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Cortex

1: I Don't Really Like Work

 

00:00:00   You're going to be really natural right now, that's what you're going to do?

00:00:03   This is supernatural.

00:00:04   Okay, go for it.

00:00:05   So I guess we should probably tell people who I am.

00:00:10   I think everybody knows who you are.

00:00:12   When they hear this British voice, I should probably explain a little bit about me.

00:00:17   Okay, that sounds good.

00:00:18   I am Myke Hurley and I'm the co-founder of Relay FM.

00:00:21   I am a podcaster full-time.

00:00:23   I've been podcasting for like five years and I've been full-time podcasting for maybe like

00:00:28   six months or something like that.

00:00:29   And we're gonna talk a little bit more about kind of where I came from or where you came from work-wise a little bit later on.

00:00:36   But I just wanted people to know who I am as we start this.

00:00:40   And of course I have the real pleasure of being joined on Cortex every week by Mr. CGP Grey.

00:00:46   Hello.

00:00:47   Hello Grey.

00:00:48   I've only agreed to ten episodes though so far.

00:00:50   Yes.

00:00:51   Let's make that very clear. You have successfully pestered me into doing this.

00:00:56   You have been very convincing, but I have agreed to do ten episodes of this podcast with you.

00:01:01   I basically force-fed Grey Coffee and got him to agree to doing this with me.

00:01:08   Yes, yes. You were very consistent over several lunches together of getting me to do this with you.

00:01:17   So here we are.

00:01:18   Because I mean I am a big fan of your work, especially of Hello Internet.

00:01:23   that is my favorite thing. I love you and Brady every week. But there's

00:01:27   one thing that when I listen to Hello Internet that I would love to hear more

00:01:30   of and that's what Cortex is gonna be.

00:01:34   Where initially I want to talk about with you the way that you work.

00:01:38   Because every now and then you drop a little interesting tidbit of information

00:01:45   about the way that you work and I am kind of fascinated to understand a

00:01:52   little bit more about that and the decisions that you make.

00:01:55   Okay you want to follow that up on on here? Mm-hmm that's what this is gonna be.

00:01:59   Okay. So I have many I've been keeping a big long list of things of peculiar

00:02:05   things like I would like to tease something every every time I tell

00:02:09   somebody about this show I give them one piece of information as to why I think

00:02:12   Cortex is going to be interesting. And it's because a recent lunch that we had

00:02:17   I found out that Grey put sleep on his calendar.

00:02:21   - You seem transfixed by this.

00:02:23   This really struck you.

00:02:25   - Everybody that I tell about this,

00:02:28   when I'm talking to people about why I think

00:02:30   this show is going to be awesome,

00:02:33   is exactly this thing I tell them,

00:02:35   and they all react the way that I reacted.

00:02:38   They're like, "I just can't believe it."

00:02:40   - I don't understand.

00:02:41   It seems very logical to me, but--

00:02:43   - We will save this conversation,

00:02:44   I want to table this conversation,

00:02:45   'cause we'll lose the entire show to this.

00:02:47   We will put that to the side for now.

00:02:49   That will be on the calendar episode.

00:02:51   But that, this is the type of thing that I want to, that I hope we will come across on Cortex

00:02:56   and as we try and understand a little bit more about the inner workings of your robotic mind

00:03:02   and the way that the gears turn.

00:03:03   We can see how this goes.

00:03:05   Although, I am aware that I seem to have developed a bit of a reputation for being some kind of productive robot

00:03:13   And one of the reasons why I have only agreed to 10 episodes is

00:03:18   I don't really think that there's that much to talk about

00:03:22   because even though I have this reputation, I don't actually really like work very much.

00:03:28   I don't like working, and I am constantly trying to think of ways to minimize work

00:03:34   or to sort of maximize the output that I can get from the minimum amount of input.

00:03:40   input. So I'm not a huge fan of work. So I'm not sure there's going to

00:03:46   actually be a lot to talk about. But you see that's the thing for me. That is

00:03:50   wherein the interesting stuff lies because you are a person who is

00:03:55   successful at what you do and you have a good output of work and the work

00:04:01   that you put out is of high quality and you seem to be quite efficient about the

00:04:05   way that you do it simply because you want to not do too much of it. So I think

00:04:09   that there is something really interesting in there. You're not a workaholic, right?

00:04:14   No.

00:04:14   In that instance. But you have found interesting ways to get maximum output with minimum input.

00:04:22   Perhaps.

00:04:22   We'll find out.

00:04:23   It works for me anyway. Many people wish I made more videos, but this is the way I work.

00:04:30   That's actually a topic I have for later. So like, you know, you have agreed to 10,

00:04:34   But I have like 20 topics, so we'll see. We'll see how we go on that one.

00:04:39   Don't push your luck, Myke.

00:04:40   I'm planning this into 2020, buddy, but you can't get away from me now.

00:04:45   It was a big deal for me to put something weekly on my schedule.

00:04:49   This is a- I carved out a lot of time for this. I don't know about this.

00:04:52   You're already trying to reserve decades ahead.

00:04:55   This is like a podcast Trojan Horse.

00:04:58   Ah, okay.

00:04:59   That's how this works.

00:05:00   We'll see.

00:05:01   So everybody knows that listens to your stuff that you used to be a teacher, right?

00:05:06   Mm-hmm.

00:05:07   Is that the primary part of your background, your working background?

00:05:11   Yes, before I started making videos on YouTube, being a teacher here in the UK was really my only job as a full-grown adult.

00:05:23   I have no long list of interesting careers.

00:05:26   I basically went to school and then after university I trained to be a teacher and became a teacher for a number of years

00:05:35   and then eventually left that to do YouTube is the short version of that story.

00:05:38   There are other things that happen in between there but that's the gist of it.

00:05:41   Why did you want to be a teacher?

00:05:43   You're gonna start out making me look bad. You know the answer to this.

00:05:46   Okay so I always have a hard time convincing people that this is actually my answer but

00:05:53   But I became a teacher because of the time off.

00:06:00   That was really the main thing that drew me to that career.

00:06:06   And while that can come off as sounding very lazy, the reason that it attracted me is that

00:06:16   I wanted to be able to have big chunks of time to be able to work on my own side projects.

00:06:24   I'm always a person who's had side projects in my life.

00:06:28   Even now that my side projects have become my main living, I still have other side projects.

00:06:33   This is just a fundamental part of my personality.

00:06:35   And really, when you leave university and you are surveying the potential jobs that

00:06:41   are available, time off from those jobs is a very, very rare and very precious resource.

00:06:48   You know, the standard in America for people I know who, friends of mine who are living

00:06:56   there is two weeks off a year, and I know, I know. I don't think this is hyperbole when

00:07:04   I say that that's barbaric for a modern Western society. It's extra barbaric when you consider

00:07:11   that most Americans then have to take their two weeks off and spend most of that time

00:07:18   with their families at Thanksgiving or Christmas, which are usually not times most people think

00:07:25   of as very relaxed, very low-key times. So in America, the standard is two weeks, and

00:07:33   And here in the UK, it's usually about, I think, four weeks is the legally required

00:07:38   minimum.

00:07:39   I don't know, you used to work like an office job.

00:07:41   What would you get?

00:07:42   Four weeks, is that right?

00:07:43   I got, I think I started off with like 23 days and over my eight years got it up to

00:07:49   28.

00:07:50   Wow!

00:07:51   I know.

00:07:54   That's loyalty.

00:07:56   I was a rewarded employee.

00:07:59   There you go.

00:08:01   they were able to not keep you on with those rewards.

00:08:05   No.

00:08:06   But yeah, so when I was looking at, "Oh, what am I going to do with my adult working life?"

00:08:13   Teaching has this unique aspect that there are very few jobs that can give you big chunks

00:08:20   of time off.

00:08:22   And so that really is one of the main reasons why I went into teaching.

00:08:25   I mean, there are other contributing factors.

00:08:27   There are reasons why that was easier for me than other things.

00:08:30   a degree in physics also meant that I could pretty much guarantee that I could get a job

00:08:35   at a good school instead of having to start my way at the bottom of the chain and like

00:08:40   hopefully work my way into a good school over a number of years. I could just walk into

00:08:44   a very nice private school as a totally brand new teacher.

00:08:49   So those things helped and those things contributed to my decision, but it really was the time

00:08:52   off and I wanted to and did use those big chunks of time on my side projects, one of

00:08:59   which obviously eventually paid off which is the YouTube videos.

00:09:02   I find it interesting that you start off the conversation with it being like a thing that

00:09:09   you're maybe a little bit embarrassed to say because people may judge you because you say

00:09:14   you wanted time off but it's not like you wanted that time off to sit on a beach.

00:09:19   I'm sure there was some of that but you were looking at it primarily as a way to do other

00:09:24   things to be productive in other areas.

00:09:27   I think that that is a very smart decision.

00:09:31   And this is exactly the type of thing, right,

00:09:34   that for why I think it's interesting

00:09:37   to talk to you about these things,

00:09:38   because that was a very calculated decision that you made

00:09:42   in so much that you look, you didn't want to,

00:09:46   I assume you always wanted to work for yourself, right?

00:09:48   I will make that assumption.

00:09:50   - Yes, that's something I have been aware of

00:09:54   ever since I can remember thinking my own thoughts,

00:09:57   is that if I can become self-employed in some manner,

00:10:00   that is something I would like to do. And I grew up seeing my father,

00:10:04   he's self-employed, and seeing how he was in control of his own life in

00:10:11   the way that you can only be if you're self-employed. So that was always

00:10:13   a goal that I had. So because of that, when, you know, it's

00:10:18   difficult to just go from university to self-employment, like that is a hard

00:10:22   thing to do, especially with the course that you took, like the

00:10:25   the route that you took, the degree that you got.

00:10:27   I don't really know if you can just be like,

00:10:29   right, I'm a physicist now.

00:10:31   That doesn't really, that's not a thing.

00:10:33   - I don't think there are very many freelancing physicists.

00:10:35   - No, I don't know what you do.

00:10:37   You just go to, like you put your ad

00:10:39   in the Yellow Pages or something,

00:10:40   like physicists for hire.

00:10:41   I don't know if that happened.

00:10:43   So you made a decision in that you looked for a job

00:10:46   working for the man that gave you the most amount of time

00:10:49   to build your side business to take you to be self-employed.

00:10:53   That decision is the kind of thing that I find to be really interesting about the way that you plot things out.

00:11:00   And don't get me wrong, there were some summers that were spent basically on a beach.

00:11:04   But of course.

00:11:05   And I did take time off on vacations as well.

00:11:07   But yes, I wanted the time off to do things on the side.

00:11:10   For me, I have been podcasting for five years, as I mentioned.

00:11:14   been I started Relay with my co-founder Stephen Hackett in August of 2014 having

00:11:23   done been around I've been like a bunch of different places doing podcasts over

00:11:27   the years but I had been working in finance I was working in retail banking

00:11:33   for like six years and then I moved into the marketing department and I was there

00:11:37   for about two years so I worked the man from the age of 18 I didn't go to

00:11:43   university I took a gap year to get a job which ended up becoming eight years

00:11:48   the gap almost decade yeah so maybe maybe one day I'll go to university you

00:11:53   know I'm still on that gap year so who knows what happened but I'd I over that

00:11:57   time decided that I also hated working for people you didn't enjoy your

00:12:01   marketing position in finance not really hmm I don't like big corporations gray

00:12:09   That is not a thing that I enjoy. I don't like talking about pinging people or circling back to people.

00:12:15   It's just not a thing that I'm too interested in.

00:12:18   So let's start talking about your devices.

00:12:22   So I kind of want to start at the base, right?

00:12:27   So your computer devices, your computing things.

00:12:30   You want to talk hardware.

00:12:31   I want to talk hardware.

00:12:32   This is where we're going to start.

00:12:33   Okay.

00:12:34   Oh, but if you want to talk hardware and you want to talk computers,

00:12:37   Because you're going to start a religious war here over particular computers and things.

00:12:42   That's a good way to lose half the listeners straight away.

00:12:45   Mhmm, especially with some of the questions I'm going to ask you in a minute.

00:12:48   Oh great, great.

00:12:49   We're just going to cut out a massive swath of people just straight out the door after

00:12:55   minute twelve.

00:12:57   So what computer do you use?

00:12:59   I am talking to you right now on my computer which is a 27 inch Retina iMac.

00:13:06   I would say is that this is the computer that I have been waiting a very long time for because I bought this

00:13:13   Solely because of the retina screen. I was just waiting for Apple to come out with a large retina screen and

00:13:20   As soon as they did it's like yes

00:13:23   I will take that computer and Apple says you haven't heard how much it is and I said I don't care right I've been waiting

00:13:28   for this just just give it to me and

00:13:30   They're like, oh sign this sign this document in your own blood and I find fine sign whatever

00:13:35   I just I need a big retina screen to work on. It's my main

00:13:40   computer although it may not be my main computing device

00:13:43   But I am I am very happy with it and the retina screen makes a huge difference to me

00:13:48   And that's where I do all my podcasting from and all the animating from.

00:13:52   Do you have any other Macs?

00:13:53   Well see this is what's gonna make people angry. There's a lot of Apple gear in my house. There's a lot of Apple gear

00:14:00   Yeah, I mean look we just have to accept that

00:14:04   That is where this conversation is going. I apologize to everyone for taking Grey down this path.

00:14:10   In the room behind me I have a little laptop that I sometimes use for doing work around the house

00:14:15   because a 27-inch iMac doesn't translate well to doing stuff on the couch if you need to do computer work.

00:14:21   So I have a little very old MacBook Air from years and years ago.

00:14:26   And then I also have, nearby here, I have a co-working office space that I go to sometimes.

00:14:34   And I have another laptop in there as like redundant gear.

00:14:39   So I have basically an office computer in an actual office that I use as well.

00:14:44   And with your iMac, what keyboard and mouse do you use?

00:14:51   I use the Clicky keyboard.

00:14:53   Now, everyone from Hello Internet will know.

00:14:57   There it goes.

00:14:58   Yeah, that's the sound when Brady's talking,

00:15:00   when my podcasting co-host is talking.

00:15:03   Very often, you can hear me looking up stuff

00:15:06   in the background when he's saying things.

00:15:08   I'm trying to find facts to contradict him, or just

00:15:12   watching YouTube videos or something.

00:15:14   I look forward to hearing that so much.

00:15:18   But yeah, so I bought this keyboard from a company called WASD, which makes old-fashioned mechanical keyboards, which I was very, very excited to find when someone, I think, mentioned it to me on Twitter or something.

00:15:31   But yes, it is very heavy, it is very solid, it is not remotely portable. You could beat a man to death with it.

00:15:39   it and I absolutely love it and it has been customized so that it uses the

00:15:44   Dvorak keyboard layout which is how I actually type all day so that is my

00:15:49   that's my keyboard. Again the Dvorak thing that's a whole I have a whole show

00:15:54   planned around that because that is like something I can't even nearly begin to

00:16:01   understand like using a different keyboard layout but again we will come

00:16:04   to that at a later date. What mouse do you use? Do you use anything specific or do you just

00:16:09   Let's go with an Apple mouse.

00:16:10   - Okay, I have this strange setup.

00:16:12   I don't actually have a mouse on my desk.

00:16:14   What I have in front of me are

00:16:16   two different pointing devices.

00:16:19   The thing that I use mainly is that I have

00:16:22   a Wacom pen tablet that I use 90% of the time

00:16:27   for drawing stuff and even if I'm not animating,

00:16:32   if I'm just using the computer,

00:16:34   just browsing the web or whatever,

00:16:35   I still use the pen tablet almost all the time.

00:16:39   - I had no idea.

00:16:40   - Oh, I thought you used something similar.

00:16:42   I guess not.

00:16:43   - No, I use, when I'm editing,

00:16:46   I use a magic track pad in one hand

00:16:50   and then a mouse in the other.

00:16:53   So I use the track pad for like panning and zooming

00:16:56   and then the mouse for like precision editing of audio.

00:16:59   But I had no idea that you had a pen tablet.

00:17:03   I guess it kind of makes sense because you animate, but that's really interesting to

00:17:08   me and even more interesting that you use it to browse the web.

00:17:11   Yeah I use it for everything. I don't really use mice very much at all. So I do really

00:17:18   like this pen tablet that I have. That is on the right hand side of my keyboard. And

00:17:23   then on the left hand side of my keyboard I have, like you do, I have a magic trackpad.

00:17:28   And I think for the same reason that I find it very helpful when doing animations or doing

00:17:33   podcasts sometimes to have that space to do gestures or secondary tasks, secondary pointing

00:17:40   tasks. It's a little bit hard to explain how I use it, but I find it useful enough that

00:17:45   I'm in the weird situation sometimes of having the pen in one hand and my hand on the magic

00:17:52   trackpad, you know, one on each. And it looks very strange, but I find it can be quite useful

00:17:58   sometimes.

00:18:00   That's kind of my desk setup right here.

00:18:03   That's what I have.

00:18:05   So what phone do you have and what phone do you own and use every day?

00:18:08   Well, Myke, I have an iPhone 6 Plus, which is entirely also because of your badgering.

00:18:19   I originally got an iPhone 6 and on my other podcast I complained quite mightily and for

00:18:24   a very long time about how much I did not like the iPhone 6.

00:18:28   And over our many lunches together, you eventually convinced me to try out the 6 Plus, which

00:18:34   I have done.

00:18:35   And now my main phone is the iPhone 6 Plus.

00:18:38   And I'm a big fan of it.

00:18:39   I am, I like it a lot better than I ever liked the 6.

00:18:45   And this is a strange time to talk about my gear because I'm finding, I'm in a period

00:18:52   of transition now.

00:18:53   Like, I'm aware that I'm using the phone very differently than I used my old phone before,

00:18:58   And then that's affecting how I use... like there are knock-on effects from using the

00:19:02   phone more to other devices and I also have the Apple Watch now which is affecting a little

00:19:07   bit how I work.

00:19:08   So it feels like things are in a period of flux right now.

00:19:11   But yes, the iPhone 6 Plus is my current phone.

00:19:14   And I guess the phone is eating into your iPad usage, right?

00:19:17   You're an iPad user?

00:19:19   Yeah, I am a big iPad user.

00:19:24   And I would go so far as to say that my iPad is my primary computing device.

00:19:31   That most of my work for the videos is actually not animating or doing the audio.

00:19:38   It's mostly script writing.

00:19:40   Just writing what I'm going to say, and then rewriting it and rewriting it and rewriting

00:19:46   it forever and ever.

00:19:48   So it's a lot of typing, and for some reason I find the iPad is the best device for me

00:19:53   to do that on, to do lots and lots of edits on.

00:19:56   It's very comfortable to...

00:19:59   I have like a little external keyboard that I use with it

00:20:02   that I can take around London and work from various cafes and things.

00:20:05   And in addition, if I'm doing research,

00:20:08   I also spend a lot of time reading

00:20:11   and copying and pasting sentences and making notes on stuff

00:20:14   and I really like doing that on the iPad as well.

00:20:17   In terms of hours spent on a device,

00:20:21   The iPad is almost certainly the big leader in that. It's where I have spent most of my time.

00:20:27   But I am really aware that with the iPhone 6 Plus, much to my surprise, the iPhone is

00:20:34   very much eating into my iPad time. Which I would not have guessed,

00:20:39   I would never have thought that would be the case, but it's definitely happening.

00:20:43   So I'm sort of refiguring how I'm using some of my devices.

00:20:46   And do you have a full-sized iPad or a mini?

00:20:49   I have many iPads, Myke.

00:20:51   I have many, many iPads.

00:20:55   I almost don't want to say how many iPads I have.

00:20:58   - What, like in-use iPads?

00:21:00   - Oh yeah, in-use iPads.

00:21:01   - All right, now you gotta tell me how many.

00:21:03   - I don't want to tell you how many I have.

00:21:04   - Come on, tell me how many.

00:21:05   Is it more than five?

00:21:06   - Well, if we're talking about in,

00:21:10   it depends on what you mean by in-use.

00:21:12   Okay, so here's the thing, here's the thing.

00:21:13   Let's back up a minute.

00:21:15   Let's tell my origin story with iPads.

00:21:18   After the iPad came out, I remember being hugely disappointed because, like other people,

00:21:24   I thought, "Oh, I didn't want a giant iPhone. I want OS X or OS X. Sorry. I can never--I

00:21:31   read it in my brain, OS X."

00:21:33   Great. So many people are going to be mad at you.

00:21:35   I know.

00:21:36   You think the people are going to be mad at you for saying you like Apple.

00:21:39   Yeah.

00:21:40   The people that like Apple are going to be more mad you said X than Android or Windows

00:21:44   users will be upset at you.

00:21:46   As a slight side note here, I often find myself in situations where I end up with both groups

00:21:52   mad at me on a particular topic.

00:21:55   This is a common phenomenon in my life.

00:21:58   I'm always in the middle of two groups, both of which are angry with me over something.

00:22:04   So that's what I've just done here.

00:22:06   So anyway, I was disappointed with the iPad.

00:22:07   I wanted a desktop computing experience on a tablet and I thought, "Oh, this stupid iPad,

00:22:12   it's totally useless for me.

00:22:13   I'm never going to have any interest in it.

00:22:16   But my wife ended up getting one.

00:22:18   And over time, I thought, ah, that looks useful,

00:22:22   this thing that she's doing over here.

00:22:24   And I started stealing more and more of her iPad time

00:22:28   away from her.

00:22:29   And I eventually started experimenting

00:22:31   with writing on it with an external keyboard, which

00:22:33   I quite liked.

00:22:34   And then my wife was getting annoyed

00:22:36   that her iPad was always missing,

00:22:38   that it was in my control.

00:22:41   But when I eventually saw the iPad 3 with, once again, the retina screen, as soon as I saw it, I thought, "Man, I have to have this. This thing is just great."

00:22:50   That was the first real-sized retina screen I'd ever seen.

00:22:54   And it was a similar thing, like, "How much, Apple? How much? Like, just, I need this right now."

00:22:59   And so since then, because the iPad is my main computing device, it's the thing that I spend most of my time on,

00:23:10   I have gotten each generation of the iPad since the 3.

00:23:14   So it's the 3, the 4, the Air, and the Air 2, if I have that right.

00:23:20   And then I also did get a Mini, so that makes it technically there are 5 iPads in my house that are mine.

00:23:28   But they all do have uses, I swear. They really do.

00:23:31   You use them all?

00:23:32   Okay, so I'm gonna have to really run through this, aren't I?

00:23:35   Yeah.

00:23:36   Okay, uh...

00:23:37   Backed yourself into a corner now, great.

00:23:39   Okay.

00:23:39   So the iPad 3 is in retirement, is the way I like to think about it.

00:23:45   The iPad 3 sits in my bedroom, and it can only do one thing because it's very old, and it only has limited memory.

00:23:54   Like an old thing?

00:23:55   Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:23:57   My iPad 3's retirement is that it functions as a white noise machine for when I sleep.

00:24:03   Because...

00:24:04   Ah, okay.

00:24:05   I have, I never know how to say it, tinnitus in my ears.

00:24:10   I can't sleep in a silent room, so I need something that makes noise.

00:24:13   So what is it, like a ringing noise you hear?

00:24:15   Yeah, as long as I have been alive I have always had a ringing sound in my ears.

00:24:22   It seems very normal to me, but I kind of forget that other people don't have this as

00:24:25   well.

00:24:26   Sure.

00:24:27   But it means that I can't sleep in a perfectly quiet room, which is one of the few times I really notice it, but it's there.

00:24:34   So I have to have something making noise. So that's what my iPad 3 does.

00:24:37   What type of white noise do you play out of interest?

00:24:40   There is a website that I highly recommend for anybody else who has this called whitenoisemp3s.com

00:24:49   And as far as I can tell, it's run by just one woman who goes around and records various soundscapes.

00:24:58   Now, over my whole life I have listened to a lot of different kinds of white noise,

00:25:03   but she does a very, very good job with the recordings. They're very long.

00:25:08   She picks interesting soundscapes.

00:25:12   So if you have this problem, I highly recommend her website to go buy some of those MP3s.

00:25:18   The one that I sleep with most of the time is actually it's a recording from the interior of a passenger airplane

00:25:25   So it's that jet cabin sound is the one that I play most of the time

00:25:30   But I use a number of her MP3s for various other other things sometimes

00:25:36   So sometimes when I'm just at home if it is bothering me, I have like a thunderscape

00:25:40   I have a thunder sound of a storm that I'll play just like low and in the background just so there's a little bit of noise

00:25:47   But it's not distracting so I use a number of her mp3s

00:25:50   So we've established what the iPad 3 does all right. That's I forgot. That's what we were doing okay

00:25:57   So now I have to explain some other ones okay, so let me let me work backwards then the iPad 4

00:26:03   lives in my office because I like to have redundant equipment in other places so the iPad 4 lives with my

00:26:10   MacBook in the co-working space yes in the co-working space so the iPad air and the iPad air 2

00:26:17   fit into this crazy system that I know you are interested in, which I call my

00:26:22   redundant bag system, where I have two different backpacks that I use based on

00:26:28   what I'm doing on a particular day. And again, I like to have everything just set

00:26:32   and ready to go, so each of those iPads lives in, like, kind of permanently in a

00:26:38   backpack so that in the morning, depending on which day it is, I can grab

00:26:41   one or the other and I'm just all set. Like, they charge up overnight and so

00:26:45   they're just ready. And the iPad mini is probably one of my least favorite but it

00:26:50   has ended up as a dedicated book reader. So I have it set up so that it's very

00:26:56   it's always using like the the low-light setting and it's always set on dark and

00:27:00   it has a very dark background so that I can use that at nighttime for reading

00:27:04   very easily. So those are those are what my iPads are being used for.

00:27:07   This first episode of Cortex is brought to you by Backblaze. I haven't told you

00:27:13   what Backblaze is, but here's how you know if you should be a customer of theirs.

00:27:18   1. Do you have a computer? A Windows computer, a Mac computer, any computer.

00:27:23   2. Do you have anything on that computer that is important to you?

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00:27:35   then you need to be a customer of Backblaze.

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00:27:46   They back up an enormous number of computer files, over 150 petabytes of data.

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00:28:00   download and install their software, and it will just run in the background of your computer,

00:28:04   automatically humming away and uploading your files to their protected servers.

00:28:09   Then, if something bad happens to your computer, which is inevitable given enough time,

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00:28:29   So when that happens, and you've been a customer backblaze,

00:28:32   you can then get your files restored.

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00:28:58   And it's not just for disasters.

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00:29:08   This is a very handy feature. There have definitely been times when I know there's a file that's sitting, say, on the gigantic external hard drive that I have next to my computer,

00:29:18   but I'm somewhere else and I need to access it and I can do that with Backblaze. I can just open up my iPhone and get access to that file almost immediately.

00:29:26   So again, if you have a computer and you store important things on that computer, you need

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00:29:50   So the question that you dread, why Apple?

00:29:53   Why Apple devices?

00:29:55   or a specific choice that nothing is getting outside of the Apple ecosystem for you.

00:30:02   Why do you personally think that Apple devices are right for you?

00:30:07   Not why they should be right for the rest of the world, right?

00:30:09   I want to make that very clear that I will speak for Gray and that he is purely saying

00:30:14   why he personally, CGP Gray, likes Apple devices.

00:30:17   So implicit in this question is people assume that you are constantly scanning the horizon

00:30:24   and comparing all other options in every possible way, every day, to make sure you're using

00:30:29   the thing that is perfect for you.

00:30:32   And that's not what I do.

00:30:34   So I get into discussions with people sometimes where they say, "Oh, have you tried Windows

00:30:39   lately?"

00:30:40   I haven't used Windows in whatever it is since I quit teaching.

00:30:44   Three years, four years, I don't know exactly.

00:30:45   They go, "Oh, you haven't used Windows today!

00:30:48   It's completely different."

00:30:49   There's always these moving goal posts.

00:30:51   "Oh, I looked at an Android phone a year ago and I didn't like it."

00:30:54   "Oh, but you didn't look at an Android phone today."

00:30:56   "Well, I looked at an Android phone last week."

00:30:58   And they go, "Oh no, it's totally different today. It's much better."

00:31:01   You can never have looked at something recent enough to satisfy the person who you are talking with.

00:31:07   Like, "But you're not looking at the Android phone right now!"

00:31:10   "You just looked at it a minute ago when you handed it back to me, but it's totally better now."

00:31:14   So, I mean, I think what happens is I made a decision back when I was in college to switch

00:31:24   to Macs for a variety of reasons, and I liked Macs, and I have continued using Macs, and

00:31:31   I have found that they have fit me, and I haven't found any wildly compelling reason

00:31:36   to switch, and so I use Apple stuff.

00:31:42   In some ways it's very simple.

00:31:44   I grew up using DOS, like that's where I learned how to use computers, and then I went off to college.

00:31:50   And in college in my wild experimental days, I was building my own computers and using Linux and all the rest of this.

00:31:56   And then when I left college, I switched to Macs and I've stuck with them.

00:32:03   And it was partly because I was tired of messing around with Linux all the time and trying to customize my system and keep up to date on everything.

00:32:09   You know what, I just, I don't have time, and frankly, I don't have the interest in this anymore

00:32:14   of staying on top of all of the packages and compiling from source and all this stuff

00:32:18   So I remember switching to Macs partly because they had Unix underpinnings

00:32:22   So I thought, "Oh, well, the terminal is there if I ever want to use it, I can still do all the Unix stuff

00:32:26   It's not like I'm going to waste that knowledge"

00:32:29   But fast forward 10 years and, you know, it's a rare quarter when I open the terminal to do anything now

00:32:36   I don't know if that's a satisfactory answer, but that is definitely the case.

00:32:40   And then once you've picked a groove, it makes sense to double down on that.

00:32:46   So I tend to use now... like I use Final Cut to animate my videos, which I have to say I really like.

00:32:53   I think that program is very nicely designed, and I like it.

00:32:57   And I use Logic to edit the podcast, which is okay, although it is crash-tacular.

00:33:04   I'm sure there is a better system for...

00:33:06   Would you agree with that? Do you use Logic?

00:33:08   My favorite thing about Logic is if you have a project open, Logic,

00:33:12   and you try to open another project,

00:33:14   Oh yes!

00:33:15   and it's like, and a dialogue pops up, and it basically says to you,

00:33:19   "Are you sure you want to do this? Because if you do this, everything will go wrong."

00:33:23   Right.

00:33:24   "You can choose to do it, but we strongly advise you close one of them."

00:33:27   I'm not making any promises that we're going to keep any of your changes

00:33:30   if you're going to try to have two projects open at once.

00:33:33   It's like sometimes I'm doing that and I'm recording in one and assembling in another

00:33:37   or something like that.

00:33:38   Yes.

00:33:39   And I basically, all I do is press play and the entire thing crashes.

00:33:43   It's like, it's the fundamental thing.

00:33:45   I just press the play button, boom, everything's gone.

00:33:48   Yes, yes.

00:33:50   On the Hello Internet podcast, which again I do with Brady, I probably over edit that

00:33:55   podcast.

00:33:56   I end up with a couple hundred audio cuts every time.

00:33:59   But I'm aware that as that number spikes up, if I want to just nudge a bunch of clips a

00:34:05   little bit left, Logic's like, "Oh, I don't know.

00:34:07   I don't know if we can handle this, man.

00:34:09   You want to move clips together to cut out a bit of white space.

00:34:12   I know this is the primary function of an audio program, but you know, spinning wheel

00:34:16   of death."

00:34:17   Logic is probably not the best example of, "Oh, wow.

00:34:21   Isn't this Apple product just absolutely amazing?"

00:34:24   But when I started doing the podcast, I looked around a little bit in terms of what else

00:34:28   was available and I can't even remember why but at the time I decided I'm just going to

00:34:34   bite the bullet and learn logic and now I have.

00:34:37   For both of us the reason that we use logic is the perfect example of why we use Apple

00:34:42   products like this is why I do and I assume it's probably the same for you it's what I

00:34:46   know now like I use logic because whilst it frustrates me I really know how to use logic

00:34:52   to get what I need done with it and that's like as for as much as I mean I'm pretty much

00:34:57   exactly the same as you. I use all Apple products. I have a Mac Pro instead of an iMac.

00:35:03   I have a MacBook Pro as well that I use. I use two different machines. And Apple

00:35:09   devices quite frequently frustrate the hell out of me for myriads of

00:35:15   reasons. But I know how to use them. They are the things that I chose to use like

00:35:21   ten years ago. So now it's just the stuff that I use and then I use an iPhone as

00:35:26   well because once I think there is a real benefit with Apple devices

00:35:30   especially that if you get one of them it makes your life easier to get others

00:35:34   and that's not so much with Android right because there isn't a Android

00:35:39   desktop as such but you it helps you then to be in Google's complete ecosystem

00:35:45   in general so you use all Google's products because it helps you if you

00:35:48   have your Android device same as if you have a Windows phone it probably really

00:35:51   helps to have a Windows PC so you kind of get stuck in these thetums but once

00:35:55   Once you're there, it's really hard to break out.

00:35:58   No matter how great something might be, if it's not what you know, it can be really hard

00:36:03   to go away from it.

00:36:05   Yeah, and it's not even that it's hard to go away from it.

00:36:08   It's just, what's the point?

00:36:11   You have to spend an enormous amount of time relearning a whole new system for what?

00:36:18   Maybe a 5% or 10% improvement, maybe not even that.

00:36:22   Maybe it's just the same.

00:36:24   you don't know what other problems await for you in a different system, so I'm always of the opinion that if you're going to ask me to change

00:36:31   everything about my computing life, which is now many devices across personal and work,

00:36:38   you need a hell of a good reason to switch.

00:36:41   This can't be like, "Oh, it's 10% better."

00:36:43   This has to be 10 times better.

00:36:46   Because I've also issued my family an ultimatum when I made the switch to Mac, which was

00:36:53   "You guys can keep using Windows, but I can no longer support you on your Windows systems.

00:37:01   I will drift away in knowledge of how to fix your Windows problems.

00:37:06   And if you want continued free technical support from your son, you are going to need to switch over."

00:37:13   And they were no fools. They switched over.

00:37:16   So it's not even like, "Oh, convincing me to change to a different thing is just me making a personal decision."

00:37:22   It's then the whole network of people in my life whose devices I also support.

00:37:29   In my immediate family and friends and all.

00:37:32   It has big, big knock-on effects.

00:37:34   There are network effects to this as well.

00:37:37   But I developed a lot of weird habits when I was working at school because the school

00:37:46   used Windows for everything.

00:37:48   And I was still using a Mac, so I brought my personal laptop into work every day and

00:37:54   then kind of was always juggling back and forth between the two systems.

00:37:58   And I was very aware of keeping documents platform agnostic.

00:38:03   So I still have to this day remnants of the system which is entirely based on storing

00:38:08   information in text files or other ways that are portable back and forth between the two

00:38:12   systems.

00:38:13   But when I got my first iPhone, which was the iPhone 4, that was really--I didn't know

00:38:21   it then, but that was really the moment when I started to get locked in big time, where

00:38:28   it started to no longer matter to me about trying to keep all of my document formats

00:38:34   transferable in the future.

00:38:35   I started to make more decisions about, "I'm really all in on this."

00:38:41   And I am very glad that I made that decision because it has made lots of things much easier

00:38:45   for me and just the systems working together.

00:38:49   So we've spoken about hardware, right?

00:38:52   And we have established that you have a Mac and an iPhone and 20 iPads.

00:38:58   That's about right.

00:39:00   I think I got that right.

00:39:01   I think I was following correctly.

00:39:03   Close enough.

00:39:04   Okay, good.

00:39:05   So I want to see what's on them, right?

00:39:07   I want to understand a little bit about how you set them up

00:39:09   because again, listening to Hello Internet,

00:39:12   I know that you're very particular about the way

00:39:13   that you organize things in your house

00:39:15   and I wonder if that comes to your devices as well, right?

00:39:19   So I want to look at your iPhone first,

00:39:21   maybe your iPad as well, but I think, you know,

00:39:24   is it fair to say maybe your iPhone

00:39:26   is the most important of the two?

00:39:28   - Ooh, that's a hard, if I had to pick between the two,

00:39:30   if I could only have one, that's a difficult question.

00:39:33   I'd have to sit down and think about that for a while.

00:39:36   That's not immediately answerable.

00:39:38   - Wow, that's surprising to me.

00:39:39   I guess that shows a difference in the way

00:39:40   that me and you work.

00:39:42   Like I don't even use an iPad.

00:39:43   I have one, I just don't use it ever.

00:39:45   - Right.

00:39:46   - Because my iPhone is like,

00:39:48   that's like the most important device that I own, I think.

00:39:52   - Yeah, it's closer for me.

00:39:55   My iPads do not live unloved on the floor

00:39:58   somewhere in my house, as presumably yours does.

00:40:01   - It's like somewhere.

00:40:02   If I ever need it, I always have to search for it.

00:40:05   It's never in a place that's immediately obvious.

00:40:08   Like the only thing I ever, ever use it for

00:40:10   is to watch video on.

00:40:11   - Yeah, they're very good for browsing stuff.

00:40:14   But what do you want?

00:40:15   You want like a screenshot of my iPhone?

00:40:16   Is that what you want?

00:40:17   - You can give me one if you'd like one.

00:40:18   That would be really lovely for the show notes.

00:40:21   - You sound way too excited about that.

00:40:23   - I really hope that people find this as interesting as I do

00:40:25   'cause I just am fascinated by it.

00:40:27   And I think that, I mean,

00:40:30   whenever I talk about these sorts of things with people,

00:40:32   seems to get, you know, people seem to be excited about it. I am very excited about

00:40:37   the way that people arrange their devices and like the decisions that they make. It's

00:40:42   just fascinating to me to see like the icons that people pick. Because I think I remember

00:40:47   seeing a screenshot of your iPhone previously and I was kind of a little bit fascinated

00:40:53   by it. There were like, there were things on there that I just couldn't understand.

00:40:56   Okay, well, I will send you an unmodified "Here's how it looked right now" as we were

00:41:02   talking.

00:41:03   I didn't know you were going to do this screenshot.

00:41:04   I'll send it to you on iMessage.

00:41:07   But yes, as you might imagine, I'm a very fussy person in some ways, and I have spent

00:41:16   far, far more man-hours than I care to admit trying to select a wallpaper that is acceptable,

00:41:23   and the way that I arrange the icons on my phone and on my iPad, I really don't want

00:41:30   to know how much time has been spent on it. But it has been a lot, and I'm in an acceptable

00:41:35   place now with the way all the icons are. But you know, it can always be improved.

00:41:40   Okay, so I'm looking at this, right? I'm looking at this image here, and people can find this

00:41:44   image if they want to in a couple of different ways. So, as I mentioned, we've mentioned

00:41:48   show notes, right? The place that you can go for the show notes. They're on the web,

00:41:52   relay.fm/cortex/1 and they're also in, if you use like a modern app, a modern podcast

00:42:02   app, you will tend to find the show notes in there and some will even show this image

00:42:07   like embedded because I'm fully embedded because I think that's interesting to see that right

00:42:11   there so you don't even have to click the link, it'll be right there for you to see.

00:42:14   So I have, I think we may spend the next four hours just talking about what I can see here.

00:42:20   Wow, this podcast is going to be so exciting!

00:42:23   I think it is. I really hope people enjoy it, Gray, because, I mean, this might just be for me now, but...

00:42:30   I think you're slightly crazy, Myke, but you know...

00:42:34   Well, see, for, you know, I think it's a nice balance. I'm crazy about the things you're crazy about.

00:42:40   Uh-huh. I guess that works for me.

00:42:43   Everything is on one screen.

00:42:45   This took a little while to set up, but I do not like multiple screens.

00:42:50   For various reasons, I have to accept multiple screens on my iPad.

00:42:53   But on my iPhone, especially with the six plus, I was absolutely determined

00:42:58   to fit everything onto a single screen.

00:43:01   I don't want to have to swipe left or right for anything.

00:43:04   I just want to open up the phone and it's all right there.

00:43:07   OK, so the way I arrange that is I have four folders across the top.

00:43:16   And then there are three rows of four icons each.

00:43:20   So that's a four by four grid in total.

00:43:24   And everything that I use on my phone is there.

00:43:26   There is no secondary page to go to.

00:43:28   So one of the things that interests me the most

00:43:31   is the fact that you have three items in the dock of your iPhone.

00:43:35   Okay, I have discussed this with people.

00:43:37   This seems so obvious to me.

00:43:40   It looks visually so much more pleasing

00:43:43   if you have three icons in your dock

00:43:45   than if you have four icons in your dock.

00:43:47   Look, I mean, look at that screenshot, Myke.

00:43:50   You have to agree, right?

00:43:53   Doesn't it look nicer?

00:43:54   Except for the folders.

00:43:55   There's nothing I can do about the folders,

00:43:56   but I mean the three icons in the dock.

00:43:58   Doesn't that look nicer?

00:43:59   I don't know if it looks nicer.

00:44:03   You're wrong.

00:44:03   It does look nicer.

00:44:04   OK, silly me.

00:44:06   The thing is, you're like you're wasting a space.

00:44:09   You have like that's prime real estate down there.

00:44:12   There must be one of the apps in that grid.

00:44:15   of 12 that is good enough or used enough that it could take that fourth place.

00:44:23   Okay but here's the thing, here's the thing Myke. Since I only have one page

00:44:27   the dock is less important than it might be on other people's phones. So while I

00:44:34   agree that it is still prime real estate it is very thumb reachable, for me the

00:44:38   importance is demoted. But those are definitely my three most important apps

00:44:44   that I use most of the time that I have in my dock.

00:44:47   So it's the Notes app, Launch Center Pro, and OmniFocus.

00:44:50   Yes, those are the three that are in my dock.

00:44:52   And having them visually offset from the grid above,

00:44:56   I find makes them easier to kind of see and to go to.

00:45:01   It highlights their importance, having only three,

00:45:04   and then having them centered like that.

00:45:07   It's much, much better.

00:45:09   But the other problem that I have, and this took a while to settle,

00:45:12   is that because I have a very large number of iOS devices,

00:45:16   I wanted to make sure that the dock would always be the same

00:45:19   on all of those devices,

00:45:22   because I set up my iPad slightly differently

00:45:24   depending on the context of what they're being used for.

00:45:26   But on every dock on every device,

00:45:28   it's those three icons in the same order,

00:45:31   Notes, Launch Center Pro, and OmniFocus.

00:45:34   So I always want that to be the same.

00:45:37   -Something else that I find interesting, right,

00:45:39   is the apps that you use, the apps that are out --

00:45:42   on that grid of 12, right, that they are the prime apps that sit in in this group.

00:45:47   They are outside of the folders, you have elevated these apps to the status

00:45:53   of "must be always available". So I want to look at this and I want to ask

00:46:00   you a few quick questions about some of the choices that you've made. So one of

00:46:05   the things that I find really interesting is you have pages, byword,

00:46:08   editorial, and notes. They are all text entry apps. I assume then that you have

00:46:15   different uses for each of these applications. Okay, yeah. So on my

00:46:21   phone screen here, the rows aren't arbitrarily chosen. They are

00:46:25   arranged in a particular way. And the bottom row, within the

00:46:32   closest reach of the thumb on the iPhone 6 Plus, is basically my writing stuff row.

00:46:38   So the four icons on the bottom are, in order, messages, pages, byword, and editorial.

00:46:45   Messages has to be in that spot because that's the easiest spot to hit with the thumb, and it's a very frequently used app.

00:46:51   But then I have those three slots, and conveniently I basically use three writing apps.

00:46:56   And yes, you are right, they serve different purposes, from least important to most important.

00:47:01   Pages is the least important of the three.

00:47:04   I use that for shared documents with some people, primarily Brady.

00:47:11   So we do our show notes actually using pages, which is something you and I have talked in private about,

00:47:18   but that you would not abide for this show. You were very insistent on using Google Docs.

00:47:23   Unacceptable. Unacceptable.

00:47:25   Even though I hate Google Docs for a variety of reasons, but I relented.

00:47:30   I appreciated that. You cannot even begin to understand how much I appreciate that.

00:47:34   But pages works for Brady and I for doing the show notes, because if you are a professional

00:47:42   YouTuber you end up with a million Google accounts and it can be very frustrating to

00:47:47   try and find the correct one for the show notes. So that's why pages works for us.

00:47:52   So we have some shared documents in there.

00:47:55   And I also have a series of shared documents/instructions

00:48:02   for my personal assistant, which are in pages.

00:48:05   So I can make changes in pages, and then she

00:48:08   can see it on her end about how things need

00:48:11   to be done in a particular order.

00:48:13   So pages is largely for sharing documents

00:48:17   with those two people.

00:48:17   And there's a few other things, but that's

00:48:19   like 95% of the use case.

00:48:21   Next over then is Byword, and Byword is where I contain an enormous number of lists and documents

00:48:34   in text format. This can be anything from I keep a list of movies to watch and books to read,

00:48:42   or I'll have a document just on a whole bunch of notes for a potential project in the future, or

00:48:49   half-finished scripts that I'm not working on at the moment. Almost anything that doesn't have a

00:48:56   dedicated place kind of lives in Byword. So there's just a ton of lists in there, and I like to have

00:49:03   that immediately accessible because I can think of, "Oh, I just thought of a place that I would

00:49:09   like to go on holiday at some point." So I have a list of places to visit at some point, so I can

00:49:13   just quickly open up Byword and add that onto the list. And then the one that is the furthest

00:49:19   over is the most important to me, which is editorial. And that is the app that I

00:49:26   actually use to write the scripts for my videos. And I keep a very, very limited

00:49:34   number of documents in there. I try very hard to keep it at five or under of

00:49:41   videos that I can say in some sense are active, that I am currently working on

00:49:46   and currently writing. So that is what editorial is for.

00:49:50   The notes app, right? You keep it in the doc.

00:49:54   Yes. The notes is basically just like a pile of crap

00:49:58   is kind of the way I think of notes. Notes is, "Oh, some thought popped into

00:50:02   my head and I just want to write it down.

00:50:06   I don't even necessarily know what it is or where it's going to go. I just

00:50:10   put it in notes if something comes into my mind.

00:50:14   And I have a regular review session that I do with myself

00:50:19   where I will go through just everything that got

00:50:22   dumped into Notes.

00:50:23   And I'll sort it out later.

00:50:25   But I very often find myself in situations where there's just

00:50:28   something that I want to write down quickly.

00:50:30   And I'm not even sure exactly what it is or where it's

00:50:33   going to go.

00:50:33   And I just throw it in Notes.

00:50:35   And the reason I use Notes is because I want that to be

00:50:39   available everywhere.

00:50:41   And I often go through that stuff on my computer.

00:50:44   So I want an application where I can have all of these little like scraps of paper, almost these virtual scraps of paper.

00:50:51   But I can then turn through them on my computer one at a time and then very quickly.

00:50:56   Oh, yes, this goes on this list.

00:50:57   This goes over here. This I can just delete.

00:50:59   So it's this kind of scratch pad sort of application.

00:51:03   But it's on the dock because it is very, very frequently used of just I want to write this thing down really quick.

00:51:09   OK. The next row up is the audio row.

00:51:12   The audio row, yes. Music, Audible, Overcast, Spotify.

00:51:15   Right.

00:51:16   Audible and Overcast, I can see those uses, right?

00:51:18   Audio books, podcasts.

00:51:20   Right.

00:51:20   Music and Spotify. So I assume you have some stuff that you want on your device that's not on Spotify?

00:51:27   Yeah, my music system is kind of a mess, because I have a bunch of music that I bought through iTunes a while back.

00:51:35   And I don't know, a few months ago I thought, "Oh, all these kids these days, they're talking about this streaming music.

00:51:39   Let me try that. So I signed up for Spotify and I'm kind of waiting to see what Apple does with beats.

00:51:47   Like, can you just solve something for me here, Apple? I feel like I'm halfway between two music systems

00:51:53   and everything is just a mess everywhere. So I have some stuff that's in music where I've made particular playlists.

00:51:59   Like I have playlists for when I'm writing or for exercise or other stuff.

00:52:04   But then Spotify is a source where I can get new music or it has this little radio feature.

00:52:08   each does things that I like, but my music system is just a total mess, which is why

00:52:12   I have the two of them there. But I'm unhappy with the current state of music, and ideally

00:52:17   I would like to compress those two icons down to one icon in the future. But, you know,

00:52:22   this is where we are at the moment.

00:52:24   So then I'm gonna guess like Clear is for lists, right?

00:52:29   So Clear is a very recent newcomer on this front page here.

00:52:34   Ooh, a promotion.

00:52:37   It's a big deal when you decide, ooh, you know, I'm going to have a new one that's on

00:52:41   the homepage.

00:52:42   I can't remember, someone got demoted, I don't remember who it was.

00:52:47   They're so unimportant, they've slipped out of my mind.

00:52:50   But yeah, clear is a new one and I'm experimenting with what I'm calling the top two, where I'm

00:52:59   trying to figure out what are the two most important things that I do on a particular

00:53:04   day.

00:53:05   two best things that I can accomplish today.

00:53:08   And I'm keeping them in Clear.

00:53:11   That's all Clear is, is a list of two items.

00:53:14   And the reason it's there on my phone is mainly because of actually on my computer setup.

00:53:19   Since I use OmniFocus to run all of my life, like everything is in OmniFocus,

00:53:25   on my actual desktop computer I also always have now Clear open on the side,

00:53:31   showing me the two things that I think are really what needs to be accomplished.

00:53:36   And I'm finding that it helpful to have that visually present all the time and separate

00:53:42   from the "Oh, I'm running through this enormous checklist of stuff I need to do when I'm uploading

00:53:47   a new video" or, you know, "Here are the bunch of minor errands that I need to run today"

00:53:52   kind of stuff.

00:53:53   Or like, OmniFocus is on top of all of that, but I like having it visually separate and

00:53:57   omnipresent these two items that I'm selecting as particularly important items for the day.

00:54:02   So that's why clear is there. I don't use it a lot on the phone, but I like to be able

00:54:06   to change or tick off those items immediately.

00:54:09   Are these two items things that you would like to do or things that you have to do?

00:54:16   This can be a whole other conversation. I would say that they are important items, but

00:54:23   they are very rarely things that have to happen.

00:54:27   But this can be another conversation.

00:54:29   So I mean,

00:54:31   "Doo, doo, doo."

00:54:33   I always struggle to say it.

00:54:35   "Doo."

00:54:37   "D-U-E, doo."

00:54:39   Every time I talk about this app

00:54:41   I have to spell it.

00:54:43   Because I just know that I say it ridiculously.

00:54:45   It's like it's just a totally different word.

00:54:47   I

00:54:49   use this for like reminders

00:54:51   and alarms and things.

00:54:53   The crazy thing when you look at this screenshot

00:54:55   is, "Wait a minute, this guy has three icons on his home screen that have checkboxes on

00:54:59   them."

00:55:00   Alright, clear, omni-focus, and do.

00:55:02   And it seems like it's a lot of items.

00:55:05   But I don't actually use do for their reminders at all.

00:55:08   I use do solely because they have the best timer feature of any app I have tried.

00:55:15   Yeah, 100%.

00:55:16   It's amazing.

00:55:17   Yeah.

00:55:18   When I'm trying to find a new app, you can look through my purchase history and it's

00:55:21   like, oh, this guy bought 20 timer apps on the iTunes store, and he tried every single

00:55:27   one of them.

00:55:29   But Doo is the only one that does this thing, which now, especially with the Apple Watch,

00:55:34   is just amazing because I use timers constantly for when I work.

00:55:41   And the thing that I really like about Doo is when the timer goes off, you can have it

00:55:47   automatically re-notify you in a minute and keep re-notifying you every minute until you

00:55:54   tell it to stop.

00:55:55   I love that feature so much.

00:55:58   It's almost hard to explain why that's useful, but there are many, there are very many occasions

00:56:02   where I don't want a timer to constantly ring until I tell it to stop.

00:56:08   I want it to poke me every minute, meaning that you need to wrap it up, buddy, but keep

00:56:13   reminding me until I tell it, "Yes, I have finished this thing that I'm doing."

00:56:19   It is life-changing, this timer. And the way it works with the Apple Watch, with sort of

00:56:25   tapping you on the wrist, is absolutely phenomenal. I have to say, I use, at least right now,

00:56:31   I use basically no third-party apps on my watch except Do, and I use Do all day long.

00:56:37   actual Apple Watch app is brilliant because you can you can enter things

00:56:42   there you can reschedule things as well I actually do is probably my favorite

00:56:47   Apple Watch app mm-hmm yeah it's absolutely great it's absolutely great

00:56:51   so unexpectedly I have now kind of just like took you pushed you through this

00:56:58   tour of your iOS device right and pointed out things that I find

00:57:02   interesting and and somewhat weird would you like the opportunity to do the same

00:57:06   to mine. Well are you gonna give me an honest screenshot? Yeah I'll go get my

00:57:12   phone right now and I will send an iMessage you a screenshot. Yeah let's see

00:57:16   for comparison what have you got there? Give me one second. Myke this iPhone is

00:57:20   hideous. Okay awesome right let's do this what's the problem? This screenshot is horrifying.

00:57:29   Why what's wrong with this? Okay I almost I almost said this when I was talking

00:57:35   about my iPhone but now I have to say it to you I don't understand people who

00:57:40   fill up every slot with icons and you're one of those people yeah you have an

00:57:46   iPhone iPhone 6 plus so it's one two three four five six seven rows including

00:57:52   the dock seven rows completely full with four icons on each row my problem is

00:57:57   there's like maybe three apps that I don't want to be there but I can't make

00:58:03   get uneven and plus I just like to fill the screen you got the screen fill the

00:58:06   screen oh my god that's how I feel okay look if there's three that you don't

00:58:11   want to be here at least at least demote one app and leave that that row on the

00:58:19   bottom clear having having at least one row clear is very nice it's very

00:58:24   pleasing I used to do that I don't know maybe maybe this this this will force me

00:58:29   to do it. I need to think more carefully. I mean the phone. Why the heck is the phone

00:58:34   icon on your home screen? I actually don't know why it's there. Okay, there we go. I've

00:58:39   solved your problem for you. Get rid of the phone icon. Get rid of whatever those other

00:58:43   three are. And I mean, when I look at this, this to me is just... I can't believe I've

00:58:50   never seen this in person. I feel... I think you must have been hiding this from me in

00:58:54   person when you've like grabbed it and thrown it at the wall or something.

00:58:59   You need to fix this right now buddy. This is just, this is horrifying visual noise and

00:59:05   I have to say your wallpaper, your wallpaper isn't helping. Are you going to put this in

00:59:09   the show notes for people?

00:59:10   Yeah, that's one of the built-in ones. Apple give you that.

00:59:14   Is that one built in?

00:59:15   Uh huh.

00:59:16   No, that's not built in.

00:59:17   I promise you it is. That is an Apple designed wallpaper. I'm telling you.

00:59:21   I mean they do occasionally they make horrifying decisions.

00:59:24   That is no, there's no way.

00:59:26   I mean, it is just, it is just triangles of color.

00:59:30   Uh huh. There's a blue tinted one and a red tinted one.

00:59:33   And I have the red tinted one because I have a red iPhone case.

00:59:35   Open your settings app. Go to wallpaper.

00:59:37   It's open right now. I'm scrolling through.

00:59:41   Oh dear God, you're right.

00:59:44   See? I told you.

00:59:45   I can't believe that's one of the built-in ones.

00:59:47   It's great.

00:59:48   No, it is not great.

00:59:49   It is great.

00:59:50   It's not great. Listeners, listeners, go look at the show notes and ask yourself,

00:59:57   which phone would you rather use? You know what the answer is going to be.

01:00:01   I have more personality than yours, Greg. It's all like, you know, it's like a robot in there.

01:00:07   I've got like a clown going on or something.

01:00:09   This looks like, yeah, this looks like someone just puked a bunch of neon and squares all over the place.

01:00:16   I do feel like that. Having now looked at yours and now looking at mine,

01:00:20   I'm looking at it like on my screen because I'm looking at it on my laptop here. It's bigger than usual and it's like

01:00:25   Oh my god, it looks like a clown vomited like

01:00:27   It doesn't help because I have a lot of color on the icons as well. Yeah, I mean well

01:00:34   This is I didn't even want to get into my crazy obsession with this

01:00:38   But part of the problem with me arranging the icons is you have to distribute colors appropriately

01:00:42   And I and the various icons that I have are way too white and orange heavy

01:00:47   and it took forever to try to figure out how to arrange them.

01:00:49   But yeah, you have a lot of color icons here, but you have the camera icon on your home screen,

01:00:53   but you can just get that from Control Center. You don't need that icon there. Get rid of that.

01:00:57   But that doesn't work properly. But also, the camera serves two purposes.

01:01:01   It's also the way I get to my photos.

01:01:03   So that is the life hack.

01:01:06   Do you have three pages of this? Because I'm looking, you have three dots on the bottom.

01:01:09   Yeah. Do you want to see the other pages?

01:01:12   I don't know if I can handle the other pages.

01:01:14   It's lots of stuff and lots of folders.

01:01:16   This is the thing, like if I have to move things off this homepage, I don't know where

01:01:20   they're gonna go. That's the problem. That's one of the main reasons that it stays as it

01:01:23   is, because I don't know where to put stuff.

01:01:25   Okay, send me the other ones. Send me others.

01:01:27   This show was meant to be looking at the interesting ways that you work, and now it has actually

01:01:31   turned into what I expected, which was you ridiculing the way that I work.

01:01:37   I mean, I have to say, when I'm looking at this on my phone, because I want to get the

01:01:41   full experience.

01:01:42   Oh, that's a good idea. I like that.

01:01:44   there I can tap it and then it takes up the whole screen and so it is though I

01:01:47   am using your phone and now that I have all three pictures I can swipe back and

01:01:51   forth just like it's the three pages. I mean I don't know any other way to

01:01:55   describe this than just disgusting. This is just disgusting to me Myke.

01:02:00   I assume right now that this is like attacking your senses? I don't know I

01:02:07   don't know how you I don't know how you do anything on here I don't know how you

01:02:10   find anything on here. I use the search quite a lot. Everything just looks like

01:02:14   crap. Okay so this is what I was going to ask. I mean please include these other - I

01:02:18   don't know if you can - but if you know please include these other two

01:02:21   screenshots so people can see the floor. I mean first of all like you your

01:02:24   folders are just random all over the place it makes no sense at all. Well to

01:02:28   you. I don't think it makes sense to you. I don't think I don't think it can

01:02:32   possibly make sense to you. Now - one thing that I really don't like I don't

01:02:37   I don't like having apps on a second and third page of a folder.

01:02:42   That frustrates me. I don't like that.

01:02:45   Okay.

01:02:45   I wish that there was no preview of the icons, because then...

01:02:49   That's why. Because I can see the little icons in there.

01:02:52   If they're on the second page, I don't like that.

01:02:55   I wish it was just no icon at all.

01:02:57   I couldn't see anything that was in the folders, then I could put more stuff in folders.

01:03:01   I don't like them hidden away like that.

01:03:02   Yeah, I wish there was a way to just specify that I...

01:03:05   There's two things that I want

01:03:07   that Apple will never give me.

01:03:09   I want opaque folders,

01:03:11   so it doesn't even show me what's in there,

01:03:13   or maybe I can select a representative icon or something.

01:03:16   - Yeah.

01:03:17   - But that's the thing that I hate the most

01:03:18   about my iPhone now,

01:03:19   is seeing those junky folders at the top.

01:03:21   But I'm willing to pay that visual price

01:03:24   for having the one screen.

01:03:26   The second thing that I want,

01:03:28   is I want the option to turn off the words

01:03:32   underneath the icons.

01:03:34   Why does it have to say audible below the icon?

01:03:38   I know what that icon is.

01:03:39   - You know what's gonna happen now, right?

01:03:41   - What? - Android people.

01:03:43   - Yeah, I know Android people will tell us.

01:03:45   (laughing)

01:03:46   I know, this is what happens.

01:03:48   It can never mention, if I ever mention a setting,

01:03:50   it's like, listen, Android people,

01:03:51   I know that you have settings to change everything.

01:03:53   I'm fully aware of that.

01:03:54   See our previous 20 minute discussion about changing.

01:03:58   But I want to be able to take away the words.

01:04:01   I find the words are visual clutter that I have no need.

01:04:04   The purpose of the icon is to be able to identify the app.

01:04:09   I don't need to read it.

01:04:10   I'm not looking at that screen going,

01:04:12   hmm, I wonder what the pink music note is.

01:04:14   Oh, it's music.

01:04:15   Thank you, word below the picture.

01:04:17   There's no need for this.

01:04:18   I wish I could get rid of that.

01:04:19   And I would love it if I could get rid of those words,

01:04:22   but I can't.

01:04:23   So I want to visually simplify this even better.

01:04:26   But okay, so just to step back for a second,

01:04:29   because you mentioned that because you have no kind of system at all, you use search to

01:04:35   try to find your stuff because there's just crap everywhere in random spots.

01:04:38   That's what you have to do.

01:04:40   Now I use search for everything basically that's not immediately visible.

01:04:47   And what I'm wondering is I may have more apps on my phone than you do.

01:04:52   I want you to look it up on your phone right now.

01:04:54   Do you know where to go?

01:04:55   I'm just curious.

01:04:56   I'm just going to get my phone.

01:04:57   What are you doing?

01:04:58   Why are you leaving your phone all over the place?

01:05:00   It's charging! It's charging!

01:05:02   Why don't you have a charger where you're sitting?

01:05:04   That's a thing that I need to do.

01:05:06   Yeah, it is a thing you need to do.

01:05:08   Where is he going?

01:05:11   Plus, I didn't want it, so I was distracted.

01:05:13   Uh huh.

01:05:15   I need to give you my full attention.

01:05:16   Yeah, you gotta maintain focus.

01:05:18   So, yeah, I know where to go. So I'm going there now.

01:05:20   Uh, yeah, so it's under Settings, General, About.

01:05:23   Okay.

01:05:24   I have 113 applications on my phone. How many do you have?

01:05:27   do you have? Aha! I have 194. Okay. I don't even know why. I had no idea. The thing, when

01:05:37   I got this phone, I started fresh. I don't know what's happened. I don't know how I've

01:05:42   done this. You have done this. You have done this to yourself. You've ruined everything.

01:05:47   I have ruined nothing. You have ruined everything. I have just pointed to the ruin. Because now

01:05:52   Now I want my phone to look like yours.

01:05:56   I mean, you gotta do something about that, Myke.

01:05:59   I know.

01:06:00   See, this is why.

01:06:02   You know I'm right.

01:06:03   You know the three icons on the bottom looks much nicer.

01:06:06   You know the one page is nicer.

01:06:07   No, I will not have the three icons on the bottom.

01:06:10   I will always have four.

01:06:11   I mean, I'm looking at this picture still, and it just seems like there's no rhyme or

01:06:15   reason to anything.

01:06:17   There's no rhyme or reason to any of this.

01:06:18   Well, there is.

01:06:19   Do you want me to talk you through it?

01:06:22   I mean, you can try.

01:06:26   So the doc consists of Tweetbot, Mailbox, Chrome, and Overcast.

01:06:30   They are my most used, most beloved applications.

01:06:34   So they live there.

01:06:35   I use them constantly.

01:06:36   I don't even think you should have Twitter on your phone, but that's a whole other conversation.

01:06:39   Hmm.

01:06:40   I'm writing that down.

01:06:46   Episode number 11.

01:06:47   Okay.

01:06:48   nine. Then I have messaging applications, messages, Whatsapp and Slack. Right. They

01:06:57   are there, I use those, they're my messaging apps. I then have Beats, right? Because it

01:07:02   sits above Overcast. That's like the audio portion. Then I have 1Password,

01:07:08   Fantastic Hell, OmniFocus and Workflow. That is the productivity section.

01:07:14   It's where I get stuff done. I can't believe there wasn't a calendar on your

01:07:17   home screen. Nope. That will be the calendaring episode. Then Launch Center Pro lives above

01:07:24   workflow. I can't imagine a worse... oh wait, you use your phone right-handed, don't you?

01:07:31   Yeah. Okay, I'm looking at that thing, that's a terrible place for Launch Center Pro. But

01:07:35   oh, if you're using it right-handed, then that's fine. Yeah, that was actually picked

01:07:38   as one of the prime places for me. Yeah, that's an easy spot. Then I have camera stuff. Camera,

01:07:45   Periscope. Periscope on the home page? Yeah that was a bad mistake that needs to come off. Yeah

01:07:51   it's terrible. I don't know why I ever did that. Terrible decision. I was really excited about it

01:07:55   one day and then it got moved to my home screen. I don't know why. Then I have um this next line

01:08:01   makes no sense. Yeah yeah your RSS reader, Evernote, Dropbox, Google Maps. Oh yeah those all

01:08:06   those four go together obviously. There's no thing there. Clear and Dew they go together because

01:08:13   because they're kind of remindery type things.

01:08:15   How do you say it again?

01:08:17   - Do.

01:08:18   - Do.

01:08:19   Then I have Foursquare, because,

01:08:22   and this is all falling apart.

01:08:24   - I mean, look at you, you're putting the two,

01:08:26   the two white colored apps next to each other.

01:08:28   I mean, even unread above the camera,

01:08:30   you have two grayscale apps right above each other,

01:08:32   and then above one password, it's just,

01:08:34   it's visually hard to parse.

01:08:37   You have editorial above do,

01:08:38   which are, you have the older version of editorial,

01:08:40   so it's white.

01:08:41   This is, this is no good.

01:08:43   I mean, in your doc you have mailbox and Chrome next to each other,

01:08:45   which are visually similar.

01:08:46   And then you have the phone at the top left,

01:08:48   which you already admit that you don't use.

01:08:50   So that's that's the phone at the top left is there because I think it's always

01:08:53   been there.

01:08:54   Right. So you never thought about it.

01:08:55   You never went about it in any kind of rational way. You just left it there.

01:08:59   Great. Okay. And then day one of your journaling application.

01:09:03   Yep. I need to seriously rethink this now.

01:09:06   Yeah, you do.

01:09:07   And I will never forgive you for that.

01:09:10   We need to have like a little sit down next time we meet up for lunch.

01:09:13   I want to, now I've decided I want to make my phone look like your phone.

01:09:19   I think that would be good for you.

01:09:20   With four icons in the dock because I'm civilized.

01:09:24   Three icons in the dock because it looks much nicer.

01:09:25   Yeah but where, I'll be missing one.

01:09:28   You don't need Tweetbot.

01:09:29   You can take Tweetbot off that.

01:09:31   That's the one I need the most buddy.

01:09:34   No, goodbye Tweetbot.

01:09:37   Twitter isn't even installed on my phone.

01:09:38   shouldn't have Twitter on your phone. But then how will I talk to anybody? How will I like Twitter? If I don't have Twitter on my phone how will I tweet? I don't understand. We will discuss it in episode 9.

01:09:52   This episode of Cortex is also brought to you by igloo the internet you'll actually like. We're talking about work here and I know that so many people I used to be one of those people I believe Gray probably one of those people as well used to have to use intranet products.

01:10:06   Intranet products that are so boring and horrible to look at and terrible to use that you have to like just accept HR policies on

01:10:13   And basically just read some important announcement from a stuffy executive somewhere or some boring stuff like that

01:10:19   That's the stuff that we all hate to do

01:10:21   Nobody wants to use an intranet in that way is boring and it looks like these things were built in the 90s

01:10:25   Looks like designed by somebody who actually probably feels like they hate you because they just make everything look so horrible and hard to use

01:10:32   Well, those days are over and this is what igloo is all about

01:10:34   igloo allows you to make your company intranet feel like a place that you actually want to be. It's super configurable

01:10:42   You can completely rebrand it to give it the look and feel of your team

01:10:45   You can make it feel at home by having a drag-and-drop interface

01:10:48   It allows you to drop little widgets in so you can reorganize the whole platform to fit exactly how

01:10:53   Your teams and the different departments in your company work. It's pretty pretty cool with igloo as well

01:10:58   you don't have to be chained to your desk to do your work. You can manage your task list from a laptop during a meeting, you can

01:11:04   share status updates where you got one foot out the door on a Friday, Friday!

01:11:07   And you can also access the latest version of a file from home.

01:11:11   You can even do this in your pajamas and nobody will know, nobody will judge you.

01:11:14   I won't judge you. These days everything should be on mobile. Your work should be too and so should your

01:11:21   intranet. One of the problems with living mobile lives like we have these days is that people sign up for loads of different services like

01:11:28   box and google drive and dropbox and they want to keep their stuff with them right because they're

01:11:32   going to be out of the office so they put them in dropbox so they can access them at home this can

01:11:36   be problematic for so many different reasons because you can have security problems right

01:11:41   we don't really want to talk about those but they can happen they can be serious security problems

01:11:44   having customer data in dropbox and you've got it at home and also it's just inconvenient because

01:11:48   there are files all over the place well igloo allows you to integrate those services into one

01:11:54   big, easy to use, easy to manage, easy to secure platform. So people can still use Dropbox

01:11:59   and stuff, but it's inside of igloo as well. Because this just makes it safer, it just

01:12:04   makes it easier. If you know terms like 256 bit encryption, single sign on and active

01:12:09   directory integrations, then you are going to know just how rock solid igloo is. If you

01:12:13   don't know what any of that means, just trust me.

01:12:16   With igloo, you can share files with your co-workers for you all to collaborate on.

01:12:20   You can track who's read them with read receipts. This can be super useful for, do you remember

01:12:24   that HR policy document I was talking about earlier, rather than you having to go around

01:12:27   and check with every single person that it's been done, because you know, let's face it,

01:12:31   that stuff still needs to be signed, with igloo you can see who has read it because

01:12:34   it will pop up and say that they have.

01:12:36   It's time to break away from the intranet that you hate.

01:12:39   Go and sign up for igloo right now and you can try it out for free for any team of up

01:12:43   to 10 people for as long as you want.

01:12:45   Go sign up right now at igloosoftware.com/cortex.

01:12:49   Thank you so much to igloo for supporting this show and all of relay FM.

01:12:53   [BEEP]

01:12:54   How much do you even consider using your Mac in this way?

01:12:57   Like, do you even think about like what goes on your dock

01:12:59   and what goes on your menu bar is an important thing?

01:13:01   I have nothing in my dock.

01:13:04   Whoa.

01:13:04   OK, we need to go back to this again.

01:13:07   Do you seriously have nothing in your dock?

01:13:09   To a first approximation, that is true.

01:13:12   What are the two?

01:13:14   There are two applications that I do leave in my dock,

01:13:17   But that is only because I always want them in the same location on the dock

01:13:20   But otherwise I have no applications in my dock. The only two things that live there permanently are

01:13:25   Activity monitor because I just want to be able to see it. I have it next to finder

01:13:30   I want it in the same spot every time I bring up the dock and I have a program called anti RSI which is to

01:13:36   Remind me to stop using the computer at particular times

01:13:39   So those two are in my dock, but it is only because I want their icons in the same place all the time

01:13:45   Otherwise, no dock icons. My dock is minimized and there are no icons.

01:13:51   Please don't tell me it's on the bottom.

01:13:54   It is on the bottom but it doesn't matter.

01:13:56   Great! No!

01:13:58   Why does this bother you?

01:14:02   It takes up so much screen real estate.

01:14:04   But can I tell you something that's probably going to drive you crazy?

01:14:06   I have a couple of computers and actually the dock location is inconsistent between them.

01:14:10   On a couple of them it's on the side and some of them it's on the bottom.

01:14:14   I don't understand how I can be criticized about my iPhone.

01:14:19   But here's the thing.

01:14:20   Because I never use the dock to launch anything,

01:14:23   and because it's always hidden, I don't even really ever

01:14:26   pull it up.

01:14:27   I never look at the dock.

01:14:28   So if it's hidden, it doesn't matter what's on there.

01:14:31   I never use it.

01:14:32   So it doesn't make any difference if it's on the side

01:14:33   or if it's on the bottom.

01:14:35   One of these days, I'll make all the computers consistent.

01:14:37   But I just--

01:14:38   I don't care because I never look at it.

01:14:39   Activity monitor, though.

01:14:41   Is that really-- that's crazy to me

01:14:43   that's that important, that it's not only open all the time, but is pretty much the

01:14:48   only app, right? Because the RSI thing is like a utility, it's like a thing. But it's

01:14:53   the only app really that you ordain to live. I mean, you have a really powerful computer,

01:14:58   like what's the issue that you're finding there?

01:15:01   The reason it's there is for when I'm exporting stuff. It is useful to see if programs have

01:15:06   frozen or if they're busy. I mean, I don't use it a ton, but it just gives me a sense

01:15:12   Like, what's the system up to in situations where it might be ambiguous?

01:15:16   So when I'm exporting animations, is the usual culprit of, "Did the system just freeze, or is it busy for the next couple hours churning away at a two-hour long Hello Internet video for YouTube?"

01:15:28   That's why I have it there. But I don't use it very much. It's just more that I want it consistent if it is open on all the systems.

01:15:34   So I can quickly go look and see if there's a problem with something, or something needs to be killed.

01:15:37   Do you care about what lives in your menu bar?

01:15:39   That I am very picky about and definitely for the show notes for listeners.

01:15:43   If you are picky about the icons that live on the top of your menu bar, I use Bartender.

01:15:49   Yes.

01:15:50   Which is excellent.

01:15:51   It is an excellent little app that gives me a little box on the menu bar which I can hide

01:15:56   a million ugly little icons in.

01:15:59   So there are very, very few icons that are actually visible all the time on my menu bar.

01:16:06   There's the Bluetooth status, there's volume, I do have Time Machine, but that's only because

01:16:12   I need to keep an eye on that, I've just switched over systems and I want to make sure it's

01:16:16   working right.

01:16:18   There is the input menu, so that I can see that my computer is in Dvorak, because every

01:16:23   once in a while it likes to switch over to a different keyboard, which is super fun.

01:16:27   I use the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard, which is a PC keyboard.

01:16:32   Right, yes, I know that one.

01:16:33   So I have to change mine to like PC British or otherwise just nothing works.

01:16:40   Basically, I may as well be using a Dvorak keyboard at that point because it's just like

01:16:45   I just don't recognize any key input.

01:16:47   Yeah, so I have the Dvorak keyboard thing, I have the Wi-Fi indicator, and then the one

01:16:55   that drives some people crazy when they see my computer is that I have what's called a

01:17:00   fuzzy clock.

01:17:02   I used to use one of these.

01:17:04   The fuzzy clock, on my clock right now,

01:17:06   it doesn't display the time as a number.

01:17:10   It displays it as a little sentence.

01:17:12   So it says quarter past four.

01:17:14   The words are written out on my computer right now.

01:17:17   I can actually take a little screen shot for people.

01:17:19   It's actually 16, 17 right now.

01:17:21   Yeah, but who cares?

01:17:22   I don't care.

01:17:23   I don't need to know the time that precisely.

01:17:25   And I really like having the fuzzy clock.

01:17:27   I don't like having the little number.

01:17:29   And for some reason I just find it's much easier and I don't live a life that I need to know to the minute what time it is.

01:17:36   It just doesn't matter to me.

01:17:38   So I like the ambiguity and it's somehow...

01:17:42   It's just somehow clearer in my mind the notion of "Oh, it is 5 o'clock."

01:17:47   "Is it 5.03? Maybe. I don't care."

01:17:49   Yeah, I get that. I do actually get that. I like that.

01:17:53   Because as well, if you use an analogue watch face, that's how you tell the time.

01:17:57   Yeah, it's very similar to the analog watch face thing.

01:18:01   You don't look at an analog clock and be like, "Oh, let me just hang on a minute.

01:18:05   I just need to swear exactly.

01:18:07   One, two, three."

01:18:09   Nobody does that.

01:18:10   There.

01:18:11   I sent you the thing for your show notes.

01:18:12   You can use that.

01:18:13   We massively diverged from the overall point of what I was driving at today.

01:18:19   Is this what you wanted?

01:18:20   Is this what you wanted this conversation to be?

01:18:22   Yes.

01:18:23   I feel like it got away from you, though.

01:18:24   wasn't what I planned, but looking back on it, this is exactly what I wanted. When I

01:18:30   wanted us to do this show, that last 20 minutes was exactly what I hoped would happen. Basically,

01:18:39   I don't understand you and you're really disappointed in me. This is how I expect the next few episodes

01:18:46   to go.

01:18:49   I'm glad that's what you wanted and I'm glad that's what you got, Myke.

01:18:54   I guarantee I'm very disappointed in you. But I wanted to set out with you to

01:19:01   start looking at the devices that you use and the choices that you make and

01:19:04   the way that you arrange them to ask the simple question of do you think that

01:19:10   any of this actually makes you work better? The hardware decisions, the way

01:19:14   that you organize things, the choices that you make, do you think that they

01:19:17   actually make you work faster, harder or smarter or do you think it's just a

01:19:22   thing that we do or that you do to just make you feel more comfortable to do the

01:19:28   work. Like the actual choices that you make intrinsically the choice doesn't

01:19:33   help you do the work it's just you feel more comfortable to get the work done.

01:19:37   All we have in life are the choices we make. I've made a whole bunch of choices

01:19:43   with regards to the hardware and the software that I use and then I observe

01:19:50   the changes in my own behavior as a result of those. And a lot of it is just

01:19:58   making a decision so that a piece of technology becomes almost invisible. Like

01:20:04   I don't really think about my Mac very much. It's almost semi invisible in

01:20:11   my life in a way. It's just a machine that I sit down at and I have my desk

01:20:15   and my chair and I sit here and I do work on it. And that's what I

01:20:20   want from it. But I'm always messing around and tinkering with my system to try to see

01:20:26   how can things potentially be better. And I mentioned earlier, the thing with clear

01:20:31   is something that I'm trying now to have two items always visible. Does this make a difference?

01:20:37   I think it does, but I haven't been doing it long enough to be able to tell. So, some

01:20:44   Some decisions, yes, they help the workflow.

01:20:49   I don't necessarily...

01:20:52   It's hard to say if I'm faster with particular decisions.

01:20:55   Like if I had learned a different audio program, would I be faster with that than Logic?

01:21:01   Probably not.

01:21:02   It probably wouldn't make much of a difference.

01:21:03   I just had to pick some audio program.

01:21:06   So I might as well continue with my doubling down on Apple.

01:21:08   So I went with Logic.

01:21:11   But things like selecting timer applications or task manager applications, those things

01:21:18   I can observe, they do make a difference.

01:21:20   Like having a better timer application matters.

01:21:25   Having a better to-do list manager matters.

01:21:28   It makes a difference.

01:21:30   But then there's stuff just like arranging all of the icons on my phone and picking a

01:21:34   pleasing background is just because I don't want to live a life where a clown has vomited

01:21:40   on my phone and I have to deal with that every day. Like I would like a nice calming, relaxing,

01:21:47   easily visually parsable environment in which to work. Unlike some people.

01:21:54   We have a couple of mechanisms to receive follow-up and feedback for Cortex. Now, you

01:22:02   can email us, but we will probably get to this at some point. We would both really prefer

01:22:09   it if you didn't email. You can! If you go to our page online, if you go to relay.fm/cortex,

01:22:17   you will be able to click a button that says contact and it will open your email application

01:22:21   and you can write an email and it will go to me, it will not go to Gray.

01:22:25   I was gonna say, and you can email Myke.

01:22:27   100% it will never go to him. It will just go to me. So, you know, treat that as it will,

01:22:34   you may, but both me and Gray are not big fans of email. If you have something that

01:22:40   is long that you want to say and you really want to say it, feel free to do it. You just

01:22:44   get it out there. But if it's something you can say over Twitter or on Reddit or something

01:22:49   like that, please do it there, because that is a way that we both prefer to receive feedback,

01:22:56   because it's easier to digest, I think.

01:22:58   Yes, we are recording this show fairly well in advance, but when it actually goes live,

01:23:04   I will have a, I will put up a thread on my subreddit where people can discuss this and

01:23:10   people can tweet at you or me, and that is a way in which your feedback will probably

01:23:15   be much more well received than emailing Myke.

01:23:20   Although I have no problem with emailing Myke.

01:23:22   That works fine by me, but, you know, the Reddit is probably better.

01:23:25   You would say that.

01:23:27   I can copy you into all my responses.

01:23:30   - I can create a filter that will delete all of those.

01:23:33   (laughing)

01:23:34   - I would.

01:23:35   I will set up multiple email accounts

01:23:36   and use different subject lines.

01:23:38   You'll never get away from me.

01:23:40   (laughing)

01:23:41   How do people get to the Reddit?

01:23:42   Like what is the way to do that?

01:23:44   - Oh yeah, of course.

01:23:45   - For example, I have no clue.

01:23:47   So you need to tell me.

01:23:49   - I feel like Reddit is so omnipresent in my life.

01:23:52   Who wouldn't know how to get to the Reddit?

01:23:54   you go to reddit.com/r/cgpgray and on there you will see a link that'll say "Cortex #1"

01:24:07   and you can click that and participate in the comment thread.

01:24:11   Awesome. Gray mentioned Twitter as well. We are both on Twitter. Gray is @cgpgray. And

01:24:18   I am @imike. I-M-Y-K-E. And also, this is something that I want to do for this show.

01:24:23   So we're gonna do the regular follow-up and stuff at the start of the show, as you'll

01:24:27   hear in many shows.

01:24:29   But there is something I would like to do at the end of each show, which will be called

01:24:33   Ask Gray.

01:24:35   Now this is a method that I do just on a couple of other shows that I host on Real AFM.

01:24:40   And what it does is, it allows you to ask us, I guess especially Gray, questions.

01:24:46   So this can be, it doesn't even necessarily have to be follow-up, it can be just things

01:24:50   that you wanna know, you know, about.

01:24:53   hear us talk a lot about work and stuff like that. You may have seen an app for

01:24:56   example on my home screens or Grey's home screens that you want to know a

01:25:00   little bit more about so you could tweet and ask us that question. Or maybe you

01:25:04   want to understand a little bit more about Activity Monitor and why or why

01:25:08   you would consider it to be so important that you would leave it in your doc.

01:25:13   Or why, you know, or maybe you have just a quick comment about why magnifying the

01:25:19   Doc is like it's just the worst thing you could ever do. You can if you just

01:25:23   tweet with the hashtag #askgray, A-S-K-G-R-E-Y, it will go into a document that we

01:25:30   will control and then we'll be able to bring in the ones that we want to talk

01:25:33   about each week and we can mention them and it's a really fun way to ask

01:25:36   questions and be involved in the show and it's a great way to get follow-up

01:25:39   and feedback and stuff like that. Yeah I've never done anything like this so

01:25:42   I'm curious to see how this goes. We'll see how this goes but we will not be

01:25:47   able to do it for the next episode because I believe we're recording that

01:25:50   in advance so we won't have Ask Ray next time but we will have it on the third

01:25:55   episode I guess is that the way this is going to work?

01:25:57   Yes so the first two episodes we're recording before we release them.

01:26:03   Like you know we're recording them in advance before the show is even live to

01:26:07   the internet so episode three I expect to be chock-full of follow-up and

01:26:12   questions and feedback about the show. So I'm looking forward to that episode

01:26:17   Maybe before then I would have changed my entire, just the way I do everything

01:26:21   in my life. Who knows? I sure hope so. As I am pushed into changing things. But I

01:26:29   think that's probably about it, Gray. Okay, yeah. I'm glad this is what you wanted.

01:26:34   I don't know if I... I wanted something! But I don't know if I got what I was

01:26:41   originally intending to get.

01:26:43   Alright, I'll see you next week.

01:26:47   Maybe.

01:26:49   [BLANK_AUDIO]