Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► So we're recording earlier than usual today.

00:00:03 ◼   ► And I woke up, luckily, in time.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Just barely. You woke up 10 minutes before we were supposed to be recording.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I'd forgotten we were recording today.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Super professional.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Yep.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Why were you such a lazybones waking up so late?

00:00:20 ◼   ► So I went to sleep at 3am.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Okay. That's not an excuse.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Because I was playing Pokemon.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Oh!

00:00:28 ◼   ► Well, here's the thing, here's the thing. With most people who you would say that to,

00:00:33 ◼   ► they would chastise you for being terribly irresponsible. But I, as a fellow gamer, though

00:00:40 ◼   ► I do not play Pokemon, I have never played Pokemon, I completely understand the notion

00:00:45 ◼   ► of "Oh, it's after dinner, I'm going to start playing a video game" and then "Oh, it's 3

00:00:50 ◼   ► in the morning. When did this happen? I have no idea when this happened." So you have my

00:00:55 ◼   ► sympathies.

00:00:56 ◼   ► because basically it's 20 years since the original Pokemon games came out.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I've seen the Pokeheads all over Twitter talking about it.

00:01:04 ◼   ► It's an exciting time for all of us and they've re-released the original games on

00:01:08 ◼   ► the 3DS. So I was playing Pokemon Yellow, which is my favorite of the originals, although

00:01:14 ◼   ► it's kind of not slightly original, just so I don't say that so I don't get a ton

00:01:17 ◼   ► of follow up, but I think people understand what I'm getting at. And there is a Pokemon,

00:01:22 ◼   ► the 151st Pokemon called Mew. And Mew is extremely rare and you can't actually catch

00:01:29 ◼   ► Mew in the game but you would used to be able to get codes from like game stores or events

00:01:35 ◼   ► to unlock the character. But there is a glitch in the game and I'd never done that before

00:01:41 ◼   ► and I figured why not give it a go. Took me four hours to get it to work. There's a lot

00:01:47 ◼   ► of steps that you have to do and one of the steps is basically just a ton of grinding

00:01:51 ◼   ► until you can catch a specific Pokémon that you need.

00:01:54 ◼   ► So it took me a long time, and then when I got close to it happening,

00:01:58 ◼   ► I then had to finish it, and then 3 AM rolled around.

00:02:02 ◼   ► But you got your Mew.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I did get Mew, yeah.

00:02:05 ◼   ► I am at least familiar with Mew,

00:02:06 ◼   ► because I had a friend in college who watched the Pokémon TV show,

00:02:10 ◼   ► so I've seen episodes of it.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Such a great show.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Mew is on Team Rocket, right?

00:02:14 ◼   ► No.

00:02:15 ◼   ► No?

00:02:16 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the cat on Team Rocket,

00:02:18 ◼   ► the ones who are always thrown over the horizon at the end.

00:02:20 ◼   ► Nope.

00:02:21 ◼   ► That's mute. Now listen, I'm a pokey expert here.

00:02:23 ◼   ► All right.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Because I saw episodes of a TV show in a random order, uh,

00:02:27 ◼   ► like 12 years ago, 15 years ago. I know what I'm talking about.

00:02:31 ◼   ► You got it. The Team Rocket cat. That's the one I'm talking about.

00:02:34 ◼   ► Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

00:02:37 ◼   ► We're on the same page here.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Yeah. You were bang on with that one, Greg. Great. Thank you.

00:02:41 ◼   ► What's your email address again?

00:02:42 ◼   ► None of your business at cgpgray.com.

00:02:44 ◼   ► You should have that as an email address.

00:02:46 ◼   ► We were talking about, um, on instant message today,

00:02:49 ◼   ► we were talking about business cards.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:51 ◼   ► You are going to the business dinner for the UK top tech people thing.

00:02:56 ◼   ► And you were making me think like, Oh, I need a business card. And of course then it's like,

00:03:02 ◼   ► Oh, well I have actual work to do.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Let me spec out a business card for myself instead on moo.com like this is a,

00:03:08 ◼   ► this is a good thing to do. Which then of course derailed into like, Oh,

00:03:11 ◼   ► what contact information am I going to put on this business card?

00:03:14 ◼   ► Because I don't want to give out my actual daily email address.

00:03:18 ◼   ► like I want to have something different, which then devolved into a good 30 minutes of trying

00:03:23 ◼   ► to think of a cool email address to put on my card that I could use as a filtering system

00:03:29 ◼   ► so that if I do hand someone my card, their email will go through the high priority queue

00:03:34 ◼   ► because I know like, oh yes, this is the person I've given a business card to.

00:03:38 ◼   ► You've given this person a piece of paper, like that is a, you know, that's high on the

00:03:42 ◼   ► gray system I think.

00:03:43 ◼   ► But I did realize, like, okay, I have spent 30 minutes trying to come up with something kind of cool and interesting as a secret email address for my card.

00:03:52 ◼   ► And I eventually came up with something that I quite liked, which I'm obviously not going to share on the podcast right now.

00:03:58 ◼   ► But this is what business looks like. Ooh, I need to design a business card even though I have had no reason to hand out a business card to anyone in maybe the past six months.

00:04:08 ◼   ► Business cards when you do the type of stuff that we do are a really interesting thing because I have maybe

00:04:15 ◼   ► five or six times a year that I would be in a situation where I would hand out a business card and

00:04:21 ◼   ► About point one times a year where I do it

00:04:24 ◼   ► It just never happens so much so that last year. I

00:04:30 ◼   ► Had some business cards made

00:04:33 ◼   ► This is maybe last year the year before I had some business cards made and I took them with me to a trip

00:04:39 ◼   ► And I think I left them in the hotel

00:04:41 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. So I lost like 150 business cards, but I had like a one in my bag of maybe 25 or so

00:04:49 ◼   ► I still have them right like they're fine

00:04:52 ◼   ► Still got them. So we're all good, but I am thinking I should probably order some more again

00:04:59 ◼   ► Why? I don't know because I never hand them out to anybody, but just in case!

00:05:02 ◼   ► You want to be in a situation where you had them. And I did hand out one business card at my business dinner.

00:05:08 ◼   ► See, there you go. So I've done my point one.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the thing with the business cards, right? Is you almost, at least in our situation anyway, you almost never need them.

00:05:18 ◼   ► But on the rare occasion when you do, it's really helpful to have it.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Just to be able to give someone a piece of paper and say,

00:05:26 ◼   ► "Here is how you get in touch with me if you ever want to."

00:05:29 ◼   ► And you don't have to faff around with spelling out an email address,

00:05:33 ◼   ► making sure the person's typed it correctly,

00:05:35 ◼   ► you don't have to deal with any of that, and it can be handy.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Because me and you are both in this situation,

00:05:39 ◼   ► that our names don't immediately just pop into somebody's head

00:05:42 ◼   ► as how you would spell them, because I use a Y and you use an E, right?

00:05:46 ◼   ► But you don't use it, it's in there.

00:05:48 ◼   ► But also you've got the letters, right?

00:05:52 ◼   ► Which people get wrong constantly.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:05:56 ◼   ► So it's useful to have it written down or something.

00:05:59 ◼   ► I was just trying to find my first business cards that I posted on Twitter a while back.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I'll send this to you. This is from 2012.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Obviously we can't actually post this because it still has my email address on there, so I'll have to be sure to get rid of that.

00:06:15 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:06:16 ◼   ► This is back when as a fool I would just give out my actual email address.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:22 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:06:23 ◼   ► I'll paint the word picture, shall I?

00:06:26 ◼   ► Yeah, you paint the word picture.

00:06:28 ◼   ► It looks like you made it in Keynote.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I did.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just black with CGP grey on one side with the dots in the middle.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Which I don't think you do very often, do you? Or do you?

00:06:39 ◼   ► This is like a style guide thing, right? How do you actually want to write it?

00:06:43 ◼   ► And I used to always write it with the dots, but I have moved away from the dots.

00:06:49 ◼   ► dots. This is going to sound a little overly picky, but I've moved away from the dots because

00:06:55 ◼   ► to get the dots to look right so that they're actually initials like they're supposed to be,

00:07:00 ◼   ► the kerning never works with the dot after the p versus the dots after the c and the g.

00:07:06 ◼   ► So it always looks like the dot from the p is floating off in space, and on a few things where

00:07:12 ◼   ► I have it, like I think on my website I've manually kerned over the dot so that it looks right, but

00:07:17 ◼   ► But most of the times when you type it, it looks terrible.

00:07:19 ◼   ► So this is why I have now just gone to CGP without dots,

00:07:22 ◼   ► as though that is my first name,

00:07:24 ◼   ► which basically feels like it is at this point.

00:07:26 ◼   ► - That's the other thing is,

00:07:28 ◼   ► I don't think the dots work because CGP is your name now.

00:07:32 ◼   ► It's not C-G-P, right?

00:07:36 ◼   ► Like it's not that.

00:07:37 ◼   ► - I completely agree.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I actually do have a text document on my computer,

00:07:40 ◼   ► which is, what do they call it?

00:07:42 ◼   ► Like I call it like the gray style guide,

00:07:45 ◼   ► where I make these decisions, I write them down,

00:07:47 ◼   ► Just sometimes when I forget things, like there's a couple little picky things about how do I want to do stuff in the way I'm writing on my website or the way I link things.

00:07:54 ◼   ► And yeah, a while back I made the decision to get rid of the dots and I think it was the correct decision. I think that was a good way to go.

00:08:00 ◼   ► And then on the flip side, you have a bunch of links. You have @CGPgray. You have CGPgray.com with a www at the start.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Oh nice. Yeah, that's how you know it's 2012.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Yep, then you have secret email address and then youtube.com/cgpgray.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Yeah, the thing I'm trying to find, which I can't find and I enjoyed quite a lot, was I...

00:08:23 ◼   ► That was the very first card that I had made up, but the second time I went to a conference,

00:08:28 ◼   ► I made up a card that said "CGP Grey" and then for my title beneath my name I wrote "Professional Explainer"

00:08:35 ◼   ► but with a question mark? Like I didn't even know how to describe what I was doing

00:08:40 ◼   ► And so I was trying to make that as like a joke on my own business card,

00:08:43 ◼   ► like, Oh, hi, I'm CGP Grey. What do you do for a living?

00:08:45 ◼   ► I'm a professional explainer, I guess. Right?

00:08:47 ◼   ► Like that was like the shrug that my business card was doing,

00:08:51 ◼   ► which was not a very good idea. Um, if I, uh,

00:08:56 ◼   ► if I have time, I'll, I'll,

00:08:57 ◼   ► I'll see if I can give you a copy of what my current business card will look

00:09:01 ◼   ► like when I get them printed and sent to me.

00:09:02 ◼   ► I will put a link in the show notes to my, my current business cards.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They look good. You have,

00:09:10 ◼   ► you have the multiple color business cards.

00:09:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was an idea from our designer.

00:09:16 ◼   ► He put together my card for me.

00:09:18 ◼   ► I'm gonna get them reprinted like that

00:09:20 ◼   ► 'cause I like them a lot.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And I might just say it has our logo on.

00:09:24 ◼   ► It says my curly co-founder, has my email address,

00:09:26 ◼   ► my phone number, my Twitter handle,

00:09:28 ◼   ► and then kind of a little bit of what Relay FM is on the card.

00:09:31 ◼   ► - I think they look good.

00:09:33 ◼   ► They're also the vertical business card,

00:09:34 ◼   ► which I think is a good move.

00:09:35 ◼   ► I think it looks nice.

00:09:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that was another thing.

00:09:37 ◼   ► He just kind of, when the design came through,

00:09:39 ◼   ► it was even vertical.

00:09:40 ◼   ► like okay, that's how we'll do it this time, nice work.

00:09:43 ◼   ► - And it also has the official relay slogan,

00:09:47 ◼   ► which I never remember, which is switch on.

00:09:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, which nobody ever uses, including us,

00:09:52 ◼   ► it only ever gets really used on our business cards

00:09:55 ◼   ► and sometimes on Twitter headers,

00:09:57 ◼   ► but it's at the bottom of our website.

00:09:59 ◼   ► - I never remember this, like oh right, yes, that's it.

00:10:02 ◼   ► - All right, we have some extremely important follow up.

00:10:04 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I guess we do.

00:10:05 ◼   ► - Probably the most important follow up

00:10:07 ◼   ► that we will ever have.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Yes, it is exciting news that Apple has made a PR announcement that using the pencil for

00:10:21 ◼   ► navigation is going to be restored in the next version of the iOS Beta.

00:10:27 ◼   ► So I am very much looking forward to that.

00:10:31 ◼   ► As always with these things, I still always feel nervous about something until it actually

00:10:35 ◼   ► happens and at the time that we are recording the next beta has not yet come out.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Although if the past Cortex releases are anything to go by, Apple seems to wait for us to put

00:10:44 ◼   ► up a show and then releases a beta, so we will see how that works out.

00:10:49 ◼   ► But yes, I am extremely, extremely pleased and relieved that this is what's going to

00:10:58 ◼   ► happen in the next beta.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Thank you Apple, thank you so much.

00:11:02 ◼   ► For posterity, should I do a little chain of events?

00:11:05 ◼   ► happened from the last episode to this episode so people listening in the

00:11:08 ◼   ► future will have context. Yeah for the archives, you go right ahead. So after our

00:11:13 ◼   ► episode last week this situation started to pick up steam a little bit as well as

00:11:19 ◼   ► us continuing to talk about this a bunch. There was an article written on iMore by

00:11:25 ◼   ► a friend of the show Serenity Caldwell and you were quoted in that article by

00:11:30 ◼   ► direct quote I might add not just from this show. That's how people on Twitter

00:11:34 ◼   ► knew that I was really serious because it's like you talk to a reporter you never talk

00:11:38 ◼   ► to a reporter. It's like yes under this circumstance for an issue as important as the apple pencil

00:11:44 ◼   ► I will talk to a reporter.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Then macrumors.com ran a piece where they incorrectly attributed a quote from you to

00:11:53 ◼   ► me. Saying sources in the know confirm the moving of the functionality of the apple pencil

00:11:59 ◼   ► was a decision inside of Apple, it's not a bug, right?

00:12:02 ◼   ► Which me and you know to be true at the time.

00:12:06 ◼   ► So they ran that, so that was good,

00:12:08 ◼   ► and then I got picked up by a few other places,

00:12:10 ◼   ► and basically over the space of like 24 hours, I think,

00:12:14 ◼   ► from the last episode posting,

00:12:17 ◼   ► this became a thing that was popping up in a lot of places,

00:12:20 ◼   ► to which Apple then released their statement.

00:12:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, it looked like basically

00:12:26 ◼   ► this little steamroll happened

00:12:28 ◼   ► that our episode went up, the article on iMore went up,

00:12:33 ◼   ► it got picked up in a few more places

00:12:35 ◼   ► and then ultimately landed on the front page

00:12:37 ◼   ► of Daring Fireball.

00:12:38 ◼   ► I think all of this together was enough of a thing

00:12:43 ◼   ► that Apple started worrying about this becoming

00:12:47 ◼   ► a much bigger story.

00:12:49 ◼   ► It was like, this is picking up steam a little too fast,

00:12:52 ◼   ► a little too quickly, and so they released this announcement

00:12:55 ◼   ► Which, there has been some debate about this announcement because it's a little bit strange

00:12:59 ◼   ► because the PR announcement says that Apple was always planning to bring back the navigation

00:13:05 ◼   ► and that they just temporarily turned it off while they were working out some bugs.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And this is one of those moments, dear listeners, where you have to decide who you're going

00:13:12 ◼   ► to believe because all I'm going to say is that I have several people in the know who

00:13:19 ◼   ► confirmed to my satisfaction that that was not the case, that there was definitely a

00:13:24 ◼   ► a debate inside of Apple that went one way to change things.

00:13:28 ◼   ► So it's a bit of a weird thing. Like, I'm very happy that Apple has taken

00:13:31 ◼   ► feedback and they have

00:13:33 ◼   ► changed their mind on this topic, but it's also a little weird that they

00:13:36 ◼   ► released a press announcement giving the impression that they had never changed

00:13:41 ◼   ► their mind.

00:13:42 ◼   ► So it's just, it's a bit strange, but I'm very happy about it and it seems like

00:13:46 ◼   ► this is, as Jason Snell

00:13:50 ◼   ► actually said on Clockwise on one of his episodes, which I totally agree,

00:13:54 ◼   ► with, I like this new Apple. I like the idea that they are

00:14:00 ◼   ► open in the betas, that they are releasing new features at random times that people can see ahead of time.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Like, this is the point of a beta, is it not? To get feedback from

00:14:11 ◼   ► people and to take that on board, or to not take that on board, but to be open about it. So,

00:14:16 ◼   ► overall, I'm very pleased with the way things have gone.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's one other little thing and I just want to see. This is funny to me.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Somebody suggested this to me and I think it's very funny, so I wanted to bring it up.

00:14:28 ◼   ► There was rumored to be an Apple event happening on the 15th of March.

00:14:34 ◼   ► It's now been pushed back apparently to the 22nd.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Oh has it?

00:14:39 ◼   ► And I think you're responsible.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Oh yeah? You think this is my fault?

00:14:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that they've had to leave 9.3 in the oven for another week because of us.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Oh, I see, right, because this wasn't planned to be in the actual release.

00:14:55 ◼   ► No.

00:14:56 ◼   ► That they're busy ripping out all the code, which tells the pencil to ignore inputs, and

00:15:02 ◼   ► so they need another scrum week to get the 9.3 release out.

00:15:07 ◼   ► That's what I think it is.

00:15:08 ◼   ► I don't care if you're right, I'm going to think that you're right, because it's funny.

00:15:11 ◼   ► I saw somebody say it to me, and I was like, "There's no way that's the case."

00:15:14 ◼   ► However, I think that's hilarious, so I'm going to run with that.

00:15:19 ◼   ► I like it. I like it very much.

00:15:21 ◼   ► We also have a very important announcement.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Yeah?

00:15:24 ◼   ► The official campaign logo for Grey Hurley 2016 has been created.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Okay, so you have gone crazy with this.

00:15:31 ◼   ► You made this offhand joke in the last episode at the very end about Grey Hurley 2016 when we both said at the same time that Apple should do the right thing.

00:15:41 ◼   ► You made a little joke.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And you're like, "Oh, okay, that's a funny little joke. It's great. Keep it in the podcast."

00:15:46 ◼   ► But since then, you have had the relay designer working on campaign posters and photoshopping

00:15:54 ◼   ► stuff and you keep sending me this stuff by iMessage.

00:15:57 ◼   ► You know we're not actually running for president, Myke.

00:15:59 ◼   ► But you're getting the posters already.

00:16:03 ◼   ► This was just one of those little things that struck me and I thought it was really funny.

00:16:08 ◼   ► So I just asked Frank if he would do something.

00:16:11 ◼   ► And I think he's turned out a pretty fantastic logo.

00:16:13 ◼   ► He has, he has.

00:16:14 ◼   ► I agree.

00:16:15 ◼   ► It looks very good. It looks very American. It fits in with all of the design language

00:16:21 ◼   ► for campaign posters. So I presume it will be in the show notes for people to check out.

00:16:27 ◼   ► Yep. And I'm just thinking now where else we can focus our campaign so we have that

00:16:32 ◼   ► running for us. Because clearly we've been very successful so far in our only real official

00:16:37 ◼   ► point that we've completely been a success. That's true. We have made the iPad great again.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Yep, we sure have. We sure have. Bumper stickers incoming.

00:16:47 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:16:49 ◼   ► Okay, so while this has been all fun and games, I do have one very sad, very tragic piece of Apple Pencil related news that's personal to my life.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:17:03 ◼   ► For the Apple Pencil that I got back when they were first made available,

00:17:09 ◼   ► that's been working with me tirelessly every day since I got it.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Inevitably and tragically, it had a fatal interaction with a washing machine.

00:17:23 ◼   ► [GASP]

00:17:25 ◼   ► It was only a matter of time.

00:17:28 ◼   ► But sure enough, it was left in my pocket.

00:17:32 ◼   ► My own carelessness led to the death of such a beloved tool.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Ooh.

00:17:39 ◼   ► All I can say, though, is I'm at least glad that my pencil lived long enough to know--

00:17:46 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:17:48 ◼   ► --to know that the campaign that it was fighting for,

00:17:53 ◼   ► for the right of Apple Pencils the world over to be able to interact with the navigation,

00:18:01 ◼   ► that this campaign was victorious.

00:18:03 ◼   ► So while my pencil has fallen,

00:18:07 ◼   ► pencils around the world

00:18:09 ◼   ► will be able to rise up

00:18:12 ◼   ► and take their proper place

00:18:14 ◼   ► in the Apple ecosystem.

00:18:16 ◼   ► But,

00:18:17 ◼   ► I will ask,

00:18:19 ◼   ► out of respect,

00:18:21 ◼   ► for our fallen hero

00:18:23 ◼   ► for a moment of silence.

00:18:29 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Audible.com. Audible includes more than 180,000

00:18:37 ◼   ► audio programs from some of the leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers and more.

00:18:43 ◼   ► And Audible is offering a 30 day trial membership to listeners of this very show. Just go to

00:18:49 ◼   ► Audible.com/Cortex to take a look at their fantastic catalogue of audio programs. And

00:18:55 ◼   ► and you can also grab their app if you want to listen on the go.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Now this time I have two recommendations for you. I have a recommendation from myself and

00:19:06 ◼   ► I also have a recommendation for the next edition of the Cortex Book Club coming very

00:19:11 ◼   ► soon to this very show. So I'll start off with the recommendations. So the next book

00:19:17 ◼   ► that we have decided to do on the Cortex Business Book Club is Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull

00:19:24 ◼   ► who is one of the co-founders of Pixar. And he has managed creative people for years and

00:19:29 ◼   ► years and he distills everything that he has learned into this book Creativity Inc. So

00:19:34 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to reading it. I haven't read it yet but I have heard great things

00:19:39 ◼   ► so I'm looking forward to this one. This was actually my pick because it was a book that

00:19:42 ◼   ► I really wanted to read. So you can go to audible.com and you can get Creativity Inc

00:19:47 ◼   ► now and you can listen along and then when me and Grey talk about it in our next episode

00:19:52 ◼   ► you will know exactly everything that we're talking about.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Now the second book that I want to recommend is a book called The Second Coming of Steve

00:19:59 ◼   ► Jobs.

00:20:00 ◼   ► This is my favourite book about Steve Jobs.

00:20:03 ◼   ► So this book was written in 2001, long before the iPhone came around.

00:20:07 ◼   ► So a lot of this story actually does focus on Pixar because at this point in Steve Jobs'

00:20:12 ◼   ► life this had also become a huge accomplishment of him in helping build Pixar up to be the

00:20:18 ◼   ► animation juggernaut that it became.

00:20:21 ◼   ► you'll be able to take a listen to how Steve Jobs got involved in Pixar and then kind of

00:20:25 ◼   ► how he helped build it up. It really is a very interesting look inside the story of

00:20:31 ◼   ► Pixar. So that is another fantastic recommendation. Maybe you could listen to both if you are

00:20:35 ◼   ► so inclined. But you can choose from any of the audiobooks, any of the 180,000 audio programs

00:20:44 ◼   ► that Audible has on offer. So go to audible.com/cortex to get started with your 30 day free trial.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Thank you so much to audible.com for their support of this show and relay FM

00:20:55 ◼   ► This is turning into a pretty monumental episode gray. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean we've had our first real success as a show

00:21:04 ◼   ► And now we're finally going to be addressing a topic from that was brought up in episode one

00:21:10 ◼   ► That I think I still hear about every week for people asking me when we're gonna talk about it. Hmm, and it's calendaring. Oh

00:21:17 ◼   ► Yes

00:21:19 ◼   ► Calendaring so we will we will address today my original claim to you that even sleep is blocked out on your calendar

00:21:25 ◼   ► Which was a fact that I discovered during our conversation of ever green to do this show together

00:21:32 ◼   ► Yeah, this was a conversation we had even

00:21:34 ◼   ► pre

00:21:36 ◼   ► Cortex conversations. Yeah, just talking about work in general and this came up as a thing

00:21:41 ◼   ► Well, I think it was when we were sitting at dinner

00:21:44 ◼   ► and thrashing out the idea to do the show.

00:21:47 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe, maybe. That sounds right.

00:21:49 ◼   ► 'Cause you had things happening on your Canada because I'd overrun my time with you that day.

00:21:54 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:21:56 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right, Myke. I was counting the grains of sand as they fell out of the hourglass of how much time you had left with me. That's how that worked.

00:22:03 ◼   ► I wonder if, like, a pre-computer CGP grave, he would have used systems like that.

00:22:08 ◼   ► I can only imagine you'd just have, you'd be carrying around like a trailer full of hourglasses

00:22:13 ◼   ► that just tick off the certain things you have to do each day.

00:22:16 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that if I was a monk or something I would be using hourglasses.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Because I use timers all the time.

00:22:23 ◼   ► The idea of a timer is not intrinsically connected to my phone or my watch.

00:22:29 ◼   ► So I'm pretty sure that yeah, if I was a monk 200 years ago,

00:22:33 ◼   ► you know, doing whatever monks do, transcribing books all day or something,

00:22:38 ◼   ► I would be doing the exact same thing of working in units for turning my hourglass over and

00:22:43 ◼   ► over again and having a smaller hourglass for breaks, you know, using that one.

00:22:49 ◼   ► I'm confident that's what I would be doing.

00:22:51 ◼   ► So this went in a direction I wasn't anticipating.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Historical CGP Grey.

00:22:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Let's start with what apps and services we both use for calendaring.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Because I use a calendar, right, like many people.

00:23:04 ◼   ► I think it might be interesting to position how I use a calendar and how you use a calendar

00:23:09 ◼   ► and how they're completely different I think, via what we're trying to get out of them.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I use Fantastical on all of my devices, which is an iOS and Mac app that I really love.

00:23:20 ◼   ► My favorite thing about Fantastical is the natural language input.

00:23:24 ◼   ► So you for example would type lunch with CGP Grey and it enters all of that into your calendar.

00:23:30 ◼   ► So it's, or you could say lunch at CGP Grey

00:23:33 ◼   ► at the lunch place, and it would put an event

00:23:37 ◼   ► that says lunch CGP Grey, location would be lunch place,

00:23:40 ◼   ► and it would know the time, it would put 12 o'clock

00:23:42 ◼   ► or whatever and enter it.

00:23:43 ◼   ► That's what I really like about it mainly

00:23:45 ◼   ► is that natural language stuff,

00:23:47 ◼   ► 'cause it makes more sense to the way

00:23:48 ◼   ► that I wanna do things rather than check in a bunch of boxes

00:23:51 ◼   ► and I use a combination of iCloud calendars

00:23:54 ◼   ► because I have been using it for years

00:23:56 ◼   ► and calendaring on iCloud is one of the things

00:23:59 ◼   ► I have no problem with.

00:24:00 ◼   ► We'll talk another time about address books or something.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Nothing, just nothing.

00:24:05 ◼   ► I put something in one device,

00:24:07 ◼   ► it never comes up on the other one.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Like I changed your little icon from a waving gray

00:24:12 ◼   ► to the gray logo.

00:24:13 ◼   ► A couple of weeks ago,

00:24:14 ◼   ► I've had to change on all of my devices independently.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - Well, that's how syncing works, Myke.

00:24:19 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, sorry I forgot that.

00:24:21 ◼   ► - You are the sync service.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - I am the sync service, I am the go-between.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And I also use a little bit of Google Calendar stuff

00:24:29 ◼   ► because people send me invites to my email address, right,

00:24:32 ◼   ► which is a Google Apps account.

00:24:34 ◼   ► But what do you use?

00:24:35 ◼   ► - I use a combination of Fantastical

00:24:39 ◼   ► and Apple's built-in calendar.

00:24:41 ◼   ► That's what I'm using for different reasons

00:24:45 ◼   ► on different devices and the way they display

00:24:47 ◼   ► different things.

00:24:48 ◼   ► I think maybe before we get too into

00:24:51 ◼   ► the nitty-gritty details of it,

00:24:53 ◼   ► There's like a big question about how you use calendars.

00:24:58 ◼   ► Like what's your calendaring philosophy?

00:25:03 ◼   ► And what is your calendaring philosophy, Myke?

00:25:07 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm, you're the person who has to actually deal

00:25:11 ◼   ► with lots of stuff happening at specific times, right?

00:25:16 ◼   ► My life, my life, Myke, is just an open field

00:25:20 ◼   ► in every direction, right?

00:25:21 ◼   ► with the wind gently blowing, you know, it's nice and relaxed and zen.

00:25:27 ◼   ► And your life, as we have discussed before, is like this horrific obstacle course with

00:25:33 ◼   ► jail bars that you build for yourself about that constrain where you can be at specific

00:25:38 ◼   ► times and all kinds of a complicated landscape.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And so it seems like a calendar is a tool that you have much more need for than I do.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Yeah, thanks for that accurate description of how our lives are

00:25:50 ◼   ► my

00:25:52 ◼   ► Calendar is used for appointments. So things that happen at certain times

00:25:59 ◼   ► or if I'm

00:26:01 ◼   ► Away or whatever from holiday. I'll block that out. So I know it's happening on certain days that kind of thing. So for example

00:26:07 ◼   ► Today I have record cortex on my calendar. I have record upgrade on my calendar. So the shows

00:26:14 ◼   ► But I record all on my calendar

00:26:16 ◼   ► So I know that if I get any requests for meetings or appointments or calls that time is blocked out

00:26:22 ◼   ► I can see it a glance. Okay, I know that I'm going to be doing this then

00:26:26 ◼   ► Then I put in things that I do with my girlfriend we have a shared calendar that sort of stuff goes on there

00:26:34 ◼   ► So if we're going somewhere then I'll put it on there

00:26:36 ◼   ► and I also use

00:26:39 ◼   ► Our shared calendar is a way to update her

00:26:42 ◼   ► about certain days out that I'm gonna be taking

00:26:44 ◼   ► so she has an idea of where I am at certain times

00:26:47 ◼   ► if needs be.

00:26:48 ◼   ► And I, as I say, also put like conference calls

00:26:52 ◼   ► and meetings and things like that.

00:26:54 ◼   ► So it's purely appointments and events

00:26:56 ◼   ► that will take time up.

00:26:59 ◼   ► What I don't put on the calendar

00:27:00 ◼   ► are things like edit cortex.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Because for me, that doesn't need to happen

00:27:05 ◼   ► at a specific time, that is a task for me.

00:27:08 ◼   ► and I will have it trigger a certain time in OmniFocus

00:27:11 ◼   ► to tell me to start doing it then,

00:27:13 ◼   ► and then I will do it then if I can do it right then

00:27:15 ◼   ► or I'll move it around.

00:27:16 ◼   ► So I use those two things very differently,

00:27:20 ◼   ► and I consider anything that's a task,

00:27:23 ◼   ► anything that requires a completion,

00:27:25 ◼   ► will go in OmniFocus.

00:27:27 ◼   ► Anything that is happening at that fixed time

00:27:30 ◼   ► because you've agreed it with somebody else

00:27:32 ◼   ► goes in my calendar.

00:27:34 ◼   ► That's my calendaring philosophy.

00:27:37 ◼   ► Yeah, so this to me sounds like it lines up very closely with what is the strict "getting things done" interpretation of calendaring.

00:27:47 ◼   ► Which is only events that happen at a specific time, right?

00:27:54 ◼   ► Where there is an external requirement in the world that you be doing something at exactly that time.

00:28:00 ◼   ► And so the rest of your calendar is presumably clear.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Nothing is listed on there.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:28:07 ◼   ► And it sounds, it almost sounds like a dumb thing to say, like, "Oh, you put appointments on a calendar?"

00:28:11 ◼   ► But I think a really important thing to keep in mind is just to be very clear on what is this tool for, what is it not for.

00:28:24 ◼   ► And so yes, if you don't want to put something like editing Cortex on the calendar, that's quite a reasonable thing to do, because you think like, "Okay, well, this can happen at almost any time."

00:28:38 ◼   ► It is not the same thing as like, if we didn't, you know, we're recording at an unusual time this week.

00:28:44 ◼   ► If we didn't record this episode now, we wouldn't be able to record this episode for maybe another week

00:28:49 ◼   ► because of scheduling conflicts between the two of us coming up.

00:28:52 ◼   ► So like, this has to happen right now.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So it has to be on the calendar.

00:28:56 ◼   ► But there's tons of stuff which doesn't have to happen at a specific time.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And that is the, like I said, that is the "getting things done" interpretation of calendars.

00:29:06 ◼   ► And so when I used to have a life that was much more like yours when I was working as a teacher,

00:29:11 ◼   ► I would do the same thing of like, okay, I'm going to have all of my classes that I teach,

00:29:16 ◼   ► they're going to be on calendars, any appointments or meetings or anything like that,

00:29:21 ◼   ► that is all on the calendars.

00:29:22 ◼   ► But the spaces between classes were almost always just clear,

00:29:27 ◼   ► and I would do the same thing that you would do.

00:29:29 ◼   ► It's like, okay, I have a task list,

00:29:31 ◼   ► I have a bunch of checklists of things that I want to do during the day,

00:29:34 ◼   ► and any space on the calendar that is clear,

00:29:37 ◼   ► that's when I'd switch tools and say, okay, I'm not using the calendar,

00:29:41 ◼   ► I'm now switching to the task list, which is presenting me a bunch of things to do,

00:29:46 ◼   ► and I'm going to try to grind through as many of those as possible.

00:29:49 ◼   ► And then, because the calendar is electronic, it'll beep you when something comes up on the landscape

00:29:54 ◼   ► of like, "Okay, and now I need to prepare for this class or go to this dumb meeting."

00:29:59 ◼   ► I don't know, that kind of thing.

00:30:01 ◼   ► But there are two different tools, like task list versus calendar are very separate things.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Alright, so sleep being blocked out.

00:30:10 ◼   ► This is something that I, like all of our listeners,

00:30:14 ◼   ► have been very interested to understand more about,

00:30:16 ◼   ► because I don't know the answer.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I saw this, I said, "We should talk about that one day,"

00:30:21 ◼   ► and then left it.

00:30:22 ◼   ► And it's something that I think about a lot,

00:30:24 ◼   ► because I can't fully understand why you do this.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Now, just from my perspective,

00:30:30 ◼   ► allow me to explain to you why I think this is strange to see.

00:30:34 ◼   ► So it might at least help paint the picture for why I think it's peculiar.

00:30:39 ◼   ► You know you're going to sleep every day.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Right? Like that is gonna happen, right?

00:30:45 ◼   ► Sleep will occur because it kind of has to.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Eventually you lose that battle. It's going to happen.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Even if you're busy catching muse, eventually it's going to happen.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Yeah, it did. It really snuck up on me there.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Um, and I assume that you have a pretty good idea of the time that you go to sleep.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Every day.

00:31:06 ◼   ► You keep talking man.

00:31:08 ◼   ► Okay.

00:31:09 ◼   ► That it's not like you could just forget.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Now you could do what I did, where you could stay up too late, but no calendar event was

00:31:16 ◼   ► gonna make me go to sleep.

00:31:18 ◼   ► Because I was busy.

00:31:20 ◼   ► I was catching them all man.

00:31:24 ◼   ► So why do you block sleep out on your calendar?

00:31:27 ◼   ► Okay, so here's the thing.

00:31:30 ◼   ► We're talking about calendaring at a funny time for me and the way I use calendars.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Because I'm beginning to change a little bit the way that I work.

00:31:44 ◼   ► But one thing that I find is quite useful with calendars is, okay, so you have this

00:31:50 ◼   ► idea of, "Okay, here are my appointments. They're going to happen at various times."

00:31:55 ◼   ► But the other thing that a calendar can be useful for is as a way to plan out how you

00:32:03 ◼   ► want to spend your time. And this, for me, as a person who, as I mentioned before, is

00:32:11 ◼   ► just standing in the middle of this open zen-like field, there is no structure on the day most

00:32:20 ◼   ► And so I am the person who has to impose the structure on myself.

00:32:25 ◼   ► And so I have always found a calendar to be a useful way to try and get a handle on

00:32:35 ◼   ► how much time do I have available to do various things.

00:32:40 ◼   ► And it is a very interesting exercise to sit down

00:32:47 ◼   ► with a calendar as a self-employed person

00:32:51 ◼   ► and try to plan out how much time do I have,

00:32:55 ◼   ► how much time do I want to have for various kinds of tasks in my life.

00:33:01 ◼   ► And so,

00:33:03 ◼   ► speaking of

00:33:05 ◼   ► tools and tricks for the moment,

00:33:07 ◼   ► one of the reasons why I use Fantastic Cal, particularly on Mac,

00:33:11 ◼   ► is twofold.

00:33:14 ◼   ► First, it allows you to look at a two-week view

00:33:17 ◼   ► which is much more useful for my life.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I tend to think in two-week chunks.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I don't like the one week. One week is so small and constraining.

00:33:23 ◼   ► Two weeks is way better.

00:33:25 ◼   ► And secondly, it has the ability to

00:33:28 ◼   ► switch between different calendar groups.

00:33:31 ◼   ► I have so many calendars

00:33:33 ◼   ► in my system that sync back and forth

00:33:35 ◼   ► with so many people and for so many different things.

00:33:37 ◼   ► But they fall into two broad categories,

00:33:40 ◼   ► which is different kind of appointments,

00:33:43 ◼   ► which is kind of like the action calendar.

00:33:46 ◼   ► But then I have a whole other set of calendars that I use to just plan out how, in theory, do I want to spend my time.

00:33:56 ◼   ► And so, the reason that sleep is on my calendar is because the first big unmovable block always, when planning out my time, is, "Okay."

00:34:12 ◼   ► In theory, when do I need to go to bed and when do I need to wake up?

00:34:17 ◼   ► And so I put that on my calendar as part of the "Planning My Life" section of calendars that I have.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Because I want to visually see, "Look man, if you're working a whole day, when do you need to be awake by and when do you need to go to sleep by?"

00:34:36 ◼   ► and then how much time is left in the day.

00:34:39 ◼   ► So sleep is on there because it is the biggest chunk of the day

00:34:44 ◼   ► and I want to visually see it on a calendar when I'm looking at something like a

00:34:48 ◼   ► 14-day planning my theoretical perfect two-week time period.

00:34:54 ◼   ► So that's why I put sleep on the calendar.

00:34:56 ◼   ► - Hmm.

00:34:57 ◼   ► - Listen to that "hmm". You don't like that at all.

00:35:01 ◼   ► - But you wouldn't schedule something at like 3 a.m. though, right?

00:35:06 ◼   ► No, I'm not going to schedule something at 3am.

00:35:09 ◼   ► No, I understand. I do understand. I just had to say that.

00:35:13 ◼   ► I understand what you're saying. You just want to be able to see it visually.

00:35:16 ◼   ► It's not because you might accidentally put something in.

00:35:18 ◼   ► I've just wanted to say you wouldn't schedule something at 3am to you for about six months.

00:35:23 ◼   ► So I had to get it out.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Yeah, that's fine. Let me send you something, Myke.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Let me send you something, right?

00:35:29 ◼   ► I hate to keep bringing up this Amsterdam trip. I'm going to bring it up again.

00:35:32 ◼   ► I only bring it up, people, because again, it was like the Grey Incorporated retreat

00:35:35 ◼   ► retreat and it's like "Oh, I got all these great ideas and it had this huge effect on

00:35:37 ◼   ► me!"

00:35:38 ◼   ► So I apologize if I keep mentioning this trip, but it really did matter.

00:35:41 ◼   ► So on the most recent trip, I didn't use a calendar, I used the iPad Pro to do it.

00:35:48 ◼   ► But let me send you, Myke, me putting together a sample two-week period for myself.

00:35:55 ◼   ► So I'm going to instant message you something right now so you can see.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Actually you can put this in the show notes as well if people want to see.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Well, there's a calendar.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Okay.

00:36:05 ◼   ► What have I just sent you, Myke?

00:36:07 ◼   ► The scribblings of a madman, it looks like.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Does it look like the scribblings of a madman? I think not. I think the listeners can decide.

00:36:14 ◼   ► All right, so okay.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Because radio is

00:36:18 ◼   ► theater of the mind.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:36:22 ◼   ► We have across the top,

00:36:24 ◼   ► we have

00:36:25 ◼   ► Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. It carries on. I think you got what, three weeks planned out here.

00:36:30 ◼   ► It's two weeks two weeks. Okay. Yeah, I see and then down the at the bottom which is the part

00:36:36 ◼   ► See, this is where this is where I am trying to get away from saying x-axis and y-axis because I can never remember

00:36:42 ◼   ► Which is which can you help the people?

00:36:44 ◼   ► It's the negative y-axis

00:36:48 ◼   ► See, this is why I can't do it. It's just getting more confusing on the negative y-axis

00:36:52 ◼   ► We have it starts at six six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve one two three four

00:37:00 ◼   ► Now, I'm assuming that's you saying you're going to be awake from six till four?

00:37:06 ◼   ► Right, six in the morning until four.

00:37:11 ◼   ► What you're looking at is a piece of graph paper where I was sitting down and...

00:37:15 ◼   ► Oh, and then there's a bunch of letters and scribbles.

00:37:18 ◼   ► That's the one thing I've got to mention.

00:37:21 ◼   ► I was sitting down and trying to plan out a theoretical two weeks that would be perfect,

00:37:28 ◼   ► Like a two-week block of how do I want to spend my time, and then repeat that two-week

00:37:32 ◼   ► block forever over my working career.

00:37:36 ◼   ► What does a perfect two-week block look like in my life?

00:37:40 ◼   ► And so this is an exercise that is extremely helpful.

00:37:45 ◼   ► So on this piece of graph paper, each block represents an hour, and I was going through

00:37:50 ◼   ► and writing in various things on each of the blocks for how much time do I want to spend

00:37:55 ◼   ► on this? How much time do I want to spend on that? What activities are going to happen

00:38:00 ◼   ► when? And in the theme of the Year of Less, it's a very eye-opening experience to do this

00:38:11 ◼   ► and, again, to be forced to look at the constraints of how much time do you actually have available

00:38:19 ◼   ► to do various things.

00:38:22 ◼   ► And so, yeah, in theory, my workday here is, you know, starts at six and sort of ends at four,

00:38:27 ◼   ► and there's a bunch of things that I want to do, and you realize, like,

00:38:29 ◼   ► "Oh, there's actually not a whole lot of time in here, like, of this things that I am going to schedule."

00:38:35 ◼   ► There's less than you think there is.

00:38:38 ◼   ► So this handwritten thing, I eventually converted into a bunch of calendars that are in my system

00:38:42 ◼   ► so that I have it on my computer and everything,

00:38:44 ◼   ► But this was me brainstorming and thinking about how do I want to arrange this kind of

00:38:50 ◼   ► stuff in my life.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I can see me on this calendar.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Oh yeah, you can see you?

00:38:56 ◼   ► What do you think you are, Myke?

00:38:57 ◼   ► PC and CC.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:38:59 ◼   ► Is that what you think you are?

00:39:00 ◼   ► Yeah, Podcast Cortex.

00:39:01 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:39:02 ◼   ► I don't know what the C would stand for, because I would expect there to be an E for

00:39:06 ◼   ► editing Cortex.

00:39:08 ◼   ► And I came to this because there's a P-H and a C-H, and I assume that's podcasting

00:39:13 ◼   ► hello internet and I don't know what C is hello internet k editing what is C this is

00:39:19 ◼   ► now you can't this is like the enigma mic you're not gonna crack this code constructing

00:39:24 ◼   ► it's not gonna happen creating crafting correcting that that feels more that feels more likely

00:39:37 ◼   ► what is it what's the C I'm gonna leave it I'm gonna leave it to your imagination what

00:39:41 ◼   ► What I like though is that Hello Internet has two full days, two day entries here.

00:39:46 ◼   ► Presuming that's the Hello Internet editing, which you are totally right, yeah.

00:39:49 ◼   ► Hello Internet takes up way more of my mind.

00:39:51 ◼   ► Oh no, three!

00:39:52 ◼   ► There's three editing things here.

00:39:54 ◼   ► And that is because we share the editing load, which I think is different to Hello Internet,

00:40:00 ◼   ► right?

00:40:01 ◼   ► So I take a pass and then you take a pass.

00:40:02 ◼   ► I think that's why there's the...

00:40:03 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly why it's different on the different weeks.

00:40:08 ◼   ► What's the C stand for?

00:40:09 ◼   ► I'm not going to tell you that.

00:40:10 ◼   ► And this also leaves the listener something to do.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Yeah, please suggest listeners what that C stands for.

00:40:16 ◼   ► If you assume that what we're doing is... Is it cutting?

00:40:19 ◼   ► I'm not telling you anything.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Okay.

00:40:22 ◼   ► Just leave it, just leave it, man.

00:40:23 ◼   ► I can't do it.

00:40:25 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:40:27 ◼   ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you

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00:43:42 ◼   ► [Music]

00:43:43 ◼   ► So what this would suggest then is that you're moving away from putting sleep on your calendar.

00:43:48 ◼   ► You're transitioning to a new more logical system.

00:43:51 ◼   ► No, no, you don't understand, Myke.

00:43:53 ◼   ► This is the only reason sleep isn't on here is because the graphing paper isn't big enough.

00:43:57 ◼   ► Like I just pulled up a graphing paper template on my iPad Pro and here I don't need to have 24

00:44:03 ◼   ► hours written. But I'm looking at my calendar on my actual computer, I have sleep marked off as well,

00:44:10 ◼   ► because in theory, for my planning mode, where I'm looking at how do I want the days to go,

00:44:18 ◼   ► I want every single hour occupied on that calendar. Now that sounds crazy, it doesn't mean

00:44:24 ◼   ► that I want to be working every single hour, but it does mean I also block off what is free time.

00:44:31 ◼   ► So in the calendar, I don't want white space when I'm trying to plan how does a week look.

00:44:37 ◼   ► I want to actually put in this time is time that is unallocated.

00:44:43 ◼   ► And I just really think this is, just like I think every self-employed person should have a spreadsheet that tells them what is their return on investment per hour time per project,

00:44:53 ◼   ► like I think that is a vital thing to do.

00:44:55 ◼   ► I think everyone who is self-employed or anybody who is trying to be self-employed or anybody in the working world or students or anybody

00:45:04 ◼   ► should really at some point go through the exercise of saying, "What would an ideal week for me look like?"

00:45:11 ◼   ► and block out what all of that time would look like on the calendar.

00:45:15 ◼   ► It is surprisingly revealing.

00:45:18 ◼   ► Now, it doesn't mean that you are some kind of machine that just does this perfectly, right?

00:45:24 ◼   ► So like when I try to talk to people about calendars sometimes,

00:45:26 ◼   ► I always get these replies where people are like,

00:45:28 ◼   ► "Oh, you have every single hour blocked off and so you just do things automatically when they happen?"

00:45:33 ◼   ► It's like, listen, listen.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Nothing like that happens in the world.

00:45:37 ◼   ► It's just like having a to-do list, right?

00:45:39 ◼   ► Having the to-do list doesn't mean that you just sit down and always get everything on the to-do list done.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Like, it's way easier to put "go to the gym" on the calendar than it is to actually always go to the gym.

00:45:51 ◼   ► But it's a starting point, right? It's a frame of reference that helps constrain and focus you on how many things can you actually do.

00:46:04 ◼   ► And going through this calendar when I was brainstorming it out and trying to think about how do I want to spend my time,

00:46:10 ◼   ► this was very much part of what led me to this whole idea for the Year of Less and realizing, like, man,

00:46:18 ◼   ► You know, the project that I mentioned a couple episodes ago of killing, of realizing like if this is successful

00:46:23 ◼   ► I've just added a whole other YouTube channel's worth of work to my life was by looking at a calendar.

00:46:28 ◼   ► Like there just isn't time for this. The projects that I do in the future

00:46:33 ◼   ► have to be able to be converted to self-sustaining on their own or I can't take them on at this stage.

00:46:39 ◼   ► And part of that is sitting down and being a grown-up and facing the

00:46:44 ◼   ► Strengths of life and how much time do you actually have available to two things?

00:46:49 ◼   ► Okay

00:46:52 ◼   ► Yeah, does that make sense to you Myke?

00:46:54 ◼   ► Not so much so in some of the other things that we've done have made me think about my system differently

00:47:01 ◼   ► because I just I

00:47:04 ◼   ► Get why you're doing this. I just don't have any desire to do it this way myself. Mm-hmm

00:47:11 ◼   ► Because my projects are mainly podcasts and they tend to be on my calendar.

00:47:16 ◼   ► Mm hmm. I have I feel like right now I have a pretty good handle on what I can complete every week.

00:47:22 ◼   ► And because my work is more structured than your work.

00:47:26 ◼   ► I know if I just already know always if I can take on a new project or not,

00:47:31 ◼   ► because I know what my structure is.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Yeah, your calendar, because your life is so appointment constraint based,

00:47:39 ◼   ► Your calendar in a way is more naturally like this.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Right? You...

00:47:44 ◼   ► This is less of an exercise that it has utility for you than it does for me.

00:47:50 ◼   ► I still think it would be interesting for you to try to map out all the time around that

00:47:54 ◼   ► just to see what you want to be doing with the other time that is available.

00:47:57 ◼   ► But yes, the more...

00:47:59 ◼   ► the more of a schedule you have because of external constraints, the less value that is.

00:48:04 ◼   ► And it's like, I never felt the need to do something like this when I was employed.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Whereas now it feels vital.

00:48:10 ◼   ► It feels like how...

00:48:12 ◼   ► After I left my teaching job and before I started doing this maybe about a year ago,

00:48:16 ◼   ► I feel like, "How did I even get by without thinking about this in the two years in between those timeframes?"

00:48:23 ◼   ► Does anything else, does any normal human activity other than sleep make its way onto your calendar?

00:48:30 ◼   ► Umm...

00:48:30 ◼   ► Now I believe, if memory serves, the reason this originally came up

00:48:36 ◼   ► is you had an Apple Watch notification when we were at dinner that time, telling you it was time to read.

00:48:41 ◼   ► Okay, yeah. So, um, this conversation did come up because of the Apple Watch originally.

00:48:50 ◼   ► And that was...

00:48:52 ◼   ► The Apple Watch was very new when we were first having this conversation.

00:48:55 ◼   ► I think it had just come out maybe a couple weeks earlier, and I was playing around with how do I want to use it.

00:49:00 ◼   ► And one of the things that I have found very useful,

00:49:04 ◼   ► which I'm doing again, is using the utility face on the Apple Watch,

00:49:09 ◼   ► which at the bottom allows it to display what your current calendar item is.

00:49:17 ◼   ► And I really like this. I think this is a very nice feature.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And even as someone who doesn't have as many appointments as most people do...

00:49:30 ◼   ► Because of the meadow.

00:49:31 ◼   ► Yeah, because of my meadow.

00:49:33 ◼   ► My life is the meadow.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I have found it in the past couple weeks of switching back to the utility watch phase

00:49:42 ◼   ► really helpful that when I happen to check the time

00:49:47 ◼   ► my watch isn't showing me what's next on your calendar in the way it would do for normal people.

00:49:54 ◼   ► It always shows me at the bottom

00:49:56 ◼   ► what did past you think would be the best thing for you to be doing right now?

00:50:03 ◼   ► So in theory if this is a perfect day when you happen to check the time as you do many

00:50:08 ◼   ► Dozens of times over the course of a day my watch always shows me at the bottom

00:50:12 ◼   ► This is what if you have a perfect week you should be doing right now, and I find that like a very helpful

00:50:18 ◼   ► hmm

00:50:19 ◼   ► Almost like like a compass or like a North Star sort of always pointing the way

00:50:24 ◼   ► Towards what you should do that's an interesting way of putting that to me that just feels like judging

00:50:31 ◼   ► See, it's not judgment at all.

00:50:34 ◼   ► It is just guidance.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Because this is one of the things that is very hard for me to communicate to people.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Even though I am looking right now at a calendar on my computer that has a two-week timeframe where literally every single hour is blocked off,

00:50:48 ◼   ► what that is is guidance to me.

00:50:53 ◼   ► Right? It is not a requirement.

00:50:56 ◼   ► And many, many times, I just totally blow off what that calendar says.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And this past week has actually been a great example.

00:51:04 ◼   ► For the last seven days, I have totally blown off everything that's on my calendar,

00:51:11 ◼   ► because I have been busy animating and getting a video ready to upload,

00:51:17 ◼   ► which is actually processing in the background as we record this episode.

00:51:20 ◼   ► But so I don't feel like, "Ooh, my calendar is judging me,"

00:51:24 ◼   ► because I'm not following through on what it says.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Instead, it feels like, no, I am a person who has made a decision

00:51:31 ◼   ► that if I want to get this video up by this particular date,

00:51:35 ◼   ► I'm having to blow everything off on the calendar.

00:51:38 ◼   ► That's part of what it is. Like, this can be revised.

00:51:41 ◼   ► It's not chiseled into stone.

00:51:44 ◼   ► It is a thing that is adaptable.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And when I'm being particularly good about things,

00:51:49 ◼   ► I will just delete everything off the calendar now

00:51:53 ◼   ► when I make that decision. So like the past few days I have had

00:51:56 ◼   ► nothing on the calendar because I know like I'm just gonna be animating as much as I can and

00:52:01 ◼   ► taking breaks when I feel like I need to and then going back to animating and there's no point in trying to

00:52:06 ◼   ► put this on the calendar. I'm just gonna be grinding through stuff. So it's it isn't judgment. It's

00:52:11 ◼   ► guidance. It's helpful guidance from a past me. That's what it is.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Do you have lots of shared calendars? Me and you share a calendar. Do you do this over people?

00:52:22 ◼   ► Oh my god, okay, let me tell you all my calendars here, Myke, before we talk about shared calendars.

00:52:27 ◼   ► Okay, I have UK holidays, US holidays, posts, which is any kind of thing that I'm going

00:52:34 ◼   ► to post on the website, changes, a social calendar, a personal calendar, a work calendar,

00:52:41 ◼   ► a miscellaneous calendar, a hello internet calendar, a cortex calendar, a free time calendar,

00:52:47 ◼   ► a health calendar, a high-intensity work calendar, a low-intensity work calendar, and a landscape

00:52:54 ◼   ► calendar. These are all the calendars that I have.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Wait, what's landscape? Oh man, landscape is super useful. Okay.

00:53:04 ◼   ► Landscape is a thing where I want to be aware of something that is going on in the world

00:53:09 ◼   ► that doesn't necessarily affect me directly. So for example, I have you on my landscape

00:53:14 ◼   ► calendar on this Thursday as Myke in Dallas. Anytime somebody else is doing something that

00:53:22 ◼   ► I want to be aware of, that goes on the landscape. I think of this as like the landscape of people

00:53:28 ◼   ► around me and how accessible are they.

00:53:31 ◼   ► You could also call it stalking calendar.

00:53:34 ◼   ► It's not stalking calendar. I only put it on if it's ever going to matter. Like sometimes

00:53:38 ◼   ► I might need to get in touch with you and it's helpful to be aware of, oh, you aren't

00:53:42 ◼   ► around.

00:53:43 ◼   ► So for example, on Hello Internet, Brady's doing just a ton of traveling this year.

00:53:47 ◼   ► So I have a bunch of things where I know he is not going to be around,

00:53:51 ◼   ► where I have it marked off as like "Brady is not going to be available".

00:53:55 ◼   ► I even put on things like, uh, I have WWDC marked off, which is this summer.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I don't have any plans to go to WWDC, but a lot of people that I interact with I know will be less available during that week.

00:54:09 ◼   ► or on the YouTube side of things, like I have VidCon marked off on my calendar in landscape.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Again, I have no intention to go to VidCon,

00:54:17 ◼   ► but I need to just be aware, like, "Oh, if I'm trying to reach some YouTube people,

00:54:21 ◼   ► it's going to be very hard to reach them on that day because it's VidCon."

00:54:25 ◼   ► And so, anything like that I like to put on that landscape calendar.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Future potential conferences that people make reference to,

00:54:33 ◼   ► travel plans for other people,

00:54:36 ◼   ► Just anything that's going on that might affect my ability to get in touch with other people

00:54:42 ◼   ► or might affect what's going on in my own life, I will put on there.

00:54:46 ◼   ► Oh, another example of a thing that I put on there which is useful is

00:54:49 ◼   ► on the occasions I've had family visiting me here in London,

00:54:52 ◼   ► I want to be able to block off, like, when is this going to happen

00:54:55 ◼   ► so that I'm aware if someone else wants to try to schedule something,

00:55:00 ◼   ► say, during a week if my parents are visiting or something.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Like I am less available to other people during this time.

00:55:06 ◼   ► So that's what the landscape calendar is for.

00:55:08 ◼   ► It's very useful. I highly recommend it.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Yeah, that one does sound pretty useful.

00:55:12 ◼   ► I've got to say.

00:55:13 ◼   ► Yeah. See, I'm convincing you here.

00:55:15 ◼   ► You sounded so skeptical at first, but this is good.

00:55:17 ◼   ► OK, so shared calendars then.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:55:21 ◼   ► So you have shared calendars of lots of people.

00:55:24 ◼   ► Yeah. Is anybody allowed to put something on your calendar?

00:55:28 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. OK. All right.

00:55:32 ◼   ► In terms of shared calendars, I have a shared calendar with my wife, which is for various social events.

00:55:38 ◼   ► So I'm aware of when she will be out of the house, or when we are doing something together with other people.

00:55:43 ◼   ► So obviously that's shared between my wife and I.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And for the most part, my wife adds things to that.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Because I am an antisocial hermit, right?

00:55:52 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, social things? Like, I don't want to plan for or put these things on a calendar."

00:55:56 ◼   ► So if I had to do all of our social arrangements, we would have no social arrangements.

00:56:01 ◼   ► It's probably more accurate to say that your wife has a social calendar that she invited

00:56:06 ◼   ► you to.

00:56:07 ◼   ► That is actually what happened, yes, that's correct.

00:56:13 ◼   ► So we have that social calendar.

00:56:16 ◼   ► The Hello Internet calendar obviously is shared between myself and Brady, which we use for

00:56:21 ◼   ► planning recording.

00:56:22 ◼   ► There's a Cortex calendar, which is shared between you and myself, which is also used

00:56:26 ◼   ► for planning the recording.

00:56:28 ◼   ► But on all of those shared calendars, I also have my personal assistant shared across those

00:56:34 ◼   ► things.

00:56:35 ◼   ► So she is aware of when I am available or not available for things.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Yeah, as I found out to my surprise one day.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Well yes, you were annoyed because I had my assistant bulk update a bunch of Cortex posting

00:56:49 ◼   ► dates.

00:56:50 ◼   ► It wasn't so much that I was annoyed, it was like, "Who is this person in my calendar?"

00:56:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:56 ◼   ► added 20 events over the next couple months for episode release dates, yes.

00:57:01 ◼   ► But the most important calendar that my assistant is in charge of, which is shared between us,

00:57:09 ◼   ► is the calendar that I call "Changes". And you know how in... What are you laughing at?

00:57:16 ◼   ► - It's a great name. - What's funny about the name "Changes"?

00:57:20 ◼   ► - It's just funny to me about it. - What do you think "Changes" is for?

00:57:24 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what it could be.

00:57:29 ◼   ► Just the the calendar with the name "Changes" is just a very peculiar name to me.

00:57:35 ◼   ► No, okay. So, "Changes" is for anything that is different in the week that I almost certainly need to be notified that it's different.

00:57:48 ◼   ► So this is, like, looking at my changes calendar for this upcoming week,

00:57:53 ◼   ► listed on there, like, tomorrow I have a boring business bank appointment that I have to go to,

00:57:59 ◼   ► on Thursday I have a medical examination that I need to go to.

00:58:04 ◼   ► So those two things are listed on this changes calendar,

00:58:07 ◼   ► because I'm going to want alerts ahead of time to remind me to pop up on my watch or whatever

00:58:12 ◼   ► that I need to go to these things,

00:58:14 ◼   ► But, like a bank appointment is not going to be a recurring event.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Like this isn't going to be every other week I go to the bank, it's just going to happen this one time.

00:58:24 ◼   ► Isn't this just like an appointments calendar then?

00:58:27 ◼   ► Why is it changes?

00:58:28 ◼   ► Isn't this just an appointment?

00:58:30 ◼   ► Yeah...

00:58:32 ◼   ► I mean, I guess it could be appointments,

00:58:35 ◼   ► but to me, changes feels like the right word because...

00:58:41 ◼   ► I mean I guess like in some ways I could almost title this calendar "Interruptions to my life"

00:58:46 ◼   ► but changes is just a shorter way of saying that. It's like there's a normal week and then here are

00:58:51 ◼   ► the changes in that week. So yeah I guess it is an appointments calendar really but okay changes is

00:58:56 ◼   ► the word. The reason I asked that is I know I've been that's just semantics but I wanted to know

00:59:01 ◼   ► if there was more to that calendar than that you know like I have a calendar that's just called

00:59:06 ◼   ► general because that was the name that it was given, right, I think automatically.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And that's my blue calendar, which is where stuff like that goes.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Like this is not a thing that would have its own calendar because it doesn't happen all

00:59:20 ◼   ► the time, but it's a thing that I have to do today which is different.

00:59:25 ◼   ► And it might be something like, go to the bank, go get a haircut, that type of thing.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Yeah, so that kind of thing is useful to have, and that to me is...

00:59:34 ◼   ► This Changes calendar is, like I said, in some ways is the primary default calendar,

00:59:40 ◼   ► because it is the one that most often I need to add something to,

00:59:44 ◼   ► or my assistant is adding something to, and so these are appointments that get scheduled.

00:59:50 ◼   ► That's the way this works, and that's a shared calendar where I get...

00:59:52 ◼   ► So it's almost always like, "Oh, I get a notification that something has been added to that,"

00:59:56 ◼   ► and it's like, "Oh, here comes an appointment. I can't wait to find out what it is."

01:00:00 ◼   ► It's not normally happy news when something gets added, they're like,

01:00:04 ◼   ► "Oh, gotta go to the bank, I've gotta go to the dentist, I've gotta go to the doctor.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I don't wanna do it." My assistant has a bunch of rules

01:00:12 ◼   ► about how she is to add things to this calendar.

01:00:16 ◼   ► So I set down a bunch of guidelines about, okay,

01:00:20 ◼   ► never book anything before 1pm unless there's absolutely

01:00:24 ◼   ► no other time that it can happen because I'm very protective of my mornings and trying to do work then.

01:00:31 ◼   ► And then I have, you know, preferential days about when it should be added, so it's like, okay,

01:00:35 ◼   ► Tuesdays are the best days to add calendar events and Thursdays are the worst days to add calendar events.

01:00:41 ◼   ► And then a few other things like, if there's already an appointment on a Tuesday,

01:00:45 ◼   ► just let's book as many things on that Tuesday as we possibly can.

01:00:49 ◼   ► Like, I'd way rather have one day with four appointments than four days with one appointment.

01:00:54 ◼   ► And so that kind of gets all clumped together if possible.

01:00:58 ◼   ► That's the way I like to kind of arrange things. Just easier to deal with that way.

01:01:02 ◼   ► But yeah, so I do have very many shared calendars.

01:01:06 ◼   ► I'm looking at all those little radio icons on my little sidebar there.

01:01:10 ◼   ► And yeah.

01:01:14 ◼   ► The whole notification system with calendars is a bit weird when other people add stuff or you add stuff.

01:01:18 ◼   ► Like everybody gets notified and it can be a little bit annoying, but it's the best thing that works.

01:01:22 ◼   ► As we said before, I use iCloud to keep it all synchronized.

01:01:24 ◼   ► And it's pretty good.

01:01:25 ◼   ► It's pretty good. I don't have any problems with that.

01:01:27 ◼   ► So are those little icons in different colors?

01:01:31 ◼   ► As I said, I use colors for all of mine, and I know all of my calendars by their colors,

01:01:37 ◼   ► and kind of think of them in color rather than what they are.

01:01:39 ◼   ► Oh yeah, color is vitally important, Myke.

01:01:42 ◼   ► But there can't be enough colors in the system to hold all the calendars you have.

01:01:47 ◼   ► Oh, okay, so the number of times I have thought...

01:01:52 ◼   ► Human vision is too constrained for how many colors I want in my calendars.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Right? Because we really have essentially seven colors that a human can really clearly,

01:02:04 ◼   ► at a glance, distinguish.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, you're not looking for Lila Confucius here.

01:02:09 ◼   ► Yeah. Seven is not enough. Seven is not enough.

01:02:12 ◼   ► So just running through my own colors, which it's so personal, but it's like,

01:02:19 ◼   ► I can't envision it any other way. It's been this way for... I mean, years and years.

01:02:24 ◼   ► But...

01:02:25 ◼   ► Work stuff is blue, personal stuff is green, health stuff is red,

01:02:34 ◼   ► I have free time is blocked off in yellow.

01:02:38 ◼   ► The changes calendar is very important. I use the color orange for the changes calendar.

01:02:44 ◼   ► Not because that's the color that I want to use, but it's because it's the color that stands out the most on Apple Calendar.

01:02:49 ◼   ► One thing that I am kind of frustrated with the Apple Calendar thing is how it wants to make everything super pale, which is very frustrating.

01:02:55 ◼   ► But their orange color happened to stand out the most even when it was pale.

01:03:00 ◼   ► So like eight years ago, because of this way that Apple Calendar worked, like I chose orange as my changes color,

01:03:06 ◼   ► and like forever until the end of time now, changes always will be in orange.

01:03:10 ◼   ► A David Bowie song is gonna be in my head all day now.

01:03:13 ◼   ► [music]

01:03:15 ◼   ► And I have holidays as pink, and posts and podcasts and stuff are also blue because from my perspective they are a subsection of work.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And purple I use for nothing because purple is an abomination.

01:03:32 ◼   ► So because of the amount of calendars that I have, I effectively don't have any color overlap.

01:03:38 ◼   ► So I have podcasts calendar which is orange and on that calendar is my recordings but also calls and appointments related to podcasts.

01:03:48 ◼   ► Going orange. I have a cortex calendar which is yellow.

01:03:52 ◼   ► No, yellow is free time though Myke, that's all wrong.

01:03:56 ◼   ► Well, there's nothing I can do about it. Hang on a second, is there a grey colour?

01:04:00 ◼   ► Sleep is grey.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Alright, I need to change the colour of my cortex calendar to grey. How did I not think of this before now?

01:04:07 ◼   ► now. Edina has a calendar that she shares with me, which is just kind of things that

01:04:12 ◼   ► she's doing, and that's green. My general calendar is blue.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Ah, this is all wrong. This is subjectively all wrong.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Yeah, subject- there you go, that's it. Subjectively all wrong. I have a calendar called "Work",

01:04:24 ◼   ► which is also green, but nothing goes on there anymore because I don't have a job. I have

01:04:30 ◼   ► a red calendar called "Holiday". I have a yellow calendar called "Gigs" for concerts,

01:04:36 ◼   ► I don't go to concerts anymore, so Cortex and gigs being the same thing, like gigs hasn't

01:04:41 ◼   ► been used in years.

01:04:43 ◼   ► So what a bizarrely specific calendar to have.

01:04:46 ◼   ► I used to go in my prime, I used to go to about two concerts a week.

01:04:54 ◼   ► And then me and Adina have a shared calendar which is purple.

01:04:58 ◼   ► But now any gigs and concerts and stuff would go in the purple calendar because most likely

01:05:02 ◼   ► me and Adina would be going together.

01:05:04 ◼   ► I also have a dark blue calendar, which is our live show schedule calendar, but I hide

01:05:10 ◼   ► that, I don't see it, because I already have all of that in orange that I need to know

01:05:13 ◼   ► about.

01:05:14 ◼   ► And then I have a dark green calendar, which is invites to my Google account.

01:05:18 ◼   ► There you go.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Little tip here for you, Myke, to get rid of that gigs calendar.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I do have one other calendar, which is grey, which is just called old calendars.

01:05:28 ◼   ► When you go to delete a calendar that you no longer need, Apple's calendar program asks

01:05:33 ◼   ► if you want to move it to... move all of the past events to a different calendar.

01:05:37 ◼   ► And so I have one calendar called "Old Calendar" that is just a collection of things that don't exist anymore.

01:05:42 ◼   ► It's like all of the various calendars I used to have to manage school stuff.

01:05:46 ◼   ► I've deleted those calendars because I don't use them anymore,

01:05:50 ◼   ► but the events are still all there in this greyed out old calendar.

01:05:54 ◼   ► So I can go back and look and say,

01:05:56 ◼   ► "Oh, what was my schedule like when I was teaching six years ago at X school?"

01:06:00 ◼   ► In case I ever need to see it.

01:06:02 ◼   ► So that's a way that you can still keep all of the old stuff without having to

01:06:07 ◼   ► have your sidebar cluttered up with calendars that you haven't used in years

01:06:10 ◼   ► like you do.

01:06:11 ◼   ► That's a good idea.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Yeah. See, I'm currently changing the, there we go.

01:06:16 ◼   ► The record cortex calendar is, is now, is now gray. There you go.

01:06:21 ◼   ► That's fine. That's the time. I'm proud of myself now.

01:06:23 ◼   ► It's a fantastic thing to do.

01:06:24 ◼   ► It's still the wrong color though,

01:06:25 ◼   ► because gray is for sleep or for archived calendars.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Oh yeah. Yeah. How could I have gotten that wrong?

01:06:31 ◼   ► use that. Yeah.

01:06:32 ◼   ► It's just like hearing you even

01:06:35 ◼   ► describe something like whatever

01:06:37 ◼   ► it was, just a work calendar being

01:06:39 ◼   ► green. My brain just rebels against

01:06:41 ◼   ► that. It's like, no, green is for

01:06:43 ◼   ► personal.

01:06:44 ◼   ► But FantasticOwl on iOS doesn't

01:06:47 ◼   ► have a gray color.

01:06:48 ◼   ► So it's going back to yellow.

01:06:52 ◼   ► You can pick an exact color in

01:06:54 ◼   ► FantasticOwl.

01:06:55 ◼   ► It'll it'll just sink over on iOS.

01:06:57 ◼   ► Oh, it didn't do that.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Oh, my God. Now all my colors have

01:07:01 ◼   ► have changed. Why did that happen?

01:07:04 ◼   ► I can't give you live tech support while we're recording a podcast, Myke.

01:07:09 ◼   ► Why had they all changed?

01:07:10 ◼   ► Your colours were all garbage anyway, so it doesn't matter.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Ugh.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Quick calendar tip, which I really like. This thing is a thing that I do all the time.

01:07:23 ◼   ► on iOS has a "Today" widget that you can install.

01:07:30 ◼   ► The thing that I like about it is that you can set only some calendars to appear in the "Today" widget.

01:07:40 ◼   ► And this is one of the little habits that I have that every morning I swipe down on Notification Center

01:07:45 ◼   ► and look at that little widget, because it's a great way for me to just see what things have to happen today.

01:07:54 ◼   ► So in FantasticAl, I have it set so that my Changes calendar, the Hello Internet calendar, the Cortex calendar,

01:08:02 ◼   ► and the Posts calendar are the only things that show up in that FantasticAl widget.

01:08:10 ◼   ► So like when I swipe down on it today, it shows me there are two items that are all day items

01:08:16 ◼   ► Which are the posts which is the next video and the next episode of hello internet are each going up today

01:08:22 ◼   ► And then it lists record cortex and it shows the exact time

01:08:25 ◼   ► So I really love that to always just have a quick little overview of I don't want to see the whole calendar

01:08:31 ◼   ► I just want to see a subset of my calendars and I love that like I use that every morning every day

01:08:38 ◼   ► to kind of orient myself about what is going to happen today big picture wise.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Is there anything in this system that's missing?

01:08:48 ◼   ► Like, is there things that you wish your system did better or things that you've tried to implement and have failed to do?

01:08:55 ◼   ► The one thing that I would like

01:08:59 ◼   ► that I have tried to

01:09:04 ◼   ► replicate in some ways, but I wish there was better

01:09:08 ◼   ► notifications for different kind of items. So I would like...

01:09:14 ◼   ► Do you know that like the Do app timer? That app has this great feature

01:09:20 ◼   ► which is like this little "remind me every five minutes when a timer goes off" feature.

01:09:26 ◼   ► I absolutely love that and I wish a calendar app had something that was similar to that. Like keep bugging me about

01:09:33 ◼   ► about this thing when it's supposed to start.

01:09:37 ◼   ► Like, don't just...

01:09:38 ◼   ► Again, because so many of the things on my calendar are

01:09:41 ◼   ► things that don't absolutely have to happen.

01:09:44 ◼   ► So, like, with going to the gym, for example.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I would love to be able to have my calendar

01:09:49 ◼   ► nag me about that repeatedly,

01:09:52 ◼   ► instead of just once having a little notification come up.

01:09:56 ◼   ► That's probably the only thing that I would like.

01:09:58 ◼   ► There are a couple ways that I'm getting around that

01:10:01 ◼   ► using a few apps we might talk about at some point in the future,

01:10:04 ◼   ► but it would be nice if that was directly built into a calendar.

01:10:07 ◼   ► I think the only thing that I'm missing is for a calendar app to complete all of the things on my calendar for me

01:10:15 ◼   ► without me needing to do anything.

01:10:16 ◼   ► So maybe I can join you in the meadow.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Yeah, that would be quite nice. I would like that too.

01:10:23 ◼   ► Same with the to-do app.

01:10:24 ◼   ► If I could get a to-do app that would actually do the items for me, that'd be perfect.

01:10:27 ◼   ► They're all called "do", but no, they don't do anything, do they?

01:10:30 ◼   ► They don't do anything, it's worthless.

01:10:32 ◼   ► It should just be called "Not Do".

01:10:34 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:35 ◼   ► Undone.

01:10:37 ◼   ► That's going to be the name of my to-do app.

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01:12:35 ◼   ► Have you found us an office space yet?

01:12:36 ◼   ► Us? Whoa whoa whoa.

01:12:38 ◼   ► I mean you, sorry.

01:12:41 ◼   ► No. I have not found us an office space. I will never find us an office space.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Never say never.

01:12:48 ◼   ► I'm saying never. Never say never. I already did, Myke. What if it's huge? What if I win

01:12:56 ◼   ► the lottery and offer to buy a massive complex for the two of us but you just need to find

01:13:04 ◼   ► it and it's big enough that we'll never run into each other but it will be the same building.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Okay listen, I will agree to that if we have separate elevators on separate sides of a

01:13:13 ◼   ► building that go to separate floors.

01:13:16 ◼   ► That's my conditions.

01:13:17 ◼   ► There you go, Myke.

01:13:18 ◼   ► All I'm trying to do is understand the parameters.

01:13:22 ◼   ► So I have now established them.

01:13:24 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:13:25 ◼   ► So now you can never say never.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, there you go.

01:13:28 ◼   ► You're right.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Never with an asterisk on it.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Functionally equivalent never.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Never say never is a problematic phrase.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Sorry, I don't know where to go with that.

01:13:43 ◼   ► You don't need to go anywhere.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I just left you hanging there.

01:13:46 ◼   ► I don't know what to say.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So how is your office search going?

01:13:53 ◼   ► Not well, Myke.

01:13:54 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:13:55 ◼   ► Not well.

01:13:56 ◼   ► It's not going well at all.

01:13:57 ◼   ► What I'm assuming is nowhere can provide you with what you require.

01:14:01 ◼   ► So you remember a few episodes ago, we talked about the horrors of the OpenPlan office.

01:14:12 ◼   ► And so my initial probings into trying to find office space

01:14:20 ◼   ► have revealed that the open-plan office is a virus that has taken over everywhere.

01:14:26 ◼   ► And so

01:14:29 ◼   ► Like when I'm thinking about "Oh, I'm going to get an office for myself"

01:14:33 ◼   ► Like my father is self-employed as a lawyer and when I was a kid he had

01:14:39 ◼   ► Various offices that he rented in different locations like then there were office buildings that had many offices that people could rent

01:14:46 ◼   ► And this is sort of what I had in my mind about like I want to try to find something like this

01:14:50 ◼   ► but looking around

01:14:52 ◼   ► All of the relatively new office buildings and buildings within like the last 10 years

01:14:58 ◼   ► are all built as

01:15:01 ◼   ► single endless open

01:15:04 ◼   ► Floors. Yeah

01:15:07 ◼   ► So the building itself doesn't even have any structure within it to provide for private offices for people.

01:15:14 ◼   ► It's just endless open floors.

01:15:17 ◼   ► And so when I try to contact some places and say, "Oh, do you have office space for rent?"

01:15:21 ◼   ► They say, "Why, yes we do. How many tables do you need?"

01:15:26 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh, no, what do you mean?"

01:15:27 ◼   ► And like, "Oh, well, we have a grid of 10x10 tables per floor that we rent out to companies.

01:15:35 ◼   ► "How many of those tables would you like on a floor?"

01:15:37 ◼   ► Like, you gotta be kidding me.

01:15:38 ◼   ► That sounds awful for companies. That's not at all what I'm looking for.

01:15:42 ◼   ► "Do you have any private space?"

01:15:43 ◼   ► And like, what do you mean by private?

01:15:45 ◼   ► Do you mean like with a door? No, we don't do doors.

01:15:48 ◼   ► That's the response that I often get.

01:15:51 ◼   ► But I say the open plans thing is like a virus, because even trying to find office space

01:15:57 ◼   ► in what, to me, look like older buildings,

01:16:00 ◼   ► it seems like many of them on the interior have converted as much as they can

01:16:04 ◼   ► to open plan space.

01:16:06 ◼   ► So I've seen a few buildings where I think,

01:16:08 ◼   ► "Surely building, when you were originally made..."

01:16:11 ◼   ► Because this is London, right? So the building's

01:16:13 ◼   ► thousands of years old.

01:16:15 ◼   ► "You weren't built with an open plan office in mind."

01:16:18 ◼   ► "But clearly at some point, you realized it was more profitable to"

01:16:22 ◼   ► "sell office space by the desk and by the floor"

01:16:26 ◼   ► "and so you just got rid of all of the interior walls."

01:16:28 ◼   ► So it has not been promising so far, Myke.

01:16:30 ◼   ► It has been disappointing to be looking for a place that is private as opposed to a place

01:16:36 ◼   ► that is just a table in a room of other tables.

01:16:39 ◼   ► So you've been conducting this search personally?

01:16:44 ◼   ► I have been personally approaching buildings that I am aware of and I've had my assistant

01:16:50 ◼   ► searching out various options and neither of them have returned promising results so

01:16:55 ◼   ► far.

01:16:56 ◼   ► like you might need to go to a company, you know, that can just provide this search for

01:17:02 ◼   ► you.

01:17:03 ◼   ► I was wondering if such a thing exists. Like, there must be companies that can do this.

01:17:08 ◼   ► There has to be. If there are letting agents for personal property, there are letting agents

01:17:14 ◼   ► for commercial property.

01:17:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess there have to be, but the problem is I am on a very strange scale of it.

01:17:23 ◼   ► I don't think so. You're a small business.

01:17:25 ◼   ► There are small businesses looking for offices.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe.

01:17:30 ◼   ► I don't know. Everything I've come across is just weirdly wrong in a bunch of ways.

01:17:35 ◼   ► And it's just frustrating because it feels like I'm in central London.

01:17:38 ◼   ► There are offices everywhere.

01:17:40 ◼   ► There's commercial real estate in every direction as far as the eye can see.

01:17:45 ◼   ► There are sad office drones working in every building.

01:17:48 ◼   ► I see them through all the windows.

01:17:49 ◼   ► and many of those buildings have phone numbers on them that you can call about for office space

01:17:54 ◼   ► but just none of them so far have had private office space

01:17:56 ◼   ► The only places that do have private office spaces that I have found so far are unacceptable

01:18:01 ◼   ► because they are out of central London

01:18:05 ◼   ► and then suddenly it's like, "Wait a minute. I can get some nice offices that might work for me just as a single person?"

01:18:14 ◼   ► But then suddenly I have made for myself a morning commute.

01:18:18 ◼   ► And I'm like, "F*ck that."

01:18:22 ◼   ► I have worked too long and too hard to work myself back into a commute.

01:18:30 ◼   ► It's like, "No, no, no, no, no. I have done that for many years."

01:18:33 ◼   ► And I cannot imagine, like, I'm not getting on the Underground at six in the morning

01:18:39 ◼   ► for a 30 minute train ride out to the outer rim of London just to have a private office.

01:18:44 ◼   ► Like no, no, no, this is...

01:18:46 ◼   ► Yeah, come join us out here. The office space is plentiful.

01:18:49 ◼   ► You're not 30 minutes away, you're like two hours away.

01:18:51 ◼   ► I'm not two hours away. I'm 45 minutes from the centre of London.

01:18:55 ◼   ► 45 minutes from the centre of London. You might as... yeah, you're just...

01:18:59 ◼   ► You're not even in London technically, are you?

01:19:02 ◼   ► No.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah, there you go. It's just too far.

01:19:05 ◼   ► I'm in another county.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Yeah, that's no good. No good at all, Myke.

01:19:08 ◼   ► Like, out there with your tumbleweeds.

01:19:11 ◼   ► Not interested.

01:19:12 ◼   ► I'm very aware of that.

01:19:14 ◼   ► Don't need you to tell me.

01:19:18 ◼   ► But that is exactly the problem.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Like here is the seductive part about living in the centre of a city.

01:19:25 ◼   ► Even for all of the problems that it has, like incredibly high costs, frustratingly

01:19:30 ◼   ► small places to live, the seductive part about where I live is everything I need in my whole

01:19:38 ◼   ► life is within walking distance.

01:19:40 ◼   ► And so, my co-working space, my gym,

01:19:44 ◼   ► several grocery stores, a couple of parks,

01:19:48 ◼   ► even my wife's place of employment is within walking distance.

01:19:52 ◼   ► And so, like, I've occasionally met her after work to walk her home.

01:19:55 ◼   ► Like, 99% of everything I need I can walk to

01:19:59 ◼   ► within 15 or 20 minutes at the absolute most.

01:20:04 ◼   ► That's just absolutely great.

01:20:07 ◼   ► And so what I would just, I just want like magically there to be an office space that I can rent that is also within this tiny radius of my world.

01:20:17 ◼   ► But so far, so far nothing Myke. It is sad, it is disappointing.

01:20:22 ◼   ► We did have some follow up about your working environment in general because there were quite a few people taken with how you were working and the kind of constraints that you put yourself in during Workcation 2.

01:20:34 ◼   ► And Fireball73 on Reddit pointed out something that you were surprised about that I thought

01:20:45 ◼   ► was very interesting, which is the idea that many bands go to remote locations to record

01:20:52 ◼   ► their albums. This is a very normal thing. So for example, a band from London may go

01:20:57 ◼   ► to a recording studio in LA to record their album. And this can be for a few different

01:21:04 ◼   ► reasons but sometimes it's just to get the feel of a different city to help them with

01:21:08 ◼   ► the music right like to kind of inspire them creatively so they're in different surroundings

01:21:13 ◼   ► and it might make them record different sounding music you know some people will go to a specific

01:21:18 ◼   ► place because they're trying to capture the sound of that place in their music and some

01:21:23 ◼   ► people do it so they're just away from the usual distractions of their day I'm not sure

01:21:29 ◼   ► if you were trying to capture the sights and sounds of Amsterdam for your recent video

01:21:33 ◼   ► or not. You know, I guess people can make their mind up about that depending on how

01:21:38 ◼   ► many colors are in the video, I guess. But this is something that you're clearly not

01:21:44 ◼   ► alone in doing.

01:21:45 ◼   ► B: I know I'm not alone in doing this. I didn't know about bands because I'm not interested

01:21:49 ◼   ► in the world of music, really. But yeah, I was surprised by that. Like, "Oh, is this

01:21:53 ◼   ► a thing?" And apparently it is a thing. But it makes sense in retrospect that like, "Oh,

01:21:57 ◼   ► of course that is something that I could see bands definitely doing for the exact same

01:22:01 ◼   ► reasons that I did it. It's like yeah, having a different environment and also having a

01:22:07 ◼   ► environment where you are out of the normalcy of your life is very effective for limited

01:22:12 ◼   ► periods of time.

01:22:15 ◼   ► And also Meadpie on Reddit wondered if, and I thought this was quite an interesting idea,

01:22:22 ◼   ► if your brain could maybe be tricked via different lighting into thinking that you're working

01:22:26 ◼   ► in different scenarios, did you consider something like this? So they suggested maybe one of

01:22:31 ◼   ► these bulbs that you can change the lights of, like a Philips Hue or something like that.

01:22:36 ◼   ► Oh Myke, my house already has Hue light bulbs in every socket.

01:22:43 ◼   ► What do you use them for?

01:22:44 ◼   ► I first thought that this was, I don't know, like a gimmick, the Hue light bulbs. I can't

01:22:52 ◼   ► remember why I got the very first one, but I had some specific reason why I wanted to

01:22:56 ◼   ► just try one out. And then as soon as you have one, you go, "Oh, I want every lightbulb

01:22:59 ◼   ► in the house to be just like this."

01:23:04 ◼   ► They are surprisingly, surprisingly handy. And the thing that's really great is, again,

01:23:11 ◼   ► on Notification Center, when I pull it down on any of my iOS devices, I use an app called

01:23:17 ◼   ► iConnect Hue. And this allows me to have presets for the lights in the house. So at any point,

01:23:24 ◼   ► and I can turn all the lights on and off or change it to a whole bunch of presets that my wife and I have made.

01:23:29 ◼   ► And it is just really great and really convenient to be able to do that.

01:23:36 ◼   ► So we have different settings for movies.

01:23:39 ◼   ► We have two movie settings, one which is called "serious movie"

01:23:43 ◼   ► and then we have another one which is called "not so serious movie"

01:23:46 ◼   ► which is depending on how much we want the lights up or down when we're watching a movie together.

01:23:52 ◼   ► It's a not so serious movie, has brighter lights because we're gonna be getting up and going to the kitchen and moving around more

01:23:57 ◼   ► because we're not paying attention as much.

01:23:59 ◼   ► There's a setting that I use all the time, which is that I tend to go to bed much earlier than my wife does,

01:24:04 ◼   ► but she doesn't want the lights in the bedroom all the way off when she comes to bed

01:24:09 ◼   ► because she can't find her way in the room, like, and doesn't want to stumble over stuff.

01:24:13 ◼   ► So I have a setting that I use which has the lights very low and very red in the bedroom when I'm going to sleep,

01:24:19 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't bother me, but it's still visible for her to move around. Like, boy, is that great and use that every single day.

01:24:26 ◼   ► There are a few other things that we use them for, but this person mentioning about tricking with the lighting, like,

01:24:33 ◼   ► my wife does have it set so that all of the lights in the house

01:24:39 ◼   ► slowly come on when she gets up in the morning. She wakes up later than I usually do and

01:24:46 ◼   ► And that is a very nice feature.

01:24:50 ◼   ► She also has one of these Philips sunrise alarm clocks,

01:24:54 ◼   ► which try to wake you by having this kind of fake sunrise

01:24:57 ◼   ► happen in the room.

01:24:58 ◼   ► I wish I could use these because I wake up earlier

01:25:03 ◼   ► than my wife and it doesn't make sense

01:25:05 ◼   ► for her to wake up at the time that I'm going to wake up.

01:25:09 ◼   ► So if one of us is going to get the sunrise,

01:25:11 ◼   ► it's going to be her.

01:25:12 ◼   ► But let me tell you, anybody out there

01:25:14 ◼   ► who's trying to wake up in the mornings,

01:25:17 ◼   ► the light trick is amazingly effective.

01:25:21 ◼   ► Like it really does help you wake up quite naturally

01:25:24 ◼   ► to have the lights slowly come on

01:25:26 ◼   ► like the half an hour before you wanna wake up.

01:25:28 ◼   ► You should totally do it.

01:25:29 ◼   ► - I really want one of these,

01:25:33 ◼   ► I really want one of these light bulb systems.

01:25:37 ◼   ► The only reason we haven't done it is

01:25:39 ◼   ► I don't know what the light fixtures are gonna be

01:25:41 ◼   ► in the house we move to.

01:25:43 ◼   ► So I don't want to go ahead and buy all of that stuff now and then have to change it in six months.

01:25:48 ◼   ► It's a big investment. Like the Hue light bulbs are not cheap. They're not cheap at all.

01:25:53 ◼   ► So you don't want to buy a whole bunch and then realize you need different ones in six months. That's no good.

01:25:59 ◼   ► So have you tried anything like this to maybe have a setting for podcast editing, a setting for script writing,

01:26:06 ◼   ► and to maybe try and trick your brain into a different location that way?

01:26:10 ◼   ► I don't explicitly do that with work.

01:26:15 ◼   ► I do sort of do it because I like the lights at a different setting than my wife does.

01:26:21 ◼   ► So I like them much whiter and brighter than she does.

01:26:25 ◼   ► And so when she's gone, I set them that way, and then I have them actually automatically slowly set back to her preferred setting around the time that she comes home.

01:26:34 ◼   ► So there is this interesting thing that happens in your brain, like I am ambiently aware of about the time she is coming home because the lights have changed ever so slightly.

01:26:42 ◼   ► Like it's interesting that your brain does learn to pick up on these cues.

01:26:46 ◼   ► I... I'm not sure that...

01:26:50 ◼   ► Like the lighting effect I imagine is maybe 5 or 10% helpful.

01:26:55 ◼   ► And I think 90% of the battle for me is having a different location that I can go to that is not working in my house.

01:27:03 ◼   ► So while I can say like, "Oh yeah, maybe they would be helpful,"

01:27:05 ◼   ► really what I still just want to focus on is trying to find an office and a dedicated space

01:27:10 ◼   ► for writing and editing work and things like that.

01:27:14 ◼   ► That's going to help me way more than messing around with the lights and trying to train my

01:27:19 ◼   ► brain like, "Ooh, when the lights are blue, you're supposed to be writing."

01:27:22 ◼   ► And Gabriel suggested the idea of if me and you were to ever share a desk space...

01:27:29 ◼   ► I know it's never going to happen.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Yeah, we're not going to share a desk space.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Okay, it would make for a fantastic sitcom

01:27:34 ◼   ► Which I agree with

01:27:37 ◼   ► And I have a title for that sitcom

01:27:40 ◼   ► If we ever decided to go ahead and make it maybe YouTube can throw some of that red money our way

01:27:46 ◼   ► No, and we can make an original and I feel like we should call it the gray area

01:27:50 ◼   ► No, that's such a good name

01:27:54 ◼   ► I'm just saying YouTube if you want to throw some money because he you know gray will bend to this if you throw enough money at

01:28:01 ◼   ► him. He said before that he'll sell out so you can call me. I've got a picture of my

01:28:07 ◼   ► business cards in the show notes so just send me a note and make it happen. The grey area.

01:28:13 ◼   ► There need to be so many zeros on that check. So many zeros.

01:28:19 ◼   ► They got the money.

01:28:20 ◼   ► [silence]

01:28:35 ◼   ► Can we just briefly mention American Track Simulator?

01:28:38 ◼   ► I have nothing to add about this. I think it's like...

01:28:40 ◼   ► It's just... Let's not talk about that now.

01:28:43 ◼   ► I don't know why I want to talk about it because I've been playing the hell out of it.

01:28:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I know you have, but let's save it until next time.

01:28:50 ◼   ► the hell out of it. I have made many threats, I'm saving for a drug.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Yeah, sure, yeah, we'll talk about it next time.