00:00:00 ◼ ► I have like three key areas of frustration right now, and I need to talk them through with you.
00:00:05 ◼ ► Like today, this episode of Quotex is basically going to be like workplace therapy for me.
00:00:09 ◼ ► I was just about to say, it feels like you're setting me up to be like your therapist for this episode.
00:00:30 ◼ ► Before we dive in, I feel like what I would like is, can you give me the brief version of how have we gotten here?
00:00:41 ◼ ► I've got these email apps and like a bunch of problems that I'm getting all these messages.
00:00:53 ◼ ► I like getting notifications and when I started my first business, Relay FM, I was responsible for sales.
00:01:02 ◼ ► And especially when you're starting out a business like that and you're trying to build a client base,
00:01:10 ◼ ► So having email notifications would mean that I was going to get back to people in a timely manner
00:01:18 ◼ ► This was many years that I did this job and over this time I built habits, especially around triage.
00:01:26 ◼ ► So, you know, I get a bunch of email, I could look at notifications, I could archive them from notifications.
00:01:58 ◼ ► The clients that I still handle, so there really isn't anything pressing with that anymore.
00:02:06 ◼ ► I'm still CC'd and more stuff than I would like, which feels like something that no matter how much we try,
00:03:04 ◼ ► because they have a work phone or they're signed into an email app for work on their personal phone.
00:03:22 ◼ ► Yeah, it's interesting you bring this up now because I've had a bunch of email thoughts
00:03:39 ◼ ► So I've been taking notes over here and the very first thing that I wanted to know is like,
00:04:17 ◼ ► Yeah, I feel like what you're dealing with is a little bit of like what my frustrations are
00:05:48 ◼ ► But I do still feel like both of those tools are important for the things that they are best at.
00:07:03 ◼ ► I've always imagined like the wheel that someone gets someone and the knives are thrown.
00:07:46 ◼ ► But I am convinced that you are feeling a frustration here because you still want to use this thing
00:07:53 ◼ ► which has served you well in a way that I just do not think is compatible with your actual roles now.
00:08:02 ◼ ► And so when you want to do the thing of like, oh, I just want to quickly respond to a message.
00:08:11 ◼ ► And if I was just to give a quick like thumbs up or thumbs down to something like I unblock another person
00:08:21 ◼ ► But it is quite easy to overvalue how much it really, really matters in the moment to unblock that person
00:08:38 ◼ ► Okay, these three topics in a way I feel like there's a meta thing which I want to just like discuss here,
00:08:47 ◼ ► These problems, just as you quickly outlined them to me, feel like they are all related to that idea.
00:08:54 ◼ ► I've always said to people like, especially if you are like, you're trying to work on your own and you want to be a freelancer.
00:09:01 ◼ ► But even if you are working a more traditional career path, like you're a salaried employee and there's a promotion ladder,
00:09:07 ◼ ► a thing that you should keep in mind when you're working on your career is that over time, the value of your time per hour should go up.
00:09:18 ◼ ► That's like a measure of success in the sense of like, oh, you're achieving what you're setting out to achieve.
00:09:25 ◼ ► You're more valuable in your career and that is represented by like the dollars earned per hour.
00:09:29 ◼ ► Or if you're salaried, the reverse is true of like what you're trying to do is be able to do the same amount of stuff,
00:09:41 ◼ ► And so you, Mike, have been successful at like push that number up, like the hourly number up over the past many years.
00:09:51 ◼ ► But what I see in people is that this does start to cause like a bunch of weird frustrations and problems
00:10:08 ◼ ► And so I want you to keep that in your mind because your actual goal is something like,
00:10:35 ◼ ► but there's some kind of like sticky brain time that should be added to each of those things.
00:10:45 ◼ ► like in the math of what your time is worth, you should add like an extra minute to that.
00:10:56 ◼ ► So that's what I'm trying to think of here is sure, if you're archiving messages on your phone,
00:11:10 ◼ ► And so it feels like you've gained something, but I really think you've lost something.
00:11:16 ◼ ► I think you've lost more than you were realizing because you can just archive all of those messages
00:11:29 ◼ ► I think like dealing with anything in the moment for you has like slowly creeped up in cost
00:11:46 ◼ ► That's kind of what I feel like might be one of the underlying things that's happening here.
00:11:58 ◼ ► Every time I look at my email inbox, I'm going back into the same thing where it's like, all right,
00:13:02 ◼ ► And so if that was to happen, my concern would be, if we continue that line of thinking,
00:14:28 ◼ ► It kind of makes me think it's like the same phenomenon that's happened with physical mail,
00:14:35 ◼ ► It's like, "Oh, the average physical mail message is basically net negative in value to me."
00:15:34 ◼ ► And so I just feel like the checking activity or like the archiving activity is no good.
00:17:28 ◼ ► It's still going to dictate certain things that are going to happen in my day or my week.
00:18:01 ◼ ► Because I do genuinely believe that I still, because I work with the amount of people that I do
00:18:15 ◼ ► What I don't want is to like increase the amount of messages I'm getting from people saying like,
00:19:45 ◼ ► But what I am thinking is just, here is my fundamental problem with email as the first thing.
00:20:48 ◼ ► you are on the train and you're not looking at your phone and you're like heading into work.
00:21:55 ◼ ► So the reason it's my dream scenario is it's the scenario that benefits me the most, right?
00:22:07 ◼ ► I again think there is a world of difference in you're on the train, it's Monday morning,
00:22:14 ◼ ► it's like upgrade game time, and you are thinking a little bit about the upcoming show,
00:22:21 ◼ ► And then the first thing that you do when you get there is you start arranging all of the stuff
00:22:34 ◼ ► And then when you are done with that, then you go to email and you work on your email then.
00:22:53 ◼ ► That is what's occurring when you're triaging your email on your phone on the way into work.
00:23:12 ◼ ► - I feel like you know that about me, like it's something that I really try and take value in,
00:24:17 ◼ ► by which I mean like the moment you leave your front door, that's when the timer starts.
00:25:03 ◼ ► where it matters and how much is that going to cost versus, I mean, as happens to you sometimes,
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00:28:37 ◼ ► - Well, I mean, it does feel like this is all one big ball, but yes, let's go to notifications.
00:28:41 ◼ ► - These two are quite linked in this way because the time zone benefit in the morning is great.
00:28:55 ◼ ► working with in America, which means that they're still very much in their work day when I'm very
00:28:59 ◼ ► much not. And this is like a second thing where I am starting to become more frustrated with
00:29:06 ◼ ► things that are required of me in the evening or just work things that are coming my way
00:29:26 ◼ ► to see less of this stuff? Like I'm becoming much more particular about my work-life balance,
00:29:34 ◼ ► all thanks to the year of the weekend where I actually started to value my work-life balance.
00:29:38 ◼ ► And so now, like, I believe that it is better for me to have less stuff intruding, but I feel like
00:29:46 ◼ ► I don't have a sense of what the exact things that I should do should be. The one that I can think of
00:29:52 ◼ ► is to set a do not disturb in Slack. I think the way it works in Slack is it doesn't send
00:30:01 ◼ ► notifications at all. I don't use that, but that's my understanding. If you set do not disturb in
00:30:06 ◼ ► Slack, the app is sending no notifications. I don't know what happens when you come out. I
00:30:11 ◼ ► presume it just sends you everything that was waiting. But I don't think it does do that,
00:30:14 ◼ ► actually. I think it's just like when the do not disturb is off, you'll start getting notifications
00:30:17 ◼ ► again. But when you open the app, everything that was sent to you while you're in do not disturb is
00:30:21 ◼ ► just waiting for you there. And what I do like about Slack in this regard is, well, one, it's
00:30:27 ◼ ► doing that, so it's not sending anything, but also someone can break through, which is helpful for me.
00:30:31 ◼ ► That would make me feel better knowing that, like, if there's something I need to know,
00:30:36 ◼ ► whoever it is can see I have do not disturb on and they can be like notify me. I like that feature.
00:30:42 ◼ ► So I think I'm going to do that. I need to choose what the time is, which is a weird one for me.
00:30:53 ◼ ► a week. I'm still working at 8 p.m. where naturally it would be like, oh, like, 5, 6 o'clock
00:30:59 ◼ ► is what most people would set. Like maybe it's 7 or 8 for me. And like you would say, like,
00:31:05 ◼ ► oh, focus modes will handle this for you. And like maybe -- but what I don't like about focus modes
00:31:17 ◼ ► >> Because I have a weekend one that I like the weekend focus mode that I have. But then sometimes
00:31:22 ◼ ► I see that I still have the email. I still see the email. It's like, oh, I don't want to know it's
00:31:27 ◼ ► there. >> There's like a weird perverse satisfaction I have here of like most people just don't
00:31:32 ◼ ► understand what the problem is. But now I feel like I've almost infected a friend with like now
00:31:37 ◼ ► you understand what the problem is. Like I just don't want to even know that it's there.
00:31:41 ◼ ► >> Yeah, like just tell me later on. Like I don't want -- like so in case people don't know,
00:31:45 ◼ ► in a focus mode if you exclude apps from it, they don't show up on the lock screen. But when
00:31:51 ◼ ► you go into notifications, enter it like collects them all up. But the problem is not only does it
00:31:56 ◼ ► collect them up, it gives you a little bit of a preview too. It's like, no, this is not what I
00:32:05 ◼ ► it's sort of a fundamentally unsolvable problem with like the way you want notifications to be
00:32:09 ◼ ► handled. Because really like what's happening with notifications is you really want to tell your
00:32:14 ◼ ► phone like read my mind and just know when I want to know something and know when I don't want to
00:32:20 ◼ ► know something. So as someone who has spent many years and many, many hours trying to tweak this
00:32:26 ◼ ► to be perfection, like it just never can be. And one thing that I've been trying to do that I
00:32:32 ◼ ► think is helpful is realizing that notification center is basically never the tool that I want
00:32:41 ◼ ► for the job and trying to frame things a little bit differently. So one thing I've been trying
00:32:47 ◼ ► to make more and more use of is I forget exactly what it's called, but iOS has the feature that's
00:32:52 ◼ ► called like scheduled delivery, where it holds up the messages and then delivers them all at once
00:32:59 ◼ ► at a time of your choosing. So that's something that I'm trying to think about for more and more
00:33:04 ◼ ► apps is like, can I just tell everything to arrive in one scheduled delivery at like 2 p.m. every day
00:33:12 ◼ ► and just like you collect up all the notifications and I will see them then. And that does keep them
00:33:17 ◼ ► out of notification center, like they don't go into notification center. Or the other alternative is
00:33:23 ◼ ► basically I'm trying to turn off notification center for everything that I can think of now.
00:33:28 ◼ ► The other option is like, look, notification center didn't used to exist. We used to just have badges
00:33:34 ◼ ► on the apps. And like, actually, that's like the solution that I want most of the time. Because the
00:33:39 ◼ ► nice thing about focus modes is focus modes can hide badges so that you don't see that like, oh,
00:33:45 ◼ ► you've got three messages in email that's important to you. But in the correct focus mode,
00:33:50 ◼ ► it's like, oh, no, badges are allowed. And now you can see that there's messages there.
00:33:54 ◼ ► So there's two things to think about. But it's like, I think I've realized my frustration has
00:33:59 ◼ ► come from a thing where it's like, oh, Apple created this tool called notification center.
00:34:04 ◼ ► And I've always just used it because it's on by default without ever really thinking through,
00:34:11 ◼ ► if I was designing the phone from scratch, would I want this as a feature? And the answer is no,
00:34:16 ◼ ► like it's very hard for me to even imagine why I would want this here really. It's like the thing
00:34:22 ◼ ► that I'm trying to achieve, depending on an app can usually be achieved through some combination
00:34:27 ◼ ► of like, it's the badge, it's the scheduled delivery, or it is the like lock screen slash
00:34:33 ◼ ► home screen notification with or without preview, like tweaking those things is usually what I'm
00:34:39 ◼ ► looking for. So we've scheduled delivery. Talk me through what scheduled delivery looks like for you.
00:34:45 ◼ ► Because this feature I always found kind of weird and strange. It's like, what are you having it do?
00:34:50 ◼ ► And what does it look like when it happens? The scheduled delivery is this thing that will appear
00:34:57 ◼ ► in notification center, you can think of it as a subset of notification center. So if you in
00:35:02 ◼ ► settings tell an app that it is to use scheduled delivery, I think basically what's happening is
00:35:09 ◼ ► that as far as the app is concerned, it's still sending you notifications. But iOS just completely
00:35:16 ◼ ► hides the existence of those notifications in totality. Like they just they are not in the
00:35:21 ◼ ► system at all. iOS is just holding on to those notifications, and gives them to you all at once
00:35:29 ◼ ► at the time of your choosing. And so what you get is a thing that will be called like, oh,
00:35:33 ◼ ► your afternoon summary or your morning summary, which is basically a notification center inside
00:35:47 ◼ ► That's how that works. So basically, you're able to say like, app x can only reach me at
00:35:55 ◼ ► a time of my choosing, and otherwise I am to never hear from it. And you can have multiple time slots
00:36:02 ◼ ► for these scheduled deliveries. So you can say like, oh, four times a day, this app can get in
00:36:07 ◼ ► touch. But otherwise, I never want to hear from it. That's how scheduled delivery works.
00:36:20 ◼ ► almost like they were trying to lay out a magazine or something, the layout I found really
00:36:25 ◼ ► peculiar. Yeah, it just looks like notification center. So I actually I have my slack on this
00:36:30 ◼ ► of like, just once a day, send me everything like slack, just be quiet. And it appears in my
00:36:35 ◼ ► scheduled delivery. And it just looks like, oh, here's all the messages that went to you from
00:36:40 ◼ ► slack in the previous 24 hours. That's what happens. Just like the regular notifications,
00:36:46 ◼ ► you can click on any one of them. And it will just take you straight to that conversation in slack.
00:36:50 ◼ ► And you can clear them individually, just like you would a notification center. I don't know if this
00:36:54 ◼ ► is what you want. But I am flagging it as I think this is an underappreciated tool that can be the
00:37:01 ◼ ► right answer for certain things. I'm intrigued by it. But I do think that just if we remove email
00:37:09 ◼ ► notifications completely one way or another, and I put the slack do not disturb, I think it would
00:37:15 ◼ ► actually just solve the vast majority of the things that I would want. Yeah, I mean, slack
00:37:21 ◼ ► do not disturb sounds like for you the clear thing to do like that communication tool itself has an
00:37:26 ◼ ► inbuilt tool to like try to address what you're dealing with here. Yeah. And what I might do too,
00:37:31 ◼ ► is like I have a weekend focus mode, I may just extend that to my home focus mode or something
00:37:37 ◼ ► like that. I'm going to look into that too. It's just for me, I'm not sure I need that much control
00:37:44 ◼ ► over the other notifications that I get because I don't think again, I will pay attention to it,
00:37:50 ◼ ► but I'm not sure that I have other work stuff and that's what I'm trying to get rid of. Like,
00:37:54 ◼ ► it doesn't bother me if the fitness app is telling me something or it doesn't bother me if my to do
00:38:02 ◼ ► app is telling me something because if I've set that, well, is the reason I set it for that time,
00:38:07 ◼ ► you know what I mean? Like for me. Yeah. For me, the to do app is the only app that I think is
00:38:11 ◼ ► approved in every single focus mode because that is like a very different kind of exception of like,
00:38:21 ◼ ► reminders and OmniFocus have like a total access at all times in all focus modes to set up an alert.
00:38:28 ◼ ► Like if I look at the other stuff I've got, like if it's iMessage or that's still on that to come
00:38:33 ◼ ► through because again, like I put a bunch of iMessage threads on mute anyway, like the chatty
00:38:38 ◼ ► ones. So I'm fine with that. So I actually think I do a decent job of, it really seems like the
00:38:43 ◼ ► stuff that I want to get rid of is the work stuff and I think I may have that handled. But yeah,
00:38:49 ◼ ► I just wanted to talk to you because I think that Slack do not disturb feature is kind of what I'm
00:38:54 ◼ ► looking for, I think. Because I do think like, I don't want to put the onus on the people that
00:39:00 ◼ ► I work with, right? Like if they're in their workday, they shouldn't not send me stuff.
00:39:05 ◼ ► Right. But what I want everyone to understand and I think they'll get that just from seeing
00:39:10 ◼ ► the stuff is like, I've chosen not to be working right now. So like, I'll get back to you and I'm
00:39:25 ◼ ► what healthy relationships need are healthy boundaries. And without boundaries, it's no good.
00:39:32 ◼ ► And so, yeah, you too, Mike, get to have a time where you say like, I'm not working today. And
00:39:39 ◼ ► yes, like I understand the time zone thing of like, people are messaging you later in the day.
00:39:43 ◼ ► Like I have the exact same thing of like, when I am feeling like it is bedtime is often like,
00:39:49 ◼ ► right in the productive swing of people in America. But that's fine. Because again, it is the
00:39:55 ◼ ► sure, I could theoretically unblock some stuff right now as someone is working. But it is just
00:40:04 ◼ ► fundamentally not as important as having mental space, which is the no, I'm at home watching a
00:40:12 ◼ ► movie with my wife mental space. And the time delay is fine. Like everyone has this, this
00:40:22 ◼ ► feeling like someone has messaged me and I need to get back to them right now. But also, other people
00:40:28 ◼ ► have other things to do. Like, it's easy to overvalue how absolutely vital it is for you to
00:40:34 ◼ ► get back to this person now. So yeah, like, you should just have a clear cutoff in your mind for
00:40:48 ◼ ► just set that and people will quickly adapt and learn like, I mean, this is the thing like,
00:40:53 ◼ ► when you were going to school, and I was sending you messages and getting no replies, because
00:40:58 ◼ ► you couldn't even get those messages that I was appalled on day one. Very quickly, even I too
00:41:04 ◼ ► adapted to like, Oh, Mike will get stuff back to me later. Or like, I think even in me over a very
00:41:10 ◼ ► short period of time, it caused a slight behavior change of even sending you less stuff. So I think
00:41:16 ◼ ► it's good for you to have clear boundaries of like, Oh, no, after eight or 9pm, or whatever it
00:41:23 ◼ ► is, Mike is just not around. And as long as you're consistent about it, as long as it's a pattern
00:41:29 ◼ ► that either people can pick up on, or you can just be very explicit about, I don't think there's any
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00:42:58 ◼ ► These are the things that I'm going to do. Slack do not disturb on the relay slack and the
00:43:11 ◼ ► Look into scheduled delivery. Although I don't think I need it, but I want to play around with
00:43:22 ◼ ► I'm going to put all of my email accounts into Spark. I'm going to turn off notifications
00:43:29 ◼ ► for the Gmail app, but not delete the Gmail app because people want to log in sometimes
00:43:45 ◼ ► And I'm going to turn off email notifications on my iPad, but I'm going to leave Spark on
00:43:53 ◼ ► Because if I'm going to do some work at home, I'm only going to do that on my iPad. And
00:43:57 ◼ ► this will allow me to do some stuff without getting my Mac. Because I feel like that there
00:44:03 ◼ ► is another step there where I could like maybe I'm going to do some work or grab my iPad
00:44:08 ◼ ► dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, rather than go and grab my Mac, which will drag me in way more
00:44:17 ◼ ► checking my email a bunch when I'm at home on my iPad, then no, that's going to go too.
00:44:21 ◼ ► That's where I am so far. Now the thing about like when I check like we both agree it should
00:44:38 ◼ ► But it is my goal. Like maybe it'll be easy because like I just don't really want to do
00:44:49 ◼ ► Okay. Here's an action item, which is a little bit of a, like a mental shift, but I'm trying
00:45:06 ◼ ► that's all it has to be. Right. You just can't check your email for the first 20 minutes.
00:45:23 ◼ ► check email at home, you have to be able to answer yes to the question. Do I have 20 minutes
00:45:38 ◼ ► have 20 minutes to work on this? If there's something in here that needs your attention,
00:45:42 ◼ ► great, then you can check it. But if you don't, then you're just in that loop of like checking
00:45:48 ◼ ► to check. What you're doing is you're checking to soothe yourself is really what you're doing.
00:46:04 ◼ ► checking my email more? Because like I'm not getting the notifications. So do I keep checking
00:46:08 ◼ ► the inbox? Like the only way for me to reduce this notification thing is I can't have email
00:46:22 ◼ ► And so the only way to stop myself from doing that is I got to cut it off. I got to cut
00:46:31 ◼ ► my phone at all, but I'm just not going to have the app that I use. Right? Like the mail
00:46:40 ◼ ► are just signed in and it's just like, whatever, but I'm not going to look at it cause I hate
00:46:44 ◼ ► that app anyway. I feel like it is too complicated, more complicated than I want to be like turning
00:46:50 ◼ ► off the ability for my phone to get email. But I think that's fine. Like I'm not worried
00:46:57 ◼ ► There's various times in various ways I have tried to disable a bunch of stuff and I have
00:47:02 ◼ ► come to the conclusion that in most scenarios, zero ability to do thing on your phone is
00:47:22 ◼ ► So I need to have the mail app there so I can grab those. Cause look, there are accounts
00:47:28 ◼ ► that I have for things where they don't have passwords. Like the only way to sign in is
00:47:32 ◼ ► to sign in through a mail app. Like I don't want that to be the case. I think honestly,
00:47:48 ◼ ► Yeah. I'll give you a very strange two factor thing that I read into. So again, like I don't
00:47:53 ◼ ► do email on my phone. I was like, oh, I have access to a thing. I ran into the weirdest
00:47:57 ◼ ► two factor thing, which is I had to renew my driver's license while I was in North Carolina.
00:48:06 ◼ ► Yeah. And while I was doing that, in order for a certain step of the procedure to proceed,
00:48:12 ◼ ► I needed to give them a code that they sent to my email. And it was like such a strange
00:48:36 ◼ ► When did it happen that email became like the most important and secure thing that everybody
00:48:41 ◼ ► has in their lives when people are getting their emails hacked all the time? Like, well,
00:48:55 ◼ ► zero access is just more of a problem. Like if I hadn't been able to give that lady that code,
00:49:01 ◼ ► it would have cost me weeks of setup and like getting an appointment at the DMV for like to
00:49:06 ◼ ► be like, oh, well, I don't do that because I'm so busy. I actually don't have email on my phone,
00:49:21 ◼ ► Like I've ignored them so far because I'm kind of like, this is a new technology and I don't
00:49:27 ◼ ► want to start just like giving up passwords for a problem that I can't yet foresee. But you know,
00:49:33 ◼ ► this is a way of just using like the face ID on my iPhone as the two factor rather than
00:49:37 ◼ ► a code or whatever. So maybe there'll be some things that like if they have pass keys and
00:49:43 ◼ ► they're otherwise going to send me an email, I'll be like, all right, go set up a pass key.
00:49:46 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Even though I'm just not convinced about how well that technology works.
00:49:51 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. I too have put this in the bucket of like, I'm going to give this a couple of years and
00:49:55 ◼ ► then we'll see where we are. So the pass key stuff is different. Yeah. It's like when two factor was
00:50:00 ◼ ► introduced, it was complicated, but now it's like super simple. Yeah. Like I have most of my two
00:50:05 ◼ ► factor, like in my one password. So when I click on the thing to log in one pass, so it just fills
00:50:09 ◼ ► the two factor code. Like it's like really easy. Right. And I know one pass could somehow do
00:50:14 ◼ ► something with pass. I'm just not bothering yet. I'm like going to give it a little bit more time,
00:50:19 ◼ ► but I see the thought about it. Right. Like if all of our devices have a biometric authentication
00:50:23 ◼ ► method, that is 100% the best way to do it than getting a code out of an email account.
00:50:28 ◼ ► Yeah. But I mean like, I'm not going to hold my breath on the DMV setting up a pass key system
00:50:35 ◼ ► anytime soon. Well, but the thing is though, like there is a genuine benefit to these organizations
00:50:40 ◼ ► because then they don't have to worry about the servers getting hacked. Yeah, for sure.
00:50:44 ◼ ► Because it's no longer their problem anymore. So I actually do imagine this to be more readily
00:50:49 ◼ ► adopted by more organizations because it's an easy step for them to take and have to not worry about
00:50:55 ◼ ► a bunch of all this stuff that they had to do. Yeah, true. All of that is just to say, I agree
00:51:01 ◼ ► with you that you need to have access, but you want to have access in such a way where it is
00:51:07 ◼ ► very clear you are never going to attempt to use this tool. It is just there for these kind of edge
00:51:13 ◼ ► cases of like, Oh, I got an email that I'd from a thing for something I'm doing right now and I just
00:51:18 ◼ ► need to be able to like click a confirmation link to get a thing. Like that's just the way the world
00:51:23 ◼ ► is and totally deleting email is just impractical. And in the same way that I tried many times that
00:51:30 ◼ ► eventually gave up on, you can disable the Safari browser entirely on your phone, which in my ideal
00:51:37 ◼ ► world, I would like to not have the browser on my phone, but it's the same thing of like, there's
00:51:41 ◼ ► just too many things that require the browser as like, I just have to give up this dream of my phone
00:51:49 ◼ ► has no email and has no browser is what I actually want. But it's like, I don't know. That's like
00:51:54 ◼ ► dreaming to live in a world where I don't need the phone at all. That's what I'm really dreaming
00:51:59 ◼ ► of there. You know, I've had someone suggested this to me ages ago and it's been on my mind
00:52:05 ◼ ► recently and I don't like it. The work phone. I don't remember what it was, but it was a
00:52:11 ◼ ► conversation we were having on this show and I think I was talking about all of these kinds of
00:52:16 ◼ ► things, but like differently. And they were just like, well, this could be solved if you just had
00:52:20 ◼ ► a work phone on a personal phone. And like the idea is so good. Just it's simple, right? Like
00:52:26 ◼ ► it's simple in the sense of like, well, there just isn't Slack on my personal phone. There is
00:52:31 ◼ ► something to be said for it. The problem is I don't want to carry two phones. I do not want two
00:52:36 ◼ ► phones. Like I don't under any circumstances want a second phone that I ever have to take anywhere.
00:52:43 ◼ ► Like that's the thing. So what I'm trying to do now is like get all of the benefits of what that
00:52:50 ◼ ► would be, I suppose, by like deciding the devices that have access to things, the devices that don't,
00:52:57 ◼ ► and then also implementing software tricks where I can. I think the whole idea of like the work
00:53:03 ◼ ► phone, personal phone thing that made more sense the further back in time you go from the creation
00:53:08 ◼ ► of the iPhone as much as people ever made fun of it. But I really do think like with the introduction
00:53:14 ◼ ► of focus modes, it's like you can get 80% of the way there through software. And I just think now
00:53:21 ◼ ► it is not worth doing the work phone, personal phone thing because it also introduces like a
00:53:27 ◼ ► whole bunch of other problems. Like even just trying to manage two different accounts. Like it
00:53:37 ◼ ► Look, I've got to assume based on what this show is, that there are people inside of Apple that
00:53:44 ◼ ► work on the focus mode project that listen to this show. Like I've just got to naturally assume
00:53:49 ◼ ► that that is a possibility. If that's the case and you work on the focus mode project, focus modes
00:53:57 ◼ ► would be made so much better if I had the ability to turn off the preview of stuff that was waiting
00:54:01 ◼ ► for me. If I was able to turn off that entire little category that says like, while you were in
00:54:07 ◼ ► weekend focused and you can tap it and see this list of stuff that's being held, like I understand
00:54:13 ◼ ► why that's there. I get it. I completely understand. It makes a lot of sense for these kinds of things.
00:54:18 ◼ ► Like if you've got a two factor code in Gmail, right? Like all that stuff it's there in case you
00:54:22 ◼ ► need it. I would like to turn that off. Give me a setting. Focus mode is full of settings, which
00:54:28 ◼ ► are great. Like the longer it has gone on, the more settings it has gotten, the more complicated it has
00:54:33 ◼ ► gotten. But this is one of those things where I'm happy that somebody inside of Apple is like, you
00:54:38 ◼ ► know what? We have to add complication to the system to make it worthwhile. And it has gotten
00:54:43 ◼ ► better and better over the time. I would like this feature now, please, if you wouldn't mind adding
00:54:51 ◼ ► - I would also say if those engineers are listening, one, thank you because focus modes
00:54:55 ◼ ► are much more than I feel like I could have ever reasonably expected Apple to implement. Like
00:55:03 ◼ ► - It is. But I'm with Mike. Like my number one request would be that thing of like, I just,
00:55:09 ◼ ► to me, the whole point of the focus mode is I don't want to know. And so it is frustrating to have this
00:55:16 ◼ ► little thing here, which is like, oh, hey, while you're in this mode, like here's the stuff that
00:55:21 ◼ ► happens. Like just give me the option to make that go away. I just don't want to see it.
00:55:29 ◼ ► I don't want to know that while I was here, a bunch of work stuff was piling up. It's like the
00:55:34 ◼ ► whole point is to like, no, it's weekend mode. Like I'm just hanging out and having a good time.
00:55:40 ◼ ► And I don't even want to be tempted by like, oh, what was that message about that thing? No,
00:55:47 ◼ ► Recording Focus right now. And I've got like, while you're in Recording Focus, here's some
00:55:55 ◼ ► Formula One app. Like I just don't want them. Like I just don't want that to be there. It only sits
00:56:10 ◼ ► and being like, oh, what happened in Formula One? Like it just pulls your mind in a way that is
00:56:14 ◼ ► contrary to the literal word focus, right? Like it's a focus mode. You shouldn't have a place
00:56:21 ◼ ► in the back of your brain, it knows, if I just like quickly tap my screen, I can just see if
00:56:26 ◼ ► like anything did happen. It's like, no, no, take that option away because this is the focus mode
00:57:01 ◼ ► - It's unbelievable how bad it is. I've never seen a piece of the operating system that has
00:57:07 ◼ ► been made so much worse over time, which is weird. - Look, the only notification center that's worse
00:57:13 ◼ ► than the one on the Mac is the one on the Vision Pro. But again, I'm fine with that because I don't
00:57:21 ◼ ► but I genuinely think it is better because when you go into notification center on the Vision Pro,
00:57:26 ◼ ► you can at least see all of your notifications, right? On the Mac, they show you three,
00:57:31 ◼ ► you know? It's like, oh, you want to see more? Click this thing too. Like that's worse. I
00:57:35 ◼ ► actually think the Mac is worse. It doesn't make any sense. You have so much space on the screen.
00:57:44 ◼ ► again, I was thinking about this with notifications a bunch, is how do I like simplify,
00:57:48 ◼ ► how do I try to get what I want to have happen happen? And I have decided that outside of some
00:57:54 ◼ ► very special cases, my phone is my notification device. This is how I am thinking about
00:58:01 ◼ ► notifications. This is where all notifications come. And so on my computer and on my watch,
00:58:08 ◼ ► I've basically shut down almost everything else unless it makes extremely specific sense
00:58:14 ◼ ► for that device. So for example, Final Cut on my Mac and Logic on my Mac can send notifications
00:58:22 ◼ ► because those are useful and they are specific to the Mac, but that's it. Otherwise, they just
00:58:28 ◼ ► don't get notifications. And my watch has some fitness notifications that just literally can't
00:58:34 ◼ ► appear anywhere else. So it's like, okay, watch, you can do that. But all notifications should be
00:58:41 ◼ ► phone notifications. And I think this works much better than you might think because with the
00:58:47 ◼ ► wireless charging stuff and the always on screen, it's like, look, wherever I am, my phone is always
00:58:52 ◼ ► just docked somewhere within view. So that's why like the phone is the notification device, is what
00:59:00 ◼ ► I have decided. And like everything else, iPads, Mac, watch, Vision Pro, all of it, like no
00:59:11 ◼ ► This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Notion. There's so much to love about Notion.
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01:01:05 ◼ ► the amount of meetings that I need in my work. And then I've also just filled up my time with
01:01:13 ◼ ► the work that I do, which seems like a pretty normal thing to do, right? Like the work will
01:01:17 ◼ ► occupy the space that it has available to it. And a lot of the time more than that, right?
01:01:24 ◼ ► I mean, it's not like I don't have any quote unquote meetings. Like my podcasts are essentially
01:01:46 ◼ ► I have a Monday afternoon meeting with Jason, but we just so happened to record an upgrade during it.
01:01:51 ◼ ► Boo. I hate it. Thumbs down. Hate it. Reframe. Mike, that is the creative core of your work.
01:02:25 ◼ ► Me and Steven always had a meeting every Monday for Relay, but it's become more serious.
01:02:47 ◼ ► focus than it did previously. Also on Mondays, I have a meeting with my assistant as part of
01:02:53 ◼ ► Project Air Traffic Control. And this is the idea of like, let's talk about what's going on
01:03:03 ◼ ► It is the way in which we set out the week. And it's been fantastic. Some of the things
01:03:09 ◼ ► that we've put in place are brilliant, and I feel so much more on top of my work because
01:03:21 ◼ ► we're doing at Cortex Brand, I need to have more meetings with more people. And so these
01:03:29 ◼ ► for brand stuff with a brand team that we're working with. Like there's so much more, as
01:03:34 ◼ ► well as manufacturers, accountants, business advisors, like more and more stuff. I should
01:03:53 ◼ ► I've worked with and we continue to work with lots of different designers and creatives
01:04:08 ◼ ► the majority of stuff that me and him talk about is done in Slack. Like there is a level
01:04:17 ◼ ► that I'm doing now, it's requiring much bigger thinking, bigger planning, putting things
01:04:49 ◼ ► think that those meetings will only be replaced by different ones, right? So when we're
01:05:07 ◼ ► is the essence of working with a team of people. Like you need to communicate with them. And
01:05:18 ◼ ► I care deeply about the work and I enjoy all of the stuff. The issue is that I filled up
01:05:28 ◼ ► the time already. The time was full. And now we need to add more time in. And the thing
01:05:34 ◼ ► about meetings are they are so time intensive in the sense of how much space a meeting takes
01:06:26 ◼ ► and forth? And the answer is in theory it could, but nonetheless, like actually meeting
01:06:51 ◼ ► and faster than you can indirectly. And then yes, but it was still an all day meeting because
01:07:16 ◼ ► then there were tasks that I put off because of that, that I was still dealing with like
01:07:34 ◼ ► I am still doing too much, but maybe that is just the function of running two businesses.
01:07:49 ◼ ► there is really that much I can do about this. I just need to get better about how I handle
01:07:59 ◼ ► my hope is this is the short term pain for the longterm gain. Like we're bringing people
01:08:06 ◼ ► in. So the better people are doing the right things because a lot of the stuff that everybody's
01:08:18 ◼ ► benefit of that with my assistant, which is like, there is stuff that I wanted to do that
01:08:28 ◼ ► take this moment to be cognizant and remind myself of the fact that if I'm going to keep
01:08:35 ◼ ► going down this route, which I believe is the right one, I need to continue to delegate.
01:08:39 ◼ ► Yeah, I think what I'm just kind of thinking of listening to you talk is like a similar
01:08:45 ◼ ► sort of thing that I'm kind of going through on my end with some things, but I think it
01:08:59 ◼ ► meetings. It's like you're meeting and discussing like, what are we doing at Relay? Or like
01:09:04 ◼ ► your air traffic control meeting, which is just like still just a great name that I might
01:09:14 ◼ ► that's one kind of meeting. And there's other kinds of meetings which are like about getting
01:09:27 ◼ ► strategy meetings are irreplaceable. I think there's just fundamentally nothing that you
01:09:30 ◼ ► can do to get rid of them. But it is good to keep in mind if you're doing a like future
01:09:44 ◼ ► this needs to happen less. That's what's really occurring with those meetings is like trying
01:09:49 ◼ ► to set up a structure so that down the road, these meetings need to happen less. And it's
01:10:02 ◼ ► kind of like work or onboarding meeting. This is not a strategy meeting. This is a like,
01:10:08 ◼ ► how do we get things done better meeting and like, the meeting isn't the work. In strategy
01:10:15 ◼ ► meetings, that is the work because it is the strategy. But other meetings are like, this
01:10:20 ◼ ► isn't the actual work. This is the administrative overhead for the work. And that's the kind
01:10:24 ◼ ► of thing that you just want to focus on reducing. But if you're bringing on a bunch of people,
01:10:33 ◼ ► Yeah, because people have to understand what we're doing, where we're coming from, we've
01:10:39 ◼ ► got to get on the same page. And that is better when we actually sit and have conversations
01:10:53 ◼ ► The meetings thing, really, it's just like, I just wanted to talk about it because it's
01:10:57 ◼ ► just like happening to me. But like, this is the talk therapy part of today or the others
01:11:13 ◼ ► try and control it, this will spiral out of control. And I will just be in meetings all
01:11:22 ◼ ► the time to do with how my work is scheduled right now. I imagine a scenario in 10 years
01:11:27 ◼ ► time where that is my job. Like my job is, I'm back to back meetings, five hours a day,
01:11:40 ◼ ► That doesn't bother me, right? That does not bother me. But it's, I can't do that now because
01:11:45 ◼ ► I'm still in the content lines, you know, I'm still, what do you say, forging notebooks
01:11:52 ◼ ► from paper mills or whatever. Like I'm still doing all of that. So I can't be back to back
01:11:58 ◼ ► in meetings all the time. Like even if that is what people may or may not want from me,
01:12:14 ◼ ► a future where what you're doing is the meeting stuff. I don't think that's a probable future
01:12:19 ◼ ► because I think you like the hands-on creation of things quite a lot and you're good at it.
01:12:32 ◼ ► Oh yes, like when I'm writing in the mornings, it's just like a meeting because it can be
01:12:36 ◼ ► on my calendar. It's just a meeting with myself. Yeah. It's me in Obsidian. We're having a
01:12:41 ◼ ► meeting. It's like, yes, sure. That is technically correct in that it exists on a calendar, but
01:12:54 ◼ ► You know, like we're in all the stores, you know, like product design is going to be very
01:13:01 ◼ ► And it will be like, hey, there's a couple of people and we're working on a thing together.
01:13:11 ◼ ► drawings to be done, I'm not doing them or is this layout to be done? I'm not doing it.
01:13:15 ◼ ► Like I can still help steer where it's going, you know? So like then again, it's like, it's
01:13:33 ◼ ► No, it's a long way, if ever. What I'm saying is I just want to kind of get it out that
01:13:46 ◼ ► But like if I just, if my work continues to take me in a scenario where I'm having more
01:14:00 ◼ ► Yeah. And I actually, I really like that comment you made about how with the calendar and the
01:14:05 ◼ ► to-do list that there are two things and like exploding one like really explodes the other.
01:14:20 ◼ ► few months. I'm like, oh yeah, I've kind of had like huge calendar disruptions. And it's
01:14:24 ◼ ► like, yes, that has massive impacts on the to-do list. Like it's just, it's good to think
01:14:28 ◼ ► about it in that way. Like I like that framing quite a lot. But yes, you are making podcasts
01:14:33 ◼ ► while you're not having meetings. I just can't, I just, I can't even hear you say that.
01:14:45 ◼ ► is not a usual thing that I have at the end of a podcast. I have a list of seven, no eight
01:14:51 ◼ ► action items so far. That's something I want to get better at too. Like sometimes I leave
01:15:04 ◼ ► Every meeting that matters, you have to have action items. Like if you don't have that,
01:15:08 ◼ ► what even happened? Like a bunch of people got together and talked about their feelings
01:15:11 ◼ ► for a while, like some kind of therapy session. No. And even therapy sessions, you should,
01:15:17 ◼ ► like right now, come out of them with a bunch of like clear action items. Like this is what
01:15:21 ◼ ► you're going to do. If there's no action items, what even happened? Just a bunch of words
01:15:33 ◼ ► needs to happen and everyone goes away. Cause I really don't like the feeling when I leave
01:15:42 ◼ ► had that more and more in Cortex brand than anything else that I've done because we are
01:15:48 ◼ ► constantly encountering things we've not dealt with before. Which I don't remember having
01:15:59 ◼ ► years since I've had these kinds of feelings. And so I need to make sure that like, I'm
01:16:04 ◼ ► really noting that stuff down well, and it's getting moved to the right places and being
01:16:10 ◼ ► handled. Like that's something I'm trying to get better at for sure. And it's something
01:16:14 ◼ ► that I'm going to have to really, really be diligent about. If the meetings will continue,
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01:18:36 ◼ ► All right, considering that you're in therapist mode today, should we try and give some help
01:18:47 ◼ ► You can always send in your questions, whether you have questions for us or you'd like some
01:18:54 ◼ ► Potospooke asks, "Since coming to college, I've been paying more attention to to-do lists
01:18:59 ◼ ► and utilizing them, and I've been having trouble with deciding which are the good tasks to
01:19:14 ◼ ► No, I believe this. If you think that something needs to be remembered, you should write it
01:19:22 ◼ ► down and then over time you can learn if you needed to remember that or not. But like some
01:19:29 ◼ ► of the stuff that I put as a task is madness, but it makes me feel better to have done it.
01:19:42 ◼ ► start recording." Now that is not a problem for me. I know I know this, but I opened you,
01:19:46 ◼ ► I'd say coffee, in one hour. So in an hour I'd already bought the coffee, but the reminder
01:20:06 ◼ ► have tasks that you think are important, they go in your to-do app. If you have tasks that
01:20:10 ◼ ► you think are "stupid," they can go in a different app. So they're not clogging things up, but
01:20:15 ◼ ► you're at least written them down and you're going to get a reminder, whether it's something
01:20:25 ◼ ► the fact that you did write it down somewhere. I do think that that is important. It's important
01:20:35 ◼ ► you get into the habit of writing stuff down because if you don't, you will have important
01:20:42 ◼ ► Yeah, I think I was zeroing in too much on the task part of it. And also you say there's
01:20:46 ◼ ► no stupid tasks, which it's like, I get it in the way that you were framing it. I think
01:21:01 ◼ ► Yeah. I think you're pushing more of an answer to this question, which I think I would summarize
01:21:09 ◼ ► as it is not possible to over capture ideas. The vast majority of people are under capturing
01:21:20 ◼ ► ideas, like the things that pop into their head. A huge number of which are tasks, like
01:21:25 ◼ ► I should do this or I should do that. If there's something that has popped into your head,
01:21:29 ◼ ► it cannot be so small as to not be worth writing down and considering later. I think thoughts
01:21:39 ◼ ► And with to-do lists, I really am now pushing the like, I think it is so good to get into
01:21:46 ◼ ► the habit of talking to Siri or whatever your assistant is and just saying like, "Remind
01:21:53 ◼ ► me later to whatever," just as a starting point. I actually did this just on our pre-chat
01:21:59 ◼ ► today. There was something earlier and that kind of stuff has just gotten real good. And
01:22:05 ◼ ► like you said, can also be, even if you don't use the reminders app or whatever the default
01:22:08 ◼ ► is on your phone, that can be the place where just a bunch of random stuff lives that you
01:22:19 ◼ ► like, "Hey, remind me to whatever in X days or tomorrow or in an hour." Like, "Oh, there's
01:22:25 ◼ ► a thing I can't do now? Just like remind me in an hour to do this thing?" Once you start
01:22:29 ◼ ► doing that, it is shocking how often you will notice if you say like, "Oh, remind me in
01:22:34 ◼ ► an hour to do whatever," that when that hour comes up later, you have already completely
01:22:39 ◼ ► forgotten the thing and are like, "Oh, right. I need to do that." So yeah, like you cannot
01:22:46 ◼ ► - Man, you saying about talking to Siri about this stuff like we're on the verge of such
01:22:56 ◼ ► - This stuff could get incredibly good. Like the ability to be able to talk to the assistant
01:23:01 ◼ ► on your phone and like with tasks and understanding your calendar and knowing that like there
01:23:08 ◼ ► is a potential here that I am actually pretty excited about and I just hope that they're
01:23:22 ◼ ► better over time, but like there is a potential huge leap that they could make if they can
01:23:32 ◼ ► - Yeah, for sure. I mean, I can see even little inklings of this. It's like a slight sidebar
01:23:53 ◼ ► - And it's fantastic. So I hit it. It says like, what's your task? I write down the task
01:23:57 ◼ ► and I say like, okay. It was like, what time? And I type in a time and it's like, where
01:24:13 ◼ ► pressing the action button. And then there's a flow that I go through, which is very quick.
01:24:18 ◼ ► And I really like it because sometimes it means I can add the task when I'm still looking
01:24:36 ◼ ► is if you're in like a real work mode, you're in an optimal scenario. So like you're, you're
01:24:41 ◼ ► on your computer and you're doing work. I feel like sometimes I'm in a real like administration
01:24:47 ◼ ► mode. You're just like doing a bunch of things in that mode. If something pops up in my head
01:24:54 ◼ ► as like, Oh, this is a thing that I should do. I won't write it down. If it's something
01:25:08 ◼ ► - Yes. That is the exception. If you can do the thing, the moment that you have thought
01:25:19 ◼ ► it. That's when it's a bad idea to write it down. I think that that use case in a sense
01:25:24 ◼ ► is quite narrow because you also just want to be sure that you're not derailing yourself
01:25:34 ◼ ► like if I'm in admin mode, that's when I'll like I'll write down the smallest number of
01:25:39 ◼ ► tasks because I'm just like I can do more things in that moment. But yeah, so it's like
01:25:44 ◼ ► if the administrative overhead of tracking the thing is not worth just clearing it immediately,
01:25:56 ◼ ► Ask Cortex question that we have, which is from Riley, who asks, "You answered a question
01:26:02 ◼ ► about how long each of you go without looking at your phone after waking up. They want to
01:26:15 ◼ ► this question because my previous answer for how long do you go before you look at your
01:26:26 ◼ ► something. And it's like, oh, what is almost certainly one of the very first things that
01:26:43 ◼ ► small to have on your to-do list? No, because I have what I call my whole boot up routine
01:26:51 ◼ ► in the morning of like, hey, welcome to consciousness, Gray. Here's the order in which you need to
01:26:57 ◼ ► do things to boot up into being a human who's like ready to go and get to work. And that
01:27:22 ◼ ► Are you getting like a dopamine hit from this? Is that one of the reasons that you like it?
01:27:29 ◼ ► So there is, there's two things that are happening here. One thing is it is totally a like get
01:27:37 ◼ ► into the swing of things, right? This is what you should be doing. You should be getting
01:27:47 ◼ ► is the vitally important work half of the day. So like just make this go nice and easy.
01:27:52 ◼ ► So I do think there is something that's like training your brain to be like, look at the
01:27:57 ◼ ► thing that you have decided it should be guiding your day. And here's 20 easy wins to start
01:28:21 ◼ ► wake up, it's like I sort of had in my head all of the things that I need to do. But Mike,
01:28:28 ◼ ► in Magic the Gathering, there's a thing called sequencing, right? Which is the order in which
01:28:32 ◼ ► you're going to play your cards. Very important. And new players underrate the value of sequencing.
01:28:44 ◼ ► it's the difference between winning and losing. And so I have slowly sequenced the morning
01:28:50 ◼ ► to just be better for me of like, yes, here's 10 things that need to happen before I like
01:28:56 ◼ ► stumble on my way to the gym or whatever I'm doing that morning. But this order of like,
01:29:03 ◼ ► no, I want to do this before this. I want to do that before this as just like the dumbest
01:29:08 ◼ ► sort of thing. Every morning it's like, okay, I need to get dressed for the day, but I also
01:29:20 ◼ ► I also want to weigh myself. The chance that I'm going to just like take off the clothes
01:29:36 ◼ ► if I don't do that one first, it's like wildly drops the probability that it's going to occur
01:29:47 ◼ ► want to do these things and like this is the order to do them. So the answer to when do
01:29:51 ◼ ► I look at my to do list is like first thing with like my barely open eyes. Like what do
01:30:06 ◼ ► world. That's the first thing I was doing. So who knows? Maybe to do will be first, but
01:30:20 ◼ ► would be before I look at my to do list. It's probably most days it's not until I get to
01:30:29 ◼ ► time for me a day at a time. It's going to remind me. So if I need to do something before
01:30:51 ◼ ► Monday that reminds me to go buy those groceries. Like I don't need to have looked at my to
01:30:56 ◼ ► do list for that to occur to me. So it's not super soon. Maybe it will become that way.
01:31:01 ◼ ► I have no idea what I will do tomorrow morning when I wake up. I have no idea what's going
01:31:08 ◼ ► to happen. You're a free man, Mike. What we find is like whatever app I put in my dock,
01:31:14 ◼ ► that's the one that will get opened. All right, well you need to really think about what that's
01:31:35 ◼ ► is a great question because we all found out that you love and you think the best way and
01:31:54 ◼ ► No, I don't deserve it. You know what? I don't deserve it. Heated seats and air conditioning
01:32:03 ◼ ► I actually do have another one that I didn't put into the show notes, but I will read to
01:32:07 ◼ ► you now because it doesn't require much action, but you might want to hear this. This comes
01:32:11 ◼ ► from Lauren who says, I would never have thought to do the thermostat hacking when we arrived
01:32:18 ◼ ► at our Hawaii resort hotel and the thermostat only went down to 68 degrees Fahrenheit and
01:32:23 ◼ ► did not actually even come close to the actual temperature. I immediately jumped on YouTube
01:32:32 ◼ ► much more comfortable. Thank you, Gray. Oh, you're welcome. Look at me improving lives.
01:32:39 ◼ ► I'm still not sure about the legality of these things or the safety of these things, but
01:32:50 ◼ ► you're sitting on? So I just have to say to Matthew, thank you. Oh no. I don't know how
01:32:58 ◼ ► this never occurred to me before, but I am going to do this. You could get one of those
01:33:03 ◼ ► massage things. What do you mean by the mass? What are you, what are you thinking of? What's
01:33:12 ◼ ► things that also have heat options. Hmm. So you could get like one of these like massage
01:33:27 ◼ ► fancy. Yeah. I don't know how this thought never entered my head. It just like, it just
01:33:31 ◼ ► never occurred to me, but uh, yeah, I'm going to think this through. Yeah. This is 100%
01:33:53 ◼ ► Rings trilogy. Unbelievable to me. Never seen them. That is changing. If you are a cortex
01:34:01 ◼ ► member, if you sign up at get more text.com, not only do you get access to ad free longer
01:34:07 ◼ ► versions of each and every episode of cortex, including an ad free back catalog, you also
01:34:13 ◼ ► get access to the more text special episodes feed. This feed includes all of the specials
01:34:19 ◼ ► that we've done in the past, all of the text adventures in the RPGs and now the first episode
01:34:26 ◼ ► where we have watched Lord of the Rings, the fellowship of the ring. We've watched it together.
01:34:37 ◼ ► to be doing three episodes, one for each movie and they're going to be available just two
01:34:43 ◼ ► more Texans. So pumped for this. We've recorded the first one. I could just never hold it
01:34:48 ◼ ► in my mind that Mike had not seen these movies because it's such an unbelievable fact to
01:34:59 ◼ ► we talked about this a bunch and in our conversations I eventually realized like I have not seen
01:35:05 ◼ ► these movies in a long time. Like it has been a long time since I sat down and like properly
01:35:11 ◼ ► watched them through. And so yeah, we're like, you know what we're doing for cortex? This
01:35:22 ◼ ► to it right now and we are recording the other two episodes and it's like, ah, I'm so excited.