Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Great, it's that time again.

00:00:01 ◼   ► What time is it, Myke?

00:00:02 ◼   ► It's an episode out of time.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Oh no!

00:00:05 ◼   ► Where are we?

00:00:06 ◼   ► When are we, Myke?

00:00:07 ◼   ► Nobody knows!

00:00:08 ◼   ► Nobody knows!

00:00:09 ◼   ► So I guess we should welcome our listeners to an episode out of time 3!

00:00:14 ◼   ► Time strikes back!

00:00:16 ◼   ► I spend a lot of time thinking now about what these episodes can be called.

00:00:21 ◼   ► You know the rule with movies is now when we get to an episode out of time 4, it just

00:00:24 ◼   ► has to be something like an episode out of time revolution, right?

00:00:28 ◼   ► moved to something with an R. We find a way to put the number into the text.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I feel like number five we could put like EPI5ODE for episode, right? And then we reboot

00:00:40 ◼   ► it for six. I like that you've got the reboot already lined up. You're in charge of this.

00:00:45 ◼   ► It should be great. Thank you for joining me today. I have a very important question

00:00:50 ◼   ► for you before we start the rest of our conversation here. I would like to know where do you see

00:00:54 ◼   ► yourself in five years. This is your performance review now.

00:00:59 ◼   ► Oh is this my performance review? Yeah.

00:01:02 ◼   ► I don't do performance reviews Myke, I'm self-employed.

00:01:05 ◼   ► The reason I bring this up with that time interval is that you have been self-employed

00:01:09 ◼   ► for five years. Yeah, yeah that was a surprise.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Did this one pop up on you unexpectedly? It totally did. I would not have known or

00:01:20 ◼   ► noticed were it not for the memories function in Apple Photos. I took some photos of my

00:01:27 ◼   ► last day on the job and they popped up in memories.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Oh, that's awesome. What a great way to find that out.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really fun. I do have a habit of taking what I think of as memory shots, photos

00:01:41 ◼   ► that are not intended to be good photos but they're photos that are just intended to provoke

00:01:45 ◼   ► a memory in the future. So I have a bunch of photos that are like that that just seem

00:01:49 ◼   ► like they're totally meaningless photos, but I see them I remember like oh yes, this is why I took this photograph this day

00:01:54 ◼   ► and so yeah, there's just uh, just a couple photos of my old science lab and

00:02:00 ◼   ► Like oh, right

00:02:02 ◼   ► That was that was five years ago

00:02:05 ◼   ► and it was it was surprising to see it pop up in memories as a essentially like

00:02:09 ◼   ► Surprise anniversary that you didn't know was happening

00:02:14 ◼   ► Did you have any sense of it being around this time?

00:02:17 ◼   ► Like, do you have a vague idea of when it was that you quit work?

00:02:22 ◼   ► Like, does that ever pop into your head?

00:02:24 ◼   ► Like, I can't remember the year offhand, but I have a vague idea of the season,

00:02:30 ◼   ► like, kind of the time frame in which I left.

00:02:33 ◼   ► It caught me off guard because I've never been able to fully internalize the UK teaching schedule.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Having grown up with the American school schedule of the summers are very different even though you worked in it for multiple years

00:02:49 ◼   ► That's yeah

00:02:50 ◼   ► It was it really was like it just I was always like I always had to look at calendars about when the summer

00:02:56 ◼   ► Was just it was so so different

00:02:59 ◼   ► It just never really my brain just did not snap together with that and holidays were always like oh, what a nice surprise

00:03:04 ◼   ► So the answer is no like when I saw it I was I was really quite surprised to realize that

00:03:12 ◼   ► Oh, it was this time last year because of course it was toward the end of the school year and also complicated by the fact as I've

00:03:20 ◼   ► mentioned previously when you're a teacher you have to quit like three months in advance.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Which is actually if you take the summer into advance is a lot closer to like four or five months in advance.

00:03:31 ◼   ► So it's a strange thing.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I did a six-week notice.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Out of like kind of goodwill and that froze me off.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, right because even six weeks is a long period of time

00:03:42 ◼   ► Right to like between when you know, you're done and when you actually leave like three months

00:03:48 ◼   ► I can only imagine that being like prison

00:03:51 ◼   ► Right, like it's the closest thing I can think of like some kind of emotional prison because you at this point you're done

00:03:57 ◼   ► You know, you're leaving but they're like keeping you there

00:04:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it wasn't it what I wouldn't describe it as emotional

00:04:04 ◼   ► Prison in fact, it's it's much of the reverse because there's a certain amount of like I don't have to care about any of this anymore

00:04:10 ◼   ► No, that's true. I understand why that schedule happens for teachers, but I don't think it's

00:04:14 ◼   ► Great for anybody involved. Mm-hmm because as the teacher is like, ah, whatever, you know, this place doesn't exist to me anymore

00:04:22 ◼   ► But you're still like teaching children for many months. You're shaping the hearts and minds

00:04:27 ◼   ► but that also

00:04:31 ◼   ► muddies and confuses the waters a little bit in my head about when did this thing happen.

00:04:36 ◼   ► But so I figure like oh, I'll mark the anniversary from

00:04:39 ◼   ► the day that I walked out of a school for the last time like that seems like the reasonable place.

00:04:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that's it's the day you left. That's because before that point you're still working the job. You can't you're not self-employed.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Yeah, no, you're not self-employed.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Have you had any kind of reflection personally on five years? Like if you did it to dis-trigger anything for you to sit and think

00:04:59 ◼   ► about

00:05:00 ◼   ► What you've achieved where you are where you thought you might be and where you've actually ended up

00:05:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not that kind of person, uh-huh, I think I was just surprised because I hadn't thought about it

00:05:13 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, but it but I didn't I don't know. I don't I don't feel a moment to like oh, I'm gonna sit down and

00:05:17 ◼   ► Reflect on these last few years. Let me see if I can force it

00:05:23 ◼   ► Are you where you thought you might be?

00:05:28 ◼   ► Like if you look at what your life is now, is this what you imagined?

00:05:36 ◼   ► Like if we take out the fact that there are, you know, the things that you don't think

00:05:39 ◼   ► about, right, like the little administration frustrations and stuff like that, like take

00:05:44 ◼   ► away the minutiae and just look at it from like a big picture.

00:05:47 ◼   ► Is this kind of where you expected you would be in your life?

00:05:49 ◼   ► Okay, so the reason I'm hesitating about that is I don't tend to think about things in that

00:05:55 ◼   ► way.

00:05:56 ◼   ► fast forward five years from now, which is how you started this question, I don't have

00:06:04 ◼   ► anything like expectations for where will I be in five years from now. Well I think this is just a

00:06:10 ◼   ► question which is infinitely harder for somebody who's self-employed to somebody who is within a

00:06:16 ◼   ► company, right? Like it's a joke, right? And it's like a thing that I can't even really answer, like

00:06:21 ◼   ► Like as a person who owns a company, it's a similar thing.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Trying to think where you'll be in three or five months time or where your company will

00:06:28 ◼   ► be is really difficult.

00:06:30 ◼   ► But when there is an organizational structure, well, that's easier.

00:06:33 ◼   ► That's a path.

00:06:34 ◼   ► But there isn't really a defined path when you're out on your own because there are factors

00:06:40 ◼   ► and things that might happen that will change everything, which is, you know, of course

00:06:44 ◼   ► there are things like that inside of a company, but it's at least easier to answer the question

00:06:47 ◼   ► because you can be like, well, I want to be a senior manager.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Yeah, that's definitely true.

00:06:52 ◼   ► The flip side of it is, I think, when I was teaching

00:06:55 ◼   ► and this thing would come up about "where do you want to be in five years?"

00:06:59 ◼   ► And my answer to the people above me was always very clear

00:07:03 ◼   ► "Not in management, not with any more responsibility than I have right now."

00:07:06 ◼   ► Not with teaching.

00:07:08 ◼   ► No, but I mean like, the job that I'm doing right now

00:07:11 ◼   ► is exactly if I'm still here, what I want to be doing.

00:07:13 ◼   ► That's another way to kind of answer it, is like, I just want to be a frontline teacher

00:07:18 ◼   ► and I do not want to move up in this hierarchy.

00:07:21 ◼   ► - Well, I think that's perfectly fine.

00:07:22 ◼   ► I mean, I have people that work for me

00:07:24 ◼   ► back in my old corporate days

00:07:25 ◼   ► who would have the answers to that question.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And I always found it's perfectly valid.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Not everybody can or should aspire

00:07:32 ◼   ► to continue moving through the ranks

00:07:33 ◼   ► 'cause there's not enough spaces, right?

00:07:35 ◼   ► That's not how companies are built.

00:07:37 ◼   ► They're built on people that are in layers

00:07:39 ◼   ► in an organization, and it's really useful

00:07:42 ◼   ► to have people that wanna stay where they are.

00:07:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that's why I'm just thinking

00:07:45 ◼   ► there's a more clear career answer to that from a long time ago. Whereas now, when I

00:07:53 ◼   ► think five years in the future, I would call them targets, like not even goals, but just

00:07:58 ◼   ► sort of targets for various areas of my life. But those come without any kind of expectation

00:08:08 ◼   ► of anything.

00:08:09 ◼   ► How important are they to you?

00:08:11 ◼   ► wildly important. Like they're really, and that's why I kind of like the word target is it's just like it's something to aim for

00:08:18 ◼   ► but targets can also change and move like they're not they're not like a goal

00:08:24 ◼   ► that's like a fixed position on the earth that you're running toward. Like the target is just like oh

00:08:29 ◼   ► this is a thing that you're

00:08:31 ◼   ► steering toward but it just feels so much less important in my mind. So there's like tons of time in my life

00:08:37 ◼   ► where it's just like oh, yeah, I totally miss targets and it doesn't matter

00:08:39 ◼   ► It doesn't really affect me because that's not the purpose of the thing. The purpose of the thing is to just have something to aim toward.

00:08:45 ◼   ► I guess the thing that I can say to sort of answer your question is that

00:08:49 ◼   ► like I feel very fortunate to be

00:08:52 ◼   ► much more successful now than I had any reasonable expectation of being at the time when I was walking out of that door.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Leaving that school, I felt like I had achieved what was then what I wanted, which is I can safely

00:09:08 ◼   ► leave this environment and become self-employed without too much stress or anxiety.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And it's like that's when I was walking out the door. That was the thing. It's like, okay great

00:09:18 ◼   ► I have achieved this and now five years later

00:09:22 ◼   ► It's like I'm doing more things than I would have expected that I was doing. So yeah, I feel I feel very fortunate in that way.

00:09:28 ◼   ► I can definitely

00:09:30 ◼   ► relate to what you're saying in that I feel like I'm doing what I

00:09:34 ◼   ► Hoped I would do I feel like I'm doing what I expected I could do. Mm-hmm

00:09:39 ◼   ► But it's very it's also very different, you know, the actualization of it is different. I'm doing better than I thought I would

00:09:47 ◼   ► But it's still like the same thing, but the actual output the results are different, you know, like I am still

00:09:55 ◼   ► Employed as somebody who makes podcasts for a living which is what I hoped I would be able to do

00:10:02 ◼   ► It's what I set out to do

00:10:04 ◼   ► Right. You achieved your dream, Myke.

00:10:05 ◼   ► I achieved my dream, but I've been able to do it at honestly a level which is much larger than I

00:10:12 ◼   ► expected. And it's, you know, because I'm coming up on three years now.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:10:16 ◼   ► Which surprises me when I think of you, I feel like you've been doing it forever, right? You

00:10:22 ◼   ► know, like just my conception of you, my imagination, like from is that you've been doing

00:10:28 ◼   ► this for so much longer. And it's really surprising to me that you only have two years on me. Like

00:10:32 ◼   ► like that is just a big, when you said it I was like oh wow because I don't think I

00:10:36 ◼   ► really had an idea of the timeframe.

00:10:39 ◼   ► But yeah like you know it is an interesting thing to think about like to look back on

00:10:45 ◼   ► what you thought you might be able to do and where you are and it is nice to know that

00:10:49 ◼   ► you achieved it and it's nice I think sometimes to look back and think to yourself yeah no

00:10:54 ◼   ► I did this because it can be really easy to get stuck in the day to day right?

00:11:01 ◼   ► I mean, yeah. I think when I realized that it was five years, my reaction is, it's all

00:11:09 ◼   ► careers in entertainment come to an end at some point.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Oh, please. I don't want to talk about this right now.

00:11:19 ◼   ► You might not want to talk about it, but I mean, look, Seinfeld was what, nine seasons?

00:11:25 ◼   ► I have been spending an amount of time recently thinking on that problem of a career in entertainment

00:11:34 ◼   ► only lasts so long.

00:11:36 ◼   ► I've been thinking about this.

00:11:37 ◼   ► It makes me very uncomfortable.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Okay, so that's why you're having such a visceral reaction to this.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Like, I've hit upon a thing which is on your mind at the very moment.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:47 ◼   ► It's just something that I think is stupid to not think about, you know?

00:11:51 ◼   ► And it ties back to what I've been talking about with the fact that I have this urge

00:11:56 ◼   ► to do new things in that I want to make sure that I'm trying not even to be relevant, because

00:12:02 ◼   ► if I want to be relevant, there's a million things that I could do that I don't want to

00:12:05 ◼   ► do.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Relevancy is not necessarily what I'm looking for, but it's to remain fresh and new and

00:12:12 ◼   ► to reinvent things and move in different directions so I can pick up people along the way and

00:12:19 ◼   ► also to make sure for the people that are tuning in, watching, that they're getting

00:12:24 ◼   ► new stuff that they're not going to get bored of.

00:12:27 ◼   ► I've always been very conscious of that, like repackaging and rebranding and that sort of

00:12:32 ◼   ► stuff.

00:12:33 ◼   ► It's something that I've had quite a lot of focus on in my professional career.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And that is purely in the idea of trying to make sure that I'm keeping things fresh so

00:12:44 ◼   ► it makes people want to keep tuning in.

00:12:46 ◼   ► But yeah, I've been thinking about this, like, how long does it last?

00:12:50 ◼   ► Not forever, not even necessarily a long time.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Not forever, but it can last for long enough.

00:12:55 ◼   ► It can last for long enough.

00:12:56 ◼   ► You know, because I look at other people, there have been people that have been podcasting

00:12:58 ◼   ► for over 10 years.

00:13:00 ◼   ► You know, and I think to myself, if I'm able to do this for 10 years and it can keep growing,

00:13:04 ◼   ► then I'm probably going to be in a good situation to do something else when it's done.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Like, that's what I keep thinking of, right?

00:13:10 ◼   ► Is like, making sure that what I'm doing right now is the best that I can do, so it gives

00:13:15 ◼   ► me the ability to do something else when it's all said and done.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Yeah, it's funny.

00:13:19 ◼   ► When I talk to YouTube creators, I find that they fall into two categories on this topic,

00:13:26 ◼   ► which is category one.

00:13:30 ◼   ► People who assume, "Well, every morning when I wake up, I could discover that it's all

00:13:36 ◼   ► gone.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Like, the algorithm doesn't love me anymore," or whatever.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Like it all just could disappear any morning.

00:13:43 ◼   ► And then the other category of people seem to just assume that it will last forever and find questions about the end baffling.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Like their meaningless Zen-Koan meditation comments, right?

00:13:59 ◼   ► It's like, "What do you mean an end? This will last forever!"

00:14:03 ◼   ► And I am definitely much more in the former category than the latter category.

00:14:08 ◼   ► So, for me, it's-- my feeling is...

00:14:12 ◼   ► I feel like I have been preparing for the end from day one.

00:14:16 ◼   ► So it's not like, "Oh, I've never thought about this until, like, I noticed it was five years."

00:14:21 ◼   ► But it is-- it's just a thing that I feel like I am constantly aware of this as a thing.

00:14:28 ◼   ► And, like, especially being a YouTube creator, like, being kind of at the mercy of the algorithm in a way that makes this kind of career more vulnerable than others.

00:14:37 ◼   ► than others, and it's also particularly scary when I've seen people who I know

00:14:41 ◼   ► seem to suddenly be on the end of an algorithm change that dramatically impacts their career. This thing comes

00:14:49 ◼   ► for all of us, but I think this is part of like

00:14:53 ◼   ► any kind of self-employment. I think if you are not

00:14:59 ◼   ► constantly thinking about and planning for the future, it's almost a kind of negligence

00:15:07 ◼   ► not to. Like even if you don't have any realistic expectations that your career might end at any moment,

00:15:15 ◼   ► I think you still need to be, to some extent, planning as though that might be the case.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Because like you never know what's going to happen, and this is the great fear and abyss that comes with being self-employed,

00:15:32 ◼   ► which is also part of why it cannot be universally recommended as a career path to everybody.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Because that's a thing that you always have to have in the back of your mind and you have to be ready for.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Is preparing for a future that might be quite different from the present.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Why does this always happen on these episodes?

00:15:54 ◼   ► What?

00:15:55 ◼   ► They always get so grim.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Do they get so grim? I don't remember.

00:16:00 ◼   ► My memory serves that like something happens some level of introspection occurs on the episode out of time

00:16:06 ◼   ► I mean, it's it might kind of make sense right, you know, we're floating in this little vortex right now

00:16:11 ◼   ► All we have to do is to think about ourselves and I guess right that you know

00:16:15 ◼   ► The harsh realities of time they they hit you quite hard. I don't think it's that there's nothing hitting hard

00:16:20 ◼   ► This is there's no harsh reality like this is just the way things are you know?

00:16:24 ◼   ► With it with everything Myke this too shall pass

00:16:28 ◼   ► This episode shall pass our lives shall pass everything. I don't think I want to talk to you anymore

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00:18:09 ◼   ► Considering this is an episode out of time,

00:18:12 ◼   ► I wanted to talk about something that I spotted a little trend happening on Twitter a little while ago.

00:18:17 ◼   ► of people tweeting images of their old home screens.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Like iOS 6 era 2012, 2013 home screens.

00:18:27 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, there was a fun little Twitter thread about this.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Who started this, was it Casey, Casey started this?

00:18:34 ◼   ► Yes, that's right. - Yep, Casey Liss started it

00:18:36 ◼   ► and then it went on from there.

00:18:37 ◼   ► And I thought it might be fun for us to take a look at this

00:18:41 ◼   ► considering home screens are our bread and butter really.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Why not in an episode out of time go back in time and review and critique our past selves?

00:18:52 ◼   ► So I have one example for you here, I have two examples for me.

00:18:55 ◼   ► Okay.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And I have 2011 and 2012.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Should we start with my 2011 because it's the oldest?

00:19:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:03 ◼   ► So there is a link between my 2011 and 2012 home screens, which is the wallpaper.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Okay, so

00:19:11 ◼   ► You have some kind of movie poster as your wallpaper, it's a movie poster. I really like this wallpaper because

00:19:20 ◼   ► Nothing is the icons cover everything that is relevant the icons cover

00:19:27 ◼   ► The title of the movie the icons cover the central design

00:19:32 ◼   ► iconography

00:19:35 ◼   ► The thing that is most clear is on a movie poster when you see all of those words below that list everybody who's involved

00:19:41 ◼   ► That's the part that is the clearest lee visible just above the dock. Yep. It's a real a-plus home screen material

00:19:47 ◼   ► Yeah, this this this movie poster. Yeah, this is a terrible choice for your wallpaper

00:19:52 ◼   ► But what movie is this Myke? This is Scott Pilgrim versus the world. I figured it had to be okay

00:19:57 ◼   ► So that when I look at this now

00:19:59 ◼   ► I like I see to myself how I could have made it so much better just by

00:20:03 ◼   ► dropping it into Pixelmator and just take at least taking out the title text and all the words underneath

00:20:08 ◼   ► right like it would have made it vastly better like i don't know why i didn't do that because

00:20:12 ◼   ► you'll see the seven figures up at the top that's pretty good they're kind of standing on the icons

00:20:16 ◼   ► right that one's not too bad but everything else is super super terrible by the way the images for

00:20:22 ◼   ► all these will be in our show notes if you want to you really should be looking at this as we're

00:20:26 ◼   ► talking about it otherwise you have to do some real mind games to try and picture what these look like

00:20:33 ◼   ► Well, it is fun to see the pre-iOS 7 transition.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Just how different everything looks.

00:20:41 ◼   ► And then of course, this screenshot that we're looking at here,

00:20:44 ◼   ► it must be an iPhone 4 or so?

00:20:46 ◼   ► Like the size of the 4 anyway, because it doesn't...

00:20:48 ◼   ► Right, because the 5 has one more row of icons.

00:20:51 ◼   ► So it's all squashed and rectangular.

00:20:56 ◼   ► I also particularly enjoy on your home screen here,

00:20:59 ◼   ► there's a thing that I could not possibly abide by,

00:21:02 ◼   ► which is that you have an app which is called Chiching.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm looking at it right now.

00:21:07 ◼   ► But it looks like the icon for Chiching is...

00:21:09 ◼   ► Non-retina.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the non-retina icon.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Chiching. Chiching was a tale of heartbreak for me.

00:21:15 ◼   ► So Chiching was a budget planning application that I used very extensively at this time in my life.

00:21:25 ◼   ► The problem with Chiching was it was...

00:21:29 ◼   ► active development was ceased before the iPhone 4, I think. And it was just, I held onto it for a

00:21:36 ◼   ► few years and just over time more and more of it was breaking. And it was just, it was really sad

00:21:44 ◼   ► that like every time I bought a new phone or every time iOS was updated, the app got closer and

00:21:49 ◼   ► closer to dying. And it died, I don't know when it was, but it was just before iOS 7 and I had to

00:21:57 ◼   ► to move away from Chiching.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I actually ended up moving to no budgeting application

00:22:01 ◼   ► at all.

00:22:02 ◼   ► - Right, of course.

00:22:03 ◼   ► - Because there was just nothing that would give me

00:22:05 ◼   ► the exact features that I wanted.

00:22:07 ◼   ► I tried a bunch and then over time I stopped doing it

00:22:10 ◼   ► because the applications just weren't sufficient.

00:22:12 ◼   ► It was sad, it was very sad.

00:22:14 ◼   ► But yeah, you can see it there, it's on my 2011,

00:22:16 ◼   ► it's also on my 2012 home screen.

00:22:18 ◼   ► It's this app that just refused to die.

00:22:21 ◼   ► The real one here though that I don't know what it is

00:22:24 ◼   ► and it's the Abhorrent is an app called Pouch,

00:22:28 ◼   ► which has got a photo as its icon.

00:22:31 ◼   ► - Is it like a bag of holding?

00:22:33 ◼   ► Like what did you put in there?

00:22:33 ◼   ► - Honestly, I don't know what it is.

00:22:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:22:36 ◼   ► I can't find it.

00:22:37 ◼   ► - It's funny to think that this is a thing

00:22:40 ◼   ► that was important enough to make it

00:22:42 ◼   ► on your four by four home screen page.

00:22:45 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:22:46 ◼   ► - And now you can't remember what on earth this thing was.

00:22:48 ◼   ► - So like the only thing that I can find

00:22:50 ◼   ► is an app also called Pouch,

00:22:51 ◼   ► which enables your 37 signals backpack account on your iPhone and iPad.

00:22:56 ◼   ► But I don't even know what that is, right?

00:22:58 ◼   ► Like I don't even know what backpack is.

00:23:01 ◼   ► So I don't know why I had it.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I don't know what I was doing with it at that time.

00:23:05 ◼   ► I'm assuming it's the same application, but like,

00:23:08 ◼   ► I just cannot recall why I would have ever used it.

00:23:10 ◼   ► So that's actually pretty telling of my life at this point.

00:23:14 ◼   ► What do you mean?

00:23:15 ◼   ► Just like trying these things to be productive.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I think at this point in my life,

00:23:19 ◼   ► I'm like starting all of my real side projects, right?

00:23:22 ◼   ► 2000 and I started podcasting in 2010.

00:23:25 ◼   ► In 2011, I would have been getting a bit more serious about it.

00:23:29 ◼   ► So like an application, which is like a digital backpack, I'm sure was somehow

00:23:34 ◼   ► related to me trying to become more productive.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Ah, right.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Okay.

00:23:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:23:38 ◼   ► You're trying to bootstrap yourself.

00:23:39 ◼   ► I see.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:23:40 ◼   ► I see.

00:23:40 ◼   ► There's something in there, I believe, which is like my attempts at becoming

00:23:46 ◼   ► someone who's thinking about side projects and side careers

00:23:49 ◼   ► and using productivity tools to make that happen.

00:23:52 ◼   ► - You could have used a podcast like Cortex

00:23:54 ◼   ► to help you along, Myke.

00:23:55 ◼   ► - I sure could have.

00:23:57 ◼   ► The thing is though, Gray, if Cortex would have existed then

00:23:59 ◼   ► then I would have been all right.

00:24:00 ◼   ► Like, you know, we'd be fine, we'd be fine.

00:24:04 ◼   ► - We might have caused a time paradox.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - Yep, that's the real risk of doing an episode out of time.

00:24:09 ◼   ► You do have the ability to just rip a hole

00:24:12 ◼   ► in the fabric of time at any moment.

00:24:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, we have to be very careful.

00:24:15 ◼   ► very careful. Is there anything else on this screen that jumps out at you particularly?

00:24:18 ◼   ► What is Icebird? What is this thing?

00:24:20 ◼   ► This was back in the day when Twitter clients were rampant.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Oh, it's a Twitter client. Okay, that makes sense.

00:24:26 ◼   ► Icebird was the app that I was using, I think, when everyone was still using like Tweety

00:24:31 ◼   ► or Twitterific. It was like a pretty janky in places application, but it had a lot of

00:24:36 ◼   ► really interesting features that I cannot remember. But I know at the time I was using

00:24:41 ◼   ► because it allowed me to do like weird and wonderful things with Twitter.

00:24:44 ◼   ► But like I was the only person that I knew that used it.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Hmm. You know, as a meta-commentary, there's a thing I feel like I can't get my brain to

00:24:54 ◼   ► understand the appropriate scale of, which is how old and how long some pieces of software

00:25:03 ◼   ► have been around on iOS because in my brain iOS is still new. It's the new shiny thing,

00:25:13 ◼   ► but then at the same time the iPhone came out in 2007. It's not new at all. And I constantly

00:25:22 ◼   ► have to use 2007 as like a year zero reference. I'm particularly aware of it if I'm watching

00:25:31 ◼   ► movies and like movies from the 2000s like I think it's always useful to peg

00:25:36 ◼   ► when a movie takes place relative to the iPhone because of how central something

00:25:42 ◼   ► like an iPhone could be too many of the plots of movies. Yeah yeah yeah right

00:25:45 ◼   ► like a movie that takes place in 2008 or there was filmed in 2008 you realize oh

00:25:51 ◼   ► you can't assume that people have smartphones like smartphones are still

00:25:55 ◼   ► relatively new things and so all sorts of wacky miscommunication plots they're

00:25:59 ◼   ► way more acceptable, even though the world still looks like a modern world.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Like it's the nothing is really that different except for the phones being added.

00:26:07 ◼   ► It's like fashions haven't changed that much technology and all sorts of other

00:26:11 ◼   ► things hasn't changed that much. It's just the presence or absence of phones.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And so like, I don't know, like I'm just looking at your home screen here and

00:26:19 ◼   ► it's like, oh, right. There's Dew on here, which is an app that I still use.

00:26:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I can't believe that. That's the thing that really surprised me.

00:26:27 ◼   ► like an application like Dew that I use all the time

00:26:30 ◼   ► and I've been using it for over five years at this point.

00:26:33 ◼   ► That was a real big surprise to me.

00:26:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's surprising to see.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Or like Instapaper, which I always want to go back and look,

00:26:42 ◼   ► but I'm fairly sure Instapaper may have been

00:26:46 ◼   ► the very first app I ever downloaded from the App Store.

00:26:50 ◼   ► But it's like, oh, okay, this is a thing

00:26:52 ◼   ► that I have been using for a very long time now,

00:26:56 ◼   ► But it still feels like, oh, right, it's this new thing that I can use to save articles.

00:27:00 ◼   ► There's something in my brain that just can't place the age of iOS and the iPhone appropriately.

00:27:10 ◼   ► And it's constantly re-surprised at how long a bunch of these things have actually been around.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Saying about aging, though, when you look at these screenshots, they do feel older than they are.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Like, I'm really struck by how dark everything looks.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Hmm. Yeah.

00:27:25 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like it looks like the brightness is down on all of these images. It's very strange. It's like obviously design

00:27:30 ◼   ► changes and now things are whiter and brighter but everything looks really like

00:27:35 ◼   ► dingy and dirty in a way that I can't it's very strange to me. Well, yeah

00:27:41 ◼   ► I think it's it's a holdover from lots of stuff having textures and gradients. Yeah shadows, isn't it?

00:27:46 ◼   ► I think that the shadows and the gradients for some reason when I look at them now

00:27:50 ◼   ► It makes it look like like the camera icon has been dragged through a hedge or something

00:27:54 ◼   ► Yeah, or even if you look at for example Reader, which is an RSS app I used for a long time, the texture

00:28:00 ◼   ► darkens Reader. Or I think a particularly good example is if we flip over to your next iPhone screen, the one with the yellow background.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Tweetbot is a great example of they put

00:28:12 ◼   ► texture on the bird's face and that texture really darkens

00:28:17 ◼   ► everything. So there's that's why everything looks dark because in order to make it look

00:28:23 ◼   ► 3D, you need to have parts that are dark. You can't just have a flat icon design.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Should we look at the 2012 one now? See how it changed?

00:28:31 ◼   ► Yep.

00:28:32 ◼   ► So you see our good old friend, Ching-Ching, holding on. Well, he's not dead at this point.

00:28:37 ◼   ► No.

00:28:39 ◼   ► Looking worse and worse.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Some of the things I find interesting is how a lot of the applications remained in their places or were replaced

00:28:46 ◼   ► by similar types of applications.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Mm-hmm like agenda which was a calendar app that I don't really remember very well

00:28:54 ◼   ► Agenda agenda I really miss I remember that that was my ching ching

00:29:00 ◼   ► I remember holding on to agenda so far past the point at which I should have been using it

00:29:06 ◼   ► Huh eventually something about the sink broke and I was like, oh I have to let you go now agenda

00:29:10 ◼   ► But I don't even remember what it was

00:29:12 ◼   ► I just remember I really loved that calendar app and I feel like I haven't I

00:29:18 ◼   ► Haven't liked a calendar app as much as I liked agenda since the only thing I remember about

00:29:23 ◼   ► Agenda is it had themes and some of the themes were named after popular websites in the Apple community

00:29:28 ◼   ► It's the only thing I remember about

00:29:31 ◼   ► So like simple note reader do they all remained in the same place?

00:29:35 ◼   ► Icebird is replaced by tweet bot at this point as my Twitter application

00:29:39 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, you know the camera and Instagram they moved over maps moved a little bit

00:29:44 ◼   ► I find it funny that between 2011 and 2012 I realized that the phone is not a worthy

00:29:49 ◼   ► dockable application.

00:29:51 ◼   ► That moves up one and gets replaced by day one.

00:29:56 ◼   ► There's a couple of remnants of Myke Past in here like Nike Fuelband, that was a thing

00:30:01 ◼   ► that I was using for a while to track fitness, and App.net Rhino, an application for a social

00:30:06 ◼   ► network that is now dead that was supposed to be a Twitter replacement called App.net.

00:30:12 ◼   ► That was there for a while.

00:30:13 ◼   ► remember app.net. Wow, I haven't thought about them in a long time. One application

00:30:17 ◼   ► that I tweeted, when I tweeted the image of this one, people were like, "Oh man, it

00:30:22 ◼   ► was Verbs. Verbs was an IAM app." You'll notice I had an IAM application on my

00:30:27 ◼   ► previous screen called IAM Plus. Right. This was in the times when people were

00:30:31 ◼   ► still using like AIM and MSN and stuff like that to talk. Yeah, of course, of

00:30:35 ◼   ► course. That was still then, right? Like, iMessage didn't exist at this point, I

00:30:39 ◼   ► don't think. Right, so like, you know, you were talking to your friends on AIM, like

00:30:42 ◼   ► that was what you did.

00:30:44 ◼   ► - The thing that also really strikes me

00:30:45 ◼   ► about looking at the old home screen

00:30:47 ◼   ► is the bubbleness of the notification numbers.

00:30:51 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:30:52 ◼   ► - Like the real bubbles on top of the thing.

00:30:54 ◼   ► - And it's so big, why does it need an outline?

00:30:56 ◼   ► You know, like it's so much space is taken.

00:30:59 ◼   ► But it's as well.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Oh and this note, just my wallpaper here,

00:31:02 ◼   ► that's Ramona Flowers, she's also in Scott Pilgrim.

00:31:05 ◼   ► This was a big Scott Pilgrim phase of me.

00:31:07 ◼   ► It's one of my favorite graphic novels,

00:31:08 ◼   ► I recommend it, it's absolutely fantastic.

00:31:10 ◼   ► The movie's really good, but the movie's better

00:31:12 ◼   ► if you've read the books, that's all I'm gonna say.

00:31:13 ◼   ► I'm one of those sort of people, but it's true.

00:31:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:16 ◼   ► - It is often true.

00:31:17 ◼   ► You don't have to apologize for that, Myke.

00:31:19 ◼   ► - SimpleNote, we didn't talk about that last time,

00:31:21 ◼   ► but SimpleNote, that was an app that lasted with me

00:31:24 ◼   ► for a very, very long time.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Probably all the way up until Apple Notes got good, honestly.

00:31:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I remember trying SimpleNote,

00:31:33 ◼   ► but it never stuck with me for some reason.

00:31:34 ◼   ► But that was obviously like a big note-taking app

00:31:38 ◼   ► in the world.

00:31:39 ◼   ► It felt like everybody was using SimpleNote except for me.

00:31:41 ◼   ► and I can't remember why I was picky about it for some reason or other.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Because you're you man, that's why.

00:31:46 ◼   ► That hurts Myke, that hurts really.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I found you to your core.

00:31:50 ◼   ► One of the things I do find interesting in this one and the screen before

00:31:53 ◼   ► is the fact that I had an RSS application on my home screen

00:31:57 ◼   ► and now I don't even look at RSS in any way.

00:32:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I remember transitioning away from an RSS reader

00:32:08 ◼   ► to just selecting a very, very small subset

00:32:12 ◼   ► of the RSS feeds that I follow

00:32:14 ◼   ► and just IFTTTing them straight to Instapaper.

00:32:17 ◼   ► And it's like, well, I guess,

00:32:19 ◼   ► so we had a good long run here, RSS reader,

00:32:22 ◼   ► but you are essentially now no longer needed.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Goodbye.

00:32:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I took the small subset

00:32:27 ◼   ► and then just follow the Twitter accounts

00:32:29 ◼   ► and then believe, as has turned out to be true,

00:32:31 ◼   ► that I just find out everything

00:32:32 ◼   ► that I need to know about osmosis.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Like anything that's important just gets shared

00:32:36 ◼   ► and then that's kind of it.

00:32:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:32:39 ◼   ► I still remember having a conversation

00:32:41 ◼   ► with my wife a long time ago,

00:32:44 ◼   ► who may not even have been my wife at that point,

00:32:46 ◼   ► but about how I had discovered this thing called RSS readers

00:32:49 ◼   ► and I was like,

00:32:50 ◼   ► this is going to let me read more websites faster.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Like this is gonna be a great productivity.

00:32:54 ◼   ► - Just what we need.

00:32:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I remember her like,

00:32:56 ◼   ► sort of rolling her eyes at that one like,

00:32:59 ◼   ► oh yes, the ability to check more websites more frequently.

00:33:02 ◼   ► You think like this is fundamentally a good idea.

00:33:05 ◼   ► I was like, oh yeah, this is the future.

00:33:07 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, no, no it wasn't."

00:33:09 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:33:10 ◼   ► - There is something fun, right?

00:33:11 ◼   ► Like I've realized in App.net,

00:33:13 ◼   ► on the previous screen is Path,

00:33:14 ◼   ► which is another failed social network.

00:33:16 ◼   ► So Path failed for me, then it got replaced by App.net,

00:33:20 ◼   ► which then also failed.

00:33:22 ◼   ► It just goes on and on and on.

00:33:23 ◼   ► There's a, I also like,

00:33:25 ◼   ► I've transitioned from Instapaper to Pocket,

00:33:27 ◼   ► and that was purely because Pocket

00:33:29 ◼   ► also had really good support for like videos

00:33:31 ◼   ► and stuff as well.

00:33:32 ◼   ► - Right, right, yeah.

00:33:33 ◼   ► - So I moved to something that was more of a catchall

00:33:35 ◼   ► for multimedia.

00:33:36 ◼   ► The social network stuff, or even just the like, Tching as an example, this just reaffirms the idea that

00:33:44 ◼   ► in the business world you talk about companies that sell software as a service, which is like subscription models

00:33:49 ◼   ► and people get all huffy about subscription models

00:33:52 ◼   ► but like this stuff just reaffirms like ultimately though, all software is a service because

00:33:59 ◼   ► It requires continual improvements and updates even if small and it's like it all erodes away

00:34:06 ◼   ► if it isn't continually updated, and so I don't know I feel like I'm just very on the other side of

00:34:13 ◼   ► people complain about subscription services I feel like but it it has to be like apps

00:34:17 ◼   ► Apps ultimately have to go to some kind of subscription model if you want them to last indefinitely like saying that you're

00:34:25 ◼   ► against

00:34:27 ◼   ► subscription model means like you're against this software lasting forever and so such as like looking back at the old screenshots

00:34:34 ◼   ► It's like oh, yes, there was an app. I paid a dollar for once, you know, ten years ago

00:34:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and like it doesn't exist anymore. Why I loved it so much. It's like well, I

00:34:44 ◼   ► Think it's not too hard to figure out business wise why it didn't last

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00:37:00 ◼   ► All right, so let's move from 2012, my home screen, to 2013 and look at yours.

00:37:06 ◼   ► So one thing I'll notice is that that wallpaper is not good.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Like that is a...

00:37:12 ◼   ► I think I have a...

00:37:13 ◼   ► Like I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with past me and my home screen.

00:37:15 ◼   ► It's messy.

00:37:16 ◼   ► It looks like it's just dirty.

00:37:18 ◼   ► like a really badly painted wall.

00:37:22 ◼   ► For me it's the same thing as always.

00:37:24 ◼   ► It's like a dark, unobtrusive background

00:37:28 ◼   ► that you want to make the icons pop.

00:37:30 ◼   ► So I'm going to give a thumbs up to pass me

00:37:33 ◼   ► on his wallpaper selection.

00:37:35 ◼   ► I wouldn't use it now, but...

00:37:37 ◼   ► We've clearly moved here into iPhone 5 size, right?

00:37:39 ◼   ► Because you have more rows on your home screen.

00:37:41 ◼   ► Yes.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Than I did.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And you're not taking advantage of them in any way.

00:37:46 ◼   ► You got a huge gap there, a cavern some might even call it

00:37:50 ◼   ► between the applications and the dock.

00:37:53 ◼   ► There's two empty rows. That's that's what Myke is saying

00:37:56 ◼   ► There's possibly five rows on the iPhone 5 and I have not used two of them

00:38:00 ◼   ► Because again, I'm self-similar to past me and that he obviously didn't want to fill up his whole home screen with a bunch of stuff

00:38:08 ◼   ► You can see because there's two dots like there's two other screens on this phone

00:38:12 ◼   ► You know now lost to the sands of time like God knows where they are

00:38:15 ◼   ► I imagine like I just had a bunch of crap on those other screens, but yeah past me he understood

00:38:21 ◼   ► You wanted the smallest number of stuff that you can get away with on your home screen

00:38:26 ◼   ► And so yeah, no need to fill up those entire rows just looks really ugly when you do that you agree Myke, you know

00:38:32 ◼   ► Yeah, sure your sweetheart agenda right there. Yep agenda. Yep

00:38:37 ◼   ► What I love about agenda is how thick that icon is like the real like we want to make it maximum 3d

00:38:43 ◼   ► It stands above all the other icons.

00:38:46 ◼   ► It's almost like a skyscraper of icons.

00:38:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it really is.

00:38:51 ◼   ► It's fun.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I'm kind of looking around on Google right now and I'm finding old reviews and stuff

00:38:56 ◼   ► of the application.

00:38:58 ◼   ► It does look really great.

00:39:00 ◼   ► It still now looks like a really full-featured, pretty good-looking calendar application.

00:39:06 ◼   ► Wherefore art thou, agenda?

00:39:09 ◼   ► It's a real shame.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Fantastic Al beat it out for me just because of the natural language stuff.

00:39:13 ◼   ► And it does the majority,

00:39:14 ◼   ► or at least I assume did the majority of things that I needed.

00:39:17 ◼   ► But you know,

00:39:19 ◼   ► it's funny to see like an application that was clearly so successful,

00:39:23 ◼   ► so prevalent for like three years, right?

00:39:25 ◼   ► Cause I'm using it for two years and you're using it as well.

00:39:28 ◼   ► And now it doesn't exist anymore. Yeah.

00:39:31 ◼   ► And it probably is the idea that like we paid maybe $3 for it and then that was

00:39:36 ◼   ► it, you know?

00:39:37 ◼   ► Oh, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's going to happen.

00:39:40 ◼   ► This is gonna happen.

00:39:41 ◼   ► - So you were using OmniFocus back then?

00:39:43 ◼   ► - I see, good old OmniFocus.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I didn't have any GTD at this point in my life,

00:39:48 ◼   ► as you noticed, right?

00:39:49 ◼   ► My two previous screenshots,

00:39:50 ◼   ► there's no application solely focused

00:39:53 ◼   ► around me managing my tasks.

00:39:55 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, that's a good point.

00:39:56 ◼   ► That's a good point, you don't have any task managers.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I know if I was able to dig up an earlier home screen,

00:40:02 ◼   ► OmniFocus would have replaced Remember the Milk

00:40:04 ◼   ► with the cow icon. - Oh, the cow.

00:40:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:07 ◼   ► I hate that icon so much.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Like the logo, just like the cow is so, so dumb.

00:40:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not a good icon

00:40:17 ◼   ► and they're still sticking with it.

00:40:18 ◼   ► Every once in a while, like I still have my login

00:40:21 ◼   ► for Remember the Milk and every once in a while,

00:40:23 ◼   ► I just like, I will log in and I'll say like,

00:40:25 ◼   ► what was going on there?

00:40:26 ◼   ► And I have all this old stuff that's left over

00:40:27 ◼   ► from when I was teaching.

00:40:28 ◼   ► But I will still say that Remember the Milk to this day

00:40:31 ◼   ► still has features that no other to-do manager has.

00:40:34 ◼   ► - I would say that's probably for a reason.

00:40:37 ◼   ► You know? It's been around for so long, I think everybody would have copied the useful

00:40:43 ◼   ► features by this point.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Well, remember the Milk, right from the start, was a subscription service, which I think

00:40:48 ◼   ► is also the reason why it's still around. And it's like the people who want the features

00:40:52 ◼   ► that Remember the Milk has, they are paying for it on a regular basis. And it's like,

00:40:57 ◼   ► "Hey, guess what? It sticks around. It didn't go away." How many to-do apps have been washed

00:41:02 ◼   ► away hundreds of thousands. I'm sure that's what it is. But remember the milk is still

00:41:09 ◼   ► around and the company is still running and it's still a useful application. I can still

00:41:14 ◼   ► log into my old account and reactivate that subscription anytime that I want. So yeah.

00:41:19 ◼   ► I was going to say, pour one out for Remember the Milk, but just for me because I still

00:41:24 ◼   ► miss some of its features.

00:41:25 ◼   ► I mean, you would be able to because you clearly have the milk, so you could just pour some

00:41:28 ◼   ► of that, right? I guess that's how that works, I think.

00:41:30 ◼   ► I guess this metaphor is getting kind of gross though.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Milk is fine.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Milk is disgusting.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Evernote, Evernote right there, man.

00:41:37 ◼   ► Look at it.

00:41:37 ◼   ► Look at it.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Just gracing your hum scream of its green beauty.

00:41:41 ◼   ► There it is sucking up a whole bunch of notes from me so that it will be forever.

00:41:47 ◼   ► An albatross around my neck from which I cannot escape.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Have you ever heard of Microsoft One though?

00:41:52 ◼   ► Oh no, Myke.

00:41:54 ◼   ► I've never heard of Microsoft One though.

00:41:55 ◼   ► They did have a big update recently.

00:41:57 ◼   ► I don't know if you were.

00:41:57 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:41:58 ◼   ► No, I didn't know about that.

00:42:00 ◼   ► I haven't heard about that from everybody, from all the OneNoteians who are super intense.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Have you looked at it?

00:42:04 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, you know what I have.

00:42:05 ◼   ► I have, like, I have looked at it.

00:42:06 ◼   ► Still doesn't do what you need?

00:42:07 ◼   ► Nope, doesn't do what I need.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Just trying to help you out here, man.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Thank you for bringing it up.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

00:42:11 ◼   ► Just trying to help you out.

00:42:12 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's great, thank you.

00:42:14 ◼   ► I appreciate that.

00:42:15 ◼   ► You know, I feel like if people use OneNote, they should let you know why it's so good.

00:42:22 ◼   ► So moving right along, we also have Seconds Pro, which is my pre-do app serving the exact

00:42:29 ◼   ► same function. I wonder what that was. I've never heard of it. Yeah,

00:42:33 ◼   ► it was doing essentially a whole bunch of the similar things.

00:42:35 ◼   ► Repeating reminders, persistency. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cause it's like, man,

00:42:40 ◼   ► that is still the greatest thing about do is those reminders that you can set to

00:42:45 ◼   ► poke you repeatedly at certain times. Like it's such a valuable feature.

00:42:48 ◼   ► I don't know why more apps haven't built that in. Again,

00:42:50 ◼   ► like just to reiterate this, it's not that like it just pings up at 12 o'clock.

00:42:54 ◼   ► It will then keep pinging up like every 10, five,

00:42:56 ◼   ► 10 minutes or something, or maybe even more frequently.

00:42:59 ◼   ► I don't know the actual time interval.

00:43:00 ◼   ► It's every few minutes.

00:43:01 ◼   ► - The thing that I love about it is that you can set it

00:43:03 ◼   ► for an arbitrary time interval.

00:43:05 ◼   ► So I have things where I'm like,

00:43:06 ◼   ► remind me in an hour if I haven't done the thing,

00:43:09 ◼   ► and I have other ones that are set like,

00:43:11 ◼   ► poke me every minute until I say yes, I've done this thing.

00:43:15 ◼   ► So that's why, it's fantastic, I love it.

00:43:16 ◼   ► - It just persistently reminds you until it's done.

00:43:19 ◼   ► It's not just like a one and done reminder,

00:43:21 ◼   ► and that is what makes it so awesome.

00:43:23 ◼   ► - The only other thing I think of real note

00:43:24 ◼   ► on this home screen to me is a good old Launch Center Pro.

00:43:29 ◼   ► Probably the longest running app that is still

00:43:34 ◼   ► in the same location on my iOS devices.

00:43:38 ◼   ► - You still use it?

00:43:39 ◼   ► - Well, this is an episode out of time, Myke.

00:43:43 ◼   ► We can't discuss that right now

00:43:45 ◼   ► 'cause we'll be giving away things, but.

00:43:47 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:43:51 ◼   ► - There'll be a time paradox if we discuss

00:43:53 ◼   ► launch center pro in too much detail but I will simply say that I still think

00:43:58 ◼   ► about that old silver icon and miss it like I resented when they when they

00:44:02 ◼   ► switched to a blue icon then this is like years ago but never a day goes by

00:44:06 ◼   ► where I don't think about like I liked it better when it was silver. I will say if all of the

00:44:10 ◼   ► icons that I've looked at that is the one that I would be most willing to keep

00:44:13 ◼   ► around today it's it's not too bad you know like it's not too much it's not

00:44:18 ◼   ► going too far I actually think it looks really good still. Yeah I never liked

00:44:23 ◼   ► the blue icon update. And I also felt, I felt ideologically that an app that is a

00:44:28 ◼   ► launcher of other apps should have a neutral color. Sort of like settings

00:44:33 ◼   ► feels like it should have a neutral color because it's related to a whole

00:44:37 ◼   ► bunch of other things. It shouldn't be having its own brand being too prevalent

00:44:40 ◼   ► because it's not about that. Yeah exactly it should be in the background so every

00:44:46 ◼   ► time I press the blue launch center app I think you should be silver. But anyway

00:44:52 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a I gotta say I got to give myself points for my old home screen. I think it looks great

00:44:58 ◼   ► Why have you got your old home screens?

00:44:59 ◼   ► They look terrible just as I would expect before I came into your life

00:45:03 ◼   ► But I think I think I'm doing pretty well in my old home screens. I really do. It's good. It's good stuff

00:45:08 ◼   ► So gray, I would like to invite some of our listeners to lunch with us today and take a look at some ask cortex

00:45:15 ◼   ► Questions that we've been getting cuz I collect them all up, you know people can tweet with the hashtag ask cortex

00:45:20 ◼   ► They can even tweet it to me personally, Gray. Mm-hmm. That's nice. Did you know that that I am @imike

00:45:26 ◼   ► I am YKE on Twitter. I did know that. And that people should follow me on Twitter. Now

00:45:30 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say at this point before you object. Object to what? We've been doing this for like two years

00:45:35 ◼   ► And I have never once done that. Why would I object to you begging for Twitter followers?

00:45:40 ◼   ► You can do that if you want. I think that people would enjoy it if they followed me on Twitter

00:45:46 ◼   ► For lots of hashtag content, you know, okay follow I Myke on Twitter people. Thanks gray. He wants your ass cortex question

00:45:54 ◼   ► I'm definitely not thinking about the preparation for my future when

00:45:58 ◼   ► When I beg for Twitter followers

00:46:02 ◼   ► Okay, so let's take a look at some questions here shall we so our first question gray comes from greener and greener asks

00:46:11 ◼   ► The cortex usually discusses being productive whilst running a business presumably to free up time and resources to spend with loved ones

00:46:17 ◼   ► Greeno wants to know a few things one. How do you both get the most from the time that you spend of your significant others?

00:46:24 ◼   ► Before we can even answer that that first part of this

00:46:27 ◼   ► I think that there's a there's a comment on this question that I kind of want to make for anybody who is thinking about being

00:46:34 ◼   ► self-employed

00:46:35 ◼   ► which is

00:46:37 ◼   ► that I

00:46:39 ◼   ► I think it's very natural that you are going to be terrible at freeing up time and resources,

00:46:46 ◼   ► especially at the beginning of your self-employment career.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Yeah, let's say it gives the ability to, does not mean that you have the tools to be able to do this.

00:46:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just like there's a lot of an assumption in there, but it is remarkably hard to do.

00:47:03 ◼   ► But it's an assumption that literally everybody makes, I think, when they're going into this.

00:47:08 ◼   ► I can think of everyone I know who is self-employed in some manner

00:47:12 ◼   ► describes at least the first couple of years

00:47:15 ◼   ► being just a total absorption of all time attention and effort

00:47:20 ◼   ► So it's like if you're like, oh

00:47:23 ◼   ► We just had a brand new baby and I'd love to spend more time with my child. So I'm going to become self-employed today

00:47:30 ◼   ► You're not gonna see that kid until he's walking. Yeah, it's the worst time to do it. Do it before. Don't don't do that

00:47:37 ◼   ► Do it two years before, or two years after, but not at the same time.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And this is just like a universal experience that everyone I've talked to about this has had.

00:47:47 ◼   ► And it's certainly been my experience that I only feel like I have in the past few years

00:47:55 ◼   ► even gotten better at doing this kind of thing, about separating out the work and being able to

00:48:03 ◼   ► spend more time with loved ones.

00:48:07 ◼   ► It's just impossible to do in the first few years, because you're really learning

00:48:11 ◼   ► you're really learning how you work

00:48:16 ◼   ► and what sort of boundaries will work for you and what sort of boundaries won't work for you.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Like, what do you want your working environment to be like?

00:48:26 ◼   ► There are just so many things here that it's very hard to do this right at the start.

00:48:33 ◼   ► So while I have definitely gotten better at freeing up time and resources over time,

00:48:39 ◼   ► I was not very good at it at the beginning.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Yeah, let me just add on to that to say that

00:48:45 ◼   ► I'm gonna talk about some ways that when I'm with Adina, I try my best to be with her, but I can't give you any

00:48:52 ◼   ► concrete advice into how you make sure you're freeing that time up.

00:48:57 ◼   ► Yeah, that is the hardest thing to do.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Because really what I've noticed is what happens and what's happening

00:49:02 ◼   ► I think to me maybe now is I'm just getting to the point in my career where I can just

00:49:08 ◼   ► take the gas off a little bit in that I can hand things to other people to take care of,

00:49:14 ◼   ► right?

00:49:15 ◼   ► That I'm able to say no to some projects more and to be able to just really refine the amount

00:49:21 ◼   ► of time that I spend on certain things to the point where I can free up an afternoon,

00:49:25 ◼   ► I can free up a day.

00:49:27 ◼   ► I'm getting to that point now.

00:49:28 ◼   ► Yeah, that's good to hear.

00:49:30 ◼   ► I'm glad to hear that you feel like you can take your foot off the accelerator just a bit.

00:49:34 ◼   ► The last few months especially, I've been like, "Okay, I can spend the afternoon

00:49:41 ◼   ► with time for myself. I can spend the afternoon with Adina because she's off work today."

00:49:48 ◼   ► And things don't explode. I'm getting a lot better. It's not even so much the workload,

00:49:54 ◼   ► it's my approach to it. And that's the biggest thing. Really, it's not necessarily your workload

00:49:59 ◼   ► that's gonna get in your way. It is your approach to how you deal with your work,

00:50:03 ◼   ► and I'm finding myself now being more confident in the fact that everything's gonna be alright.

00:50:08 ◼   ► I think that's a really excellent point that I hadn't considered there, because if I think

00:50:14 ◼   ► about my own career, my workload was much less when I was starting, but I handled it way worse.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Whereas now I feel like my workload is much higher five years later from the beginning than it was at

00:50:27 ◼   ► start, but I handle it vastly better, so I actually feel like I have more time to spend

00:50:35 ◼   ► than I did at the start, even though I also have more to do, and that's part of learning

00:50:40 ◼   ► how you work. But yeah, that's an excellent point that the size of the workload is not

00:50:45 ◼   ► related to how well you handle it. As for the actual question about how do you get the

00:50:51 ◼   ► most from the time you spend with significant others? I feel like for me, I don't have anything

00:50:58 ◼   ► specific to say except a general kind of awareness of a real presence in quality time. So my

00:51:10 ◼   ► My wife and I are going to be going on a trip and I find it is extremely important to, in

00:51:22 ◼   ► those moments, be able to feel like this is quality time and to just be able to totally

00:51:30 ◼   ► put work out of my mind during those times.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And that's really the skill is like being there and not having background processes

00:51:44 ◼   ► running in your mind where you're worried about work.

00:51:49 ◼   ► That's how time can be quality time.

00:51:52 ◼   ► But again, that's just like a thing that you have to learn how you can get better at over

00:51:58 ◼   ► time.

00:51:59 ◼   ► That for me is what makes quality time quality time, is that I can really focus on what is

00:52:03 ◼   ► occurring and not have the background process of my mind worrying about other work stuff.

00:52:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I think for me, if I was going to sum it up, it's just self-control.

00:52:13 ◼   ► I try and feel the situation that we're in. There are times when we might just be hanging out on the

00:52:22 ◼   ► sofa where it's totally fine for me to just pick up if something comes in for me to do it. But when

00:52:27 ◼   ► I do that, I explain what I'm doing. I try and do that right to try and be like, "This is what I

00:52:32 ◼   ► I need to do right now, it won't take me very long, but I have to take care of it.

00:52:35 ◼   ► This is why.

00:52:36 ◼   ► To try and just set the expectation for why this is important enough for me to jump into

00:52:40 ◼   ► it now.

00:52:41 ◼   ► But then there are also times when we're sitting on the sofa where I just don't because it's

00:52:46 ◼   ► feeling the situation that we're in.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And we're taking a vacation and I'm doing my utmost to hand over everything possible

00:52:55 ◼   ► during that period of time to other people to take care of.

00:52:59 ◼   ► So if I'm going to do any work, I'm going to do real limited work during that period

00:53:03 ◼   ► of time, which will be honestly, Gray will be the first time I've ever done that.

00:53:09 ◼   ► In the whole time that I've been running my company, I've never taken a vacation where

00:53:14 ◼   ► I've set things up the way that I'm setting things up now.

00:53:17 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Having people fill in for me on my shows, handing as much stuff over to my assistant

00:53:22 ◼   ► as possible.

00:53:23 ◼   ► I will not be setting an out of office on this trip, but I will be on our honeymoon.

00:53:27 ◼   ► like this is this is a dry run for me. This is a dry run for the honeymoon? To see how far can I go

00:53:34 ◼   ► and then to know what I need to do for the big trip where it's going to be 100% no work for two

00:53:39 ◼   ► weeks is the plan. Where this one is like a week and I'm going to try and take a dry run at being

00:53:46 ◼   ► completely focused on just spending that time which is going to be really difficult because

00:53:50 ◼   ► when you run your own thing it's so it's not just something you think about it becomes part of your

00:53:55 ◼   ► personality. You are built around the fact that this is how your brain works

00:54:00 ◼   ► and when you're making all the decisions and they come from your brain well those

00:54:05 ◼   ► decisions and those thoughts and those feelings can come at any time and it

00:54:08 ◼   ► becomes part of you. So to be able to turn it off is very difficult but again

00:54:12 ◼   ► it's about how much self-control and restraint can I show to not jump in and

00:54:19 ◼   ► record that bonus episode right now because I had a great idea you know like

00:54:23 ◼   ► how do I pull back? And that's what I've been focusing more on it and I have some tests

00:54:28 ◼   ► coming up and I'll let you know how it goes.

00:54:31 ◼   ► I'll be curious to hear that.

00:54:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, so will I.

00:54:37 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Audible, the home of all the audio content

00:54:42 ◼   ► you could ever want. From thrilling novels to fascinating non-fiction to content from

00:54:47 ◼   ► newspapers and magazines. If you want it, Audible has it.

00:54:51 ◼   ► For this episode out of time, I'm going to recommend to you a book that I think anyone

00:54:55 ◼   ► could read at any time.

00:54:57 ◼   ► It's called "Essentialism, the Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg McKeown.

00:55:03 ◼   ► It's a book that emphasizes the idea that whether you're thinking about your life or

00:55:08 ◼   ► your business, you need to focus on the things that really matter.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And it's a great kind of book to listen to in the background maybe a couple of times.

00:55:18 ◼   ► I know that I have revisited it as an Amsterdam Gratation book on a couple of occasions.

00:55:24 ◼   ► I really liked it and if you feel like you're getting pulled in many directions, it's a great book to listen to.

00:55:29 ◼   ► And of course, that's the great thing with audiobooks, is that you can use all kinds of time that would otherwise be dead time to help improve yourself.

00:55:39 ◼   ► You might be on your commute to work, you might be doing your laundry, you might be cleaning the house or doing some chores or some errands.

00:55:45 ◼   ► That is a great time to listen to audiobooks, and I know errand time for me is big audiobook listening time.

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00:56:13 ◼   ► Emily has a question related to your vlog. There's a moment in the vlog where you open

00:56:20 ◼   ► Slack and you say something to the effect of enabling the dead man switch, call my lawyer

00:56:27 ◼   ► and all this stuff. Can you please explain what level of peculiarity that is? I mean,

00:56:35 ◼   ► this is very intriguing to me because I don't fully understand what's going on here.

00:56:41 ◼   ► It's a dead man switch, Myke. I don't understand what I need to explain.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Let's start with what is a dead man switch?

00:56:48 ◼   ► A dead man switch is the idea that there is an action that you as a person need to perform on a regular basis

00:56:58 ◼   ► in order to prevent something from automatically occurring.

00:57:04 ◼   ► I've usually heard this in the context of computer security.

00:57:10 ◼   ► So an example of a dead man's switch is like let's say you were really paranoid about your computer security.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And you were a programmer and what you do is you write a little program that on your computer every day you have to type a certain phrase in your Notes app.

00:57:33 ◼   ► and if that phrase isn't typed, a computer will execute and will automatically wipe your whole computer clean.

00:57:40 ◼   ► So this might be the idea like, "Oh, you're really paranoid about your data falling into somebody else's hands."

00:57:46 ◼   ► And so, if the computer is not touched by you for 24 hours, like even if it's not connected to the internet,

00:57:52 ◼   ► there's a way in which it's going to do this thing to wipe itself clean automatically.

00:57:59 ◼   ► So that's like that's an idea of a dead man switch you have failed to do something so a

00:58:05 ◼   ► Process begins when I worked in the bank

00:58:08 ◼   ► We had code words that we would use and if the code word was was or wasn't used it would activate a security protocol

00:58:15 ◼   ► Mmm, meaning that you're under duress. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Actually and that's a good example

00:58:21 ◼   ► There's um, I know in the airlines there have been

00:58:25 ◼   ► similar kinds of things like the the failure to use a

00:58:29 ◼   ► Codeword in a communication indicates that there is a problem which is when if you think about it for a minute a much better system

00:58:36 ◼   ► Than like requiring a codeword for there to be a problem

00:58:41 ◼   ► Because it may be difficult for the person to give the codeword under certain circumstances

00:58:44 ◼   ► Okay, so now

00:58:47 ◼   ► particular thing that was happening

00:58:49 ◼   ► Stage is sets for this for this concept, which is the dead man switch

00:58:54 ◼   ► So without getting into any specifics, crossing the US border, even for US citizens,

00:59:02 ◼   ► over time has become the kind of thing where for funsies, you can be detained indefinitely, even as a US citizen.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Border security can just decide that they want to hold you for a really long time, you know, and put you in a special room.

00:59:19 ◼   ► And once I had this happen to me, being detained for a very long time at the border, and it was no fun.

00:59:28 ◼   ► It's no fun at all.

00:59:31 ◼   ► So what I was doing in the vlog with this dead man switch is, all I wanted to set up was to let somebody know

00:59:40 ◼   ► that they should be hearing from me within the span of two hours.

00:59:46 ◼   ► So I had landed at the airport, I was about to go through border security,

00:59:50 ◼   ► and I just sent the message which activates the dead man switch like,

00:59:54 ◼   ► "If you do not hear from me within two hours,

00:59:58 ◼   ► you should just assume that I am being detained for funsies indefinitely by border security.

01:00:05 ◼   ► And if that happens, you should just get in touch with my lawyer and let's like start the machinery rolling."

01:00:14 ◼   ► And so the reason to do something like this is...

01:00:18 ◼   ► Because the stories are quite interesting about people who get detained at the border,

01:00:22 ◼   ► but like you can be held incommunicado for very long periods of time,

01:00:27 ◼   ► and that is not great.

01:00:29 ◼   ► So all it is, is it's like a little bit of a traveling peace of mind

01:00:33 ◼   ► that you know-- that like, I can know that if I'm in the situation, which is very unlikely,

01:00:39 ◼   ► But if I am in this situation, like the machinery of legal protection is spinning up

01:00:45 ◼   ► without me having to invoke it because I may not be able to invoke it for a long time.

01:00:52 ◼   ► So that's that's what's happening there with the dead man switch.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Okay, so my feeling on this is I have two things. One, the fact that you have been detained

01:01:02 ◼   ► excuses this for me as a crazy man's thing.

01:01:05 ◼   ► Okay, right. Okay, so that makes it that makes it more real for you.

01:01:08 ◼   ► Yeah, well because you know my feeling was like what's he doing like this?

01:01:12 ◼   ► Why are you going to these lengths?

01:01:14 ◼   ► But if you have been involved in this right like if this type of thing has happened to you before

01:01:19 ◼   ► Then it makes perfect sense like it's not an act of pure paranoia

01:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's it's not an act of pure paranoia and and the thing

01:01:26 ◼   ► The thing which I always kind of have to explain is I am NOT a normal traveler crossing the border because of my dual citizenship

01:01:34 ◼   ► Sure. So like I am pulled aside and searched at a frequency which is much greater than a regular traveler.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Okie dokie. Well, that makes sense. The other thing is I'm slightly disappointed that this doesn't have an amazing name.

01:01:46 ◼   ► Like

01:01:48 ◼   ► Activate Project Hades, right? Or like Protocol Zeus. You know, I feel like you could do better than this.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I could come up with a better activation name in the future. For that vlog, that was

01:02:03 ◼   ► That was the first time it had occurred to me that like I have a I have an actual way to solve this kind of

01:02:08 ◼   ► Problem like I have the ability to put a mechanism in place to get things started

01:02:10 ◼   ► Oh, it was just the first time you'd done it. So that was actually the first time I had done. Okay now it needs a name

01:02:16 ◼   ► No, you so now yes, okay

01:02:17 ◼   ► We'll have we'll have some kind of protocol which will have a cool name, you know

01:02:21 ◼   ► You could build like a slack box that could do a lot of this work for you

01:02:25 ◼   ► You know that right like you could automate this

01:02:27 ◼   ► You know you let the slack bot know and then it will do the notification to your lawyer

01:02:32 ◼   ► You don't even need a human.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I want a human in the loop, right?

01:02:37 ◼   ► Because I'm not like, "Oh, how confident am I about my ability to automate not when it's

01:02:42 ◼   ► serious?"

01:02:43 ◼   ► That's true.

01:02:44 ◼   ► Yeah, let's keep it going on there.

01:02:45 ◼   ► This is not a time to be like, "Oh, I'm so clever with my workflows."

01:02:50 ◼   ► Like really.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Look at me.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Yeah?

01:02:53 ◼   ► Are you 100% clever in your workflows?

01:02:55 ◼   ► I have a pretty good success rate, but then again, it could be a disaster that I'm just

01:03:01 ◼   ► not aware of. Yeah, but so anyway. That's the dead man switch. I have a question

01:03:08 ◼   ► here from Jack. Now this is a question that Jack has given to us that I hear a

01:03:14 ◼   ► lot and I think it might be interesting to talk about why this isn't a thing.

01:03:20 ◼   ► Jack wants to know why don't you just commission an email app made to your

01:03:24 ◼   ► specification? I hear this a lot, right? Because me and you have very particular

01:03:30 ◼   ► thoughts about things, especially when it comes to apps that we use to get our work

01:03:34 ◼   ► done. Email apps is maybe the biggest, right? We're very particular about our email apps,

01:03:39 ◼   ► we're never happy. Why don't we just commission an email application made to your specifications?

01:03:46 ◼   ► My answer, Jack, is I don't have enough money to do that. To get that done would be an incredibly

01:03:52 ◼   ► expensive job that I would just be pouring money into for honestly no real return, I

01:03:58 ◼   ► think.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I mean, this is a bit like I live in London the apartment that I live in is not exactly to the specifications that I would want

01:04:06 ◼   ► Why don't I commission the creation of an apartment to match my specifications? I think this is the kind of thing where

01:04:15 ◼   ► this the scope of this is

01:04:18 ◼   ► Much bigger than it might seem

01:04:21 ◼   ► Yeah

01:04:22 ◼   ► There's just a there's a colorful icon that you tap and it opens and there's email like it seems

01:04:28 ◼   ► It seems so simple, but I know from people who have worked on this kind of stuff that, what is it? It's the

01:04:34 ◼   ► SMTP, like that's the protocol that's used for email. It's like, oh, okay. Well, you just need to write something to the

01:04:42 ◼   ► SMTP protocol. It's like, oh, yes

01:04:44 ◼   ► Except that all of the major email providers

01:04:48 ◼   ► Use a slightly different version of this. It's like, oh, okay

01:04:52 ◼   ► So your work just multiplied by at least tenfold before we've even begun

01:04:56 ◼   ► that it's not "oh write a thing to this specification" it's "write a thing to Google's version of this specification and

01:05:02 ◼   ► Microsoft's version of the specification and Fastmail's version of the specification."

01:05:06 ◼   ► This is work that would never stop. This is an infinite money pit.

01:05:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like it's different if you're making this app to sell on your own

01:05:14 ◼   ► You're not paying for it. You're just using your time, right? Like if we're commissioning something we're paying for someone we're hiring someone

01:05:23 ◼   ► to do this, which is

01:05:25 ◼   ► very difficult and very expensive. Yeah, and something like an email app. I

01:05:30 ◼   ► think there are very few people who could be single individuals

01:05:37 ◼   ► who could do this in any reasonable time frame on their own. So now

01:05:42 ◼   ► it's actually, well, we're hiring three people. It's like, wait a minute, like I'm starting a software company now?

01:05:50 ◼   ► Like we're having weekly scrum meetings about this email app.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Stand up, you gotta have your stand up in the morning.

01:05:56 ◼   ► And so just I think the cost of this is vastly beyond what people anticipate.

01:06:02 ◼   ► And it's like well I know we will hear from loan developers who have made email apps,

01:06:08 ◼   ► but now this is like a very different question from we're paying someone to make a thing,

01:06:14 ◼   ► and like the recouping, recouping the cost of that,

01:06:18 ◼   ► it just, I think it's totally unworkable

01:06:21 ◼   ► in any practical way.

01:06:22 ◼   ► - 'Cause here's the other thing,

01:06:23 ◼   ► if you're willing to do this for free,

01:06:25 ◼   ► I can't do that because I can't confirm

01:06:27 ◼   ► that you'll ever make any money

01:06:29 ◼   ► other than the $10 I'll pay you for the app, right?

01:06:31 ◼   ► Like I can't, you can't do it in good conscience either.

01:06:35 ◼   ► Like this has to be something

01:06:37 ◼   ► that you would hire someone to do.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:06:40 ◼   ► - And that just ain't happening.

01:06:40 ◼   ► Like I prefer to take my current route

01:06:43 ◼   ► where I send emails to developers that I like and kindly request that they have functionality

01:06:48 ◼   ► for me, the same as anybody else can.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Exactly. And the other side of this is, I think we can all look at the bloody battlefield

01:06:59 ◼   ► of dead email apps and not feel super confident that this is a slam dunk business decision

01:07:06 ◼   ► even if you could make it happen.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Yeah, let's assume that it's actually just not, right?

01:07:11 ◼   ► Like there is no logic in this.

01:07:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I think it's a terrible idea all around.

01:07:20 ◼   ► That's why we have not commissioned an email app

01:07:24 ◼   ► to be made to our specifications.

01:07:25 ◼   ► - We both have very strong opinions about home screens

01:07:29 ◼   ► as has already been detailed in this episode.

01:07:32 ◼   ► I wanna know how you feel,

01:07:36 ◼   ► This is a question from me to you.

01:07:37 ◼   ► I wanna know how you feel about apps

01:07:41 ◼   ► that let you change their icon.

01:07:44 ◼   ► - Great. - Yeah?

01:07:45 ◼   ► - More apps should do it.

01:07:47 ◼   ► All apps should do it.

01:07:48 ◼   ► - Friend of ours, James Thompson, developer of Peacock.

01:07:51 ◼   ► He went a little bit off the reservation

01:07:54 ◼   ► and created a million icons, but I love it.

01:07:57 ◼   ► I absolutely love it. - He did a great job.

01:07:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I disagree.

01:08:00 ◼   ► I don't think he went off the reservation at all.

01:08:02 ◼   ► - Well, I'll say that James got a little bit carried away,

01:08:04 ◼   ► I think it started with five and then he's quick.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I don't even know how many he has like a million icons now in his app,

01:08:11 ◼   ► but I love them because I'm able to make choices that fit with my own aesthetic

01:08:15 ◼   ► preferences. I think it's fantastic. I love it. Um, my,

01:08:19 ◼   ► we have a question from Rick who asks what Reddit client we use.

01:08:22 ◼   ► So I can roll this one up into there. My Reddit client of choice,

01:08:25 ◼   ► Narwhal also lets me do this and I have a nice, I,

01:08:29 ◼   ► the app I use is in a dark mode and they have icons that are dark icons.

01:08:33 ◼   ► It's the same for Overcast. I use Overcast dark mode.

01:08:36 ◼   ► And they have a dark icon there as well.

01:08:39 ◼   ► I really like this layer of customization. I think this is awesome.

01:08:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I wish more apps should do it.

01:08:47 ◼   ► And to any app developers who are out there,

01:08:50 ◼   ► I just want to specify, I think you should do it,

01:08:52 ◼   ► and I think it should be in an app purchase.

01:08:54 ◼   ► - Oh, definitely. - This is a no-brainer,

01:08:59 ◼   ► easy path to additional revenue to support the development of your app.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Because this is exactly the kind of thing, this is like selling hats in World of Warcraft, right?

01:09:09 ◼   ► Like it does, does it affect the functionality? Not at all?

01:09:12 ◼   ► Is it a thing that people like to customize their stuff? Tons?

01:09:16 ◼   ► So this is like the most no-brainer of no-brainer.

01:09:19 ◼   ► If you're sitting around thinking, "How can I get it more additional revenue out of my app?"

01:09:24 ◼   ► Customizable icons has got to be one of the biggest bangs for your buck that you can possibly do. Make a few different colored versions,

01:09:31 ◼   ► Stick it up as an in-app purchase. Boom, done.

01:09:35 ◼   ► Like easy money for

01:09:37 ◼   ► not too much work compared to say adding new features to your app.

01:09:43 ◼   ► So I wish more apps would do it and I will happily pay more apps to customize the icons if they make that an option.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's fantastic because why not, right?

01:09:54 ◼   ► Yeah. Make it part of just these additional features, some kind of pro level, whatever, but let me pay and let me customize.

01:10:01 ◼   ► I think it's a great like just a nice little addition a nice little enhancement

01:10:05 ◼   ► Yeah, and every one of you app developers, you should look look up to James Thompson and pcalc

01:10:11 ◼   ► For the way you should do custom icons. Yep

01:10:15 ◼   ► Side note me and Grey forced James to charge for these

01:10:20 ◼   ► Which I think is kind of hilarious. I think it's fair to describe it as bullying. Yeah

01:10:26 ◼   ► I think it's fair to say that we bullied James into making them paid, which I also think

01:10:32 ◼   ► is funny, is like, "I'll be super angry with you if you don't make me pay for this thing

01:10:36 ◼   ► that you're doing."

01:10:37 ◼   ► Sorry, James, but we did it for your own good.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Yep, and I think he's very happy.

01:10:41 ◼   ► I think he's very happy.

01:10:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:43 ◼   ► I have a couple of questions here that are about some to-do system particulars that I

01:10:48 ◼   ► quite enjoy.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Isaac asked, "When writing a new task in your to-do application, do you start the task

01:10:55 ◼   ► of a capital letter.

01:10:59 ◼   ► What do you do, Myke?

01:11:00 ◼   ► Oh, I have to.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Okay.

01:11:02 ◼   ► I can't look at that list later on and then not be the sentence capitalized.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Because sometimes my tasks are sentences, right?

01:11:08 ◼   ► Actually, very frequently they're sentences.

01:11:10 ◼   ► There has to be punctuation and correct capitalization.

01:11:15 ◼   ► It all goes in.

01:11:16 ◼   ► I mean, luckily as well, I do most of this on iOS so the capitalization is done automatically.

01:11:20 ◼   ► But even if I'm adding something on my Mac, I'll put a capital letter in myself.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:11:24 ◼   ► I'm laughing because, I mean, years and years ago I decided on the CGP Grey style guide for this kind of thing.

01:11:31 ◼   ► I really hope that there's a document that exists.

01:11:34 ◼   ► There is literally a CGP Grey style guide text file.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Oh man, I want to see that one day.

01:11:39 ◼   ► Nope.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Because I could imitate you, that's all I need.

01:11:44 ◼   ► There's a bunch of stuff that's in there, but yes, it is a text file.

01:11:47 ◼   ► Which is surprisingly useful because there's a bunch of corner cases that I sort of forget.

01:11:51 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh great, past me made a decision about this, and I'll just see what he did."

01:11:54 ◼   ► But for my task manager, the style guide is that

01:12:00 ◼   ► tasks

01:12:02 ◼   ► start with a capital letter, like it's a sentence,

01:12:04 ◼   ► but projects are written in title case.

01:12:08 ◼   ► So that's the way I do this. If it's a project, it's written in title case, and

01:12:14 ◼   ► if it is a task, it is first letter capitalization only.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Very brief description title case is when you capitalize most words in a sentence. Yeah, is this the way like a movie will be capitalized

01:12:25 ◼   ► Yeah, right. Well, it'll be like night of the living dead of the won't be capitalized

01:12:31 ◼   ► But the rest of the words will be yeah

01:12:32 ◼   ► If you're ever interested in finding out how to format this by the way

01:12:36 ◼   ► There is a fantastic online tool that I use quite a lot at title case calm

01:12:40 ◼   ► I just wanted to recommend that as a little tip for people

01:12:42 ◼   ► It has a bunch of it can format text in a bunch of different ways for you

01:12:47 ◼   ► And we title case all of our episode titles and sometimes I'm not 100% sure how to do it. So I use titlecase.com

01:12:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I use titlecase.com in the case where there's any ambiguous capitalization.

01:12:59 ◼   ► It's the referee.

01:13:00 ◼   ► It seems like it should be super obvious, but you can run easily into an ambiguous case

01:13:06 ◼   ► and so I use titlecase.com as the final judgment on what's going to be capital or what's not going to be capital if I'm not sure.

01:13:12 ◼   ► So I would say mostly final judgement. Sometimes I would change something if it just doesn't

01:13:16 ◼   ► look right. Yeah, yeah, every once in a while there's

01:13:20 ◼   ► one that's just ugly and like, well I'm not going to look at that.

01:13:22 ◼   ► It's like six words, every single one of them is capitalised except for "of" and I'm like,

01:13:27 ◼   ► I just got to capitalise it. There's nothing I can do here, it's over.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And I really like this one, this question from Chai.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Do either of you complete a task that's actually not on your to-do list, add it to your list

01:13:39 ◼   ► and then mark it as complete?

01:13:41 ◼   ► No, I find this a really bizarre behavior.

01:13:47 ◼   ► And I remember first coming across this as a teacher

01:13:50 ◼   ► because one of my students did it in front of me.

01:13:53 ◼   ► She wrote down a thing that she had already done

01:13:55 ◼   ► to then cross it off in her little journal.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And I was totally baffled by this behavior.

01:14:02 ◼   ► I think now I can conceptualize why people do it,

01:14:06 ◼   ► people do it but I was super confused at first. I don't do this. I find it sort of strange

01:14:12 ◼   ► but I'm guessing that you do from your reaction?

01:14:14 ◼   ► From time to time I have done this. I've done some things like this. Like if I have to rearrange

01:14:20 ◼   ► a task but I've done part of it but it's not done yet, you know, I might move the task

01:14:25 ◼   ► and then make another one and check it off so I've at least got the satisfaction of doing

01:14:29 ◼   ► the checking. Plus I use Todoist which actually does do some kind of like tracking of your

01:14:33 ◼   ► statistics and like you can get a streak going and sometimes like if I'm one away from keeping

01:14:38 ◼   ► the streak but I like can't complete this like say for example the task is like because

01:14:43 ◼   ► I have some stupid tasks which you hate something like Q3 sponsorship could be a task right

01:14:49 ◼   ► but that's not a task that I'll complete in a day but I might knock chips out of it every

01:14:53 ◼   ► day right so then I'll be like well I deserve something because I did some stuff today so

01:14:58 ◼   ► I might add myself a little task in and check it off yeah no but I see what you're doing

01:15:02 ◼   ► here you're juicing your stats like the city of Baltimore like that's that's

01:15:04 ◼   ► what you're up to you're like oh yes look at all these look at all these

01:15:07 ◼   ► tasks that were ticked off today but you're just you're creating ones to be

01:15:10 ◼   ► ticked off a very productive human being I'm sure you are I have a 29-week streak

01:15:16 ◼   ► going on here now well you can't can't let that break can't break the street

01:15:20 ◼   ► even if it's even it's the truth hey is it true it's the truth because you've

01:15:26 ◼   ► made it the truth you can't handle the truth