Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► There are Cortex t-shirts. There are. Now that we kind of finished the first 10, we are marking it with a t-shirt design.

00:00:08 ◼   ► And we are doing something called Teespring, which I know you've never done before, so I will explain it to you, Gray, in an effort to also explain it to our dear listeners.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Yes, thank you. Because I know this is a thing that you have done with several of your Relay shows. And I am unfamiliar with this at all, so I do need this explained to me.

00:00:27 ◼   ► So Teespring is basically like crowdfunding for t-shirts. So we set a goal and we set like to sell 75 shirts as a minimum.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Okay.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Just because that's where the it makes sense but they will actually print as long as there's a profit. It's kind of a weird thing.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And we have two different variants of shirt for men and women. We have a grey shirt and a blue shirt.

00:00:53 ◼   ► shirt with our little monkey brain guy on who I would like to give a name to

00:00:58 ◼   ► we can table that discussion for another time

00:01:01 ◼   ► We went back and forth a couple times and the designer that you work with came up with what I thought was something very cute for this run of shirts

00:01:09 ◼   ► which yes is half of it is the Cortex Brain logo but the bottom half of it is a little monkey head

00:01:17 ◼   ► which is a thing that we have mentioned before about trying to...

00:01:20 ◼   ► working with yourself is in some sense trying to work with the monkey that is inside your own brain.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So that's kind of the idea behind this t-shirt for season one.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And I like it. I think it looks great.

00:01:31 ◼   ► So we have our little monkey brain and then on the back of the t-shirt we have the coding of the redundant t-shirt.

00:01:36 ◼   ► So people know that this is in fact a redundant t-shirt.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Maybe you could buy more than one so you have redundant, redundant t-shirts.

00:01:42 ◼   ► shirts. So they're there and what will happen is once the end of the campaign

00:01:46 ◼   ► is done, so it's two weeks from the day that we release this episode, so the

00:01:51 ◼   ► campaign will end on the 11th of September. So you have until the 11th of

00:01:57 ◼   ► September to buy a shirt and once the campaign is over this run of

00:02:01 ◼   ► t-shirts will be done. And so basically what we may do, we may bring this design

00:02:06 ◼   ► back in the future, we may not, we're just seeing how interested people are in this

00:02:11 ◼   ► shirt and then we can work out where to go from there but if you want one you

00:02:14 ◼   ► want to go to teespring.com/cortex and buy one or two or you can buy many many

00:02:22 ◼   ► redundant t-shirts for you to have I'm probably gonna buy like three or four of

00:02:26 ◼   ► them excellent and the two colors so I consider the gray one the gray shirt and

00:02:32 ◼   ► the blue one the mic shirt oh yeah is that what it is that's how I think of

00:02:35 ◼   ► this yeah okay the blue one is the mic edition yeah cuz I I wanted it to be a

00:02:39 ◼   ► color mm-hmm because I have way too many gray and black t-shirts you can never

00:02:44 ◼   ► have too many black t-shirts this is why I knew we had to have a gray version

00:02:47 ◼   ► because I wanted a color version but I knew that you wouldn't allow it only to

00:02:53 ◼   ► be just one color so that's why there's two colors the blue is the one for Myke

00:02:56 ◼   ► and the gray is the one for me because I will definitely be getting the gray one

00:03:01 ◼   ► you won't even buy one of the blue ones but that's that's the one for you I'm

00:03:05 ◼   ► I'm gonna buy them both, but...

00:03:06 ◼   ► - I don't have any t-shirts in any color except black

00:03:10 ◼   ► and very dark gray.

00:03:11 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:03:12 ◼   ► - Why would I have other ones?

00:03:13 ◼   ► Then you just get into a whole problem

00:03:14 ◼   ► of having to match your wardrobe in the morning.

00:03:17 ◼   ► Not interested.

00:03:17 ◼   ► - Cortex is also now on YouTube.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Can you explain this to me?

00:03:22 ◼   ► I'm so confused.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Does it even have a URL?

00:03:24 ◼   ► I don't understand how it works.

00:03:26 ◼   ► - Oh God, I don't even know if it has a URL right now.

00:03:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:29 ◼   ► - Maybe.

00:03:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:31 ◼   ► - This is, this is, ugh.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Okay, well let's back up for a second before we get to the URL thing which I can complain about in a moment.

00:03:38 ◼   ► But I will have to explain this to you because I also have to try to figure it out for me as well.

00:03:43 ◼   ► But I know that there is some audience of people who, for whatever reason, likes to listen to podcasts on YouTube.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Perhaps they're just trying to consolidate all of their media consumption in one place.

00:03:56 ◼   ► So on Hello Internet we've had the Hello Internet podcast on YouTube for a while now.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Now, and I know, because I hear from people who complain that I'm too far behind on the shows,

00:04:05 ◼   ► that they prefer to listen to it that way, so we make it available there.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And so I thought, well, why don't we set that up for Cortex as well, in case people are interested?

00:04:14 ◼   ► So, some people do like to listen on YouTube, and so we are going to put it there for them.

00:04:20 ◼   ► And we were just arranging the specifics of that this morning, finalizing things.

00:04:24 ◼   ► But yes, it has been a very long time since I set up a brand new, unconnected to anything, YouTube channel.

00:04:32 ◼   ► And because YouTube just changes things so often and they've gone through a Google+ integration/now disintegration process,

00:04:43 ◼   ► it's just so confusing setting up a new YouTube channel, even for someone who is ostensibly a professional YouTuber.

00:04:51 ◼   ► So I was trying to figure out all the things like how do I get a designated URL?

00:04:55 ◼   ► And the answer was not easily when you're setting up something that's new.

00:04:59 ◼   ► But we will have the link in the show notes.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Maybe there will, maybe there won't be a real URL by the time this goes up.

00:05:04 ◼   ► But there will be a place that you can listen to Cortex on YouTube if you so desire.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I guess there will be a URL, but it would be horrible to read.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Yeah, this seems to be the way companies like Facebook and Google are doing things sometimes where

00:05:19 ◼   ► Maybe they want to get out of the equivalent of domain name squatting where people are just trying to grab URLs

00:05:25 ◼   ► and instead just trying to make everybody search for everything.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So if you go to YouTube and you search for Cortex, I'm sure you'll find it.

00:05:31 ◼   ► The funny thing about talking about this is the people that need it won't hear it.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I was realizing that as we were explaining it as I'm trying to figure out, again,

00:05:41 ◼   ► who is going to be the person who receives this message when they need to.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Because I'm also going to be handing this entirely over to you

00:05:51 ◼   ► So I don't know what the the schedule of the shows on YouTube is going to be

00:05:54 ◼   ► I'm...

00:05:55 ◼   ► Neither do I

00:05:56 ◼   ► I've set things up and then I am washing my hands of the entirety of it and leaving it in your very capable hands

00:06:02 ◼   ► with your gigantic

00:06:04 ◼   ► Relay company to deal with these things

00:06:06 ◼   ► But yes

00:06:06 ◼   ► I'm trying to figure out who is who is going to be the person who hears

00:06:09 ◼   ► This message right now is the person who's listening on a podcast player

00:06:13 ◼   ► but would vastly prefer to listen on YouTube instead, but also doesn't mind going back right now and listening to the older episodes.

00:06:20 ◼   ► I guess that is the target audience for this. We will see.

00:06:23 ◼   ► I expect that audience is huge.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Many multiples of our actual listeners right now.

00:06:27 ◼   ► You're back home and therefore back to work, I assume.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Or have you--are you still on the Hawaiian lifestyle? Like, what's happening over there?

00:06:36 ◼   ► Ugh, no, no. No more aloha spirit for me, thank you.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I got back into London about a week ago now, and so, as always, having fun first few days dealing with the jet lag

00:06:48 ◼   ► and now I am trying to ease myself back into a regular working schedule

00:06:53 ◼   ► because it has been quite a long time since I've had a regular working schedule

00:06:56 ◼   ► this summer vacation ended up being much longer than I was originally expecting it was going to be

00:07:02 ◼   ► And yeah, so now I'm just trying to de-jet lag myself and work myself back into a normal

00:07:09 ◼   ► getting up early schedule, which makes me a much happier monkey when I'm in it, even

00:07:13 ◼   ► though it can be a little bit difficult to actually wrench yourself back into that when

00:07:17 ◼   ► you haven't done it for a while.

00:07:19 ◼   ► I can attest to the fact that you're back into a working schedule as me and you have

00:07:22 ◼   ► gotten more done this morning than I think the last three weeks combined.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:07:27 ◼   ► We've been very productive today.

00:07:28 ◼   ► Yes, this morning was Cortex time.

00:07:30 ◼   ► In no small part because I was slightly avoiding getting back into writing time, which is way harder

00:07:37 ◼   ► It's procrasti-working. That's what you're doing

00:07:40 ◼   ► Exactly. This is the the thing with Cortex was oh

00:07:43 ◼   ► I have a list a list of very clear very discreet items each of which can be ticked off and accomplished and you know

00:07:50 ◼   ► It's way harder is the thing that I've been sort of trying to do the last day and a half which is

00:07:55 ◼   ► arrange my YouTube upload schedule for the next several months and then once that is actually done

00:08:01 ◼   ► start writing the next video, which is very very hard to do. I think this is probably the longest

00:08:08 ◼   ► time I have gone

00:08:11 ◼   ► without writing since

00:08:13 ◼   ► ironically, maybe the very moment when I first started YouTube professionally, which is slightly a different story

00:08:19 ◼   ► But yeah for the duration of my vacation, I was still working on podcast stuff

00:08:24 ◼   ► But I didn't have I didn't have time to work on podcast stuff and writing stuff

00:08:28 ◼   ► So it's been a big break and I need to get back into that because again ostensibly I'm a professional youtuber though

00:08:33 ◼   ► It's now feeling like it's been quite a while since I uploaded a video

00:08:36 ◼   ► How do you feel about our new schedule?

00:08:39 ◼   ► Two weeks working out good for you so far

00:08:41 ◼   ► Well, you're baiting me with this question because you know, you know full well that we arranged

00:08:45 ◼   ► It was going to be every two weeks and we'd set things up and then yesterday. I made you change absolutely everything around

00:08:51 ◼   ► and so

00:08:54 ◼   ► Our new schedule lasted zero episodes

00:08:57 ◼   ► with our new theoretical schedule.

00:08:59 ◼   ► This is going to be the only episode

00:09:01 ◼   ► that you're listening to right now

00:09:02 ◼   ► that is on that schedule.

00:09:03 ◼   ► I realize now we've changed this to every other Monday,

00:09:06 ◼   ► is that right?

00:09:07 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:09:09 ◼   ► - Well, this is so confusing.

00:09:12 ◼   ► This episode will come out on Friday

00:09:15 ◼   ► and then the next episode will come out,

00:09:19 ◼   ► not the following Monday, the Monday after,

00:09:22 ◼   ► and then every Monday every other two, no every two weeks,

00:09:25 ◼   ► who knows, I tell you what, just wait and see.

00:09:28 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It's a mystery.

00:09:30 ◼   ► - Oh, see, now you have finally come around to my policy

00:09:34 ◼   ► on uploading things to the internet,

00:09:36 ◼   ► which is you upload them when they're ready

00:09:38 ◼   ► and you don't have to worry about a schedule.

00:09:40 ◼   ► - Oh, no, no, there definitely is one,

00:09:41 ◼   ► I'm just finding it too hard to explain now,

00:09:43 ◼   ► it's just too difficult.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - I just think you shouldn't worry about the schedule.

00:09:48 ◼   ► You're making your own problems here, buddy,

00:09:50 ◼   ► as far as I'm concerned.

00:09:51 ◼   ► - I will not accept that.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I bought a Wacom tablet, as you know.

00:09:53 ◼   ► - Oh, did you?

00:09:54 ◼   ► - Yes, I did.

00:09:56 ◼   ► I did, and I've played around of it a little bit.

00:09:58 ◼   ► It's very weird, it's very weird.

00:10:00 ◼   ► I did the thing that you suggested with the pen setting.

00:10:05 ◼   ► So instead of it feeling like a mouse

00:10:07 ◼   ► where you can kind of accelerate and that moves the pointer,

00:10:12 ◼   ► it is like mapped one to one with the monitor, right?

00:10:15 ◼   ► So if I want my mouse pointer to be on the top left,

00:10:19 ◼   ► I have to put the pen on the top left.

00:10:21 ◼   ► Right.

00:10:22 ◼   ► - And there are a couple of things that I find weird,

00:10:25 ◼   ► like you hover it over, right, and tap down.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And it's taking some getting used to.

00:10:33 ◼   ► I could see how if I give myself the time

00:10:37 ◼   ► to get the hang of it, it could be a good tool for editing.

00:10:40 ◼   ► I feel like it's kind of natural and unnatural

00:10:43 ◼   ► at the same time, which is kind of interesting.

00:10:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it takes a while to get used to a pen tablet.

00:10:49 ◼   ► There's nobody who switches over to a pen tablet

00:10:51 ◼   ► in pen mode and immediately says, "Oh wow, this feels naturally much better."

00:10:55 ◼   ► You have to use it for a while to get used to it.

00:10:59 ◼   ► But I feel like I wish I had more buttons on the pen.

00:11:03 ◼   ► This depends on which model you have gotten. But yeah, I have one that has two programmable buttons

00:11:07 ◼   ► on it, and I don't know what you have. I have two.

00:11:11 ◼   ► You sound sad about that. You want 100 buttons on your pen? Is that what you want?

00:11:15 ◼   ► I want like five. I'm not quite sure how that would work actually holding it.

00:11:19 ◼   ► No, it would be a nightmare.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's why they don't put 5 on there.

00:11:23 ◼   ► But I bought a new mouse as well.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Oh, did you? How interesting.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think the mouse is gonna win.

00:11:30 ◼   ► What mouse did you buy?

00:11:32 ◼   ► The Logitech MX Master.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Ok, Myke, you're not gonna believe this.

00:11:36 ◼   ► My hand, right now, is resting on a Logitech MX Master mouse.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Isn't it incredible?

00:11:44 ◼   ► I just got it this morning, actually, so I don't know how incredible it is.

00:11:48 ◼   ► Why did you buy it? I saw it came up in one of my recommended YouTube videos was MKBHD's

00:11:55 ◼   ► review. MKBHD's video, that's why I bought mine!

00:11:59 ◼   ► There we go. I hope Logitech is giving MKBHD some kickbacks because I have been in the

00:12:07 ◼   ► market for a long time for a real professional mouse and I never quite saw anything that

00:12:12 ◼   ► I like the look of and I thought "Oh, that looked very good!" and his review really

00:12:16 ◼   ► sold it for me. So I thought, oh, I'd like to try it. And it just arrived this morning.

00:12:21 ◼   ► It's been on my desk for maybe two or three hours, so I can't really review it adequately.

00:12:26 ◼   ► But great minds think alike, I guess, is the lesson from this.

00:12:30 ◼   ► You need to download the Logitech Options software.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Myke, do you think I would buy a mouse, a piece of hardware, and not immediately dive

00:12:38 ◼   ► into the configuration software? Are you a crazy person? I've already tried to configure

00:12:42 ◼   ► it in a whole bunch of different ways to see how this is going to work.

00:12:45 ◼   ► I couldn't find the software. That was my main problem.

00:12:47 ◼   ► It took me a long time. Like Logitech's website was a nightmare. Um, but I,

00:12:51 ◼   ► I have this mouse set up in such a glorious way. Great.

00:12:55 ◼   ► It is making me so happy.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I can move between spaces and stuff like that.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I have configured the buttons to where I can basically do about about three

00:13:05 ◼   ► quarters of all of the things that I do in logic with just the mouse now.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Like I've set it up so one of the buttons is play pause.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I've set up one of the buttons so it's the modifier key.

00:13:18 ◼   ► So I can click that to use different tools.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I have set like a delete key so I can delete stuff.

00:13:26 ◼   ► Oh and I also have a, I can click down on the,

00:13:28 ◼   ► you know the button that would usually change

00:13:30 ◼   ► the mouse scrolly thing to either ratchet or be smooth.

00:13:35 ◼   ► - Yeah I change that immediately.

00:13:37 ◼   ► - Yeah I hate that.

00:13:38 ◼   ► I have that button, I press down on that button

00:13:40 ◼   ► and I can zoom in and out on the waveforms.

00:13:44 ◼   ► - Did you do that with the gesture?

00:13:45 ◼   ► So that you press and hold and you move the mouse up

00:13:47 ◼   ► and down and you zoom in, is that what you're doing?

00:13:49 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:13:49 ◼   ► - Not only did we get the same mouse,

00:13:51 ◼   ► but we have chosen the same very particular configuration

00:13:55 ◼   ► of one of the options of the mouse.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Because I was trying to figure out as well,

00:13:58 ◼   ► oh, I want the scroll wheel to zoom in and out

00:14:00 ◼   ► when I'm in something like Logic or Final Cut,

00:14:02 ◼   ► but I don't think that's possible to do.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And so I was trying to figure out how to change it.

00:14:07 ◼   ► But yes, for anybody who's listening,

00:14:09 ◼   ► This mouse is very cool looking and it has a lot of buttons.

00:14:14 ◼   ► But more importantly, it has,

00:14:16 ◼   ► one of the things that really sold me was,

00:14:18 ◼   ► in addition to the vertical scroll bar,

00:14:20 ◼   ► there is a horizontal scroll bar.

00:14:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:14:23 ◼   ► - Or a horizontal scroll wheel, I really should say,

00:14:25 ◼   ► that's underneath your thumb.

00:14:26 ◼   ► And if like Myke and I, you work with audio,

00:14:30 ◼   ► one of the biggest pains in the ass of dealing with logic

00:14:34 ◼   ► is the horizontal movement of going back and forth.

00:14:37 ◼   ► that is the thing that always kills me is going back and forth.

00:14:41 ◼   ► And so when I was watching MKBHD's review and he said there's a horizontal

00:14:44 ◼   ► scroll wheel, it was like soul.

00:14:46 ◼   ► This is not a cheap mouse. Like this is like an 80 pound mouse.

00:14:50 ◼   ► It is, it is expensive. But it also, Oh,

00:14:52 ◼   ► the other thing that to me was the big selling feature, uh,

00:14:55 ◼   ► was when I went to look at it on the website, just to be sure,

00:14:58 ◼   ► they did mention that they have some kind of special laser in the bottom,

00:15:01 ◼   ► which can be used on glass and reflective surfaces.

00:15:05 ◼   ► And that was important to me because the desk that I'm sitting at, while,

00:15:08 ◼   ► while the top is not glass,

00:15:10 ◼   ► the desk is black and it has a very reflective surface to it.

00:15:15 ◼   ► And almost every other mouse I have ever used is just worthless on that

00:15:19 ◼   ► surface.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And so I've often found myself in the strange position of using my tablet as a

00:15:25 ◼   ► mouse pad for whatever mouse that I want to use.

00:15:28 ◼   ► Because I just, I need something. So it's like, Oh,

00:15:33 ◼   ► Let me either grab the Wacom tablet or...

00:15:35 ◼   ► Oh, there's an iPad handy, right? I need something

00:15:37 ◼   ► as a mousepad, because I can't find

00:15:39 ◼   ► a mousepad that would stick to the surface that

00:15:41 ◼   ► wasn't disgusting. Anyway, this mouse from

00:15:43 ◼   ► Logitech super delivers. I

00:15:45 ◼   ► like the horizontal scroll wheel so

00:15:47 ◼   ► far, and I can use it on

00:15:49 ◼   ► a black, shiny, reflective surface.

00:15:51 ◼   ► So I'm definitely going to give it a

00:15:53 ◼   ► try. I will still,

00:15:55 ◼   ► for the listeners, I will still be using the

00:15:57 ◼   ► Wacom tablet a lot because

00:15:59 ◼   ► I regularly switch input

00:16:01 ◼   ► devices because of RSI concerns. So I always rotate out a mouse and a pen

00:16:07 ◼   ► tablet and a trackball every once in a while just to keep things different and

00:16:12 ◼   ► I found that that really helps minimize RSI. So I but I for the longest time I

00:16:17 ◼   ► haven't had a good mouse in that rotation and I think this one looks

00:16:20 ◼   ► pretty promising so far. Yeah I can't I can't speak hardly enough about it. So

00:16:27 ◼   ► How long have you been using it for?

00:16:28 ◼   ► - Three or four days.

00:16:29 ◼   ► But I have maybe racked up about seven hours in Logic

00:16:34 ◼   ► over that period of time.

00:16:35 ◼   ► So I'm using it a lot for that stuff

00:16:37 ◼   ► and I really, really like it.

00:16:39 ◼   ► And I've got it, you know, I've tweaked it

00:16:41 ◼   ► to the point of oblivion

00:16:43 ◼   ► and I'm very happy with the setup that I have.

00:16:46 ◼   ► And this is, it really is just excellent.

00:16:50 ◼   ► And I'm very happy that you bought one as well.

00:16:53 ◼   ► But yeah, MKBHD is, he's doing a good job for Logitech.

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00:17:38 ◼   ► paper to use abbreviations whilst you're typing.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And the newly released version 5.1 improves suggestions by omitting most single dictionary

00:17:47 ◼   ► words and giving you great control over the notifications and how they'll come through.

00:17:53 ◼   ► So let me give you an example of another use of TextExpander that I love.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Let's say that you frequently fill in a form with the same information, maybe it's addresses,

00:18:02 ◼   ► maybe it's credit card information, shipping stuff, whatever.

00:18:05 ◼   ► You can make this super simple by creating a fill in snippet.

00:18:08 ◼   ► So in just a couple of keystrokes, you can fill in an entire form that may have taken

00:18:12 ◼   ► you minutes before.

00:18:13 ◼   ► And you can even use fill in snippets to personalise and standardise repetitive replies.

00:18:17 ◼   ► But let's say you have to send an email which is very similar to many different types of

00:18:21 ◼   ► people but requires some specific information, maybe that person's name or maybe you want

00:18:26 ◼   ► to choose from a couple of different replies.

00:18:28 ◼   ► You can set this up so you end up hitting a couple of keystrokes, you type in their

00:18:31 ◼   ► name and then you can choose maybe option A, B and C from some drop down list to fill

00:18:36 ◼   ► in that email super super fast.

00:18:38 ◼   ► You can sync all of your TextExpander snippets amongst multiple devices by storing them on

00:18:43 ◼   ► iCloud drive or Dropbox.

00:18:45 ◼   ► This means that you will have access to all of your snippets wherever you are, they are

00:18:48 ◼   ► going to stay in sync everywhere.

00:18:50 ◼   ► You can access your TextExpander snippets inside of Smiles iOS app or enable TextExpander

00:18:56 ◼   ► in the 60+ apps that are in the store that have integrated snippets like Fantastical2,

00:19:01 ◼   ► Draft, Launch Center Pro, Editorial and many more.

00:19:05 ◼   ► Or you can enable the iOS custom keyboard that comes with TextExpander for iOS so you

00:19:10 ◼   ► can use your snippets in absolutely any app.

00:19:14 ◼   ► TextExpander 5 for the Mac also adds support for JavaScript which also works within TextExpander

00:19:18 ◼   ► Touch for iPad and iPhone.

00:19:21 ◼   ► TextExpander is one of the first apps that I install on all of my devices.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Without it I am totally lost.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Relying on TextExpander to help me save time is massively important for helping me get

00:19:30 ◼   ► my work done.

00:19:31 ◼   ► My Mac feels broken without TextExpander.

00:19:33 ◼   ► It's like I'm typing characters and the things that I'm expecting just don't appear.

00:19:36 ◼   ► I love it and cannot recommend it highly enough.

00:19:40 ◼   ► Xpander 5 costs $44.95 US with upgrades available for $19.95 for existing users and it's free

00:19:47 ◼   ► to anyone who purchased Xpander on or after January 1st 2015.

00:19:53 ◼   ► You can find out more about Xpander 5 by visiting www.smilesoftware.com/cortex.

00:19:58 ◼   ► Please note that Xpander 5 requires Yosemite and Xpander for iOS is available on the App

00:20:04 ◼   ► for iPhone and iPad.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this show.

00:20:09 ◼   ► So I wanted to do some follow up on mind maps

00:20:13 ◼   ► because I have a couple of corrections I need to make.

00:20:16 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:20:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have a correction for you.

00:20:20 ◼   ► - I feel like I have misrepresented Adina's work.

00:20:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, you couldn't have misrepresented

00:20:28 ◼   ► what Adina does more by describing it as a mind map.

00:20:31 ◼   ► I asked you to send me this picture after we were done,

00:20:34 ◼   ► and this is no mind map.

00:20:35 ◼   ► This is what we call a flow chart.

00:20:37 ◼   ► I think almost anybody would recognize these as flow charts.

00:20:40 ◼   ► That's why what she does is useful,

00:20:41 ◼   ► because it's an entirely different thing

00:20:43 ◼   ► than useless mind maps.

00:20:45 ◼   ► - So this isn't the only way that she works,

00:20:48 ◼   ► and the other examples that she's given I can't share,

00:20:51 ◼   ► but she does different types of stuff,

00:20:53 ◼   ► so sometimes there's bubbles, sometimes there's arrows,

00:20:56 ◼   ► and in my brain, I just have mushed it all together

00:21:00 ◼   ► and call it mind mapping.

00:21:01 ◼   ► So yes, I apologize to everybody,

00:21:05 ◼   ► especially to Vmax77 on the Reddit,

00:21:07 ◼   ► who actually, I can't believe I forgot this,

00:21:10 ◼   ► I felt so bad about it,

00:21:12 ◼   ► creates mind maps for the episodes of the show.

00:21:15 ◼   ► But yeah, if you wanna see a real mind map,

00:21:17 ◼   ► it'll be in the show notes of last episode.

00:21:20 ◼   ► There is a complete mind map.

00:21:22 ◼   ► - Yes, there is a mind map of the episode of mind maps.

00:21:25 ◼   ► - And I look at this and I still don't know why it exists.

00:21:28 ◼   ► I'm happy it does, 'cause it's nice

00:21:29 ◼   ► that somebody would put the work in,

00:21:30 ◼   ► but I just don't get what the mind map is doing.

00:21:33 ◼   ► But I think we both feel that way.

00:21:35 ◼   ► - Yep, I'm on board with you.

00:21:37 ◼   ► - And then a question that I couldn't ignore

00:21:39 ◼   ► from Burn on Twitter.

00:21:41 ◼   ► So if you look at the original image of Adina's work,

00:21:44 ◼   ► there is some blue writing,

00:21:47 ◼   ► and Burn has asked what the pen is

00:21:50 ◼   ► that Adina is using for the text.

00:21:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:53 ◼   ► - You can't pass up any kind of pen question.

00:21:56 ◼   ► - Cannot.

00:21:56 ◼   ► So she is using what is known as the TWSBI Mini Fountain Pen, a company called TWSBI,

00:22:03 ◼   ► who makes these, and she's also using an ink called Pilot Iroshizuku Konpeki.

00:22:08 ◼   ► I will put links to those in the show notes.

00:22:10 ◼   ► They both come with thorough recommendations from me.

00:22:12 ◼   ► Can't pass up a pen question.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Nope.

00:22:15 ◼   ► You're a pen addict.

00:22:16 ◼   ► That's what you are.

00:22:17 ◼   ► You could say that, yes.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Many people do.

00:22:20 ◼   ► In last week's episode, we touched upon a couple of things about starting new projects

00:22:27 ◼   ► and building a side business.

00:22:29 ◼   ► And they were kind of just in the middle of the bigger conversation, but people seemed

00:22:33 ◼   ► to really latch onto them.

00:22:34 ◼   ► There's been a lot of really interesting conversation happening on the Reddit about this.

00:22:38 ◼   ► And I wanted to talk more about that today because it seems to have been something that

00:22:43 ◼   ► has sparked something in people's minds and something that we both have very strong opinions

00:22:47 ◼   ► on, one way or another.

00:22:49 ◼   ► There was one really great comment, a very long comment on the Reddit by Reddit user

00:22:54 ◼   ► AlienTurnedHuman and I've picked out a couple of sections of this that I want to read out

00:23:00 ◼   ► and then we can discuss them because I think that there's some really interesting questions

00:23:03 ◼   ► about it.

00:23:04 ◼   ► And this is mainly in regards to starting something new.

00:23:07 ◼   ► So we were talking about the fact that tools, the tools these days to create what you create

00:23:13 ◼   ► are a lot more advanced and free in many instances.

00:23:18 ◼   ► Yeah, the tools that both of us use because as you touched upon you used GarageBand for a while for podcasting and that comes free with an Apple computer now doesn't it?

00:23:28 ◼   ► It does, yeah.

00:23:29 ◼   ► This is not just for you're making YouTube videos, this is for you're doing almost anything on the internet. The tools are free and/or way cheaper than the equivalents would have been a while back.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So that's kind of the starting point of this conversation.

00:23:41 ◼   ► So this is from that comment. So it starts off with "On the issue of starting a YouTube channel being easier or harder today, I would answer both.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Clearly, a literal interpretation of this question means that it's easier because, as Gray very correctly states, the means to produce content is easier than ever even compared to five years ago.

00:23:58 ◼   ► However, when people ask the question, that's not really the question they're asking. What they're asking is about starting a highly successful YouTube channel, like the next Vsauce."

00:24:09 ◼   ► So, I will pose the question to you, do you believe it is easier or harder to start a

00:24:16 ◼   ► successful YouTube channel in 2015?

00:24:18 ◼   ► Yeah, Vsauce has just over 9 million subscribers now.

00:24:23 ◼   ► I don't even know what this channel is about.

00:24:25 ◼   ► It's an educational YouTube channel.

00:24:26 ◼   ► Okay.

00:24:27 ◼   ► So I'm just looking at his videos here, so say something like, "Is the Earth actually

00:24:32 ◼   ► flat?

00:24:33 ◼   ► What is the speed of dark?"

00:24:35 ◼   ► I think one of the ones I remember off the top of my head was

00:24:38 ◼   ► "What is the color of a mirror?"

00:24:40 ◼   ► But I think his style is mostly well known for using that question as a jumping-off point and very often going on to several

00:24:47 ◼   ► Tangents. So his videos are often a lot like three different videos in one. So he's an educational channel

00:24:54 ◼   ► well, I want to look at the numbers as well because as a

00:24:56 ◼   ► groundwork

00:24:59 ◼   ► Underneath this conversation. I'm not sure how much there is to be gained from looking at the top top

00:25:07 ◼   ► people in an attention-oriented field. I mean

00:25:11 ◼   ► Vsauce has got to be in the top

00:25:14 ◼   ► hundred or so of all channels on YouTube and when you start talking about the people at the absolute apex like

00:25:21 ◼   ► gigantic numbers if that's what you're thinking about

00:25:23 ◼   ► Those are people who have to have

00:25:26 ◼   ► Everything go right for them practically by definition. Where are you in that list?

00:25:31 ◼   ► Well, I can tell you actually there is a website called vid stat X which people use to

00:25:39 ◼   ► Track all this stuff. So, let me see

00:25:42 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, so if we look at

00:25:46 ◼   ► Vsauce very quickly his subscriber rank is number 45 on YouTube. That's high up, right?

00:25:54 ◼   ► That's why like if this if this is the the level that you're talking about it's a crazy number if this is

00:26:01 ◼   ► There's a very very strong chance. You're not gonna do that. It's a it's it's a bit like saying how do I be Chris Pratt?

00:26:08 ◼   ► well, I

00:26:11 ◼   ► Don't mean this as a joke, but there's a very different conversation between how do I become a working actor?

00:26:16 ◼   ► Right and and how do I become one of the most successful people in the world?

00:26:22 ◼   ► Right like well you can't engineer that you know like Chris Pratt had to have everything go right to be Chris Pratt

00:26:28 ◼   ► Okay, so for comparison here if you're looking at me so right now

00:26:34 ◼   ► Oh my subscriber number is up to 1.8 million subscribers and that puts me at

00:26:41 ◼   ► number

00:26:43 ◼   ► 650 on all of YouTube which is still incredibly high by the way congratulations on that yeah

00:26:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's still very high, but again, if you're looking at subscriber numbers, it's this asymptotic graph, this power law.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Always, always happens. So when you look at the top people, they're just these crazy, crazy numbers.

00:27:00 ◼   ► And let me just see, just for comparison here, if we do...

00:27:03 ◼   ► When do you start getting below a million subscribers? Just as our ballpark here.

00:27:10 ◼   ► have million subscribers as your mark of success there are 1400 channels on

00:27:18 ◼   ► YouTube with a million or more subscribers right now. Right and that

00:27:23 ◼   ► that puts this into a very different ballgame because a million you are

00:27:28 ◼   ► highly successful right that is a you look at that number that is a big number

00:27:32 ◼   ► but in terms of relative to other youtubers it isn't so much. Let's say

00:27:38 ◼   ► Let's say YouTube is having a party and they want to invite the most popular kids

00:27:42 ◼   ► Right, they're starting at this list and there's a long way down until you get to people who have

00:27:48 ◼   ► let's say, three quarters of a million is more than 2,000 people now

00:27:53 ◼   ► before you get down to people who have 775,000 subscribers, right?

00:27:59 ◼   ► It's just, the numbers get very very strange

00:28:03 ◼   ► but then of course the graph starts to level out very fast as well

00:28:06 ◼   ► when you start talking about the lower, lower numbers.

00:28:09 ◼   ► So anyway, that's just what I wanted to kind of lay out there

00:28:12 ◼   ► is there's a big difference between

00:28:14 ◼   ► when people think of successful YouTubers,

00:28:18 ◼   ► they'll think of someone like Michelle Phan,

00:28:20 ◼   ► who has like an empire now that she has built from YouTube,

00:28:25 ◼   ► and she's one of the most popular YouTubers,

00:28:27 ◼   ► or they'll think of Vsauce, or they'll think of PewDiePie,

00:28:29 ◼   ► and that's a very, very different thing from saying

00:28:32 ◼   ► how likely is it that you can make a living on YouTube,

00:28:35 ◼   ► which is already an unlikely thing, but it's a very, very different ballgame.

00:28:40 ◼   ► That's an incredibly long run-up to my answer, which is that I still think that if you are defining success in terms of you are able to make a living on YouTube,

00:28:55 ◼   ► it is easier to do now than it was, say, five years ago, which is often what people will say, "Oh, you should have started five years ago."

00:29:04 ◼   ► Why do you think that though?

00:29:06 ◼   ► Alright, one of the reasons I think that is the case is because the audience of people on YouTube is also much, much bigger.

00:29:19 ◼   ► So there is more human time and attention to go around.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Whereas when you talk about YouTube in 2008 or 2009, the number of people looking at YouTube videos were much smaller.

00:29:34 ◼   ► So as YouTube has grown in profile, there are more people looking at YouTube videos, which means there is more potential desire for things to watch from a much, much broader audience of people.

00:29:47 ◼   ► Whereas when you go back in the day to when YouTube started, it was a much smaller audience, and it was also a much more narrow audience.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Like it was almost certainly way more nerdy on average when YouTube just begins than it is now.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Whereas now it's, you can say that there's just, there are YouTube channels on everything.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Because everybody watches YouTube. There's a lot of room for people to make a living in a bunch of different fields.

00:30:14 ◼   ► fields. Because the tools have gotten cheaper over time, and because the audience has broadened

00:30:23 ◼   ► over time, there are more spaces for people to occupy if they want to be making a living

00:30:32 ◼   ► in the world where they have to aggregate human attention in some way. I think a good

00:30:37 ◼   ► example actually is we made an allusion to it earlier, but you have a podcast about pens,

00:30:43 ◼   ► What is that podcast called, Myke?

00:30:45 ◼   ► - It's called The Pen Addict.

00:30:46 ◼   ► - It's called The Pen Addict.

00:30:47 ◼   ► This is always a great example to me of a podcast

00:30:50 ◼   ► because I find it hilarious that a show

00:30:53 ◼   ► that is about pens can exist for two reasons.

00:30:57 ◼   ► One, I'm not surprised that there is in some ways

00:31:00 ◼   ► enough of an audience who wants to listen

00:31:02 ◼   ► to a podcast about pens, but I'm also surprised

00:31:05 ◼   ► that there is enough to talk about every week

00:31:07 ◼   ► in the world of pens.

00:31:08 ◼   ► That is also of interest to me.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Like, I don't know what you guys talk about every week.

00:31:11 ◼   ► It is many times easier to find things to talk about on the pen addict than it is to

00:31:17 ◼   ► find things to talk about on our tech shows.

00:31:20 ◼   ► That's amazing to me.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Because there's more that happens just every week.

00:31:25 ◼   ► This to me gets to the core of the thing about the internet that I just love, which is people

00:31:30 ◼   ► that have interests in niche topics can aggregate together and be really interested in those

00:31:38 ◼   ► topics and and the they sort of generate for themselves things to talk about and

00:31:44 ◼   ► industry and goings-on and I think that's just that is just amazing to me

00:31:49 ◼   ► just taking the pen addict as an example if we rewind to back when there was just

00:31:54 ◼   ► radio programs it is very unlikely that any radio station anywhere ever could

00:32:00 ◼   ► make a show about pens financially successful it can't exist there's no way

00:32:05 ◼   ► for it to exist. It can't exist in any kind of financial model because of limited time

00:32:11 ◼   ► for broadcasting. It's just so many reasons why it didn't, it couldn't possibly work.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Now on the internet if you have a narrow interest, but that a narrow interest when you look at

00:32:23 ◼   ► the whole of the human population and you say are there enough people interested in

00:32:28 ◼   ► this to be able to put together a podcast or put together a show on this topic? If the

00:32:33 ◼   ► The answer is yes, that's a possibility for you, right?

00:32:37 ◼   ► That's a thing that can be done.

00:32:39 ◼   ► And so as we have gotten more and more people online, and we have gotten more and more people

00:32:45 ◼   ► used to the idea of watching video online or listening to podcasts through the internet,

00:32:53 ◼   ► as you bring all of this human attention to this internet world, there is more opportunity

00:33:00 ◼   ► for people to start new things that aggregate human attention.

00:33:05 ◼   ► People talk about YouTube getting too big,

00:33:08 ◼   ► and I always feel like it, but it's good if it's really big.

00:33:10 ◼   ► You want it to be really big.

00:33:12 ◼   ► That's what enables lots of crazy stuff to exist in all kinds of fields.

00:33:17 ◼   ► It is that enormous audience that is there.

00:33:21 ◼   ► That argument makes sense to me. I hadn't really thought of it in that way.

00:33:24 ◼   ► I mean, my thinking when I was thinking about YouTube was just...

00:33:28 ◼   ► it does seem like it might be harder,

00:33:31 ◼   ► and there is an elephant in the room,

00:33:32 ◼   ► which is production quality,

00:33:34 ◼   ► which we'll get to in a minute,

00:33:35 ◼   ► 'cause I think they're slightly different discussions.

00:33:37 ◼   ► But I can totally see what you're getting at.

00:33:40 ◼   ► As there are more people, it works out.

00:33:43 ◼   ► And that's what we're seeing in podcasting now.

00:33:45 ◼   ► There is more and more people coming to podcasting,

00:33:48 ◼   ► and there is a general belief

00:33:50 ◼   ► that that will help everyone out.

00:33:51 ◼   ► But in regards to what makes a successful podcast,

00:33:54 ◼   ► the numbers and everything are very different

00:33:56 ◼   ► and a lot more tricky.

00:33:58 ◼   ► There isn't a centralized database of comparison

00:34:01 ◼   ► with numbers out front and center.

00:34:04 ◼   ► If anything, the podcast industry

00:34:07 ◼   ► keeps numbers quite close to its chest.

00:34:09 ◼   ► People are, they just don't really share them as much

00:34:13 ◼   ► because they're not public, so people can't themselves.

00:34:16 ◼   ► - It's the biggest thing that I have to get used to

00:34:18 ◼   ► when I'm doing podcasts in addition to doing YouTube

00:34:20 ◼   ► is I am so used to everybody knows exactly

00:34:24 ◼   ► where everybody else stands

00:34:25 ◼   ► because all the YouTube data is public.

00:34:27 ◼   ► I find it really frustrating in the podcast world of it's it's hard to get a sense of

00:34:32 ◼   ► How big are the biggest shows or what is the minimum number of listeners that a show needs to survive all?

00:34:39 ◼   ► Everybody keeps their keeps their cards real close to the chest in the podcast world and I find that just a very different

00:34:45 ◼   ► Culture than the YouTube culture. So from my experience of this stuff a podcast starts to become

00:34:52 ◼   ► Traditionally successful when it breaks the 10,000 a week numbers like on average, you know, that's what it's getting every week

00:34:59 ◼   ► I've I have found that that is when it becomes easier to get advertisement and stuff like that at that sort of level

00:35:05 ◼   ► Is it so that's when sponsors start taking your calls is when you get to get into the 10,000 a week numbers

00:35:10 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I have found and other people say different things

00:35:13 ◼   ► But from my experience that's when you can kind of try and get your foot in the doors when people will take you seriously

00:35:20 ◼   ► But it isn't until the multiple tens of thousands number before a podcast

00:35:25 ◼   ► Becomes a level where it could support you financially because the rates I mean look the advertising rates

00:35:33 ◼   ► It's like an infinite scale higher than YouTube

00:35:37 ◼   ► Yeah, the amount that you can charge per thousand people known as a CPM

00:35:42 ◼   ► for podcasting and YouTube is just

00:35:46 ◼   ► insanely different to the point that I really don't even understand why YouTube is as low as it is

00:35:51 ◼   ► Because it works for the podcasting industry and advertisers are happy with the rates that they pay but for some reason

00:35:57 ◼   ► I mean because you know you even see it like in people that do traditional

00:36:02 ◼   ► Advertising when I you know as in like how we do advertising on this show people that do advertising like that in YouTube videos

00:36:08 ◼   ► Make more money than the YouTube ads but it's the same thing. It's very confusing very confusing to me

00:36:16 ◼   ► But it's a that is where it starts to get financially viable is in the multiple tens of thousands level

00:36:22 ◼   ► That's where people can start to turn it into a career

00:36:25 ◼   ► But I think that success comes around the ten thousand mark because at that point you are

00:36:32 ◼   ► Far and above many of the other like hobbyist podcasts that exist

00:36:38 ◼   ► Because the NPR stuff and the gimlet stuff and all of that. That is a whole different world

00:36:45 ◼   ► It's a different board game. It's coming from a different place in my opinion and that is

00:36:50 ◼   ► astronomically large and requires different levels of popularity and many

00:36:55 ◼   ► Independent people can get to that level, but it's extremely hard to do that

00:37:00 ◼   ► But yeah, that's what I think the success levels differ between YouTube and podcasting

00:37:06 ◼   ► Because of the numbers and the way it all works out and the relative audience like maximum audience size

00:37:12 ◼   ► There are way more people that watch YouTube videos and listen to podcasts. So it skews it slightly differently, but that's kind of where it sits

00:37:19 ◼   ► I mean, it depends on a lot of details, but my the threshold that I used to use for

00:37:24 ◼   ► for

00:37:26 ◼   ► minimum YouTube success was around

00:37:29 ◼   ► 200,000 subscribers. It's an order of magnitude larger than is necessary in the podcast world

00:37:35 ◼   ► But it's also because the advertising rates are at least an order of magnitude less on YouTube

00:37:42 ◼   ► So that's why there's such a disparity there that you need to aggregate a much, much larger audience on YouTube to sustain yourself than you do on podcasts because of the way the advertising rates work.

00:37:55 ◼   ► 200,000 episode podcast is a phenomenal success.

00:38:00 ◼   ► It's just such a different world.

00:38:01 ◼   ► world.

00:38:02 ◼   ► But I echo your statement that I think that because of the growing market of podcast listeners

00:38:07 ◼   ► it is easier to get to be successful.

00:38:11 ◼   ► However the flip side of it which still does apply is as it becomes more popular it becomes

00:38:20 ◼   ► harder because there are less new ideas.

00:38:24 ◼   ► There are more and more people having ideas that will become successful.

00:38:29 ◼   ► So the thing for you to try and come up with something that makes you unique becomes harder

00:38:34 ◼   ► as there are more people doing it because your competition increases.

00:38:38 ◼   ► That's the hard part is the being creative.

00:38:41 ◼   ► But I don't think that that is an inherent problem with the industry.

00:38:44 ◼   ► It's just you as a human being need to be more creative of what you're looking to create.

00:38:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:50 ◼   ► I mean, yes.

00:38:53 ◼   ► But again, business advice in the YouTube podcast world is not like business advice

00:38:59 ◼   ► anywhere else because YouTube and podcasts are so heavily personality and entertainment

00:39:09 ◼   ► based that it makes them unlike other products.

00:39:14 ◼   ► And so it's not necessarily that you have to come up with a great idea that nobody has

00:39:20 ◼   ► come up with before.

00:39:22 ◼   ► If you can just be an entertaining person, someone that people like watching on YouTube

00:39:28 ◼   ► videos or someone that people like listening to on podcasts, it sometimes doesn't really

00:39:33 ◼   ► matter what your idea for the show is.

00:39:37 ◼   ► I mean, YouTube is filled with this whole world that I don't pay a lot of attention

00:39:41 ◼   ► to, but of young vloggers who don't have any set topic.

00:39:46 ◼   ► They're just talking about whatever, but they're able to do it in a way that is interesting

00:39:51 ◼   ► to their audience. But the idea of "Oh, I'm just going to talk about random stuff this

00:39:55 ◼   ► week on my YouTube channel" like that's not a new idea. There are lots and lots of people

00:40:01 ◼   ► who do that for a living. Because the real thing that is being kind of sold to the audience

00:40:06 ◼   ► is a short video that is entertaining to watch. Because the person's funny or maybe because

00:40:12 ◼   ► the person is just likeable or for whatever reason. It's not necessarily a unique idea

00:40:19 ◼   ► is being on offer there. In the same way that if you're manufacturing something for sale,

00:40:26 ◼   ► it definitely helps if you're able to come up with something that is new and unique that

00:40:29 ◼   ► people want. It's a very different kind of thing.

00:40:32 ◼   ► See that is a whole other problem, right? Being entertaining. That is, you know, like

00:40:41 ◼   ► how you can't learn that. Is it a case of you either are or you aren't or what? Like

00:40:48 ◼   ► how does that, you know, it's difficult.

00:40:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very difficult. This is a perennial topic of conversation

00:40:57 ◼   ► among some people. Is it just a natural thing to be

00:41:02 ◼   ► entertaining or is it a thing that is learned?

00:41:04 ◼   ► You know, I definitely come down on the side of it's something that people

00:41:08 ◼   ► can get better at, but that's very different from saying

00:41:12 ◼   ► could you take someone who is zero percent entertaining

00:41:16 ◼   ► and ever get them up to 50% entertaining versus someone who is starting at, say, 30% can you get them to 60%?

00:41:24 ◼   ► We all know people who are starting at 0% entertaining and I'm not sure that you can ever teach some people to do that.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I don't know if that is actually possible to do.

00:41:37 ◼   ► And if you want to have a career in public in the way that podcasts and YouTube videos are,

00:41:44 ◼   ► There is no doubt about it that entertaining is a necessary part of the equation.

00:41:52 ◼   ► And I remember when I made my very first YouTube video, which now I can't watch because I hate the production quality of it, the UK Explained video.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And in it I had a couple of jokes.

00:42:05 ◼   ► And I remember one of the earlier pieces of feedback that I got from a bunch of people was people saying,

00:42:11 ◼   ► "Oh, I like the video, but it would have been better if you didn't put in those little jokes.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Like, why couldn't you just have it be a straightforward explanation video?

00:42:20 ◼   ► Why do you have to do the couple of diversions into little little jokes here and there?"

00:42:23 ◼   ► And I remember that's really struck me at the time, and I felt, "Oh, you know what? They probably were right,

00:42:29 ◼   ► that these little these little side tangents, I probably shouldn't do that."

00:42:34 ◼   ► But even though that's how I thought at first, I have realized later on, like, "No, that is absolutely

00:42:40 ◼   ► this is absolutely vital. If people just wanted to straight up know the information, it's like,

00:42:47 ◼   ► well, I can hand you a Venn diagram of the overlap of the UK and how everything fits together.

00:42:52 ◼   ► And it conveys the same amount of information in way less time than my video does.

00:42:58 ◼   ► But I think one of the reasons that my videos are successful is because people find them entertaining.

00:43:05 ◼   ► I think there has to be a level of entertainment, but the problem is it's

00:43:09 ◼   ► It's not even really something we can have a discussion about because you can't label it

00:43:15 ◼   ► You can't buy a box of entertainment or download it like it's and it sounds so like oh look at us

00:43:22 ◼   ► We're so entertaining

00:43:23 ◼   ► But I don't think that I'm entertaining as I'm sure you probably don't necessarily believe that you are entertaining

00:43:29 ◼   ► But people are entertained by us anyway

00:43:32 ◼   ► Yeah, well this is what we discussed a little bit last time or maybe two episodes ago that I am not able to see where other

00:43:39 ◼   ► people find my videos funny until I watch my wife watch a video and

00:43:44 ◼   ► Then I can see where the funny parts are so it's a strange thing because I don't even know how I do it

00:43:51 ◼   ► Like I and I always think that my videos aren't funny until I see someone watch them

00:43:56 ◼   ► and that's why it's like you know what this is a kind of difficult conversation to have because

00:44:01 ◼   ► Entertainment is a necessary part of

00:44:04 ◼   ► wide scale success in an attention field like YouTube or like podcasts

00:44:11 ◼   ► but it is also the part that I have the least understanding of

00:44:15 ◼   ► how I incorporated into my own work. Like I just I just don't even know. That's why when people talk about success on YouTube

00:44:23 ◼   ► it's just

00:44:24 ◼   ► It's very very different from other other kinds of things, but but putting the the like can you be entertaining?

00:44:31 ◼   ► Question aside I still say that if you want to start a career on

00:44:38 ◼   ► YouTube it is easier now than it was in the past and I

00:44:42 ◼   ► violently disagree with this idea that it would have been better to start

00:44:48 ◼   ► Five years ago because that to me is a bit like wishing it's like well

00:44:53 ◼   ► Yeah, had you started five years ago, you would be in a better position now than you are right now

00:44:59 ◼   ► But that's a bit like me saying. Oh, man. I wish I had started dieting and exercising five years ago

00:45:06 ◼   ► It's like well. Yeah, I would be in a much better position now had I done that

00:45:10 ◼   ► But it doesn't change the fact that today is the best day to start on that if it is a goal that I'm I'm trying to

00:45:18 ◼   ► achieve

00:45:19 ◼   ► Hey everyone, let me take a quick break here to just thank our friends over at fracture for helping support cortex today

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00:47:53 ◼   ► Okay let's move on to the other part of this which I think by now is an elephant in the room which is

00:47:59 ◼   ► production standards. The increases in competition means higher standards of production are now

00:48:06 ◼   ► required. If there is any barrier to entry for the viewer to enjoy your content, particularly

00:48:11 ◼   ► on a technical level when it comes to video or audio quality, a lot of people will move on

00:48:15 ◼   ► because they have other options where this is not the case. That's not to say that if you produce

00:48:20 ◼   ► something that is exceptional in terms of everything else just recorded on a poor microphone

00:48:24 ◼   ► and camera that people won't see through it, however it does reduce the chance people will give

00:48:29 ◼   ► it the time that it deserves. So do you think that production levels are a barrier to entry

00:48:36 ◼   ► for higher success?

00:48:41 ◼   ► But I have a problem with the way that question is even phrased. Okay listen, I always say

00:48:47 ◼   ► this thing that I think is definitionally true, which is that people will watch a video

00:48:53 ◼   ► because it is good.

00:48:55 ◼   ► And I mean good in the sense of they draw something

00:49:00 ◼   ► out of that video.

00:49:02 ◼   ► And so in some sense, any video that gets a huge number

00:49:05 ◼   ► of views, no matter how dumb you might think it is

00:49:08 ◼   ► or how low the technical production is,

00:49:10 ◼   ► there's something good in it that the viewers are enjoying,

00:49:13 ◼   ► right, that they are watching.

00:49:16 ◼   ► I have seen very, very funny stuff on YouTube

00:49:20 ◼   ► that has terrible, terrible production values.

00:49:23 ◼   ► But the thing that it is offering to me

00:49:26 ◼   ► is that it can make me laugh.

00:49:28 ◼   ► And the rest of it is not relevant.

00:49:32 ◼   ► The production values are not relevant if it makes me laugh.

00:49:35 ◼   ► It just doesn't matter.

00:49:37 ◼   ► - If you start a video and it sounds bad or looks bad,

00:49:40 ◼   ► do you even get to the laughter point?

00:49:43 ◼   ► See, that's the problem, right?

00:49:45 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause I can kind of understand this.

00:49:47 ◼   ► Like I think that with podcasting,

00:49:50 ◼   ► I think podcasting's even harsher than YouTube

00:49:53 ◼   ► because with YouTube there are two points.

00:49:55 ◼   ► You can get the video right or the audio right,

00:49:57 ◼   ► but with podcasting, with audio podcasting,

00:49:59 ◼   ► you have one thing.

00:50:01 ◼   ► You have to sound good, I think.

00:50:03 ◼   ► But the barrier to entry for this is not massive.

00:50:05 ◼   ► I mean, there is still a money investment.

00:50:07 ◼   ► You can get a good microphone like the Blue Yeti

00:50:10 ◼   ► for under $100, which is still a lot of money,

00:50:14 ◼   ► but it's not an incredible amount of money.

00:50:16 ◼   ► It is a small percentage of the amount of money

00:50:19 ◼   ► that my current setup has for arguably a small difference

00:50:23 ◼   ► in quality to many people.

00:50:25 ◼   ► But it's the setup that I like to use

00:50:27 ◼   ► 'cause I like the way I sound with it.

00:50:30 ◼   ► But you can kind of get into it and have a good microphone

00:50:33 ◼   ► that produces good audio for a relatively small

00:50:36 ◼   ► amount of money.

00:50:37 ◼   ► But I think that's important.

00:50:40 ◼   ► But with YouTube, there are two parts of it.

00:50:43 ◼   ► And if it doesn't sound good, it doesn't look good,

00:50:46 ◼   ► Will you continue? I don't know.

00:50:48 ◼   ► Okay, look, again.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I make the argument that production values don't matter as much as people think they do.

00:50:55 ◼   ► I swear, I think this is something that people like to focus on as a kind of pre-built barrier to not starting.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Right? They look at the high production values of people who have been doing stuff for years and think,

00:51:11 ◼   ► "Oh, I could never get a video to look like that."

00:51:13 ◼   ► And so I'm not going to start making a video

00:51:17 ◼   ► But the people who've been doing stuff for a long time rarely does their stuff look like that when it started

00:51:22 ◼   ► what matters is that you have something that people want to pay attention to when you start it and

00:51:29 ◼   ► in the podcast world I use the the classic example of

00:51:32 ◼   ► Totally crap audio but still very entertaining. Can you guess what podcast I'm going to name Myke the flop house?

00:51:39 ◼   ► I am going to name the flophouse which has some of the worst audio you will ever hear on a podcast

00:51:46 ◼   ► it's horrible, but you know what people get through it because

00:51:50 ◼   ► They are very entertaining guys talking about

00:51:53 ◼   ► terrible terrible movies in a very funny way and I listen to that podcast and

00:52:00 ◼   ► That gets some of the deepest laughs out of me of anything that I ever listen to the flophouse reminds me of the wire

00:52:08 ◼   ► Okay, please tell me how you're going to go with it.

00:52:11 ◼   ► Go with me on this.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Okay.

00:52:12 ◼   ► In the same way that when you first watch The Wire,

00:52:15 ◼   ► you have to watch a couple of episodes to kind of get it and to be able to stick with it.

00:52:20 ◼   ► I find the flophouse to be like that. You have to commit to a couple of them to look past its

00:52:25 ◼   ► foibles in that. Sometimes it's

00:52:28 ◼   ► it would be deemed unlistenable in many other areas, right?

00:52:32 ◼   ► But you can kind of get past it because it is incredibly entertaining.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Right and even over time the flophouse has gotten better with their audio

00:52:40 ◼   ► I mean they still they still sound like three guys sitting around a single microphone for some unknown reason

00:52:46 ◼   ► But they even they have gotten better because over time

00:52:49 ◼   ► They had something that people were willing to pay attention to and so then you can

00:52:55 ◼   ► Make it better as you go on and I think this is the same thing for starting a YouTube channel, right is

00:53:02 ◼   ► Start your YouTube channel see if you have a core of anything that people are willing to pay

00:53:09 ◼   ► attention to and if you go back and you go back and you look at

00:53:13 ◼   ► Any youtubers now their first videos they are always lower quality than what they're doing now

00:53:20 ◼   ► But nonetheless the people who are still making a living on YouTube

00:53:25 ◼   ► Almost without exception you can look at their first video and you can say yes

00:53:31 ◼   ► the technical quality of this might not be the best, but there is something there that is

00:53:37 ◼   ► interesting or engaging or entertaining in some way. You can see that there's like a little core of what it can eventually

00:53:44 ◼   ► be. If you look back at MinutePhysics first video, you know, his tone of speaking is much slower,

00:53:52 ◼   ► it's much less entertaining, but nonetheless he's still sort of got some attention with it and turned it into a thing.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Like all yours. Yeah, you can look at you can look at mine

00:54:01 ◼   ► I don't know if you've ever seen it, but have you ever seen MKBHD's first video?

00:54:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it is adorable because he's like 12 years old and he's reviewing the like a DVR or something

00:54:12 ◼   ► but nonetheless you can look at this 12 year old kid explaining the DVR and I still say

00:54:18 ◼   ► He does it better than other videos I've seen on YouTube. It's like, okay, obviously it's not great

00:54:24 ◼   ► But you can tell there's something there about he's explaining it through in a methodical way

00:54:30 ◼   ► Then you can you can watch those videos over time and see him grow up into the professional youtuber

00:54:36 ◼   ► He is today. Everybody's videos are like that. You just you don't start out amazing

00:54:41 ◼   ► It's very very rare to start out just absolutely amazing. I'm not convinced that

00:54:48 ◼   ► Production values matter as much as people think they do. I just think it's an easy concrete thing for people to focus on

00:54:55 ◼   ► that

00:54:57 ◼   ► distracts them from

00:54:59 ◼   ► Starting the actual project that they want to start. You need to think of it like the venture capital world, right?

00:55:06 ◼   ► You need a minimum viable project

00:55:08 ◼   ► If you want to start a YouTube channel

00:55:10 ◼   ► You start your YouTube channel and start filming stuff and just see do you get any kind of reaction from people?

00:55:15 ◼   ► Do you get any kind of feedback from people? If you don't that's probably not a good sign

00:55:21 ◼   ► But then you can try doing something try doing something different like at least you have gained valuable

00:55:25 ◼   ► Information instead of just sitting thinking like oh, maybe one day I'll do this thing as well

00:55:30 ◼   ► Like I think that there is a real benefit in being able from a production level to just start small and then build up

00:55:37 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, like as you see from your video and from MKBHD's first video starting at a very bare minimum

00:55:45 ◼   ► and then building up the cameras and the audio and the planning that goes into it.

00:55:50 ◼   ► You build that up over time and it gives you a ramp through to your success.

00:55:55 ◼   ► You start with nobody, right?

00:55:57 ◼   ► So you should start with very basic equipment and then build it over time as your potential

00:56:02 ◼   ► audience will build along with you.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and if the thing is a successful thing, it starts to make sense to invest in it over

00:56:09 ◼   ► time.

00:56:10 ◼   ► I was just trying to find it. There's a video that Derek of Veritasium did, which is called "How to Start a YouTube Channel"

00:56:17 ◼   ► And I'll send it to you for the show notes.

00:56:20 ◼   ► But in there he talks about some of the similar stuff, but he also shows some clips of some of his earlier videos

00:56:26 ◼   ► And he talks about the things that he learned from those earlier videos of starting a video fast or production qualities

00:56:34 ◼   ► qualities and it's just it's very interesting to see someone show you these little moments of them like not being so great

00:56:41 ◼   ► but nonetheless like he's doing this now because even though it's not so great videos had a

00:56:48 ◼   ► Core of interestingness to them that was able to attract some audience that he was able to snowball over time

00:56:55 ◼   ► Into into a full career now. Should we talk tough of our listeners now gray?

00:57:02 ◼   ► Okay, maybe if you're using these things as reasons that you're not making the podcast or YouTube video that you want to make

00:57:09 ◼   ► You need to just get over it and do it

00:57:11 ◼   ► Because if these are the if you feel this way like if you have this thing that you want to make

00:57:17 ◼   ► But you're like, oh it's gonna be too difficult because of the I don't have a red camera

00:57:22 ◼   ► Oh, it's too it's too difficult because there's already a million people

00:57:26 ◼   ► The only reason that you're not success is because you're not making it you can't be successful

00:57:31 ◼   ► unless you make it so you actually have to just go and make it. Yeah I mean it's

00:57:37 ◼   ► definitely true I mean this is the the just start advice is the kind of advice

00:57:42 ◼   ► that I find true and also kind of useless advice. I'm never quite sure who

00:57:49 ◼   ► the target audience is of this because the people who just start stuff do just

00:57:54 ◼   ► start stuff. This is this has always been my experience like maybe you can give

00:57:57 ◼   ► them a little bit of a push but for the most part they're going they're going to

00:58:00 ◼   ► do it on their own and from talking to people you know when I hear people

00:58:06 ◼   ► talking about production qualities or getting started or these these kinds of

00:58:09 ◼   ► difficulties I don't think the people who talk about that necessarily realize

00:58:17 ◼   ► that they're using it as a kind of built-in excuse to not get started like

00:58:22 ◼   ► I've just I'm not sure I'm not sure that there is any direct value to be gained

00:58:26 ◼   ► from that that kind of just start advice well this is why we need to talk tough

00:58:30 ◼   ► to them, Gray. We need to kick them in the pants, you know? So now they know that it's

00:58:34 ◼   ► an excuse. Yeah. You're gonna tell them to just start but you're gonna say it louder?

00:58:39 ◼   ► Is that what you're gonna do? I'll do that. That's what I'll do. Or maybe I'll just loop

00:58:44 ◼   ► it for the next 10 minutes, you know? Just me saying just start over and over again.

00:58:47 ◼   ► Have you seen that Shia LaBeouf video? You must have seen his video. Yeah, it's the one

00:58:54 ◼   ► where he's on the green screen just screaming "Just do it. Just get started."

00:58:58 ◼   ► Yep. That man's whole career is, I think, an amazing piece of performance art.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Yes. Like, I'm not sure what you're up to, Shia LaBeouf.

00:59:08 ◼   ► At least I hope that's the case. This is my... this is how I choose to interpret his career.

00:59:12 ◼   ► I guess I should say one of the reasons why this topic kind of frustrates me is because

00:59:17 ◼   ► I feel like as for as long as I have been doing YouTube, I have been hearing people say how now

00:59:25 ◼   ► is harder than ever. I remember prominent YouTubers saying before I started my YouTube career in 2011

00:59:34 ◼   ► that it was pretty much impossible for new people to come along because you have all of these big

00:59:40 ◼   ► players who are already established and it's very very difficult for new people to get started.

00:59:44 ◼   ► I feel like I was hearing that in 2011 and I've been hearing that every year about how "oh now

00:59:51 ◼   ► it's you know it's just way harder and the production qualities are higher but new people still keep coming along and I want to use it

00:59:58 ◼   ► Like as a bit of an example is the YouTube channel Kyrgyzat, which is doing very well like they are

01:00:04 ◼   ► New or they're from two years ago. They're a team of people actually who work together to make a video but

01:00:10 ◼   ► people have said like oh that no one can possibly break into the the YouTube educational space because

01:00:16 ◼   ► It's already been like it's it's all been homesteaded right all the plots of land have been divided and and the people who were there

01:00:22 ◼   ► Back in 2011 you know we'll own it for forever, but like no Kyrgyzat started relatively new and he's doing very well

01:00:29 ◼   ► He's approaching a million subscribers as we record this this episode

01:00:33 ◼   ► There's always there's always room for someone who is good and who is putting a lot of work into it

01:00:38 ◼   ► I think there's just there's always space for for somebody who is new just there's always gonna be churn

01:00:44 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. It's a bit like saying, "Oh, there'll never be any new actors in Hollywood because we have all of the actors now."

01:00:50 ◼   ► This isn't how this works. It doesn't work like this in any field.

01:00:55 ◼   ► I don't understand why people talk about YouTube as though it's different in this way.

01:01:01 ◼   ► We have Chris Pratt. We don't need anybody else.

01:01:03 ◼   ► Right, right. We're never gonna need another charming leading man.

01:01:08 ◼   ► Right, we're done. We're, you know, we're all closed up, you know, and if an amazing talent comes along,

01:01:13 ◼   ► We're just gonna leave him out in the cold in the rain to be a hobo. That's not how this works

01:01:18 ◼   ► I'm very proud of your current pop culture reference that you you will doubt today

01:01:22 ◼   ► I was really trying hard to think like who can I mention like I've had I need a name

01:01:27 ◼   ► What name like I saw Guardians of the Galaxy a while ago. It was a dude. He had a funny name

01:01:31 ◼   ► It was Chris Pratt. Okay, great, because he really is the person you would bring up

01:01:35 ◼   ► So you did really well, I'm proud of you great

01:01:39 ◼   ► I'm very pleased about that. The other thing just about this is when people look at YouTube channels

01:01:43 ◼   ► I've seen some people try to argue with data about the existing channels and how long ago they were started

01:01:49 ◼   ► Like I would actually be really curious to have someone say I don't know if you could do this

01:01:53 ◼   ► But scrape all the data off of vidstatX and say what is the median year of?

01:01:59 ◼   ► start for the top thousand YouTube channels for example and

01:02:05 ◼   ► And I would still expect that to be relatively old

01:02:08 ◼   ► Even if I'm saying it's easier now to get started than it ever has been

01:02:13 ◼   ► Because this is how survivorship bias works like you should expect that the people who were successful are

01:02:19 ◼   ► More likely to also be successful next year and so the average successful

01:02:25 ◼   ► YouTube channel you should expect to be around for quite a while

01:02:29 ◼   ► Even if it still is easier for new channels to get started than ever because you also have the field just growing over time

01:02:37 ◼   ► but that doesn't that's not to argue that the people who have already been around don't have some kind of lead or

01:02:43 ◼   ► That they don't have this survivorship bias. It's like yes, it is

01:02:47 ◼   ► I've been making videos for several years and if you had to put bets on it

01:02:50 ◼   ► It's like I can probably still make videos next year like I do still have an audience and I'm still I'm still making stuff

01:02:56 ◼   ► But I'd be very curious to see the actual data on that

01:02:59 ◼   ► But I don't feel that if the data came back and said, "Oh, the median channel was created three years ago, four years ago, five years ago."

01:03:07 ◼   ► I don't feel like that would necessarily counter it.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Because you run into the same thing with mutual funds in the stock market.

01:03:14 ◼   ► That the average age of mutual funds is quite old. And it's like, "Oh, it's not really surprising though."

01:03:19 ◼   ► Because the ones that didn't make it, they went bankrupt and you removed them from the pool.

01:03:23 ◼   ► the pool. I feel like I've said all I need to say and probably you feel the

01:03:27 ◼   ► same but I feel like we're not done with this. This is gonna come up again. The

01:03:32 ◼   ► thing is Myke I just feel I just feel all agitated. I just feel all agitated

01:03:35 ◼   ► now because I was trying to prepare for this topic a little bit and I just feel

01:03:38 ◼   ► that I have actually wandered all over the place. Well I think it's something

01:03:42 ◼   ► that we both feel quite emotional about so it's likely gonna move around a lot

01:03:47 ◼   ► and I expect that you'll have many things that you want to say next time

01:03:51 ◼   ► once you've heard this.

01:03:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm almost certainly going to listen back to this edit

01:03:58 ◼   ► and be very, very unhappy and cut out lots of stuff.

01:04:00 ◼   ► I'll warn you that in advance.

01:04:02 ◼   ► This episode's 10 minutes long.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Yeah, this is why I demanded final veto control

01:04:05 ◼   ► over what goes up.

01:04:09 ◼   ► I'm sure I'm going to listen to myself and think, "Oh, what an idiot,"

01:04:10 ◼   ► and just cut out a whole bunch of things.

01:04:13 ◼   ► So I hope you have something else to talk about.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I do.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Thank God.

01:04:16 ◼   ► So something that goes kind of hand in hand

01:04:17 ◼   ► with the previous discussion is the building a side business type stuff.

01:04:18 ◼   ► because we had a few questions about that as well because we were both talking about

01:04:22 ◼   ► how we built our side businesses a bit last week and how we approach that with our current

01:04:26 ◼   ► jobs at that time, our full-time work.

01:04:28 ◼   ► So Philip asked, "How do you motivate yourself to do the business when you're exhausted from

01:04:34 ◼   ► your full-time job?"

01:04:35 ◼   ► It's like, how do you come home at 6 p.m. and then work another six hours when you've

01:04:41 ◼   ► worked a full day?

01:04:44 ◼   ► The answer is you don't.

01:04:46 ◼   ► Don't do that at all.

01:04:47 ◼   ► a terrible idea. For all of the various side projects that I have attempted, I did them

01:04:53 ◼   ► before work. Because that O sounded really sad there.

01:05:00 ◼   ► No, no, it's just, that seems weird to me. What time did you start?

01:05:05 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it would depend, but here's the way I looked at it. I tried to do stuff

01:05:11 ◼   ► after work, but you are exhausted after work. Do you want to know why? Because you've been

01:05:16 ◼   ► working all day even if you haven't been working very hard right you have some

01:05:20 ◼   ► some office job where you can relatively slack and you're just your job is

01:05:24 ◼   ► actually to try and hide from your boss most of the day it's still just

01:05:27 ◼   ► exhausting like you've been doing stuff you've done a commute and you get home

01:05:31 ◼   ► and you're tired and you know what you want to do you want to watch TV and you

01:05:34 ◼   ► want to eat ice cream right like that's what's just gonna happen and science now

01:05:38 ◼   ► shows us that your brain is literally drained of all of the executive

01:05:42 ◼   ► chemicals it requires to actually make you do stuff.

01:05:46 ◼   ► And so I feel like I learned very quickly

01:05:48 ◼   ► this habit about myself of, you know what,

01:05:50 ◼   ► you're never going to do anything that's really interesting

01:05:53 ◼   ► or good if you're trying to do it after work.

01:05:55 ◼   ► You're always going to be tired.

01:05:57 ◼   ► And looking back on the previous weeks

01:06:00 ◼   ► of trying to do stuff after work,

01:06:01 ◼   ► like is there any evidence that you're ever going

01:06:03 ◼   ► to do anything good in the evenings?

01:06:06 ◼   ► No, the answer is no.

01:06:07 ◼   ► - I couldn't disagree with you more, but carry on.

01:06:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:06:11 ◼   ► Well, I'm just talking for myself here,

01:06:12 ◼   ► that's why I'll see how you come in here.

01:06:14 ◼   ► But this was the thing that I learned from myself,

01:06:17 ◼   ► that it just wasn't happening.

01:06:18 ◼   ► And so, as usual, I tried to approach it

01:06:20 ◼   ► from a systems perspective, and I said,

01:06:22 ◼   ► "You know what?

01:06:22 ◼   ► "Instead, I'm not going to give my best hours

01:06:26 ◼   ► "to my employer first.

01:06:27 ◼   ► "I'm going to wake up earlier in the morning

01:06:30 ◼   ► "and focus on my side projects then,

01:06:33 ◼   ► "and then I'm going to go to work,

01:06:35 ◼   ► "and my employer can get what's left over."

01:06:37 ◼   ► And that's how I arranged it.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - You get the drags.

01:06:41 ◼   ► Exactly! It's like I'm going to try to do... I mean it doesn't have to be a huge amount of time. I think I usually did...

01:06:48 ◼   ► Well, except for some client stuff, which was a little crazy, but I would usually just try to do like an hour and a half's worth of work for myself before actually going into work.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And that stuff just builds up over time.

01:07:03 ◼   ► And so yes, like I did almost all of that UK video

01:07:07 ◼   ► was in the mornings, right?

01:07:09 ◼   ► Before I went into teaching is when I did the vast majority

01:07:12 ◼   ► of putting that together.

01:07:13 ◼   ► And the same with my other side projects.

01:07:15 ◼   ► I did them before work because I just knew in the evenings

01:07:18 ◼   ► I wasn't going to do it.

01:07:19 ◼   ► So my answer is, how do you motivate yourself?

01:07:21 ◼   ► The answer is, I don't really believe in motivation.

01:07:24 ◼   ► I don't think it works.

01:07:26 ◼   ► Like I don't think you can watch a video

01:07:28 ◼   ► of Shia LaBeouf yelling at you and then you feel like,

01:07:29 ◼   ► "Okay, well man, I'm gonna get to work right now because he motivated me."

01:07:32 ◼   ► I think you have to rearrange things in a systemic way that allows you to work better.

01:07:36 ◼   ► But you disagree, so I want to hear what you have to say.

01:07:39 ◼   ► Right, so I did all of my work in the evenings.

01:07:42 ◼   ► [laughs]

01:07:44 ◼   ► How, Myke? How?

01:07:46 ◼   ► Because if I had to do it in the morning, there would be nothing.

01:07:49 ◼   ► You're not a morning person?

01:07:50 ◼   ► It doesn't matter how early I get up, I wouldn't be able to do anything before work in the morning.

01:07:54 ◼   ► it would be just basically me just falling asleep and waking up again for two hours is probably what

01:07:59 ◼   ► it would be. I'm not a morning person. I am a better morning person now but that's because

01:08:05 ◼   ► the type of work that I do in the morning is very light now. You know, I'm reading Twitter and

01:08:10 ◼   ► looking at email in the morning for two hours before I start anything else. And there, I found

01:08:17 ◼   ► that I could be productive. I mean, I think that I was definitely conserving energy but I did work

01:08:24 ◼   ► hard enough that I was considered to be good at my day job.

01:08:28 ◼   ► So it wasn't like I was just sitting there

01:08:30 ◼   ► and doing nothing all day.

01:08:32 ◼   ► But my answer is just the motivation for the dream, man.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Like, that's what it was.

01:08:40 ◼   ► I loved it.

01:08:41 ◼   ► And that was why I was, you know, last week,

01:08:43 ◼   ► last time I was talking about find the thing that you love

01:08:46 ◼   ► and not necessarily the thing that you're good at.

01:08:49 ◼   ► Do you remember that?

01:08:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember you saying that.

01:08:52 ◼   ► So that's what I'm talking about.

01:08:54 ◼   ► Because if it's the thing that you love,

01:08:56 ◼   ► like if you do it because you enjoy it

01:08:59 ◼   ► and it's like a hobby as much as it is a thing

01:09:01 ◼   ► that you enjoy, I feel it helps.

01:09:03 ◼   ► It really, really helps motivate you

01:09:05 ◼   ► when it's two a.m. in the morning and you're still editing

01:09:09 ◼   ► and you have to be up again in seven hours,

01:09:11 ◼   ► in six hours to get ready for work again.

01:09:14 ◼   ► - I think you're wrong about you, Myke.

01:09:16 ◼   ► I think you're wrong about you.

01:09:17 ◼   ► You're saying there that it's the motivation

01:09:20 ◼   ► of the thing that you love,

01:09:21 ◼   ► But you also, you did the same thing I did in some ways,

01:09:25 ◼   ► which is that you knew that if you were getting up

01:09:27 ◼   ► early in the morning, that you wouldn't be able

01:09:30 ◼   ► to do any good work, right?

01:09:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:09:34 ◼   ► - So in a sense, you could reverse this guy's question

01:09:37 ◼   ► to say, oh, if you had to get up at four in the morning

01:09:41 ◼   ► to start work on your side project,

01:09:43 ◼   ► how would you motivate yourself to do it?

01:09:46 ◼   ► I think your answer then would be,

01:09:48 ◼   ► I wouldn't, I would be in a sleepy fog all morning.

01:09:51 ◼   ► you are just for whatever reason that your brain and physiology are different

01:09:56 ◼   ► from mine,

01:09:56 ◼   ► that you are able to still do good work in the evenings in a way that I found

01:10:00 ◼   ► that I was not able to do it. So I don't think it's necessarily that it's,

01:10:03 ◼   ► it's that it's the motivation there.

01:10:05 ◼   ► It's that you too found that you were able to work at that time and produce

01:10:10 ◼   ► quality things.

01:10:11 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I mean that is part of it,

01:10:13 ◼   ► but I still think the motivation is a big factor. It is a,

01:10:17 ◼   ► Because if you weren't motivated because you enjoyed the YouTube videos, or for whatever

01:10:23 ◼   ► reason you had your motivation, you would never have woke up in the morning and given

01:10:28 ◼   ► those extra hours of work.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Why would you do that?

01:10:32 ◼   ► I mean, yes, it's true in that sense that I was motivated to become a self-employed

01:10:36 ◼   ► person.

01:10:37 ◼   ► But I think that's a slightly different question from how do you motivate yourself to work

01:10:41 ◼   ► when you are tired?

01:10:43 ◼   ► the answer is that I have never found anything that is an effective answer to

01:10:47 ◼   ► that that that my my answer is more of of managing all of the schedule to

01:10:53 ◼   ► minimize the overlap of I need to work and also I am very tired and I am very

01:10:59 ◼   ► worn out that that's that's a different question of like of I am I mean I have

01:11:05 ◼   ► motivation in the sense of I am a human with motivations that drive my actions

01:11:09 ◼   ► Like yes, in that sense I am motivated, but I do not have an answer for I am worn out,

01:11:15 ◼   ► how do I still produce quality work?

01:11:16 ◼   ► The answer is there's not enough coffee in the world to fix that.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Like it's just you have to rearrange the schedule or the order that you do things.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Well I hope that helps.

01:11:25 ◼   ► I don't know if we did.

01:11:27 ◼   ► I think we both think we helped, but I don't know if either of us did.

01:11:32 ◼   ► My advice is very clear.

01:11:34 ◼   ► Hopefully you have the physiology of a morning person and get up earlier.

01:11:37 ◼   ► my advice is very clear, find the thing that you love and do that.

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01:13:14 ◼   ► Dyed101 on the reddit asked "What percentage of your income did you

01:13:19 ◼   ► generate from your side jobs before you were able to confidently quit your job?"

01:13:22 ◼   ► I don't know if Grey will answer this question. Yeah you go first with this one.

01:13:26 ◼   ► So I never thought of the side income as an income.

01:13:31 ◼   ► I treated the podcasting money as if it was just free money because I never wanted to

01:13:36 ◼   ► rely on it.

01:13:38 ◼   ► So it was just like this is just the money and I'd spend that on whatever but I never

01:13:42 ◼   ► really considered it as this is what I earn.

01:13:45 ◼   ► I always considered it as what I earn and what I budgeted with to be the salary that

01:13:49 ◼   ► I received.

01:13:50 ◼   ► And then when it came time for me to decide I wanted to quit I took a look at the income

01:13:55 ◼   ► that I received from my bank job and then as soon as I felt I could match that with

01:13:59 ◼   ► the podcasting stuff I cut it out and then made the switch.

01:14:03 ◼   ► I get what you're saying there but I'm still you must have had some sort of target that

01:14:08 ◼   ► you wanted to hit before you left your job right?

01:14:13 ◼   ► Yeah the target was to match my the money that I received from my full-time job with

01:14:18 ◼   ► podcasting money but not the two together.

01:14:22 ◼   ► What do you mean by not I don't get this what do you mean by not the two together?

01:14:25 ◼   ► So I had two income streams, right?

01:14:27 ◼   ► I had my full-time job and I had the revenue that I made from podcasting.

01:14:33 ◼   ► I never took those two together and called that my income.

01:14:39 ◼   ► I thought of my bank job as the income and the money from podcasting was just whatever

01:14:45 ◼   ► money.

01:14:46 ◼   ► So I tried to match my income with the podcasting money, which is just my full-time job money.

01:14:50 ◼   ► Because if you put them together, it's way harder to make that number up.

01:14:54 ◼   ► If you put them together, that equation is fundamentally unsolvable because you're saying

01:14:57 ◼   ► "Oh I want P to be greater than P plus J."

01:15:01 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:15:02 ◼   ► Yeah, so obviously you would never do that.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Yeah, but I think that it is a common trap that people take it as their income and they

01:15:09 ◼   ► think "Right, this is what I earn."

01:15:11 ◼   ► But then if you have to try and replace that, you can't do that.

01:15:14 ◼   ► It's basically impossible.

01:15:17 ◼   ► You have to have some sort of monumental explosion of revenue overnight, which is very rare.

01:15:24 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, and still,

01:15:26 ◼   ► that equation would never solve itself,

01:15:28 ◼   ► no matter how monumental your sudden windfall was.

01:15:32 ◼   ► Okay, so you replaced your income before leaving, basically.

01:15:36 ◼   ► - That was what I did, yeah.

01:15:37 ◼   ► - I was in a bit of a funny situation,

01:15:40 ◼   ► because with the way my history worked,

01:15:44 ◼   ► I was making a really serious push towards self-employment

01:15:49 ◼   ► in my final two years.

01:15:51 ◼   ► And my final two years of teaching,

01:15:54 ◼   ► I was actually only teaching part-time.

01:15:57 ◼   ► I wasn't a full-time teacher.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And I was living on very, very little money,

01:16:04 ◼   ► but it was a gamble to get more time

01:16:09 ◼   ► for myself to work on side projects.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Even though when I accepted the part-time job at the school,

01:16:16 ◼   ► I did not have any particular side project in mind.

01:16:20 ◼   ► I just thought, I need to free up a couple days a week

01:16:23 ◼   ► where I can dedicate towards working on side projects

01:16:26 ◼   ► and try to make this work.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I know that I matched the income

01:16:32 ◼   ► that I was making from teaching before I left,

01:16:36 ◼   ► but that income was already significantly less

01:16:40 ◼   ► than a normal full-time teacher would work.

01:16:42 ◼   ► But this was why it was a bit of a gamble for me,

01:16:47 ◼   ► but I had a very clear number in my head

01:16:50 ◼   ► and a spreadsheet that I was using to track it,

01:16:53 ◼   ► which was 200,000 subscribers.

01:16:56 ◼   ► Because in the timeframe that I was looking,

01:16:58 ◼   ► my estimate was that if I could reach 200,000 subscribers

01:17:03 ◼   ► by the date that I needed to,

01:17:05 ◼   ► that was enough growth that I could count on it

01:17:09 ◼   ► growing more in the future

01:17:12 ◼   ► to replace what would be a full-time teacher salary,

01:17:16 ◼   ► if you see what I mean.

01:17:18 ◼   ► Because if my part-time gamble didn't pay off,

01:17:21 ◼   ► I was eventually going to have to find another job that was a full-time teaching job

01:17:25 ◼   ► because I couldn't live on that low of a money for an indefinite period of time.

01:17:29 ◼   ► I wasn't saving for retirement, I was burning through the savings that I had.

01:17:33 ◼   ► It was not sustainable in the long run. So it was a real gamble roll of the dice.

01:17:39 ◼   ► But I quit when the trajectory looked sound.

01:17:44 ◼   ► And that was partly because of the horrible dynamics of when you can quit as a teacher

01:17:49 ◼   ► and when you have to come back without breaking a contract.

01:17:53 ◼   ► So just very briefly, let's say it's this academic year.

01:17:57 ◼   ► If you don't want to show up next academic year,

01:18:02 ◼   ► September 1st, you have to quit this academic year,

01:18:06 ◼   ► usually by mid-April.

01:18:10 ◼   ► There's a big, big lag between when you're a teacher,

01:18:12 ◼   ► when you hand in your resignation,

01:18:14 ◼   ► and when you don't come back.

01:18:16 ◼   ► So you have to quit in April to be able to leave in September of 2015?

01:18:22 ◼   ► Yeah, to be able to not come back September 2015.

01:18:24 ◼   ► So you would leave in what, like June of 2015 or whatever?

01:18:27 ◼   ► Yeah. It's almost half a year is the notice that you need to have.

01:18:32 ◼   ► And that's why I was doing a kind of trajectory-based resignation.

01:18:37 ◼   ► Because I couldn't...

01:18:39 ◼   ► I was willing at that speed of subscriber growth to make the gamble

01:18:43 ◼   ► that I could leave the teaching job and it would still grow and I would be fine

01:18:48 ◼   ► instead of missing that April date

01:18:53 ◼   ► and then what would happen is the earliest I could resign is if I handed in my resignation over the summer

01:18:58 ◼   ► then I would be allowed to leave in January.

01:19:02 ◼   ► Because there's such that big lag, that's why I was trying to think about it very very far in advance.

01:19:08 ◼   ► But so that's the way it worked. I wanted to hit that number 200,000 subscribers before April and I did.

01:19:15 ◼   ► And that was a very exciting day. And then I was able to hand in my resignation letter.

01:19:20 ◼   ► You okay over there?

01:19:22 ◼   ► That is just such a... I understand why they do that.

01:19:25 ◼   ► But it feels like you just end up with people that just can't care enough for like five months.

01:19:31 ◼   ► Because they've already quit.

01:19:33 ◼   ► I've changed jobs a couple of times with teaching.

01:19:35 ◼   ► It is a weird experience to hand in your resignation letter in April and then be like, "Well, I guess I'm still here until the summer just teaching?"

01:19:46 ◼   ► I did like a five week notice and it was terrible for everyone.

01:19:52 ◼   ► You don't think what is the equivalent of like a three month notice really is a good idea?

01:19:56 ◼   ► No, I don't think that.

01:19:58 ◼   ► it actually kind of works in the teaching world because the turnover is

01:20:01 ◼   ► usually relatively small and also the commitment is much higher

01:20:07 ◼   ► because even though you feel like oh i'm leaving this school

01:20:11 ◼   ► you would feel just like you can't just like leave the kids that you've been

01:20:14 ◼   ► working with for two-thirds of the year so you feel much more like oh i have

01:20:18 ◼   ► this this commitment to the kids that i have been teaching

01:20:21 ◼   ► which is totally separate from the commitment that i have to the school as

01:20:25 ◼   ► as an institution.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I think there are reasons why this happens

01:20:29 ◼   ► in the academic world in a way that it doesn't happen

01:20:32 ◼   ► in the corporate world.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And it would be crazy making if it happened

01:20:35 ◼   ► in the corporate world.

01:20:37 ◼   ► But it does mean that as a teacher,

01:20:38 ◼   ► if you are ever planning to switch jobs,

01:20:40 ◼   ► you need to think about it way in advance.

01:20:42 ◼   ► You need to have everything set up a long time

01:20:46 ◼   ► before you do it.

01:20:47 ◼   ► - So I have one more thing on this,

01:20:49 ◼   ► which came from SWFK on Reddit.

01:20:53 ◼   ► If you remember last time we were talking about how we firmly believe you shouldn't

01:20:57 ◼   ► tell anybody about your side business at your current full-time job.

01:21:02 ◼   ► Yeah, at work.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Don't tell anybody at work.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Yep.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:07 ◼   ► How would you recommend simultaneously telling the world about a side project because you

01:21:12 ◼   ► want it to gain attention whilst also keeping it a secret from the people you work with?

01:21:19 ◼   ► I mean, this happened to work out for me, but I wouldn't recommend this path.

01:21:25 ◼   ► It was, it was, I can say without doubt that my final year of teaching and trying to do YouTube on the side was the worst year of my adult life thus far.

01:21:37 ◼   ► It was a terrible, terrible, stressful time.

01:21:43 ◼   ► Like I wouldn't exactly be like, "Oh, you know, this is definitely something that you should, you should aim for."

01:21:49 ◼   ► Like, don't get me wrong, this is a high anxiety situation no matter which way you cut it.

01:21:57 ◼   ► If you're trying to do a public project on the side and keep it away from everybody else.

01:22:07 ◼   ► But the only real piece of advice I have is the obvious one, which is to just not tell

01:22:13 ◼   ► anyone at work.

01:22:14 ◼   ► There's nothing else that you can do.

01:22:16 ◼   ► And I think it's easy to suffer from, I forget the name of this psychological bias, but it's

01:22:24 ◼   ► easy to think that everybody else is much more interested in you than they are, because

01:22:31 ◼   ► of course you are the central point of your whole world.

01:22:35 ◼   ► And so it's easy to over assume how interested other people are.

01:22:41 ◼   ► But if you are already employed somewhere and you're just doing your job and you're

01:22:45 ◼   ► normal employee, the chances that your coworkers are still actively

01:22:50 ◼   ► occasionally googling you is probably a lot lower than you think it is. Like if

01:22:55 ◼   ► you're switching jobs and you're new in a place like that probability goes way

01:22:59 ◼   ► up, but if you've just been in a place for a while I think it goes way down. So

01:23:03 ◼   ► just don't tell anybody at work even though there are many situations where

01:23:08 ◼   ► it feels like a natural thing to do in a conversation maybe like the

01:23:12 ◼   ► conversation comes up and you feel like you should contribute to that

01:23:15 ◼   ► conversation, I just don't. It's hard, but you just have to keep your

01:23:22 ◼   ► mouth shut. There really isn't any other advice. And the only

01:23:27 ◼   ► thing I would say is that if people do discover your side project, you should

01:23:32 ◼   ► always plan for some kind of plausible deniability. So I wouldn't, for example, on

01:23:38 ◼   ► on your website have a big announcement about how

01:23:41 ◼   ► this is the thing that you hope will eventually replace your full-time job.

01:23:45 ◼   ► I would always want to be able to parlay it off

01:23:49 ◼   ► to any co-workers as "Oh this is a hobby! This is a thing that I do

01:23:53 ◼   ► just for myself on the internet."

01:23:56 ◼   ► That's the only advice I can give which is probably not very helpful advice.

01:24:00 ◼   ► Also avoid giving people

01:24:04 ◼   ► access to the megaphone. So like don't talk about your Twitter account with

01:24:09 ◼   ► them if that's where you're promoting yourself. Also keep that stuff

01:24:13 ◼   ► away from people. I did have an instance where as I say more people knew about

01:24:19 ◼   ► what I did because of the way that I got my job than with yours.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Right, because the marketing connection. Exactly but it was still people that were within my

01:24:29 ◼   ► immediate team and they also maybe didn't understand the kind of the

01:24:36 ◼   ► the avenues that it went down and like they didn't understand the size of what

01:24:41 ◼   ► I was working on and attempting to do and then one day I received an email

01:24:46 ◼   ► from someone in our legal team who had googled me because I was emailing them

01:24:52 ◼   ► about something and they would just had a kid and they were thinking about names

01:24:57 ◼   ► and they noticed the weird way that I spell Myke and they googled that just

01:25:03 ◼   ► Myke I think and I came up in the search term or however it was that they did it

01:25:09 ◼   ► and they just started looking through and they wanted to have this big

01:25:13 ◼   ► conversation with me my advice in those scenarios is act shy about it nervous

01:25:19 ◼   ► about it and shut it down end that conversation as fast as possible so you

01:25:25 ◼   ► you don't end up having to be in that scenario unless you want to brag about it then go ahead, but I think my

01:25:31 ◼   ► My advice in that scenario is just try and get out of it as quickly as possible

01:25:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean this touches on another whole topic that we could talk about sometime which is

01:25:42 ◼   ► If you're doing side projects you need to just be as

01:25:48 ◼   ► anonymous as possible at work like

01:25:53 ◼   ► You can't you don't want to stand out in any way

01:25:56 ◼   ► Precisely for like this thing that you you ran across here like your name is spelled differently

01:26:01 ◼   ► So someone ended up googling you you just don't want to cross people's field of attention

01:26:06 ◼   ► And I definitely remember at my my final school

01:26:09 ◼   ► There were a couple of people who I was actively making sure like I never want to cross their radar

01:26:15 ◼   ► They should never have a reason to hear my name right everything should just be smooth

01:26:20 ◼   ► It should just be done, but I don't want to stand out as exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, right?

01:26:28 ◼   ► Like, I don't want to be on anybody's lists for any reason.

01:26:31 ◼   ► I just want to be an anonymous part of this machine so that I am drawn to the attention of as few people as possible.

01:26:40 ◼   ► That sounds weird, but again, I think it's easy to conflate, like, what are your goals versus, like,

01:26:47 ◼   ► what are the the goals of the institution in which you work and sometimes it's a little easy to think

01:26:54 ◼   ► of co-workers as friends but if you're really trying to achieve this goal of independence

01:27:00 ◼   ► like you can't necessarily treat co-workers as bosom buddies that you share everything with like

01:27:07 ◼   ► it just these are these are mutually conflicting goals and it's like you have to you have to pick

01:27:14 ◼   ► which set of trade-offs you are willing to live with.

01:27:17 ◼   ► I have a couple of Ask Cortex questions and we can wrap it up today.

01:27:20 ◼   ► Okay.

01:27:22 ◼   ► So this is a couple that I wanted to pick out for today because I liked them.

01:27:24 ◼   ► Thanks to everybody who is sending them in and I have seen a very great adoption of the new hashtag.

01:27:29 ◼   ► Oh good, good.

01:27:31 ◼   ► So everybody is doing exactly as told, Gray, which I'm sure will make you very happy.

01:27:34 ◼   ► It does make me very happy.

01:27:36 ◼   ► So please continue to send those in. I like to let them build up and we can knock out or maybe do another one of the Q&A types that it shows at some point in the future.

01:27:43 ◼   ► future but I like to add them in every now and then because the one thing that they also do

01:27:46 ◼   ► while I may not ask the questions explicitly is they help inform future

01:27:51 ◼   ► topics as well so that's always very useful. But Vera asked "have you tried any

01:27:56 ◼   ► of the virtual keyboard replacements on the iPhone?" Vera likes SwiftKey.

01:28:01 ◼   ► Have you Myke? Yeah I have and there are a lot of good ones the problem is Apple

01:28:05 ◼   ► just doesn't care about it enough to make it a good experience in most

01:28:10 ◼   ► instances where you end up having to switch between keyboards which takes

01:28:14 ◼   ► about a week I think to press that button and wait for the new one to load

01:28:18 ◼   ► up and it just isn't as integrated as you would like and you can't get rid of

01:28:24 ◼   ► the standard keyboard the whole system needs more work and in iOS 9 there

01:28:30 ◼   ► doesn't really seem to have been much change because there's some that I like

01:28:33 ◼   ► I like SwiftKey, I like the TextExpanded keyboard, I like Emoji++, I like the, there's a Canada

01:28:43 ◼   ► app called Sunrise and they have a great keyboard called Meet which allows you to schedule meetings

01:28:47 ◼   ► really easily from a keyboard, which is really awesome.

01:28:50 ◼   ► That one seemed crazy to me.

01:28:51 ◼   ► I saw people talking about that when it first came out and I was like, "What do you mean

01:28:54 ◼   ► your keyboard is your calendar?

01:28:56 ◼   ► This doesn't make any sense."

01:28:57 ◼   ► That was somebody thinking outside the box of what a keyboard is.

01:29:00 ◼   ► And it's really interesting.

01:29:01 ◼   ► It's a cool little add-on.

01:29:03 ◼   ► But the problem is, it's just working with those on iOS is not a great experience in my opinion.

01:29:09 ◼   ► But I know that you are a man who likes quirky keyboard entry setups, Mr. Dvorak.

01:29:16 ◼   ► So have you tried anything?

01:29:18 ◼   ► I mirror all your sentiments about the keyboards not working great on iOS.

01:29:23 ◼   ► But I actually do largely use an additional keyboard.

01:29:28 ◼   ► keyboard and the one I use is called Flexi, which I really quite like. And I use that

01:29:35 ◼   ► exclusively on my iPhone. I don't use it on the iPads. And I use it largely because I

01:29:41 ◼   ► hate on the iPhone when you turn it into landscape mode Apple's dumb little in the center keyboard.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Yeah, you should be able to split it.

01:29:51 ◼   ► Yeah, you should be able to split it or at the very least they should put all those dumb

01:29:56 ◼   ► buttons on the side that you hit by accident that you never mean to, put those in the middle

01:30:02 ◼   ► and put the keyboard on either side.

01:30:04 ◼   ► But even if they don't want to do a split thing like they do on the iPad, just put the

01:30:10 ◼   ► keys near your thumbs and put those extra buttons that you don't frequently use in the

01:30:14 ◼   ► middle.

01:30:15 ◼   ► So I cannot abide using the built-in one in Landscape.

01:30:20 ◼   ► So I do have Flexi installed on my iPhone and I use it actually most of the time.

01:30:25 ◼   ► They have a few updates that have helped with stability, but it is still Apple's fault for

01:30:29 ◼   ► not making it super great.

01:30:31 ◼   ► But I really do like using that one in landscape mode.

01:30:34 ◼   ► So that's what I use.

01:30:35 ◼   ► And the next one is, I would be very interested to know, is actually, Eric asked, "Are you

01:30:41 ◼   ► a fan of 10 hour versions of songs?"

01:30:44 ◼   ► This is a thing that you see quite a lot on YouTube, somebody loops a song for 10 hours.

01:30:48 ◼   ► Oh!

01:30:49 ◼   ► I didn't realize that's what they're asking about.

01:30:51 ◼   ► I don't know this then at all.

01:30:53 ◼   ► Someone just loops a single song for 10 hours.

01:30:54 ◼   ► Why don't you just put it on repeat one like I do all the time?

01:30:58 ◼   ► I don't know it's just a thing that's on YouTube.

01:31:00 ◼   ► It's like for example the Make 'em Bake 'em Pancakes song from Adventure Time.

01:31:05 ◼   ► There is a 10 hour version of it and the song is about 15 seconds.

01:31:10 ◼   ► So it just carries on around and around and around and you watch these things for 10 hours.

01:31:14 ◼   ► This sounds like the song that never ends.

01:31:16 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:31:17 ◼   ► It just goes on and on my friend.

01:31:18 ◼   ► Right okay I am unfamiliar with someone just looping a song for 10 hours on YouTube.

01:31:23 ◼   ► I put single songs on repeat, sometimes for many many hours in a row.

01:31:29 ◼   ► That seems like it's functionally the same thing.

01:31:31 ◼   ► I don't know why I would need to go to YouTube to listen to one that is simply ten hours

01:31:35 ◼   ► long.

01:31:36 ◼   ► What I thought you were asking about is songs that have been stretched to be ridiculously

01:31:41 ◼   ► long.

01:31:42 ◼   ► Do you know what I'm talking about?

01:31:44 ◼   ► You don't know what I'm talking about.

01:31:45 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:31:47 ◼   ► Oh Myke, you are just not the connoisseur of music that I am.

01:31:52 ◼   ► When you say stretch you just mean a song that is written to be very long or that something's

01:31:56 ◼   ► happened to it.

01:31:57 ◼   ► Ahh, Myke, Myke, Myke, hold on.

01:31:59 ◼   ► Or like when...

01:32:00 ◼   ► Haha, I've seen a thing before where people slow down music to make it very long.

01:32:07 ◼   ► Here we go.

01:32:09 ◼   ► This is the only example that I know of this, but it is someone who has taken a Justin Bieber

01:32:15 ◼   ► song and they've reduced it to make it 800% slower.

01:32:21 ◼   ► And I actually think it is amazing, and I have listened to this several times.

01:32:27 ◼   ► I actually really like this as bizarre background music.

01:32:34 ◼   ► It's very interesting to listen to.

01:32:36 ◼   ► But yes, if you take a song and you super stretch it...

01:32:39 ◼   ► I would really like to know technically how they did it.

01:32:43 ◼   ► Because it doesn't sound like they just dropped the speed.

01:32:47 ◼   ► They must have done some interpolation or something.

01:32:49 ◼   ► But anyway, I do quite like this song that is slowed down 800% by Justin Bieber.

01:32:54 ◼   ► So that's what I thought you meant by 10 hour songs, but apparently not.

01:32:58 ◼   ► I don't have any idea what that is.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Because usually when you slow something down like this it makes it sound like this.

01:33:03 ◼   ► Which this doesn't really have that.

01:33:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like they've slowed it down but they've kept the pitch alright.

01:33:11 ◼   ► It's very strange.

01:33:12 ◼   ► I remember trying to figure out what they did and if you actually just make it go 800%

01:33:17 ◼   ► you can hear that it doesn't sound normal at that speed.

01:33:20 ◼   ► So they've done some adjustments to it to make it sound okay.

01:33:23 ◼   ► But yeah, there's my music recommendation for the week

01:33:28 ◼   ► from my cultured selection of new music that I always like to listen to,

01:33:32 ◼   ► Justin Bieber, 800% Slower. Check it out, people.

01:33:35 ◼   ► Heard it here first. CGB Grey is a fan of very slow Justin Bieber.

01:33:40 ◼   ► Don't forget to buy t-shirts!

01:33:42 ◼   ► Oh yeah, t-shirts.

01:33:43 ◼   ► teespring.com/cortex

01:33:45 ◼   ► Go and buy them, support the show

01:33:47 ◼   ► and wear a monkey on your chest and we'll be very happy about it.

01:33:50 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]