164: Screen Crimes: The Ghost Device
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I feel like a task voyeur. Oh, yeah? Who are you voying on? You. Well... I don't know if I like that, Mike. Yeah, I'm in the Asana now. Okay. Obviously, I'm only seeing the tasks that I should see, which is good. I wouldn't want to see what's going on everywhere else. I mean, wouldn't you want to see, though? Aren't you curious, Mike? I mean, curious, yes. But also, I know it would be horrifying. Kind of like Ark of the Covenant kind of opening feeling is what I imagine would happen. Uh-huh.

But I don't know why it's weird to me, but just seeing how somebody else adds a task and what they put on that task...

It's just a weird thing because I don't share to-do tasks with anybody. And so now being in our shared Asana and seeing the way that you like, the tasks that you create, which tasks have due dates, which tasks are assigned to other people. It's just a fascinating thing to see. And I'm also terrified of it. Like, I don't want to put anything in there. It's a very intimidating place to be. I don't mean to intimidate you, Mike.

It's not you. You know, I've never used Asana, so I don't yet understand how to deal with it, you know? Okay, well, so let me actually, this is a good time, let me try to shortcut you on a little bit of some of the things that I have been figuring out about Asana, having spent...

Basically, the last week has been a really intense Grey Industries kind of reorg, clean up, doing everything and like getting it all over into Asana, which is one of those things where you

boy, oh boy, has it made me realize this was way overdue because the number of projects and the number of areas of responsibility that I was trying to track in like different ways or across people was just so

so much that like bringing it all into one place has really made me like face the scope and size of like all of the things that need to happen. So it's been a real crash course in the move, but I could not be happier. But also I kind of wish I could have convinced me of two

two years ago maybe to get started on this but the best time to plant an asana is two years ago and the second best time is now I mean it's always these things that you've got to go through the fire you know and if you don't then you're just not going to do it okay to have a tangent here the thing that I'm aware of in like the venture capital world that I

I think the investors are bringing to the table in many ways is, oh, they've seen companies go through the transitions as they get bigger. And so they can act as kind of guides to try to make the changes before they're necessary. Yes. I have a very good friend who is a VC and one of the things that he does is he does

One of the things that I've learned in the many conversations I've had with him is it seems like a lot of what a good investor will do, it's providing you with structure, support, and paths to follow that...

a startup needs if they're going to grow into a real thing there's a way in which when I'd heard this in the past I always thought that was kind of this sort of person overselling themselves but I just don't think that that's true anymore now having done just like the teeny tiny version of having a thing that's gotten bigger and more complicated over time like

someone else could have shown me five years ago like hey you should do this now this is clearly the way that it's heading and this would like make a big difference so it's funny actually I just had something like this come up like yesterday well

I was thinking to myself, like I wanted to let you know how many outstanding invoices we had to pay over the next couple of months for product stuff. And I was thinking, I was like having to rack my brain of like, oh, so which one? Where is it? You know, really having to think about it, like which invoices have we got? Which products are coming up? And I realized we need a system to raise purchase orders within our own company. So at any time we can understand how much money is committed to...

in voices that have not yet been sent to us, you know, like we've lost A for something. I don't know why this has happened to me more with Cortex brand than Relay. I think maybe just in the like,

what the businesses do and how they function. Cortex is more like a regular business where Relay is a little bit more irregular, I think, in the way that it functions. I think it's the very fact that we have inventory. Like, actually, as soon as you have said this now, I think this is the exact same thing for any of these projects, right? Like, you're going along and everything is fine. Like, we started with the theme system journal and then we, like, add the subtle notebook. We add, like, one product at a time.

And I'm only just realizing now, of course, until this moment, we've been basically mentally tracking. Oh, yeah, we've got to pay for the journals. Oh, yeah, we've got to pay for the sidekick. Like we've just been kind of knowing that that's coming. But there's like the multiplication in complexity, right? Keeping track of three projects is like,

six times more complicated than keeping track of two. And like that's what happens where you add like one more thing and suddenly you go, whoa, this is like way over the line of being able to keep track of. So yes, let's do that. So it's very funny.

To be in this position where the things that I used to hate dealing with when I worked in my corporate job, like raising purchase orders and dealing with invoices, I now understand why companies do these things. Because if there is money to be spent on something, you've got to only spend the amount that can be spent. And whatever has to be paid later on has to be put aside. Like you can't just wing it.

It's very funny to me to kind of just be fumbling my way through and bouncing into these just very common things. I am very aware that too many of our listeners, when I say this stuff, they just are head in hands. But I actually find it for myself and for us kind of adorable that we're just kind of like,

here we are, like, la-di-da, like, ah, you know, how's it going? Oh, this is going well. And they're like, oh, we don't know how much money we've got to spend. You know, I don't know why, but it's like, I like it. I like having these moments where I realize what I need and work out a way to solve it. And at the same time, I feel like it means that we're just adding what we need at the time that we need it. And that works for me. Because there's some times where I think to myself, I wished I could put all of my time into trying to grow this business, but I can't. And

I also other times don't want to because that would mean giving up everything else that I love to do. It's the side project, really, in its own little way. And that means it grows and shapes itself in just like a funny way sometimes. Everything is a trade-off, right? Like every hour you spend on one thing is an hour you can't spend on another thing. But this is the byproduct of...

Like the side project has become more successful, which makes it more complicated. And that's why we have kind of bumbled into these things as it's gone along. And then on the reverse side, for me, I think the thing again, like I've been forced to reconceptualize is I was just...

really determined to think of myself as a person on my own who happened to work with others and it's a similar kind of thing like oh has the number of people I worked with really changed that much like it's gone up

a little but it's like oh but the Cortex brand project has become more important as it's become more successful so that has more involvement like there's more people vaguely over there but it's like just gone over that threshold where it's like I cannot hold on to this conception anymore like it's hugely important and

Also, just very much realizing, like even on a small team, as things get more complicated, like, oh, why do big companies do all of this tracking stuff? Because in big companies, people have to be able to make decisions autonomously or semi-autonomously, having information at hand to do that.

And when you're like a really small team, it's easy to just keep the communication lines always open. But as it gets just slightly bigger, it is now better to have like this is where the information is. And so like everyone can know what everybody else is doing or like what's related to what, what's the current stock order, what's the current bank balance. Oh, it's better to know the current bank balance, not by asking Mike what he remembers we have out as orders, but like having an actual system that's keeping track of it.

But I think for both of us, like these things have just like gone over the line a little bit and be like, oh, okay, got to formalize it more. And there's a reason that like bigger companies formalize these things in this way. That is part of bringing Cortex brand into like the greater gray incorporated world of like what is going on over here. So welcome, Mike.

I also think it is very funny because you are talking about like, oh, you're seeing what's being added to Cortex. It's like, ah, we have not yet turned our attention to the Cortex stuff. This is just like incidental things that have happened to pop into various people's heads to add on to the list. It's like it has been all the like gray industry side of things for now. I will say it's been very interesting using Asana. And I want to try to like shortcut you on, I think, Asana.

When you're using it, the thing that has been the absolute strangest thing for me to really try to wrap my head around, and that is in Asana, the fundamental thing that is different here is it is a database of tasks. It looks at first like it's every other project manager where it's like, oh, here's projects. And then I have tasks inside of those projects.

But that's not really what it's doing at the fundamental level. Really, it is just these unrelated task entries in a database. And like that is the foundation of what it's doing. And so...

Everything else, including the project that this task is part of, is functionally just metadata attached to the task. And that allows some really interesting things like the thing that sold me of, oh, a task can exist inside of more than one project at a time because everything

It's really just metadata that is being added to the... It's not like a folder that the thing is in. And that has an enormous number of upsides. But the one thing that has been totally breaking my brain with Asana, which has really led to me trying to reconceptualize a lot of the ways I set things up and think about things, is it means that there is no order to the tasks. They're just...

floating around in that database. I have never seen a task manager do something in that way where there isn't the canonical order of these things. You can kind of like force it to be in order in various ways, but it's not like

the starting place like you're writing a list what are you doing when you're writing a list of things on a piece of paper you're putting them in order it's like such a basic concept that I almost feel like I was blind to the very idea that everything I've been thinking about is a list in order and that is not at all what Asana is doing and I think that is like the biggest mental shift to get around it's like

That is not how this works. It gives some really interesting advantages, but it is very strange to think about when you're actually setting things up for the first time. And I guess that's because, as you were saying, that like the tasks, they relate to something else, not just to them being a list of tasks. Like they sit within different projects and because they can sit in different orders in different projects based on what might happen before or after that.

that if you just look at all of your tasks it's not going to make any sense you have to kind of like is it like project first task second the key piece of information is who is it assigned to so a task is assigned to a person so here's the huge upside and this is also the thing that like the secondary thing that really sold me is that when you start using this you realize oh because the tasks don't have this intrinsic order

It means that each person can arrange the tasks and view them and categorize them in ways that are separate from every other person. So the primary thing from the user perspective is here are all of the tasks that are assigned to you. You then can like I think the their ideal thing here in a sense is.

there's like a little thing at the top which is just called my tasks you would just go in there and start grinding through all of the things that are available to you and that are assigned to you right now and again i think it's so interesting because it's like oh of course when you're distributing work across a bunch of different people

The order of those tasks doesn't matter to the individuals at any particular time. Like, where does this exist in the broader hierarchy? It's really only the question of what can I do right now? And that's where it'll let you see

if you have a task that is blocking someone else and it will let you see if there's a task that's assigned to you, but you can't get to it yet because someone else needs to finish it. And so they're blocking you. But that's kind of about all the order that's really in the thing. I just keep like turning this over in my head because it's just like is not the way that I work. But I think it is the correct way to do this when you're working with multiple people.

And so it's very interesting, like having gone through this with my assistant, it's like, oh, I can already see the very different ways that we work. It's like, I want to kind of set up a list, which is basically I should do these same things in this order every day. Like that's how I want to work through stuff. And Asana will let me do that. But like my assistant's job is very different where it's like, oh, what is she seeing? She's seeing, hey, a bunch of things were assigned to you overnight and

and then she's able to like immediately triage like oh which of these does she want to do today which of these does she want to do tomorrow and she's able to move it across like a traditional kanban board which i would never use for like sorting like the incoming currently working on pending future tasks

It's like, oh, of course. Like, we're each doing very different kind of work. My work is much more reliable. Hers is much more sporadic and across, like, a lot of different things. So she has to have a system that allows her to,

see things and quickly triage them and i want a system that is like here are the things that i have preset for myself to do like in this order that i want to see them in this order but like other people if those tasks are blocking them they don't care what that order is on my own list it just is like okay they can see that like i need to do something that is blocking them

And that I think is just like what an advantage because we've discussed many times like the problems of these kinds of tools.

is that they ultimately force everyone to work kind of the same way, which is where everyone's like a little unhappy all the time, which is kind of how I've always felt about Notion. Like, oh, everybody has to look at this exact same document in this same way because we're like literally typing a document that everyone can read. So Asana just like,

totally blast through that and I think it's great. What if you are like me where like I like to have like due dates and due times on events does that not

disrupt this way of working? No, so the due date is just part of the metadata on the task. Because when you're saying about the task list, you mean like the master list, like the big overall list of all of the tasks, and then everybody else just sees their own, like they get their own little list of stuff that they've got to be dealing with? Yeah, so even for me, right, like I'm organizing the whole system, right, like I'm getting like the highest level view.

Asana acts as a two-tier tool for me. So organizing the company, what are the priorities? What are the high-level goals that we're trying to achieve? Blah, blah, blah. And then that actions down into like, here are the specific projects that we're trying to complete. Those projects then have tasks. But the moment that I'm not in like,

thinking about the high level stuff mode. I too am just going into Asana looking at a list of the things that are assigned to me and that's what I'm working through. Now, I am the person who, since I'm going to use Asana for literally everything in my life, I'm also doing, I'm putting in like all of the routine stuff that I was doing from last year and like the stuff that I want to work on this year from my theme. So I have like the absurd little tasks that are also just assigned to me that no one else has to see. But that's where like

this is what is really happening. It's like it exists on the assigned to you level and each individual person gets to organize it however they want. But if something does have a due date, you will see that as part of like the task that you are assigned to. Or you can see that like, oh, this task is part of a project that is assigned at a date in the future. So that information also travels through. I have to say, hugely impressed. I will also say the thing that I want to plug on this is...

Anyone who has listened to this show will know that it's like, what is the one great thing that I've always complained about with all task managers other than OmniFocus is they have no concept of this defer date of like, you can't start the thing until X date. And

asana falls into that same category it has something called a start date but it doesn't act like the thing that i want it to it doesn't have like a true defer date i was like oh no is this going to be the complete deal breaker that just like ruins this whole thing for me and the answer is no because you can also define

any new custom metadata that you want to for any task. And then within Asana, it's like nearly Turing complete. There's like a bunch of rules that you can have run on all tasks to like treat them however you want or move them around automatically when different things happen. And so I have been able to sort of like shortcuts for macOS. There's a thing that they just call rules, which is like shortcuts for Asana. And so...

I've been able to program Asana to basically be custom to me that all tasks that are assigned to me automatically get created like this deferred date metadata thing. And then how my tasks are displayed to me depends on that deferred date.

And again, what is amazing is like no one else has to even know that this is happening to these tasks. Like this is just for me to like arrange them the way that I want it. But anyone else could do the exact same thing. Like if they have some picky thing that they want to add to the tasks, they can just do it on their end. And no one else has to even know that that's part of what's going on with these tasks or part of what's happening with this system. So I am huge.

Hugely, hugely impressed with Asana. Only thing that I don't like is the iOS app, which is surprisingly limited in a bunch of ways. But I already have put in a little task for Asana to be like, seriously consider hiring an iOS developer to just make a better widget for Asana. So that might be a thing that comes to pass someday. I mean...

You know the iOS app like you're probably not gonna be doing all the big complex stuff on it anyway, right? Yeah, that's exactly it like all I would really want is just a better widgets and maybe also just a thing on my watch like I'm not trying to do all the complicated stuff and Asana has like this API that lots of companies have written stuff again So it's already been in the back of my brain. I like I'm invested in this enough that

this is going to be the tool going forward. This might actually be the first time for me that it makes sense to try to like get a custom piece of software made to like solve a problem that I want with this thing. But other than that, very impressed, very happy. And you will be too, Mike. You will be too.

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Back in 2018, Apple introduced something called Screen Time back in iOS 12. And the idea of this feature is that it would watch what you're doing on your device and give you statistics about it. The apps that you're using, the notifications that you get, that kind of stuff. This was all a part of like a thing that was

that Google and Apple were doing at the time. I don't remember what they called it, but it was this idea of like, hey, we're looking out for you. We don't want you to overuse your phone. There was a phrase that they used that

Digital well-being? Yes, I think, yeah, that's what it was. Something like that. It's kind of like how every once in a while there's a year where like three movies on the same topic get released. It felt like that, like every software company that year had like gotten the word about the good news on digital well-being. We're here to save you dot, dot, dot,

From us? Dot, dot, dot. And also from anyone trying to make laws against us. Because there was some pressure. There were pressure groups being set up, that kind of thing. I remember around this time. And so both at the exact same time, Google and Apple introduced these features of looking out for you, suggesting you stop using apps, allowing you to set limits on apps, and all this kind of stuff.

And so then we decided on episode 82, an episode called Screen Crimes, that we would share this with each other. So I would share my screen time data and you would share yours with me. So you could actually see what our devices were really being used for, no matter what it was we said they were being used for. And I've really wanted to do this again. And so we're going to share them today. In preparing for this episode...

I realized just how buggy this feature continues to be on iOS. These are the bugs that I have encountered in trying to prepare for this episode. Screen time turned itself off at some point in the last few weeks. So I do not have a full seven days data. I have six days because it just turned itself off. And I text you and said, please make sure it's turned on because mine turned off. In general, it's still giving completely different information on all of my devices, even though they're all turned on.

So my iPhone, my iPad, and my Mac, when I go to set the setting to show me the data across all devices, gives me completely different numbers. And there is some kind of ghost device that is currently reporting a 24-hour-a-day usage on a website, and I don't know where it's coming from.

So these are my caveats. I ended up taking my data from my Mac because it gave the best overall picture of what I was doing. So I'm going to send you my screenshot now. You could look at my first if you like. And I'll have the link in the show notes if people want to look too. What screen time is doing is three things. It's like your usage of applications,

your notifications that you receive, like how many there are, and also what they call pickups. So when you use your device, what is the first thing you open when you use your device? Yeah, let me just also back up the bugginess of this system, which I just have not thought about this in absolutely forever. I think since Apple rolled out the focus modes, I was able to basically not look at this at all because I was previously trying to use...

Okay, I feel like Apple has these...

three or four interconnected systems that could really use a revamp and it's like it's the screen time it's downtime and it's the family sharing settings it feels like all three of these are sitting on top of some shared database of like what's going on that is very buggy i think screen time is the database so like over the years they have added features on top so app limits downtime and focus modes all got added on top of screen time

And I think now screen time is this database of information which other things rely on, but itself needs to be looked at, I think is maybe the best way to put it. Yeah. I tried to turn it back on from my Mac and it was like...

The data was garbage. Like, oh, do you know what I'm doing with my time, Mike? I spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week on Finder. That's what I'm doing, apparently, according to my Mac. Last week, I spent 133 hours and 11 minutes on Bloomberg.com.

I don't think you did. No, I did. I've got to read the reports. I need to know. I need to know. I'm hooked into the terminal. So yeah, I'm going to be giving you my phone information because that is like the only useful thing that I was able to get. So let me send that to you now. Very fair. I feel like my phone stuff is...

pretty accurate looking at just the phone but how do you feel about this for well all the things when i looked at it on my phone it felt okay ish and then when i wanted to try and get a bigger picture though and i ended up finding the data set that made the most sense like when i was looking on my iphone it was showing i'd been using safari for three hours in the entire week and then when i looked on my mac it was like eight hours which feels also inaccurate but better

So that was why I ended up going with this data set. Yeah, I know, but I'm just like, I'm finding my brain immediately breaking because it's like, ah, 22 hours of daily usage. It's like, I don't even know how to start thinking about this. Well, that's because of the 133 hours on Bloomberg. Yeah, I guess so. But even still, it's breaking my brain. I mean, the immediate one at the top of my list is the combo, the one-two punch of YouTube and Bellatro. What's Bellatro? Oh, God.

It's a video game. Oh, you have brought this one up to me. I think you pitched this to me on episode of more text. I just haven't gotten a chance to actually try it yet. This was like wild card poker, but sort of what you were saying. It's like you get points for better poker hands. It's like a deck building poker game. Is that what it was? Correct. You're like, you're adapting your deck and you're adapting your hands via these joker cards, which provide different properties that away the points are scored.

And it's fantastic. I love this game so much. I play it every day. I play it all the time, as you can see. And then he 10 hours last week.

I play Bellatro a lot whenever I'm commuting. I play it as a way to kind of wind down in the evening. Like I play it all the time. And YouTube is paired with that a lot. And a lot of that YouTube time, of which there was 15 hours recorded last week, it's podcasts. So I watch video podcasts. And typically I will watch a video podcast and picture in picture while I'm playing Bellatro. It's like a perfect pairing. I love it. Yeah.

I have also found that YouTube is surprisingly good for podcasts in a strange way. Like, here's the advantage that YouTube has over like a normal podcast player that I've just become more and more sensitized to is I'm subscribed to like a ton of shows in my overcasts.

Because I like to be able to just like have a big bank to draw from and delete everything that just seems boring and try to like find the thing that kind of like catches my interest. Right. But the problem that I have with that is I just never really thought about this until I started listening to more podcasts on YouTube is if I have like a topic show and I'm like looking for the interesting topics and I'm like deleting the things that seem boring.

The problem is I'm not able to know which of these episodes that seem boring might actually be super interesting because there's nothing like a view count. There's no even just like the algorithm is trying to bring me something to see that I might not have thought of otherwise. And I feel like that to me has been a

surprising advantage with watching podcasts on YouTube is like, oh, I might not have watched this, but the view count is really high. So maybe there's something interesting here or like it's bringing me things. And the very fact that YouTube brings it to me just makes

gives it like a higher credence of like, oh, I'll try listening to that even if it doesn't sound immediately interesting. Or maybe like, even just the thing like, I don't know who this guest is, but YouTube thinks I might be interested. So like, I'll give it a try and see if this person is interesting. And I'm just like, increasingly aware of how in a traditional podcast player, I have access to none of that information.

It's like ironically I'm doing more of a kind of self-reinforcement of listening to the same kinds of things with an un-algorithmic source like a podcast than the YouTube algorithmic source. So this is a long way of saying I'm not surprised to hear that you're listening to a lot of podcasts on YouTube because I've also noticed an increase in this behavior for myself as well. I find all of those ways you're talking about podcast discovery to be interesting. What do you mean?

Well, because it's still not at all what I'm doing. The way in which I am consuming podcasts on YouTube is still very old school in a way. So it really is just one set of podcasts. So I'm a big fan of a podcast network called Kind of Funny, and they mostly do gaming stuff with some pop culture stuff.

And they have a really wonderful studio and they record in person in a studio. And so I just prefer to watch the video. And a lot of the time I'll have YouTube, like my phone locked and I'm listening, just walking around and I might grab my phone if something happens and I want to see what just happened, you know, like maybe some kind of visual gag or whatever. Yeah.

but I really could just listen to them in overcast as well. And it would be fine, but I just prefer having the opportunity to also watch the video. I do not use it as a recommendation thing. Like I want to listen to all of their shows that I like to listen to. I don't kind of pick and choose that way, but,

I know lots of people do. And I think what you're describing is the reason that YouTube is becoming a bigger and bigger and bigger part of the podcasting ecosystem is because people want to consume podcasts this way. I think this couples hand in hand with the

explosion in interview podcasts over the last five to ten years right that like interview podcasts do kind of need this as a way to try and surface to people if a show is interesting yeah they need it more and they're well served by the algorithm in a way that like other shows are not but yeah it's why even when i'm thinking about it youtube is capturing for me a pfft

Maybe even now it's like, oh, the majority of interviews, I'm probably going to listen to them on YouTube and like I'm less inclined to do interview shows in Overcast. My favorite kinds of podcasts are the ones that benefit from there being a long running relationship between the hosts and a chemistry and a camaraderie.

And I think that algorithms do not help that kind of content to blossom. No. From the producer side or from the listener side. But when they

the episodes are kind of singular because they're having a different makeup of people on them. I think that algorithms do help that, but that's also just not a kind of content that I like to consume. I don't listen to really any shows like that. With one exception, which is a podcast called The Town, which is just an audio podcast and it's about kind of like Hollywood news and I really like it because the host is so good. But my favorite episodes are the Monday episodes where he has a fixed guest. Like,

Like the same person every Monday. So, you know, that is why YouTube is so high for me. I mean, along with all of the other YouTube videos that I watch, like YouTube is my number one source of entertainment. Like, yeah, if I want to watch something, if just for me, if I want to watch something, it will always be YouTube.

very rarely with my wife. If we're going to watch something, it will be a more traditional television show. But if I'm watching something on my own, it's most likely going to be from YouTube. Yeah, that's the same thing for me. Any solo viewing, it's like YouTube is the first port of call every time for like, what is it that I'm going to be watching? The only time it's not is when

Someone I follow on YouTube has posted like members only content on like a subscription service like Patreon. But like I still feel like I'm still just watching YouTube. That is like still functionally the same thing. But yeah, it's like YouTube is totally the first port of call. That is the beauty of YouTube as a thing, which is YouTube is where you get the thing that's just for you. Like it's the what is the weird niche you care about?

that people in your life don't care about, it's on YouTube. Like, you'll find it. Oh, yeah. And that's why I believe it's, like, such a fantastic, like, solo viewing experience because you can just... You can watch someone make knives out of, like...

gummy bears you know like because that's what you want to watch someone's doing it you can go watch it yeah and that's also why it is the solo viewing because it just gets so tailored to you it's like ah yes I want to listen to someone talk about their experience at a theme park for six hours like great is that very shareable content normally no

No, it's the kind of content that if you were to show someone you're watching it together, you feel kind of embarrassed. But when you're watching it on your own, you're like, yes, where's hour seven? But this does actually bring a problem with this entire screen time system, right? Which is overcast is 20 minutes right down at the bottom. But that's not accurate, right? Yeah, that is not accurate. All it is measuring is what is on your screen. It's not measuring what is being used.

And I think that is a fundamental problem with a system like this. Yeah. Because, like, I've never tried to set an app limit on Overcast or, like, an app that you use in the background. Yeah.

But my thinking would be that I could put a 10 minute app limit on Overcast, but listen to it in the background for four hours. So I have just had a flashback to using this system. And I literally tried to do exactly what you're saying, put a timer on all kinds of media consumption, including Overcast. And you are correct. I ran into this exact problem of like, oh, I only want to listen to Overcast for an hour a day. Well, guess what? I'm never going to hit that limit because I'm not

actively using the app for an hour a day. This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Google Gemini. I tried Gemini a couple of days ago, the Gemini Live, where you can talk to it. And it really is wild to have a full-on conversation with this thing. I was messing around and asked it to give me some ideas for hosting a party during the holidays. And when it started giving results, I could just stop it and say, okay, but what about something low-key for a smaller group? And then it just adjusts to that and you can keep going until you get an idea that you want.

I think that's what I would use it for most. Brainstorming things. It's so good if you don't know where to start or you hit a wall. You just go to Gemini. It helps you get the ball rolling. But you can use it for all kinds of stuff. If you want to learn something new, you can have it give you advice. Ask it to explain Bitcoin in simple terms. Or you can have it quiz you on microbiology. Imagine being a student and you've got this personal tutor on hand.

It's hard to explain. You really have to play around with it, see how it listens to you, responds, adapts to your style of conversation. Just try it out. It's free. Our thanks to Google Gemini for their support of this show and all of Relay. There's another place where you can get statistics that are kind of like this. So in the battery statistics. So I just went in, in the last 10 days, I've had 15 hours of overcast usage based on battery statistics.

but 20 minutes in screen time and also in the last 10 days 28 hours of YouTube because 14 hours is in the background because I'm just listening to it like a podcast right and so like if I wanted to set an app limit on myself or this is also using parental controls on somebody else I could set them

10 hours a week on YouTube or whatever, but they could just listen infinitely in the background. Now, I don't know if that's necessarily what you'd be concerned about, but if you were...

this system doesn't provide that for you, you know? I completely forgot that there's this totally parallel system. I'm just going to send you what mine looks like because there's definitely bugs in this system. So here's my battery usage from the last week. I was like, oh, this will be interesting to compare. And it's like, oh no, this data is all garbage. But for a different reason, I have this wild bug that I have tried to fix multiple times. I have contacted the developers for the app Portal, which is this audio player app

And my phone is convinced that I am running this audio player 24 hours a day, every day. So I have like 222 and 20 minutes of background usage of portal, which I can absolutely guarantee is not the case. So like,

Like, why are there multiple incorrect ways of trying to track what you're using on your phone? Like, this really feels like, you know what? Apple needs to do what we're doing. They need to do a reorg of like, how are we tracking what people are doing on their phone? Because these systems are just wild. I understand why a battery usage thing would be separate.

Because there are apps that do just run in the background and they take a sip at your battery, but they do run in the background. But then you do run into the situations that we're talking about where there are apps that are explicitly designed to run in the background that then do not show up in your screen time, which is essentially a log of your usage.

Maybe what actually needs to happen is there are two different things, but there needs to be an overall usage set of data. I understand why you might want to just track something that shows on a screen, but what about all of the usage of my phone? Like,

I wouldn't personally feel a need to do something with it. But, you know, if you wanted to consider your digital well-being, maybe that would be I need to consume less content, right? Yeah, you need to know how you are actually using it. Yeah, and you can't. You can't get that data in a reliable way. I mean, let alone the fact

these systems don't work very well, but even if they did, it still wouldn't be the accurate set of information. Yeah, so I feel like that is, from the moment I was looking at this screenshot of your stuff, that's the thing that's been in the background of my mind. It's like, what is this even showing, actually? And it's showing some strange...

subset of all of the data when what we would actually want is usage. Because, yeah, that was exactly what I was trying to do when I was using downtime. And I remember it particularly being around media like I want to limit media consumption. But actually, the vast majority of my media consumption is audio, which is completely untracked by this whole thing. And meanwhile, every single second that Finder is on the screen on my Mac is like diligently logged as though I am there just like staring right at it.

It's just like not giving what we would really want. But there is still stuff in here which is interesting. Like, for example, the fact that last week I spent a cumulative hour in email looking at the way this is broken up from 30 minutes to the mail app and then like another 20 minutes to Readall and then another 25 minutes to Spark. So what is also happening here because these are different apps and different platforms, they're...

they're trying to work out like the com dot something is like, yes, that doesn't exist on this platform. So it's like trying to work out what it is, but you can kind of work out that between smart email, spark desktop, a mail, there's two entries for spark and one entry for mail. Hmm.

And I think that's great. And we're going to see it as we go through my notifications and pickup data. The amount of time I spend in email is just less and less over the years. And I like seeing that data there. And in an entire week period that I only spent an hour in email just is so much better than it has been for me at other different parts of my working life, which I love. Yeah. That is kind of what I was thinking towards is...

It still seems to be like the activity data is like just not very helpful. No, but the notifications and the pickups is actually trying to get at something true and I feel like it's particularly useful for the phone like the phone is the absolute epicenter of like the usefulness for notifications and pickups like

Like I completely forgot that it was even tracking that. And it's like, oh, yeah, this is a thing that I do want to kind of review every once in a while. Oh, you know what? I should create a repeating Asana task to like do that just to like check this out every once in a while. Because Mike, if you say you want to do something, but you don't actually capture it as an actionable item that you're going to fit somewhere in your life, like what are you even doing? It's not even true. You've not even done it.

assigned to me straight into my tasks. But yeah, this is the stuff that is like significantly more interesting and exciting

I feel like once again Mike is a very popular boy 2000 notifications from messages it's probably like half of that right because it is double counting some stuff like I just looked on my iPhone statistics for last week on my iPhone I got 700 notifications for messages not 2000 but it is probably around 1000 I would expect

But what I do find fascinating about that is I have a bunch of group threads on mute. So like I get so many more messages than this, which that's funny. But yeah, I mean, but that doesn't surprise me. That is how I communicate with people. I like to send messages. You know, you're not going to find tons of phone call data in here because that's not what I'm doing. Yeah. And then kind of like going down, Abode is my home security system, which is also why like the home app is up there because we get

lots of notifications like doors opening and closing windows opening and closing that kind of stuff okay that's what that is i didn't realize okay do you and to do this they're doing their thing along with clock it's like that's all my alarms uh i have to think about how many alarms i set every day but you can kind of average it out that's like 10 alarms i was just like doing six days worth of data 63 alarms okay uh

It takes 10 alarms to get a mic out of bed. You know what? Whatever you got to do, man, to get out of bed. If it takes 10 alarms, that's what it takes. Soon it's not going to be alarms. It's going to be one little person that's going to be getting me out of bed. I'm not going to need alarms anymore. We'll see. WhatsApp, that is one that's creeping up the list.

This is just as a function of meeting new people in London. People don't use messages here. They use WhatsApp. That is how everybody communicates. It's only becoming more and more prevalent that WhatsApp is moving up and up and up in my life as a communication system. I was thinking about this. I would be very surprised. I put this down now. We can check it later on. I would be very surprised if WhatsApp...

WhatsApp was not on my home screen when we do state of the apps this year. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. And like, this is a thing of like, I'm already getting a sense of like my home screen is going to look very different by the time we get there. Cause there's like a few apps that are already starting to vie their way into being very likely to be moving to the home screen. So I'm going to have to find like two or maybe three apps

apps to remove from my main home screen. That's the thing. WhatsApp is going to be one of them. I think that makes its way in. Yeah, I was just looking. So I have I have for years like vehemently refused to use WhatsApp. I'm like, I just do not want another communication channel like at all costs. Like I will do anything I can.

But I will easily bet that like WhatsApp will be on your home screen next year, because even for me, it didn't cross over into like my top list for notifications. But the dam did break this year of like, oh, there were suddenly three contacts who all needed to use WhatsApp. And I was like, I can't fight this anymore. Like, I have to give in. And so I was like, great.

now I too have WhatsApp it's like I finally lost this battle that I somehow thought I could be like the only person to survive from but you probably don't need this top tip but I'm going to share this top tip because this was a thing that's frustrated me of WhatsApp forever was that say you have three people that send you a message right

and you have a badge like three on the little badge thing. If you opened WhatsApp and looked at one message, it would clear the badge completely. Yeah, that has happened to me. What's the top tip? You can change this now. They have added a setting. For years, they did not have this as something that you could change. It was just that was how WhatsApp worked.

But now, if you go into WhatsApp, you go into settings, you go into notifications, there is a toggle called clear badge. Okay. You turn that off. Immediately. And it will maintain the badge for you. I want to share this tip with as many people as possible because it has significantly changed my feelings towards WhatsApp because I sometimes...

would be like, there is a message in there that I want to get to. And I was terrified to open new message notifications because it will clear the number away. And then I would forget that I had to go and respond to a friend about meeting for lunch or something. Thank you so much for that. Because I have already, even with just a few contacts in there, that's already caused me problems several times. Precisely because I'm not used

using it a lot so i've accidentally cleared something and i don't get back to it for weeks because it's like it doesn't come up that often so uh great that is uh immediately using that absolutely insane to me that that they didn't do it this way and then added the feature and didn't make that the default i don't understand why they think people want to live their life that way but

Apparently the developers of WhatsApp do. I don't know. That feels to me like user engagement. That's what they're trying to go for, right? Someone has a spreadsheet where they want to do something like messages per opening and they're trying to optimize for it and then not taking the badge away. But I just don't know why you would care about that if you made WhatsApp. They're not...

selling something based on engagement. Yeah, that's true. Maybe it's just... Yeah, just a bad decision that they made. I have Whoop in here, which I know is a thing that people will ask about. I'm wearing a Whoop band...

I don't know what I think about it yet. This is something that we will talk about later on in the year, though, I think. I was bullying you to give it a try. I wasn't sure if you ever really, really did, so that caught my attention straight away, is that you've got the woop, but we'll save that. I wear it every day. We'll save that for a future conversation. Ooh, interesting, interesting. Duolingo...

Sitting down there. I don't understand how Duolingo is only on 15 notifications because I feel like Duolingo is always up in my business. Yeah, that's their whole deal, isn't it? Maybe I'm just very good. I am on a 403-day streak of Romanian. Very good. Forte bun, in fact, you could say, Grey. Yeah. Yeah.

I couldn't help but notice that the New York Times word game thing was on there. I'm just curious, which game is it for you? Because I have recently gotten completely addicted to one of the games, and I just wanted to know if it's the same one. Which one is it? So...

I wouldn't say I'm addicted, but me and Idina tend to play together the mini crosswords. Oh, the mini crosswords. Okay. So I got my mom a subscription to the New York Times games a couple of years ago because she was playing Wordle. And this was just one of those things where, you know,

You pay attention to like, especially with parents. I want my mom to stay as sharp as she possibly can. Right? And she does. She's a very intelligent woman and I want that to remain that way. And when I got a hint that she was really into word games, you know, I'm like, all right, great. And so I bought her a subscription and she plays all of them. I think Spelling Bee is her favorite. Every time I play Spelling Bee, this is without fail, I fall asleep. Yeah.

The game sends me to sleep, so I can't play Spelling Bee anymore. But we signed up for Connections. I was playing Connections and signed up for that, but then found that the mini crossword is my favorite. Okay. So I was just shocked that I signed up for this because I just hate word games. I have always felt like I should be the kind of person who does crossword puzzles, and I just...

I cannot do them, partly because my spelling is just absolutely atrocious. There's just something about word games I cannot do. I have never enjoyed any of them. But the one that did get me, which I love, is the connections. So if you haven't played, they give you this 4x4 grid where there's one word written on each of these squares. And...

What you have to do is find four words that belong in one category four times. So at the end, you will end up with like, ah, you've correctly put together the four words into the four categories. And it's a game like I will really, really push it of you have to play it a few times to kind of get what the game is after.

But what I really like is I feel like it gives the satisfaction that people are getting out of crosswords, which is something like, oh, that was a really interesting question that led to this word in an unexpected way. Like, it feels like that's the satisfaction that people get. But...

i don't have to spell or come up with the word the words are there and it can just be very satisfying sometimes to go like oh that's a way that these four words are connected which i never would have thought about so like yeah i took a little while but boy do i just i really like it and

i don't know if it's true but i honestly feel like it kind of makes me better at writing because it's just getting me to think of words in different ways than i would normally do because that's the whole key to the game is like ah yeah there's the obvious thing this word is but there's some secondary or tertiary meaning that also lines up with the secondary or tertiary meaning of three of these other words so a plus word game the only word game i have ever enjoyed

If you've never played the mini crosswords, I do recommend them. Like it's just enough crossword. Mike, I have one question. Am I required to spell words? Yeah. Okay. It's out. Okay. You don't like doing that? I am incapable of spelling words. So no, it's not even a choice. I just literally can't.

I understand. I mean, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Like if there was any number, like all the number games, no, it's not happening. I just can't, numbers I can't deal with, you know, like Sudoku was on there. It's like, no, you're okay. I'm not even going to bother. Don't even. But I like Connections too. Strands is fun. If you've never played Strands. Do I have to spell? Well, it's the spelling in reverse, right? Why would you even? Spelling in reverse? Do you ever play Word Searches? The Word Searches, is that also like a kryptonite kind of thing?

Mike, you know what you have to know how to do in order to search for words?

Spell them. You have to know how to spell them. But connections, you have to read them, which means you need to know how to spell them. Look, Mike, I can read, right? Yeah, but you can read by looking at a word search, right? No, it's all different, right? Because I'm basically trying to spell the word one adjacent letter at a time. The word search is somehow the worst version of all of this. It's awful. Okay. Okay, let's take a look at your pickup data. Not surprisingly, messages at the top there, given all of the messages that you get...

good old instagram still holding strong in the top three love instagram what is the i want to do some kind of like the whatsapp pickups per messages sent ratio very high so yeah that's that is totally climbing the rank of uh priority for you there yeah

Oh, you're on Blue Sky Social? So you're over on the blue butterfly? I don't know any of the lingo for Blue Sky Social. Blue Sky is my current favorite text social network. But if we jump back over to app usage, you'll see 56 minutes an entire six days. Right, so not a ton. No, I mean, they all have their app limits of 15 minutes a day. And you can see in that data that I'm not going over it. So...

I'm still really happy about that. Like three hours in the week for text-based social media, I think is amazing. Especially for someone who works in the tech reporting industry. Yeah, that is absolutely amazing. That is fantastic to be holding the line on that one. That's really good. But I do feel that this is where some of the data is just not helping me out. Because like, I know I'm spending a ton of time in RSS and like reader is down there at like 20 minutes. And it's like, that's not right.

Like, there's right down at the bottom. But, like, I just know that what I am doing is spending a lot of time going through RSS as my way of getting news. I do not rely on text-based social media to get news for my work anymore, which is what I was doing years and years and years ago. So I'm much happier about this mix of the way this stuff works for me now. But, yeah, of the ones that I am using, I find Blue Sky to be currently the most popular

But this stuff, it goes up and down over time. It's also the newest one, you know? I didn't want to do many comparisons, but I do want to make a comparison. So back when we did this the first time, back in 2018, I spent seven hours a week on Twitter. Oh, wow. I didn't realize it was that bad. Spending a full workday on Twitter. Oof.

So I think that is a pretty great difference of a thing that I've worked on over time, where now it's half of that with three services. MARK MANDEL: Yeah, that's way better. That's good. And that's the kind of stuff that these systems should be helping you work towards. So yeah, that's really good.

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Okay, let me take a look at yours here. I think the first thing that I'm immediately drawn to is the name of your device's three emoji, TickFunStar. What are you asking about? What does that mean? I'm just like, what is this code? So I've settled on like three emoji scheme for basically all of my devices. Okay. Like, okay, again, this is another one of these things. I have always had a real, I'm realizing now I'm about to say this right after the part where I'm like, I can't play word games. I'm like, I can't play word games.

I was about to say, I've always had a real war on words. It's like it's why I've never liked the words below the app icons, which we can finally get rid of. It's even why like, oh, in my to do system, I use a lot of emoji to represent tasks like in my time tracking. It's the same thing.

And so I recently redid all of my devices to be like, I don't need to have the names of these things. I can just use like three little icons to represent what they are. The checkmark is still a little bit of a legacy thing because I was actually just...

doing a physical cleanup of all of my devices and re going through each one of them and so as i was doing it i was just like doing the green check mark to be like okay i've gone through this device i've changed the settings i've updated the name so that's eventually going to go but otherwise it's just like oh it's a little iphone and then it's the star icon because this is the like newest iphone i still have last year's model like around so i gave that one like a brown rock right it's like

Oh, this is the old one. Right. And then this is the new one. So all of my devices now I have some like little emoji code for like, which device is this? And then some little emoji just to represent where does this live or what is the device's primary purpose? And I've done that with like the different headphones because I have the different AirPods and I've

Again, maybe it's because I read words out loud in my head. I've always just felt like reading words is kind of slower and less clear. So I've been really happy with this, even going through things like the Bluetooth connection and just switching headphones. Like I find it visually much easier to parse. Like, oh, I want to connect to this headphone, which is represented by these emoji rather than like,

reading the words like, this is the AirPods Pro 4 with noise cancellation. And this is the AirPods Pro 2, but the new one, not the old one that you thought you lost and had to replace or whatever. So that's why I have that weird device name. But

I like this as a system. I am not recommending this as a system to anyone. I was immediately drawn to one thing in your list. 50 minutes on Sonicare. Oh! You have an app for your toothbrush? Okay, so this is brand new as of that week. The newest Sonicare toothbrush has an app which I cannot believe they are convincing me to use.

You do have an electric toothbrush? I have a Philips Sonicare. Okay, so you have a Sonicare. So you know how it does like the little boop boop, right? And it's like, so you're brushing your teeth and then it goes like boop boop and you're supposed to move on to the next zone? Yeah, okay. I wasn't sure if you meant the boop boop for the zone or the boop boop for too hard. Well, yeah, there's also boop boop for too hard. I feel like that's not quite a boop boop. That's more like an ah sound, right? It's like the toothbrush is freaking out in your mouth because you're pressing it too hard. My one has a little light that shines on the bottom to kind of also grab my attention. Yeah.

So, like, I sort of vaguely knew that they were, like, "Oh, the boop boop means you're supposed to move to a different zone." And I've used, like, Sonicare's, Philip's toothbrushes for years, and I just made up my own zones, and I'm like, "Ah, I'll just go with this." Yes! I have this! It's like, "Alright, I start here, then I move to here, and then I go to here." Like, I have my own little process based on, I don't know, the intervals that it's giving me, I guess? Like, I was like, "Ah, this one I'll do the inside of my teeth, this one--" Like, I was just doing my own thing, like, whatever Sonicare, I have no idea.

But I recently got their like new top-of-the-line Sonicare toothbrush because I need to replace my old one. And the like instructions was really pushing the app. And I thought, okay, let me just like give this a try just out of pure curiosity. And so I was like, okay, number one, now I know what the zones are supposed to be. But the thing that I actually thought was like worth trying for a while is that if you're brushing the teeth with the app,

It's actually able to keep track of how long and how hard are you really pressing in each of the zones that it wants. It can tell which way the toothbrush is angled. And if you're going along with the zones, it then knows, like, are you doing the front or the back of the teeth? And...

Interestingly, it's keeping track basically of is there some area that you're always giving slightly short attention to? And then every once in a while it does like, hey, you should do a makeup session. And it will tell you like just spend 30 seconds right here. I think that's interesting. This is funny. I explicitly have avoided the one that comes with the app. Because I'm just like I don't want an app. Yeah.

My toothbrush? Like, I just don't. I really don't want that. So, like, I agree. I'm not sure that I'm going to keep doing this going forward. But I thought, you know what? I am going to give this a try and just, like, see it for a little while. I think the biggest problem, though, is just realizing how...

When I'm brushing my teeth, I want to be on my phone doing literally anything else than looking at the tooth brushing app is like fundamentally the conflict of like, uh, what do I want to be doing? It's like, oh, I want to be going through my like morning routine checklist or like, I want to be listening to a podcast. Like I want to be doing something else.

It made me kind of realize how much brushing my teeth was totally on autopilot. I never really want to think about this task at all. So I've given this a little bit of a try, but I'm not 100% sure that this will be forever going forward in the future. But

As far as tooth brushing apps go, I think it's about as good as it could be. So what we do know is that you spend 50 minutes a week brushing your teeth. Two minutes twice a day times seven. Oh, I guess actually, I guess that's not that far off. Yeah.

So do you have to have the app open while you're brushing? That is the killer. That's what I mean by I want to be doing something else. I see what you mean. Yeah, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to live my life that way. Okay, Sonicare, if you're listening, what I really want you to do is the way YouTube could let you play like a little video on screen while you're doing something else, that's what I want this app to functionally do. Like show a little video on screen of what you want me to do so I can also be doing something else.

because I do feel like that toothbrushing app, it's really blocking every other app on my phone while I'm brushing my teeth. So don't love that. I love that Asana is your most used app of the last week. I mean, it really ties up what you were talking about earlier on. I think that's amazing. Yeah. So ideally, this shouldn't be the case, right? This is like setup week. Yeah. This is where I was really realizing like,

trying to get the iPhone app to work the way I want to display in widgets like the things that I want in the particular order, it's functionally not really possible without just like a lot of work, which again, I may be able to automate through rules, but probably not. But ideally, your task manager should not be the top thing on your phone. It should maybe be like

top one or two for pickups but it shouldn't be like this many hours but this is entirely the like oh I had my computer open and I'm making changes and I'm keeping the phone open and seeing like oh how does that update in the app because they're just like weirdly different how does this look in the widget so that's why that's there but that's not the way it should be like permanently going forward something I cannot understand

is how I have 117 pickups for messages and you have 115. Now, that just doesn't feel like... That can't be possible. ...it should be the case for both of us because...

I get the impression you just don't use messages for days. And so I don't know what you're doing over there. It's either way under counting yours or way over counting mine in some way. I don't know. Because that doesn't make any sense. Because again, we now have like the actual numerical measurement here that I am like one quarter as popular as you. So I should not be picking up messages as frequently as you.

you no no no no remember as i said that is over counting for multiple devices no it's under counting because you have all those group threads that you're also muting right so i'm at least one quarter as popular as you so i like this i don't understand that number either just looking on my iphone for last week 637 messages

114 pickups you are at 657 messages 115 pickups did i accidentally screenshot your phone for my pickups and notified i don't understand how is this possible i don't understand at all how they could be so close like the fact that you're using messages apparently as much as me i don't know who you're texting it ain't me but there's also something funny about that of like

That 650 number to about 110 pickups, there's a correlation there that must be just a standard number for pickup to notification ratio that occurs between people? I guess so. I don't know. There's something statistically significant about that one, I guess, considering the fact that

We use messages, I think, very differently, but yet notification to pick up ratios isn't. That's very weird. That is very, very, very weird. Yeah. The only thing I can think of that might, it still seems like it's an overcounting, but I functionally don't use messages anywhere other than my phone. Like I've turned it off on my computer and iPad. So like I'm just never, ever interacting with it anywhere other than the phone, which might be like,

falsely pushing a bunch of activity here that you have distributed across more things that's true it still feels very wrong and I wasn't even thinking about it like looking at the screen time like four hours of messages also seems very wrong but I don't know whatever what was my time in messages

3 hours 13 minutes. You're just like texting up a storm these days. That's what I'm recognizing. I think I screenshotted your phone. I think that's what happened. Well no the reason I know it's your phone is because Slack EMM is still in there. I can't believe you're still using that. Why would I ever change that? Well I'm just very surprised that it still exists. So this is the enterprise version of Slack that you can sign in to any Slack account with right? Like you're just writing into a regular Slack. It's not an enterprise Slack.

Yeah. So you end up with two slacks that you can control individually. It's incredible. I can't believe that that is still a thing that exists. You know what? I am realizing, though, I should probably change that. So I originally did this to have, like, my gray industry slack separate from the notifications for the Cortex slack. But I realized, like, like,

I don't think actually now the settings are different anymore. Like I think both of them are just doing the same thing. They're going to notification center. So I should probably just have it in one because it is annoying enough times that I'm opening Slack and then I want to go to the other one. So I should probably change that. And also, I think since we first spoke about this, Slack has put in more native notification management.

than they would have had them. Yes, you know, I was like, yeah, what else has changed? That is the other thing. They've gotten way better at the ability to do that. Okay, I'm deleting Slack EMM off my phone right now. Well, don't forget to sign into the other Slack account, though. And done. That is the end of the task. Absolutely nothing else to do. Great. It's just that was the last time we ever heard from him. This episode of Cortex is brought to you by ZocDoc.

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So, TikTok, Mike, how goes the paternity clock? It's ticking. Oh boy, is it ticking. So, this is my last episode that people will hear before my paternity begins. Me and you are actually pre-recording an episode, which, by the way, is going to be a book club. I might as well say that now. We're going to do How to Win Friends and Influence People.

So that is going to be the next episode of Cortex, which will be out sometime in March whenever I find the time to post it. Yeah. Give it a read. Probably the most famous self-help book, maybe? I don't know. It's like, it's got to be up there at like the top. More than seven habits? I,

i think more people would have name recognition for how to win friends and influence people than seven habits seven habits might be better for the business people but i feel like general populace how to win friends and influence people's got to be more name recognition i'm very aware of the title of the book and i'm very aware of the book having existed i think of all of the books that we are reading it is the one that i

even knowing the title is what I do, I have no idea what this book is actually about. Oh, interesting. Okay. Like, I can make a guess based on the title. What would that guess be, Mike? What do you think the book is about? I don't really know how that translates to a book, in a way. Right? Like, because the title would suggest to me is it is about kind of manipulating people, I think. But like, I don't know if that's what the books are going to be about. So I'm intrigued to find out. So that's going to be our next episode. Wow. So cynical, Mike. That is actually...

the final podcast I will record before my paternity leave. Oh, I'm last in line with that one. I didn't realize. Okay, so nothing else afterward. Did you really expect that you wouldn't be? Like, realistically? I mean, I guess that does seem kind of inevitable. Yeah, I'm sorry. I apologize. I'm just happy that we do have a plan to pre-record something, you know? So my paternity leave...

in the way in which it will be, is planned to be about an eight-week span. Okay. So this will be two weeks where I don't really want to hear from anyone. And that is kind of like from when the baby is born, not the first two weeks of my paternity leave. Because my expectation will be I will probably have about a week of

of paternity leave where the baby isn't here. And that's just kind of like the final preparation time and also the true danger window. Oh, I see. Right. Okay. Yeah. You know, different people do it in different ways, but because I'm affording myself such a long period of time, I am going to give myself a little bit of time beforehand. You know, I'm going to do everything

a full deep clean of the house. You're clearing the way for babies. Exactly. Yeah. And like, we're doing stuff like that now, but this will be the, all right, the final, final things before I'm going to take care of them in those few days. And then I will have, I'm expecting probably four weeks that I'm calling like with contact and then maybe a week or two of kind of like staging back in.

Now, the biggest thing, though, for this whole period of time is I won't be recording podcasts. That is the... I mean, as we know from my time tracking, my biggest time allocated is to the preparation, recording, and editing of podcasts. So this would give me most of my time back. It's also the thing that...

Takes me out of the house the most, which I don't want to be doing during this time. So that is the thing. And then I will be keeping in touch with various endeavors. There'll be the occasional meeting that I'll still be attending like during the kind of like four weeks.

with contact in the week or two of staging back in the staging back in will probably include recording some podcasts but not all of them but that is a very nebulous thing this is a thing that a bunch of friends recommended i do but really it's like a will this occur at week six or will this recur actually at week eight and maybe you know some stuff doesn't start again until like week nine or

I don't know yet. Wait, was your original plan just to go straight back into all of it and not phase it in? Of course. You know me. Oh my God. You know me. That's crazy. I was like, bang, let's go. Like, because that's just how my brain works. It didn't even cross my mind that you could do that. Oh boy. Incorrect, Mike. I'm glad you have been correctly advised on this to stage it back in. Am I going to be last out first back in? Is that the way it's going to work for Cortex? You might be first back in, yeah. Mm-hmm.

I'm not sure yet, though, because I really don't know what the end part of this looks like. But this is emblematic of this entire process for me. Being self-employed, I'm just working this out on my own, right? Why eight weeks? Because that felt like a good...

It was also my opening gambit and everybody agreed, which I couldn't believe and I was so happy about. I was just like, well, six would be nice. I guess I'll start with eight in like a negotiation. But all of my colleagues were like, yeah, of course, take as much time as you want. I was like, oh, great, I'll take eight weeks then. I didn't know what I should do, but I knew what I wanted. And what I wanted was as much time as seemed realistic. This is a very important thing for me to be able to spend time

as much time as I can in the beginning of building my family. And there was also this thing in my mind, which was if I can't take a really long time, kind of what was the point of doing all of this? Yes. Yeah. Why build your own career for a decade if you then can't take an opportunity like this, you know? And there was a part of me that was like, you deserve this. Like,

You have gotten yourself to a point where you can do this, so you should do this. Oh yeah, 100%. I feel like we talked about this in the very early days of Cortex, but that...

the danger of being a self-employed person which like does happen to most self-employed people is that you end up just building this kind of cage for yourself that in many ways can be much worse than like the job that you left if you were trying to do it for like freedom reasons is like oh boy you can be the person that everything hinges on and now you can never take breaks and like you have to be so careful in constructing your career to be able to do that and it's like yeah

If you are able to do that, Mike, it's like 100%. That is because you have made that possible. And this is the time to take advantage of it if there ever is time. Yep. And I consider myself to be incredibly lucky that I am surrounded by the most supportive co-workers and that everyone is just making it work. I am also doing my best to just trust everybody that it will all be done, which is not...

my natural way of feeling. No, it is not. You know, we all have pride in the work that we do. And part of the pride that I have is that everything is done as well as it can be on time. And I feel like for projects to work that way, everybody kind of has to agree on that. Like, part of my role in a lot of the shows that I have and a lot of the projects that I have is the person who

make sure that this is done, make sure that that is done and gets it complete. And it's not the case of all of my projects because Steven is more that person than me. So like on Connected, he does all of that. But on my other shows, I tend to be like the driving force, the producing force. And so for that time period, I'm kind of like handing everything over to my co-hosts and I trust that they will get it done because I know it's important to them too.

Typically, say I'm away and something is happening, I will kind of be checking in on it, you know, or like keeping my eye on it. Yeah. But I am choosing for this time period. I know everyone can handle this and I am going to turn my attention to the thing that is more important to me during this time. Yeah.

Yeah, but that's not easy when you've been the de facto project manager for most of the podcasts that you're working on. I'm going to be really interested to kind of debrief with everyone of how this time was for them. I was talking to Jason the other day, and he was very sweet. He said, I'm going to miss you. He said something along the lines of, I think I'm going to realize how much in doing everything, kind of realizing what we both bring to the table, which I thought was very funny.

I mean, I do want to ask, because the thing that caught my attention straight away is you said here, like, the first two weeks, this is a very strong statement for Mike, no contact. I was just like, what are the boundaries of that? What do you really mean, like, no, no contact with anyone? Like, what does that mean to you? Because that's a very strong statement. For those two weeks, I don't want to hear from anybody that I work with unless it is an absolutely critical emergency. Okay.

Like, there are other people that can answer questions. If they can't, then you can get to me. And I feel like it's important to be that strong because then it makes people question if something truly is an emergency. I kind of want people to just work out on their own because it's unlikely you're going to hear from me anyway. You know, like even if you've got something you want to say to me, that time period, I just, there is only one thing I want to be focusing on.

And I want to put all of my energy into that. And I don't want to be thinking about work. I would suggest, if you haven't thought of this already, that this is a good time to have your assistant act as the firewall. Yes, we're doing something like that. Great, right? Because it's like, ah, if she's the first point of contact, I think it helps just put a little bit more resistance to people just messaging you. Yes. So let me explain how this is going to work. So for Relay...

it's not needed because there is an infrastructure that already exists and everybody knows. Like, no one's going to need me, right? Like, they know they can go to Steven, they know they can go to Carrie, they know they can go to Kathy, and realistically, most of the time, people would go to one of those three before me anyway for most things. So, like, for Relay, it's not so much of a thing. For Cortex Brand, that is the way it's going to work, that everyone's going to go to my assistant. And also, something that is going to be happening, which...

When it was originally pitched to me, it was a horrifying idea, but I really came around to it quite quickly, is my assistant is going to be managing my email from my paternity leave. Great. So she will have my email logins and we'll be looking at it a few times a day, triaging it. And she will then, if something appears to be urgent, come reach out to me.

But by and large, it will be triaged. She will put in Slack things that maybe I want to know if I want to just go and have a look, right? Like rather than open the email. But then whenever I do get to my email, there will be just the stuff that is important for me to see, even if it's not necessarily urgent, but is important. So that is like a big part of it. But realistically...

Everyone in Cortex Brand will know they can go to her and she will get to me if it's needed or just collect things up.

And with relay, the structure is already well in place. And realistically, these days, people, they don't need me for this kind of stuff. Like, everyone's pretty self-sufficient anyway. And typically, if something urgent is needed, it's very rarely me that has the answers anyway. It's like, if it's technical, Stephen is doing it. If it's ads, Kerry is doing it. And those are the two most urgent categories, yeah. But then, like, that's when I said the urgent things then...

are like something quite bad is happening, you know? And these things can happen. They do happen. And I will just hope that they don't happen while I'm on my paternity leave. It was funny that there was something similar. So Stephen took a sabbatical earlier this year, in part because I was going to be taking a break. And so it felt good to be able to give him some time too after the podcast with Thumb where he really put a lot into it last year. Mm-hmm.

And I think within three or four days, our entire website broke. Oh no. The whole thing. It was just 100% unresponsive. And I know a few things to do. Poor Steven. Poor Steven. That's terrible. And I went in and like, I was like rebooting things and like, you know, I was trying my best and I reached out to him. And luckily he didn't even know what needed to be done in that scenario.

And so then we got our developer involved and it was like a, it was just a random chance that like an update had failed on the server kind of thing. But it was like, I felt so bad. Like I tried so hard to fix it and I couldn't fix it. But like, there are things like that that could happen, but in the reverse, I don't know what they would be, but like some kind of big business issue, which, you know, is a decision that Steven would probably not make on his own and would at least want me to know about it. But I consider that unlikely. And I also know that he knows that,

how important this is to me and it's important to him that I can take this time so it would have to be huge to kind of cross my path but we'll see I mean

For the majority of the time that I will be away, I'm going to be checking in with people and answering questions. It'll just be on like a weird schedule, you know, like people can send me stuff and I'll get back to them when I can. Cortex brand is probably where the majority of my work will go during my paternity leave. Just because it needs more decisions right now because it's new. And it's likely we're going to be launching our pocket notebooks during my paternity leave, which is a decision that,

that I made that I want to do it during that time period because if this is going to be the year of products, we have to actually launch the products.

And so that is going to be happening during the time, but obviously towards the end. I feel like I would strong push to defer that to the phase back in two weeks period. That's probably just when it's going to end up being, like just based on shipping and stuff like that. Like it's going to be in April for sure. Then it's just kind of like, when is everything ready? But luckily it's good in a way because with the way that things are timing up,

It means there is work for everyone to do while I'm away. You know, images to be taken, copy to be written, like stuff that everyone can just be getting on with, which is all of the things around a new product launch. And that I can then start reviewing as I'm kind of about a bit more, you know, like things that are a bit more asynchronous and we can kind of take our time with it. Like we're not on a time crunch. All of the pieces can be put into place for when I return. You know, because everybody that works with us

They're working on hours, right? So like they're billing us for their time. And something that I was nervous about in like, you know, months and months ago was I didn't want my paternity leave to result in nobody being able to bill any hours. Right. Yeah. You don't want to be the blocker for absolutely everybody. Yeah. No. And so I'm really happy that we have this like project of getting all of the collateral together for a new product and

for happening while I'm gone because everyone will be having things that they can get on with without me needing to be there. And that, you know, then eventually...

everybody presents what they've got and then i can do the approvals and the approval stuff or like the feedback stuff that doesn't take too much time the time has actually been getting to this point you know putting brace together and like getting all the products together and i can set it out to all of our creative people that we work with and they can go ahead and put something together for us so like i think that's i'm happy that i've gotten this project to this point

before the leaf begins. You just reminded me, and I am assigning it to you...

right now a template in the cortex brand asana for product launching so while you're doing this just gonna put that in there for you to just like throw in the rough steps as we're doing it this way this new way the first time and like we'll organize it later but this is just like a place to start capturing like what do you want to have happen in what order and when so uh yeah

There you go. There's something assigned to you right now in Asana while you were thinking about it. But yeah, might as well do this for the pocket since like our little product launch. It feels like it's the perfect one to start with. And yeah, if you're going to do it for the phasing back in time, we need to get on this. Love it. So aside from the thing that I have just assigned you though,

How do you feel about clearing your calendar like this? I mean, this has got to be like the biggest no work intentionally time you've had like since the start of Relay? Since the start of working maybe? I don't even know. Yeah. It's got to be like your absolute biggest break. How are you feeling about it? Yeah. The biggest break I had before this was my honeymoon, which was two weeks.

After that, every year will take a week or two that will be completely away from work and I'll take a couple of breaks and stuff. So one, I would say I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to detach from work and the news cycle for the period of time that I'm going to have. I think it's going to be a good refresh for me for when I come back. What I'm looking forward to is the way I'm going to get news

about the topics I care about is by listening to the podcasts that I'm not on. I think it would be fun. So I'm not going to read like RSS during my paternity, but I will listen to Upgrade. I will listen to Connected, right? Like I'll listen to The Pen Addict and we'll hear...

What is happening that way which I'm looking for I'm actually really looking forward to that it will be fun That's a funny thought yeah you get to experience the show as a real listener does which I always get when I'm on vacation But even when I'm on vacation, I'm still kind of like keeping up a little more, but this time it's like gone It's not the same. Yeah. Yeah, you're still doing more biggest Fear that I have or like the biggest concern I have from my work during this time is like

More of like an imposter syndrome-y thing. It's going to be a long time on my weekly shows where I'm not there. And it's like, will people prefer it?

That's what I have in my head. I mean, I don't know if you could hear the sound of me rolling my eyes at the words imposter syndrome. I have no patience for this concept. What your real fear here is replacement syndrome, right? That's what your fear is. Yeah. Like people were like, oh, I much prefer it without Mike or I much prefer the show with this guest or that guest. And this comes from the fact that like...

sometimes when I'm away, people say these things. And I get it, right? Like there are maybe certain pairings that you prefer. I don't think everybody has to like me. Like I'm not unrealistic, right? In the way that I think about the content that I make because I'm also a consumer of content too. And I have preferences about the pairings or the people that are as part of projects that I like and don't like. You know, I get that. Yeah, it's just like a weird thing. It's like a long time. And I know that that's going to be in there

Or maybe I won't care. I don't know. But it is something that I am nervous about a little bit because it's like a weird thing to do to take such a long time away from these creative projects. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think you do have the different problem of you will actually be subbed in. So for rolling my eyes at imposter syndrome, it's like I do get it. And of course, given the way that the Internet is, everyone will tell you their opinion on everything. And like with an audience size large enough, you will hear every version of everything, which means like, yep, you're sure going to hear from the people who are like, I like the new guy better. That's just going to happen. But it is the sheer way that these things go.

I know I'm going to have so many people because I'm already having it tell me how they're going to miss me, but they're so excited. And when I come back, people are going to be like, oh, I'm so happy you're back. But there'll be like three people who will email me and be like, stay away forever. And they're the only ones I'm going to think about. But like, I know this, but the thing is I've been on the internet for too long that I know that it will bug me for a day or two, but I've just like hardened over time. I'm kind of just like, hey,

So what? That is the ultimate thing that I get to with those, where there is this kind of thing of like someone will say to me, oh, I wish such and such person was here instead of you. And I'm kind of like, well, unfortunately, you have me to listen to. So that's your punishment, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, my feeling is a little bit more direct, Mike. It's like, they're your shows. Those people can suck it. That's just the end of it. I don't know. But like outside of that, it's like business disasters. But I don't really worry about that. The thing...

The more realistic thing from a business perspective is like, what are the little things that get missed and how long does it take to realize? But they're also going to be handled like it will just be handled. And I know it will be. Yeah. And again, definitionally, if they're little things that get missed, they're little things. They're not business disasters. So I feel like it's definitionally fine for this period of time. So, yeah.

I feel like you have nothing to worry about, Mike. I'm very confident in your paternity leave. What could go wrong? I know it's going to be fine. I genuinely know it's going to be fine. But also, it doesn't matter because I have something that I care more about. Right? Like, ultimately, the reason for all of this is for this time period and for the next little while and then for the rest of my life, there's something more important than me. And I don't know how that's going to feel yet. But, like...

I'm more aware of it than before. You know, like I'm more aware of this feeling that my life is about to change.

And I'll see what it feels like on the other end of it. And I'm curious to know who that man will be. Because it's not the one that's here right now. And I feel very confident of the fact that I am about to undergo the single biggest change of my entire life. And nothing will ever come close to this after. And so...

We'll see. What could go wrong? Cortexans, this is the end of the show, but it doesn't have to be. There is more. Just go to getmoretext.com and you can sign up now. You'll get longer ad-free versions of the show. In More Text this time, I talk a little bit about themes for parenthood and more about how ready I feel for this next step in my life. Go to getmoretext.com and you can sign up now, support the show, and get longer ad-free episodes.