think about that and I think, "Why did they do that?"

00:18:07 ◼   ► And one of the reasons is, if they're thinking of it in terms of mining, the internet is

00:18:15 ◼   ► already this well-mined area.

00:18:20 ◼   ► And now, in the modern age, the library and physical printed books are a much more untapped

00:18:27 ◼   ► resource.

00:18:28 ◼   ► If you're making a video essay about The Shining,

00:18:32 ◼   ► there's a million people who want to do that

00:18:34 ◼   ► and who will look for articles about The Shining.

00:18:37 ◼   ► But there are for sure very serious film enthusiasts

00:18:41 ◼   ► who have written books about The Shining

00:18:43 ◼   ► that are much less likely to come across.

00:18:46 ◼   ► And so if you're trying to do background reading

00:18:49 ◼   ► on a topic, you're going to find maybe more gemstones

00:18:53 ◼   ► that other people haven't found on this topic

00:18:56 ◼   ► if you're using a high quality source

00:18:59 ◼   ► that maybe fewer people use.

00:19:01 ◼   ► - Well, and I guess the inverse of it as well

00:19:03 ◼   ► is if you want to be original

00:19:06 ◼   ► and you don't look at any YouTube videos,

00:19:10 ◼   ► you're more likely, I guess,

00:19:11 ◼   ► to be less like other YouTube videos.

00:19:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and ever since I read that article,

00:19:18 ◼   ► I've always thought about that,

00:19:19 ◼   ► and I view that as a platonic ideal to aim for,

00:19:24 ◼   ► but it's something I know I'll never achieve,

00:19:26 ◼   ► like the internet is just too useful. But it is,

00:19:30 ◼   ► it is very useful to try to dig down into other sources.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And it's such an interesting thing. Like I was, I was talking to Kurtz Kazzat,

00:19:39 ◼   ► I know you can pronounce that channel very well.

00:19:41 ◼   ► Very good. At my edutube conference that I was attending and

00:19:47 ◼   ► I have to do it Myke, you're just asking it for it. But it was interesting.

00:19:53 ◼   ► Like, we were talking about this thing that happens where...

00:19:57 ◼   ► Let's say you're trying to do all your background reading for a video that you want to produce,

00:20:02 ◼   ► and you're doing it entirely online.

00:20:04 ◼   ► It is terrifying how often you find these little loops of internet articles

00:20:13 ◼   ► or, like, newspaper articles that all reference each other in a circle that closes.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Right? Where it's like how on earth does this happen?

00:20:23 ◼   ► Where a thing just becomes a thing that everybody starts to reference

00:20:27 ◼   ► and it's very hard to know like where did this thing originally come from?

00:20:31 ◼   ► And I ran into a few of those with this video in particular.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Which did end up with me attempting to go down a little bit more the route of

00:20:44 ◼   ► let me try to find things that people probably haven't gone across

00:20:51 ◼   ► if they're making a video on this topic, or if videos on this topic already exist.

00:20:57 ◼   ► And yeah, it was very interesting, but I definitely ended up much more obsessive about this topic

00:21:06 ◼   ► than some of the ones in the past, and it did end up with me actually going into a library.

00:21:13 ◼   ► into a library and getting books, like physical books and newspapers on this topic to do some

00:21:21 ◼   ► of the background reading.

00:21:22 ◼   ► And it was a really interesting experience, but I thought I would mention it to you, Myke,

00:21:29 ◼   ► because there's a funny Cortex crossover here.

00:21:32 ◼   ► So you may remember two episodes ago, I said something like, "Oh, I don't use my iPad anymore."

00:21:39 ◼   ► And it just lays on the table and I don't touch it.

00:21:42 ◼   ► I don't think you said those exact words. I think that you wouldn't want to break my heart that way

00:21:46 ◼   ► I don't remember you saying that. That may have been what you were thinking, but they weren't the words you said, I'm sure of it

00:21:52 ◼   ► Yeah, they weren't exactly the words I said, but it was, you know, the gist of it.

00:21:55 ◼   ► But so, literally two days after that episode went up

00:22:00 ◼   ► I like I fell off into the like I'm doing the deep deep reading on this topic now and

00:22:05 ◼   ► Some of the books I was trying to get a hold of

00:22:10 ◼   ► like no joke, books from the 1800s about the history of New York and New Jersey trying to trace some things down.

00:22:17 ◼   ► I had to get

00:22:20 ◼   ► membership in a couple of special libraries to be able to get these books because like they just don't exist online and

00:22:26 ◼   ► the main research library that I was using had a no computers rule.

00:22:36 ◼   ► The rule was you can come into the library and you can have pen and paper

00:22:41 ◼   ► But you can't you can't bring a computer

00:22:44 ◼   ► because the typing sounds of a keyboard are too offensive in a

00:22:49 ◼   ► Serious research library which I can actually get behind. I was

00:22:55 ◼   ► Very annoyed and surprised when I showed up with my gigantic 15-inch MacBook Pro like hi

00:23:01 ◼   ► I want to look at some of your books

00:23:05 ◼   ► "No, you will not be able to do that."

00:23:09 ◼   ► But so, I found, I found a

00:23:13 ◼   ► loophole. And what do you think that loophole was, Myke?

00:23:17 ◼   ► Was it typing on a glass screen? Okay, so I asked

00:23:21 ◼   ► them, and like, well, next time I come I have an iPad.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Can I use this? And they say, "Will you be typing?" And I go,

00:23:29 ◼   ► "Of course not! I won't be typing at all. There's no keyboard

00:23:33 ◼   ► on this thing. In fact, it's just going to be on the screen a picture of a piece of paper

00:23:39 ◼   ► that I will be writing on with a pencil." And the librarian paused.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Pondered this fantastical technology.

00:23:45 ◼   ► You know, "The rule is paper and a pencil." I was like, "Well, this device is literally

00:23:51 ◼   ► called a pencil, and I'm going to have a picture of a piece of paper. How close can I get?"

00:23:55 ◼   ► And it was deemed that bringing an iPad into the research library was perfectly acceptable.

00:24:02 ◼   ► And then I ended up having, like...

00:24:06 ◼   ► This was going-- You remember I was talking about how, like,

00:24:09 ◼   ► "Oh, things are so great."

00:24:10 ◼   ► Like, I'm just having these perfect nail-em-out-of-the-park days working on stuff.

00:24:15 ◼   ► Again, I think that was an episode or so ago.

00:24:17 ◼   ► So I never like to talk about videos when I'm working on them.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And I've, like-- Like a fool, I've broken that rule a couple of times in my life,

00:24:29 ◼   ► and I have always regretted it.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it never goes well. Like it doesn't. It doesn't go well.

00:24:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it just never goes well. The only time I will talk about a video is like once the audio has been recorded and

00:24:42 ◼   ► the basic animations are done, then I feel like oh this rock is already starting to roll downhill and there's nothing to stop it.

00:24:49 ◼   ► But I've always regretted talking about the videos

00:24:53 ◼   ► before that process. It always feels like it just deflates it. And so I was working on

00:24:59 ◼   ► these two videos then.

00:25:01 ◼   ► But I was also just... I was in like the world's most pleasant working routine.

00:25:06 ◼   ► I was like, this is how I know life is going smooth.

00:25:08 ◼   ► It's like I would get up, I would go into my glass cube,

00:25:12 ◼   ► I would do a couple hours of writing, and then when I felt myself start to flag with the writing,

00:25:17 ◼   ► I picked up my old iPad Pro,

00:25:20 ◼   ► brought it with me, trucked off like I was in school again to the library,

00:25:25 ◼   ► and

00:25:27 ◼   ► spent another couple of hours at the library every day just with the iPad and like

00:25:33 ◼   ► going through some of the research material that I had gotten librarians to get for me and

00:25:38 ◼   ► just really spending the time to read a bunch of these very boring old documents and

00:25:43 ◼   ► It was great like boy was that just a

00:25:48 ◼   ► perfect little routine for me to be in and

00:25:53 ◼   ► for you Myke this this gift that I have for you is that I do want to say that I feel like I've found

00:25:59 ◼   ► The new role for the iPad in my life, which is the iPad is this little

00:26:06 ◼   ► research companion

00:26:09 ◼   ► This is this is great. Like this is the role for this thing. And then once I thought about it in that way, I

00:26:17 ◼   ► Started to use it very intentionally in that way. Like if I'm ever in

00:26:22 ◼   ► video reading research mode,

00:26:24 ◼   ► do it on the iPad, like sit in a comfy chair, sit back and

00:26:30 ◼   ► use this as the device to go through all your Evernote notes or like read or highlight PDFs on whatever the topic is.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Or like have this as the companion that you're using when you're reading an actual

00:26:42 ◼   ► book and you're trying to get in under the wires of a fussy library's rules.

00:26:47 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by our friends at Squarespace.

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00:28:29 ◼   ► [BEEP]

00:28:30 ◼   ► It's interesting because it feels to me like you have reverted back to the stage that you were at

00:28:37 ◼   ► before the iPad became your primary computer.

00:28:39 ◼   ► Like this was the kind of stuff you were doing before that it seems like you'd maybe kind of lost sight of

00:28:45 ◼   ► No, I think that is 100% correct and I find it interesting that this is this is the cycle of like

00:28:53 ◼   ► Oh, I liked it so much. I turned it into the main computer and

00:28:55 ◼   ► I don't

00:28:58 ◼   ► expect to

00:29:00 ◼   ► Really ever go back to it being the main computer as long as we have computers and iPads as they currently exist

00:29:07 ◼   ► But it is it is like a rediscovery of the role of this device in this specific way and also just

00:29:15 ◼   ► Yeah, it just takes advantage of all of of all of the power of it

00:29:21 ◼   ► like being it this is where like being able to use the pencil and

00:29:23 ◼   ► Like oh god and all these boring

00:29:26 ◼   ► boring government report PDFs being able to like go through and and

00:29:31 ◼   ► Highlight them in Evernote and just something about doing it with the pencil is very different

00:29:36 ◼   ► Are you still doing your marking up of scripts? Are you doing that with the iPad?

00:29:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm still doing that. I'm still doing that.

00:29:42 ◼   ► It really feels like it's found its place again then, honestly.

00:29:45 ◼   ► This is the thing, I call my iPad my main computer just because I sip with it more,

00:29:54 ◼   ► but it also has its place for me, and its place for me is communication and administration.

00:30:03 ◼   ► I think it's the perfect machine for that.

00:30:05 ◼   ► And that's where it fits for me.

00:30:06 ◼   ► But I'm sitting right now in front of my iMac, because that's where I feel

00:30:11 ◼   ► most comfortable recording and editing shows right now.

00:30:14 ◼   ► That's just that's how it works for me.

00:30:16 ◼   ► But like it is a device that's definitely has a very, very important place.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Like one of the one of, you know, I have two very important uses for computers.

00:30:25 ◼   ► And that feels one of them like it has its place for me.

00:30:28 ◼   ► And, you know, that's real work.

00:30:31 ◼   ► What you're doing is real work.

00:30:32 ◼   ► real work is always brought up, but you know, I don't think that you have to say that a

00:30:37 ◼   ► device can completely replace another device for it to be real work or not. You're doing

00:30:42 ◼   ► your real work on your iPad.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and I still love the idea of like this futuristic tablet as being the only thing

00:30:50 ◼   ► that you need, and I think that's like that's the romance and that's the attraction of the

00:30:53 ◼   ► iPad. But yeah, it's, I'm just very pleased with it. Like, and I was having just a like

00:30:58 ◼   ► a fantastic time where everything in life seems to come together just right.

00:31:04 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, I'm really interested in this topic.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I'm really on schedule with my routine of writing.

00:31:10 ◼   ► And then I have this device that's doing exactly what I want it to do, being this friendly

00:31:16 ◼   ► assistant that is helping me with this other area of my life."

00:31:20 ◼   ► And it was like, "Ah, this is just fantastic."

00:31:25 ◼   ► And everything was firing on all cylinders.

00:31:27 ◼   ► I will say this makes me very happy to hear.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Well, I wanted to talk about it last time,

00:31:31 ◼   ► and then when, behind the scenes everyone,

00:31:34 ◼   ► sometimes topics are intended to be talked about

00:31:37 ◼   ► and we don't talk about them.

00:31:38 ◼   ► And so I had put like iPad on the bullet points

00:31:41 ◼   ► for last week, and you said you wanted to skip it.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Oh, sorry, sorry.

00:31:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:48 ◼   ► Look, future listeners won't know when this goes up, right?

00:31:50 ◼   ► People working their way through the back catalog

00:31:52 ◼   ► will have no idea, yesterday.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Yesterday.

00:31:55 ◼   ► So I had put iPad on the list,

00:31:57 ◼   ► And when we were recording, I can't remember why, but you decided like,

00:31:59 ◼   ► oh, let's not, let's not talk about it this week.

00:32:01 ◼   ► I think we've talked about too much Apple stuff.

00:32:02 ◼   ► So you said like, let's cut it.

00:32:03 ◼   ► And I didn't want to say anything, but at the time, like my heart sunk because

00:32:08 ◼   ► I thought, oh, Myke, I have like a little gift for you.

00:32:10 ◼   ► I want to talk to you about how, how I found this place for the iPad again.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Let me say how it was written in our document.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Grey gives the iPad it's due.

00:32:19 ◼   ► One particular use case that has been great recently.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I was just like, that sounds boring.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Like he's just going to tell me like, oh, it's the greatest tool to read Reddit on,

00:32:29 ◼   ► but I don't read Reddit or something, you know, like it's just like, it's not really

00:32:32 ◼   ► going to give me what I want.

00:32:33 ◼   ► Like if it would have said like, Gray is going to make Myke happy again because he's

00:32:37 ◼   ► using the iPad more, then that would have been bumped up to topic number one.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Yeah, but I didn't want to spoil it, Myke.

00:32:43 ◼   ► No, it's good.

00:32:44 ◼   ► But I said, that's why he's like, but now here we are.

00:32:46 ◼   ► I will say something, though, because this might wrap it around to make it an even more

00:32:51 ◼   ► fun episode for me.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Earlier you referenced my old iPad Pro.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Did you buy a new iPad?

00:32:58 ◼   ► I mean, look, in America, iPads are a lot cheaper and...

00:33:07 ◼   ► Yeah, nice try on that one, they're not really,

00:33:10 ◼   ► but that was a really good attempt to come up with an excuse as to why you bought it.

00:33:15 ◼   ► No, it's way too, it's like everything in America is like a 50% off sale,

00:33:18 ◼   ► or at least it was eight years ago.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Okay, so I did buy a new iPad. Although, I must say, I was genuinely kind of annoyed at first,

00:33:28 ◼   ► because the iPad had wormed its way back into my life like three weeks before whatever that event

00:33:34 ◼   ► was. And then the Apple event happened, which, sidebar here, I didn't realize was happening,

00:33:42 ◼   ► and I uploaded my first video in the middle of the Apple event, which I would have never done in a

00:33:48 ◼   ► thousand years if I had been online and knew what was going on.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Oh, I just wanted to give a quick correction before I get to that. I was completely wrong.

00:33:56 ◼   ► It's way cheaper in the US, so I would like to retract my previous statement. But yeah,

00:34:00 ◼   ► I did at the time, because the Apple event was going on, and you posted your video, and

00:34:06 ◼   ► I think I sent you a message of like, "Do you know there's an Apple event right now?"

00:34:11 ◼   ► And you're like, "Oh no, I forgot." I was like, "Oh my god."

00:34:14 ◼   ► Yeah, so you were the one who alerted me to the fact that there was an Apple event occurring.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Well, because this is one of those things where every now and then you do something and people send me messages

00:34:23 ◼   ► This was one of them of like why is he doing this right now?

00:34:26 ◼   ► It still makes me uncomfortable that this happens

00:34:27 ◼   ► I don't like it's weird to me that people send you messages about what I'm up to

00:34:31 ◼   ► But yeah, I could see that this would be one of those moments

00:34:33 ◼   ► Sometimes when people ask what's the downside of not being on the internet?

00:34:39 ◼   ► That's a clear moment that I can point to is I pick maybe the worst moment in the world to upload the video because I just

00:34:45 ◼   ► had no idea

00:34:47 ◼   ► But anyway, the video went up and then I was immediately busy on trying to get the federal land part done as quickly as possible.

00:34:58 ◼   ► And so I actually didn't really know anything about the new iPads or hadn't even seen one in person until just a few days ago in Alabama when I discovered there was an Apple store nearby.

00:35:11 ◼   ► nearby and I wandered in. I was like, oh, let me just, let me take a look at,

00:35:16 ◼   ► let me take a look at these iPads. You know, like you're going into,

00:35:20 ◼   ► like you're going in to a pet store just to look at the puppies. Right? Like,

00:35:24 ◼   ► that's, that's what it was. I was like, oh, let me just,

00:35:27 ◼   ► let me just see what these iPads are like. Oh, how cute are they?

00:35:32 ◼   ► Let me just pick one up and hold it. Oh, how, how light,

00:35:35 ◼   ► how nice this iPad is. Ooh, this pencil, it snaps on the side. That's very cool.

00:35:40 ◼   ► So yeah, of course, I totally walked out of the store with an iPad.

00:35:44 ◼   ► And I really love it.

00:35:45 ◼   ► I really love it, Myke.

00:35:46 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Tell me what you think about it.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I love everything about it.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Like I've had it for about a month, right?

00:35:56 ◼   ► Multiple weeks at this point.

00:35:58 ◼   ► I have both of them, of course.

00:35:59 ◼   ► #MultiPadLifesyle.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Right.

00:36:01 ◼   ► This is like my favorite Apple industrial design.

00:36:04 ◼   ► Maybe ever, at least in the last 10 years.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:36:09 ◼   ► It sings on every level.

00:36:11 ◼   ► There is nothing wrong with it.

00:36:13 ◼   ► I just I can't find anything wrong with this.

00:36:16 ◼   ► There's there doesn't feel like there's any compromises.

00:36:19 ◼   ► The only like it's the only minor frustration is the removal

00:36:23 ◼   ► of the headphone jack.

00:36:24 ◼   ► But like I can just deal with that.

00:36:26 ◼   ► I only ever use the headphone jack on my iPad when I'm on a plane.

00:36:29 ◼   ► So I just bought a dongle.

00:36:31 ◼   ► I attached it to my headphones.

00:36:33 ◼   ► It's in my backpack and it will never leave those headphones.

00:36:35 ◼   ► So like situation controlled, right?

00:36:37 ◼   ► Like it's not a problem.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Everything else is just perfect.

00:36:41 ◼   ► I love the flat sides.

00:36:42 ◼   ► It is unbelievably thin.

00:36:44 ◼   ► You may not know this, but you know,

00:36:45 ◼   ► it's thinner than any iPhone

00:36:47 ◼   ► they've ever made.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Wait, it's thinner than any iPhone?

00:36:49 ◼   ► This is the thinnest iOS device ever made.

00:36:52 ◼   ► It's like, where's my where's my phone?

00:36:55 ◼   ► That can't be right.

00:36:56 ◼   ► It's 100 percent true.

00:36:57 ◼   ► This is one of those things I figured

00:36:59 ◼   ► because, you know, you don't listen to

00:37:01 ◼   ► podcasts or anything or just do

00:37:02 ◼   ► anything anymore.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I figured I could give you that fact and

00:37:05 ◼   ► you wouldn't have known it.

00:37:07 ◼   ► I mean, look, I don't I don't mean to put this burden onto you, Myke, but Cortex is now my Apple news podcast.

00:37:16 ◼   ► That's perfectly fine.

00:37:17 ◼   ► I have absolutely no doubt that all of our listeners will be very happy to understand this fact so we can just talk about it more.

00:37:24 ◼   ► I'm sure they will.

00:37:25 ◼   ► So the new iPads, both of them are five point nine millimeters thick.

00:37:30 ◼   ► The new iPhones are seven point seven millimeters thick.

00:37:36 ◼   ► It really seems impossible.

00:37:38 ◼   ► It does, doesn't it?

00:37:39 ◼   ► Like, I forget it a lot, like, because it just doesn't seem like it could be fathomable.

00:37:43 ◼   ► How could you do that?

00:37:45 ◼   ► But they did it.

00:37:45 ◼   ► I mean, this is this part of the reason I love this device, because there are parts of it where it's like,

00:37:51 ◼   ► I have no, it doesn't make any sense why you did that, but I love that you did it.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Like the bezels on both the devices, on the 11 and the 12.9, they're the same thickness.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:38:04 ◼   ► It's just little things like that where I'm like, that's wonderful.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Like, I love that you did that.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Thank you for doing that.

00:38:11 ◼   ► I adore them.

00:38:12 ◼   ► I think that they're absolutely beautiful.

00:38:14 ◼   ► They're wonderful to hold.

00:38:16 ◼   ► USB-C, I'm really intrigued about the possibilities of it.

00:38:19 ◼   ► It has at least made my charging easier to deal with.

00:38:23 ◼   ► This, it still needs a lot.

00:38:25 ◼   ► It needs some work to like really kind of make that port shine.

00:38:29 ◼   ► But I am very confident that iOS 13 is going to

00:38:33 ◼   ► we're gonna see some crazy stuff for these iPads.

00:38:35 ◼   ► It reminds me of the iPad Air 2, right?

00:38:39 ◼   ► So the iPad Air 2 came out and it was really powerful

00:38:43 ◼   ► for what iOS could deliver.

00:38:45 ◼   ► And then in June, iOS 9 came out with multitasking.

00:38:49 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - So like, it feels like that again to me.

00:38:52 ◼   ► This machine is incredibly powerful.

00:38:55 ◼   ► It's powerful than most of the laptops,

00:38:57 ◼   ► it's more powerful in Geekbench scores

00:38:59 ◼   ► than most of the laptops that Apple sells right now.

00:39:01 ◼   ► It has USB-C, this incredible screen.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Like, I think it's a great time to, to love the iPad right now.

00:39:09 ◼   ► And I am, I feel blessed with the hardware that I've been given.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Every part of it, every single part of this whole package is, I find better.

00:39:19 ◼   ► Like I, the Apple pencil, I am just, I've fallen head over heels in

00:39:26 ◼   ► love with that thing all over again.

00:39:28 ◼   ► Like I'm full of hyperbole with these new devices, but you know,

00:39:32 ◼   ► I've thought about it and talked about it enough now that I feel confident in

00:39:36 ◼   ► this. Like I think the app,

00:39:37 ◼   ► the Apple pencil two is probably the best version two of any product

00:39:42 ◼   ► Apple's ever made.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Like they took everything that was frustrating about it and completely fixed

00:39:47 ◼   ► every part of it.

00:39:48 ◼   ► I just, I also had this little moment where I realized, Oh,

00:39:54 ◼   ► - Oh, of course.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Myke has talked about this iPad on lots of shows already

00:40:00 ◼   ► over the last, whatever it is,

00:40:01 ◼   ► three weeks that it's been out.

00:40:03 ◼   ► And somehow, I think in my head, I sort of thought,

00:40:07 ◼   ► if I don't listen to your shows, they don't happen, right?

00:40:12 ◼   ► Whereas like, I'm used to listening to you talk about

00:40:14 ◼   ► the things on other shows and then we talk about it

00:40:16 ◼   ► and it's like, I'm aware of that.

00:40:17 ◼   ► It's like, oh, of course, yeah.

00:40:18 ◼   ► So you can be very confident in these statements.

00:40:22 ◼   ► - They are distilled now.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Yeah, like you've been through the internet wins of saying it and then like buffeted by

00:40:27 ◼   ► the comments and pushback and like, that's outrageously hyperbole, right?

00:40:31 ◼   ► And you're like, no, no, I think it is true.

00:40:33 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm enjoying getting this distilled version of your thoughts.

00:40:38 ◼   ► Yeah, this is the triple filtered version of my thoughts.

00:40:41 ◼   ► These are the purest thoughts.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Let me tell you why the Apple Pencil is so great now, right?

00:40:46 ◼   ► It's smaller and it's got a better weighting to it throughout.

00:40:50 ◼   ► So it's better balanced.

00:40:51 ◼   ► It makes it easier to hold.

00:40:53 ◼   ► The magnetic storage and inductive charging is unbelievable.

00:40:59 ◼   ► I cannot believe that they did this because it's so good.

00:41:03 ◼   ► It feels like it's too good to have done it.

00:41:06 ◼   ► So going from sticking the lightning port into the bottom of the iPad, which whilst

00:41:10 ◼   ► in elegant I still remain was the best thing they could have done with that technology.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Being able to charge the pencil with the device you're using it on was the best thing to do.

00:41:19 ◼   ► Trying to stick it into a wall to charge it was a stupid idea and that never would have

00:41:22 ◼   ► like they did the best thing they could at the time but being able to just pop it on the top of

00:41:27 ◼   ► the iPad and it charges is incredible because it's always where you want it to be which is stuck to

00:41:32 ◼   ► the iPad and because every time it's stuck to it it's charging it's always charged so I use my

00:41:38 ◼   ► Apple pencil more than ever now because it's so easy to get you just reach up and grab it and it's

00:41:43 ◼   ► always ready to go like always it's there it's ready to go it's where it's there when you need it

00:41:49 ◼   ► and that has made it an even more valuable tool for me.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it's gone from "I always have to plug in the pencil," which I agree,

00:41:57 ◼   ► I think people pooh-poohed that charging solution more than was deserved.

00:42:01 ◼   ► So here's the thing, here's the thing on this, and I think a lot of the criticism,

00:42:05 ◼   ► and look, I think a lot of the criticism over the way the iPads function and work

00:42:09 ◼   ► typically is by people that don't use them that much. So they don't get it, right? But like,

00:42:16 ◼   ► Like if you used the Apple Pencil every day, like we did, you understand that whilst stupid

00:42:22 ◼   ► and ugly and dangerous, you want to be able to charge it with the device.

00:42:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Right?

00:42:29 ◼   ► Like that was the best thing you could have done with what you had.

00:42:32 ◼   ► It's now a million times better, but you think it's inelegant and you laugh at it, I think

00:42:38 ◼   ► when you're not using it.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Because if you're only ever charging it every once in a while, it does seem stupid because

00:42:43 ◼   ► you lose the cap or whatever.

00:42:45 ◼   ► But I prefer to have an Apple Pencil where I've lost the cap than to be on a plane and

00:42:51 ◼   ► need to go and find my adapter so I can plug it into the back of the airplane seat to charge

00:42:55 ◼   ► it.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:42:57 ◼   ► You know?

00:42:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you might be right about that.

00:43:02 ◼   ► I mean, I do love this inductive charging so much better because always the things that

00:43:08 ◼   ► I like.

00:43:09 ◼   ► What's one less thing that I have to consider at all?

00:43:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:13 ◼   ► the amount of charge in the pencil is something I just never have to consider.

00:43:19 ◼   ► I haven't thought about it once.

00:43:21 ◼   ► It's never flat. Because you're never going to use it for an amount of time

00:43:25 ◼   ► that you would even run the battery down.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Like in most cases, it's very likely that you would take a break

00:43:31 ◼   ► within the multiple hours of charge that it has,

00:43:33 ◼   ► and then you just pop it down where it's supposed to go,

00:43:36 ◼   ► and it will juice up again.

00:43:37 ◼   ► So it's kind of perfect. I love it.

00:43:42 ◼   ► I'm so happy you're happy Myke.

00:43:45 ◼   ► They're amazing and I'm still doing both of them even though the smaller one is 11 inches

00:43:50 ◼   ► like it's still the benefits are the same for me where like the 13 is still too much

00:43:54 ◼   ► screen for a lot of cases that I need for the use cases that I have for it like if I'm

00:44:00 ◼   ► in bed and reading or watching videos or whatever 13 inch screen is a bit too much but the 11

00:44:08 ◼   ► great for that. But there is a thing now which has never happened before when sometimes I'm

00:44:14 ◼   ► looking at my iPad and I'm like, "Which one is this?" I'm not sometimes I'm just not 100%

00:44:22 ◼   ► sure which one is which.

00:44:24 ◼   ► AO: It's the bezel-less because it throws off your only frame of reference. Now I didn't

00:44:31 ◼   ► get two iPads because I'm not now the holder of the mantle of the multi-pad lifestyle.

00:44:39 ◼   ► Yep, I've taken that. I'm running with it. Yeah, that's yours. You run with it.

00:44:42 ◼   ► I simply got the bigger one because it was a total no-brainer of if I'm looking at some PDF

00:44:50 ◼   ► from a research paper, I want it as big on the screen as it can be and I want as much space to

00:44:55 ◼   ► write notes. It's a total no decision. Something they kept saying in the marketing is now that

00:45:00 ◼   ► device is the same size as an A4 piece of paper.

00:45:03 ◼   ► Oh, is it?

00:45:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and they said that's one of the reasons they decided to bring the bezels in rather than

00:45:08 ◼   ► make the screen bigger is they felt like that that was a was like a really prime size for most people.

00:45:15 ◼   ► I may have to redo my papers a little bit because they don't quite fit perfectly anymore so I'll

00:45:20 ◼   ► have to work on that but uh what was I gonna say all right no no bezels throws off your frame of

00:45:25 ◼   ► reference and so I don't have two iPads to wonder which one is it but I do that

00:45:29 ◼   ► with my phone all the time. I have the big phone and I look at it and

00:45:33 ◼   ► constantly think "wait is that the big one or is that the other one?"

00:45:37 ◼   ► and it's because you just don't have the bezels to know the proportion of the

00:45:41 ◼   ► screen versus what's not the screen. I think it's... I don't know it's not like

00:45:45 ◼   ► an optical illusion but it's just there's nothing for your brain to perch

00:45:49 ◼   ► onto. It's just a black rectangle and you're not that good at judging the size

00:45:54 ◼   ► of black rectangles just in the abstract.

00:45:57 ◼   ► - Face ID is so much better on the iPad

00:45:59 ◼   ► than any other device.

00:46:00 ◼   ► I love it.

00:46:01 ◼   ► - I find it really cute how when you go to open the screen,

00:46:05 ◼   ► it'll put the little arrow to be like,

00:46:06 ◼   ► "Hey buddy, you're covering the Face ID camera?"

00:46:09 ◼   ► Like, I don't know why.

00:46:10 ◼   ► - It's cute. - I don't know why.

00:46:11 ◼   ► It makes me smile every time.

00:46:13 ◼   ► - So I hear a lot of people say, right,

00:46:15 ◼   ► that like Apple's lost its whimsy, right?

00:46:17 ◼   ► That they used to have a lot of whimsy in their design.

00:46:19 ◼   ► You know, things like when you would empty the,

00:46:23 ◼   ► Oh no, when you drag something out of the dock on the Mac and it would like poof into a little like

00:46:27 ◼   ► plume of smoke, right? I feel like this is very whimsical, like this little arrow that's pointing

00:46:32 ◼   ► over here and the iPad itself is telling you like, "two faces too far away" or like, "hey,

00:46:38 ◼   ► you're covering the camera up!" Like, silly, you know? Like it's, it kind of has a, a delightfulness

00:46:44 ◼   ► in the way that the copy is written in the UI and the way that it indicates to you that it can't see

00:46:50 ◼   ► I think it did a really good job of it.

00:46:52 ◼   ► Every time something comes up about you've covered up the camera, it's "iPad peekaboo."

00:46:56 ◼   ► That's what it feels like we're playing.

00:46:58 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, it's adorable! Like, peekaboo, I see you now, iPad, I've moved my hand!"

00:47:02 ◼   ► It's great. It's really cute.

00:47:06 ◼   ► I will have to just put in for me one thing that is a really big deal,

00:47:14 ◼   ► which also goes back to what some of my original frustrations were with the iPad.

00:47:19 ◼   ► But it's not, Face ID is great, but what matters even more to me is that because Face ID is there,

00:47:28 ◼   ► now the user interface for my phone and my iPad is the same again.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it makes more sense. Like whilst they had the gestures, they weren't fully baked in, and it made it all feel weird.

00:47:41 ◼   ► and it has become more fluid again now that the basic fundamentals of these devices have

00:47:47 ◼   ► unified, which does make sense, I think.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Yeah. I still have all of my weird grumbles about, I find it clunky when I want to do

00:47:56 ◼   ► some additional thing, but what I really love now is that swipe back and forth gesture,

00:48:03 ◼   ► which I don't use a lot on my phone, is the perfect and most valuable way on my iPad to

00:48:10 ◼   ► do the thing that I'm doing if I'm at the library a lot, which is I have Evernote on the screen,

00:48:16 ◼   ► and then I want to slide over to GoodNotes and write something by hand, and then slide back to

00:48:21 ◼   ► Evernote and, you know, continue looking at a PDF or whatever. That fluid gesture, taking away the

00:48:28 ◼   ► little bit of resistance of doing the home button double tap, plus also the "oh, I have to remember

00:48:33 ◼   ► I'm using an iPad, I'm not using my phone, I have to press the button, I can't swipe on the screen,"

00:48:38 ◼   ► that makes it a little, it makes the device a little bit more invisible.

00:48:43 ◼   ► It makes it much more like, "Oh, it's just here. I'm just using this thing in a natural way."

00:48:47 ◼   ► So that bar on the bottom to swipe back and forth between GoodNotes and Kindle or GoodNotes and

00:48:56 ◼   ► Evernote is like, I've used that a thousand times on the iPad and it's great. It feels really

00:49:01 ◼   ► natural. So that to me is really the biggest deal of anything is the user interface experience is

00:49:08 ◼   ► now consistent everywhere and I don't feel like I'm breaking my brain switching back and forth

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00:51:42 ◼   ► I'm very excited for iOS 13.

00:51:44 ◼   ► I bet you are, Myke.

00:51:46 ◼   ► This USB-C port, what is it there for?

00:51:50 ◼   ► USB-C is interesting.

00:51:51 ◼   ► It's not right now the most interesting thing to me.

00:51:54 ◼   ► Like, I just think that, you know, we've spoken about this a bunch in the past.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Like, if you're all in on a company, you know, like we aren't with Apple devices,

00:52:02 ◼   ► like these are the devices that we've chosen to use.

00:52:04 ◼   ► This is the ecosystem that we're a part of.

00:52:07 ◼   ► It is it it makes you feel good when the company is putting a lot of effort into the thing you use

00:52:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and it feels like they put a lot of effort into this ipad which just makes me feel confident

00:52:20 ◼   ► that ios 13 is going to have a lot of effort put into it for the ipad and there's a lot of stuff

00:52:25 ◼   ► I want to see right but I think that there's going to be some stuff that splits the ipad and the

00:52:30 ◼   ► iphone apart again um you know like there's been a lot of rumors of a revised home screen which I

00:52:36 ◼   ► I really think it's time for the iPad.

00:52:39 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:52:40 ◼   ► - I would love to see stuff like,

00:52:42 ◼   ► little bit more widget like,

00:52:43 ◼   ► or something with shortcuts, right?

00:52:45 ◼   ► Like how could shortcuts make the home screen better?

00:52:48 ◼   ► And I was thinking about this recently.

00:52:50 ◼   ► I wanna see what you think about this.

00:52:52 ◼   ► On the Mac, you have Launchpad, right?

00:52:55 ◼   ► Which is a way for you to bring up your applications

00:52:59 ◼   ► from the dock, right?

00:53:00 ◼   ► So you press the little button, it shows all your apps.

00:53:02 ◼   ► I don't understand why the iPad doesn't just have that

00:53:05 ◼   ► and you don't put apps on the home screen anymore.

00:53:08 ◼   ► - Launchpad to me seems like trying to make the Mac

00:53:10 ◼   ► into what the iPad currently is.

00:53:12 ◼   ► What do you want to be different?

00:53:14 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:53:15 ◼   ► - I don't want the home screen

00:53:16 ◼   ► to just be grids of app icons anymore.

00:53:18 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, yeah, okay, I agree with you there.

00:53:20 ◼   ► - So I feel like you could use the iPad's dock

00:53:23 ◼   ► and just hit a little button

00:53:24 ◼   ► and it brings up all of your apps

00:53:25 ◼   ► and you can just choose them that way.

00:53:27 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, I see.

00:53:28 ◼   ► You want a launchpad button on the iPad.

00:53:32 ◼   ► - On the dock on the iPad, yeah.

00:53:33 ◼   ► - To make the iPad look like it currently does

00:53:35 ◼   ► and then you can do something else more interesting with the screen. Yes,

00:53:37 ◼   ► I totally agree.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Like you can put documents there if you wanted to. You could put shortcuts,

00:53:41 ◼   ► you could put widgets, you could put all kinds of interesting pieces of

00:53:45 ◼   ► information.

00:53:46 ◼   ► So the home screen becomes like a command center and then you're only ever

00:53:51 ◼   ► opening apps from the dock.

00:53:53 ◼   ► I think there is a problem with that a lot of people don't like can't get their

00:53:56 ◼   ► head around like why does the dock exist if the home screen exists and like how

00:54:01 ◼   ► do I do multitasking? Do I have to go back to the home screen all the time? Everyone

00:54:07 ◼   ► that uses the iPad a lot, most of their multitasking is action from the dock. They just swipe up

00:54:13 ◼   ► the dock and all the apps that they use in multitasking are there, and the real iPad

00:54:16 ◼   ► power users have a folder of little utilities that keep getting brought up. And I think

00:54:21 ◼   ► that there is a disconnect between why the dock would exist and why the desktop exists,

00:54:27 ◼   ► Mac users don't put app icons very frequently on their desktop, right?

00:54:32 ◼   ► So like, why are they mixed together on the iPad?

00:54:35 ◼   ► I think that a revision to the iPad's home screen will probably bring it closer to the Mac

00:54:42 ◼   ► and further away from the iPhone, but I think that's the right thing to do for now.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Yeah, they should do something.

00:54:51 ◼   ► In my ideal world, the home screen, the background,

00:54:56 ◼   ► could be built to be something

00:54:58 ◼   ► like the Windows Phone background.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Like here's a bunch of tiles that show me things

00:55:01 ◼   ► that's useful to me or buttons I can press.

00:55:04 ◼   ► Like it doesn't need to be this grid of icons.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Like it's literally a decade ago

00:55:08 ◼   ► when we first thought of this.

00:55:10 ◼   ► Like we can do more now.

00:55:11 ◼   ► - Look at any Android phone, right?

00:55:13 ◼   ► It is possible to put useful pieces

00:55:16 ◼   ► of information just there, right?

00:55:19 ◼   ► Like, I don't want to have to swipe to the left to get to Spotlight anymore.

00:55:23 ◼   ► Like, Spotlight should just be on the home screen.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Right?

00:55:28 ◼   ► So I could just tap it and search for something if I want to.

00:55:30 ◼   ► Like, I'm keen to see what a kind of starting place for a computer could be in 2019 if you

00:55:40 ◼   ► think it through again.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Like, what does that end up being?

00:55:45 ◼   ► And again, it's just like, what is the workflow team for?

00:55:48 ◼   ► Like why did they get them?

00:55:49 ◼   ► Why did they want to do shortcuts?

00:55:51 ◼   ► I feel like this makes more sense.

00:55:54 ◼   ► I've been spending time thinking a little bit about home screens in general and putting

00:55:59 ◼   ► them around actions, you know, like we've been talking about recently.

00:56:03 ◼   ► I've been thinking about that, like what does that mean?

00:56:06 ◼   ► And that's just something I've had rolling around in my head at the moment.

00:56:08 ◼   ► So I am very excited for iOS 13 because I love my iPad Pro so much.

00:56:15 ◼   ► They're really, really wonderful.

00:56:16 ◼   ► Now I'm so happy for you, Myke. I'm glad you're happy with your new iPad.

00:56:20 ◼   ► I'm happy for you! Welcome back, welcome back.

00:56:23 ◼   ► I'm happy for me too.

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00:56:53 ◼   ► It's glow-in-the-dark so that you can always know that it is Cortexmas all the time.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Cortexmas should extend for as long as possible, and so you need to be able to see the Cortexpin

00:57:03 ◼   ► as long as possible.

00:57:04 ◼   ► The sun will never set on Cortexmas!

00:57:09 ◼   ► That's what I want, yes.

00:57:11 ◼   ► They're doing a short second run of the subtlety.

00:57:15 ◼   ► So we work with Cotton Bureau for our production.

00:57:18 ◼   ► They're an incredible partner for Cortex merch.

00:57:21 ◼   ► And they're doing a promotion right now called All the Ts, which includes a giveaway of some

00:57:24 ◼   ► awesome stuff.

00:57:25 ◼   ► So the subtlety is on sale until December the 4th.

00:57:30 ◼   ► And I will say, Gray, I am wearing my subtlety right now.

00:57:35 ◼   ► Mine came very recently from the first run that we did.

00:57:37 ◼   ► I am so happy with this product.

00:57:40 ◼   ► Like it perfectly fits the idea that I had, which is I have a cortex t-shirt now that

00:57:47 ◼   ► I can wear to all manner of functions.

00:57:49 ◼   ► Like I went for a nice lunch this afternoon with some family and I could wear my cortex

00:57:54 ◼   ► t-shirt because it just looks like a nice fancy t-shirt that I own because it has this

00:57:58 ◼   ► lovely little embroidered logo on it.

00:58:00 ◼   ► So we are selling them right now until December 4th.

00:58:04 ◼   ► I don't know when they will be on sale again.

00:58:06 ◼   ► I will say of all the merch that we have done, this is my favorite item now.

00:58:11 ◼   ► So I think it is in your best interest if you are interested to go and get one,

00:58:16 ◼   ► um, as they're on sale for just a short period of time, but also now a cortex

00:58:21 ◼   ► march.com, you will find our permanent line of products, which includes a hat,

00:58:26 ◼   ► a hoodie, a tea, and a pin, all featuring the regular blue cortex logo.

00:58:29 ◼   ► They will always be there now whenever you want to get them at cortex merch.com.

00:58:34 ◼   ► But we have our limited edition products.

00:58:37 ◼   ► So go right now.

00:58:39 ◼   ► Cortex merch dot com.

00:58:40 ◼   ► There's always a lot going on at cortex merch dot com.

00:58:43 ◼   ► So that's why you should check in frequently, right?

00:58:45 ◼   ► Yeah, you should check in every week with cortex merch dot com like that.

00:58:49 ◼   ► You should definitely do that because you never know limited sales, new stuff to get.

00:58:54 ◼   ► I just got a bunch of cortex pins delivered to me.

00:58:57 ◼   ► They're fantastic. I love them.

00:58:58 ◼   ► The subtlety is is so good that I can

00:59:02 ◼   ► Like I can make myself get over how much I don't like the fact that the name is a pun,

00:59:07 ◼   ► but you're so pleased about that and the shirt is so good I can say it.

00:59:10 ◼   ► It's a pun? I don't know what you're talking about!

00:59:12 ◼   ► It's just a subtle t-shirt!

00:59:14 ◼   ► God damn it, Myke!

00:59:15 ◼   ► I don't know what you mean!

00:59:17 ◼   ► Yeah, so things are always happening at cortexmerch.com.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Go check it out.

00:59:21 ◼   ► [DING]

00:59:22 ◼   ► Okay, Cortex book club time.

00:59:25 ◼   ► The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker.

00:59:29 ◼   ► [SIGH]

00:59:32 ◼   ► So Myke, I need to tell you a little story about me and this book.

00:59:37 ◼   ► And you have to not get angry.

00:59:41 ◼   ► Because I didn't finish my homework, but there's more to it than that.

00:59:52 ◼   ► Because...

00:59:53 ◼   ► So this book had been sitting in my Kindle library for forever as a book that a bunch

01:00:01 ◼   ► of people had recommended, and I vaguely thought I should read at some point, and then suggested

01:00:08 ◼   ► it.

01:00:09 ◼   ► Again, without saying it was good, I always wanted to be clear for Cortex Book Club, just

01:00:13 ◼   ► suggesting it as a thing to read to try it out.

01:00:16 ◼   ► And I figured now would be the time that I read the book.

01:00:20 ◼   ► So a couple weeks ago I thought, "Gotta get started on this.

01:00:24 ◼   ► Gotta read this book.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Homework time.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Open up my Kindle, download the effective executive, start reading, and what do I see

01:00:36 ◼   ► but a highlight?

01:00:37 ◼   ► And I go, "Huh, that's weird.

01:00:41 ◼   ► How is this highlight in this book?

01:00:45 ◼   ► It seems like something I would highlight, but I haven't read this book.

01:00:47 ◼   ► I don't know how that happened."

01:00:49 ◼   ► So I keep reading, and then there's more highlights of exactly the sorts of sentences that I would

01:00:54 ◼   ► highlight.

01:00:55 ◼   ► And then eventually a note from myself to me in the margins with a highlight.

01:01:01 ◼   ► I had read this book already, Myke.

01:01:05 ◼   ► But when I read it the first time, I didn't finish it then either.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And I had, when I suggested that we do it for the show, no memory at all of having ever

01:01:21 ◼   ► read the book.

01:01:23 ◼   ► And I made a very game, a very game second attempt at reading it, but I also petered

01:01:32 ◼   ► out maybe two chapters farther than I had made it the first time.

01:01:37 ◼   ► So I have to apologize to you, and I have to apologize to all the Cortex listeners.

01:01:42 ◼   ► I didn't finish it, and I also didn't remember that I read it.

01:01:46 ◼   ► I will say this is it is very valid because this book really pizzas out in like the final

01:01:53 ◼   ► third.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Oh, OK.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I feel less bad then.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it really like a lot of the stuff that I found most interesting in this book was

01:02:02 ◼   ► contained in the first half of it.

01:02:05 ◼   ► And then a lot of it for a couple of reasons.

01:02:07 ◼   ► One it it it starts talking about stuff that just doesn't really apply to me or you anymore.

01:02:13 ◼   ► it talks about a lot of like managing conflict resolution in small teams and how to be effective.

01:02:20 ◼   ► So the idea is that the book is focused around, you know, as all these are, the title is what

01:02:25 ◼   ► the book is about, which is about being an effective executive. I like the term and I

01:02:30 ◼   ► like the way that this book is focused on, it's about you as an individual being the most effective

01:02:37 ◼   ► person you can be, there's not too much focus on leadership in this book or like being the

01:02:44 ◼   ► best leader that you can. It's mostly focused on like what you can do to be the most effective

01:02:50 ◼   ► person in the organization you're a part of. So I liked it for that and that's what it's about.

01:02:55 ◼   ► Like being effective, it's not about exactly the executive is not about like being a CEO,

01:03:01 ◼   ► it is about like you being in control of your own effectiveness and how to do that.

01:03:06 ◼   ► that. So it's good, but then it does start to get into some team stuff, which isn't really

01:03:11 ◼   ► that interesting. And there is a chapter, I think it's like chapter six or something

01:03:17 ◼   ► like that, which is called "The Effective Executive and the Computer".

01:03:21 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:03:22 ◼   ► Now let me tell you something.

01:03:25 ◼   ► Oh man, I forget how old these books are sometimes.

01:03:28 ◼   ► The effective executive by Peter Drucker was written in 1967.

01:03:33 ◼   ► - Oh my God. - So I skipped

01:03:36 ◼   ► that entire chapter.

01:03:38 ◼   ► - I don't know, that's so old

01:03:39 ◼   ► it would be interesting again, right?

01:03:41 ◼   ► - Oh, I couldn't do it because I was really dying

01:03:43 ◼   ► with this book by that point

01:03:44 ◼   ► and was looking for any reason to skip.

01:03:46 ◼   ► - One must have a large number of punch card monkeys

01:03:49 ◼   ► assisting them with the computer.

01:03:50 ◼   ► - Because before that, like, he's making reference

01:03:53 ◼   ► to the computer, but like the executive won't be affected

01:03:57 ◼   ► by the computer because decisions still need people's thought and there's no way that the

01:04:02 ◼   ► computer will take away decisions. And I was like, oh Peter Drucker, old 1967 Pete. Here's

01:04:08 ◼   ► the thing about this book whilst I'm talking about its age, it's been reissued and reprinted.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I cannot believe it has not been updated in a couple of ways. One, that section should

01:04:20 ◼   ► just be taken out. And another, now I'm going to say this, I need to say this because it

01:04:26 ◼   ► annoyed me so much, right? I know this book was written in 1967, but there is incessant male

01:04:35 ◼   ► gendering throughout this book to the point that it was driving me mad. Like, everyone is referred

01:04:42 ◼   ► to as he and him, and only men are executives. And I just feel like it's so easy to change that.

01:04:51 ◼   ► you could have just changed it in one of the reprintings.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Like I think it was reprinted like three or four years ago.

01:04:58 ◼   ► It's not difficult to make a change from like he to they.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Like it's really not hard.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Like if you've if you've reissued the book, like you can amend it.

01:05:08 ◼   ► It's OK. And it's just it really grated on me over time.

01:05:13 ◼   ► And also like this book feels like it was written in 1907 at points.

01:05:20 ◼   ► It's obsessively wordy, almost like a Dickens novel.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Like this just and some of the phrasing is like bonkers.

01:05:28 ◼   ► Another thing that drove me mad is the use of one and oneself.

01:05:32 ◼   ► It makes some sentences unreadable.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I am going to read for you my favorite example of this, right?

01:05:37 ◼   ► OK.

01:05:38 ◼   ► One can know about oneself that one usually does a good job

01:05:41 ◼   ► working alone on a project from start to finish.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Like, why would you write it like that?

01:05:47 ◼   ► One can know about oneself that one.

01:05:50 ◼   ► - Like it's-- - Wait, one can know about oneself--

01:05:53 ◼   ► - No, about oneself that one usually does a good job.

01:05:56 ◼   ► - Okay, okay.

01:05:57 ◼   ► I'm like mentally putting in commas in this sentence.

01:05:59 ◼   ► - You could just say, you know that you do a good job

01:06:04 ◼   ► or like someone knows they do a good job

01:06:06 ◼   ► working alone on a project.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Like one can know about oneself that one.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Yeah, the way this book is written

01:06:13 ◼   ► is really annoying in places,

01:06:15 ◼   ► but annoying for different reasons

01:06:18 ◼   ► that these books are usually annoying.

01:06:19 ◼   ► I don't think that there are many of these types of books that have lasted for like 50 years, right?

01:06:29 ◼   ► Like this one has?

01:06:30 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of a counter example, and the best counter example I can come up with is

01:06:34 ◼   ► How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie,

01:06:37 ◼   ► which may literally have been written in 19-oh-something,

01:06:41 ◼   ► and I don't know when, but I feel like that was written pre-World War I.

01:06:45 ◼   ► But that is also a book that,

01:06:48 ◼   ► I mean at this point I think they have to write like "written by Dale Carnegie" in quotes

01:06:52 ◼   ► because the foundation that owns all of his stuff, whenever they do a reprinting,

01:06:57 ◼   ► they update all the stories, they completely rewrite the book every time they do it.

01:07:02 ◼   ► And it's like they're keeping the ideas of that book there, but guess what?

01:07:07 ◼   ► An anecdote about CEOs in the 1910s means nothing to anyone now.

01:07:13 ◼   ► So they're like, "Okay, we're just gonna get rid of that story

01:07:15 ◼   ► and we're gonna replace it with another story."

01:07:17 ◼   ► Like, there are so many references to, like, Lincoln in this book.

01:07:23 ◼   ► AO: I mean, he is a very important historical figure, Myke.

01:07:26 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:07:26 ◼   ► MIKE No, but, like, there's gotta be something else,

01:07:29 ◼   ► right? Like, surely. This version, the version that I read, was reprinted in 2007.

01:07:36 ◼   ► AO Alright, let me see if I can find where my

01:07:38 ◼   ► version was done. Uh...

01:07:40 ◼   ► MIKE It hasn't been up-- it can't have been updated,

01:07:42 ◼   ► because it doesn't feel like anything has changed.

01:07:46 ◼   ► I really feel that the

01:07:50 ◼   ► he/him thing would have been changed if they would have changed anything,

01:07:54 ◼   ► because it's so egregious, it's so persistent throughout the entire book

01:07:59 ◼   ► that like you wouldn't make a change to a book today

01:08:05 ◼   ► and then not also change that, because it doesn't change the meaning

01:08:09 ◼   ► of anything, really.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Like it's not like you're going in and tinkering with what being an effective executive means.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Like it's just like a change to the language, but so I just don't think they changed anything.

01:08:20 ◼   ► I was just trying to find when this book was published and I have, I didn't notice it,

01:08:25 ◼   ► but there's an author's note in my book that is for the updated version from 2002.

01:08:31 ◼   ► I don't know what edition I'm reading, but I think, yes, if any of our listeners dares

01:08:40 ◼   ► brave this book. When you're reading it, you have to interpret the way he says him and his as though

01:08:47 ◼   ► it's J.R.R. Tolkien writing about the race of man, right? Where he's like, "Man does this thing!"

01:08:54 ◼   ► And he uses the word "man" to compare it to elves and dwarves, right? Like you just have to get that

01:08:58 ◼   ► in your mind that it's like, "Oh, it's a name for the whole race!" Because otherwise, yeah, it's

01:09:03 ◼   ► I like, it's crazy. I didn't realize how old this book was, but I was very aware of thinking

01:09:09 ◼   ► of it like in capital letters every time of like, okay, well then then we can sort of

01:09:15 ◼   ► deal with this. But yeah, maybe it may be a little bit of updating of the section on

01:09:20 ◼   ► the executive and his mainframe computer that exists in the basement. Like you could probably

01:09:25 ◼   ► take that out. It's probably not very relevant.

01:09:28 ◼   ► So there aren't a lot of typical, actually there are none, none of those like sickening

01:09:35 ◼   ► fake stories.

01:09:36 ◼   ► They don't exist in this book, which I actually found quite refreshing.

01:09:41 ◼   ► The examples that he uses are of named individuals from real companies and I found that refreshing.

01:09:47 ◼   ► Whilst I didn't necessarily read all of them, and we'll get to why in a little bit,

01:09:52 ◼   ► I at least found that refreshing.

01:09:54 ◼   ► However, the introduction of this book did not disappoint.

01:09:58 ◼   ► So the forward is written by somebody else, right?

01:10:00 ◼   ► Like it's a, I don't have the person's name in front of me, but it's not important.

01:10:04 ◼   ► I want to read from you the opening of the forward of the effective executive.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Please do, Myke.

01:10:10 ◼   ► In December of 1994, I pulled up to Peter Drucker's house in my rental car.

01:10:14 ◼   ► I rechecked the address because the house just didn't seem big enough.

01:10:18 ◼   ► It was a nice house in a neighborhood near Claremont Colleges, bordered tightly by similar

01:10:23 ◼   ► suburban houses with two small Toyota's parked in the drive.

01:10:27 ◼   ► It would have been a perfect, modestly proportioned home for a professor from the local college.

01:10:33 ◼   ► But I wasn't looking for a professor from the local college.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I was looking for Peter Drucker, the leading founder of the field of management, the most

01:10:41 ◼   ► influential management thinker in the second half of the 20th century, the founding father

01:10:47 ◼   ► of the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management.

01:10:51 ◼   ► But the address matched, so I ambled up to the front door.

01:10:54 ◼   ► That's amazing.

01:10:55 ◼   ► I wish it was in my edition.

01:10:57 ◼   ► I don't have that. That is a thing of beauty.

01:10:59 ◼   ► The introduction then goes on to talk about like how

01:11:02 ◼   ► I had never met Peter Drucker before, but he was so warm and welcoming as if we'd

01:11:07 ◼   ► been friends for 50 years.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Like it's just like, waaaah, like vomiting all over the plane as I'm reading it.

01:11:13 ◼   ► I want you to write a foreword like that when I write a book.

01:11:17 ◼   ► For you? I will actually.

01:11:19 ◼   ► I will do that. I will take that 100 percent and I will write it just like that.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Yeah, look, every business book needs at least a moment of disgusting sycophanti, right?

01:11:31 ◼   ► It's just a requirement.

01:11:33 ◼   ► So there are a bunch of things spoken about in this book, like how to be effective, how

01:11:39 ◼   ► to make decisions, and a lot of that stuff was okay, but it didn't really speak to me.

01:11:46 ◼   ► There wasn't anything that I found particularly insightful in those chapters, which are the

01:11:52 ◼   ► later chapters.

01:11:53 ◼   ► But the first two kind of areas that the book focuses on I found really interesting.

01:12:00 ◼   ► One was the term of knowledge worker, which I can only assume, because I hear this a lot,

01:12:06 ◼   ► I haven't looked into this, but I can only assume that since this book was written in

01:12:09 ◼   ► 1969, that Peter Drakker probably coined the term knowledge worker.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Yeah, knowing how old this book is, I think I would bet you're right that this may be

01:12:17 ◼   ► the first appearance of that term.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Because I had, I don't know why I had always probably because it's the first place I had

01:12:23 ◼   ► come across it. I had vaguely assumed that David Allen was like the creation of knowledge

01:12:28 ◼   ► work.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Because the beginning of Getting Things Done, which again is a book like when I tried to

01:12:34 ◼   ► reread it like does not age well.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Yep. I've just checked the Wikipedia page. The term was first coined by Peter Drucker

01:12:40 ◼   ► in the book called The Landmarks of Tomorrow in 1959.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Okay, interesting. So he's the father of this.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Well, like this is if you read this, this is part of his series, right? So like he did

01:12:49 ◼   ► a book about knowledge workers, and now knowledge worker is a term that exists in another book.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Like effective executive is a term that exists in later books that he wrote.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Right.

01:13:00 ◼   ► All right.

01:13:01 ◼   ► It's just interesting.

01:13:02 ◼   ► But it's like, I thought that was David Allen because he spends so much time selling you

01:13:06 ◼   ► on this idea of knowledge work as separate from other things.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And I remember at the time, like, oh, it just crystallized a bunch of thoughts around work.

01:13:17 ◼   ► but it was so dependent on the modern world and technology.

01:13:21 ◼   ► So I'm almost kind of curious about

01:13:23 ◼   ► how did Peter Drucker define this word originally?

01:13:27 ◼   ► But yeah, that's very interesting to know.

01:13:30 ◼   ► - Okay, so his thinking, and I like this more actually,

01:13:34 ◼   ► that a knowledge worker is based around ideas.

01:13:38 ◼   ► And so he splits it into knowledge work and manual work.

01:13:40 ◼   ► So here's a couple of quotes that I like.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Knowledge work is not defined by quantity.

01:13:44 ◼   ► - I'm looking at that right now.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Neither is knowledge work defined by its costs.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Knowledge work is defined by its results.

01:13:51 ◼   ► And when I was reading this, something that struck me, which is if we think of knowledge

01:13:55 ◼   ► work as ideas, ideas, they're not like a tradable commodity with volume.

01:14:01 ◼   ► You can make a bunch of things that you can sell and maybe you can sell them for a little

01:14:05 ◼   ► bit cheaper or you can sell them at scale.

01:14:08 ◼   ► But an excellent idea that you have, if it's a really, really good idea, it's not equal

01:14:13 ◼   ► to like 10 okay ideas or 50 bad ideas because they don't have a price attached to them.

01:14:19 ◼   ► And I found that to be quite an interesting parallel of like if you think about making

01:14:23 ◼   ► a physical thing and just thinking, your thoughts don't have an inherent intrinsic value to

01:14:29 ◼   ► them.

01:14:30 ◼   ► There wasn't like material cost and markup on these.

01:14:33 ◼   ► It's just your ideas are all you have and they're only really useful when you put them

01:14:38 ◼   ► into action.

01:14:40 ◼   ► but they're not like a tradable thing.

01:14:42 ◼   ► And that's like a big difference between people that deal in knowledge and

01:14:45 ◼   ► people that deal with making.

01:14:47 ◼   ► Yeah. Like I highlighted that section too.

01:14:51 ◼   ► And it's, it struck me as well because it,

01:14:55 ◼   ► it is the same thing of particularly like knowledge work is not defined by its

01:15:00 ◼   ► costs, which I also interpreted that like,

01:15:04 ◼   ► you're not looking at cost per unit of idea,

01:15:09 ◼   ► that there are some ways in which knowledge work can have tremendous costs, but then also

01:15:15 ◼   ► outsized results in a way that physical products simply never could. So it doesn't always make

01:15:20 ◼   ► sense to think about cost-cutting measures in relation to knowledge work in the same

01:15:26 ◼   ► way that it does make sense in terms of physical products. Like, you have to think about cost-cutting

01:15:30 ◼   ► measures in that way.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's a part, like, later on where they're talking about, like, decisions, like,

01:15:35 ◼   ► relate into this stuff where it's kind of a case of because you can't he says

01:15:40 ◼   ► like cost cutting is pointless like when you're doing cost cutting measures

01:15:43 ◼   ► you end up cutting things that there's kind of no point in cutting because

01:15:46 ◼   ► there's such minuscule savings but if you're a cost cutter you've made effect

01:15:50 ◼   ► you've been effective by cutting that cost even though there was no point

01:15:53 ◼   ► doing it but I like something that he says which is something that I know that

01:15:56 ◼   ► me and you both share as a thought anyway which is like if you are making a

01:16:00 ◼   ► decision you ask yourself like if I stop doing this thing is it going to affect

01:16:05 ◼   ► anything. And if it won't, then you just stop doing it. Or like another question of like,

01:16:11 ◼   ► if knowing everything we know today, someone asks us to do this thing again, would we do it? And if

01:16:16 ◼   ► we wouldn't do it, we stop doing that thing. Right. Right. And this is like part of that,

01:16:20 ◼   ► like, it leads into part of the idea. I also like a thing about, when we talk about knowledge workers

01:16:25 ◼   ► is typically somebody who's coming up with ideas is not actually the person that actually does

01:16:31 ◼   ► anything with it, so you give your idea to somebody else who then goes out and does it.

01:16:38 ◼   ► So it's a lot of the time, and this isn't always, because I know that people that are

01:16:43 ◼   ► solo or independent like us, we will typically put a lot of our stuff into production ourselves,

01:16:48 ◼   ► but especially if we're working in a company. If your job is to make decisions and come

01:16:52 ◼   ► up with ideas, you probably communicate those to somebody else who then makes an output

01:16:56 ◼   ► with them that the knowledge worker is not always tied to the output.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Yeah, like, I like that stuff. I'm trying to think about, like I'm looking through a

01:17:09 ◼   ► bunch of my notes from this book. And it's interesting because there are a bunch of parts

01:17:18 ◼   ► that I do really like. And so let me take the one that I think is the best of this book.

01:17:27 ◼   ► I wonder what it's gonna be.

01:17:30 ◼   ► - I think it's not gonna be what you think it is.

01:17:35 ◼   ► - Okay, okay.

01:17:36 ◼   ► - Okay, I'm gonna try to guess.

01:17:38 ◼   ► You're gonna guess it's time tracking.

01:17:40 ◼   ► - I am gonna guess that 'cause it's my favorite part.

01:17:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:17:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, so he talks about time tracking a lot.

01:17:46 ◼   ► That's not actually, it's not actually that.

01:17:49 ◼   ► The thing that I like the best in this book is,

01:17:52 ◼   ► and it's making me laugh now because it's a section

01:17:55 ◼   ► where he references Lincoln,

01:17:57 ◼   ► But it's chapter four. I think the start of chapter four is really great.

01:18:02 ◼   ► And that chapter is called making strength productive.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And

01:18:09 ◼   ► like this is, okay, how do I want to,

01:18:17 ◼   ► I want to phrase this delicately. It's not a good book. Like I, I don't,

01:18:22 ◼   ► I can't really recommend it,

01:18:25 ◼   ► But I do think if you are just coming out of school,

01:18:31 ◼   ► like you've just graduated high school or you've just graduated college,

01:18:34 ◼   ► find a library and read the first few pages of chapter four in this book.

01:18:40 ◼   ► Because...

01:18:41 ◼   ► the thing that I find so frustrating about school

01:18:48 ◼   ► is it's this machine that produces the opposite of what we want in the real world.

01:18:54 ◼   ► In school, you're always taught to focus more time on the thing that you're the worst at.

01:19:01 ◼   ► And so it's like, "Oh, you've gotten an A in science and you've gotten a B in English,

01:19:05 ◼   ► but you got a D in geography.

01:19:07 ◼   ► So what happens now?

01:19:09 ◼   ► You're supposed to spend most of your time on geography and ignore the thing that you're

01:19:14 ◼   ► actually good at."

01:19:16 ◼   ► And it's like you spend two decades under this propaganda of you're supposed to be a

01:19:23 ◼   ► well-rounded individual.

01:19:26 ◼   ► Whereas the real world doesn't care at all about what you're bad at, right?

01:19:30 ◼   ► The real world only cares about what you're good at.

01:19:34 ◼   ► And again, like it's so personal for me because it's like spelling.

01:19:38 ◼   ► My whole life, like I failed spelling in school constantly and everyone was like, "You got

01:19:42 ◼   ► to spend more time on spelling."

01:19:44 ◼   ► And guess what?

01:19:45 ◼   ► that I'm an adult, it doesn't matter at all. Like, it doesn't make any difference. Nobody

01:19:49 ◼   ► cares that I can't spell. Like, it's not a skill that holds me back. It just doesn't

01:19:53 ◼   ► matter. And, like, I just, I really like the way he focuses on a few things here. And he's

01:20:01 ◼   ► focusing on it from both angles of, like, you need to find what you're really good at

01:20:06 ◼   ► and double down on. And I also like that he really focuses on, if you're in a position

01:20:13 ◼   ► of working with other people, you should be able to overlook their flaws.

01:20:18 ◼   ► You know, and it's like where he talks about Abraham Lincoln, but he's like, you know,

01:20:22 ◼   ► Lincoln picked generals who were like men who had tremendous flaws, but they were good

01:20:28 ◼   ► at winning battles.

01:20:29 ◼   ► And like, he doesn't care that like Ulysses S. Grant was like a total monster and a drunk.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Like he's good at winning battles.

01:20:37 ◼   ► And you shouldn't expect that everybody you work with is this well-rounded person who's

01:20:43 ◼   ► good at everything.

01:20:45 ◼   ► And I just, like, I think that's a really fundamental point that is very easy to overlook,

01:20:52 ◼   ► especially when you're coming right out of education, because the whole school system

01:20:57 ◼   ► has taught you the opposite.

01:21:00 ◼   ► And in the real world, double down on what you're good at, and don't spend a lot of time

01:21:04 ◼   ► on what you're bad at if it doesn't really affect you.

01:21:08 ◼   ► But you liked the time tracking part, did you Myke?

01:21:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I did like that strengths part because it was very, it's very useful, right?

01:21:14 ◼   ► Like the idea of if you're in a good organization you can hopefully find it, but like especially

01:21:20 ◼   ► if you're working on anything for yourself, creatively or otherwise, like understanding

01:21:25 ◼   ► what you're good at, doing that and then trying to work with other people who can help complement

01:21:30 ◼   ► the skills that you're not so good at, is an incredibly valuable thing to learn.

01:21:35 ◼   ► But I would say, I really would say, I agree with Grey, read that part, but I really think

01:21:42 ◼   ► reading the beginning, and I think the whole chapter on time tracking is very useful.

01:21:49 ◼   ► I think that it does in some places a better job of explaining why than we have been able

01:21:54 ◼   ► to explain over the course of the show.

01:21:57 ◼   ► There are sometimes things that are interesting when you read books like this, is that it

01:22:02 ◼   ► can help communicate an idea that you already know, but it can solidify it for you.

01:22:07 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of really excellent quotes about why time tracking is important.

01:22:14 ◼   ► And again, to think that whilst this book is long-winded and it can be a bit frustrating

01:22:19 ◼   ► in places, Draka really knew what he was talking about.

01:22:23 ◼   ► He was coming up with a bunch of this stuff in '69.

01:22:27 ◼   ► He kind of, he really got it, right?

01:22:29 ◼   ► Like there was some stuff that he totally understood

01:22:32 ◼   ► and he made it, you know,

01:22:34 ◼   ► he kind of made it work all the way back then, right?

01:22:36 ◼   ► Like things that we're still doing today.

01:22:38 ◼   ► So there's a couple of things that I like, right?

01:22:40 ◼   ► He says the executive's time

01:22:42 ◼   ► tends to belong to everybody else.

01:22:44 ◼   ► - I can see why you, you in particular, Myke.

01:22:47 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:22:47 ◼   ► - I can see why you would like that quote.

01:22:48 ◼   ► - And I love it, right?

01:22:50 ◼   ► Like there is, and then like it kind of leads on,

01:22:54 ◼   ► like the fundamental problem is the reality

01:22:55 ◼   ► around the executive unless he changes it

01:22:58 ◼   ► by deliberate action.

01:22:59 ◼   ► The flow of events will determine

01:23:01 ◼   ► that he is concerned with and what he does.

01:23:03 ◼   ► So I find this stuff to be very true

01:23:05 ◼   ► for people that are self-employed

01:23:08 ◼   ► or people that maybe head up a small team or anything.

01:23:12 ◼   ► Your time is a lot of the time pulled in such,

01:23:16 ◼   ► in so many different ways

01:23:18 ◼   ► that you actually don't get to control it

01:23:20 ◼   ► because people require things from you

01:23:24 ◼   ► and they require your time.

01:23:26 ◼   ► So you don't really get to control it, they control it.

01:23:30 ◼   ► And funnily enough, I like, talks a lot about the fact

01:23:33 ◼   ► that meetings are mostly just time wasting.

01:23:36 ◼   ► And I like that again, 1969, but yet still happens

01:23:39 ◼   ► more and more and more.

01:23:41 ◼   ► And you know, he goes on by saying that what you want to do

01:23:46 ◼   ► is find out where your time goes, and then try to cut back

01:23:51 ◼   ► on non-productive demands over time.

01:23:53 ◼   ► And Drucker focuses on something that we talk about

01:23:57 ◼   ► all the time, it's like, don't do it from memory.

01:24:00 ◼   ► You have to actually record it.

01:24:03 ◼   ► You have to record it because if you try

01:24:05 ◼   ► and do it from memory, I love this.

01:24:07 ◼   ► If we rely on our memory,

01:24:08 ◼   ► we do not know how time has been spent.

01:24:10 ◼   ► The important thing is that it gets done

01:24:12 ◼   ► and that the record is made in real time.

01:24:14 ◼   ► That is at the time of the event itself,

01:24:16 ◼   ► rather than later on from memory.

01:24:18 ◼   ► And he says, like, he goes on to say that like,

01:24:20 ◼   ► if you do it from your memory,

01:24:22 ◼   ► you record what you think you should have been doing

01:24:25 ◼   ► rather than what you actually were doing.

01:24:28 ◼   ► And I was like, that is such a good point

01:24:30 ◼   ► because you're like,

01:24:31 ◼   ► I know I had these important things to do today.

01:24:33 ◼   ► I know I took care of them.

01:24:34 ◼   ► That must have taken up the majority of my day.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Well, that's probably not true,

01:24:39 ◼   ► but your brain weights these things

01:24:41 ◼   ► because on what it thinks is important

01:24:43 ◼   ► as opposed to where you actually put your time.

01:24:46 ◼   ► - No, it really is an excellent point.

01:24:49 ◼   ► And we've mentioned this on the previous Book Club episodes,

01:24:53 ◼   ► but this phenomenon I think of as crystallization.

01:24:58 ◼   ► That you bring to a book the solution of thoughts

01:25:03 ◼   ► that's in your head.

01:25:06 ◼   ► And then you read someone express an idea

01:25:09 ◼   ► and your thoughts can crystallize around that idea.

01:25:12 ◼   ► But you get out of books what you bring to them.

01:25:16 ◼   ► And it's why when you're reading something,

01:25:19 ◼   ► lots of sentences don't resonate at all and then you feel like, "Oh, this sentence has

01:25:23 ◼   ► crystallized what I've been..." like you said before, like stuff that's been rolling around

01:25:27 ◼   ► in your head. And like I was thinking as you're talking, I think I was a little bit harsh

01:25:34 ◼   ► on this book by saying it's not a good book because the note that I made to myself is

01:25:42 ◼   ► like I think it's not a good book for me because I highlighted a bunch of stuff

01:25:49 ◼   ► and when I was rereading it I highlighted even more but I was very

01:25:54 ◼   ► aware of I'm just going through this and highlighting things that I agree with

01:25:58 ◼   ► and thoughts that I've already had for a really long time but there was no point

01:26:04 ◼   ► in reading the book where I felt like something crystallized for me but it's

01:26:09 ◼   ► because I've been thinking about this stuff for a long time and reading these

01:26:12 ◼   ► And now as you have revealed, like this is also a foundational book that has appeared in many others.

01:26:17 ◼   ► But I'm reasonably confident that

01:26:20 ◼   ► if I handed this book to

01:26:23 ◼   ► the me who just graduated from college, he would actually get a lot out of it. That it would help

01:26:31 ◼   ► sharpen and crystallize a bunch of his thoughts on these topics sooner than it would otherwise have happened.

01:26:38 ◼   ► And so,

01:26:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess like maybe the more familiar you are with this stuff the less good this book is and the less familiar you are

01:26:47 ◼   ► with it the more potential it it has for you to say like, oh, that's a great way to put this because yeah, like as

01:26:55 ◼   ► you as you pointed out at the beginning it also predates a lot of the

01:26:59 ◼   ► business book tropes

01:27:02 ◼   ► So it does like I have to give this book credit for having a very high density of ideas

01:27:09 ◼   ► Like there is not a lot of filler in this book. It's him

01:27:13 ◼   ► Much more talking about like time tracking doing the best managing your time meetings are a waste of time

01:27:20 ◼   ► the the concept of being an

01:27:23 ◼   ► Executive as one who is the executor of their own life and trying to make things happen in some way. So

01:27:30 ◼   ► so yeah, like I want to withdraw my comment about it being bad and and simply phrase like it wasn't a book that had things for

01:27:39 ◼   ► me to crystallize around, but it may very well have lots of those things depending on

01:27:46 ◼   ► who the reader is.

01:27:47 ◼   ► S: I think we should move on from it. I feel like we've drained most of what we found interesting

01:27:52 ◼   ► about this book, but I want to read my final last quote just to drive home the point about

01:27:58 ◼   ► time tracking and why people should do it. So Drucker says, "Time is the scarcest resource,

01:28:04 ◼   ► unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed. The analysis of one's time,

01:28:08 ◼   ► moreover, is the one easily accessible and yet systematic way to analyze one's

01:28:13 ◼   ► work and to think through what really matters in it. I love that. It's just like

01:28:18 ◼   ► you only have your time. Your time is all you have to spend to do the work that

01:28:22 ◼   ► you want to do. If you're not controlling your time, if you're not trying to look

01:28:27 ◼   ► at your time in a clever way or in a smart way or with any kind of like

01:28:32 ◼   ► thought into where it's going, you won't be enabling yourself to be able to get

01:28:37 ◼   ► done what you want to get done because your time is like leaking away in just, I

01:28:42 ◼   ► don't know, being on phone calls or whatever. So I just thought it was a very

01:28:46 ◼   ► good way of continuing to like drive home this point of time tracking being

01:28:51 ◼   ► important. So I liked it a lot for that. The book itself was really rough in

01:28:58 ◼   ► places, but rough for different reasons to the usual books that we read.

01:29:01 ◼   ► And I honestly think a lot of it is purely in the book's age.

01:29:06 ◼   ► And I think that whilst it makes it kind of fascinating in places that the guy

01:29:11 ◼   ► was talking about this stuff, it also like that the age of this book really

01:29:18 ◼   ► kind of lets it down in some places.

01:29:20 ◼   ► So I think that's, that's the main problem that I had with it.

01:29:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:25 ◼   ► So as I close this book virtually,

01:29:29 ◼   ► don't let it tap to blue mana and cast forget on me again

01:29:34 ◼   ► if I ever like suggest that we do the effective executive

01:29:38 ◼   ► at some point in the future.

01:29:39 ◼   ► Like if I suggest it again, you have to remember Myke

01:29:43 ◼   ► that we've already read it.

01:29:45 ◼   ► - Well, I will remember because there was something

01:29:47 ◼   ► quite unique about this book.

01:29:50 ◼   ► The effective executive is the first book I have actually read in probably like 10 years.

01:29:59 ◼   ► You mean like red red?

01:30:01 ◼   ► Red with my eyes, not with my ears.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Red with your eyes!

01:30:04 ◼   ► And how did you read it with your eyes, Myke?

01:30:07 ◼   ► On a Kindle.

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01:31:54 ◼   ► How was this experience?

01:31:56 ◼   ► It was good and bad.

01:31:59 ◼   ► There is good and bad to it, to the point that I'm not really sure

01:32:04 ◼   ► what I should do about these books going forward.

01:32:08 ◼   ► Okay, so I just want to back up for a second for the listeners.

01:32:10 ◼   ► So Myke doesn't read books with his eyes.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Myke reads books with his ears. And can you give a summary about why that is the case?

01:32:23 ◼   ► Why you read books with your ears and not with your eyes?

01:32:25 ◼   ► Like how would you describe the reason for that?

01:32:27 ◼   ► I think that like...

01:32:29 ◼   ► See, I feel like I don't even want to talk to you about this, but I think it's like my attention.

01:32:37 ◼   ► I just don't really...

01:32:38 ◼   ► And this has kind of been a thing always for me.

01:32:42 ◼   ► I struggle to focus on just sitting and reading. Like, I get distracted really easily. Like,

01:32:51 ◼   ► something that I noted about this book is I had to be in an environment of complete silence to

01:32:57 ◼   ► be able to read it, which was difficult. Like, I can't listen to music.

01:33:02 ◼   ► B: I was gonna say not even music.

01:33:03 ◼   ► Can't listen to music. I just find myself getting distracted by noises and things moving.

01:33:14 ◼   ► It was difficult. And this isn't a problem that I have with visual distractions when

01:33:20 ◼   ► I'm listening to a book. And plus, when I'm listening to a book, if I zone out a little

01:33:27 ◼   ► bit, I don't notice it as much. Then if I'm sitting and reading, I'll be like, "I don't

01:33:32 ◼   ► I don't know what I just read.

01:33:34 ◼   ► I also, I think that I am one of these, well, I know I'm one of these people that

01:33:38 ◼   ► I read each word in my head, right?

01:33:42 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:33:43 ◼   ► So when I read the book, my brain is saying the words to me.

01:33:47 ◼   ► Right.

01:33:49 ◼   ► So I'm not a fast reader. So it takes me quite a while to actually read.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I do the same thing for the record and it is

01:33:58 ◼   ► Mind-blowing to me that people can read without doing that.

01:34:02 ◼   ► Yep, I don't understand it.

01:34:03 ◼   ► Like and I've done some of that speed reading stuff like I've tried it and like I can do it

01:34:08 ◼   ► You know like with a speed reading app where you just like just look at it and it goes into your brain

01:34:13 ◼   ► But I just I don't like it. It feels like it makes my head hurt to do it

01:34:19 ◼   ► So I've done those things and it just makes the internal narrator faster where it flashes the one word. It is like

01:34:27 ◼   ► I'm totally still hearing it when they do that.

01:34:29 ◼   ► It's very strange.

01:34:32 ◼   ► - So I kind of just haven't really spent a lot of time

01:34:37 ◼   ► thinking about it.

01:34:40 ◼   ► Audiobooks work for me.

01:34:42 ◼   ► Audiobooks work for me when I'm doing other things.

01:34:45 ◼   ► That was something I was really noted about.

01:34:47 ◼   ► I couldn't read this book whilst walking.

01:34:52 ◼   ► I couldn't read this book whilst I was doing the washing up.

01:34:56 ◼   ► I couldn't steal time away to read this book

01:35:01 ◼   ► like I could with other books in the Cortex book.

01:35:03 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:35:04 ◼   ► This book demands your full attention.

01:35:06 ◼   ► - I need to sit down with the Kindle

01:35:09 ◼   ► and spend this time just reading this book.

01:35:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can't also be playing Stardew Valley

01:35:16 ◼   ► while you're listening to the book.

01:35:16 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:35:17 ◼   ► - And feeling, oh, look at me, I'm being doubly productive.

01:35:20 ◼   ► I'm relaxing and working at the same time.

01:35:22 ◼   ► - So that was a frustration for me

01:35:24 ◼   ► it made this book in places harder to get through, but there are things that I was able to do with

01:35:30 ◼   ► this book that I can't do with the audiobook and that is skimming. So when he's rattling on

01:35:36 ◼   ► about the Bell Labs guy, I'm just like skimming through it because as is usual with these books,

01:35:43 ◼   ► there is a thing that you'll note, right? If you read the first two paragraphs of a section and the

01:35:48 ◼   ► last two paragraphs of the section, as long as you understood the first two, you'll understand the

01:35:53 ◼   ► the last two because they make their point, they have a huge example and then they conclude

01:35:58 ◼   ► the point. A lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time, I don't need to have

01:36:03 ◼   ► it explained to me in depth because I got what he was trying to say. There were times

01:36:07 ◼   ► when I did need more and I would read it. But if he set up a thing like, "Oh, I understand

01:36:12 ◼   ► this. Like, I don't need a historical example, like, because I get what you're talking about."

01:36:17 ◼   ► So that's good because when I'm listening to the books, I have to listen to those things.

01:36:21 ◼   ► But it did make me think, right?

01:36:25 ◼   ► Is some of the best stuff about the Cortex book club the frustration?

01:36:31 ◼   ► Because if that makes this segment more interesting to listen to, then maybe I should be forcing

01:36:37 ◼   ► myself to have to listen to it.

01:36:39 ◼   ► Now this book doesn't have a lot of that, right?

01:36:42 ◼   ► So maybe it's not the best test case, but it was something I was aware of.

01:36:48 ◼   ► like I would not have continued to read like the examples of the what book the emith was

01:36:57 ◼   ► it emith guy who was like living on an island of his family on a moped yeah that guy visited

01:37:02 ◼   ► yeah I wouldn't have read that right I'd be like I hate this go away and just like skipped

01:37:06 ◼   ► over it so I don't know like maybe I would have had some really hilarious anecdotes of

01:37:11 ◼   ► what it was like for the guy talking about reading a computer in 1969 but I couldn't

01:37:15 ◼   ► bring myself to spend the time to read it. So that is like a good thing maybe for me,

01:37:22 ◼   ► but I don't know if it's a good thing for when we're talking about those books.

01:37:26 ◼   ► B: Yeah, yeah, I mean, how much is it the value people get from listening to us talk

01:37:32 ◼   ► about the books versus how much people think it's hilarious to hear people suffer? And

01:37:38 ◼   ► other human suffering is hilarious. So I understand that. And I don't understand how, you know,

01:37:45 ◼   ► I read these books, and to me, the thought of listening to them without the ability to skim is intolerable.

01:37:56 ◼   ► I just don't know how you could possibly do it.

01:38:00 ◼   ► So to me, you have finally experienced the way that is the only way a human can survive these books,

01:38:06 ◼   ► which is to skim and to skim a lot.

01:38:09 ◼   ► When you feel like, "Ah, okay, author, I see what you're doing. You're going into your story.

01:38:13 ◼   ► or let me just boop boop boop down three paragraphs and now, okay, we're back.

01:38:17 ◼   ► We're back to talking about the actual the actual thing.

01:38:20 ◼   ► So like that, that was a big

01:38:22 ◼   ► that that was a big help for me when getting through this book.

01:38:26 ◼   ► But like I'm undecided right now.

01:38:29 ◼   ► Like what is the best route forward?

01:38:31 ◼   ► Like I feel like I would want to do it

01:38:34 ◼   ► whenever our next one is.

01:38:35 ◼   ► I would want to try and read it again and like see

01:38:37 ◼   ► see what I think is the best thing to ultimately do.

01:38:41 ◼   ► So you would give then reading a physical, in quotes,

01:38:46 ◼   ► like a physical book a shot again?

01:38:49 ◼   ► - Here's the thing, right?

01:38:50 ◼   ► So the read time on the Kindle version

01:38:53 ◼   ► was three and a half hours is what it quoted me, right?

01:38:56 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:38:57 ◼   ► - The audiobook is 10 hours.

01:38:59 ◼   ► - Oh, oh God.

01:39:01 ◼   ► - I didn't read the whole book,

01:39:03 ◼   ► but it probably took me about three hours, right?

01:39:06 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm not a fast enough reader, I don't think.

01:39:08 ◼   ► But so it took me a third of the time to get this book done.

01:39:12 ◼   ► Right. But there was no Stardew Valley time overlaid on those three hours.

01:39:16 ◼   ► So this is what I haven't decided, right?

01:39:18 ◼   ► Like now I was able to skip a lot of the stuff I didn't want to read and that

01:39:23 ◼   ► was great, but I don't, I haven't worked out like the trade offs for me yet.

01:39:27 ◼   ► As you know,

01:39:28 ◼   ► I liked the system of highlighting and noting because I didn't have to write out

01:39:33 ◼   ► a separate note like I usually do. Right.

01:39:36 ◼   ► And that was the system on the Kindle was very good for that.

01:39:38 ◼   ► And then I could just bring them all up on a computer and then just like

01:39:41 ◼   ► copy and paste into our show notes, the bits that I wanted, it let me triage it.

01:39:45 ◼   ► It was, it worked pretty well for that.

01:39:46 ◼   ► Um, I liked that.

01:39:48 ◼   ► The gradient on the Kindle was, was, was fine.

01:39:52 ◼   ► I, I got the, the Oasis, maybe.

01:39:57 ◼   ► Was it the one with the battery pack in the cover?

01:40:01 ◼   ► Or is it the, I didn't get the cover, but I can have a cover, right?

01:40:05 ◼   ► But it's got that weird hump on it.

01:40:07 ◼   ► It has three little pins on the back of it to connect to the battery cover.

01:40:11 ◼   ► Okay, yeah.

01:40:12 ◼   ► It has the weird hump and it's like a square, right?

01:40:15 ◼   ► Which is all very strange.

01:40:16 ◼   ► And it wasn't as comfortable as I wanted.

01:40:21 ◼   ► I got that one because it had a light on it.

01:40:23 ◼   ► It had a backlight and I wanted a backlight.

01:40:27 ◼   ► But like whilst it's super small and super light, it's still not light enough.

01:40:33 ◼   ► I feel like I wanted it to be a little bit lighter so I could really easily and comfortably

01:40:39 ◼   ► just like hold it in one hand.

01:40:41 ◼   ► It's this weird thing that like whilst the paperback book is heavier, its thickness makes

01:40:45 ◼   ► it like easier to hold like there's like a balance to it where this thing is so thin

01:40:51 ◼   ► but yet it's not light enough and the weight is misbalanced because of the strange hump.

01:40:55 ◼   ► I just had a genius idea which hadn't even crossed my mind until just now because I do

01:41:00 ◼   ► love the Kindles and but they are their thinness does make them hard to hold

01:41:07 ◼   ► sometimes and I'm aware of that and the the newest Kindle is heavier than the

01:41:13 ◼   ► version that you use they made it bigger and it's heavier but I just realized

01:41:17 ◼   ► Myke popsocket on the Kindle oh now I I never thought of this is G but this

01:41:28 ◼   ► seems great like why not this yeah that's perfect I'm gonna get I'm gonna

01:41:32 ◼   ► grab my Kindle right now I have a pop socket right on the back of it straight

01:41:36 ◼   ► on there that is genius genius by the way pop sockets they've introduced a new

01:41:42 ◼   ► version where you can like easily twist the part of the back right they've

01:41:48 ◼   ► called it like pop tops so you can one thing you can do is customize it but the

01:41:53 ◼   ► other, it lets you do wireless charging.

01:41:55 ◼   ► Yeah, no, someone someone sent me that.

01:41:58 ◼   ► And it's still I still it doesn't

01:42:00 ◼   ► work the way I would want it. But

01:42:01 ◼   ► yeah, it's made me angry. Because

01:42:03 ◼   ► what I want is no steps. And that's

01:42:05 ◼   ► one step. Yeah, I might as well

01:42:06 ◼   ► plug in the wire at that point.

01:42:07 ◼   ► Right. And I totally agree with

01:42:09 ◼   ► you. I totally agree with you. But

01:42:11 ◼   ► on the off chance that it was like

01:42:13 ◼   ► that that made sense. I thought

01:42:14 ◼   ► I'd recommend it right like they

01:42:15 ◼   ► do that they have created they have

01:42:17 ◼   ► tried I think they've tried to do

01:42:18 ◼   ► their best right like to to how can

01:42:20 ◼   ► we make this work but it's still

01:42:23 ◼   ► like I wouldn't want to be like taking these discs on and off every day.

01:42:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:42:26 ◼   ► But it is an option.

01:42:27 ◼   ► So that's, that's, that's what I'm going to do.

01:42:28 ◼   ► Pop socket on the back of my Kindle immediately.

01:42:30 ◼   ► I think that's going to be great.

01:42:32 ◼   ► So yeah, I would say that like overall, I think there are benefits to this, which I

01:42:38 ◼   ► knew existed, but didn't really know how beneficial they would be in like being

01:42:42 ◼   ► able to skip stuff about like enraging every time I'm listening to these like

01:42:49 ◼   ► horrific lists.

01:42:51 ◼   ► But also though, Drucker isn't that bad with this stuff.

01:42:54 ◼   ► So I want to give it a go with some of another book before I make my final

01:42:59 ◼   ► decision as to whether going forward I will use a Kindle or use an audio book.

01:43:03 ◼   ► Right. Like he is not he was not one of these people that would write like

01:43:08 ◼   ► 17 different things, you know, like I have helped like people

01:43:15 ◼   ► who have been gambling.

01:43:16 ◼   ► I have helped people who are like, you know, going on and on and on and on and on,

01:43:20 ◼   ► where you could just easily jump it.

01:43:22 ◼   ► Like there wasn't that much of it.

01:43:23 ◼   ► His stuff that I was skipping

01:43:24 ◼   ► were just really long stories that I didn't care about

01:43:27 ◼   ► or a computer chapter in 1969.

01:43:31 ◼   ► I feel like I should go back and read that at some point.

01:43:34 ◼   ► But like that.

01:43:35 ◼   ► So, yeah, I think I would say the Kindle experiment was an interesting one.

01:43:38 ◼   ► I just haven't made my mind up yet

01:43:43 ◼   ► to what I'm going to what I'm going to do going forward.

01:43:48 ◼   ► But I will say it was better than I thought.

01:43:51 ◼   ► I thought I was going to absolutely hate it and wouldn't finish the book and would have

01:43:54 ◼   ► to go to the audiobook.

01:43:56 ◼   ► And that wasn't the case.

01:43:58 ◼   ► That's what I was wondering was going to happen.

01:44:00 ◼   ► Because when you suggested the idea that you were going to try to read this one on Kindle,

01:44:03 ◼   ► which I can't even really remember why you originally... was it because you were traveling

01:44:06 ◼   ► a bunch and you thought maybe you'll use the Kindle then?

01:44:08 ◼   ► Was that the idea?

01:44:09 ◼   ► I have no idea how it came up.

01:44:10 ◼   ► Like one of us just mentioned it and then it'd be like, "Oh, that'd be interesting to

01:44:13 ◼   ► talk about."

01:44:14 ◼   ► So I just did it.

01:44:15 ◼   ► I have no memory of why we ended up deciding to do this, but we just did.

01:44:20 ◼   ► Yeah. But like I was,

01:44:23 ◼   ► I was interested in you doing this because of the way that you entirely read

01:44:28 ◼   ► books by listening to them instead of looking at them with your eyes.

01:44:34 ◼   ► And I don't know,

01:44:35 ◼   ► I was just kind of curious about what your experience was of reading a book with

01:44:39 ◼   ► your eyes, but I'm also just realizing,

01:44:41 ◼   ► But of course, the only books you're ever going to be reading are these horrible books

01:44:47 ◼   ► for the Cortex book club.

01:44:50 ◼   ► And it's not exactly like you're not exactly snuggling up on a couch with Harry Potter,

01:44:56 ◼   ► right?

01:44:57 ◼   ► It's like it's not quite the same experience.

01:44:59 ◼   ► I did read a fiction audio book recently, but like, I don't know if it really fits the

01:45:03 ◼   ► bill.

01:45:04 ◼   ► I read The Handmaid's Tale.

01:45:05 ◼   ► But, but okay, but you listen to it or you read it?

01:45:08 ◼   ► I listen to it.

01:45:09 ◼   ► I listen to it.

01:45:10 ◼   ► was also an interesting thing because that was like the first fiction that I'd

01:45:14 ◼   ► read in any form in like 10 years as well. So.

01:45:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess like I want to,

01:45:20 ◼   ► I want to say this without any judgment, just to be clear.

01:45:24 ◼   ► Cause I think there's this weird societal judgment about like, Oh,

01:45:27 ◼   ► people who read books are better than people who don't. Right.

01:45:30 ◼   ► Which I think is dumb. And so I'm not trying to do that. But I was,

01:45:33 ◼   ► I was kind of curious if your experience with the Kindle

01:45:38 ◼   ► gave you even the slightest feeling of like, oh,

01:45:42 ◼   ► maybe I would want to sit on a couch and read a book with my eyes instead of

01:45:47 ◼   ► listening to one. Like did that happen at all?

01:45:52 ◼   ► Like is it a thing that you might imagine in your life with a Kindle or do you

01:45:57 ◼   ► think like it's just not a thing that you're ever going to do?

01:45:59 ◼   ► I don't think that this experience made me any more likely to do it.

01:46:06 ◼   ► Okay, all right. I think that makes sense. That makes sense, given your reasons from earlier.

01:46:13 ◼   ► But I was just kind of curious if... I wanted you to do it because I thought maybe there's like a

01:46:18 ◼   ► tiny, tiny chance that you might end up finding that you really enjoyed the experience of the

01:46:23 ◼   ► Kindle, but I just hadn't really thought about the fact that I was making you read something

01:46:27 ◼   ► torturous and like maybe that's not the best introduction.

01:46:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I just I can't explain why I am this way, but I just don't enjoy reading.

01:46:37 ◼   ► And again, I'm not being judgmental about that. I just think it's just I find it.

01:46:42 ◼   ► I just find that interesting.

01:46:44 ◼   ► It is. I don't know the reason why. Like, it's not like I don't have problems with the content.

01:46:49 ◼   ► Like, it's not like I never want to read X, Y or Z. Like, I like to listen to things, right?

01:46:55 ◼   ► But I mean, I'm the same. It's not just books.

01:46:58 ◼   ► Like it's I don't like to read 2000 long New York Times articles.

01:47:02 ◼   ► Like it's just not, you know, it's just not my thing.

01:47:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess the reason I find it interesting is because you are a curious person.

01:47:11 ◼   ► Like you're interested in things in the world.

01:47:13 ◼   ► You're interested in thinking about things.

01:47:16 ◼   ► And with people that I know, that correlates very highly with reading

01:47:19 ◼   ► and people who are generally incurious people, it correlates very low with reading.

01:47:24 ◼   ► So I guess that's why I always just find this,

01:47:27 ◼   ► my mind wanders back to this on occasion,

01:47:30 ◼   ► because you are like a bit of a statistical outlier

01:47:34 ◼   ► with people in my social circle

01:47:35 ◼   ► with regards to this behavior.

01:47:37 ◼   ► But I'm glad you gave it a shot on the Kindle.

01:47:40 ◼   ► I guess I'm gonna try to pick a much,

01:47:42 ◼   ► like I'm gonna try to pick a real winner for,

01:47:44 ◼   ► like I need a really engaging book

01:47:46 ◼   ► for the next Cortex book club

01:47:48 ◼   ► that we can still pass off as like a workbook for the show.

01:47:52 ◼   ► Oh, right, you're trying to win me over. I get it. See, I was just thinking like,

01:47:56 ◼   ► we just picked something horrifically bad, so I'll understand if I like skipping sections still.

01:48:02 ◼   ► No, no, I'm not trying to win you over. I just think if you're gonna give the Kindle one more shot,

01:48:10 ◼   ► I would like something that has at least the chance of being somewhat engaging. I think that's

01:48:15 ◼   ► what I would be aiming for on the next Cortex book club. We'll see, who knows?

01:48:19 ◼   ► I'm trying to think, have we read any book so far?

01:48:22 ◼   ► Creativity Inc. I think was good.

01:48:24 ◼   ► Yeah, but that wasn't even a business book though, really. It was his biography, and I like biographies.

01:48:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but look, that's close enough, right?

01:48:32 ◼   ► Maybe there's another one like that.

01:48:33 ◼   ► That's within the greater orbit. Yeah, it's within the greater orbit of Cortex Book Club.

01:48:37 ◼   ► We can try to find something, or I guess the listeners can suggest things, and maybe several

01:48:44 ◼   ► months from now I can go back and try to find something. I don't know. We'll figure it out.

01:48:48 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]