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Cortex

56: Castles Made of Sand

 

00:00:00   Gray, I need your help.

00:00:01   - Yeah?

00:00:02   - How do you break a four week sleep cycle?

00:00:04   - Oh, Myke, Myke, I need your help with this.

00:00:10   (laughing)

00:00:11   - Oh no.

00:00:12   Where have you been?

00:00:17   - We'll get to that.

00:00:18   Tell me what's going on with you.

00:00:19   - Well, I mean, I've come back from my hurly day.

00:00:22   My hurly day is over and I'm suffering

00:00:27   from pretty bad jet lag.

00:00:29   I thought that I had mostly gotten over jet lag as a problem in my life. Like it takes

00:00:33   me a day or two and I adjust.

00:00:36   You thought you solved jet lag just as a general problem?

00:00:39   I wouldn't say that I feel like I'd solved it, but it's more that like I've gotten used

00:00:45   to my pattern that if I just do things in a certain way for like a day or two, just

00:00:50   like make sure I stay awake, embrace the fact that I won't sleep the next day, wake up at

00:00:55   a normal time and then I'm good. That's usually how I deal with this stuff. No matter where

00:00:59   I am. Like even if I'm on the West Coast, it just takes me like two days and I can get back into it.

00:01:03   And that's mostly because I tend to live like close to East Coast time in London. You know,

00:01:11   like I'm usually like going to bed at 2am and I wake up, you know.

00:01:15   Yeah, you stay up pretty late.

00:01:16   Yeah. So it helps me adjust relatively well. But this time, this time is not good. Like I've been

00:01:24   home for three or four days and I'm just not sleeping and I feel terrible most of the day

00:01:30   and then like it comes to about seven o'clock at night and I'm wired and ready to go.

00:01:40   You have you have all of my sympathies. Jet lag. Jet lag is the absolute worst.

00:01:46   Surely like how has nobody fixed this problem? Why isn't there like a surefire pill to take

00:01:54   or some kind of beverage to drink that just fixes it.

00:01:58   That is what I want. I feel like there should be some kind of refreshing beverage you could just drink.

00:02:03   And it's like, "Oh great!"

00:02:04   They just give it to you when you get off the plane.

00:02:05   Yeah. Now I'm all set. It turned out all I needed was some electrolytes at the right time.

00:02:11   And now I'm set. But no.

00:02:14   I've heard that one of those Dreamliner planes changes the oxygen level and apparently that's supposed to help.

00:02:20   But I'm not sure if I believe that either.

00:02:22   But see, jet lag is one of those things because the symptoms are...

00:02:27   Like, they're hard to define symptoms and they're slightly different for everybody.

00:02:32   And this then breeds a whole world of home remedies

00:02:38   and just superstitions around what works or what doesn't work.

00:02:43   Just stand on your head and count backwards from ten.

00:02:45   You fixed it!

00:02:48   I have tried so many different things.

00:02:52   And I've just I have found nothing nothing has any consistent success with trying to minimize it

00:02:58   Okay, I guess

00:02:59   Asterisk the only thing I have found that successfully works is simply refusing to acknowledge the time zone of the place that you are in

00:03:06   That works. Yeah, other than that

00:03:09   No, I have I have found no doesn't work for a month though

00:03:13   Like I feel like I would have not really gotten anything useful done if I spent four weeks on London time in

00:03:19   Various places in the US. I feel like I would have I really should have just not made that trip

00:03:23   If that's what I was planning to do, right? Yeah, it's impossible

00:03:26   It's not gonna work out for you Myke. So so I

00:03:30   Have I have nothing to help you with this you were supposed to be my long-term travel guru

00:03:37   Oh, and this is this is the one thing I truly need, you know

00:03:44   Oh is this it? This is the one thing that you truly need and I have failed to deliver

00:03:48   on this?

00:03:49   You didn't help me with laundry really and/or just dealing with emotional trauma. So this

00:03:55   was the one thing that I desperately need from you that I was hoping for a real just

00:04:00   CGP Grey brand life hack and I have received just deal with it and/or don't change your

00:04:08   time which is you know neither of those things neither of those things are

00:04:13   helpful to me now right yeah no I I understand the reason why I was also

00:04:18   asking like I need your help with this is because one I too would like a

00:04:22   solution to jet lag that is simply magical but the other thing is I have I

00:04:29   have also since this summer I have not been dealing with jet lag like I've been

00:04:36   home long enough that jet lag is not a problem, but what I have been dealing with is clearly

00:04:41   my whole sleep cycle is just messed up from an entire summer of strained schedules and

00:04:48   frequent travel. And it's not jet lag, but it's kind of a virtual jet lag when you're

00:04:56   trying to simply iron out your sleep schedule. And this has been the bane of my last several

00:05:04   weeks is just trying to get my brain back into what I know is the optimal schedule for

00:05:10   me for work and for happiness and it's just like I cannot do it. I can feel my brain resisting

00:05:18   getting put back into a regular schedule after two months, three months without a regular

00:05:24   schedule.

00:05:26   And as well for me, the irony is not lost upon the fact that I have returned home with

00:05:30   this terrible sleep cycle in what is probably the busiest two weeks of my year.

00:05:34   These two weeks are the busiest two weeks of your year?

00:05:36   iPhone season.

00:05:37   Oh, of course! I was thinking, I was thinking, why is Myke so busy in early September? But yes.

00:05:45   By the time this episode comes out, the iPhone will have been shown to the world,

00:05:50   or will about to be shown to the world. So by the time most people hear this,

00:05:55   they're either getting ready for an iPhone keynote or have already seen it.

00:05:58   Ooh, that's exciting.

00:06:00   So they're living in a future where we have or do not have face unlocking, we have or do not have

00:06:06   touch ID and a big screen. The people they know, Gray, they lord that over us right now.

00:06:13   We're stuck in the past.

00:06:14   We're stuck in the past.

00:06:15   Although somehow while we're recording the show, it feels like we're already in that

00:06:21   glorious new iPhone future. So while I'm talking to you right now, it feels slightly like time

00:06:26   traveling but it isn't but yes of course for you in particular for a man

00:06:33   who does so many tech and tech adjacent shows this would be the busiest season

00:06:38   and not a good time to have a bunch of jet lag interfering with the rest of

00:06:44   your work. No luckily they didn't have the event or announce the event before I

00:06:48   came home like or that it just didn't overlap like badly. Luckily when

00:06:54   they announced it, they announced it, it was like it's gonna be in two weeks time, so I

00:06:57   was able to just come home and then try and deal with myself and then get back to work

00:07:02   again. So unfortunately I will just, I will just live with my weird sleep cycle for now

00:07:08   and hopefully in October I will have fixed it ready to go back to the US again. So hooray,

00:07:15   hooray for jet lag I guess. Oh no. I've just realised by the time that I get this thing

00:07:23   fixed I'll have to break it again. This is what happens. This is what happens when you have to do a bunch of

00:07:28   travel. It's just it's frustrating and and this kind of thing

00:07:33   really does take a while to sort out. Like getting it getting into I find for me anyway personally like

00:07:42   maybe the number one predictor of

00:07:45   how well a day is going to go is

00:07:49   if I got up at the time that I'm supposed to. Like if you had to take a single data point and

00:07:55   see if it was

00:07:57   most correlated with what I would consider a productive day, that would be by far and away the single data point that would matter the most.

00:08:03   And

00:08:05   it's, it is very

00:08:07   because like unlike so many other things in our working life

00:08:13   sleep is a thing that is like you really have

00:08:18   no control over it. You can't just knuckle down and get to sleep harder than you're trying to get to sleep at this very moment.

00:08:29   And at least for me, if you wake up and your body wasn't ready to wake up, it feels like you have woken up dead.

00:08:37   It's just awful and it's so hard to do anything productive.

00:08:41   I don't know, it's like a thing that is just interesting that at least I find that as time has gone on, like this matters more and more as a thing that is super important and is a thing that I focus on and try to keep on a regular schedule.

00:08:59   But yeah after after the summer it like this is this is a thing that I have personally been

00:09:04   Struggling to get back into a regular schedule for a while

00:09:07   But it's like I can just I can feel my brain just pulling against against the regular schedule

00:09:13   Even though of course like it'd be better for me in the long run

00:09:16   But like it doesn't that doesn't help you in the short run if you could choose

00:09:21   to not sleep

00:09:23   But lose 25% of your productivity

00:09:27   Would you take that?

00:09:29   Wait, I get an additional third of my life back?

00:09:33   Sure, you get all the time back.

00:09:35   Okay.

00:09:36   But you are 25% less productive.

00:09:38   Would you take that deal?

00:09:41   Yeah, yeah, that seems like a great deal.

00:09:43   I'm getting 33-- I'm getting a third of my life back, and I'm only losing a quarter of productivity?

00:09:50   That seems like an amazing deal.

00:09:51   Okay, what if you lost a third of your productivity?

00:09:54   So it just ended up balancing out.

00:09:56   Would you take it then?

00:09:57   Okay, so when you say balance out, you mean I get the same amount of stuff done that I

00:10:05   get done now, but I'm also, I never have to sleep?

00:10:08   Yeah.

00:10:09   Yeah, what's the trade-off?

00:10:10   Who wouldn't take that?

00:10:11   But I feel like people enjoy sleeping, right?

00:10:14   This is why I'm assuming.

00:10:15   So there are people in the world that just would prefer to sleep, or just ended up working

00:10:19   out the same, just take the sleep.

00:10:21   But like I would even take the the option where it balances out because I would just end up playing more video games or whatever

00:10:27   yeah, I

00:10:30   mean, I mean, I guess I

00:10:32   Guess I could say in a minor in a very minor way

00:10:36   I enjoy sleep

00:10:37   But that's only because sleep is it gets it's the your brain makes you like it because it's the solution to a problem

00:10:43   I only ever enjoy after it's happened. I never want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah right now actually

00:10:50   Right now

00:10:52   Saying that I it's half past four in the afternoon might be pretty I feel like I could do

00:10:57   with a good nap right now, but I guess the answer to your question is no like I don't I don't feel like oh

00:11:03   Sleep is the best. It's like I would much rather have the hours

00:11:06   back I don't I don't see sleep as a

00:11:10   recreational activity that is worth a third of my life and I can't imagine anybody would would see it that way

00:11:17   I don't know. I think it has a lot to do with how you like to spend your time, right?

00:11:26   Like part of it is because I would prefer to be working as much as I can when I'm awake

00:11:32   and then spend the rest of the time just playing video games and doing the things that I don't

00:11:37   want to do but not everybody wants to work to that amount. So I guess like if all you

00:11:42   wanted to do was put in eight hours, six hours, seven hours of work a day or whatever it is

00:11:47   that you end up putting in and you're cool with that, like that's the way that you want

00:11:50   to be, then maybe you would want the sleep.

00:11:52   Yeah, but you could still just spend it as recreation time.

00:11:55   Yeah, but I assume that there are some people that enjoy the practice of sleep, right? They

00:12:00   just like getting into bed and cosying up and just going away for a bit.

00:12:06   I don't think that's Cortex listeners. I think the people who listen to Cortex, they're not

00:12:10   people who are big enjoyers of sleep.

00:12:13   I want to know. In the Reddit, I just want to know. Sleep on no sleep. So you got to

00:12:18   tell me. Sleep on no sleep. I'm interested to know this now. If people would like to

00:12:22   sleep or would not like to sleep. I'll tell you what I'll do. I will post in the Reddit

00:12:27   just a simple survey. You can click the link. It will take you somewhere. I just want to

00:12:31   get an idea now. Sleep on no sleep. It will be in the Reddit thread. You'll find it.

00:12:36   And of course, all of the home remedies for how to take care of jet lag. Unsolicited,

00:12:41   Doubtless will be there. You need some sleep, Myke. You gonna take a little nap during the

00:12:44   show?

00:12:45   Yeah, I'll uh, actually I'll see what's next in our document. I'll just get you talking

00:12:50   and I'll pop in towards the end, assuming that I figure I know what you're gonna say.

00:12:57   So I'll just go away. There's a sofa behind me. I'll just go and sit there for a little

00:13:02   bit and then I'll come back when you're done with your frustrations.

00:13:06   I've just come back from visiting my parents. They've moved house and of course setting

00:13:11   Setting up a new house is a big job.

00:13:13   There's lots of things to do.

00:13:15   And one of the things you need to do when you're setting up a house is get a mattress

00:13:19   for the guest bedroom.

00:13:20   Now of course, since my parents listened to Cortex, there was only one choice of mattress

00:13:25   that they were going to get.

00:13:26   The Casper mattress was delivered before my arrival, but as I had never tried one in person,

00:13:32   they saved it for me.

00:13:33   So when I got home, on the very first day, there was no mattress set up for me to sleep

00:13:38   on.

00:13:39   there was a big Casper box in the room.

00:13:42   And together, we opened it up.

00:13:44   It was a genuinely exciting family event.

00:13:47   To open the box, my dad and I arranged the mattress

00:13:50   on the bed, we removed the plastic covering,

00:13:53   and just like Casper promises, the mattress self-inflates.

00:13:58   Within mere moments, it was ready to go.

00:14:01   That night, at the end of a day of long travels,

00:14:04   I crawled into bed onto the Casper mattress

00:14:07   for the first time.

00:14:08   How would a mattress be without springs inside?

00:14:11   How would a mattress be that came delivered in the mail?

00:14:15   Well, I'm here to report that it was good.

00:14:18   You could even say that it had just the right sink,

00:14:21   just the right bounce.

00:14:23   I was very glad that my parents had not carted with them

00:14:25   the old guest mattress that I used to sleep on,

00:14:28   full of springs and lacking in comfort.

00:14:31   The Casper mattress, vastly superior.

00:14:34   And that is as it should be.

00:14:36   The Casper mattress was designed by a team of 20 engineers to make sure that their memory

00:14:41   foam and open cell layer for maximum comfort were designed just so.

00:14:46   Now if you're wondering about buying a mattress through the mail, Casper has made it completely

00:14:50   risk-free.

00:14:51   There's free delivery and free returns to the US, Canada, and the UK.

00:14:57   And when you set up that mattress, Casper gives you 100 nights to try it out.

00:15:01   You'll only need one before you realize how great it is, but if there's any doubt in your

00:15:06   mind you can spend 25% of a year sleeping on that mattress to make sure it's perfect

00:15:14   for you.

00:15:15   And if for whatever reason you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund you everything.

00:15:19   So you have nothing to lose except the poor quality sleep you're getting on that spring-filled

00:15:24   mattress that you're currently sleeping on.

00:15:27   Now that you've decided you're getting a Casper mattress, all you need to do is go to

00:15:31   to casper.com/cortex and use the code CORTEX at checkout to get $50 towards any mattress

00:15:38   purchase.

00:15:39   That's casper.com/cortex to get $50 off.

00:15:43   Thanks to Casper for supporting this show, and thanks to Casper for giving me excellent

00:15:48   night's sleep at my parents' house.

00:15:51   So of course, with the imminent release of a new iPhone comes a new release of iOS.

00:15:58   iOS 11 is just around the corner. It's going to be with us soon.

00:16:03   And...

00:16:05   We have, because we're the kind of people that we are, Myke, we've been running the betas for a while.

00:16:11   I told myself, like I tell myself every year, like, "I'm not going to install the beta. I'm gonna wait a while."

00:16:18   But of course I have to give in, so I've been running the beta since the very first public beta that was available.

00:16:25   and I was not able to resist.

00:16:27   And just before it goes public,

00:16:29   I thought this is kind of a good time to talk about

00:16:34   a couple of little frustrations

00:16:37   and also what's going on with the dock

00:16:42   and our home screens.

00:16:44   What do you say, Myke?

00:16:46   Are you there, Myke?

00:16:46   - I mean, anytime you talk about home screens,

00:16:48   I'm ready to go.

00:16:49   You said the magic word.

00:16:51   I'm revitalized, let's do this.

00:16:53   (laughing)

00:16:55   I think it is worth mentioning for a piece of long-term follow-up that you did not get

00:16:59   your wish, right, of the opening of applications via a keyboard shortcut.

00:17:05   Maybe people listen to you, but nobody's put it into place.

00:17:09   I'm pausing here for a moment to think about how much I can say.

00:17:12   I'll put it in vague ways that I can say that I know this has been received and that there

00:17:20   maybe reasons that it doesn't happen that maybe I don't necessarily agree with, but

00:17:27   I don't know. Who knows? Who knows?

00:17:29   Who knows if an email could have been received or sent? No one could know. There is no way

00:17:35   of knowing. Yeah, who knows if like a frustrating non-answer

00:17:39   was received? Nobody. Nobody could know.

00:17:41   Certainly not me. No way.

00:17:42   Anyway, so yeah, I was hoping last time that for just barely, just like the tiniest of

00:17:49   keyboard shortcuts added and that hasn't happened and I don't think it's going to happen in

00:17:54   the next two weeks or week until the final version comes out.

00:17:59   So we can assume that that's definitely not the case.

00:18:02   I think we can feel pretty sure at the fact that we are currently at beta 10, we're good.

00:18:08   This is what it's going to be most likely.

00:18:10   Yeah, I think so.

00:18:12   So around this, one of the biggest changes with iOS on the iPad is the introduction of

00:18:18   dock on the bottom screen. And for someone like me and someone like you who spends a

00:18:23   lot of time working on the iPad, I feel like that dock on the bottom totally changes everything.

00:18:31   It really makes the iPad a very different feeling device to work with than on the previous

00:18:37   version of iOS. And I've been having just some interesting things about how do I arrange

00:18:47   my dock now on my iPad? How do I arrange my home screen on my phone?

00:18:54   And I feel like I'm slowly going crazy because I can't figure out what it is that I want to do,

00:19:02   even though I've been working with this for a long period of time.

00:19:05   So I took some screenshots today, Myke. Would you like to see what my current setup looks

00:19:10   like on my various devices? You know I want to see. You don't have to

00:19:14   ask me. You could send me these messages just on a random day in the middle of the night and I'll be

00:19:19   happy to get them, you know, anytime. If you have your iPad around, I am legitimately curious to see

00:19:26   what your home screen looks like because I feel like I'm very open to trying to figure out how

00:19:30   have people set up things on their iPads and on their various devices. Do you want both or just

00:19:37   one? #MultipadLifestyle. I want whatever you will give me. I'm going to give you three home

00:19:42   screenshots and you can give me back whatever you want.

00:19:45   Okay, so while yours come through to me, I'm going to go and get my iPad from the other

00:19:49   room because I only have one of them with me right now and then I can send them both

00:19:52   to you.

00:19:53   Yeah, you go do that.

00:20:07   Okay so screenshots have been exchanged.

00:20:10   Screenshots have been exchanged.

00:20:12   I have yours, you have mine.

00:20:14   Okay, let me talk about what's going on in my mind here, Myke.

00:20:17   So, in iOS 11, especially on the iPad, the dock is of paramount importance.

00:20:26   It's the way to get to your apps because if you have an app that's on the dock,

00:20:33   you can just drag it from the dock right onto the screen

00:20:37   and so that you can go into the multi-app mode or you can have it hover over,

00:20:41   Whereas apps that are on your home screen,

00:20:45   to me the home screen now becomes like a dead space on your iPad.

00:20:50   There are apps that you can launch, but only if you are already at the home screen.

00:20:56   And there's no way to get to the home screen, to get to an app, to then put it into the multi-view mode.

00:21:03   So because of this, I have decided that on my iPads the home screen is dead to me.

00:21:09   Like I don't want to put a single app

00:21:14   on my iPad home screen because I feel like,

00:21:17   what is the point of this?

00:21:19   All it is is a worse app launcher.

00:21:23   There's no point to this at all.

00:21:26   So I have banned all app icons

00:21:30   from the home screen on my iPads.

00:21:33   It dock or nothing.

00:21:35   You took the nuclear approach.

00:21:36   Well, I actually don't think this is the nuclear approach because I feel like the architecture

00:21:43   of iOS 11 on the iPad so encourages you to use the dock that it feels like a penalty

00:21:53   having apps almost anywhere else.

00:21:56   But here's where I'm going crazy, Myke.

00:21:59   Because the iPhone doesn't work this way.

00:22:01   Oh, okay.

00:22:02   Right, again, I wanted to say where we are in the world right now

00:22:06   Mm-hmm, cuz it might we don't know yet, right?

00:22:09   We just as this is as we stand right now, who knows what could happen with the next iPhone?

00:22:14   But yeah, go on the iPhone doesn't work in this way. I understand that

00:22:17   Yeah, the iPhone doesn't work like this

00:22:20   now

00:22:21   there may be

00:22:23   If there is a merciful God in the universe

00:22:25   Mm-hmm when the next phone comes out

00:22:29   The next phone may work more similarly to the way the iPads do.

00:22:34   Yeah.

00:22:34   There may be a little dock that swipes up from the bottom.

00:22:37   You know, it could be better when the next iPhone comes out.

00:22:41   One can only hope.

00:22:42   One can only hope. But you know what? It's not gonna be.

00:22:45   It's not gonna be the same because there's not going to be a universe in which you can put eight

00:22:52   icons in the dock on your phone.

00:22:54   Yeah, it's only gonna be four, right? And maybe a folder. Still, that's gonna be the same.

00:22:59   Yeah. Yeah, and there's not going to be multitasking on the phone presumably.

00:23:05   So lots of things

00:23:07   lots of things work differently. So I feel like I am trapped and trapped in this universe

00:23:14   where

00:23:16   consistency is not possible. That there is no solution

00:23:21   that works everywhere the same that I want it to work. So I feel like when I'm using my phone

00:23:27   I'm losing my mind about how do I launch apps on my phone versus launching apps on my iPad and

00:23:34   as a result of this like what you are seeing what you were seeing in these screenshots is just my

00:23:41   current state of arranging things

00:23:43   Which is not good

00:23:45   But what I can't tell you what I got what I I don't even want to know is how how many different ways?

00:23:52   I have tried arranging things

00:23:55   How many different placements I have tried, like different full-- like, I'm going crazy

00:24:00   because there's a lack of consistency. Because as listeners to the show will know,

00:24:04   we've talked about home screens a few times,

00:24:07   and

00:24:08   there's been something that for the entirety of my iOS use has been exactly the same,

00:24:16   which is

00:24:18   three icons in the dock, and those icons have been incredibly stable.

00:24:23   Notes, Launch Center Pro, and OmniFocus.

00:24:27   And I felt like that was a real centering location to,

00:24:33   here is a thing that is consistent across all of the devices that you use.

00:24:38   There's like a little launching station for the things that you want to access quickly and consistently everywhere,

00:24:44   and it's the same on all of the devices.

00:24:47   And then above that, because I live the multi-pad lifestyle and because I have a phone as well,

00:24:52   you can arrange the icons that you use in particular on this device on the home screen.

00:24:58   Mm-hmm.

00:24:59   Right? But it's like, but all of that is gone now. So I'm just going crazy.

00:25:04   I deconstructed my dock, I've put some new stuff in there, and I'm trying to figure out what to do,

00:25:10   but I'm just, I'm going crazy, Myke.

00:25:12   I can tell.

00:25:13   I'm going absolutely crazy, and I don't know what to do.

00:25:15   Alright, so, episode to episode, we've switched to crazy.

00:25:19   Alright, that's, it's all on you now, buddy.

00:25:22   I have, we have a lot I think that we want to get to about this today, but I just, we need to just go over, okay, we're going to come back to the doc, alright, and like kind of what that is, but I just have a bunch of questions first because I'm looking at these images, and it's all

00:25:39   And it's all.

00:25:40   - Yeah, here's the thing.

00:25:40   You ask questions away because I don't even know

00:25:43   what's happening in my world anymore.

00:25:44   - Right. - Like I don't know.

00:25:46   - What I don't understand from a fundamental perspective

00:25:49   is you're complaining about consistency,

00:25:51   but you have inconsistent apps

00:25:52   in both the docks on your iPads.

00:25:54   I don't get that, I don't get it.

00:25:56   Like you can look at my screenshots

00:25:58   and you'll see the docks are the same.

00:26:00   The home screens differ in slight ways

00:26:02   depending on what I do on those iPads,

00:26:04   but the docks are the same,

00:26:06   what I'm putting in them and where they go.

00:26:08   And you have like all different apps

00:26:11   in all different placements.

00:26:12   And like some apps are on the dock on one

00:26:15   and not on the other.

00:26:16   Like there is no consistency

00:26:18   and you are making it inconsistent for yourself.

00:26:20   - Okay.

00:26:21   - Evernote, look at Evernote just sitting there in the dock.

00:26:24   My word, where are we in 2017?

00:26:26   - Sitting in the dock, laughing at me.

00:26:29   - I know, what is that thing it's next to?

00:26:30   What is that red Fox arrow thing?

00:26:33   What is that?

00:26:35   - Oh, that's a Wikipedia viewer.

00:26:37   Oh, yeah, I've seen this before.

00:26:39   It's really good.

00:26:40   It's called V, V for Wiki, I think is what to search for.

00:26:44   It's a really great Wikipedia viewer.

00:26:47   So here's where I'm trying to focus

00:26:48   on consistency in my world, okay.

00:26:49   Step one, I decided that it was time

00:26:55   to let Launch Center Pro go.

00:26:58   Ah, okay.

00:26:59   Which may be one of the longest running apps on my phone

00:27:03   that has changed the least.

00:27:05   It's like that has been around for forever.

00:27:07   - We were just talking about it, about the icon.

00:27:10   - Well, this is why.

00:27:12   On the episode "Out of Time", it comes up as a thing

00:27:16   and I didn't want to specify anything at that point in time

00:27:18   but I had already, when we recorded that show,

00:27:20   gotten rid of Launch Center Prom.

00:27:22   - Right, because on an episode "Out of Time",

00:27:23   you cannot acknowledge the time.

00:27:26   - Yeah, who knows when it occurs.

00:27:28   Is that the rule for episodes "Out of Time"?

00:27:30   I don't understand how that works.

00:27:31   So I got rid of that.

00:27:32   Now, I have tried other launchers,

00:27:35   and I think other launchers are probably fine

00:27:39   for other people.

00:27:40   But, right, it's like I don't want to denigrate

00:27:43   other launchers that people might use,

00:27:45   because they are good, and they do, but like,

00:27:47   there's a bunch of things I didn't like,

00:27:48   and I'm very picky about this,

00:27:50   and there's, like, the reason I had stuck

00:27:51   with Launch Center Pro for as long as I had

00:27:53   is because it solved a particular need very well.

00:27:56   So I was thinking it through and realizing 95%

00:28:00   of what I was using Launch Center Pro for in the past year

00:28:05   was really as a way to kick off a bunch of workflows.

00:28:09   So I had a whole bunch of stuff in the workflow app

00:28:12   and Launch Center Pro was just a faster way

00:28:14   to launch a workflow than going directly

00:28:17   into the workflow app itself.

00:28:19   This, what I'm about to say is going to sound crazy

00:28:21   to people, but actually is, I think is great

00:28:24   and is the part of the system I'm the happiest with,

00:28:27   is I replaced Launch Center Pro with a folder

00:28:31   that just has shortcuts to workflows.

00:28:36   - No, this is better.

00:28:37   The way you were doing it was worse.

00:28:39   Like opening Launch Center Pro to launch workflows

00:28:44   is a, I think, a slower way of doing it

00:28:46   than what you're currently doing,

00:28:48   which is to save, 'cause you can save workflows

00:28:50   to the iPhone home screen

00:28:53   with like this weird hack of Safari, basically.

00:28:56   and this is quicker having that folder there and then hitting the button.

00:28:59   That's one less tap.

00:29:01   The reason I stuck with launch center pro

00:29:02   is as long as I did is it was lightning fast to do it.

00:29:05   It actually is a little bit slower with the folder.

00:29:08   OK, because Apple's like, look at our beautiful animation.

00:29:11   Yeah, OK, but hit by animation speed.

00:29:13   OK. Yeah.

00:29:15   Whereas especially if launch center pro was still kept in memory,

00:29:18   it was essentially instant.

00:29:19   So there's a little bit of a speed trade off here, but it's fine.

00:29:23   I still think this is a better way to do it, though.

00:29:25   It might not be faster, but I think this is cleaner.

00:29:29   Yeah, so this is cleaner. It does have a disadvantage

00:29:33   that I have to manually arrange everything so that it's

00:29:37   the same on all of the devices. There's no syncing anymore. The state of what

00:29:41   the launch center is. But that's fine. That's a fine trade-off.

00:29:45   And if someone looks in the screenshots, what they will see is

00:29:49   dead center on all of my devices, there is a folder

00:29:53   and that folder has nothing but buttons which launch

00:29:57   workflow actions.

00:29:58   - Yeah, it's dead center but not always relative.

00:30:01   - What do you mean not always relative?

00:30:03   - It's not relative to the green and red.

00:30:05   - Okay, no, we'll get into this in a second.

00:30:07   We'll get into this in a second, Myke, right?

00:30:08   - There's so many layers.

00:30:09   - 'Cause I've thought about this for a long time.

00:30:10   - This is like the onion of home screens we're in right now.

00:30:13   - No, but listen, okay, listen, listen.

00:30:16   Look at those three screens.

00:30:17   The workflow folder is dead center.

00:30:20   - Yes, it is, it is, it is.

00:30:22   Look at those little dots that are supposed to show you the home screen or the widgets.

00:30:26   I can see it.

00:30:27   That is the center.

00:30:28   Right?

00:30:29   And the folder is directly below those dots or as close as a person can make it.

00:30:33   Yes, it is.

00:30:34   It is.

00:30:35   I'm sorry.

00:30:36   It's not perfectly aligned because of some aesthetic choices that Apple has made, but

00:30:41   we'll just let that slide for right now.

00:30:43   Yeah, that is weird, isn't it?

00:30:44   It would be perfectly aligned, but it isn't.

00:30:45   It's fine on the iPhone.

00:30:48   Not fine on the big iPad.

00:30:49   Yeah, not fine on the iPad.

00:30:52   I bet that doesn't bother you at all.

00:30:54   It does, very much so.

00:30:57   Okay.

00:30:58   Alright, so this is the anchor around which we're building everything.

00:31:03   I've gotten rid of Launch Center Pro, I have found an adequate solution,

00:31:07   it's going to go in the center on all of the devices.

00:31:10   This is where we begin.

00:31:11   My assumption here is that these are all to launch, most likely, toggle actions.

00:31:19   Would be my assumption.

00:31:20   Nothing in that center folder is for toggle. We'll get to this.

00:31:23   Okay, good, good, good, good.

00:31:24   I thought that was gonna be the end of the discussion and I was gonna lose my mind.

00:31:27   [laughter]

00:31:31   No, actually, most of those launch center things are pre-programmed stuff for OmniFocus and,

00:31:38   like, a couple of other things.

00:31:39   Okay, the purple ones I assume are OmniFocus and then there's other stuff.

00:31:42   Yeah, purple ones are OmniFocus stuff.

00:31:44   That's cool. That's all I really need to know. I just needed to know what they did,

00:31:48   and that's enough for me.

00:31:49   It's all inconsistent now because I haven't quite decided on like what this new setup is going to be so I haven't worried about

00:31:55   Making sure it's consistent on every single device, but I'll get there at some point

00:31:59   I've just noticed something else that you've done. Okay. What have you noticed in the iPad folders?

00:32:04   You've put blank icons in there. So it's always the same. Yes. Okay, so this is

00:32:10   This is one way this is one way I am trying to force

00:32:17   out of an operating system that is trying to force me into an inconsistent state.

00:32:22   Because you want the 3x3 grid everywhere.

00:32:25   Because the thing with a launcher is that it's muscle memory, right?

00:32:29   You're not scanning and looking for a thing, you're trying to make it muscle memory.

00:32:35   So the iPhone only allows a 3x3 grid in the folder,

00:32:40   so I am forcing a 3x3 grid in the folder on the iPads.

00:32:46   But as you can see, that means the 3x3 grid is not centered, and it can't possibly be centered because the iPads want a 4x4 grid in the folder.

00:32:56   So this is a trade-off I'm just going to have to make, that the grid will be off-center, but there's no way to manage that for the LauncherOne, and the muscle memory of where the buttons are is vastly more important.

00:33:08   All of these images are in our show notes, so you can play along at home. I just wanted to reinforce that.

00:33:13   Yeah, I think you have to look at this.

00:33:15   You cannot conceptualize this unless you're seeing it, so you have to see it.

00:33:20   If you're driving, just wait till later. We're all good.

00:33:23   But you need to see these.

00:33:25   Rethink number two.

00:33:26   Okay. Can't believe we're just on number two, but okay.

00:33:28   I know you can't believe we're just on number two.

00:33:31   I feel like I'm barely halfway through whatever's going to happen.

00:33:34   I'm still so dissatisfied.

00:33:36   I have so many more questions.

00:33:38   I keep seeing things that make me laugh.

00:33:41   Because I know what you're doing, but I just need to double check.

00:33:44   double check.

00:33:45   Thing number two that happened is

00:33:48   there's a change in iOS 11, which I really like,

00:33:51   which is that you can put notes in Control Center.

00:33:55   And so I realized I don't need notes on the dock anymore

00:34:00   because the way I use notes is probably different

00:34:03   from the way almost everybody uses notes

00:34:05   in that I use it solely to just write down something

00:34:10   and then once a week I kind of go through

00:34:13   and cull all these random pieces of text throughout the week.

00:34:17   I don't use notes as an organizational system of any kind.

00:34:20   - Okay.

00:34:21   - Notes is just, I need to write something down

00:34:23   and I know future me will do whatever is necessary

00:34:26   with this piece of text at a later point in time.

00:34:28   - Okay, couple of questions on that.

00:34:29   - Yeah.

00:34:30   - Are you writing them down with a keyboard

00:34:32   or with a pencil?

00:34:33   - With a keyboard almost all the time.

00:34:36   - Okay.

00:34:37   And so I'm assuming that you're taking these things

00:34:41   either putting them in a task manager or inside of a project that you're already writing and/or

00:34:47   inside of your beloved Evernote would be my assumption.

00:34:50   Yeah, it's like it's just anything, right? Like it's like a simple case,

00:34:54   like somebody recommends a movie and I'm like, "Oh, okay." And I make a note of the movie title

00:34:57   and then later I'll properly sort that into like the place where I keep a list of "here's a bunch

00:35:02   of movies to watch or books that have been recommended" or right. It's just like little

00:35:05   pieces of text that don't go anywhere in particular and it's not worth the effort of properly

00:35:10   sorting them at the time.

00:35:12   Right, okay. So it's different to me where like, if it's text, it goes in notes, right?

00:35:18   If it's not a task, because tasks never go in notes, it always just like, so I would

00:35:22   have my list of movies to see would be in notes, for example.

00:35:27   I know that that is the way most people would use it, but it's just it's just not the way

00:35:31   that I use it.

00:35:32   Sure, I get that.

00:35:33   is the app called Drafts.

00:35:35   I use Notes the way Drafts is intended to be used.

00:35:39   Like that's like a little comparison there.

00:35:41   So it's not a storage facility of any point.

00:35:44   - As a starting point for text, never the final point.

00:35:47   - Yeah, exactly.

00:35:48   And I really like this little change in iOS 11,

00:35:51   that you can do it from Control Center

00:35:53   because it also means that it's much more accessible,

00:35:57   much more quickly in a bunch of scenarios.

00:35:59   So I love that the phone is locked

00:36:01   and I can just swipe up from Control Center

00:36:03   and go to Notes and type something

00:36:05   and it just goes into the system

00:36:07   and I never even need to unlock the phone.

00:36:08   - Yeah, that's a great thing that you can do that now

00:36:11   if you want to set it up that way.

00:36:13   - It is a really nice addition.

00:36:15   And so that change meant,

00:36:17   okay, well, Notes doesn't need to be on the dock anymore.

00:36:20   Notes can just go away.

00:36:22   - Yeah, and in an interesting way,

00:36:24   that kind of reinforces your use case.

00:36:26   - Yeah, it's almost like it's designed exactly for that.

00:36:30   Like, oh, someone just said a thing,

00:36:31   you want to write something down really quickly and you just want it to go into the system.

00:36:35   You're not filing it at that point in time.

00:36:39   So, I'm glad about that.

00:36:41   But again, I'm all like muscle memory because this is a thing that happens lots.

00:36:46   So I just want to know that whatever device I'm using,

00:36:50   I've built it into my brain that, oh, the way you now type down a thing

00:36:55   is just pull up Control Center, hit New Note, and just type it and done.

00:36:59   So this is no longer a dock first activity.

00:37:03   OmniFocus has also been removed from the dock, but this is a complicated thing.

00:37:07   We'll just have to get to later. For various reasons

00:37:11   OmniFocus is not going to be on the dock anymore, but it's like, I can't even articulate it.

00:37:15   Of your iPhone, you mean? Yes, it's not on the dock of the iPhone.

00:37:19   Because it's on the dock of one of the iPads. I know, I know.

00:37:23   Reinforcing the inconsistency, but, you know, whatever. Yes, I know, I know.

00:37:27   could be on the dock on the iPhone we'll just we'll get rid of that. Oh I just noticed Todoist

00:37:31   is there as well wow look at you. Would you. Look at you Mr. Todoopants you got a wall

00:37:37   going on. Would you stop, would you stop jumping ahead? I can't help it you shouldn't have

00:37:42   given me the images you know like I can't I can't help it. Okay so there was then a

00:37:47   long period of thinking well what the hell goes on my dock now for a while I tried nothing

00:37:53   on the dock except that one folder. But that looks really dumb and it makes no sense on

00:38:00   the iPads because again you're punished for not using the dock on the iPads and just having

00:38:06   the one little launcher folder is ridiculous. What I have eventually settled on for my dock

00:38:13   icons is a green plus and there's a red X. And I was trying to think what is the thing

00:38:22   that I now do the most in the day.

00:38:24   I've replaced my launcher,

00:38:26   I've replaced the thing where I'm typing in stuff.

00:38:29   What is the next most frequent activity?

00:38:31   And of course, that is everybody's favorite topic,

00:38:34   time tracking.

00:38:36   - Oh no.

00:38:37   - Time tracking is the thing that I do the most.

00:38:39   - I promise we won't talk about this for too long, listeners.

00:38:41   I really, I just want you,

00:38:43   we'll get through this as part as quickly as we can.

00:38:46   But yes, go on.

00:38:47   - I promise you that we will as well

00:38:49   because there isn't that much to say about it

00:38:50   except what do these two buttons do?

00:38:53   They are also workflows.

00:38:55   So the green one simply launches a master workflow

00:39:00   that allows me to very quickly select

00:39:02   what is the activity that I'm doing right now.

00:39:04   - This is what I'd assumed they were.

00:39:06   And I thought that the middle folder was related

00:39:08   to just triggering specific trackers,

00:39:10   but that makes sense.

00:39:12   Like the green and red, it made perfect sense.

00:39:15   One is to start and one is to stop.

00:39:17   I mean, and I have these, but they're in,

00:39:20   I have them in my widgets in Notification Center.

00:39:23   - So this is a thing that I had tried for a long time.

00:39:25   Workflow has a fantastic widget.

00:39:28   It's really, really great.

00:39:30   But basically in iOS 10, there was an option to say,

00:39:34   hey, you're in Notification Center.

00:39:36   It's dumb, I don't ever use it, I don't care.

00:39:39   Remember what the thing I swiped down last time was.

00:39:42   So if I've pulled down the widgets,

00:39:45   always just have the widgets there.

00:39:47   but iOS 11 seems really proud of their notification center

00:39:50   and they've removed this option.

00:39:52   So in theory, I would want to use the widget

00:39:57   to launch and to stop my time tracking,

00:40:02   like across all devices, that'd be a way

00:40:03   to do it consistently, but that extra swipe

00:40:07   really annoys me every time.

00:40:09   Doesn't it work if you just swipe to the left?

00:40:12   Okay, but this is a thing that then becomes

00:40:15   little bit in my mind like it like an inconsistent thing like which device am

00:40:20   I using how do I open up that device like am I on the lock screen is the lock

00:40:26   screen open or is a lock screen not like I tried it with the widget but it's it's

00:40:32   just a little bit of an annoyance I don't feel that it's also but here's

00:40:39   here's the use case that here's the use case that I will give you which is I'm

00:40:43   I'm on the iPad doing something and I want to trigger the timer.

00:40:48   Yeah, okay.

00:40:49   Yeah.

00:40:50   Where do I go?

00:40:51   You have to pull down or go home and yeah, it's the thing.

00:40:53   Right, I can't, yeah, there's like, so it's not the same every time.

00:40:57   And this, again, is where muscle memory is really important.

00:41:00   Like, this is an activity that I'm going to do dozens of times a day.

00:41:05   It has to be something that I just don't think about.

00:41:09   So that moment of being on the iPad with the apps open is like, I have to think about it

00:41:15   for a second and now it's all ruined.

00:41:18   So this is what ended up with the most sensible thing to do, was to put the time tracking

00:41:23   stuff in the dock.

00:41:25   And so I'm thinking of it from the perspective of the most space-constrained device, which

00:41:32   is the iPhone, which you can only put three icons in the dock if you want it to look nice.

00:41:38   So now I have my three doc icons.

00:41:41   And so now we come to the iPads.

00:41:45   OK.

00:41:48   And so I have given you two screenshots because we

00:41:52   live the multi-pad lifestyle.

00:41:53   Hashtag.

00:41:54   Yes, hashtag multi-pad lifestyle.

00:41:56   The one with the standard Apple wallpaper,

00:42:00   which is like the exploding paint, this is my Office iPad.

00:42:04   So this is the one that I'm primarily using for writing.

00:42:08   And then the one with the black sand beach, this is the Everything Else iPad.

00:42:13   Okay.

00:42:15   So the writing iPad is reasonably okay because the use cases are very constrained.

00:42:23   And this is where I feel the happiest because it's like I want to use Ulysses to write,

00:42:29   I want to use GoodNotes for the physical writing.

00:42:33   I use Bear to organize a bunch of notes,

00:42:37   and then of course I have Evernote and a Wikipedia app,

00:42:41   and it's like, this is easily 95% of the time

00:42:44   I'm going to spend on this iPad.

00:42:47   So I can get it all in the doc,

00:42:48   and I can get it arranged reasonably nicely.

00:42:50   Now the thing that I'm trying to do

00:42:52   to preserve my mental muscle memory

00:42:55   is because since docs are variable in size,

00:42:57   there's three muscle memory points here.

00:43:01   Center, left hand side, right hand side.

00:43:05   So this is what I want now to be the same

00:43:07   across all devices.

00:43:08   So the launching folder is in the center,

00:43:11   the plus to start the timer is on the left,

00:43:14   and the X to stop the timer is on the right.

00:43:17   This is what's going to be the same across all devices.

00:43:21   And all that means now is I need to

00:43:23   put a symmetrical number of apps in between those points.

00:43:28   So on my writing iPad, I have three apps

00:43:31   between the left and the middle,

00:43:33   and on the right-hand side, I have two apps

00:43:37   plus a folder that contains everything else

00:43:41   that's on the iPad.

00:43:42   Since I've decided that there will be no apps

00:43:45   on the home screen, that means everything else

00:43:48   goes into the Infinity folder that holds

00:43:51   all of the other apps that are going to exist on the iPad.

00:43:55   So this is the idea of my dock solution,

00:43:59   is you have one folder, that's the infinity folder,

00:44:04   I have three muscle memory points,

00:44:07   and then I fill in the rest.

00:44:08   That's the idea of what's going on.

00:44:11   - Can I ask you a question about the muscle memory thing?

00:44:14   - Please.

00:44:15   - Why didn't you put all three in the middle on everything?

00:44:17   Because on the big iPad, because you have the recents,

00:44:20   it's not on the far right.

00:44:22   - In iOS 11, you have this option of,

00:44:25   because the doc is so important,

00:44:27   iOS will put three suggested apps in your dock on the right side.

00:44:33   And these you don't have control over, they just appear, they're the suggestions, they're

00:44:38   what Apple thinks you want to have.

00:44:43   Now there's like a funny bit of space that's between these apps and the other apps that

00:44:49   makes everything kind of off-center.

00:44:52   And having the three right in the middle but not exactly in the middle makes it more obvious

00:44:59   that things are off-center to me.

00:45:02   It just visually bothered me more.

00:45:04   Okay, so you tried it?

00:45:06   Yeah.

00:45:07   I tried it but it just looked weird.

00:45:10   And I can, in my mind, sort of mentally place those suggested apps in a different location.

00:45:18   And you like the suggested apps enough to keep it on the big iPad because it's not on

00:45:22   the small iPad?

00:45:24   Well we're trying a few things here.

00:45:28   But we'll get to this in a second.

00:45:29   It also helps that the red X I press far less than the start button.

00:45:33   So it matters less that that one is in the exact right spot.

00:45:37   But for me, for my brain, this just works even though it should seem like keeping everything

00:45:43   in the center would make more sense.

00:45:46   But I don't-- for like, for me, for somehow, this is just what seems to make more sense,

00:45:50   is put them at the edges, even though on one of these devices there isn't quite an edge.

00:45:57   So this is what I am trying.

00:45:59   But this again, like, this world of inconsistency is crazy making, because on the iPad that

00:46:04   I use for everything, I do have these suggested apps, because it's really useful to have them

00:46:11   But I don't want them on my dedicated sort of writing office iPad because they're often just suggesting apps to me which are in the dock already.

00:46:21   Right? Or they're things that I've just used and they're changing is annoying. Like it's not helpful because on that device I'm able to get just about everything that I want in the dock in the dock.

00:46:31   This is where I am with the setup of things.

00:46:34   I have a couple of observations.

00:46:36   One, I enjoy the fact that you have decided that you are unwilling to take the colors

00:46:42   of some icons and have recreated icons of your own, books and audiobooks.

00:46:47   I'm assuming that they are literally just shortcuts to launch iBooks and Audible?

00:46:55   And you have taken matters into your own hands and have gone for a more pleasing to you green

00:47:00   color than the yellows.

00:47:03   I have taken matters in my own hands. There's another one that you have missed there, which is Flashcards.

00:47:07   No, I hadn't missed that. I had assumed that that wasn't real, but the books and audiobooks were more obvious to me.

00:47:14   Yeah, Flashcards is a shortcut to the program I've been using for years and years, which is called Anki, which is-- it's great.

00:47:23   It's a fantastic flashcard program,

00:47:25   but it has a very ugly app that I don't think has been updated in years and years.

00:47:31   I can tell how long you've been using it because you keep calling it a program, which is very

00:47:36   strange.

00:47:37   Yeah, you know what?

00:47:38   That's totally, yeah, it is a program because I started using it in college on a computer.

00:47:44   That is the program, everything else is an app.

00:47:46   I love that your brain made that distinction.

00:47:50   This is a computer program.

00:47:53   Yeah, I would never have used that.

00:47:55   And then because Amazon finally introduced proper text alignment in their app, I was

00:48:00   Kindle.

00:48:01   --switch back to using Kindles, which is great.

00:48:04   But that Kindle app icon is horrifically ugly.

00:48:09   Do not buy it.

00:48:11   I will not allow that on my screen.

00:48:13   I don't want to have to look at that.

00:48:16   I hate that the apps have the words beneath the app

00:48:18   to begin with.

00:48:20   And then any app which also has to write

00:48:22   its own name on the app icon in addition to the title

00:48:26   underneath-- it's like, I can't deal with that.

00:48:28   It's horrible.

00:48:28   It's like, Kindle.

00:48:29   yeah, I get it Kindle. Like I see the word twice. I hate it. So I just made a much better

00:48:35   icon using workflow than they use. So yes, I have some replacement app icons for ones

00:48:42   that are unacceptable.

00:48:46   Except for the fact that you're running three to-do apps on your iPhone. I think that's

00:48:53   most of my general questions.

00:48:57   So my phone there, just to be clear, that to-do row, which is four icons that have check

00:49:02   marks is--

00:49:03   To-do lane, this is Simone.

00:49:04   Yeah, it's a to-do lane.

00:49:05   Just quickly so people don't think I'm going crazy.

00:49:07   It's like the do is for reminders that are related to a particular time or timers that

00:49:10   I want to run.

00:49:11   As we've discussed in the past but we don't need to go over here again, it is useful to

00:49:17   split certain kinds of tasks between to-do and omni-focus.

00:49:23   So OmniFocus is generally like big project stuff and to-do is much much smaller things.

00:49:29   And then to-do-ist is what I use to communicate with my personal assistant. So that is like

00:49:34   shared tasks between the two of us.

00:49:37   Oh, Wunderlist is dead.

00:49:39   Oh, yes. Yeah. Wunderlist is gone.

00:49:43   Maybe I should call this one to-doist. Like I have to give this one a new name now because

00:49:48   Wunderlist is gone.

00:49:50   No you don't. No, we don't need to do that.

00:49:52   - Todoist is actually a pretty funny name, I like that.

00:49:55   But I use Todoist and love it,

00:49:57   so I wouldn't dare give it a different name.

00:50:00   Even though Vunderlist is the way

00:50:01   that that app should be pronounced anyway.

00:50:05   - Yeah.

00:50:06   - Todoist, interesting, okay,

00:50:08   what do you think of Todoist?

00:50:09   'Cause this is what I use every day,

00:50:10   I mean, I extol its virtues, I like the automation.

00:50:13   I bet that's pretty good for you

00:50:14   if you're using it for shared tasks,

00:50:15   to have things automated from it is pretty good.

00:50:19   I actually don't use any of the automation features in it.

00:50:24   This is a case where basically my assistant and I

00:50:27   were running up against some limitations in Wunderlist.

00:50:30   We just ran into some things where like,

00:50:32   this isn't working great anymore.

00:50:34   And primarily one of the things was like the need

00:50:36   to be able to prioritize certain tasks above others.

00:50:39   She is the one who is 95% using this.

00:50:42   And I am simply like adding tasks and adding comments.

00:50:45   So I feel like I can't really give a fair review of Todoist.

00:50:50   - Yeah.

00:50:50   - Like what I do use of it, I can say like,

00:50:54   I'm not a huge fan and it feels like

00:50:57   there's some really obvious things that are missing.

00:51:00   But I can say that it is definitely

00:51:03   a better collaboration solution

00:51:06   when your collaboration gets more complicated.

00:51:09   Like that's clearly the case.

00:51:10   - Goodbye, Wunderlist.

00:51:12   Goodbye, it's been a pleasure.

00:51:14   I feel a little exhausted from all the explaining I've done

00:51:17   of this setup that I have here, Myke.

00:51:20   And I feel like I've barely even scratched the surface.

00:51:24   - It might be your time for a nap.

00:51:26   - Yeah, it might be my time for a nap.

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00:53:13   What do you use the two different iPads for?

00:53:17   What are the use cases for you of your two devices right now?

00:53:21   So primarily, the primary use cases are home and out of home.

00:53:28   So at home I use the 12.9 and away from home I use the 10.5.

00:53:33   But I do use the 10.5 a lot at home if I'm going to be doing things like reading Twitter

00:53:42   and stuff like that.

00:53:43   I may just grab the 10.5 because it's just easier to hold and use because it's smaller

00:53:47   and lighter.

00:53:49   But like the primary is home and away, which is why I take steps to set them up very similarly.

00:53:57   They're not exactly the same.

00:53:59   So like some of the folders and the placement of some apps on the home screen is different,

00:54:03   but that's not a thing that I worry about too much because if it's not in the dock,

00:54:09   I'm opening it via Spotlight.

00:54:13   And so like for me, the reason I still have apps on my home screen is because they're

00:54:19   really just an organization thing, it's just like a place for me to put the apps because

00:54:23   I open the majority of apps from Spotlight.

00:54:26   Right, okay, so that makes sense. Since you are doing the same kind of things on both

00:54:31   devices, it's a simple, it's simply the size factor and convenience factor of moving it

00:54:37   or not moving it.

00:54:39   Exactly.

00:54:40   So that's why you want the dock the same everywhere because otherwise you would be losing your

00:54:43   mind.

00:54:44   And my steps are like, so I have less, you can have more apps in the dock on the 12.9,

00:54:53   But I actually keep less because I like the consistency.

00:54:56   I have noticed an inconsistency which I want to rectify that Dropbox on the large iPad

00:55:01   is in the dock on its own, but on the small iPad it's in a folder.

00:55:06   Although I expect as soon as Dropbox update for the Files app on iOS 11, I won't need

00:55:11   it anymore really.

00:55:12   I'll just be using the Files app.

00:55:14   I'm kind of just waiting for that point.

00:55:17   So the dock for me is really like these are the apps that I'm using most on my iPad and

00:55:22   And I think it reinforces the fact that I say I use the iPad for work because they are

00:55:27   work apps.

00:55:28   Like, all of those.

00:55:30   That's what they are.

00:55:32   And the reason that they are all there is because these are the applications that I'm

00:55:35   most frequently using in split views.

00:55:39   So I keep them in the dock because it's way easier that way to just flick up and just

00:55:42   drag it to where I need it to be.

00:55:44   Which just for the record, because there is a lot of a, I think there's a lot of inconsistent

00:55:49   opinions about how people feel about this.

00:55:51   I love the new multitasking in iOS 11.

00:55:56   I think it's fantastic.

00:55:57   I think it is superior in almost every way.

00:55:59   It just takes time to get used to and learn.

00:56:02   But I absolutely love it.

00:56:05   I love all the dragging because I'm able to visualize

00:56:08   where everything's gonna be.

00:56:09   iOS is very visual.

00:56:11   I think that that is,

00:56:12   I think there is a key to being able to work on iOS

00:56:15   in the, if you like things visual.

00:56:18   I think that that is a thing that you have to just

00:56:20   get used to is that you like to be able to see things, you like to be able to see the

00:56:24   movement of things, and being able to physically drag applications to where I want them to

00:56:30   be and have them snap into a place and move them all around and the additional flexibility

00:56:35   that iOS 11 multitasking has is amazing and I love it.

00:56:39   And I've changed some of my workflows and they're changed now and I would never want

00:56:43   to change them back.

00:56:44   Yeah, I do again just want to make it really clear that I am also in favor of the changes

00:56:52   and I think it's a really great the way that they have done it.

00:56:55   I've just been advocating for something on top of that.

00:56:58   Very minor thing on top of that.

00:56:59   But yeah.

00:57:00   Yeah, of course.

00:57:01   I mean there are things that I would like for it to do that are different.

00:57:06   But on the whole I am a real proponent of the changes that Apple has made.

00:57:12   So a thing that I found really interesting about using iOS over this long period of time

00:57:19   is with my two iPads, one that has this dedicated purpose, which is writing and research, and

00:57:27   the other one, which is the everything iPad, all kinds of administrative, all kinds of

00:57:32   work, I see both sides of how this works.

00:57:36   So on my dedicated iPad, I feel like this is exactly what Apple is really optimizing for.

00:57:43   I can put essentially all of the applications that I want to use on the dock,

00:57:48   and on my writing iPad, every app does have a consistent buddy that it stays with.

00:57:55   Ulysses and Bear, I'm always opening together.

00:57:58   One's the main writing app, and then the other one is for auxiliary notes.

00:58:02   Workflow and Do are side by side. They're always together.

00:58:07   Like, To Do and OmniFocus stay together as a little pair.

00:58:11   So, on this device, I have consistent pairs, which is great.

00:58:17   It's nice to see the things that I want next to each other, next to each other all the time.

00:58:21   And I also have the vast majority of my work is just there on the dock and easily accessible.

00:58:26   It's like, this is great! I feel like this is exactly what this was designed for.

00:58:31   But I do still feel like on my everything iPad, like I'm just losing my mind and I still find it very clunky and frustrating to work with.

00:58:42   Because there I just don't have consistent pairs of apps.

00:58:48   And I find myself always wishing it was a bit more like spaces on Mac OS where I could say,

00:58:56   I want to define these two apps together and don't break them apart if I happen to go to something else briefly.

00:59:06   I feel like I'm building castles out of sand.

00:59:11   For example, this morning I was doing storyboarding feedback with the animator.

00:59:16   That is a process that has a bunch of apps that I want to use.

00:59:20   And I just keep finding it clunky to be constantly setting up pairs,

00:59:26   but then I want to break them down because I want to bring in a third app,

00:59:29   but I want to go back to the previous thing.

00:59:32   I'm still finding it frustrating for intensive use of a large number of varied apps.

00:59:40   But on the smaller case, it's great and perfect,

00:59:45   but it's more frustrating the larger number of apps you use.

00:59:49   I think the fundamental problem of people that feel the way that you do is thinking of apps as pairs.

00:59:55   I don't think that Apple ever really asked you to do that. You decided to think of it that way on

01:00:02   your own, right? But what I mean about the the pairs though is it's not the thinking of them as

01:00:09   pairs. It's the switching like here's the use cases like I have one major

01:00:17   So, like, what I was doing this morning is the perfect case.

01:00:20   So I'm watching a movie that's a storyboard.

01:00:23   So this is, like, the main thing that I want to look at.

01:00:26   And then on the side, I want to be able to switch between three different things.

01:00:31   Like, I want to have notes that I'm taking in Bear,

01:00:34   I need to be able to talk to the animator in Slack,

01:00:38   and there's a couple of other things where I need to bring up good notes

01:00:41   to be able to make a quick sketch to make something that's clear,

01:00:44   and then Dropbox to send a link back to the animator who I'm talking in Slack,

01:00:49   but I never want to close the movie that I'm watching, which is the thing that is being commented on.

01:00:54   That workflow, which is still very easy to do on a computer, is frustrating because of the

01:01:01   the time it takes to switch the app on the side, and it's also frustrating because of the

01:01:08   inconsistent steps of

01:01:11   How do I summon these apps? Like where is this app that I'm trying to summon? Like let me get it from Spotlight.

01:01:16   When I get it from Spotlight, I have to drag it over into just the right spot.

01:01:20   I have to wait for the little animation to show me that it's going to go there. Like rapid switching between a few things is

01:01:27   noticeably slower than rapid switching between a few things was under the old system. And I want to be really clear.

01:01:33   I'm not asking for that old system. That was crazy.

01:01:37   In iOS 10 you could use the command tab action to switch out just what was in the left pane.

01:01:43   I understand that, I do miss that, but I don't want it back.

01:01:48   There's other weird consistency problems that I sort of thought were bugs at first in iOS,

01:01:54   but I think are not bugs, which is when you do the command tab switcher, what apps show up in that

01:02:01   list? It doesn't show everything, and I don't understand what it's supposed to be showing.

01:02:05   That is something that I think is wrong.

01:02:07   However, Apple are deciding to make that list is is wrong

01:02:11   because it should show everything and it should show pairs.

01:02:16   But it doesn't.

01:02:17   And it should show things that I've just touched.

01:02:21   So it feels like this.

01:02:23   The thing that it seems to miss the most is I've summoned an app from Spotlight

01:02:27   and dragged it into an overview setting or like a not main view.

01:02:32   And like then it doesn't show up in the command switch.

01:02:35   It's like, I want that thing-- I was just there.

01:02:37   That also adds to this frustration of trying to switch between multiple apps.

01:02:42   Like, it's--

01:02:43   So, I guess this is one of the things that also just doesn't help with, like,

01:02:48   what is my dock setup going to be and how am I going to set up these iPads is

01:02:52   the use case where I want to have the most number of things,

01:02:57   I feel like I really need to cram the dock full of stuff.

01:03:02   And this is where you can see on my everything iPad screenshot.

01:03:07   Like, I have the Infinity folder, I have the Launcher folder,

01:03:10   but I'm also trying to make a little communications folder,

01:03:13   which is like, here are the little apps where I'm talking to people,

01:03:17   and I find myself switching in and out of very frequently,

01:03:20   and trying to put them in a folder on the dock

01:03:23   so I can get access to them more quickly

01:03:25   for dropping into the workspace that I'm using.

01:03:29   like I'm trying to get around this, but I don't have a great solution that feels like,

01:03:36   "Wow, I'm really flying through my work on this iPad." It still feels really clunky for me to do that.

01:03:42   So I can see in the specific use case that you've posted in that you want to use three apps plus for

01:03:50   video, right? And I'm assuming picture-in-picture isn't working for you here for whatever reason

01:03:56   that might be. It's not really worth getting into.

01:03:58   Yeah, the details don't matter.

01:04:00   But picture in pictures is either the view isn't large enough or the app that you use

01:04:03   doesn't support it, whatever. I can see for that where it's frustrating, right? But because you're

01:04:09   watching a video, I think for basically any other workflow issue, you can just deal with switching

01:04:14   into a different app for a moment, right? Like if you need four apps, well, just using three of them

01:04:19   because you can use three if you slide over and then you just command tab out to the other app,

01:04:24   enter whatever you need to go in there and go back. The specific use case that you're posing

01:04:28   is tricky because you want to be watching the video at all times. But you know, just I would

01:04:33   just say like it's frustrating but just pause the video right like that that's that's the workflow

01:04:37   you will end up getting yourself into I reckon just like well I'll pause for a moment and do

01:04:41   what I need to do and go back. I get that there have been some workflows that I have had to change

01:04:48   as well but I take this small frustration because the system as a whole is vastly superior to what

01:04:58   has come before it and I really think that a lot of people are getting more frustrated about this

01:05:04   just because of how close it is to the Mac now which I actually think is a testament to how good

01:05:10   iOS 11 is that people are getting more frustrated about how it's different to the Mac because it is

01:05:17   so good and it's so powerful it's almost like an uncanny valley thing where people are less

01:05:23   comparing it to what ios 10 was and comparing it to what they think it should be because of how

01:05:29   the mac works so yeah like i i will agree with that 100 because there was no doubt in my mind

01:05:36   that it's a bit of a frustration for me because like on i don't know about you but on the mac i'm

01:05:42   a very heavy spaces user.

01:05:44   Yeah, I am.

01:05:45   I really like the ability to use lots of spaces.

01:05:48   I think most heavy iOS users use the Mac that way.

01:05:51   Hmm, maybe.

01:05:53   And so yes, it does invite that comparison of, on the Mac it's much easier to be fussy

01:05:59   about my spaces and which apps go in what spaces, and then it feels like I'm switching

01:06:04   between a whole bunch of different virtual desktops that have been left just the way

01:06:10   I want them to be.

01:06:11   And so like I will completely agree with you on that.

01:06:14   That is, it is impressive in a way

01:06:16   that the comparison is now,

01:06:18   oh why can't I do this as lightning fast

01:06:21   as I can do it on a full desktop computer?

01:06:23   You and I have always acknowledged

01:06:24   that there are many things on the iPad

01:06:26   that we have always known it is slower to do,

01:06:30   but it doesn't change the fact

01:06:31   that we like working on an iPad way better.

01:06:34   Like and that has always been a trade off

01:06:37   that we're willing to make.

01:06:38   - Yeah, like I know that dragging from the dock

01:06:41   is slower than however any other system would use it, even the previous system.

01:06:45   But I don't care because I enjoy it more.

01:06:47   I like the multitasking because I'm multitasking with my hands.

01:06:52   Like, I like it. I like the feeling of it.

01:06:54   But I understand. I understand the concerns.

01:06:57   But like, I think this is the best we could have got

01:07:00   because any more than this would have been way too complicated.

01:07:04   Like a jump bigger than the jump that Apple have made here

01:07:08   would have been too much, especially when at this stage that we're at right now,

01:07:13   and we'll still be at for a few weeks as app updates come out, we haven't even

01:07:16   realized the full potential of what this system is because

01:07:20   we don't really have the opportunity to use drag and drop very heavily

01:07:24   because the app support isn't there yet because they're not out yet.

01:07:28   So I think that like there are still things that we've yet to fully

01:07:33   appreciate for what this system is doing.

01:07:37   So I think any more than what Apple has added in 11 would have been way too complicated.

01:07:43   Like the idea of having persistent pairs and having apps that can be open with other pairs

01:07:49   in multiple instances inside of the multitasking pane, I think that kind of thing might come in the

01:07:55   future. But if they would have put that in now, it would have been like a nightmare scenario to

01:08:00   try and understand what was going on. I will completely agree with that. My frustration is

01:08:05   is simply the thing that I was trying to remedy

01:08:07   with the keyboard shortcut is,

01:08:10   like I'm very used to just switching stuff fast

01:08:13   with the keyboard.

01:08:14   And my main frustration is, it's like,

01:08:16   I will happily learn complicated keyboard commands

01:08:19   if it lets me move between a bunch of,

01:08:21   but like there's just no way to do that

01:08:23   under the current system.

01:08:24   It's like-- - Like command shift alt tab

01:08:27   could change the left app or whatever.

01:08:30   - I think I had some great suggestions for app shortcuts,

01:08:32   but whatever.

01:08:33   [laughs]

01:08:35   It's-- I think that that's one of the things that also just-- it feels like it slows it-- slows it down.

01:08:40   But again, I keep thinking of the--

01:08:43   Like I mentioned last time, like for-- for my aunt who uses an iPad Pro is her main computer.

01:08:49   This is a hell of an upgrade and she is not a very technical user,

01:08:54   but I think the system is

01:08:56   brilliantly designed because I know it will take her no time at all to figure out what to do.

01:09:00   You just move it with your hands like it's a physical object or ignore it completely, right?

01:09:05   You can ignore it completely if you don't notice it and it's fine. Yeah, or yeah, it doesn't even matter

01:09:10   That's why like it's it is a great solution to a very difficult thing

01:09:15   I just I just wish for pro users. There was like a faster way to do more precise stuff

01:09:20   You've got some beautiful wallpapers on your iOS devices here, Myke

01:09:24   Thank you two of them are

01:09:28   creations of in 5k of old Apple Mac desktops, which I'll put a link in the show notes

01:09:35   Stephen Hackett and our amazing designer Frank put those together together

01:09:40   the one on my iPhone is actually a

01:09:43   Relay FM members exclusive wallpaper. So if you're a relay of a member you get loads of cool wallpapers

01:09:50   We're just doing another plug here everybody and you yeah, you get lovely wallpapers and that's one for remaster

01:09:57   which is the video game show that I do, you have that same black one on your phone that

01:10:02   you've had forever, the fractal one, although it's better than whatever that out of time

01:10:07   home screen was, that weird dusty thing. And I'm assuming, I didn't, I hate, not good.

01:10:16   I assume that the other two are both Apple's ones, right? I think that that's beach one

01:10:22   is too? No the beach one's not Apple's one. The paint splash is an Apple one. I feel like in

01:10:31   beta season I'm more daring with what wallpapers I might use on different devices.

01:10:36   You're wild right now. Yeah so this is Gray Gone Wild with his wallpaper backgrounds. I think

01:10:43   after beta season is over we might calm down a little bit and go to something more

01:10:51   button-down and business-like.

01:10:53   But where is the beach one from?

01:10:55   I don't know actually where that beach one is from.

01:10:59   I can't remember where I got that originally.

01:11:00   Let's hope nobody wants it because if you don't know where it's from, I can't give people

01:11:04   the links.

01:11:05   This is why we're mentioning the wallpapers because people always want them.

01:11:09   This is what reverse image search is for.

01:11:11   Yep, that's how people found the original one that you couldn't find.

01:11:15   Oh actually I should make a plug

01:11:19   because I don't think I've mentioned it on the show before

01:11:23   but the iPhone wallpaper, it's done

01:11:27   by this designer who's made a whole series of black wallpapers

01:11:31   and they are fantastic and great looking

01:11:35   and so it's similar to the old one that I used to have

01:11:39   it's just less contrasty, it's more subtle

01:11:43   and I will put the link in the show notes for the designer of that has a whole series of

01:11:49   similarly great black wallpapers that people should go check out.

01:11:53   I want to thank Squarespace for supporting this week's episode of Cortex.

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01:12:47   I am using Squarespace right now to build a website for my upcoming wedding.

01:12:52   So I'm getting married next year and we're going to want all of our guests to have all

01:12:56   of the information that they need when that time is right and we're able to do that with

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01:13:31   Oh, Myke. I'm exhausted.

01:13:35   Oh, I'm sorry.

01:13:37   I really am, because I feel like when we talk about these--

01:13:40   I have to mentally go through all of my thoughts for the past many weeks about decisions.

01:13:46   We've barely touched this in the depth that I feel is adequate.

01:13:51   But I cannot go on any further.

01:13:54   We had topics planned for the show, which have all been destroyed by home screen discussion.

01:14:00   which always eats everything.

01:14:03   - Everything.

01:14:05   - And so, what I really wanna know about right now,

01:14:10   as we're ending this show,

01:14:11   is tell me more about your laundry.

01:14:14   (laughing)

01:14:16   - I have a lot to say, believe it or not,

01:14:18   about my laundry, 'cause I'm back home now,

01:14:20   and it was halfway through my trip,

01:14:22   so I needed to do more laundry before I got home.

01:14:26   - The continuing adventure of Myke's laundry.

01:14:28   - Yeah, I did laundry two more times, in fact.

01:14:32   - Okay, so when we last checked in with your laundry,

01:14:38   you had asked for advice for people

01:14:40   about what you were gonna do.

01:14:42   - Yep.

01:14:43   - So what happened?

01:14:43   What happened in America with your laundry?

01:14:46   - So, remember last time,

01:14:49   I had done expensive hotel laundry

01:14:52   and I had done one load of laundry at my co-founder's house

01:14:54   using a machine I didn't understand.

01:14:57   And that me and you were talking about the idea

01:15:00   and how great it will be to use one of those apps,

01:15:03   you know, like the laundry app,

01:15:04   so they can pick up the laundry for you.

01:15:06   I have some bad news, Gray.

01:15:08   All of the apps that I tried

01:15:10   required a US telephone number for signup.

01:15:13   - Okay.

01:15:15   - And I couldn't trick them.

01:15:16   - What do you mean by trick them?

01:15:18   - Like entering a random number

01:15:20   or entering a number that was my number

01:15:22   but in some weird US format,

01:15:24   because they all want to send you a text message

01:15:27   to confirm the phone number to confirm sign up.

01:15:30   - Yeah, this is what Skype phone numbers are for.

01:15:32   No, I didn't think of that, did you?

01:15:36   - No, and you know what's really annoying?

01:15:37   Is I actually set up a Skype telephone number two days ago

01:15:41   because I needed it for a conference call

01:15:43   and I didn't put two and two together.

01:15:47   Can Skype numbers receive text messages?

01:15:50   - I am fairly sure they can.

01:15:52   - Okay.

01:15:53   - And if they can't, I know a lot of these services

01:15:56   do a fallback where they call and give you the pin.

01:15:59   - Mm, yeah, see that would have been it.

01:16:01   - I know for a fact I have verified stuff

01:16:04   that demands a US phone number

01:16:06   with my Skype US phone number.

01:16:09   I know I have done this. - Yeah, okay.

01:16:11   - You're making me slightly doubt myself

01:16:13   about the text message,

01:16:14   but I know I have used it to verify something.

01:16:15   - Can you use the call fallback?

01:16:17   So this is a CGP Grey brand life hack

01:16:20   for everybody out there on the world.

01:16:22   This is good, 'cause they're not cheap,

01:16:25   those Skype numbers, but I do have one now because every now and then someone needs to

01:16:29   call me. I need to talk to someone on the phone and it's just like, oh, can we use Skype?

01:16:35   And it's just like a whole big deal. But now I have a phone number that people can call

01:16:39   and with I think it was with iOS 10. If I'm signed in on Skype, it just rings as if it's

01:16:44   not. So yeah, that's good. I have that set up now. I didn't think of that at the time.

01:16:48   So there you go. You either need that or you can't do it. So when I was in Brooklyn, which

01:16:54   the way, I love Brooklyn, obviously. Love Brooklyn.

01:16:58   Wow, what a surprise. What a surprise. Surprise, surprise.

01:17:02   Do you like Portland too, Myke? I like Portland, I like Brooklyn. I also

01:17:06   stayed in the east, like the Lower East Side, like the East Village. Love that too,

01:17:10   obviously. Yeah, all good, all good stuff for Myke. Lots of Mykey things in those places.

01:17:15   I took my clothes to a laundromat, like a laundromat that had a wash and fold

01:17:21   service. I wasn't 100% sure what that meant, but I assumed what it meant was they would wash and

01:17:27   fold my clothes. That's what it sounds like. It's what it sounds like, right? So I was like,

01:17:31   I figure that this is what I'm looking for, right? But I'd never used one of these services before,

01:17:37   so I just took my, I basically took my clothes in a bag into this place,

01:17:41   making an assumption of what would occur, and I put it down and I said, "Can you take care of

01:17:47   these?" And they said yes, and they gave me a piece of paper and that was it. And I was like,

01:17:51   All right, well, we'll see what happens.

01:17:53   That cost me nine dollars, that that load of clothes, and it was great.

01:17:57   And I was very happy.

01:17:58   And it came back basically exactly the same as the hotel stuff,

01:18:02   just not with a blue ribbon.

01:18:04   So, you know, you don't feel the need to bleep that number nine dollars.

01:18:08   No, I'm fine with nine dollars.

01:18:10   So you're going to let that go through.

01:18:11   Uh huh.

01:18:12   There was an unexpected side effect of the last episode for me.

01:18:16   Yeah, something I didn't anticipate was the amount of direct messages

01:18:20   I was going to get from friends asking me just one simple question. Can you guess what

01:18:26   that question was?

01:18:27   How much did you pay for your laundry?

01:18:29   Yes.

01:18:31   Pretty much everybody that I know.

01:18:33   Everybody wanted to know.

01:18:34   Everyone wanted to know. And as I assumed would happen, all the listeners wanted to

01:18:42   know too.

01:18:43   Yeah, that's what you get for bleeping.

01:18:45   Yep. I mean, I knew it would happen. I was fine with it. But then something really interesting

01:18:50   happened in the reddit thread. Someone with the username "funkyu" put together a google

01:18:58   form to employ the wisdom of the crowd, which I found out was like this method of trying

01:19:06   to guess something by using multiple people's guesses and you take the averages of the guesses

01:19:11   and it gives you something which is expected to be correct. Now this person put together

01:19:18   this survey, they weeded out some of the more wild answers, which was probably the right

01:19:25   thing to do, and came up with an answer of $153.21 over 183 responses. They then closed

01:19:37   it down after that point just because they felt that they had a good sense of the answer

01:19:42   from that point. Now, because this number was so close to the actual number, I felt

01:19:51   that it was only fair for me to confirm it. So the actual number that I paid for my laundry,

01:19:59   dear listeners, was $116.

01:20:04   That's pretty good for a wisdom of the crowd estimation.

01:20:07   And I didn't want to share the number at the time, or cold, because I still believe if

01:20:11   If I would have said $116, I would have been inundated by people saying how ridiculous

01:20:16   that is to spend on laundry.

01:20:18   It is ridiculous.

01:20:19   It is ridiculous.

01:20:20   But also all of my friends that asked me, how much did you spend?

01:20:23   I said to them, my first answer for everyone was, how much did you think?

01:20:28   And everyone went higher.

01:20:30   So I still believe that by not giving that number, everyone thought it was worse than

01:20:34   it actually ended up being.

01:20:36   Because I still think $116 is an embarrassing amount to spend on laundry, especially when

01:20:40   and I got the same amount done for $9.

01:20:43   But I feel better about my $116

01:20:46   because most people thought it was 1,000,

01:20:49   which was wild to me.

01:20:50   People kept thinking I spent $1,000.

01:20:52   I would say keep the clothes, right?

01:20:55   Like you can have 'em.

01:20:57   I don't want 'em anymore.

01:20:58   Take 'em.

01:20:59   $1,000, no, that's ludicrous.

01:21:03   I spent 116 was the amount.

01:21:05   - So you feel like you've done

01:21:07   successful expectation management here?

01:21:09   I do actually. I feel like I managed this best for my own personal well-being. $116

01:21:20   was the amount. Congratulations to everybody for getting so close with $153. So I assume

01:21:27   that there was just a lot of people that have probably been through this themselves. I also

01:21:31   did hear from a lot of people that have been through this themselves who had a guess of

01:21:34   amount because they know how much this stuff costs. So I think this can close out the laundry

01:21:40   now because I'm back at home and I'm doing my laundry at home with a machine that I understand.

01:21:46   And it's effectively free because our water is paid for by our building so I don't need

01:21:52   to pay the water bill. I guess it's just the electric that powers the washing. Anyway,

01:21:59   I expect it's less than $9 a load.

01:22:01   What do you want? You're walking us into a kilowatt hour cost conversion calculation here?

01:22:07   Is that what you're going towards?

01:22:08   I really don't need that. We're all good. I'm cool with what it's costing me at home,

01:22:12   but there we go. So that's the laundry.

01:22:15   I'm glad you're back to your front-loaded washer.

01:22:18   It's just so much more easy to understand. I used another one of those top-loading washers

01:22:25   with some more friends because we went for a vacation with friends,

01:22:29   and I still don't understand it.

01:22:31   I just don't get it.

01:22:32   It doesn't make sense to me.

01:22:34   There's like this big wheel

01:22:35   and it has like a million options on it.

01:22:38   I just, I don't get it.

01:22:39   - I think we're just gonna have to put this aside

01:22:40   as cultural differences, my--

01:22:42   - It is, oh, 100%.

01:22:43   I'm not saying it's wrong.

01:22:44   I'm just saying I don't understand it.

01:22:47   You know, in the same way that I would imagine

01:22:48   people that are used to the top loading machines

01:22:51   have to take some time to understand

01:22:52   the front loading machines, 'cause they're different.

01:22:54   - They're not that different.

01:22:56   - I wanna just, before we finish today, Gray,

01:22:58   I want to thank everybody who signed up to become a relay FM member

01:23:01   We mentioned it on the last episode so people could get access to spooky manor our wonderful text adventure special

01:23:08   Members only podcast you can still sign up if you want to you can go to relay.fm/membership

01:23:14   You can sign up you can support this show. We would love that you can support any relay FM show

01:23:18   You'll get the bonuses you'll get the wallpapers that I mentioned earlier as well

01:23:22   I will put a link in the show notes to an amazing video trailer

01:23:25   which gives a sense of the audio from last time, but also some fun visuals as well.

01:23:30   You can still sign up and still get access to it if you want to.

01:23:33   You can sign up at any point. If you're listening to this episode in like a year in the future

01:23:38   from this date, you can still sign up at relay.fm/membership and you'll get access to all those

01:23:44   episodes. So you can do that. You get this year's and you'll get last year's fun Texas venture along

01:23:48   with a lot of other really good relay FM bonuses that have come out. So please feel free and thank

01:23:53   you if you have signed up. I just want to say thank you to everybody who signed up

01:23:57   as well. We really appreciate it and I also want to specifically say a

01:24:03   real thanks to you Myke and to Jason Snell for all of the work that you two

01:24:10   put into that episode. I feel like this is a thing where I get to just show up

01:24:17   and I have a lot of fun doing those episodes, but I always feel the need to re-emphasize.

01:24:27   I am so aware that those member episodes work because Jason does such a fantastic job of being

01:24:38   the computer, being the parser. That is a much more imaginative role than it may seem to the listener,

01:24:45   like the things that he has to keep track of and all of the work he has to do live while we are recording

01:24:51   so I really appreciate that and

01:24:53   to you Myke

01:24:55   for the

01:24:57   I'm going to say

01:24:59   insane amount of editing you do to these these member shows all of the

01:25:05   special effects that you add all of the

01:25:08   atmospheric sound effects which which people might not even notice when they're listening but really add to the feel of the show

01:25:15   I am very grateful to the tremendous amount of work that the two of you are putting into these shows.

01:25:23   And I think it's what makes them fun to do.

01:25:27   And I have to say, it makes them really great to listen to.

01:25:31   I have listened to both of our member episodes multiple times, just out of enjoyment.

01:25:38   Like, "Oh, is this work? Am I listening for edits?"

01:25:40   Like, "Ah, I'm just listening because I like it."

01:25:42   Like they're great shows and there's a lot of man hours

01:25:46   that have gone into them.

01:25:48   So thank you for all the work that you do on that.

01:25:50   - It's a pleasure, genuinely it's a pleasure

01:25:52   'cause I really, really love doing them.

01:25:55   (laughing)