Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Where in the world is Myke Hurley?

00:00:02 ◼   ► Well, it depends who you're talking to.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Myke Hurley, the body, is in London.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Ah, right. Right, okay, yeah, I know this.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Myke Hurley, the kind of the general spirit and consciousness,

00:00:14 ◼   ► is stuck somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Right. That Myke Hurley is still catching up with this Myke Hurley.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Yeah, he'll be here just in time for it to change again, so.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Oh, good.

00:00:26 ◼   ► He's very excited about.

00:00:29 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:00:30 ◼   ► - Perfect.

00:00:31 ◼   ► So you're in that in between time then.

00:00:33 ◼   ► One trip is over and another trip will start

00:00:36 ◼   ► just as you've adjusted.

00:00:38 ◼   ► That's the best.

00:00:39 ◼   ► That is just the best.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've been chasing that feeling

00:00:43 ◼   ► for about three months.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I've had a lot of really great travel

00:00:47 ◼   ► this back end of the year,

00:00:50 ◼   ► but it has thrown my body clock through a loop.

00:00:54 ◼   ► I just got back from Seattle yesterday.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - From PodCon.

00:00:58 ◼   ► on PodCon. It happened and I got back yesterday and I managed to stay awake. I've gotten

00:01:05 ◼   ► pretty good at staying awake when I get home and then I just hate when you have really

00:01:12 ◼   ► bad jet lag when you wake up the next morning and feel worse than when you went to sleep

00:01:18 ◼   ► and that was how I felt today.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm with you there.

00:01:22 ◼   ► So I'm drinking a smoothie right now called vitamin power.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Ooh.

00:01:28 ◼   ► hoping that that will get me through. Yeah, I have often found that the jet lag kind of tricks you.

00:01:35 ◼   ► I'm often very optimistic the first day I get back. I feel like, "Oh, I'm doing really well."

00:01:41 ◼   ► But it's like, "Oh, the jet lag is actually just winding up for day two." When you're like,

00:01:46 ◼   ► "Oh, I feel terrible." Oh, it's day two your day? My worst is night three. Night three,

00:01:53 ◼   ► "I need to clear the schedule for day four because night three means Myke will not sleep."

00:01:59 ◼   ► That tends to be what happens to me, so I've got no sleep coming in a couple of days,

00:02:06 ◼   ► so that'd be fun.

00:02:07 ◼   ► This is the thing with travel, especially very long travel, like if you're going from

00:02:11 ◼   ► London to the West Coast and back again, is it's really got to be worth it to do that trip.

00:02:20 ◼   ► and you were going out to a PodCon, the first PodCon.

00:02:25 ◼   ► No one had ever been to a PodCon before.

00:02:27 ◼   ► Was it worth it, Myke?

00:02:29 ◼   ► Was it worth the jet lag?

00:02:31 ◼   ► - Without a shadow of a doubt.

00:02:33 ◼   ► - Oh, great.

00:02:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was fantastic.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I would do it again.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I would do it again next week, if there was one next week.

00:02:41 ◼   ► I had such a good time

00:02:44 ◼   ► at probably the best organized conference I've ever been to.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Well, you know, the Greens, they have some experience with organizing conferences.

00:02:53 ◼   ► They know what's going on.

00:02:54 ◼   ► They put a few together in their days.

00:02:56 ◼   ► I've never been to VidCon, but what I could feel was happening was

00:03:01 ◼   ► VidCon moved to Seattle.

00:03:03 ◼   ► It was just an incredibly well-oiled machine.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Everything was taken care of.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Like every event that I had to go to, there was someone to take me there and pick me

00:03:16 ◼   ► up. Like it was, yeah, it was amazing. I was so blown away by like how all of the details

00:03:24 ◼   ► were taken care of. And it made me smile. Everyone was wearing radios, right? Like it

00:03:29 ◼   ► was just like a whole big to-do. It was very, very well put together.

00:03:34 ◼   ► That's really great to hear. It's one of those things where I was not able to attend this

00:03:38 ◼   ► year. Like I wanted to go and I wasn't able to go, partly because my travel schedule has

00:03:43 ◼   ► also been crazy this year. And I was watching with some sadness people on Twitter, like,

00:03:49 ◼   ► seeming to be having a great time at PodCon. I was like, "Oh, I'm over here, not able to

00:03:53 ◼   ► be there at PodCon."

00:03:54 ◼   ► It was a great time. It was really good.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Remind me again, like, what were your responsibilities at PodCon? You did a panel, is that right?

00:04:00 ◼   ► I had four events.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Four? Okay.

00:04:05 ◼   ► In total. I had a panel about networks with some amazing people. I had what's called a

00:04:13 ◼   ► podcast scramble. Scramble? Yeah, it's where they put two podcast hosts that have never

00:04:18 ◼   ► worked together before together and you make a show about anything. Like speed podcast

00:04:23 ◼   ► dating? Like speed podcast dating, yes. But the date happens in front of an audience.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Okay. You have to do the podcast just live? Like what, you have to do a 15-minute show?

00:04:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it was a 25-minute show in front of an audience. Do you know who you're going

00:04:39 ◼   ► to be scrambled with ahead of time?

00:04:41 ◼   ► - Yes, we knew vastly ahead of time

00:04:44 ◼   ► so we were able to put a plan together.

00:04:46 ◼   ► I wouldn't do the other one 'cause that sounds like hell.

00:04:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:50 ◼   ► - I'm just trying to imagine what,

00:04:52 ◼   ► maybe from an audience perspective, it would be amazing,

00:04:55 ◼   ► to see two people walk out on stage

00:04:58 ◼   ► who don't know that they're going to meet,

00:05:00 ◼   ► and then the audience just screams, entertain us,

00:05:02 ◼   ► and they have to do it.

00:05:03 ◼   ► That could be great from a watching perspective

00:05:05 ◼   ► for very many reasons.

00:05:07 ◼   ► every one of these scrambles will be the same.

00:05:09 ◼   ► How's PodCon for you?

00:05:11 ◼   ► That's how every single one of them would go, right?

00:05:13 ◼   ► It's how they would all start.

00:05:14 ◼   ► How's your PodCon?

00:05:15 ◼   ► - No, that's not a podcast.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Then you're just talking to the audience.

00:05:18 ◼   ► It's a podcast if there's two people talking to each other.

00:05:21 ◼   ► So the audience could yell at them and say,

00:05:22 ◼   ► "No, you're breaking the rules.

00:05:23 ◼   ► "This isn't a podcast, this is just a show."

00:05:25 ◼   ► - I don't think I like the CGP Grey organized PodCon

00:05:28 ◼   ► very much.

00:05:29 ◼   ► - Well, this is why I didn't and shouldn't

00:05:32 ◼   ► organize any kind of conference.

00:05:34 ◼   ► There are many things people don't want me to do.

00:05:37 ◼   ► One of the things highest on that list almost certainly would be trying to organize any kind of conference.

00:05:42 ◼   ► I'm always amazed at these things and there is no ability for me to put this stuff together.

00:05:48 ◼   ► So it was panel, scramble, what were the other two?

00:05:53 ◼   ► Creator chat, which I believe is something that happens at VidCon.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Yes, yeah, it does.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And this is where I sat down with a group of 12 people

00:06:03 ◼   ► who I think were all mostly podcasters themselves

00:06:08 ◼   ► and they were just asking me questions

00:06:11 ◼   ► about what my opinions were on things

00:06:13 ◼   ► and the way that I do things and stuff like that.

00:06:15 ◼   ► That was really fun.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And then my signing was the fourth and final thing.

00:06:21 ◼   ► The first three things all happened on Saturday

00:06:23 ◼   ► and my signing happened on Sunday,

00:06:25 ◼   ► which was both a blessing and a curse

00:06:26 ◼   ► because I felt like Saturday lost it for two days,

00:06:30 ◼   ► it felt like, but then I had the impending doom

00:06:33 ◼   ► of the signing hanging over me.

00:06:36 ◼   ► - Right, the concern.

00:06:38 ◼   ► The signing that you were going to bribe people

00:06:41 ◼   ► to come to with your poster.

00:06:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:06:43 ◼   ► - Okay, well tell us, Myke, how was the signing?

00:06:48 ◼   ► - The signing was very overwhelming for me.

00:06:56 ◼   ► because there were a lot of people there.

00:06:58 ◼   ► I don't know exactly how many,

00:07:02 ◼   ► but I know it was more than anybody was prepared for.

00:07:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:07 ◼   ► Because we needed a second volunteer

00:07:11 ◼   ► to come and help out.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And also, I realized

00:07:18 ◼   ► that I don't know how signings work.

00:07:24 ◼   ► and I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do.

00:07:28 ◼   ► So I have my box of posters under my arm,

00:07:33 ◼   ► and I was standing behind a black curtain.

00:07:36 ◼   ► - Ah, okay, they did that setup, right, yeah.

00:07:40 ◼   ► I know this setup, yep, I've seen this.

00:07:42 ◼   ► - And I walked through the curtain,

00:07:43 ◼   ► and there were significantly more people

00:07:46 ◼   ► sitting there than I expected.

00:07:47 ◼   ► They made noises, and then I put the box down on the table,

00:07:54 ◼   ► and I said hello and didn't know what to do next.

00:07:57 ◼   ► And no one was there to tell me.

00:08:00 ◼   ► So I sat down and then the volunteer was like,

00:08:05 ◼   ► 'cause this is a great thing that I didn't expect,

00:08:08 ◼   ► which shows the organization happening behind the scenes.

00:08:13 ◼   ► I expected to just see a line of people just lining up.

00:08:16 ◼   ► But what they do is they sit everybody down

00:08:19 ◼   ► in front of you, almost like audience style,

00:08:23 ◼   ► and then bring people up line by line

00:08:25 ◼   ► and they just have one row lining up at a time.

00:08:28 ◼   ► So it means the people that are waiting

00:08:29 ◼   ► aren't just standing around, they're sitting down.

00:08:32 ◼   ► It's like, that's a really smart way to do this.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I just assumed that there would just be

00:08:36 ◼   ► like a snaking line of people.

00:08:38 ◼   ► - It's very uncomfortable to stand.

00:08:41 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:08:42 ◼   ► - For as long as, for as long as much time

00:08:44 ◼   ► as it's going to take to see a Myke Hurley apparently.

00:08:47 ◼   ► - Well, it did take a long time

00:08:49 ◼   ► for some people unfortunately.

00:08:51 ◼   ► I had an hour, right?

00:08:52 ◼   ► That was my allotted time.

00:08:54 ◼   ► So I figured I just started and people came over

00:08:58 ◼   ► and I would say like, "Hi, hello, how are you?"

00:09:01 ◼   ► Like I was able, I got good at reading people's names

00:09:04 ◼   ► from their name tags so I could start writing the names down

00:09:07 ◼   ► 'cause I like write the name on the poster.

00:09:09 ◼   ► I could ask them where they wanted me to sign it

00:09:11 ◼   ► 'cause there wasn't like an obvious place.

00:09:12 ◼   ► I ended up working out the obvious place on the poster.

00:09:15 ◼   ► I'm gonna put a link in by the way

00:09:17 ◼   ► to the poster in the show notes.

00:09:19 ◼   ► I'll talk about the poster again in a minute

00:09:20 ◼   ► but just so you can see it.

00:09:21 ◼   ► and I was writing it kind of like around the chair.

00:09:23 ◼   ► There's like a chair in the postroom.

00:09:25 ◼   ► It's like a white space.

00:09:25 ◼   ► I was writing it there.

00:09:26 ◼   ► Like, thanks so much for coming, blah, blah, blah.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Same to people like, how are you enjoying the,

00:09:31 ◼   ► how are you enjoying PodCon?

00:09:32 ◼   ► That kind of thing.

00:09:33 ◼   ► People would usually have something

00:09:34 ◼   ► that they wanted to say to me.

00:09:35 ◼   ► And that was great.

00:09:36 ◼   ► So moving through people, I was having a great time.

00:09:38 ◼   ► It felt really cool taking some pictures.

00:09:40 ◼   ► Then a little while goes by.

00:09:45 ◼   ► I don't even check my watch.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Like I'm just completely focused on what's going on.

00:09:49 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:09:50 ◼   ► You don't have any time to check your watch in those kind of situations.

00:09:53 ◼   ► So like I'm just going through these things, getting the post, signing it, like this.

00:09:57 ◼   ► The volunteer comes up to me and she says, "I just want to let you know that you've

00:10:04 ◼   ► run through half of your time, but a quarter of the people."

00:10:07 ◼   ► Oh God.

00:10:08 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh no!"

00:10:10 ◼   ► Oh God.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Okay.

00:10:14 ◼   ► So I was like, "Right, okay then."

00:10:15 ◼   ► So, uh, just tried to start speeding up a little bit, speeding up a little bit.

00:10:19 ◼   ► And I was kind of getting to the point where like I figured I think the thing that's

00:10:24 ◼   ► taken me the longest amount of time is writing out an individual note on everyone's posters,

00:10:29 ◼   ► which was what I wanted to do but couldn't. So I was just like writing people's names

00:10:33 ◼   ► down signing it taking pictures that kind of thing. A little while passes more and she

00:10:37 ◼   ► comes up to me again. She's like, you're gonna have to speed up because the McElroy brothers

00:10:41 ◼   ► are next. Right and like people are starting to arrive for their signing. Right. Right.

00:10:48 ◼   ► - Of course, of course, right.

00:10:49 ◼   ► - And so then it's continued to go through,

00:10:51 ◼   ► continued to go through.

00:10:52 ◼   ► And then I noticed something changed in the audience

00:10:56 ◼   ► where like, what was happening was people would come

00:11:00 ◼   ► and then I would sign the poster

00:11:01 ◼   ► and if they wanted a picture,

00:11:03 ◼   ► the volunteer would take the picture.

00:11:05 ◼   ► So like beforehand, they would give her their phone,

00:11:08 ◼   ► she would take the picture and go.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Then I noticed something change where like,

00:11:12 ◼   ► other people in the line were taking pictures for them.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And at first I thought, oh, these are just all friends.

00:11:20 ◼   ► But then like that person would take,

00:11:22 ◼   ► and then what I realized had happened

00:11:25 ◼   ► is that the volunteer had said to people,

00:11:27 ◼   ► you can choose something signed or a picture.

00:11:30 ◼   ► So the attendees were going rogue

00:11:34 ◼   ► and taking pictures for each other.

00:11:38 ◼   ► - Right, I see.

00:11:40 ◼   ► - The thing was, what ended up being the best move

00:11:43 ◼   ► was to ask for the picture

00:11:44 ◼   ► because I was making sure every person left with a poster

00:11:47 ◼   ► because that was the deal we made, right?

00:11:50 ◼   ► Nobody knew this, but that was the deal

00:11:52 ◼   ► that me and you, the listener, made.

00:11:54 ◼   ► So if they took it, I would just scribble my name on it

00:11:56 ◼   ► and just throw it at them.

00:11:58 ◼   ► I got through everybody.

00:12:00 ◼   ► I thought I was going to die.

00:12:02 ◼   ► And the volunteer came up to me afterwards.

00:12:06 ◼   ► She was like, "Thank you so much.

00:12:07 ◼   ► "You were amazing,

00:12:09 ◼   ► "and we were not expecting this amount of people.

00:12:11 ◼   ► So, great, the bribery worked.

00:12:14 ◼   ► Maybe a little too well.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Maybe a little too. I would say for me personally, it worked great because I

00:12:22 ◼   ► didn't walk out to just five people who were my friends.

00:12:24 ◼   ► That was a great moment. There were like five of my friends were in the audience

00:12:28 ◼   ► and they all lined up. Basically, they came over.

00:12:31 ◼   ► We just took a picture and I told them to get the heck out of there.

00:12:33 ◼   ► And like, and I, I could feel the happiness from the volunteer who was trying to

00:12:38 ◼   ► deal with this as I knocked out half of a line in two seconds. And then I just gave

00:12:44 ◼   ► them their posters. Because they were just there for me in case nobody showed up, right?

00:12:49 ◼   ► That was my backup plan.

00:12:50 ◼   ► So the volunteer's thinking, "Oh, this guy's a real pro. He's going to get through

00:12:54 ◼   ► this line in no time at all." Little did they know what was actually about to happen.

00:12:58 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Yeah, they're like, "Oh man, this guy's great. He must do this all the time."

00:13:03 ◼   ► Right, because it's full, right? So they're like, "Well, if this is full, he must have

00:13:07 ◼   ► done these before. But it turns out, no.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and so that's why you didn't get a warning until half the time was gone because they

00:13:13 ◼   ► were thinking, "Oh, at any moment he's going to get back into the groove of it." And then

00:13:16 ◼   ► there was panic slowly setting up.

00:13:17 ◼   ► There was no groove. No groove.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Yeah, there was no groove. They need like a... I feel like in running you have a pacer

00:13:26 ◼   ► runner, right? I feel like they need some kind of mechanism to visually indicate to

00:13:31 ◼   ► you if you are on ahead or behind schedule, like some kind of visual pacing mechanism.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Like they could build like a signing robot, which is signing a pace. I got like a pace robot

00:13:42 ◼   ► And that's it's not I've got a kind of match the pace of the robot that sits next to me

00:13:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that would probably make it feel just as personal and non-mechanical

00:13:50 ◼   ► To the people coming to see you for the signing. Maybe it's you

00:13:55 ◼   ► Robot

00:13:59 ◼   ► I'm not here to help you out with this. I just I don't think the pacing robot is good

00:14:05 ◼   ► I'm just thinking like behind the line just a light that's in your field division that you can see that's you know

00:14:10 ◼   ► Green yellow or red for how well you're doing. That's that's that's what they need

00:14:14 ◼   ► I want to get real for a second and just I want to thank everybody that did come to the signing

00:14:20 ◼   ► I think pretty much all of those people listen to cortex. Everybody told me that they love the show and

00:14:24 ◼   ► It was gray a real-life moment for me, honestly because I wasn't expecting a lot

00:14:31 ◼   ► Oh, one thing I forgot to tell you. So I'm like in the kind of the green room

00:14:37 ◼   ► I'm getting ready to go and I'm kind of I'm nervous right cuz I don't know what what's waiting for me

00:14:43 ◼   ► Right, and then somebody sent me a tweet

00:14:45 ◼   ► This is like 20 minutes before my signing that there were 50 people in the line at that point

00:14:50 ◼   ► That made me feel very uncomfortable

00:14:53 ◼   ► Cuz like at that point that's already like maybe 10 times more people than I expected we're gonna be there

00:15:00 ◼   ► Right. So the whole situation is something that I will never forget because it was like emotionally overwhelming

00:15:09 ◼   ► So, yeah, thank you if you came it was

00:15:14 ◼   ► It was amazing. It really was just amazing. I couldn't believe it. It was brilliant. Oh, I signed a bunch of phones. Oh

00:15:21 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah to iPhones

00:15:25 ◼   ► To Google pixels the pixels are better to sign on

00:15:29 ◼   ► - How are they?

00:15:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, something about the aluminum in them,

00:15:32 ◼   ► like the way it's, it was way nicer.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Somebody had me sign an iPhone 4,

00:15:35 ◼   ► which was a disaster 'cause it's glass.

00:15:38 ◼   ► So the sharpie didn't stick to it.

00:15:39 ◼   ► - Those cannot be signed.

00:15:40 ◼   ► - Can't be signed.

00:15:41 ◼   ► I signed some beard oil.

00:15:44 ◼   ► - Okay, all right.

00:15:45 ◼   ► I was wondering, I thought like,

00:15:47 ◼   ► some Cortex listener is going to bring beard oil.

00:15:49 ◼   ► - Yep, someone brought beard oil,

00:15:51 ◼   ► and one person brought a safety razor.

00:15:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:15:54 ◼   ► It was awesome.

00:15:57 ◼   ► T-shirts, signed a couple of t-shirts, stuff like that.

00:16:01 ◼   ► But yeah, the beard oil and the safety razor were hilarious.

00:16:04 ◼   ► - The t-shirts really are the hardest thing to sign.

00:16:06 ◼   ► - So there was one very smart person

00:16:08 ◼   ► brought their own fabric pen.

00:16:10 ◼   ► 'Cause I only had Sharpies, Sharpies are a disaster.

00:16:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, a Sharpie trying to sign a t-shirt--

00:16:16 ◼   ► - Doesn't work.

00:16:17 ◼   ► - It's terrible.

00:16:18 ◼   ► You need, if you're gonna try to sign a t-shirt

00:16:21 ◼   ► with a Sharpie, you need three people.

00:16:24 ◼   ► You need the signer, and you need two people

00:16:27 ◼   ► to hold tight the shirt in place in order to even have a chance of it happening.

00:16:32 ◼   ► You need like a medieval rack to put the t-shirt in.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that's 100% what is necessary.

00:16:38 ◼   ► The only thing that can keep it taut enough so you can actually make the Sharpie make

00:16:42 ◼   ► any kind of imprint.

00:16:44 ◼   ► It's just like, I know before having ever done these things in my head, I think like,

00:16:48 ◼   ► "Oh, t-shirts seem like, oh, that must be so, like the best design, right?

00:16:51 ◼   ► Is it easy to bring?"

00:16:52 ◼   ► And it's like, no, they're the worst.

00:16:53 ◼   ► They're the absolute worst.

00:16:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I remember the first time I signed the t-shirt like years ago and it was someone

00:17:01 ◼   ► was wearing the t-shirt.

00:17:04 ◼   ► It was a nightmare.

00:17:05 ◼   ► It looks like it was signed by somebody who's never held a pen before.

00:17:08 ◼   ► It's just the worst.

00:17:11 ◼   ► Just a bunch of horrible lines.

00:17:15 ◼   ► I'm really glad to hear that the signing went well.

00:17:21 ◼   ► things can be. There's such strange moments that it's hard to express what it's really like.

00:17:30 ◼   ► So I get what you mean when you say it's emotionally overwhelming because you have

00:17:34 ◼   ► this thing where it's all of these people are here because they've listened to you on a podcast for,

00:17:40 ◼   ► you know, they've listened to you on many podcasts for many hours and, you know,

00:17:45 ◼   ► they're coming up and they want to say something to you and you're signing these things.

00:17:48 ◼   ► And then there is also, like what makes it draining is there's like,

00:17:52 ◼   ► there's a time constraint or there's a number of people and you want to make sure that everybody

00:17:57 ◼   ► is as happy as you can possibly make them but you also have these constraints in the world.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Like it's a strange situation that can be overwhelming on a whole bunch of different levels.

00:18:10 ◼   ► Did you have to do anything immediately after the signing or could you go

00:18:13 ◼   ► just collapse on the floor?

00:18:14 ◼   ► No, I ended up being very happy that I only had that to do on Sunday.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:20 ◼   ► Right? Like at first I was like, but like I'm so busy on Saturday,

00:18:23 ◼   ► but like no, I needed the rest of Sunday to just sit and just try and rebuild.

00:18:28 ◼   ► Yep.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Yep.

00:18:31 ◼   ► There were two other things about PodCon that I wanted to mention.

00:18:33 ◼   ► One was the feeling of the conference and the audience and the attendees.

00:18:38 ◼   ► there was a feeling of just like niceness and warmth and like appreciation that I've never

00:18:46 ◼   ► felt at any conference before. Everybody just seemed to be really nice and having a good time

00:18:53 ◼   ► and that was amazing. Do you think it was partly like a because I'm thinking like you know we've

00:18:58 ◼   ► been at WWDC together and do you think that's just because like it's much smaller than WWDC

00:19:04 ◼   ► is, you know, because WWDC is like, you know, last year in particular, it's like, "Oh, the entire

00:19:09 ◼   ► city of San Jose is now WWDC Disney." Uh, and like that's, that's a very particular feeling,

00:19:15 ◼   ► like an entire city has taken over a place. Like, so what's the comparison in your mind

00:19:21 ◼   ► between those two? There's no cynicism at PodCon.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Right. Everyone's just super excited and happy to be there. And like, at something like a WWDC,

00:19:34 ◼   ► see there is there is always a like a level of people and I'm not talking

00:19:39 ◼   ► about like if we do meetups or whatever it's very similar to my experience of

00:19:45 ◼   ► PodCon but like the overall feeling of the conference I have never felt

00:19:51 ◼   ► something like this where like everyone was like super happy you know there are

00:19:55 ◼   ► a bunch of people in cosplay there are like fan like attendee generated meetups

00:20:03 ◼   ► that were like official on the program whenever like anybody goes onto a stage

00:20:10 ◼   ► everyone goes crazy for them like there was just like a general feeling of like

00:20:15 ◼   ► everyone that is there is super excited and happy to see the thing that they

00:20:19 ◼   ► love well like other conferences there can be like apathy to people that come

00:20:26 ◼   ► out on the stage because you don't know who they are or like it's something like

00:20:29 ◼   ► there's a real mix of like just general feelings towards what's happening at the conference.

00:20:36 ◼   ► And that didn't feel like that with PodCon.

00:20:38 ◼   ► So I guess you're saying that if they do it again next year, you'd go.

00:20:40 ◼   ► 100%.

00:20:41 ◼   ► That seems to be the conclusion.

00:20:42 ◼   ► 100%.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Because I also had the experience of being a fan myself, seeing some of my favorite podcasts.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Like there were podcasts that I adore that were on stage and I got to sit in the audience

00:20:54 ◼   ► and watch them.

00:20:55 ◼   ► And it was fantastic.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I really, really enjoyed that.

00:20:58 ◼   ► And it was all just in this one event.

00:21:01 ◼   ► I would 100% go and I would just say, nobody's asked me to say this, Gray,

00:21:05 ◼   ► but it is possible still to sign up to get a remote attendee ticket,

00:21:10 ◼   ► which is audio of panels and stuff like that.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And I believe that the podcast scramble and the panel that I did about podcast

00:21:18 ◼   ► networks will be available to people to listen to.

00:21:21 ◼   ► I think it's like $30 for the remote attendance.

00:21:24 ◼   ► But there was a ton of fantastic panels across the whole weekend.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Some that I'm looking forward to hearing again or some that I missed.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So you can still go and get that and you can get a lot of the value if you're looking to

00:21:37 ◼   ► learn some stuff or if you're looking to be entertained from that.

00:21:40 ◼   ► So I tried to mention that because there was so much great stuff there and if you couldn't

00:21:44 ◼   ► make it and or if this now sounds interesting to you and you're like, "Oh man, I wish I

00:21:47 ◼   ► would have been."

00:21:49 ◼   ► Now you can still get some of that stuff.

00:21:51 ◼   ► You still get some of that feeling.

00:21:54 ◼   ► That's interesting. I haven't come across this idea of a remote attendance ticket before.

00:21:59 ◼   ► But it makes so much sense considering it was a podcast convention that you would have

00:22:02 ◼   ► audio available afterwards.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like, could this be more thematically on target? I think not. That's a really interesting

00:22:11 ◼   ► idea to do the remote attendance ticket. I will be looking forward to hearing your panel

00:22:17 ◼   ► and hearing your scramble.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Scramble.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Something about the word man, I love it, Scramble!

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00:24:25 ◼   ► Great, Cortex is about two and a half years old now.

00:24:29 ◼   ► - Oh my God. - As a project.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Sorry, I meant two weeks.

00:24:32 ◼   ► Does that make you feel better?

00:24:35 ◼   ► - Oh no, now it's uncertain if it's gonna last.

00:24:36 ◼   ► - Exactly. - It's two weeks.

00:24:39 ◼   ► I feel like projects should be eternally 10 months old.

00:24:44 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:24:47 ◼   ► - That feels like a number I like.

00:24:48 ◼   ► - So let me, let me re-say that thing.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Gray Cortex is 10 months old now.

00:24:52 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah, it feels about right.

00:24:53 ◼   ► - Feels good, right, feels good.

00:24:55 ◼   ► Since the beginning of the show,

00:24:57 ◼   ► people have been asking for us to talk about

00:25:00 ◼   ► what we're gonna talk about today.

00:25:01 ◼   ► You wrote a blog post.

00:25:04 ◼   ► - You're hyping it up, Myke.

00:25:05 ◼   ► - You wrote a blog, I know I am.

00:25:06 ◼   ► You wrote a blog post in 2014 called State of the Apps, in which you kind of went through

00:25:12 ◼   ► in a bunch of different categories some tools that you use and you wanted to share them.

00:25:17 ◼   ► So when people started asking me for this, and it was a lot, right, like I was getting

00:25:22 ◼   ► it a lot, and still do actually.

00:25:23 ◼   ► I always regret writing that article.

00:25:25 ◼   ► I should never have written that article.

00:25:28 ◼   ► I had assumed that you were writing it every year.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that was the intention.

00:25:34 ◼   ► Because people would say, "Oh, you should do a state of the app, you should do a state

00:25:36 ◼   ► of the apps."

00:25:37 ◼   ► I googled it, saw what it was, like, "Oh, that would be a good idea," and I put it in

00:25:39 ◼   ► my note.

00:25:40 ◼   ► Right.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And then when I went to look into this, maybe six months ago, kind of like, let's maybe

00:25:46 ◼   ► start thinking about planning this one out, I was surprised when I couldn't find 2015

00:25:51 ◼   ► and 2016.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Because the amount that people were asking made me think that you had done it regularly,

00:25:58 ◼   ► but no, you did it once three years ago.

00:26:02 ◼   ► everybody wants it. And I can't remember why we're doing it today, but we are. I think maybe

00:26:08 ◼   ► I can finally ground you down because it is a really good idea and I guess now is the time,

00:26:14 ◼   ► right? Yeah, I think it's partly that you ground me down and it's partly because when we were

00:26:24 ◼   ► talking about when does it make sense to do it, at the end of the year is a totally sensible time

00:26:32 ◼   ► to do it. And it feels like, oh, okay, if we're going to talk about it, you know, Christmas time,

00:26:39 ◼   ► talk about all the different apps, that's not a bad time. People might be getting new devices and

00:26:44 ◼   ► looking, trying to find like what do they want to install on those devices. And so, yeah, this is

00:26:50 ◼   ► the best time to do it. And also, it might be easier for you to talk about it with me rather

00:26:54 ◼   ► than trying to write an article and file it instead every year. Yeah, well, like, do a little sidebar

00:27:00 ◼   ► here. Please. So that article is State of the Apps 2014 but it was actually written in December 2013

00:27:09 ◼   ► because I felt like I'm gonna write this article but I want it to be good for a whole year,

00:27:15 ◼   ► right? So it's like I think don't they do this with cars like the 2018 car comes out in 2017.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Yeah. I think that's what they do. Yeah that's what happens. Yeah. Right so that was my idea

00:27:25 ◼   ► like State of the Apps 2014 is this article is good for the year 2014 upcoming. But I did write

00:27:35 ◼   ► it. It was just like a little list, but it ended up just being an enormous amount of work and

00:27:42 ◼   ► hassle getting together all the little icons and putting together all the little links.

00:27:46 ◼   ► What are you laughing at?

00:27:50 ◼   ► Because the icons look so bad on the page.

00:27:53 ◼   ► I know.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Like they've all got little white boxes around them and everything.

00:27:57 ◼   ► Yeah, well, okay, so let me tell you just a little story about those white boxes.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Those white boxes are an example of me giving up on something because...

00:28:07 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Sidebar to the sidebar.

00:28:13 ◼   ► This was back before I found the person who is currently my assistant.

00:28:19 ◼   ► So this is a couple of assistants before I found my current assistant.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And this was one of those cases where you assign someone a task and you say, "Look, I need a bunch of app icons."

00:28:32 ◼   ► And what you get back is one of these things where you feel like, "If I have to explain to you that they can't have white boxes around them,

00:28:42 ◼   ► I just-- this is--

00:28:46 ◼   ► I can't fix this.

00:28:48 ◼   ► I don't care enough.

00:28:49 ◼   ► I don't want to reassign this thing.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Like, it was just-- whatever.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I got this back.

00:28:53 ◼   ► It's not what I wanted, but it's just done.

00:28:57 ◼   ► So I remember those white boxes quite intensely.

00:29:02 ◼   ► I was like, oh, this is not what I was expecting.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I see.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I see what you're saying.

00:29:05 ◼   ► OK.

00:29:06 ◼   ► But then one of the other things that does happen is--

00:29:09 ◼   ► is...

00:29:11 ◼   ► There are very few times I have written articles on my website, and it is definitely a thing where the frequency has

00:29:22 ◼   ► dramatically dropped from when I first set up the website, and that that is 100% like a

00:29:28 ◼   ► like a return on investment calculation that

00:29:32 ◼   ► as

00:29:34 ◼   ► as my career as a YouTuber and then podcaster has progressed,

00:29:39 ◼   ► it is...

00:29:43 ◼   ► I'll put it this way. It is near fundamentally impossible for me to justify spending almost any time

00:29:51 ◼   ► writing something that is just going to turn into text on the website.

00:29:57 ◼   ► And it's it's almost impossible to justify on two levels. One,

00:30:02 ◼   ► I don't have any direct advertising on the website, so the website doesn't really make any money.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And then the other side of it is, even if I'm just putting together a list article, like a State of the Apps list article,

00:30:14 ◼   ► that has a huge opportunity cost because it's like the same amount of

00:30:22 ◼   ► mental, or I should put it this way,

00:30:24 ◼   ► it's like I only have so much mental energy per day that I can throw at writing, and

00:30:30 ◼   ► And so to spend that mental energy on the list article is like is like doubly insane

00:30:36 ◼   ► that there's no way it's going to make any revenue and it is the opportunity cost is incredible.

00:30:44 ◼   ► So that's partly why like articles have have just disappeared from the repertoire of what are the

00:30:50 ◼   ► things that I do. I just don't really do them anymore. So that is why like State of the Apps

00:30:55 ◼   ► was toward the end of that phase where I was realizing that writing articles doesn't make

00:31:00 ◼   ► any sense in the portfolio of grey industries. So that's also why it never got a follow-up.

00:31:08 ◼   ► And then why write an article when you can make a great podcast up again a little bit? Hence state of the apps

00:31:14 ◼   ► 2017 here we are

00:31:16 ◼   ► No, no Myke. It's it's state of the apps 2018, right? Yeah, right. How do you not understand? Yes state of the apps 2018

00:31:23 ◼   ► That's what this is. Well, I'm I'm too deep in upgrade ease 2017 thinking right now

00:31:29 ◼   ► Okay, right. Yes that makes sense though because it's the award for the previous year exactly

00:31:35 ◼   ► But see if we if we put this podcast up with the title state of the apps 2017 people won't be listening to it next Christmas

00:31:42 ◼   ► Yep, so state of the apps 2018

00:31:44 ◼   ► You previously did this with a bunch of categories

00:31:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and I've made a little note in our document of all the categories

00:31:51 ◼   ► But you've sent me a little mind map and the categories are totally different

00:31:56 ◼   ► so

00:31:59 ◼   ► What what I was planning on doing is I was gonna go through all the categories

00:32:05 ◼   ► But now you're gonna have to suggest the categories and we can work on it that way.

00:32:08 ◼   ► So we can start wherever you want to start.

00:32:11 ◼   ► Okay, this is also actually one of the reasons why I think this this kind of makes

00:32:15 ◼   ► this is actually better to do as a podcast

00:32:18 ◼   ► because I think rather than me just like listing a few things there is there is a way that you can like talk about

00:32:25 ◼   ► why you've chosen a thing or in a in a way that makes more sense.

00:32:30 ◼   ► But this but this is this is the difficulty here of like where do things fit and I feel like no no

00:32:36 ◼   ► I'm very happy to follow your format Myke you run the show, right? Okay, you're the you're the man

00:32:40 ◼   ► You're the man who does all of the things. I just I just show up. That's that's what I do

00:32:47 ◼   ► So you want me to run through the previous 2014 format and we're gonna talk about them all

00:32:53 ◼   ► I am happy to rearrange on the fly in whatever whatever way makes sense for you because this morning

00:33:00 ◼   ► Also, just like a little sidebar to the article,

00:33:03 ◼   ► this morning one of the things I was realizing--

00:33:05 ◼   ► - How many sidebars deep are we right now?

00:33:06 ◼   ► - Look, there's many. - Do we ever come out?

00:33:08 ◼   ► - No, no, we closed those previous two.

00:33:09 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, good, good, good. - And now this is another one.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Look, you have to keep the parentheses

00:33:13 ◼   ► open and closed in your mind, right?

00:33:14 ◼   ► You have to put different colors

00:33:15 ◼   ► like in a programming text editor.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Anyway, looking back over my old article this morning

00:33:20 ◼   ► when I was preparing for the show,

00:33:22 ◼   ► I realized that a lot of those categories

00:33:23 ◼   ► don't even entirely make sense anymore.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And part of it is recognizing

00:33:29 ◼   ► I have these overlapping fields of work that I didn't at that point.

00:33:33 ◼   ► And I was really shocked to realize that that article was written

00:33:36 ◼   ► before I had done any podcasting at all.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Oh, really?

00:33:40 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:33:42 ◼   ► This was prior to any podcast existing, and I was looking at some of my software choices,

00:33:49 ◼   ► and I was like, "Oh my god, how did you do anything with that, buddy?

00:33:53 ◼   ► Like, how were you putting together videos with GarageBand still?

00:33:57 ◼   ► Like I don't understand how past great was doing that stuff. So the categories have sort of changed.

00:34:05 ◼   ► So this morning I wasn't really sure how to arrange things in my little just making notes.

00:34:08 ◼   ► So you lead, I will follow Myke.

00:34:10 ◼   ► - So let's start in OG order with productivity.

00:34:15 ◼   ► So what are some of your app picks for productivity?

00:34:21 ◼   ► 'Cause I think something that maybe didn't exist and does exist now,

00:34:25 ◼   ► I know it's in my kind of list for stuff and I can see that you have some things like this too,

00:34:30 ◼   ► have services as well as apps. And I think that is just a change from 2013 to now,

00:34:38 ◼   ► is that there are a lot more services that exist.

00:34:42 ◼   ► B: Yeah, this is definitely a thing, is recognizing services exist.

00:34:49 ◼   ► Okay, so on that note, the big productivity service and the thing that has made a really

00:35:02 ◼   ► big difference to me this year, and I think I'm going to touch on a little bit more in

00:35:08 ◼   ► our next episode where we plan to talk about our year themes.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Oh no, don't tell people. That's not a very great thing to do, right? What if something changes?

00:35:18 ◼   ► I'm pinning you down, Myke, for the next episode.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Your themes.

00:35:21 ◼   ► - Your themes.

00:35:22 ◼   ► - All right.

00:35:24 ◼   ► But a service related to that,

00:35:25 ◼   ► the biggest thing that I've spent the most time on

00:35:29 ◼   ► this past year is by far and away, Toggl,

00:35:32 ◼   ► which is the time tracking service.

00:35:34 ◼   ► - And 10,000 people just stopped listening.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Bye, everyone.

00:35:38 ◼   ► - I don't know why you said that, Myke.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Everybody likes the time tracking conversations.

00:35:41 ◼   ► I don't know what you're talking about.

00:35:43 ◼   ► But yeah, by far and away, it's like,

00:35:46 ◼   ► Is toggle an app?

00:35:48 ◼   ► No, it's not really an app,

00:35:51 ◼   ► but it's a service that you can use

00:35:53 ◼   ► in a bunch of different ways

00:35:54 ◼   ► from a bunch of different places

00:35:55 ◼   ► to keep track of time tracking.

00:35:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, they have an iPhone app that isn't horrific now.

00:36:01 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:36:02 ◼   ► - They have an okay iPhone app,

00:36:03 ◼   ► but it's only on the iPhone.

00:36:05 ◼   ► Both me and you still use it

00:36:07 ◼   ► with some workflow triggers that we set up.

00:36:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's exactly the way I would describe it too,

00:36:12 ◼   ► is that their iPhone app is okay.

00:36:15 ◼   ► It's surfaceable.

00:36:18 ◼   ► Their web app is vastly better.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Using Toggl's website is way better than using their app, even on an iPhone.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Oh yeah, without a doubt. That's definitely the case.

00:36:29 ◼   ► But yeah, so that is like...

00:36:33 ◼   ► That is just a big overarching umbrella under which a lot of this other stuff falls,

00:36:39 ◼   ► is that throughout the past year,

00:36:43 ◼   ► I have gotten better and better and better at nearly constantly running a toggle timer in the background when I'm awake.

00:36:54 ◼   ► And then that obviously connects into these things like you just mentioned there.

00:36:59 ◼   ► It's like, how do I do that? I'm using Workflow as a custom interface on top of toggle,

00:37:05 ◼   ► so that I can have preset timers turn on just by pressing a single button,

00:37:11 ◼   ► So I don't need to fiddle with their app, I don't need to fiddle with the website.

00:37:14 ◼   ► And I think if there was some kind of frequency tracker for how often you launch an app,

00:37:23 ◼   ► my workflow that I save on my phone to start picking toggle timers to start,

00:37:30 ◼   ► that has got to be my most opened app by two orders of magnitude compared to anything else on my phone by far.

00:37:39 ◼   ► So I would say those are the big ones for me this year in productivity.

00:37:45 ◼   ► I would say without a doubt it's the same for me to achieve my year of less. I started time

00:37:54 ◼   ► tracking and time tracking is a habit for me now. I recognize this the most when I travel because

00:38:03 ◼   ► when I travel even if I'm working I tend not to time track.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Yeah it's really hard to do when you're traveling.

00:38:09 ◼   ► But the reason that I know this has worked is immediately when I come home I start again

00:38:13 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, you know, it's not that like I'm away for a couple of weeks come home

00:38:18 ◼   ► And then I've just fell out of the habit of it now

00:38:21 ◼   ► I just go straight back into regular mode again, and it goes back to time tracking and for me personally, I

00:38:26 ◼   ► Wouldn't say that like I'm using this data very frequently to make decisions about the way that I work

00:38:32 ◼   ► but I have used this data a couple of really key points for me this year and

00:38:37 ◼   ► And having that data is vastly superior

00:38:40 ◼   ► to not having that data when it's come to me

00:38:43 ◼   ► to make some decisions about my working life.

00:38:45 ◼   ► There's also just a mode shift in pressing the button.

00:38:49 ◼   ► Like press the button, right, here we go,

00:38:51 ◼   ► going to work now, and then when I'm done, I clock out.

00:38:55 ◼   ► And just the way that that makes me feel,

00:38:59 ◼   ► like the clocking in and clocking out of certain tasks,

00:39:02 ◼   ► really kind of helps solidify my mind

00:39:04 ◼   ► when I'm working and when I'm not.

00:39:05 ◼   ► More next time.

00:39:07 ◼   ► But one of the benefits for me with toggle

00:39:11 ◼   ► is the same thing, it's like how often am I

00:39:13 ◼   ► really using that data in a granular way?

00:39:16 ◼   ► Not a lot.

00:39:17 ◼   ► But what is mentally helpful

00:39:22 ◼   ► is simply knowing that somewhere there's a clock running

00:39:26 ◼   ► makes me more conscious of what I'm doing

00:39:29 ◼   ► in any particular moment.

00:39:30 ◼   ► And it just, it makes me more intentional

00:39:34 ◼   ► in the decisions that I'm making

00:39:35 ◼   ► how I'm spending my time. And for that alone, I think it's a really great improvement. And the

00:39:44 ◼   ► biggest deal and biggest difference by far in the productivity category for me.

00:39:49 ◼   ► >> I also switched to Todoist this year for my To Do, my task management tool. And I've been

00:39:59 ◼   ► very happy with Todoist. It gives me basically everything that I needed from OmniFocus and

00:40:06 ◼   ► the things that OmniFocus has that Todoist doesn't have ended up not being deal breakers

00:40:11 ◼   ► for me at all. But the thing that I wanted is the thing that I got which is the ability

00:40:17 ◼   ► for other applications and services to be able to read and write to my task manager.

00:40:23 ◼   ► that has been great for me.

00:40:25 ◼   ► And I've been very happy and continue to explore ways

00:40:29 ◼   ► to do this because it's enabling me

00:40:31 ◼   ► to not have to remember everything.

00:40:33 ◼   ► That not every entry that goes into my task manager

00:40:37 ◼   ► has to come from me remembering to put a thing in it.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Sometimes things just appear in it on their own

00:40:43 ◼   ► and I find great comfort in that.

00:40:46 ◼   ► - How much do you use their shared features?

00:40:49 ◼   ► Like are you using that with Relay or with anybody else?

00:40:52 ◼   ► Okay, so you're using it as a personal task manager.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I mostly don't like the idea of somebody being, like a person being able to add and

00:41:01 ◼   ► remove tasks from lists.

00:41:04 ◼   ► I just personally like to put it in myself and assume that the other person will do the

00:41:09 ◼   ► same.

00:41:10 ◼   ► I've played around a bit a little bit, and ultimately I don't like all that stuff being

00:41:15 ◼   ► in the same place.

00:41:18 ◼   ► My to-do app is like a fortress.

00:41:23 ◼   ► And there's one tunnel, which is for web services, and that's the only tunnel.

00:41:27 ◼   ► BH: I think it was at your urging I tried Todoist, and for me it has fallen into the

00:41:34 ◼   ► exact opposite role, which is that it is purely for shared tasks, and I don't use it at all

00:41:41 ◼   ► for an individual.

00:41:43 ◼   ► So this is the program that is used between my assistant and I.

00:41:46 ◼   ► And even there, it's interesting to see that what has happened is it's not like it is,

00:41:58 ◼   ► it's not used on like a daily basis of checking in things and being constantly updated, but

00:42:04 ◼   ► we have ended up using it like a record of what are the active projects to review every

00:42:11 ◼   ► once in a while.

00:42:13 ◼   ► So it's acting like it's a placeholder for what are the things that are going on.

00:42:21 ◼   ► But it's clearly not being used by either of us as the busy daily thing.

00:42:28 ◼   ► And on her end, she has her own system that she's actually using for her task management

00:42:34 ◼   ► personally in the same way that I am using my own stuff for my personal things.

00:42:39 ◼   ► But this is just like, where are we on a very high level on various projects?

00:42:45 ◼   ► That's what has ended up happening with Todoist for me.

00:42:48 ◼   ► So you're actually using a task manager again?

00:42:51 ◼   ► Okay, shall we talk about three task managers?

00:42:57 ◼   ► I mean, shall we?

00:42:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:43:00 ◼   ► I guess if that's what we're doing, I was only asking if you were using one, but if

00:43:03 ◼   ► it takes three to talk about it, then sure, we'll do that.

00:43:07 ◼   ► Okay, let's run through a few of the task managers that I have on my list here.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Clear your afternoon, everyone.

00:43:14 ◼   ► No, I can get through this very quickly.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:16 ◼   ► I can get through it very quickly indeed.

00:43:17 ◼   ► So what...

00:43:19 ◼   ► Yeah, the task manager thing, I do a little bit want to save that again for a conversation next

00:43:25 ◼   ► time.

00:43:26 ◼   ► Sure.

00:43:26 ◼   ► But I will broadly say that it's like, yes, I've been trying to get back into using task

00:43:32 ◼   ► managers on a more regular basis because this year I was a little bit in the

00:43:37 ◼   ► wilderness with task managers and what I'm currently doing is I'm using three

00:43:46 ◼   ► for different things. OmniFocus is still the heavyweight task manager where I can

00:43:53 ◼   ► throw a bunch of templates into it, write really long checklists for putting up

00:43:58 ◼   ► podcasts or putting up videos like that. That is the the heaviest of the heavyweight things.

00:44:03 ◼   ► I'm using To Do as...

00:44:06 ◼   ► Like, I was trying to think about how to describe this this morning, but I've been using To Do as like a habit or routine

00:44:15 ◼   ► tracker.

00:44:17 ◼   ► So,

00:44:18 ◼   ► these are tasks like...

00:44:20 ◼   ► In the morning, I have a bunch of things that I call like "boot up" and I want to run through those things.

00:44:27 ◼   ► Here's a bunch of easy wins in the morning to check off these boxes and you're just getting the day started, right?

00:44:34 ◼   ► Like one of them one of the simplest ones is just like drink a glass of water in the morning

00:44:38 ◼   ► Because it's just like I've seen like I definitely have a better day when I do that

00:44:43 ◼   ► So that goes in to do and then like another one of those things is like go to the office, right?

00:44:49 ◼   ► That's like another little part of the morning routine. It's like, okay great. I can tick this off in the box

00:44:54 ◼   ► So all of these things are actual items in a checklist that you check off

00:44:58 ◼   ► Yeah, they are items in the checklist that I check off. So let me ask you a question then. Mm-hmm

00:45:03 ◼   ► How do you remember to start the list to do shows the badge on my phone?

00:45:08 ◼   ► All right, so that's that's the that's the way it communicates to me. So what are these daily recurring tasks?

00:45:13 ◼   ► Yeah, there's the way I've set it up and to do is their daily recurring tasks

00:45:17 ◼   ► That are set as due in the morning or due in the middle of the day or due in the evening

00:45:23 ◼   ► which are like my three primary habit locations where I want to reinforce some behavior.

00:45:28 ◼   ► And so I just tick them off every day and they're daily repeating and they come back on the day

00:45:34 ◼   ► that they need to. But like I said, I really like it. This is a kind of task that for a long time

00:45:40 ◼   ► I've always done that I think of as like a workflow sort of task. This isn't the actual work.

00:45:47 ◼   ► Maybe these things do or don't need to happen on any particular day, but like, this is how a theoretically perfect day would go.

00:45:57 ◼   ► This is the kind of day that you want to re-establish.

00:46:00 ◼   ► And like I said, I really like it in the morning for starting a kind of momentum to make things just like easy to begin the day and feel like, "Okay, great."

00:46:11 ◼   ► I got some... my brain got some quick, meaningless wins,

00:46:15 ◼   ► but it still helps get the ball rolling on the bigger things that need to happen.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Okay, so what's the third one?

00:46:22 ◼   ► Okay, so the final one is one I've just been playing around with a little bit, which is

00:46:27 ◼   ► Things.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And Things has taken over the slot from Clear,

00:46:33 ◼   ► which is the place for having a really simple, super limited task manager.

00:46:42 ◼   ► So, what I like that for is sometimes on busy days, I feel like I need to put--

00:46:49 ◼   ► I should back up. Not on a busy day, but...

00:46:53 ◼   ► I very often find on days where you're feeling overwhelmed by tasks,

00:46:58 ◼   ► the most effective thing is to really narrow down and to say, "Okay, I'm feeling really

00:47:04 ◼   ► overwhelmed. There's like a whole bunch of stuff in the world. OmniFocus has a badge that has 67 in

00:47:09 ◼   ► it. You know, like I'm really overdue on a whole bunch of stuff." That would end my life, you know.

00:47:14 ◼   ► What do you mean? Like that would be it. I would die. If I saw a badge that said 67,

00:47:21 ◼   ► that would just be it. I would immediately die. Yeah, it's - this is one of the

00:47:27 ◼   ► the disadvantages of having like of

00:47:29 ◼   ► having.

00:47:30 ◼   ► Of being ridiculously thorough with

00:47:33 ◼   ► like all the stuff that needs to

00:47:34 ◼   ► happen and putting it into a system

00:47:35 ◼   ► is that you can end up with this

00:47:37 ◼   ► like.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Like sudden overloads where a bunch

00:47:42 ◼   ► of things come together all at once

00:47:44 ◼   ► and you're like, oh, God, like

00:47:45 ◼   ► this automatic system is showing me

00:47:47 ◼   ► a million things that are due today.

00:47:48 ◼   ► If if my if my badge

00:47:50 ◼   ► when I wake up in the morning on

00:47:52 ◼   ► to do is is over seven, I know

00:47:54 ◼   ► that my day is like it's

00:47:56 ◼   ► just.

00:47:57 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:47:58 ◼   ► Yeah, this, you do have to keep in mind that in OmniFocus I'm being ridiculously granular.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I know you don't have like 67 podcasts to post that day, but it's just like, that

00:48:11 ◼   ► number is just horrific to me.

00:48:14 ◼   ► And there are ways in which like when you're really on your game, it doesn't matter. And

00:48:17 ◼   ► like, "Oh great, okay, I've got a lot of stuff and I'm gonna sort of blow through it." But

00:48:20 ◼   ► But I do like to have on hand something that I can use as the "I'm going to have a simple

00:48:29 ◼   ► and narrowly focused day."

00:48:32 ◼   ► And in the past I've always used Clear for that, but Clear hasn't updated in a while.

00:48:36 ◼   ► I know that they are intending to release a new version soon, but they haven't actually

00:48:41 ◼   ► done it yet.

00:48:42 ◼   ► I still use Clear, and I am on the beta for Clear.

00:48:46 ◼   ► I know the app is coming and it's going to be awesome.

00:48:48 ◼   ► I know that I can see it.

00:48:50 ◼   ► They are working on a new version.

00:48:52 ◼   ► I just wanted to mention that

00:48:53 ◼   ► because every time we mention Clear,

00:48:55 ◼   ► there are people that send us screenshots now of like,

00:48:59 ◼   ► because they've said it publicly.

00:49:02 ◼   ► You can look in your release notes

00:49:04 ◼   ► and they're saying that they are working on a new version

00:49:07 ◼   ► and I have been using the new version and it's great.

00:49:09 ◼   ► - I'm just saying like for me, for right now,

00:49:13 ◼   ► I'm using things in that place.

00:49:16 ◼   ► And I've always felt like things

00:49:17 ◼   ► a very nicely designed app, which is why it can easily take over that slot in my mind

00:49:22 ◼   ► from Clear.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Whereas the thing that I liked in Clear is that it's simple and it's nicely designed,

00:49:28 ◼   ► and things fill that same role.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Like it's simple and it's nicely designed, and it's very easy to say on things, "Okay,

00:49:35 ◼   ► here are four things that if I do today, I'll feel like it was a great day, and I'm just

00:49:42 ◼   ► going to have a day where I'm focused more narrowly on what's occurring. So those are

00:49:50 ◼   ► the ways in my mind that I use these different task managers from lightest weight things

00:49:55 ◼   ► to heaviest weight omni-focus. And that's currently what I'm using with those.

00:50:03 ◼   ► So you're actually using four task managers.

00:50:06 ◼   ► I don't really count Todoist in this realm.

00:50:08 ◼   ► I do, but I'm going to count it for you.

00:50:12 ◼   ► The reason that I don't is in my mind, like, Todoist could easily be replaced by a shared

00:50:18 ◼   ► Google Doc with some bullet points on it.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Yeah, but like, things could just be reminders, or like a piece of paper.

00:50:26 ◼   ► I see what you're saying, man.

00:50:28 ◼   ► I guess it's just, like, anything could be anything if we tried, like, you know, this

00:50:34 ◼   ► could be distributed as an audio cassette.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:50:37 ◼   ► So there are four task managers that are in use.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I just don't think of to do is like a task manager

00:50:43 ◼   ► because I feel like I'm using

00:50:45 ◼   ► almost none of the features of a task manager.

00:50:49 ◼   ► OK, I can simplify this if you a little bit, because like people always mention

00:50:52 ◼   ► how I have like three to do managers on my home screen or something like that.

00:50:57 ◼   ► Right now, I think it's only two because I have to do this in due

00:51:01 ◼   ► because due is amazing for just those things like take out the trash.

00:51:06 ◼   ► It will remind me a few minutes.

00:51:07 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I also have do on my,

00:51:09 ◼   ► I didn't even mention that one.

00:51:10 ◼   ► - I know.

00:51:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:12 ◼   ► 'Cause it's not really the same,

00:51:14 ◼   ► like taking out the trash--

00:51:14 ◼   ► - No, it's a totally different thing, yeah.

00:51:16 ◼   ► - Isn't like publishing a podcast.

00:51:17 ◼   ► I mean, I guess there sometimes are some similarities

00:51:19 ◼   ► between those two things,

00:51:20 ◼   ► but like they're completely different actions

00:51:23 ◼   ► that require--

00:51:23 ◼   ► - I mean, if you really wanna be pernickety about it,

00:51:26 ◼   ► you could get this number for me up to six.

00:51:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:51:29 ◼   ► - Because I do also use reminders, the built-in reminders.

00:51:32 ◼   ► - And notes, notes has the checklist function.

00:51:35 ◼   ► - No, okay, no, but I don't use the checklist function.

00:51:36 ◼   ► fantastic cow. You can do reminders in fantastic cow.

00:51:39 ◼   ► AO: No, for the note, okay, you're pushing it too far, Myke. This is just ridiculous.

00:51:44 ◼   ► But I do use one of the very few things that Siri is useful for is sometimes being able to just tell

00:51:51 ◼   ► her like, "Remind me about a thing at this time," right? Or, "When I leave my house,

00:51:56 ◼   ► remind me to whatever." I don't do that very often, but I do do that sometimes. And so,

00:52:01 ◼   ► yeah, I guess six is the maximum in theory that it could be.

00:52:04 ◼   ► So we are still in the productivity category, which I had expected would probably be the category that we spend the most time talking about.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the big one.

00:52:13 ◼   ► I guess for me as well in there would be something like Fantastic Hal. My calendar is very important.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And I would assume that that was your pick too. Fantastic Hal?

00:52:25 ◼   ► Yeah, so I use two calendars. I use the built-in Apple calendar and I use Fantastic Hal.

00:52:33 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:52:34 ◼   ► Why are you laughing, Myke?

00:52:35 ◼   ► No reason.

00:52:36 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:52:37 ◼   ► One is none, right?

00:52:38 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:52:39 ◼   ► Okay, no, that's a-- that doesn't apply to calendaring apps. No, you're just being silly

00:52:44 ◼   ► now, Myke.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Oh, okay, of course it doesn't. You just have two for fun? Why else would you have two?

00:52:53 ◼   ► I like to have the-- I have the two simply so that I can leave them in different states.

00:53:00 ◼   ► So like Fantastic Cal I use as the, like, what are the most important things I need to see today?

00:53:08 ◼   ► So Fantastic Cal has a very, very limited subsection of the calendars that it ever has opened.

00:53:15 ◼   ► So when I open it up, like, the things I want to see on Fantastic Cal are my podcasting calendar,

00:53:21 ◼   ► so it's like, do I need to be recording something today? The social calendar that's shared with my

00:53:26 ◼   ► Like, am I supposed to be at some dinner party I didn't remember until the last possible second?

00:53:31 ◼   ► Right? It's like, okay, yeah, that'll be there.

00:53:32 ◼   ► And I have my own calendar that I call "Changes," which is essentially anything that I need to know

00:53:42 ◼   ► about on the day that's different from normal. So, like, meetings or, like, any place that I

00:53:47 ◼   ► need to be, that's gonna be there. So what I like to have is Fantasticale is just those,

00:53:53 ◼   ► and the place I actually use it the most is their little widget on the phone so

00:54:00 ◼   ► that I can swipe over into the widget area and just really quickly this is

00:54:05 ◼   ► actually one of my little like morning routine things is check the calendar just

00:54:10 ◼   ► to see if there's anything you've totally forgotten about today and that

00:54:13 ◼   ► like that is all I want to see whereas the regular built-in Apple calendar

00:54:19 ◼   ► there I have a whole bunch of other things that like none of them are urgent

00:54:23 ◼   ► But if I'm planning my year like I want to see a bunch of different things

00:54:26 ◼   ► But so fantastic how I use is just a fast way to access the most important subset of the calendars that I want to take

00:54:33 ◼   ► A look at how many calendars do you have Myke just fantastic al just the one yeah

00:54:37 ◼   ► I mean the Apple calendar is installed on my device, right? Yeah, we're only talking about the things you use though

00:54:42 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't use it for anything. I just use fantastic al

00:54:45 ◼   ► One thing that fantastic al on the Mac has which I wish they would bring to the iPhone version is the idea of calendar set

00:54:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really nice.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I wish I wish that they would do that as well.

00:54:58 ◼   ► So like you can switch modes between like I want to have two sets

00:55:02 ◼   ► and they have three different calendars in each.

00:55:04 ◼   ► So like you could build that system in there if you wanted to, where you like

00:55:08 ◼   ► you have the one that you have all the time.

00:55:10 ◼   ► But then when you want to see everything, you just change set and you get everything,

00:55:13 ◼   ► which I like to use this on the Mac because there are some calendars that I only need access to to input stuff.

00:55:19 ◼   ► input stuff. I never need to see them because they're triggering things. We broadcast shows

00:55:25 ◼   ► live a lot at Reel AFM and we have a public-facing live calendar. So if I change the time of

00:55:31 ◼   ► a recording that I'm doing, I also have to change it on the live calendar as well. So

00:55:36 ◼   ► I wish that there was an easier way to bring that in rather than having to go into settings

00:55:41 ◼   ► and manually enable the calendar and blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that is a really nice feature.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And especially if you're in a situation

00:55:49 ◼   ► where you're working with other people

00:55:51 ◼   ► and you need to have shared calendars

00:55:53 ◼   ► that you might not need to be thinking about

00:55:54 ◼   ► in all different situations,

00:55:57 ◼   ► the ability on the Mac to switch

00:55:58 ◼   ► between these different calendar sets is really great.

00:56:01 ◼   ► It's a great addition that I too wish

00:56:04 ◼   ► that they would bring to iOS.

00:56:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, for sure.

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00:58:01 ◼   ► I want to call out a little bit of a subcategory here in productivity

00:58:07 ◼   ► that I think we can maybe end on and then maybe do like a lightning round afterward.

00:58:11 ◼   ► But I think there's like communications as a concept is something that I didn't have

00:58:16 ◼   ► in the 2014 one. A long time ago when-

00:58:20 ◼   ► I didn't talk to anyone.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it is no joke, but it was a thing that I was so aware of, which is, what I'm going to say is,

00:58:30 ◼   ► personally for me, you know, communications is a very hard aspect of my working life.

00:58:39 ◼   ► It's not a thing that I am good at, and it is not a thing that I manage well. And it was something,

00:58:47 ◼   ► looking over the 2014 state of the apps, I did have this little bit of wistfulness of like,

00:58:53 ◼   ► "Oh, that past Gray, he just got to be on his own all day long. He didn't have to work with anybody."

00:59:00 ◼   ► And now there's this orbit of people that I do work with and I'm just not very good

00:59:05 ◼   ► at communications. But so now I feel like I'm always juggling communication systems or trying

00:59:15 ◼   ► to figure out how to make them work. And the biggest change in communications, particularly

00:59:21 ◼   ► over the last year, is the presence of Slack in my life now. Slack has just taken over so much.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And when I first started using Slack, I was like, "This is the greatest thing ever. This is a

00:59:41 ◼   ► a million times better than email.

00:59:44 ◼   ► But what was really the case is it's just

00:59:47 ◼   ► there were so much fewer things coming through Slack

00:59:51 ◼   ► than at email, and as Slack has spread over time

00:59:56 ◼   ► and I've slowly started working with more and more people

01:00:02 ◼   ► in Slack and also end up being signed up to more Slacks,

01:00:07 ◼   ► I'm very aware that in the space of a year

01:00:09 ◼   ► maybe 18 months, I've gone from "oh Slack is my communication salvation" to "I feel

01:00:15 ◼   ► deeply ambivalent about Slack" because now when I open up it's just like I find

01:00:19 ◼   ► it hard to manage but also recognize that this this like email has now become

01:00:26 ◼   ► a like a business communication tool that is so firmly entrenched I can't

01:00:31 ◼   ► imagine that it's going anywhere.

01:00:33 ◼   ► Yeah I don't know if I feel exactly the same as you but I

01:00:38 ◼   ► I feel there are some things where I'm similar where like I hang out in Slack

01:00:42 ◼   ► way less than I used to, but I'm still there all the time because it's where

01:00:47 ◼   ► the business is happening with the people that I work with.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Like Slack is kind of more akin to the office now.

01:00:54 ◼   ► Like it's where my coworkers are.

01:00:57 ◼   ► Right. And there is still like a water cooler that people can go and chat in.

01:01:02 ◼   ► But I think I spend less time actually doing the chatting now.

01:01:07 ◼   ► I still listen, but I don't chat as much just because I don't know why actually,

01:01:11 ◼   ► but it's just a lot every single slack that I'm in.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Basically, it tends to be quite a lot of noise and it can be harder

01:01:20 ◼   ► to keep up with as time goes on and more and more people join.

01:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think there definitely is a function that there's like, um,

01:01:28 ◼   ► it's like all communication channels trend towards memes eventually.

01:01:35 ◼   ► Right? Like that's, that's what just happens is like,

01:01:39 ◼   ► nobody means for it to happen. And of course,

01:01:41 ◼   ► like the reason it happens is because it's funny and it's easy, but,

01:01:45 ◼   ► but it does make things just really noisy.

01:01:48 ◼   ► And if you, if you were like, if you're like me,

01:01:52 ◼   ► I feel like my goal with Slack is always, I want to open it up.

01:01:56 ◼   ► I want to get a bunch of stuff done and I want to go, um,

01:01:59 ◼   ► that tendency towards noise, uh,

01:02:04 ◼   ► makes it harder to work with sometimes.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And Slack, you know, in a bunch of different Slacks that I've been to, you do have the

01:02:13 ◼   ► problem where it's like the urgent flag on emails when like the other person gets to decide how

01:02:20 ◼   ► urgent a thing really is. Like Slack can be that way a little bit where it's like other people are

01:02:25 ◼   ► deciding that a thing is really urgent for everybody to have to hear about right now and

01:02:29 ◼   ► and like maybe everybody disagrees on how urgent that thing actually is.

01:02:32 ◼   ► So I feel like I'm going to be using Slack for forever.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I really couldn't run my business the way I do now

01:02:42 ◼   ► without having a grey industry Slack like it.

01:02:44 ◼   ► I just I can't imagine doing it any other way.

01:02:47 ◼   ► But I do find myself thinking about it more ambivalently

01:02:51 ◼   ► as a tool as time has gone on.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I think as you say, it's it's kind of normal, right?

01:02:58 ◼   ► Like it's I think most of the

01:02:59 ◼   ► communication tools that I've used

01:03:01 ◼   ► in the past, I've eventually felt

01:03:02 ◼   ► like I wanted to move away from

01:03:04 ◼   ► and then it's like social

01:03:06 ◼   ► networks.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of

01:03:08 ◼   ► exactly. It's like social networks.

01:03:09 ◼   ► Eventually, I always want to find

01:03:11 ◼   ► a replacement for this, which is

01:03:13 ◼   ► better than the current one.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Like and I think Slack is finally

01:03:16 ◼   ► finally going that way.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Like Slack was the replacement for

01:03:20 ◼   ► work email for me, which

01:03:22 ◼   ► is amazing. I'm so happy that

01:03:24 ◼   ► happened. But now I'm like, what is

01:03:25 ◼   ► the replacement for Slack?

01:03:27 ◼   ► There isn't one. Yeah.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been thinking about that.

01:03:31 ◼   ► And it is fascinating though, where it's like,

01:03:34 ◼   ► we've talked about email on this show very many times.

01:03:36 ◼   ► And I am aware that in my life, in all realistic ways,

01:03:40 ◼   ► it's almost like email has completely disappeared for me.

01:03:44 ◼   ► It's like, I almost never even open email,

01:03:47 ◼   ► and I almost never look at it, because again,

01:03:51 ◼   ► 95% of what is important and matters

01:03:54 ◼   ► is coming to me through Slack.

01:03:56 ◼   ► So Slack has just absorbed all of that.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Yeah, which which I never would have expected.

01:04:03 ◼   ► So do you want to do a do you want to do a lightning round?

01:04:05 ◼   ► OK, yeah. How are we going to do this?

01:04:07 ◼   ► I don't understand these rules.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Do you want to just do one?

01:04:11 ◼   ► I say one, you say one and then we'll just go.

01:04:14 ◼   ► You say one. We have a little explanation.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Pick one. What do you like?

01:04:17 ◼   ► All right. One password, because it's where all the passwords go.

01:04:19 ◼   ► And I now have like team stuff set up and it's awesome.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Numbers absolutely love it as a spreadsheet

01:04:25 ◼   ► because it is less powerful than Excel,

01:04:29 ◼   ► but a million times more beautiful than Excel.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And the way you can arrange tables just fits with my brain better.

01:04:35 ◼   ► So numbers is where all my spreadsheets live.

01:04:37 ◼   ► In a similar vein, I love numbers for stuff that's just for me.

01:04:40 ◼   ► But if anybody else is involved, it's Google Docs and Google Sheets.

01:04:43 ◼   ► Nobody has collaboration tools like Google does.

01:04:47 ◼   ► And the Docs and Sheets programs are the best in class,

01:04:51 ◼   ► even if they can be frustrating.

01:04:53 ◼   ► Yeah, 100%. Nobody does collaboration like Google.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Next one up, I got to give all credit to Federico Vatici for recommending this to

01:05:01 ◼   ► me, which is a service, Brain.fm, which is,

01:05:05 ◼   ► I'm going to say music, but not exactly music to listen to while you're working.

01:05:11 ◼   ► I listen to a single song on repeat a lot when I'm writing, but Brain.fm,

01:05:16 ◼   ► I really like bringing this into my life because sometimes I don't have a

01:05:21 ◼   ► song that I'm listening to on repeat.

01:05:23 ◼   ► And now Brain.fm is

01:05:25 ◼   ► is a is an easy decision to just

01:05:27 ◼   ► be like, I don't know what song I'm

01:05:28 ◼   ► going to listen to.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I'm just going to open Brain.fm and

01:05:30 ◼   ► just let it play. And I love it.

01:05:32 ◼   ► It's it's a great addition to

01:05:34 ◼   ► the background sounds in my life.

01:05:36 ◼   ► Air Mail.

01:05:38 ◼   ► Oh, Air Mail.

01:05:39 ◼   ► My email app.

01:05:40 ◼   ► It's my favorite email app,

01:05:42 ◼   ► even though it upsets people.

01:05:44 ◼   ► I love it.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Last one for me.

01:05:45 ◼   ► I'm going to mention anti RSI,

01:05:47 ◼   ► which I was still using in 2014.

01:05:49 ◼   ► If you're on a Mac all day, you want

01:05:51 ◼   ► computer to remind you to take little breaks so that you can try to manage your RSI and

01:05:56 ◼   ► anti RSI is still the one that I like the best. I think it's the simplest and it does the best job

01:06:01 ◼   ► of reminding you to take little breaks and to take big breaks at regular intervals.

01:06:05 ◼   ► If you're on a Mac all day.

01:06:06 ◼   ► I'm just saying, yeah, if you're on a Mac all day.

01:06:09 ◼   ► What happened to you?

01:06:10 ◼   ► Are we talking about me? I'm talking to the people.

01:06:13 ◼   ► Last one I'm going to recommend is a tool that very few people are going to need,

01:06:17 ◼   ► but I do use it and love it and it's called PipeDrive and it's like a sales management tool.

01:06:20 ◼   ► - Oh god, that sounds very businessy.

01:06:25 ◼   ► - It is incredible, it's the most businessy app that I use.

01:06:28 ◼   ► It's like a contact relationship management tool and like a sales funnel tool.

01:06:33 ◼   ► We used to use Trello for this and we outgrew Trello.

01:06:37 ◼   ► We needed some more specific features like having the ability to add people's contact information

01:06:42 ◼   ► to the deals that we were doing and needing multiple people to have better access over it.

01:06:47 ◼   ► So we use a tool called Pipedrive.

01:06:50 ◼   ► it is without a shadow of a doubt the most businessy thing that I use.

01:06:53 ◼   ► I almost feel a little bit uncomfortable every time I open it.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Sales funnels!

01:06:59 ◼   ► Everybody loves sales funnels.

01:07:03 ◼   ► So next up is writing.

01:07:08 ◼   ► This is the exciting part.

01:07:10 ◼   ► So what writing tools are you using now?

01:07:11 ◼   ► Okay, huge change that I absolutely love.

01:07:17 ◼   ► My main writing app now is Ulysses.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And Ulysses is just amazing, and it took me a really long time to get into it,

01:07:30 ◼   ► because it has a very, very different way of organizing what you're working on.

01:07:36 ◼   ► And it was that different method that kept me away from it for a long time, where I thought,

01:07:41 ◼   ► like, "I don't need your rethinking of how writing on pages works, Ulysses."

01:07:47 ◼   ► But they are totally right, and they have this concept where you don't have pages, they

01:07:54 ◼   ► have these little things that are called sheets, and a sheet can be as long or as short as

01:08:00 ◼   ► you want it to be.

01:08:02 ◼   ► But the killer feature is you can glue a bunch of sheets together so that it looks like it's

01:08:11 ◼   ► a page, but it remains easy to rearrange.

01:08:16 ◼   ► So in a practical example, like right now I'm working on another Q&A script, like for

01:08:21 ◼   ► a Q&A video.

01:08:22 ◼   ► And so I can have each question and answer be a single sheet, and then it makes it really

01:08:30 ◼   ► easy while I'm writing to just say, "Oh, you know what?

01:08:34 ◼   ► This question, this actually works much better at the start."

01:08:37 ◼   ► And so I can just quickly like, floop, drag it up, rearrange it, and it's so nice.

01:08:43 ◼   ► Plus they just have a million great features.

01:08:48 ◼   ► It's Markdown compatible, but you can also export to anything that you want and you can

01:08:52 ◼   ► write your own little custom styles for how things are going to be exported.

01:08:58 ◼   ► So when I want to turn a script into something that I'm going to write on by hand, I have

01:09:03 ◼   ► my own custom style to export it into PDF.

01:09:09 ◼   ► It's so nice, it's so great.

01:09:11 ◼   ► "Oh, you can have different formatting for the--

01:09:14 ◼   ► or different coloring for the way you want text to be."

01:09:16 ◼   ► So you can say like, "Oh, these two characters are gonna mark off

01:09:21 ◼   ► that this text is going to be in pink."

01:09:23 ◼   ► Right? Or, "This text is going to be underlined."

01:09:25 ◼   ► And you can start building up a system for yourself

01:09:29 ◼   ► about how you want to work.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Like, it's really, really fantastic.

01:09:33 ◼   ► I feel like I can't say enough good things about Ulysses,

01:09:35 ◼   ► and I'm always coming up with more ways to use it.

01:09:41 ◼   ► I have used it. It is very good. It's too much for me.

01:09:45 ◼   ► It can, it can definitely be a bit over overwhelming.

01:09:49 ◼   ► It makes me feel like I should be writing a novel.

01:09:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it does have a bias towards, that's not even fair, but it does,

01:10:00 ◼   ► it does maybe compel you to be working on bigger projects. Like it,

01:10:05 ◼   ► it feels like it could just be used for these huge things. Uh,

01:10:09 ◼   ► And I don't even use all of the features because I'm syncing it through Dropbox,

01:10:14 ◼   ► which then only allows you to use a smaller number of their features.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Because if you're using it with iCloud, you can do an endless number of things with Ulysses.

01:10:22 ◼   ► It's really quite impressive.

01:10:23 ◼   ► Actually, I'll give you an example of a way I used it, which was totally unexpected,

01:10:31 ◼   ► but is a side effect of organizing in Sheets.

01:10:34 ◼   ► and... okay, so I've been playing around with another vlog for my channel, which may or

01:10:42 ◼   ► may not ever get released, I don't know. It's a big mess. Myke's laughing now because he's

01:10:50 ◼   ► been hearing about this for like months. But anyway, a couple weeks ago I was working on

01:11:00 ◼   ► and I felt like I'm at like a log jam point here, like nothing is really working.

01:11:04 ◼   ► But what I got the idea to do was in Ulysses, I actually ended up writing out a bunch of the

01:11:12 ◼   ► different parts of the vlog and using their color coding to represent different things.

01:11:17 ◼   ► So I could say, "Okay, let me type out what I'm saying in the vlog at this point,

01:11:21 ◼   ► and if it's pink, that means it's audio that was recorded live on location.

01:11:29 ◼   ► and if it's green, here's something that I want like future grey to be saying,

01:11:33 ◼   ► and if it's blue, here's something that somebody else was saying,

01:11:36 ◼   ► and then if it's like another color, it's an indication of what's going to happen in the scene.

01:11:40 ◼   ► My word.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Yeah, well it was it was an interesting thing to do because like I wrote it out,

01:11:46 ◼   ► which one just made me think a little bit more about what the structure is going to be,

01:11:50 ◼   ► but then because you have these sheets, it's like each sheet was like a little subsection of a scene,

01:11:58 ◼   ► And it ended up being a situation where I realized, "Oh, this is much easier to think about the vlog at a very high level,

01:12:05 ◼   ► because now I can rearrange where these things go,

01:12:08 ◼   ► without just having to watch a whole bunch of footage over and over again that maybe I'll use or maybe I won't use."

01:12:15 ◼   ► So it just ended up being like, "Oh, this is turned into a text-based storyboarding tool."

01:12:23 ◼   ► So it was an interesting thing to have done, and it really helped me a couple weeks ago realize a

01:12:31 ◼   ► bunch of stuff that doesn't need to be included and a couple of things that should go in different

01:12:36 ◼   ► spots. It's much more obvious looking at it that way. So even if you're not writing, there may be

01:12:43 ◼   ► other places where the ability to rearrange text is very valuable, and so Ulysses is just like,

01:12:51 ◼   ► that is its real strong suit.

01:12:54 ◼   ► For any type of writing that I do,

01:12:58 ◼   ► which is like longer than a message to someone,

01:13:01 ◼   ► I'm probably or if it's not going in notes,

01:13:04 ◼   ► I'm going to get to notes later for its purposes.

01:13:07 ◼   ► For me, it would be Bear is where I do this type of stuff.

01:13:11 ◼   ► Oh, there's great.

01:13:12 ◼   ► Bear is a really, really nice app that does a great job with Markdown.

01:13:16 ◼   ► So if I'm writing like a blog post or something like that,

01:13:20 ◼   ► then it would go in Bear. It's really, really nice for it.

01:13:22 ◼   ► And I have used their organizational features.

01:13:25 ◼   ► They have a great tagging system and stuff like that. Um,

01:13:28 ◼   ► I haven't gone too deep into that because I started doing it and then realized

01:13:31 ◼   ► that I never ever needed it. Like I never, I was,

01:13:34 ◼   ► I was tagging everything I was writing in Bear then realizing that I just never

01:13:39 ◼   ► needed the tags because I could just search if I needed anything. Um,

01:13:43 ◼   ► and that wasn't such a,

01:13:44 ◼   ► for me it wasn't a system where I was like needed to catalog things as such.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So I kind of realized that it just made sense for me to open it,

01:13:52 ◼   ► write the note that I need and then move away. But like, I really, really like Bear.

01:13:56 ◼   ► I think it's a very nice app that is going through a lot of great revisions.

01:14:01 ◼   ► They're adding new features very frequently. Um, I'm a big fan of it.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Sort of like how Slack amoeba-like ate all of my email.

01:14:09 ◼   ► Bear has eaten all of the random text files in random folders everywhere in my

01:14:14 ◼   ► system. Uh, so like I used to have just in different places,

01:14:17 ◼   ► like, "Lists of things," or "Here's a note about this," and I realize the same thing

01:14:24 ◼   ► that's like, "I'm just going to keep all of this in Bear," and if it's a list of anything

01:14:29 ◼   ► or a note on almost anything, I can just search for it in Bear fast enough and pull it up.

01:14:35 ◼   ► I really like it.

01:14:36 ◼   ► It's a great app.

01:14:37 ◼   ► It's a really beautifully designed app as well, and it syncs quickly and reliably, so

01:14:42 ◼   ► yeah, I have a ton of stuff in Bear and I highly recommend it as well.

01:14:47 ◼   ► And then obviously I use my Apple pencil to take notes every now and then and there are two apps that I really like to do that with and it's good notes and notability.

01:14:56 ◼   ► I kind of use them both for different things. I find good notes to be really good for marking up PDFs and stuff like that.

01:15:04 ◼   ► But if I'm taking notes, I actually prefer notability for it. In the past, at least initially, I found notability's Apple pencil support to be better.

01:15:13 ◼   ► to be better. I really like the way you can move things around. GoodNotes sometimes overwhelms

01:15:19 ◼   ► me with how much it does, and Notability feels much more focused when I'm in it.

01:15:26 ◼   ► It's funny, I feel the exact reverse. I feel like Notability has all of this stuff, and

01:15:31 ◼   ► GoodNotes is relatively straightforward. But I think it's also just like I have spent an

01:15:36 ◼   ► enormous amount of time in GoodNotes. I really like that.

01:15:39 ◼   ► You know that at back and front, like it was in the 2014 list.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that was surprising to see.

01:15:45 ◼   ► I didn't even realize it was that old.

01:15:47 ◼   ► So I think that is a case of like long time familiarity with the app has just made it

01:15:52 ◼   ► to me like it's a... it's indistinguishable from using a legal pad and a pen for me at

01:15:57 ◼   ► this point.

01:15:58 ◼   ► So I absolutely love GoodNotes and I really like it.

01:16:01 ◼   ► That's all I have for writing.

01:16:02 ◼   ► I don't know if you have anything else.

01:16:07 ◼   ► I mean, you know, this is where I can just mention Evernote.

01:16:11 ◼   ► It's sort of like, you know, still there.

01:16:14 ◼   ► It goes in the writing column?

01:16:15 ◼   ► Well, you know, I use it for research and stuff.

01:16:18 ◼   ► It's just like there.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I mean, if we're shuffling into research, I would throw notes in for me.

01:16:25 ◼   ► This is where I put all of the links and all of the articles

01:16:30 ◼   ► and all of the kind of the thoughts and notes that I have for the shows that I do.

01:16:34 ◼   ► I'm just going through the week and then either the day before or the day of the show that's

01:16:39 ◼   ► recording, I will then go into Google Docs and transfer that stuff out and plan out the

01:16:42 ◼   ► shows in more depth. But everything that I'm saving in the weeks between each show is all

01:16:47 ◼   ► going into the Apple Notes app. It's a very good app. It got a little bit flaky, not flaky,

01:16:53 ◼   ► it got a little bit weird in some places in iOS 11 with the way that it saves some links

01:16:57 ◼   ► that you put into it. But I never have data loss and it's not that kind of weirdness.

01:17:02 ◼   ► It's just sometimes things move around in a strange way.

01:17:05 ◼   ► But the share extensions and all that stuff

01:17:07 ◼   ► remain completely rock solid for me.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And I love it.

01:17:11 ◼   ► Bear has a really fantastic share extension too.

01:17:14 ◼   ► But it can get kind of weird with sync conflicts.

01:17:18 ◼   ► So I try and not put stuff like that in it.

01:17:21 ◼   ► - Interesting.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm still using notes in the way

01:17:26 ◼   ► I described a while back, which is like,

01:17:28 ◼   ► just as a place to jot down stuff

01:17:30 ◼   ► I'll figure out later where it goes. So Notes is a very temporary place for me, and Bear is the place

01:17:37 ◼   ► where structured long-term lists live. Like if I'm thinking about something for Cortex, I'll often

01:17:44 ◼   ► write it down in Bear and then transfer it over to the Google Doc later. Okay, so it's a similar

01:17:49 ◼   ► usage, really. Yeah, yeah. So video production. I mean, all I have to say on this is Final Cut.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Yeah. I have Final Cut to say as well, but I do feel like I need to get something on the record

01:18:03 ◼   ► with Final Cut, which is that this year I did make an attempt to learn Adobe Premiere.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Oh, I forgot about that.

01:18:13 ◼   ► Yeah, he forgot about this.

01:18:14 ◼   ► Yeah, there was a time where you were threatening to move to Audition on me.

01:18:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I was investigating the Adobe suite, and I sunk a lot of hours into learning Premiere,

01:18:26 ◼   ► And I got to the point where I could put together a video in Premiere.

01:18:31 ◼   ► Like I got far enough along and

01:18:34 ◼   ► I just I felt like

01:18:38 ◼   ► this is not for me.

01:18:39 ◼   ► I don't like Premiere. I don't like the way it works.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Final Cut Pro just works with my brain.

01:18:44 ◼   ► And I'm really glad I put in all of those hours with Premiere,

01:18:49 ◼   ► because I feel like I appreciate Final Cut Pro so much more.

01:18:54 ◼   ► Like I appreciate it a hundred times more after using Premiere than I did before.

01:19:00 ◼   ► So I feel like Final Cut, you're amazing.

01:19:02 ◼   ► I'm sorry I looked elsewhere for a little while.

01:19:05 ◼   ► You're the only one for me, I promise.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly it.

01:19:08 ◼   ► Like you're the only one for me.

01:19:10 ◼   ► All of your features that are amazing, I was just taking for granted.

01:19:14 ◼   ► And like I super appreciate Final Cut Pro.

01:19:18 ◼   ► I may hold it up as one of the

01:19:22 ◼   ► the best applications on any platform that Apple has ever made.

01:19:25 ◼   ► Alright, alright. You're overselling it now.

01:19:27 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

01:19:29 ◼   ► It's going to forgive you, it's okay.

01:19:31 ◼   ► I don't need forgiveness, we're getting along just great.

01:19:33 ◼   ► But yeah, so not only do I use Final Cut Pro, I really love Final Cut Pro.

01:19:38 ◼   ► Now, I mean, what about animation tools? Do you still use any?

01:19:44 ◼   ► So at this point, everything that was my animation tool creation stuff,

01:19:51 ◼   ► stuff, like that has essentially 98% been outsourced at this point.

01:19:58 ◼   ► So I'm working with my animator and he is doing essentially all of the animation at this stage.

01:20:05 ◼   ► So a lot of my concerns about vector tools on different platforms, they just do not exist as concerns anymore for me.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Which is a huge, actually, quality of life improvement. Not having to worry about that stuff.

01:20:20 ◼   ► So is there anything else in the video production category?

01:20:24 ◼   ► So there's only one other thing in the video production

01:20:27 ◼   ► category that I'll recommend which is an iPhone app

01:20:31 ◼   ► called Filmic Pro which is

01:20:34 ◼   ► if you're ever going to try to be shooting video

01:20:37 ◼   ► say you're trying to walk down a street in Las Vegas and you want to film a

01:20:41 ◼   ► montage

01:20:42 ◼   ► this is a little a little manual

01:20:46 ◼   ► camera app, a video camera app for the phone

01:20:49 ◼   ► which just has, it has a million features,

01:20:53 ◼   ► but there's really only two things that I use in it

01:20:57 ◼   ► that I really like, and it's the ability to set a point

01:21:02 ◼   ► on the screen for where you want the focus

01:21:05 ◼   ► and where you want the exposure to be set.

01:21:09 ◼   ► So you can say like, I'm walking down the street,

01:21:10 ◼   ► but I want the focus to be on the sidewalk,

01:21:13 ◼   ► but I want the exposure to be set against the sky, right?

01:21:16 ◼   ► So you can manually say, this is how it's supposed to look.

01:21:18 ◼   ► whereas with the regular iPhone camera,

01:21:20 ◼   ► like the iPhone does a great job

01:21:21 ◼   ► of automatically figuring it out for you,

01:21:23 ◼   ► but sometimes you do wanna be able to manually set that.

01:21:27 ◼   ► And then the other thing that I like,

01:21:28 ◼   ► which is just a little detail,

01:21:30 ◼   ► but with FiLMiC Pro, you can tell it which microphone

01:21:34 ◼   ► it should be recording the audio from,

01:21:37 ◼   ► and just as a little trick,

01:21:39 ◼   ► like for a lot of Las Vegas stuff and for some vlog stuff,

01:21:43 ◼   ► you can tell it to use the microphone that is facing you

01:21:48 ◼   ► while you're recording the stuff that's in front of you.

01:21:50 ◼   ► - Oh man, that's amazing.

01:21:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's really great.

01:21:54 ◼   ► And you can save it as a little preset,

01:21:56 ◼   ► so you can open up Filmic Pro,

01:21:58 ◼   ► and so it will be using the microphone

01:22:00 ◼   ► at the bottom of the phone to record you talking

01:22:04 ◼   ► while you're looking at the screen

01:22:05 ◼   ► and filming the thing that you're looking at.

01:22:08 ◼   ► So I really like that if you're just trying to capture

01:22:11 ◼   ► any kind of video on your phone,

01:22:14 ◼   ► and that's the thing that you're using.

01:22:15 ◼   ► So highly recommend it, it's a great little app.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Pro tip.

01:22:19 ◼   ► It's an app recommendation.

01:22:21 ◼   ► What about reading?

01:22:22 ◼   ► I have absolutely zero in this category.

01:22:25 ◼   ► Well, you don't read.

01:22:27 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:22:28 ◼   ► So I will have no reading recommendation.

01:22:31 ◼   ► I mean, I'll recommend the Kindle.

01:22:34 ◼   ► Is the Kindle an app?

01:22:35 ◼   ► It's a physical device?

01:22:36 ◼   ► Is this too far?

01:22:37 ◼   ► Is that state of the apps?

01:22:38 ◼   ► Well, the Kindle is an app.

01:22:39 ◼   ► Are you recommending the Kindle app?

01:22:41 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I'll recommend the Kindle app if you have to.

01:22:44 ◼   ► I'll recommend a physical Kindle as better now that they've fixed all of their software problems.

01:22:49 ◼   ► And if you installed the Kindle app on your phone, I recommend that you create a workflow to launch it

01:22:56 ◼   ► so that you don't have to look at its icon, which is improved but still not good.

01:23:00 ◼   ► So yeah, I'll recommend Kindle in terms of reading.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Oh, and of course, I'll still recommend Instapaper for articles and stuff.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Like if I'm saving articles, I'll still throw them into Instapaper.

01:23:11 ◼   ► So those are the reading apps that I use.

01:23:13 ◼   ► Okay

01:23:15 ◼   ► Was reading a category on my old yes

01:23:18 ◼   ► Okay

01:23:21 ◼   ► In the original was instapaper and kindle so you're a creature a habit

01:23:24 ◼   ► Well, I think I think I think what actually happened is we went so we went far away and then came back, right?

01:23:30 ◼   ► It was so long that we've actually gone. Oh, yeah, definitely used other stuff, right?

01:23:34 ◼   ► I bet you had a pocket phase and you had an eye box

01:23:37 ◼   ► I had a pocket phase and the eye books phase wasn't a phase eye books phase

01:23:42 ◼   ► Ibooks was a state of life for a very long period of time. So it may actually be that

01:23:48 ◼   ► right after I wrote that article I switched away from Kindle, and I have only just recently

01:23:52 ◼   ► switched back.

01:23:53 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:23:54 ◼   ► MATT: Also, you can't recommend the physical Kindle through fear that this ends up becoming

01:23:57 ◼   ► a gift guide episode. You have to be real careful. We have to skirt around the gift

01:24:00 ◼   ► guide.

01:24:01 ◼   ► STEVEN PINKER - Yeah, no, it's not a gift guide.

01:24:02 ◼   ► MATT - Not a gift guide. It's a state of the apps.

01:24:04 ◼   ► STEVEN PINKER - But a Kindle would make a fantastic Christmas present.

01:24:07 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not a gift guide, but I will recommend this for one gift.

01:24:12 ◼   ► I don't think one gift is a guide.

01:24:14 ◼   ► No, it's not.

01:24:15 ◼   ► No.

01:24:16 ◼   ► "Watching" is the next category.

01:24:17 ◼   ► Why did I have "watching" as a category?

01:24:20 ◼   ► What was past me thinking about?

01:24:22 ◼   ► I don't get this.

01:24:23 ◼   ► I think we're just going to roll this up into "media," right?

01:24:24 ◼   ► For some reason, you included "feedly" and "pocket" in your "watching," which seemed

01:24:30 ◼   ► like really strange recommendations.

01:24:32 ◼   ► Oh, yes!

01:24:33 ◼   ► I remember that.

01:24:34 ◼   ► One is an RSS reading app and one is a read it later app.

01:24:39 ◼   ► - No, but here's what I was doing, Myke.

01:24:43 ◼   ► I was trying to force the YouTube subscription service

01:24:48 ◼   ► into being the way I wanted it to be.

01:24:51 ◼   ► So I was pulling RSS feeds for YouTube channels

01:24:54 ◼   ► and then dumping them in a separate app

01:24:56 ◼   ► so that I would get all the videos

01:24:58 ◼   ► in the order and organization that I wanted.

01:25:00 ◼   ► That's what I used to be doing.

01:25:01 ◼   ► - That's impossible. - But I think you can't do

01:25:03 ◼   ► that anymore because YouTube doesn't even have RSS feeds for channels. I think they

01:25:08 ◼   ► got rid of that? I don't know if it even still exists.

01:25:11 ◼   ► Why would you set up your own RSS feed? I think that's all gone.

01:25:18 ◼   ► Obviously I recommend YouTube, but I don't think I need to recommend that to anybody.

01:25:21 ◼   ► It's like recommending Netflix. They've got some great shows.

01:25:25 ◼   ► Have you ever heard of smartphones? I think that you might like them. I use an app on

01:25:30 ◼   ► my ipad called end player. What I use this for, end player is a really great way to get

01:25:37 ◼   ► to be able to get videos onto an ipad and have a place to watch them in. So I'll give

01:25:43 ◼   ► you an example, we do not have youtube red in the UK.

01:25:47 ◼   ► Yeah very frustrating.

01:25:48 ◼   ► So if there is a youtube video, like there are some videos that I watch that are multiple

01:25:53 ◼   ► hours in length and I would like to have them on a plane. Like I watch some like let's plays

01:25:58 ◼   ► and stuff like that, and some game streams that sometimes I like to watch them when I

01:26:02 ◼   ► want to play instead. I use Workflow to download the YouTube video.

01:26:08 ◼   ► Ah, okay, right. And then I save it out to EndPlayer.

01:26:12 ◼   ► That's clever, that's clever. And so that's a good way of doing it. I actually

01:26:17 ◼   ► don't know if I can share the YouTube Workflow. They exist on the internet.

01:26:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think you should do that. You can find them potentially, but that's

01:26:25 ◼   ► thing that I do. Well there is a way to fix this YouTube. Just give me YouTube Red. Like,

01:26:31 ◼   ► you are the one who controls this. Just give me it. But they won't. I wish they would.

01:26:36 ◼   ► But they won't. Because I get teased every time I go to the US, right? And I open the

01:26:39 ◼   ► YouTube apps. Like, "Hey! Sign up!" And they put download buttons and everything. So this

01:26:43 ◼   ► is pointless because I can't. Just because I'm in this country, I can't start just using

01:26:47 ◼   ► YouTube Red now.

01:26:48 ◼   ► I had a YouTube Red account on a YouTube account that is mine that is in the US. So for a while

01:26:54 ◼   ► I was enjoying all the benefits of YouTube Red in the UK, but eventually they cracked

01:26:58 ◼   ► down on that. They're like, "Oh, no, no. We know you're paying us money. We know this

01:27:02 ◼   ► is a US bank and account, but you, sir, are not on a vacation. You are clearly just living

01:27:08 ◼   ► in another country." So, no.

01:27:11 ◼   ► Netflix did the same thing.

01:27:14 ◼   ► So disappointing.

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01:28:31 ◼   ► Listening.

01:28:33 ◼   ► I feel like we need a little disclaimer here,

01:28:34 ◼   ► because I'm about to recommend Overcast as the only podcast app

01:28:38 ◼   ► that you should use.

01:28:39 ◼   ► But I feel like we need to say, like, we know Marco who makes Overcast.

01:28:43 ◼   ► So just need to put that on the record there, but I really do think Overcast is the best podcast app.

01:28:50 ◼   ► And it's largely because of the two things.

01:28:55 ◼   ► Like, it's the smart speed feature, which cuts out a lot of the gaps in less edited podcasts.

01:29:02 ◼   ► And it is also...

01:29:05 ◼   ► It's also that whatever Marco has done with the low-level audio stuff,

01:29:11 ◼   ► No podcast app makes speeded up audio sound better than Overcast.

01:29:17 ◼   ► So that's one of the main reasons why I really, really recommend it is

01:29:23 ◼   ► you can listen to a podcast on a higher speed,

01:29:26 ◼   ► and it doesn't have as many of the artifacts or weirdness

01:29:31 ◼   ► that other other speeded up systems use.

01:29:34 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:29:36 ◼   ► I mean, the reason I use Overcast is because of smart speed,

01:29:40 ◼   ► which is the silent shortening. I don't listen to podcasts at like 1.5 or 2x.

01:29:45 ◼   ► I just let Overcast just use its rubber banding to make things faster and where it needs to.

01:29:50 ◼   ► And it's, that is the feature, right? Like, it doesn't matter how many other apps there are,

01:29:56 ◼   ► it doesn't matter if like, "Oh, that design's really pretty," or whatever,

01:29:59 ◼   ► as there are a bunch of apps that are like that. It doesn't matter, like, because they don't have

01:30:03 ◼   ► smart speed in the way that I like it. Other apps have silent stripping, but I've tried it,

01:30:08 ◼   ► and just to my ears it just doesn't sound as good.

01:30:10 ◼   ► It's close, but not good enough,

01:30:12 ◼   ► and it's not good enough to make me wanna move.

01:30:14 ◼   ► And I, one of my other favorite features about Overcast

01:30:17 ◼   ► is the black theme, because I have an iPhone 10,

01:30:20 ◼   ► so black themes, where it's like all black,

01:30:23 ◼   ► look amazing because the yellow is green.

01:30:25 ◼   ► So I like that a lot, and yeah,

01:30:27 ◼   ► I mean that's why I use Overcast,

01:30:28 ◼   ► but then as Gray said, the developer Marco is a friend,

01:30:32 ◼   ► and that always helps, but Overcast is really good.

01:30:37 ◼   ► I mean, I know a lot of people use it and they're not all friends of Marco.

01:30:40 ◼   ► So yeah, there you go.

01:30:42 ◼   ► We can do, I don't know that guy's pretty popular.

01:30:44 ◼   ► Travel travel makes me sad because you could,

01:30:51 ◼   ► you could ride that on your tombstone. Yeah. Yeah. You know what?

01:30:54 ◼   ► And very many levels,

01:30:55 ◼   ► but I just realized I totally forgot the name of that app that everybody was

01:30:58 ◼   ► using to track flights that was then bought by a company that then withered and

01:31:03 ◼   ► died. Do you know, you know the one I'm talking about.

01:31:06 ◼   ► Everybody was talking about it.

01:31:06 ◼   ► - It's in your list here, Flight Track 5.

01:31:09 ◼   ► - Is that what it was?

01:31:10 ◼   ► Okay. - It was Flight Track.

01:31:11 ◼   ► Yeah, Flight Track was the app.

01:31:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was so good and nothing has ever replaced it.

01:31:18 ◼   ► And when that thing disappeared, I swear to God,

01:31:23 ◼   ► I was reaching out to everyone I knew to be like,

01:31:27 ◼   ► what are you using to track your flights?

01:31:29 ◼   ► Like people on the edge of my contact network,

01:31:32 ◼   ► I was like, what are you using to track flights?

01:31:33 ◼   ► Tell me what you're using.

01:31:34 ◼   ► hoping that somehow someone would have discovered some gem in the wilderness that I hadn't stumbled upon.

01:31:43 ◼   ► But there was a really long period where flight tracking apps were just not up to speed.

01:31:48 ◼   ► But my recommendation in this category, I finally found one that's pretty good. It's not perfect.

01:31:57 ◼   ► I do sometimes have notifications about flights that don't seem quite right,

01:32:04 ◼   ► but I always just forward those to the developer and he seems really active about trying to, like, wrinkle out all the final little bugs.

01:32:11 ◼   ► But I'm using Flight Logger and I really like it because flight tracking apps have this delicate balance that they have to play.

01:32:23 ◼   ► of like, there's a lot of information, like how are you going to display that information?

01:32:28 ◼   ► And I think Flight Logger makes for me the design decisions in that trade-off that are pretty good.

01:32:37 ◼   ► So that's the one that in the past, I'm gonna say in the past six months, I've really settled on as,

01:32:42 ◼   ► "Okay, this is going to be the flight tracker for me every time I'm traveling."

01:32:47 ◼   ► What are you using, Myke?

01:32:48 ◼   ► I use two.

01:32:50 ◼   ► Use two, uh-oh.

01:32:51 ◼   ► I use two.

01:32:52 ◼   ► too. I use Flight Logger and I really like Flight Logger, but I need to say they have

01:32:57 ◼   ► been a sponsor in the past.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

01:33:00 ◼   ► Some of my shows. So I use Flight Logger because I like its simplicity. But then I also use

01:33:05 ◼   ► an app called App in the Air.

01:33:06 ◼   ► Oh, God.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Which has a lot of information, but too much. And most of the time I don't want it, but

01:33:13 ◼   ► there have been times when I do want that amount of information. The problem with App

01:33:16 ◼   ► in the Air is that sometimes it's too busy and it's pretty expensive. Like they have

01:33:21 ◼   ► like I think it's like $5 a month or like $30 a year.

01:33:25 ◼   ► I mean, okay, like I'm comparing it when I say expensive to what apps cost, right?

01:33:30 ◼   ► Like, yeah, yeah.

01:33:31 ◼   ► In Appland, that's pretty expensive.

01:33:34 ◼   ► But, but I do really like it.

01:33:35 ◼   ► But I like to use, I use them in conjunction.

01:33:38 ◼   ► Every time I get on a plane, I put them into both apps.

01:33:41 ◼   ► So if I just want to find out, like, what time am I taking off, then I'll just open

01:33:45 ◼   ► FlightLogger and just find that out.

01:33:47 ◼   ► But if I want to get like, what type of plane do I have?

01:33:49 ◼   ► Will I have Wi-Fi?

01:33:50 ◼   ► They're lounges in the airport. Like, App in the Air has all of that ancillary information.

01:33:56 ◼   ► And I would say, Gray, if you haven't used it in a while, they redesigned the app a little while ago

01:34:01 ◼   ► and it got a lot better. It got way-- it used to be really pushy about certain things.

01:34:06 ◼   ► Yeah, like, the thing I'll just say is-- okay, maybe the redesign happened, but the reason I

01:34:10 ◼   ► stopped using App in the Air is I've never felt this way about an app, but I felt like I was

01:34:16 ◼   ► was getting bullied by App in the air.

01:34:18 ◼   ► Like it was so--

01:34:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, very aggressive. - Insistent on the things

01:34:21 ◼   ► they wanted me to do.

01:34:22 ◼   ► And also just like, they really wanted the passwords

01:34:26 ◼   ► to my email accounts to do stuff that I didn't really care

01:34:29 ◼   ► about them doing.

01:34:30 ◼   ► And it was so pushy, I felt like,

01:34:31 ◼   ► I feel like I'm getting bullied by you, App.

01:34:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can turn a lot of that off now.

01:34:35 ◼   ► Like it's way, way better for a lot.

01:34:36 ◼   ► I would recommend you just try it out again,

01:34:38 ◼   ► just to see what it is.

01:34:39 ◼   ► - I'll take a look at it again and see, yeah.

01:34:41 ◼   ► - So yeah, I really liked it.

01:34:43 ◼   ► Do you wanna talk about games?

01:34:45 ◼   ► Well you always want to talk about games, Myke.

01:34:47 ◼   ► Well yeah, of course. I love games.

01:34:49 ◼   ► I wanted to talk about games last time, but it just made you sad.

01:34:53 ◼   ► Should we talk about Mario Odyssey?

01:34:57 ◼   ► No, I don't want to talk about Mario Odyssey.

01:35:00 ◼   ► Okay, alright.

01:35:01 ◼   ► Not with you, anyway.

01:35:04 ◼   ► With anybody else, but not with me.

01:35:05 ◼   ► Yeah, there's other people I talk about Mario Odyssey with, but not with you.

01:35:11 ◼   ► Flip Flop Solitaire is probably my favorite iOS game this year. It is like a really weird

01:35:18 ◼   ► solitaire game. I've always liked solitaire games, you know, but I've never been like

01:35:22 ◼   ► incredible at solitaire. This is difficult to describe, I think, but Flip Flop Solitaire

01:35:29 ◼   ► lets you go in both directions. So with solitaire, you would usually go, for example, starting

01:35:36 ◼   ► at the top like 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 right like you would go down right you go down with

01:35:41 ◼   ► ace being one but in flip-flop solitaire you can stack in both directions so you could

01:35:48 ◼   ► have a 10 card right and you could put on that 10 card either a 9 or a jack okay so

01:35:56 ◼   ► you can go up or down right go up or down i mean eventually you have to try and still

01:36:00 ◼   ► put all the cards away but it is an easier way to move the cards around because you can

01:36:05 ◼   ► put them everywhere. I recommend people just try it. It's a fantastic game. I really, really

01:36:11 ◼   ► love it. It's my favorite game this year that's kind of been added to my games folder, and

01:36:17 ◼   ► my games folder contains like my all-time favorite iOS games, and Flip Flip Solitaire

01:36:21 ◼   ► has very quickly become one of those.

01:36:24 ◼   ► What that makes me think of is a game I didn't play a lot of but I did really enjoy was...

01:36:29 ◼   ► Oh god, what the heck is it called? I just need to look it up to get the name right.

01:36:34 ◼   ► Bad chess. I don't know if you played this or not. It's made by the same person. Oh

01:36:38 ◼   ► Okay, well then that that makes sense. Yeah, they're both of these games are made by Zach Gage. Okay, right. There we go. Yep

01:36:45 ◼   ► But like I had fun with really bad chess the premise there is I used to play chess a lot when I was a kid

01:36:51 ◼   ► You know, I was like a chess team kind of

01:36:55 ◼   ► You played chess when you were a kid, come on!

01:36:57 ◼   ► Yeah, totally surprising but one of the things that happened with me when I was playing chess is

01:37:03 ◼   ► When I started getting better at the game, the game became deadly boring to me because you realize like,

01:37:11 ◼   ► "Oh, the first part of the game is about openings and it's always the same and then the interesting part of the game is only when you start getting into unknown situations later."

01:37:20 ◼   ► And really bad chess is super fun because it starts out with the beginning locations of all your pieces are just randomized.

01:37:28 ◼   ► And it made the game just it made chess fun to play again.

01:37:34 ◼   ► And I think it's the same thing like what you're talking about with flip-flop solitaire where the

01:37:39 ◼   ► Designer is tweaking the rules of the game to make the game more fun to play.

01:37:45 ◼   ► Yep.

01:37:45 ◼   ► And so like I really enjoyed really bad chess and like if you have ever played chess and left it

01:37:52 ◼   ► behind. This is at the very least you will have an enjoyable afternoon playing really

01:37:58 ◼   ► bad chess. It was a lot of fun.

01:38:01 ◼   ► So what games have you been enjoying? Are they recent? Are they old?

01:38:05 ◼   ► Here's the thing when I was thinking about games this time because my old article it's

01:38:08 ◼   ► like "Oh I have a bunch of games to recommend people that are recent games" but I tend to

01:38:15 ◼   ► go in phases in and out of games where it's like I play a lot and in a condensed period

01:38:21 ◼   ► Then I go for a while, and I don't play very much, and I feel like there's a bigger meta cycle that has happened in my life,

01:38:28 ◼   ► which is that this year has been a relatively low gaming year for me overall.

01:38:33 ◼   ► So I feel like I don't have an enormous number of

01:38:37 ◼   ► games that came in, like I know I did get the Switch.

01:38:40 ◼   ► So I'm just I'm going to just mention three because I mentioned them before so I can do it very quickly,

01:38:45 ◼   ► but I have come to think of these games as my holy trinity of games.

01:38:49 ◼   ► These are the games that have stuck with me the longest, that I have played the most,

01:38:55 ◼   ► and that have three very distinct roles in my life.

01:38:57 ◼   ► Can you guess what the first one is, Myke?

01:38:59 ◼   ► Mmm...

01:39:02 ◼   ► What might it be? Hmm...

01:39:04 ◼   ► It's Truck Simulator game.

01:39:07 ◼   ► Oh, oh, oh, right, yes, sorry. I was like...

01:39:10 ◼   ► Yeah, okay. Mm-hmm.

01:39:12 ◼   ► Yeah, of course, right? We've talked about it a million times.

01:39:14 ◼   ► Truck Simulator,

01:39:16 ◼   ► American Truck Simulator in particular. Absolutely love it. And that is my brain dead game. It's great.

01:39:22 ◼   ► Many, many hours.

01:39:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I was thinking about iOS and obviously there's no help there.

01:39:27 ◼   ► No, there's no help there. I have a very, very good Mac gaming rig. But then on top of that,

01:39:34 ◼   ► I mentioned them before, but I'll just mention them now again. Factorio and Rimworld are the

01:39:39 ◼   ► two other games that I absolutely like. And...

01:39:46 ◼   ► I don't know if any have ever, ever, anybody used the phrase "absolutely like"?

01:39:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:53 ◼   ► No one says that!

01:39:54 ◼   ► You absolutely love something or you like it.

01:39:58 ◼   ► You don't absolutely like it!

01:40:00 ◼   ► I guess I do absolutely like these games.

01:40:02 ◼   ► I absolutely don't mind them.

01:40:15 ◼   ► I'm glad you're enjoying yourself over there.

01:40:16 ◼   ► This is what happens on podcasts, right? When you're talking instead of writing,

01:40:22 ◼   ► like these things that come out and you're like "Why am I saying this? I have no idea."

01:40:25 ◼   ► Thanks Brain for assembling that sentence.

01:40:27 ◼   ► B: Absolutely like is a phrase that I can imagine you using.

01:40:30 ◼   ► C. Right. Well, I'm gonna use it now, right? Now that it's come into existence.

01:40:35 ◼   ► B. Right.

01:40:35 ◼   ► C. But yeah, I would describe RimWorld as "Stardew Valley except fun."

01:40:44 ◼   ► That's the way I would describe RoomWorld.

01:40:46 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:40:48 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:40:50 ◼   ► And Factorio

01:40:52 ◼   ► is a game where if you have any

01:40:54 ◼   ► programmer inclinations

01:40:56 ◼   ► at all, Factorio might be

01:40:58 ◼   ► dangerous for you to try.

01:41:00 ◼   ► But it is deeply, deeply

01:41:02 ◼   ► involving, and they've just put out a

01:41:04 ◼   ► new version in time for Christmas, which

01:41:06 ◼   ► I'm really, really trying to

01:41:08 ◼   ► prevent myself from even looking at until

01:41:10 ◼   ► I have finished all the work that I need to do

01:41:12 ◼   ► until Christmas season arrives because as soon as I open that up it's like okay well here go a bunch of hours but

01:41:18 ◼   ► Those have been the stable three Holy Trinity games for me for a long time now

01:41:23 ◼   ► And I just I think they are just great solid games

01:41:27 ◼   ► In very different areas, so I just I really like them, and I don't I don't have a bunch of

01:41:32 ◼   ► new recommendations this year, so I'm just gonna re-recommend those

01:41:38 ◼   ► I am going to give you a very quick, super quick, just give you the names of my iOS gaming

01:41:45 ◼   ► hall of fame.

01:41:46 ◼   ► Threes, Alto's Adventure, Stagehand, Domino Drop, and Mini Metro.

01:41:52 ◼   ► They are my favorite iOS games of all time and Flip Flops Solitaire joins them.

01:41:56 ◼   ► Like they are the games that I always keep installed on my iPhone.

01:42:00 ◼   ► They are perfect iPhone games.

01:42:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:42:03 ◼   ► Alto's Adventure I can definitely recommend.

01:42:06 ◼   ► That's really fun.

01:42:07 ◼   ► beautiful, like the art style in Outdoors Adventures is great and

01:42:10 ◼   ► Mini Metro, I never played it on iOS. I played it when it came out on on Steam when it was in early access and

01:42:16 ◼   ► that is...

01:42:19 ◼   ► I think that's a great example of a game that is simple,

01:42:24 ◼   ► but involving and one of the things that I really like about Mini Metro is it's a game where you always lose,

01:42:30 ◼   ► but you don't mind.

01:42:32 ◼   ► It's very Tetris-like, like the complexity just keeps scaling up and you're doing a very simple thing and you're always going to lose

01:42:39 ◼   ► It's just a question about how how long can you go on before you lose? So yeah, I'm also gonna really recommend mini Metro

01:42:46 ◼   ► So there are a couple of categories that I think we could condense

01:42:50 ◼   ► into

01:42:53 ◼   ► Miscellaneous. Yeah, I think we can do a lightning-ish round in miscellaneous. All right, you go first. I'm gonna mention

01:43:01 ◼   ► the last service, I think, which is Dropbox.

01:43:07 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:43:08 ◼   ► As a miscellaneous one.

01:43:09 ◼   ► You know, I kind of forget, like, because it's just there.

01:43:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just there, but Dropbox is the file system for me for everything.

01:43:22 ◼   ► And it's the way that I keep my work managed across different devices, different operating systems.

01:43:29 ◼   ► It's the absolutely vital underpinning of almost everything I do.

01:43:33 ◼   ► And I upgraded to Dropbox Business this year

01:43:37 ◼   ► so that I could use their new features like selective, or sorry, not selective syncing

01:43:41 ◼   ► but the thing where you can have-- Infinite? What is it called? It's what was originally called

01:43:45 ◼   ► Infinite, but they gave it a new name. Here's the problem. It was originally called Dropbox Infinite, which is an

01:43:49 ◼   ► amazing name, and then they changed it to something else and I can never remember

01:43:53 ◼   ► what the new name is because it's boring. But it's

01:43:57 ◼   ► It is Dropbox's version of what iCloud Drive tries to do, which is like, we can show you all your files

01:44:03 ◼   ► and then we'll just download them as needed.

01:44:05 ◼   ► Except, unlike iCloud Drive, which is terrible and caused me an enormous number of frustrating problems when I went to use it.

01:44:12 ◼   ► Is it Smart Sync?

01:44:13 ◼   ► No, because Smart Sync is the thing that just hides the folders.

01:44:17 ◼   ► No, that's Selective Sync.

01:44:18 ◼   ► Maybe it is. It is either Smart or Selective Sync.

01:44:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's SmartSync because it says on the website access every file in your Dropbox right from your desktop using very little hard disk space.

01:44:30 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, you're right. I'm looking at it now. Here it is. It's SmartSync.

01:44:34 ◼   ► But it is great to be able to designate a folder as to say like this folder always has to be on

01:44:40 ◼   ► the computer and up to date and then this other folder you can push it to the cloud and if I ever need to access

01:44:47 ◼   ► it just download it as fast as you can and

01:44:52 ◼   ► Also in the theme of communicating with lots of other people, you know Dropbox I have you know shared folders with like

01:44:58 ◼   ► 10 people on various things

01:45:01 ◼   ► just so vital and

01:45:03 ◼   ► To give you an indication of just how vital it is

01:45:06 ◼   ► My Dropbox folder if I open it up now

01:45:10 ◼   ► Okay, my Dropbox is

01:45:13 ◼   ► 73.6% full on a 15 terabyte Dropbox account

01:45:22 ◼   ► What?

01:45:22 ◼   ► I am using a lot of Dropbox.

01:45:25 ◼   ► Are you storing the internet in there?

01:45:27 ◼   ► What are you doing?

01:45:28 ◼   ► That's huge.

01:45:30 ◼   ► That smart sync is pretty vital.

01:45:33 ◼   ► I mean, as somebody who has a shared Dropbox folder

01:45:36 ◼   ► with you, I am very aware of the fact

01:45:38 ◼   ► that you don't like to delete anything ever.

01:45:41 ◼   ► And there is like some pretty severe selective syncing

01:45:46 ◼   ► that we have to do.

01:45:48 ◼   ► Otherwise.

01:45:49 ◼   ► No, no, but see, here's the thing.

01:45:50 ◼   ► I don't do any selective syncing because with the Dropbox business thing, like the Cortex

01:45:54 ◼   ► stuff is all just there and I never even look at it.

01:45:57 ◼   ► Yeah, well I have to because I don't have that feature.

01:45:59 ◼   ► I pay for one of the paid plans but I don't have the business plans.

01:46:05 ◼   ► The nice thing with the business plan thing is that I select Cortex as a file which is

01:46:11 ◼   ► just pushed into the cloud.

01:46:13 ◼   ► So all of the Cortex stuff is in the cloud.

01:46:16 ◼   ► But I can also say if something new pops up, so like when we're done recording this show,

01:46:23 ◼   ► have the new things sync locally as quickly as you can.

01:46:26 ◼   ► So I only ever have the new ones on the computer locally, and then the rest of it, like I just

01:46:32 ◼   ► never even look at it and it just exists wherever the Dropbox data stores are.

01:46:39 ◼   ► Probably an NSA facility somewhere.

01:46:41 ◼   ► But it's like, whatever, it works great and I need it.

01:46:45 ◼   ► So that's what that's what it's going to be.

01:46:48 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm sitting on a on a 15 terabyte Dropbox account.

01:46:50 ◼   ► And you're like 10 terabytes into it.

01:46:54 ◼   ► Yeah, it's whatever 73.6% of 15 terabytes is.

01:47:01 ◼   ► Wow. OK, so that's a pretty vital service for me.

01:47:04 ◼   ► Let's hope the smart sync never breaks.

01:47:07 ◼   ► And then just 10 terabytes of stuff tries to get pushed to you.

01:47:10 ◼   ► Yeah, that'd be fun.

01:47:12 ◼   ► That's what iCloud Drive used to do.

01:47:14 ◼   ► and f*ck them.

01:47:16 ◼   ► Yeah, well you never know, let's just hope that Dropbox have got it together.

01:47:19 ◼   ► I'm gonna recommend one of my very, very, very favorite iOS apps which is Carrot Weather.

01:47:24 ◼   ► Oh yeah, it's on my list, so good.

01:47:26 ◼   ► I love Carrot Weather. It is by far the best weather app that I've ever used for customization and data.

01:47:33 ◼   ► Plus it has this fun character to it which you can adjust to if you want or don't want it,

01:47:38 ◼   ► but I kind of like the jokes that it tells.

01:47:40 ◼   ► but the Apple Watch app is just stupendous.

01:47:44 ◼   ► And it is an app that is in continual development

01:47:48 ◼   ► and I thoroughly recommend it to anybody

01:47:50 ◼   ► that cares about the weather.

01:47:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the no-brainer choice for weather app.

01:47:56 ◼   ► And I turn that personality all the way down.

01:47:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I figured. - Because I have no patience

01:48:00 ◼   ► for that.

01:48:01 ◼   ► But it's great. - Yeah, I mean,

01:48:02 ◼   ► the line's in the middle. - It's absolutely great.

01:48:02 ◼   ► - I just let it make jokes on the screen.

01:48:04 ◼   ► It never bothers me with anything, which is a thing.

01:48:06 ◼   ► You can just, there's some space

01:48:07 ◼   ► where they can just throw some jokes in.

01:48:09 ◼   ► And I like that the developer has found a way to update those remotely, and so they're

01:48:15 ◼   ► very frequently topical, which is fun, which I enjoy.

01:48:20 ◼   ► You enjoy that.

01:48:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I know, I know, basically, I'm really in the minority amongst my friends, but I

01:48:26 ◼   ► just let it do what it's doing.

01:48:28 ◼   ► I'm going to recommend next MindNode, which is a mind mapping app, which is the app that

01:48:35 ◼   ► I used to put together my thoughts on the list of apps for today and

01:48:40 ◼   ► It's interesting because we did a show a while ago where we both talked about how we don't really use mind maps

01:48:46 ◼   ► Mm-hmm and and for me that is still true 99% of the time. Like I just don't feel like a mind map person

01:48:53 ◼   ► but every once in a while

01:48:56 ◼   ► It feels like there's something I just kind of want a mind map out

01:49:00 ◼   ► I never really use those mind maps later, but there is something that every once in a while

01:49:05 ◼   ► I feel like this is the appropriate way to like think through a thing.

01:49:08 ◼   ► Or for today, I decided to use the mind map because I figured it's a

01:49:15 ◼   ► It's going to be a more condensed way to show all of the information

01:49:19 ◼   ► instead of having a list. So this way you, Myke, can just put a screenshot in the show notes and

01:49:24 ◼   ► instead of having like a long list thing written out.

01:49:28 ◼   ► But if you're going to use a mind map, I think MindNode is the one to use.

01:49:33 ◼   ► And particularly on iOS, they have a couple of features that are just fantastic,

01:49:39 ◼   ► which allows you to act like you're typing a list, but have it go in mind map format automatically.

01:49:47 ◼   ► So, when you're on a branch and you've written out the category title, like you just hit space three times,

01:49:55 ◼   ► and then it goes and creates a child branch.

01:49:57 ◼   ► And when you're on that child branch and you're done typing,

01:50:00 ◼   ► you just hit Return three times, and it

01:50:02 ◼   ► creates a sibling branch.

01:50:04 ◼   ► So there's a really nice way, if you're a very keyboard-focused

01:50:07 ◼   ► person like myself, it's a super fast mind mapping application

01:50:11 ◼   ► to use.

01:50:11 ◼   ► So I really like it.

01:50:13 ◼   ► So I have an app that I wanted to recommend called Workouts

01:50:15 ◼   ► Plus Plus.

01:50:17 ◼   ► And this is a workout app.

01:50:18 ◼   ► And I will say, like we said with Overcast,

01:50:20 ◼   ► the developer of this app, David, is a friend of mine.

01:50:23 ◼   ► One of the reasons that I want to recommend it

01:50:25 ◼   ► is because of that.

01:50:26 ◼   ► because he's a friend, I was helping him test swimming functionality that he was adding

01:50:31 ◼   ► to the app. So I got to help tailor it to be the type of design that I want. So it's

01:50:40 ◼   ► kind of the perfect app for me when when tracking my swims. So that's why I love it so much.

01:50:47 ◼   ► It is a workout app, which is really best with the Apple Watch. You can create it as

01:50:52 ◼   ► There's a bunch of templates and you can adjust how you want the information to be shown during

01:50:57 ◼   ► the workout.

01:50:58 ◼   ► So you can show your heart rate changes, you can show the laps, the time, and all that

01:51:02 ◼   ► kind of stuff.

01:51:03 ◼   ► And you can do this with loads of different exercises, but it means that when I'm swimming,

01:51:06 ◼   ► I get to see just the information that I want to see.

01:51:09 ◼   ► Plus, Workouts++ has the ability for you to integrate podcasts into it.

01:51:15 ◼   ► So you can listen to podcasts with your AirPods just from the watch.

01:51:20 ◼   ► That's pretty sweet.

01:51:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:51:22 ◼   ► This only really works very well with workout applications because they have to be constantly

01:51:26 ◼   ► running and that kind of stuff.

01:51:28 ◼   ► But that has that feature.

01:51:29 ◼   ► Do you put your AirPods in while you're swimming?

01:51:30 ◼   ► Is that what you do?

01:51:31 ◼   ► No, I don't do that part.

01:51:33 ◼   ► But yes, I like to be able to have my – when I'm swimming, I like to be able to see just

01:51:38 ◼   ► the information that I want to see.

01:51:40 ◼   ► And I found that Apple's stuff, while still good, just didn't give me everything that

01:51:44 ◼   ► I wanted.

01:51:45 ◼   ► And Workouts++ does.

01:51:46 ◼   ► And it's – I think it's free.

01:51:48 ◼   ► So it's worth at least trying out.

01:51:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll also recommend that if you want to hear David and Marco talk about their apps,

01:51:57 ◼   ► they have a show on this very network under the radar, which you should go listen to.

01:52:01 ◼   ► It's very good.

01:52:02 ◼   ► And you should put that in the show notes.

01:52:03 ◼   ► Oh, of course I will.

01:52:06 ◼   ► So again, two developers, they make two apps that we really like.

01:52:10 ◼   ► Yes, they are friends, but they are good apps.

01:52:13 ◼   ► And they also have a podcast together, and that podcast isn't really FM.

01:52:17 ◼   ► So you know, just remember all of that, but both of these apps are free so you've got

01:52:21 ◼   ► nothing to lose when you try them and then you'll know they're great.

01:52:25 ◼   ► Next thing I'm going to recommend is a little tip that I picked up from while we're talking

01:52:30 ◼   ► about Relay People.

01:52:32 ◼   ► Stephen Hackett, you are a co-founder.

01:52:35 ◼   ► He recommended to me at WWDC a feature of Chrome on the Mac, which I did not know, which

01:52:42 ◼   ► I feel like is life-changing.

01:52:45 ◼   ► And it's that Chrome has the ability to set up different user profiles so that you can

01:52:52 ◼   ► in Chrome very easily switch between a set of logged in accounts.

01:52:58 ◼   ► And let me tell you, as someone who's trying to run a YouTube channel and a couple of podcasts

01:53:06 ◼   ► and my own personal life, Chrome, when I'm sitting in front of the Mac, is the browser

01:53:12 ◼   ► that I'm using the vast majority of the time now, and it is solely because of this feature

01:53:17 ◼   ► that I can say, very quickly switch between, "I am just me as a person and have this web

01:53:24 ◼   ► browser logged into all of my personal accounts, and now I am officially CGP Grey the YouTube

01:53:31 ◼   ► person, so here's all of the accounts I need to be logged in for that."

01:53:35 ◼   ► And the detail that makes this really, really great, that Steven suggested, is you can have

01:53:41 ◼   ► different custom visual themes for these different profiles.

01:53:46 ◼   ► So when I am logged into the most important accounts as the CGP Grey YouTube channel stuff,

01:53:53 ◼   ► the whole Chrome web browser across the top is red.

01:53:56 ◼   ► So it is not possible to make a mistake about which account am I logged into.

01:54:03 ◼   ► I really, really love this feature and if you're someone who is using a bunch of different

01:54:09 ◼   ► sets of accounts or you're using a shared computer in a family, the profiles feature

01:54:15 ◼   ► on Chrome is amazing.

01:54:16 ◼   ► I don't use that, but I do use Chrome.

01:54:19 ◼   ► But I know why that would be great if you were switching constantly.

01:54:21 ◼   ► I mean, whenever I'm posting, I just use incognito mode and log in.

01:54:26 ◼   ► But it's because I don't need that access all the time, but I can see why that would

01:54:30 ◼   ► be so useful.

01:54:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it's great because it keeps you logged in.

01:54:35 ◼   ► Like I used to log in and log out of all the stuff, but particularly with YouTube where

01:54:40 ◼   ► when you log in on one count they want to log you into a whole bunch of related services,

01:54:45 ◼   ► it makes a big, big difference.

01:54:47 ◼   ► Gboard.

01:54:49 ◼   ► I use a third party keyboard on my iPhone.

01:54:56 ◼   ► Lots of people think this is a wild thing to do.

01:54:59 ◼   ► There are downsides to it, but honestly the upsides are vastly significant for me.

01:55:03 ◼   ► autocorrect, better emoji suggestions and emoji search, I can get GIFs from my keyboard,

01:55:09 ◼   ► and I can swipe type. Apple can't beat that in my opinion, and I love Gboard and I've

01:55:13 ◼   ► been using it as the only keyboard on my iPhone for a very long time now.

01:55:17 ◼   ► I'm going to back up that recommendation. I started using Gboard a long time ago on

01:55:24 ◼   ► my iPad because I like swipe typing with the pencil. So I find it just easier than

01:55:33 ◼   ► trying... like if I'm using the pencil on my iPad I tend to want to use the pencil

01:55:37 ◼   ► for everything and tapping out letters is really unpleasant to do with the

01:55:41 ◼   ► pencil. So I started using Gboard on the iPad Pro so that I could use the swipe

01:55:45 ◼   ► typing and I really like it. Unfortunately there's a little bit of a

01:55:50 ◼   ► with if you want to use a Dvorak keyboard layout with the Gboard keyboard installed on an iPad, which is sort of frustrating.

01:55:57 ◼   ► So I have to always switch back into the regular iOS keyboard to get that to work.

01:56:02 ◼   ► But I really like it with the iPad, and I've been trying it on my phone the past couple of weeks.

01:56:09 ◼   ► And I don't know if I'll keep it, but it's definitely worth trying.

01:56:16 ◼   ► Although for some reason, I find that the swipe typing

01:56:19 ◼   ► with my thumb is taking a little while to get used to.

01:56:22 ◼   ► It's strange to do, but it is scary how good Google is

01:56:27 ◼   ► at guessing what you're trying to type.

01:56:31 ◼   ► - You say scary, I say really convenient.

01:56:35 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:56:35 ◼   ► - Well, when I mean scary though,

01:56:39 ◼   ► like a thing that happened today is

01:56:41 ◼   ► I was swipe typing something

01:56:43 ◼   ► and I realized I had done it totally wrong.

01:56:45 ◼   ► And I just thought, "I'm just gonna keep going and go back to the letters that it was supposed to be."

01:56:51 ◼   ► So I typed in quotes a sequence which is just a nonsense sequence of letters.

01:56:58 ◼   ► But Google was able to get it. Like, "Oh, we know what you were trying to say."

01:57:02 ◼   ► And that's a situation where it's like, "Is this terrifyingly accurate?"

01:57:06 ◼   ► Because my swiping was nonsense.

01:57:08 ◼   ► Because I changed my mind halfway through about what words I was trying to say.

01:57:12 ◼   ► And you still did just fine.

01:57:14 ◼   ► So, again, I'm not sure it will stay, but I can definitely back up your recommendation,

01:57:20 ◼   ► that it is worth trying and it's interesting.

01:57:22 ◼   ► I do want to recommend Knapp that I completely forgot I used until I had to set up two new

01:57:28 ◼   ► systems where I hadn't installed it, and that is OneBlocker, which is one of the ad blockers

01:57:34 ◼   ► for iOS and for Mac.

01:57:38 ◼   ► I had just installed this and forgotten about it a long time ago, and I had to recently

01:57:43 ◼   ► do a couple of my systems and I was feeling like, "Why is the internet such a terrible experience?"

01:57:49 ◼   ► And then I realized, "Oh right, because I haven't installed that ad blocker." And so OneBlocker is

01:57:56 ◼   ► a really nice ad blocker, not least of which because you can set a lot of customization to it

01:58:00 ◼   ► and you can also do things like block URLs that you want to specify or if you're into like RegEx

01:58:06 ◼   ► rules like that's a thing that you can do. So it's a really great ad blocker.

01:58:13 ◼   ► I don't use any ad blockers anywhere or anything.

01:58:15 ◼   ► No, you're a better person than I am.

01:58:19 ◼   ► No, I don't think that's the case. And I don't think it's any kind of like,

01:58:22 ◼   ► and I'm not trying to make any kind of political statement.

01:58:25 ◼   ► I have just found that like, they just randomly break things.

01:58:30 ◼   ► And I find it frustrating to be like, oh, something isn't working.

01:58:35 ◼   ► Oh, it might be because of my ad blocker. And I've gotten pretty, I think I've been on the

01:58:40 ◼   ► the internet for long enough that I've gotten pretty good at ignoring ads where I don't

01:58:43 ◼   ► want to see them. I have the ad blindness, you know? Like I can look at a page and I

01:58:48 ◼   ► just never see them. So, you know, I'm fine with it. Again, like I'm really not trying

01:58:54 ◼   ► to be like, "Oh." But I also use Chrome as well on my iOS devices. So I can't even use

01:59:00 ◼   ► an ad blocker on iOS even if I wanted to. So there's a bunch of reasons. But like I'm

01:59:05 ◼   ► I'm not trying to make a political stand, I've just never really gotten into it.

01:59:10 ◼   ► I do use a blocker, I think it's called like Cookie Box or something like that.

01:59:16 ◼   ► I'll find it, I'll put it in the show notes, and it stops those European Union cookie consent

01:59:20 ◼   ► things.

01:59:21 ◼   ► Ah, this is so annoying.

01:59:23 ◼   ► Right?

01:59:24 ◼   ► Because that is like, not helpful to anyone.

01:59:28 ◼   ► And I have, so like, this is mainly good for me because if I ever am in Safari, it's not

01:59:33 ◼   ► a browser I use frequently, so I see those things everywhere, but then I have this blocker

01:59:37 ◼   ► that just blocks those pop-ups.

01:59:39 ◼   ► >> Right, right.

01:59:41 ◼   ► Yeah, that's good.

01:59:42 ◼   ► That's good.

01:59:43 ◼   ► >> My last recommendation for today, I want to be Peacalc for two reasons.

01:59:47 ◼   ► It's my favorite calculator app.

01:59:50 ◼   ► I love it.

01:59:51 ◼   ► It's a great calculator app.

01:59:52 ◼   ► I'm going to say three reasons.

01:59:53 ◼   ► I can change to many different icons so I can have a fun icon, and also it has a game

01:59:59 ◼   ► inside of it, which I am the fastest in the world at completing.

02:00:04 ◼   ► And I literally am, there's a game center.

02:00:07 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I understand.

02:00:10 ◼   ► We just transitioned this app recommendation into a brag.

02:00:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I got it though.

02:00:13 ◼   ► Yep, and I love the game because it shouldn't be in the calculator, and it is, and I love

02:00:17 ◼   ► it.

02:00:19 ◼   ► There are like two separate levels to this game, and James Thompson is a wonderful genius.

02:00:25 ◼   ► And I, yeah, it's wild. It shouldn't exist, but it does, and I love it.

02:00:31 ◼   ► It's a great calculator app. It's my calculator app of choice as well. And of course, we also

02:00:36 ◼   ► know James Thompson, just for the record.

02:00:39 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's really important to say that. We know James.

02:00:44 ◼   ► I don't know. Is it important to say that?

02:00:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

02:00:47 ◼   ► Like, do we legally have to say that? I never know.

02:00:49 ◼   ► I don't think we do, but I feel like... I don't think I legally have to say it, but

02:00:54 ◼   ► But I feel like I should say it because people might be like, "Oh, I see him interacting

02:01:00 ◼   ► with him on Twitter all the time."

02:01:04 ◼   ► And also I think if we don't say it, it could belittle the quality to people.

02:01:09 ◼   ► So if they work out that we're friends with these people, they'll be like, "Oh, they're

02:01:12 ◼   ► only recommending that because they're friends."

02:01:14 ◼   ► But I'm really not.

02:01:15 ◼   ► It's an excellent calculator.

02:01:16 ◼   ► It's the best calculator.

02:01:18 ◼   ► But, yeah.

02:01:20 ◼   ► I don't know how this stuff works.

02:01:21 ◼   ► I also don't know, like, is this, are we good now that we've said it this once?

02:01:27 ◼   ► And next year, if we mention Peacock again, do we have to mention it again or are we all

02:01:31 ◼   ► set?

02:01:32 ◼   ► Well, yeah, because you can't assume that everybody's heard everything, you know?

02:01:35 ◼   ► I mean, no, I think we should assume that Cortex listeners have listened to every episode.

02:01:39 ◼   ► Well, that's true.

02:01:40 ◼   ► But I just, like, I don't know.

02:01:41 ◼   ► I don't know how this is.

02:01:42 ◼   ► And I also feel like this might be one of these things that is a meme that just spreads

02:01:47 ◼   ► the idea of like, okay, you legally have to disclose

02:01:50 ◼   ► some set of things, but then everybody gets worried that you have to

02:01:55 ◼   ► confess the set of like n+1 things, which then just pushes the boundary out further.

02:02:03 ◼   ► So I was like, I don't know, I don't know how this works, but for some reason I kept feeling like

02:02:07 ◼   ► anytime we know a developer, we gotta make it really clear, oh they also have a podcast on relay, I don't know.