0:00

Welcome

0:00

back to State of the Apps. State of the

0:02

Apps! 2024 edition! Every year on State

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of the Apps

0:06

we talk about the tools and services that we

0:08

use to manage our work and our lives. We've

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been doing this for many years now. I'm

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absolutely horrified because I was like, wait

0:16

a minute, and I just googled myself,

0:19

right, CGP Grey State of the Apps.

0:21

When did I do this? And I wrote that

0:23

article in 2014. Yeah, I

0:27

didn't want to mention it. I did

0:29

look this up that

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it has been a decade since you wrote

0:32

the article on your blog that became

0:34

like the reason that we do this episode.

0:38

10 years of State of the Apps for me. Oh my

0:40

god. Well, I think there was a gap

0:42

of like two or three years where there wasn't

0:44

another one. And then I was like, that's

0:47

a good idea. Let's do an episode of Cortex about

0:49

it. And then here we are.

0:51

I'm doing a quick scroll down the list of

0:53

like how many of these apps have still survived.

0:55

And the answer is not zero. That's surprising.

0:58

You know what? It might be fun actually throughout

1:00

this episode, considering we are

1:02

on like the decade of State of

1:05

the Apps. If there's any that

1:07

you pick today that are on that original list, I

1:09

think it would be fun if you mentioned that. One that's definitely

1:11

not

1:12

Evernote. Were

1:14

you positive in 2014 about Evernote? Okay,

1:18

here's what I wrote in 2014. Evernote is my dumping

1:21

ground for lots of random video related

1:24

pre-research. I use it,

1:26

but reluctantly. The

1:29

real shock of today's episode is if Evernote's

1:31

found its way back. Anything could

1:33

happen. Hold on to your seats, everyone. The

1:36

traditional way of starting State of the Apps

1:39

is with home screens. Home screens.

1:41

Although now it's home screens and

1:44

lock screens. Yeah. And focus

1:46

modes. And I think also standby?

1:49

See, there's a lot in this now.

1:51

I mean, Mike,

1:52

what even is a home screen anymore?

1:55

Honestly, that is becoming a harder and harder

1:57

question. It totally is becoming a strange

1:59

kind of question.

1:59

about what is the home screen, what do we

2:02

mean by this? Yeah, like as well,

2:04

from this year, with Interactive Widgets, home

2:07

screens aren't even just a static

2:09

thing anymore, they're not just a launcher anymore,

2:12

they are actually a place to perform

2:15

actions. Yeah, I haven't a ton

2:17

of apps that are doing Interactive Widgets

2:19

yet, but it is suddenly realizing

2:21

like the home screen is

2:24

an app now, kind of? Like

2:26

that's clearly the direction it's

2:28

going into, so what even is

2:30

a home screen? How is it connected to focus

2:32

modes and your watch and everything else? It's

2:35

like it's all kind of getting muddled together

2:38

and also partly being apps

2:40

at the same time. So what do

2:42

your home screens look like, Mike? Right, well

2:45

let's start with my regular home screen.

2:48

This is like the default home screen, I also use

2:50

these set of home screens for Do Not Disturb,

2:53

and I've also included the corresponding

2:56

lock screens for these home

2:58

screens in the image, so you can kind of get the whole

3:00

view. Yes, that's always so

3:03

overwhelming when I click on one of these links to

3:05

see all of Mike's things. It's

3:07

a visual treat, it's a little experience.

3:10

It is visual, that is true, yeah.

3:12

Visual treat. I've

3:14

gone way more widget focused

3:17

this year. For a long time, I had

3:20

like big widget on the top and

3:23

I had a little widget in the corner and then I

3:25

had like 12 apps. This year, I've

3:28

actually reduced my apps to eight

3:30

and I have two square widgets and

3:33

the large widget on the top and this

3:35

is because of interactive widgets. So

3:38

the widget I wanted to kind of like blow up

3:40

everything for was the Do widget.

3:43

Tell me about your use case of Do because Do

3:45

is one of these apps that for me has

3:48

disappeared over the years because

3:51

mainly for me, like I was looking for an app years ago

3:53

that related to timers that also had really

3:55

good shortcut support. So previous

3:58

lightning round pick for me. an

4:00

app called Just Timers, which I'm still using

4:02

to this day. Fantastic timer, shortcut

4:04

support, really good. And that

4:06

just blew due out of the water

4:08

for me. It's like, oh, I just never used it again.

4:11

So it looks like you're actually using it as a task

4:14

manager here. Like what's your use case for this? Okay,

4:17

so the types of tasks that go into

4:19

due are always personal

4:22

focused. So

4:25

I use Todoist as my to-do app, which I'll talk

4:27

about a little bit later on in the show. And

4:29

I have a personal project

4:32

in Todoist, but they're for like quite

4:34

large things. The stuff

4:36

that goes into due are very simple,

4:39

often recurring tasks. So

4:41

for example, I have take out the

4:43

trash, do the dishes, do

4:46

my evening stretches, take my

4:48

pills, text my mum,

4:50

like these little things that happen

4:53

on a daily basis, on

4:55

a weekly basis, go in here.

4:58

Remember to set my time tracker

5:00

when I go to the gym. Remember

5:02

to get cash out for my barber when I

5:04

see him next week. Do my exercises,

5:07

like these little things that are just,

5:10

I don't want all of these tasks messing

5:13

up my Todoist to-do list. And

5:16

then also all of these types of

5:19

tasks benefit from

5:21

due's nagging, right? That

5:23

you can set in due if I do

5:25

not mark this complete, keep

5:27

reminding, keep reminding. And

5:30

a lot of these things, they're like, it has

5:32

to be done today. So like, I want the phone

5:35

to keep asking me to do this stuff

5:38

until it's done. Like if I don't

5:40

remember to take the trash out, that's

5:42

going to be a problem. I have to take out

5:44

the trash, right? So like it's going to keep

5:46

telling me every 10 minutes,

5:49

have you done this? Have you done this? Have

5:51

you done this? These are the kind of things. And it

5:53

can also be like a very simple

5:55

task that might be a one-off that

5:58

will go in here. Like for example. I

6:00

had to disable the automation

6:03

of our Roomba

6:04

for a few days

6:05

because we were having a like a treatment to the floor

6:08

and so I disabled it and then I've put it back in

6:10

there to Enable it in like a week's time and

6:13

so that kind of thing. It's just like it's

6:15

just like a very simple thing I want to make sure

6:17

I remember to do it on that exact day so I can

6:19

have it actually go out and do the cleaning So that's the

6:21

kind of thing I'll just throw it into do and it

6:23

will remind me every 10 minutes

6:25

until I've done it on the day that I've asked for and

6:29

One of the things about these due tasks is that

6:31

because they are frequent things often

6:34

I just do them because I remember so

6:36

having them as a little widget They're

6:39

just there and I can very quickly check them off

6:41

from the interactive widget And I don't need

6:43

to open that app do you right

6:45

so to me this felt like a really good

6:48

Thing to just have there on my home screen

6:51

all the time. They're not work tasks

6:53

So I don't feel like the impending not

6:55

having done work And it's very easy

6:58

for me to just check these off and get them done and

7:00

so I like this widget a lot actually Hmm.

7:02

I feel like I've underappreciated

7:04

the role that do used to play in

7:06

my life and I

7:09

might borrow this from you. I think do

7:11

deserve the second view I need to take a look at

7:14

that again the other little square

7:16

widgets time Aree and now the

7:18

iOS 17 shortcuts widget

7:20

underneath has two actions

7:23

rather than one action, which is awesome and Underneath

7:26

that little timer which it is like the stack

7:29

and I've got two Timer-related

7:31

shortcuts one is a shortcut

7:34

I have where I can just add an

7:36

increment of time to my

7:38

time tracker So I can tap it and be like

7:41

I just did 15 minutes of this kind of work

7:43

But I forgot to press the button so

7:45

I like that. Oh, huh, okay.

7:47

I didn't realize that was a feature That's nice. You can build

7:49

a shortcut like I built the shortcut years ago.

7:51

It just like looks at the current time

7:54

Subtracts it by the amount of time not ever asked

7:57

and then adds it as an entry to timer e And

8:00

then I also have one more which is my recording

8:03

or editing shows timer where if

8:06

I hit it it says you're recording or editing if hit

8:08

recording it looks on my calendar and Creates

8:10

a new time entry with that as the tag

8:12

that set the naming up correctly if

8:15

I'm editing It just gives me a list of

8:17

shows to choose from and I'll choose that show and it'll

8:19

start a timer based on that Those are just

8:21

like my two most often Time

8:24

tracking shortcuts and now they just live on that little

8:26

stack underneath the time re widget, which

8:28

I'm really happy about And now the

8:30

time re widget has a nice stop button on it too, which is

8:32

great. Oh, you can stop it from that widget Okay, great

8:34

I would look up on a bunch of the widgets

8:36

have an option in the configuration

8:39

settings to add a stop button to them

8:42

This is a request that I gave to the developer

8:44

Joe that like I felt like the stop

8:47

button should be available everywhere That a timer

8:49

was incrementing. Yeah, that's

8:51

a good feature outside of that There's no

8:53

other app changes here from year

8:55

to year and I've ended up with these eight

8:58

as the ones that I'm using most from My home

9:00

screen so it's no discord Google Maps

9:02

city mapper the camera and Instagram

9:05

Messages and slack and then my talk is to do

9:07

ist spark safari and overcast

9:09

so that's all remain very similar

9:12

to previous years Yeah, I think I'm always surprised

9:14

that discord is ranked so high on your

9:16

home screen here But like I know we have different

9:18

use cases for that like every year we do this. I'm

9:20

like discord really It's

9:22

work and social for me Like the fact

9:24

that I have slack there says I should have discord

9:27

there the fact that I have Instagram says

9:29

I should have discord Cuz it like it's

9:31

almost all of those kinds of things It's like

9:33

a social network in a way But it's also work

9:36

and it's also like it's an interesting

9:38

like straddling of all of this stuff I

9:40

spent a lot of time in discord now I think the

9:43

only one I would question is do

9:45

you really need the camera on this

9:47

home screen people always say this? What

9:50

I use camera as both

9:53

the camera and how I get to my photos

9:55

Okay, so you're using it for the recently taken photos

9:58

thing where you can get it up and click on the corner Yeah, it's

10:00

like a double duty. Can't you get to the recent

10:03

photos from your lock screen? You can but if

10:05

I'm using my phone and I want to take a picture. Well,

10:07

I lock the phone. Yes That's what I always

10:09

do. Yeah. See I that doesn't make any sense to me.

10:12

Hmm Like I'm using my phone or

10:14

I want to get a picture press the Glock button

10:16

now press the camera button. No,

10:18

you here we go Plus

10:21

as well when you look when you lock the phone

10:24

it turns the display off into always-on display

10:26

So you have to tap the phone to wake the phone

10:29

then press the camera bond. That is inefficient

10:31

I guess you're right I was like this is one of

10:33

these like when you have shortcuts that you just

10:36

Your fingers know how to do and your brain doesn't

10:38

I was like Mike I don't need to tap the screen Oh,

10:40

I do need to tap the screen in order to wake it up and then

10:43

swipe over I didn't even realize I was doing just like tripled

10:45

my taps, you know, yeah. No, that's

10:47

true camera on the lock screen man Steve

10:50

Jobs was right He

10:53

was right the whole time get it on there, okay.

10:55

All right, I'll let you keep the camera I will probably once

10:57

again next year be like do you really need that? Everyone

11:01

always says it to me but I think it's a

11:03

good thing to have and right in the top I

11:05

have my long fantastic in a widget underneath it

11:07

is the carrot weather widget The perfect

11:09

pairing carrot weather widget is like it's you

11:11

always got to find a way to sneak it on there somewhere

11:13

or another On my second screen.

11:16

I've got a bunch of widgets. So I have notion widgets.

11:18

I'll talk about notion later I have a

11:20

bunch of widgets Smith widgets for photos

11:23

as well as Apple's photos I

11:25

have peak which is another

11:27

app I'll talk about later on which shows me some health

11:29

stuff then I have the best widget

11:32

as part of iOS 17 the home Widget,

11:35

which is just like the best thing.

11:38

Are you for real? Are you for real suggesting that the home

11:40

app is the best widget? It's so good Really?

11:43

Let me tell you what makes it good It's like sell me on

11:45

the home widget because I've tried

11:47

it and it only ever just shows me things

11:49

I never want It doesn't seem like I have

11:51

any way to grow it which things I use Cg

11:54

be gray. I'm gonna change your life

11:56

man. You ready? Please please do long

11:58

press on the widget Press

12:01

edit widget, untick recommended,

12:03

and choose what you want. Oh

12:05

my god! This

12:09

is why State of the Apps exists. It's

12:11

for these nuggets of wisdom. You

12:14

have changed my life. That's why I love

12:16

it. So now I have the

12:18

four lights that I always want to

12:20

be turning off most. The two in the bedroom, the two in

12:22

the lounge. I have the TV and the

12:24

most active scene that I use. It's fantastic. Oh,

12:28

okay. All right. This is definitely

12:30

going to change some things then. It's so good.

12:32

I love it because I hate the way

12:34

it works in Control Center. Because

12:37

especially what's complicated for me is I have

12:39

a home at the studio and

12:42

a home at home. And quite

12:45

often, even though it's supposed to change

12:47

based on location, it doesn't. So I'm at home

12:49

and I want to turn on the light and I pull it down

12:52

and it's showing my lights at the studio. This is not helpful

12:54

to me. There's no reason why this should

12:56

be happening. They're not even remotely close to each other. But

12:59

then also just like the phone deciding

13:01

what it wants to show you are fine,

13:04

I suppose, but it's not what I want. The

13:06

only downside with the widget is you can only

13:08

toggle things on and off, right? You can't

13:11

adjust the amount of brightness,

13:14

but I guess you could set up a scene to do that. I

13:16

run everything through scenes.

13:18

My home philosophy is you should basically

13:21

never be controlling an accessory directly.

13:24

Everything should be a part of a scene. I

13:26

have a ton of scenes, but

13:29

maybe that's also why I've tried that at the home

13:31

widget. And it's like something about my brain didn't

13:33

even process that I could tell it, don't

13:35

recommend. It never occurred to me

13:37

to untick that box. I

13:40

was just disappointed that it was constantly

13:42

like, hey, do you want to hard turn

13:44

off your Apple TV with the smart plug that

13:46

you put behind it? No. How about

13:49

these scenes that you know that I'm

13:51

telling you to set every day at this

13:53

time? Do you want to suggest me one of them? No,

13:55

no, it never wants to suggest one of them. That's

13:58

funny thing as well for that smart plug controller. on

14:00

your Apple TV. Your Apple TV is probably

14:02

the dominant HomeKit

14:05

hub in your house? Yeah, the

14:07

reason it's extra funny to me is because this is

14:09

a holdover from when, I don't know

14:11

if it was tvOS or what, but like when

14:14

we first got the Apple TV, it would

14:16

just freeze quite a lot and the

14:18

only way to fix it was to unplug

14:20

it and I plug it back in. I got so

14:23

tired of this, I bought a smart plug

14:25

just so from the couch, right? I could press

14:28

the button to like physically

14:30

cut the power to this Apple TV to then force

14:32

it to turn back on. But if that switch

14:34

was in HomeKit, if you turn it off,

14:37

you probably can't turn it back on again via

14:39

HomeKit. We have HomePods though, right? Like

14:41

so the HomePods will take the right place. Ah, there hubs

14:43

as well? Yeah, there hubs as well. Okay. We've got

14:45

like a million things in the house that are acting as hubs.

14:48

Yeah. But my wife and I joked that like buying

14:51

that smart plug, eventually

14:53

the Apple TV learns. We have like a

14:55

hard threat here, Apple TV.

14:57

You better just freaking work. Yeah. And

15:00

it slowly was like, okay, like I guess I'll

15:02

be a good Apple TV and not just completely

15:04

freeze audio all the time. So the threatening plug.

15:07

That's why it's extra funny to me that HomeKit was

15:09

like really aggressive about recommending

15:11

maybe my least used accessory

15:14

currently that like I forgot even existed

15:16

was always like front and center. Do you

15:18

want to hard cut the power to the Apple TV? No, HomeKit.

15:21

I don't. I then have a Bode,

15:24

which is my home security system. That's

15:27

a camera widget. They also have an interactive widget

15:29

for setting the state of the alarm system, which

15:31

is pretty cool. Then I have

15:33

one of the new Widgetsmith widgets, which

15:35

I love. So with the interactive widgets,

15:38

when I tap that photo of the pool, it

15:41

slides up and shows me a countdown to my

15:43

next vacation. Oh, huh.

15:45

Cause you can have these widgets stacked on

15:47

top of each other now. So like you

15:50

can take what were two widget types that were

15:52

in Widgetsmith and you can like put

15:54

them one on top of the other. So you can like

15:56

have a photo hiding time zones.

15:58

I have a photo hiding. countdown and stuff

16:00

like that. This is like one of the things that Underscore

16:03

put in is the interactive stuff. And

16:05

I really love that. Because I like having the countdown,

16:07

but sometimes the image I wanted to use,

16:10

text didn't look good on it. But now I can

16:12

have it hidden there. And we did this for

16:14

the podcast-a-thon. So I had an image of the podcast-a-thon,

16:17

and I would tap it, and it would slide up and show me the

16:19

time, which is also good for an event like that, so

16:22

I don't see how many days it is all the time. Just

16:25

what I want to see. I didn't realize David

16:27

had put that in Widget Smith. I

16:29

mean, again, as far as I could tell, he's built an entire

16:31

operating system inside of Widget Smith.

16:34

The number of things he's done is insane. So

16:36

is that an inspirational photo for you for your next

16:38

vacation, this pool photo? Yeah, it's like, here's

16:40

where you're going. Ah, OK. And

16:42

then you tap it, and it will show you. It's nice. That

16:46

is my regular home screen.

16:49

So when you say your regular home screen,

16:51

does this not exist within a focus

16:53

mode? Correct. So this is just the default state

16:55

of the phone. Yes, I also use these

16:57

home screens in do not disturb and

17:00

in my recording focus mode. Ah,

17:02

OK. I have recording as one of

17:04

the options in here, so you can look at that. And

17:07

my recording one is exactly the same

17:09

home screens. I just have a different lock

17:11

screen. So

17:14

my regular home screen, lock screen, that's confusing.

17:17

I just have an image of Adena, and I have

17:20

the very top lock screen widget

17:22

is Fantastic Al. And then I have weather.

17:25

I have widgets from a step counter, and I have a timer

17:27

timer, like it's the little circle one. And

17:29

then on my recording lock screen, I

17:32

use the photo shuffle thing,

17:35

which is the same as last time. And I just have a widgets

17:37

with time zone thing and a larger

17:39

timer time tracker on

17:41

my recording one. OK, huh. So it's

17:43

basically the same there. And I don't

17:46

have anything special for do not

17:48

disturb. It's just all

17:50

the same stuff as my regular lock screen.

17:52

Oh, OK. You mean like this is just, it

17:54

looks like this for do not disturb as well. Yeah, nothing

17:57

changes. Travel.

18:00

My travel lock screen, which is one of my

18:02

favorite lock screens. I think

18:04

this is exactly the same as before. So

18:06

I have like the globe lock

18:08

screen because I think that's really cool. Show you where you are in

18:10

the world. Oh, I added the batteries

18:13

lock screen widget, which was your recommendation

18:16

from last time. This is funny to me

18:18

because my travel focus

18:20

mode, literally exactly the same, right?

18:22

It's like clock, weather, battery,

18:25

flighty, and the zoomed in

18:27

thing for the earth. It's a little bit like

18:30

the correct travel setup

18:32

just manifested itself into

18:35

the universe. Like this is the correct answer

18:37

for if you need a lock screen while

18:40

you are traveling, this is what you should just

18:42

do. This is the one that looks the best. Those are the

18:44

most obvious options for what to have. Well, I think

18:46

the two of us who just perfected it, you cannot

18:49

argue with the arrangement. It's unarguable. Yep.

18:52

And then the home screen itself, I use way more

18:54

widgets here. I have four widgets

18:56

and they're just like weather and calendar.

18:59

I have the fine mind, just like a stack of the

19:02

things that I might have. And I can change those around

19:04

depending on what I'm taking with me, like

19:06

what suitcase I have, what bag I have. I

19:10

used to have a notes note

19:12

for both my scan and my passport

19:14

and also my packing list. This

19:17

is now in things, which

19:19

I'll talk about later. So I have a things widget

19:22

underneath the notes widget, which is where my packing list

19:24

lives. And then, you know,

19:27

for apps, they're very similar to my usual

19:29

apps, but I add wallet on there because you

19:31

use a bunch of wallet passes when you're in travel

19:33

and also like airline apps. And I change those

19:36

out depending on which airline I'm flying. Right

19:38

now, listening to you, I'm just I'm totally

19:41

stealing the find

19:43

my widget for my own travel setup. I

19:45

didn't think about that one for bags and things or

19:48

like you can even set it for people. Like if you're meeting someone,

19:50

I think like I didn't consider

19:52

that. And that's great. I'm going to add

19:55

that one straight away. You know, we've

19:57

spoken about having air tags on the

19:59

luggage and how. helpful that can be. Yeah air

20:01

tags on everything. It's super good and then just

20:03

having them right there it's just like a very quick and easy

20:06

way to get to that thing that I'm gonna need and

20:08

that's what my travel lock screen is

20:10

really. It's like a lot of widgets

20:13

because it will give me information at a glance but

20:15

also very quickly allows me to get to the apps

20:17

that have the corresponding information if I need to

20:19

dig into them. You know so I've got like these are all in

20:21

stacks but I have flighty in there

20:24

and I have Tripsy in there like so these are apps

20:26

that have got that information in them. And I

20:28

can just get to them as quickly as possible.

20:29

Alright

20:30

well when you're traveling you're traveling

20:33

to go on vacation. Yes. Do you

20:35

have a vacation set up? I do now because

20:37

last year you showed me your vacation home

20:40

screen and lock screen I was like oh that's a good idea so

20:42

I do that. And I would

20:44

say that this builds on the

20:47

travel one so I still have

20:49

like a lock screen which has now

20:52

has like an image and this will be some kind of like

20:54

image taken whilst on vacation somewhere. This

20:56

is a perfor overdina taken on a trip we took a

20:58

couple of years ago and I've got weather

21:01

there which is very important and I also brought batteries

21:03

in because that's also very important when you're on your vacation.

21:07

And then on the home screen again I have

21:09

the batteries widget very helpful

21:11

I have the Tripsy widget very helpful so

21:13

I have Find My there and I have the

21:16

basic apps that I'm going to need while I'm traveling

21:18

with two spots that are spare

21:21

and that will be related to the trip

21:23

that I'm on. Like when I was at WWDC

21:26

I still use the vacation one and I would add the Apple

21:28

Developer app there and the wallet app

21:30

because I was gonna need those. And so depending

21:32

on the trip that I'm on I will add apps

21:35

that are relevant to this vacation

21:37

lock screen which I find to be like a very

21:39

helpful thing to do. You know like if

21:41

you go into a theme park and they have an app and

21:43

put it on your home screen and it's there whenever you need

21:45

it you know. Yeah yeah for any of that kind of like

21:48

holiday stuff you need that spare space for

21:50

whatever it is. Like I'm a big believer

21:52

in spare space on your home

21:54

screens or lock screens. I've just got to say

21:57

though like you're killing me

21:59

here with with the wallpaper

22:01

being the same for all of these

22:03

modes. You change your lock screen wallpaper,

22:06

but you don't want to change the background wallpaper.

22:08

I know you love that literal wallpaper that

22:11

is your wallpaper, but doesn't

22:14

it like mess with your brain, right? That you're

22:16

on vacation and the wallpaper

22:18

is still exactly the same? Not at all.

22:21

Because the apps are different. It grabs your attention,

22:23

that wallpaper, right? It really dominates

22:26

the scene. So I feel like it

22:28

has such an impact that you

22:30

might want to change it for different, but you

22:32

just don't. I can tell you just don't. Okay. It's

22:35

like if you change all the furniture inside of your house,

22:37

you know it's different. If you leave the paint or

22:39

the wallpaper on the walls, it's not like, you know? I

22:43

don't approve of this analogy. I know you don't. I

22:45

also, if I got halfway through it, realized I didn't know

22:48

how I was going to finish it. But the

22:50

point still stands. I

22:52

changed the lock screens. I don't know why

22:54

I do that. I just do that. Like it's fun

22:56

to mess around with them. No, you change the lock

22:58

screens because you do it to mentally

23:01

reinforce that you're in a different mode. That's why you change

23:03

the lock screens. Yeah, but my app layout does that on

23:06

my home screen. I guess I'll just have to believe you. But

23:08

it's like, I can't believe it's like, oh

23:10

my God, you've shown me four focus modes in

23:12

a row and the wallpaper is the same on all

23:15

four focus modes. Oh buddy, you got another two. Don't

23:17

you worry. We're going to go for

23:19

a perfect 10 here, you know? No, we're not,

23:21

it can't possibly be a perfect 10. We'll find out. I

23:24

have a weekend focus mode now. This is new,

23:26

year of the weekend, weekend focus mode. Okay,

23:28

right. So this is different thing that you're focusing

23:31

on related to your theme. I'm sure I'm going to click on

23:33

this and I'm going to see a different wallpaper. You're going to see the

23:35

same wallpaper. Oh God, God. You're going to see

23:37

the same wallpaper. Mostly the same app. But

23:40

it's also a photo of Adina in front of that

23:42

wallpaper. That's my average, like

23:44

that's a regular lock screen. This is the

23:46

regular lock screen. Really

23:49

the main difference here is I

23:51

do actually need to change this. I've just looked at this now

23:53

and realised I have not updated this lock

23:55

screen because I still have dew there

23:57

and I want to remove that and put the little dew. widget

24:01

in instead so I need to change that around. I'm going

24:03

to do that today actually. It's kind of funny

24:05

in preparing for this episode

24:07

I have made multiple changes to multiple lock

24:10

screens and this is one that has

24:12

not been done so I would do that. So the due app

24:14

will be gone and I'll put where I've got Widget

24:16

Smith right now I'll put the due widget there as well in

24:18

a little stack. And then on the second

24:21

screen here it's just kind of a simplified

24:23

version showing me the home thing my widget thing

24:25

and also box box which is a Formula

24:28

One app. So it has the times of

24:30

the next races which always happen on the weekends so

24:32

I want to know and then also have the Sonos app. Is

24:35

that a little picture of the racetrack? Is that what that is?

24:37

That's a visual layout of the racetrack

24:39

yeah. Cool right? Yeah that is

24:41

cool. Very Mario Kart. This app is really

24:44

nice like I like it. It also has a live

24:46

activity in there which I enjoy so like there's

24:48

a live activity for the

24:51

race if you are not

24:53

watching or whatever you can enable live activity

24:55

into you's winning. I'm only laughing because like

24:57

oh someone I know who actually uses

25:00

the pitched use case of live activities

25:02

which was like you can follow the sports game. Yeah. Because

25:05

it just sewn not into sports. My brain filed

25:07

that away as like ah yes what a lovely

25:09

developer example of like how to make a test

25:12

case. It's like no no people actually do that right this

25:14

is very important to them. One of those people. Nice.

25:17

Sports. Okay so when you're going

25:19

to sleep sleep's got to look different.

25:21

Nope. Yep it does. It's different widgets.

25:26

So everything's

25:28

different. I only have one page for my sleep

25:31

home screens and basically

25:33

what we're seeing here is YouTube and Audible

25:35

are being added. It's like YouTube I watch

25:38

videos at night to wind down same as audiobooks

25:40

at night to wind down and then I also have

25:42

a little home little square home one and these

25:44

are the lights I need at night right make sure the lounge

25:47

lights are off downstairs and maybe

25:49

the bedroom lights are on while we're getting

25:51

ready to sleep and then turn them off and it's just like an easy way

25:53

to get that done. It's really fine that YouTube winds

25:55

you down at night that feels like a bad choice for

25:58

I'm gonna go to bed so I'm gonna watch some

26:00

YouTube videos. Yeah. If

26:02

that works for you? I mean, it's not all

26:04

like, hey guys,

26:06

you know, it's not all, you know, sometimes it's like,

26:09

oh, watch me make these knives. If

26:11

that works, I just feel like the related videos are

26:13

always there trying to just like keep you focused

26:15

on the app forever as opposed to something like Audible.

26:18

Great, you're talking to somebody who

26:20

doesn't pay attention to related videos. Oh,

26:23

okay. I'm very good with YouTube. Like,

26:25

I don't watch things that are on the front page. I

26:27

just watch stuff from my watch later queue.

26:29

That's my world subscription.

26:32

And then I only watch things from the watch later queue. So

26:35

it's very easy for me to ignore most

26:37

of what YouTube is trying to give me. It's

26:40

like, good try, YouTube. Do

26:43

you want to watch shorts? We've got shorts for you, please. None

26:45

of that stuff finds its way to me. Please watch

26:47

the shorts. Okay, good. I still feel like, I don't know,

26:50

for a sleep focus,

26:52

you might want to have a, like a dimmer wallpaper,

26:55

you know, something that's just a bit more, okay,

26:58

can I negotiate with you here? Would you consider

27:01

taking your current wallpaper, which

27:03

you obviously love, but just

27:05

like, why? In, I

27:07

would even said it. I'm

27:10

not interested in what you're telling me. I was just gonna

27:12

say, like, put a little vignette on it. Why? You

27:15

know, pull the saturation down or, so

27:17

it feels more like bedtime, that's why. I don't

27:19

need it. Oh, God. I don't know why

27:21

this really bothers me. I don't know why it bothers you

27:23

either. It's fine, like, it's

27:26

not a problem. Okay. I

27:29

also have some watch faces for you. I'm

27:31

glad you can't put wallpaper on watch faces. All right,

27:33

let's take a look at your watch faces. I'm unhappy. Oh,

27:37

yeah, really? I think like you and everyone else

27:39

on Earth. Because I have a new watch now, right?

27:41

I have the Apple Watch Ultra. And the

27:43

watches, faces I've used before, don't look

27:45

good on the Apple Watch Ultra. I used to like a lot of

27:47

the round watch faces. The round watch faces

27:50

do not translate very well to the Apple Watch Ultra. So

27:53

I've decided that the best thing for me to do is

27:55

just do what the Apple Watch Ultra wants me to do,

27:57

and I use the modular Ultra watch

27:59

face. And what I will say is

28:02

while I do not like the look of this watch face,

28:04

it is very utilitarian.

28:07

It is helpful because

28:10

I have like a billion complications on this

28:12

watch face, right? So I have

28:15

top left, carrot, then dew, then

28:17

a fantastic cow showing me the date, then

28:19

I have the big fantastic cow in the middle showing me my next appointment,

28:22

then I can see my activity rings, I can get to my medications

28:25

app, and timer-y. Ton

28:27

of information, which is good, and I can access

28:29

the things that I am doing most often right

28:31

there. And I just don't like the way it looks,

28:34

but this watch is so huge,

28:36

I figure I have just got to lean into it. I cannot try

28:39

and fancy it up anymore. This is just what it is. That is

28:42

a rewind back in time. The Apple

28:44

Watch has just been released, and someone

28:46

shows you and they go, someday

28:49

here will be all

28:52

of the watch faces that you can use. And then I

28:54

was able to see the current slate of

28:56

watch faces. I go, wow,

29:00

I cannot believe how many they are going

29:02

to have by next year. And then

29:04

the time traveler would say, oh no, no,

29:07

this is going to be ten years

29:09

later. We

29:12

have mentioned it a million times, but it

29:14

is just mind-blowing to me,

29:17

still, how limited and locked

29:19

in time these Apple Watch

29:21

faces are. What you have just said

29:23

is the truth of trying

29:26

to make it look good is this

29:28

endless battle. And it always

29:31

feels like they find a way to

29:35

force you to decide between two different things. But

29:38

no, I would like this watch face to do these two

29:40

things and it would look much better. So it is like, no,

29:43

no, no, no, no. You can have this

29:45

part be colored, but not that part be

29:47

colored, or whatever it is. It is just incredibly

29:50

frustrating. This new Apple Watch Ultra

29:52

face, yep, we have

29:55

got a new one, but it is still the same. It

29:57

is still the same as all of them. Yes,

30:00

it was just very frustrating. What I do

30:02

like about this new one compared to some of the other ones

30:04

It's like it has that ring around the outside

30:07

and there's a few things you can do with it Mm-hmm, and

30:09

I have it set to ticking seconds, which I do

30:11

find to be helpful Yeah, you

30:13

know a decade in the future,

30:16

but we can put a ring on it that shows you the

30:18

seconds Thanks guys. I

30:20

also have a travel watch face. These

30:22

are the only two watch faces. I have only two

30:24

interesting What I'll say is I've this is the first time

30:27

I've ever set another watch face So maybe I'll

30:29

do more in the future Hmm because before

30:31

I really was just trying to make it look the best it could

30:33

be when now I'm trying to lean into The utility

30:36

right, but this is my like traveling

30:38

watch face And I'll probably

30:40

set one up for maybe for vacations too

30:43

But it's the first one I've done and the

30:45

reason I did it was because there was a flighty watch

30:48

app now And that's what the middle

30:50

complication is but it's blacked out But

30:52

that's the I put the flighty one there so

30:55

that shows me my next flight information Then

30:58

I also have removed due

31:00

and added a quick access to my find items,

31:03

right? So like I can find my air tags

31:06

and then in the bottom right instead of timer

31:08

II I have Time zone in

31:10

London like the time in London or I might set it to

31:12

where I'm going to for example to have

31:15

arrived there So that is my

31:17

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33:38

Alright, so the number one rule that everyone

33:41

would know is if you're

33:43

going to have different focus

33:45

modes and different setups

33:48

for doing different kinds of things in life, you

33:51

want them to look different. You want them

33:53

to be visually, immediately,

33:57

obviously different. Interesting. You

33:59

can do that with... app arrangement

34:01

is one tool, but it's not a sufficient

34:03

tool. You want to also try to use color,

34:06

and you want to try to use imagery, so

34:09

that it's just immediately obvious

34:12

that you are in a different mode. Communicate

34:15

that instantly. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

34:18

That's for sure. So I've

34:20

pulled out the main focus

34:23

modes. I've sent you a copy of all

34:25

the different things that I have. So on

34:27

a high level, I have a lot of the similar

34:30

modes that you do. So I've got like

34:32

weekend, I've got travel, I've got sleep, a

34:35

do not disturb mode, and then I've

34:37

got a mode for health, a

34:39

mode that I call core for

34:42

what I think of as core work, like the most important

34:44

stuff that usually means writing. And

34:47

then I have a mode called open, which

34:49

is basically like my default mode for the phone.

34:52

Now, a bunch of modes. How do you distinguish

34:55

them? Well, Apple this

34:57

year added these absolutely

34:59

lovely planetary image backgrounds.

35:02

And so I've decided to go through

35:05

all of my focus modes and pick one

35:07

of the planets, with a slight exception,

35:10

to represent each of these modes.

35:12

Oh, a planet? How

35:14

on earth can you discern between the different shapes?

35:17

Because the planets look different. If it's all the same shape

35:19

and a black background, surely these

35:21

planets don't look that different. I've never bumped

35:24

into a square planet before, have you? No,

35:27

I have not bumped into a square planet before. But

35:30

I will say, if you decide

35:32

to go with this mode, you will realize we

35:34

don't actually have a lot of different colors for

35:37

the different planets. There's obviously the standout

35:39

of Saturn, right? We have the rings that makes it

35:41

more visually different. Earth looks quite

35:43

different. But then if you're like, oh, right,

35:46

Neptune and Uranus look like basically like

35:48

the exact same planet. Mercury

35:50

and the moon are quite difficult to tell

35:53

the difference, like at a glance. So I've

35:55

eliminated the similar ones. But

35:58

it did make me feel like... Ah,

36:00

we could use more colors in these planets, right?

36:03

We could use more differentiation for different ones.

36:05

Why do they all have to be planets? Why can't you just use

36:07

completely different images or like things

36:10

that all relate to the thing that is? Here's

36:13

the problem, Mike. If you're trying to

36:15

pick, like in my case here,

36:18

six, seven different wallpapers

36:21

to represent these different modes,

36:24

I would want them to be distinct,

36:28

but also related. And

36:31

that's actually quite a difficult task

36:33

to find wallpapers that go together

36:36

nicely,

36:37

but

36:38

also are visually distinct

36:40

in their colors. And so this was the

36:42

kind of task where I

36:44

was driving myself crazy because I would find

36:47

like, Ooh, I've got four good

36:49

wallpapers that work together, but these

36:51

two just don't quite fit and it's

36:53

like, well, let me try to fix this problem

36:56

by finding a new set of six wallpapers

36:58

that can work perfectly well. And so

37:01

when Apple came out with those planets, I made the

37:03

decision for my own mental sanity.

37:05

I was like, you know what? I'm just going to work

37:08

with what Apple gave me. There's enough choices

37:10

here. So I'm just going to stick with the planets for

37:12

each of the different focus modes. And I think

37:15

it looks really nice. And there's enough of them that are

37:17

enough different with the colors that

37:20

it can be just immediately obvious,

37:22

which thing are you doing? Sure. So yes,

37:25

this is what I do for me. As

37:27

you can see, many of these focus

37:30

modes are quite bare. So

37:33

like if we take a look at do not disturb,

37:36

which I've used as the moon, leave

37:38

me alone, right? Nobody come here. I

37:40

just don't have anything on

37:42

my phone for the do not disturb mode because

37:45

the only circumstances in which

37:47

I use that are circumstances basically,

37:49

which I shouldn't be using my phone

37:52

anyway. So like we're recording the podcast

37:54

right now, but the phone and do not disturb mode.

37:57

I'm not going to do anything with the phone because we're

37:59

recording. a show. I don't need anything here,

38:02

so I'm just going to not have

38:04

anything on the screen at all. And I

38:06

really like having it like that. It's good

38:08

to know where you're going to serve when the sun's going to go

38:10

down. Just have a little lock screen,

38:12

cut out the old sun

38:15

down there. Why are you making fun

38:17

of me for that? Because you started

38:19

it. We're a perfect recorder, and then

38:21

you're like, oh, look at your wallpaper. The

38:25

doc here, we have three shortcuts,

38:27

I'm assuming. Oh, yes,

38:30

right. Okay, yes. The only thing that I can do in any

38:32

of these modes that have nothing on them

38:34

is, yes. The doc, I've got three shortcuts.

38:37

Years ago, I used to have a launcher down here,

38:39

which brought up a list of a bunch of different

38:41

things that I could use, and I decided, you

38:44

know what? I can easily 80, 20, or 90, 10, which of

38:46

these am I actually using

38:49

basically all of the time, and just search for the rest

38:51

and get rid of this launcher. I've

38:53

gone down now to three things. They're

38:56

all input shortcuts. One

38:58

is for OmniFocus, one is

39:00

for a new note, and one is

39:03

for Cortex, for something to talk about on

39:05

the show. Those are the three that I leave on the bottom

39:07

as just like input. I have a thought.

39:09

It needs to go somewhere. Basically,

39:13

all of the time, it's going into one of

39:15

these three things. I

39:17

mean, there's a little problem that we'll get to

39:19

later, which is stuff should also

39:21

be going into Obsidian, but we

39:23

can get to that at a later point. This is like

39:26

most of my use case for just

39:28

about absolutely everything. So those are my items in

39:30

the doc. So I guess later on, we'll find out where they're

39:32

actually going. Because

39:35

that didn't sound too good. I also like

39:37

that you've had what I consider as

39:39

the very typical shortcuts experience,

39:41

which is like, I'll start one shortcut.

39:44

Now I'll make a shortcuts menu. Yeah,

39:46

yeah, yeah. So I'll make my shortcuts, and then I'll realize

39:49

I don't use them all. And so I'm just

39:51

going to go back to the ones that I really need, rather

39:53

than like my multi

39:55

shortcut, the Omni shortcut,

39:58

every shortcut possible. You know and people

40:01

end up like pairing that back over time This

40:03

is the exact same experience that people have when they

40:06

get into time tracking right is the

40:08

like oh, I'll just track Work

40:11

and it's like oh, just how many work hours I do

40:13

and then it grows into like incredibly

40:15

fine Distinctions for absolutely everything

40:18

and then you get paired back to like no wait

40:20

a minute. It's really only four things I care

40:22

about I don't care about Everything

40:24

in my life. I don't need to time track these

40:27

really subtle differences. So yeah hang

40:29

on Don't you track everything?

40:32

I'm always running a tracker But there's a

40:34

distinction here of like how fine grained

40:37

are the differences between the trackers? And

40:39

I just see this with everybody and I also

40:41

went through with time tracking Yeah, like you wildly

40:44

expand to like I'm gonna time

40:46

track the individual books that

40:48

I'm reading It's like really you

40:50

don't need to do that That doesn't make any sense and

40:53

people then pair it back and go like just reading

40:55

is fine, right? Yeah, it's the same

40:57

thing with shortcuts. Like you said you sort of explode into a

41:00

billion number of shortcuts and then you go Yeah,

41:03

but 90% of the time

41:05

I'm using these three and that's fine And

41:07

then you also have a corresponding empty

41:10

watch face what we call this watch face empty.

41:12

We have the weather on it Well, I'm assuming that the other

41:14

ones maybe have more complications on them Well,

41:16

I just wanted something that was non distracting.

41:18

Okay, like I've just gone with

41:21

a you know No numbers watch face just

41:23

the weather Basically black and white

41:25

matching the moon. It's actually a slight subtle

41:28

gray there naturally but yes once

41:30

again trying to pair watch

41:32

faces with modes is Exercise

41:36

in disappointment. Yeah, this is probably one

41:38

of the better ones and we're going to get to like

41:40

sad ugly ones later Well, I look forward to it.

41:43

So where next on the tour? Which

41:45

planet are we going to now if we're on

41:47

the moon, then I guess we'll go to earth

41:50

next Slightly disappointing because I

41:52

could see that I have travel set up exactly

41:54

the same way that you have travel

41:56

set up So that's completely uninteresting, but I

41:58

do cheat and I use Earth

42:01

twice, which I'm just like a little

42:03

bit upset at having to use the same planet

42:05

twice. But Apple does provide

42:08

this thing where you have two options, like the

42:10

zoomed in Earth and the zoomed

42:12

out Earth. Yeah, because the zoomed in one is good for

42:14

travel because it is showing you where you are. Yeah,

42:17

so the zoomed out Earth is what

42:19

I use for my open

42:21

mode. And this is

42:24

basically like the default

42:26

mode on the phone almost

42:28

all of the time. Basically, the way my day works

42:31

is like I start out in the core

42:34

for like doing my actual work or it's

42:36

the weekend. And then in the afternoon,

42:38

this rolls over into open

42:41

mode. And I call it open and

42:43

I use the Earth because this is the

42:45

period of time in which notifications

42:48

will actually reach me. This is

42:50

when you will communicate with people on Earth.

42:52

That's exactly why it's shown here. Well,

42:54

I like it because then in the other ones, look, if

42:57

you are from Mars, I'll speak to you. If you're not,

42:59

I want to know. I get it. Yeah,

43:02

so the open mode is the only time I'm having

43:04

anything to do with other Earthlings,

43:07

hence the Earth mode. And I guess it also works for

43:09

travel, too, right? It's like I'm having to like get

43:11

through all of these other Earthlings around me to get

43:13

wherever I'm going. So this

43:15

is the time where notifications

43:18

can come through, apps can have

43:20

like badges and things. This

43:22

is the one that's the afternoon one. I

43:24

don't have anything wildly interesting here.

43:27

Again, I like to try to keep things relatively simple.

43:30

So I would like to ask on the lock

43:32

screen, what is the complication with the little

43:34

flame? OK, yeah. So on the lock screen, I've

43:36

got batteries, activity, the weather.

43:39

The flame one is zero,

43:42

which is that fasting application that I've

43:44

mentioned in previous years. So with a little

43:46

timer and it just shows a little icon,

43:49

which tells you like which phase

43:51

of the fast are you in. So that's

43:53

just something that I want to do. What does a flame have to do with it?

43:56

Are you burning calories now? What's

43:59

going on? That's basically. Basically what they mean is

44:01

like, yeah, you're in the fat burning zone

44:03

of your fast. That's

44:06

basically what it means. If I was doing that

44:08

and I was hungry, I would not appreciate that little countdown.

44:11

Yeah. I mean, this is like a whole other thing, but

44:14

yeah, I've just been sort of keeping track of this. This

44:17

is part of my, people know, like I've always skipped breakfast

44:19

for forever. I guess this falls

44:21

in the same category of I'm always

44:23

running a time tracker. And so this

44:26

little timer of like, when

44:28

are you done eating for the evening?

44:31

Just start it with like slipped right

44:33

into my routine super easily. Yeah.

44:36

This to me is actually the primary benefit because I

44:38

feel like the danger is always

44:41

evening time. Like you're snacking for the whole

44:43

evening. So this is also more about

44:45

like, it's not really so much for me about when

44:48

the timer runs down. Like I don't care and I will

44:50

blow past this at all times, right? It's

44:52

like, oh, you've got two

44:54

hours left to hit your whatever goal.

44:56

It's like, I don't care, right? I don't care a timer. It's

44:59

much more about making a little

45:01

decision of like, okay, it's 8 PM.

45:05

I'm like done eating for the day. And

45:07

I know that because I press the button to start the

45:09

little fasting timer. So that's what that thing is.

45:12

And then on the home screen itself, I

45:14

just have the weather and

45:16

I have an OmniFocus

45:19

widget, which is showing me

45:21

a list that I call now, which

45:23

is basically most of the

45:25

things that are available to me just

45:28

sorted in the kind of project

45:30

slash priority order. You've got

45:32

a lot left to do today. Yeah.

45:35

23 tasks. That's like three days

45:37

for me. That's rough stuff.

45:40

Good luck. It's why I was intrigued

45:42

by the do thing that you were mentioning

45:44

before is because I think

45:47

I should experiment with pulling

45:49

out some of the more smaller personal

45:52

tasks that might fit into

45:54

this category of like, it needs

45:57

to be done today. It doesn't really

45:59

make sense. major project

46:01

and it helps to be nagged. So

46:04

I have a ridiculous number of things

46:07

in my OmniFocus and so

46:09

it always looks like, oh, Gray has a crazy

46:12

number of things, but I

46:15

rarely ever think that, oh, I'm going

46:17

to get to the end of this list today. It's just not

46:19

how I use the system and it's more like

46:21

they're ranked in priority and you just

46:23

work your way down the list and

46:26

a bunch of huge numbers of very

46:28

small things like take

46:30

out the trash, take your vitamins

46:32

or whatever, a bunch of things like that are in

46:34

there as well. So it's just a different

46:37

use for a task manager. Yeah,

46:38

okay.

46:40

So I guess we're going to go to Mars

46:42

next, which

46:45

is obviously, Mars is

46:47

for sleep. Why wouldn't the moon be for sleep?

46:50

Okay, so I'm glad you

46:52

asked, Mike, why isn't the moon for sleep?

46:54

Because it does seem like the moon should be

46:57

for sleep, but it's not

46:59

for sleep because in the actual real

47:01

world, when you're using your phone,

47:04

the moon's color is basically

47:07

bright white, like in the evening time,

47:09

right? It's the end of the day or like you're

47:11

getting ready for bed and you look at your phone and there's

47:14

like a circle of a flashlight just

47:16

shining into your eyes that is your

47:18

phone drawing the moon. So

47:21

I basically chose Mars because it is

47:24

the reddest planet. It is the darkest,

47:27

sleepiest color of all of the planets

47:29

to choose from. So that is why Mars is

47:32

the sleep focus. Okay, because it's

47:34

a sleep focus, you don't have the image of Mars on the

47:36

lock screen to send the home screen. It is very

47:39

faintly on the lock screen. Really? Oh

47:41

yeah, I can kind of see that. Right, it's

47:44

barely there. It's like

47:46

doing the sleep thing and the always on, I get that. They've

47:49

really, really dims the wallpaper in sleep

47:51

mode. Yeah, so you could easily miss it, but

47:53

you won't miss it if you're actually in like a completely

47:55

black room. Then you're like, oh, you can't actually see that

47:57

it's there. But yeah, the sleep mode, I have that setting

47:59

where It dims the wallpaper, which, so

48:02

here's the thing. I do like that for the wallpaper,

48:04

for dimming the wallpaper, but, okay.

48:07

Apple Watch frustrations. I have an Apple

48:09

Watch face for sleep

48:12

mode. So this is the

48:14

same face that you were talking about, like

48:16

the modular ultra face. Is

48:19

it? It is. So

48:21

I actually really

48:23

like this watch face. I think this is super

48:25

classy. You get like big tall numbers

48:28

in the middle. You can turn off basically

48:31

all of the complications, but

48:33

this is the ultra face. And

48:36

I feel like if you remove

48:39

basically everything and expand

48:41

the numbers in the middle, I

48:44

kind of think it's one of the nicest watch faces

48:46

that Apple makes, but this

48:48

is what I was talking about before with Apple

48:51

forces you to make decisions that

48:54

are very frustrating. So

48:57

I use this face for sleep because

48:59

it has an option which says, oh, do you want

49:01

this watch face to go into sleep mode? You

49:03

can make it red. So instead

49:05

of having the time being white numbers,

49:08

you can make them red numbers. I love

49:10

it. When I found that, I was like, oh, cool.

49:13

I can't wait to use this watch face and I'll just

49:15

set different colors for

49:17

all of the different focus modes that I use.

49:19

No, you can have it white or

49:22

you can have it red. Those are your only

49:24

two choices. Like, God damn

49:26

it, Apple. Like, let

49:29

me make it like this, but yellow?

49:31

No, you can't do that, right? Because

49:33

you can change the color, but it changes

49:36

the color of everything except the numbers

49:38

which are always white. Everything

49:40

is exactly that. Why does it do that? Numbers.

49:44

So frustrating. Like this again is

49:46

the thing of like, it's the most

49:49

obvious thing that people might want

49:51

to change and they always get to you,

49:53

right? It's the same thing with like the watch heads.

49:55

Like, oh, we can change everything except

49:57

the watch hands. No, you can't change. the

50:00

watch is so frustrating.

50:02

And so like, I really

50:04

like this as a super simple digital

50:07

watch face, but I just, I

50:09

use it on one other thing, but I

50:11

would use it everywhere if I could just change

50:13

the color of the actual numbers.

50:16

It's like, no, red or white, that's it.

50:18

Very weird. Yeah. This watch

50:20

on your wrist that has more computing power

50:23

than has sent actual people to the

50:25

moon cannot draw these numerals

50:27

in a different color. So

50:30

frustrating. What next take

50:32

me to another planet, Gray? So my very easy

50:35

method, just so Jupiter, let's go

50:37

to health. Why? I guess I'm realizing

50:39

in this conversation with you, I feel like I have

50:43

strong feelings about the planets that you

50:45

just don't.

50:47

No, of course I don't. Why would I associate

50:49

Jupiter in health? Why would I do that? Jupiter

50:52

is like the biggest and burliest of all the

50:54

planets, right? It's like, if any planet lifts,

50:56

Jupiter totally lifts, bro. Like it obviously

50:59

does. But maybe like Jupiter is just for

51:01

show, you know, another planet is actually

51:03

stronger, but Jupiter just like bulks up.

51:06

I was actually just mentally flipping through the roster

51:08

of planets, like, who could that be? And I was

51:11

like, no, I don't think anybody else does. What about Saturn?

51:13

Saturn's like holding the rings up. Saturn is

51:15

the planet that's like for looks, right? It's got the flashy

51:17

rings. Fair enough. Okay,

51:20

so for the Jupiter one, this

51:22

is where things are actually kind

51:24

of useful. So Jupiter is the coolest looking

51:26

planet, right? With the frigging

51:28

storm going on. You're like, what are you doing, man?

51:30

The storm is very interesting. It's super cool.

51:33

It's like, oh, it's always there. It's like, oh, wow.

51:35

Okay. So because Jupiter obviously

51:37

lifts on the home screen, this

51:40

is where I have all of the apps related to health.

51:43

So particularly when I'm

51:45

doing an exercise, it triggers

51:48

to flip into the health mode. So this is

51:50

also like what you would

51:52

have for fitness, right? Yeah,

51:54

I originally called this fitness,

51:57

but I ran into a problem where Apple

51:59

has... fitness hard coded

52:01

as a mode. And

52:03

I cannot remember what it is now, but that

52:06

caused some problem for me with

52:08

some automation. The fact that it was

52:10

hard coded just didn't work. I cannot remember

52:12

what it was now, but I had to change it to a more

52:14

generic name. Yeah, I have a fitness

52:18

focus mode, but all it does is just turns

52:20

off my notifications basically. Right,

52:22

right. Although, it stopped working

52:24

with the new watch. I don't understand why,

52:26

but that's the thing I need to work out for another

52:28

time. But yeah, I don't have anything special

52:30

for it. It's purely just like, I

52:33

just don't want any notifications when I'm working out of

52:35

any kind. And I just leave it at that.

52:37

Yeah, so it's the same thing here. I feel like you,

52:40

I just don't want any note. Whatever

52:42

it is, it can wait until

52:44

after. It will wait 45 minutes, right? Like

52:46

it just will, and I just don't want the distractions.

52:49

Yeah, completely agree. So I've got

52:51

Fitbot on here, which is my

52:54

exercise app that I mentioned before. Just totally

52:56

love life-changing sponsor of this

52:58

episode, I believe. Hugely important

53:01

life-changing app for me. I also have

53:03

the regular Apple Fitness one, and

53:05

I have the Apple Health app on

53:07

here. The Health app is ruining the aesthetic of this

53:10

home screen. God

53:12

damn it, Mike, you're right. Everything is

53:14

fit. Even the fitness app, because it's got

53:17

like the good hue that fits with the other colors,

53:19

and then Health is just like, yo,

53:22

I'm here too, you know? You

53:24

know what, you're totally right. Right

53:26

now, I'm going to add OmniItem,

53:29

create shortcut, because it's going to bother me. Create

53:33

shortcuts for

53:35

Health app. You're totally right. I can't

53:37

unsee it now. I

53:39

feel like maybe if it was black

53:41

with the heart that was pink, that might look kind of

53:43

nice, because then it would fit with the fitness app a

53:45

little bit. That might be kind of cool. Yeah, you're right.

53:48

Okay, so this gets filed under bugs in OmniFoC.

53:50

A lot of calculators. Pounds

53:53

to kilograms, kilograms to pounds. Smith

53:55

plate calculator. I don't know what that means.

53:58

Plate calculators, there's a lot of things going on here. Okay,

54:01

so what's happening here is the weights

54:03

that I use that I have at home, the power

54:06

block stuff, they are in pounds.

54:09

But in the UK, this is crazy

54:12

to me, in most, but

54:14

not all gyms, weights

54:16

are given in kilograms. But

54:19

a surprising, like when I go on gradations,

54:21

a surprising number of gyms

54:25

actually use both systems, and

54:27

you won't know unless you ask someone to

54:29

be like, wait, what's going on with these weights over here? Like 90%

54:33

of stuff is in kilograms in the UK, but I would

54:35

say 10% of stuff is in pounds. So

54:39

by sheer number of times,

54:42

I am most frequently exercising

54:44

at home with my weights that are

54:47

in pounds, especially this year

54:49

because of some of my theme stuff. I've also been

54:51

going to my local gym a bunch because

54:53

they have equipment that I don't. Where most

54:56

things are in kilograms. So anyway,

54:59

the long story short is in FitBOD,

55:03

the setting for changing between

55:05

pounds and kilograms is

55:07

in kind of a weird spot. And

55:10

changing back and forth in FitBOD is basically

55:12

kind of a pain. And even

55:15

within the same gyms in

55:17

the UK, I sometimes need to calculate between

55:19

pounds and kilograms, right? That's weird.

55:22

It's very weird. When I made a decision, I was like, okay,

55:24

what's the easiest thing that I can

55:27

do? I should, in theory,

55:29

because I'm in the UK, just do everything in kilograms.

55:33

But since the weights in my house were pounds, and also

55:35

since I grew up with pounds and still think in

55:37

pounds, I was like, no. Just

55:39

like Fahrenheit, right? I'm holding

55:41

the line on pounds are the correct

55:44

unit of weight. And so I made

55:46

a bunch of shortcuts. I don't agree with that at

55:48

all. Well, look, I'm not interested

55:50

in your view. I know. Here's the thing.

55:53

I know what you want. And I just need to state that I disagree.

55:56

No one's going to have to try and convince anyone of

55:58

anything. I just feel like I'm going to have to. I need to just

56:00

come out in favor of Celsius and

56:02

kilograms. I mean, look,

56:04

Fahrenheit is the best in height. We all know this. And

56:07

pounds are the worst in height. Fahrenheit is the worst in height.

56:11

I'm actually quite movable on pounds. I'm not particularly

56:14

wedded to pounds. I think kilograms are fine. But

56:16

so I spent a little time and I just made

56:19

some shortcuts to do the quick pounds to

56:21

kilograms back and forth conversions. The reason

56:23

I like kilograms is

56:26

that the smaller

56:28

is a gram and there's 100 in a kilogram. I've

56:30

got some bad news for you about how many grams

56:32

are in a kilogram and what the word kilo means.

56:35

And there's a thousand in a kilogram, let me allow them forever. But

56:37

like you've got pounds and ounces, like how many

56:40

ounces are in a pound? God damn, we don't need to have this

56:42

conversation right now. Okay. This

56:44

is why I also don't like feet and inches. It's

56:46

like the similar thing. I was like, I can't remember all of this. You

56:49

know? It's a simple thing of like there's 100

56:52

or a thousand who could know between these

56:55

things. I just

56:57

appreciate you demonstrating the mistake

56:59

that all of my physics students did.

57:01

I'm like, this is one of these things that drives me

57:03

crazy when people are like, the metric system is amazing. The

57:06

person saying that is almost always a nerd

57:09

and overestimates how rarely

57:12

normal people will make a mistake going back and

57:14

forth. But the thing is though, great. Okay.

57:17

I can see that I've made the mistake very quickly,

57:20

right? I can't do the same thing

57:23

for feet and inches or like pounds

57:25

and ounces. If I say it's six

57:27

and it actually is nine, it's just

57:29

not as easy to realize that I've made the mistake.

57:32

Yeah, it's totally fair. Yeah, yeah. Like

57:34

making the mistake is fine, but like how quickly can you correct it?

57:37

And like I will realize very quickly

57:39

that, you know, if I'm trying to do something, oh no,

57:41

wait, this is nowhere near enough. And

57:45

I'm like, I can't do that. With pounds

57:47

and ounces, you could be really close. I

57:49

made the mistake and I'm not adding it out. So

57:53

I've at least got to try and defend myself, you know?

57:55

Yeah, that's totally fair. Totally fair.

57:57

And the conversion system is better. Imperial

58:00

overestimates how often you actually switch

58:02

between the units. Like, this is a much rarer

58:04

thing. I mean, I did grow up with Imperial.

58:07

The UK has a weird mixed system. I

58:09

don't understand why. I know, and there's this weird, like,

58:11

counterculture of people trying to bring it back

58:14

as well, which is like, get over yourself,

58:16

man, it's gone, alright? Like, Imperial's

58:18

gone. Nobody wants to deal in that anymore.

58:21

Stop trying to bring gallons back into the equation.

58:23

Yes, but you've literally picked the example where,

58:25

again, the UK has this great mix of stuff. There's

58:28

gallons and quarts back for milk, and it's

58:30

like, what are you doing? Just like, get over

58:32

yourself. We've moved on. Oh, I'll agree

58:34

with you there. That ship has totally failed.

58:36

Yes, no one wants to live in this world. Everything's

58:39

in liters and milliliters. Yes. Although,

58:41

I still kind of hate milliliters. There's

58:44

a hundred milliliters in a litre. There's

58:48

a thousand milliliters. Where

58:50

are we going? Ah! Anything

58:54

with milliliters is like, why does this tiny

58:56

bottle have such a big number? I

58:59

hate it. No, I know. I hate it

59:01

so much. Like, oh, this tiny bottle of water,

59:03

how many milliliters? Three hundred! Here's

59:05

what I think we can all agree on. None of these systems

59:08

are good. They're just like, different forms

59:10

of, okay. What we can all agree on

59:13

is you shouldn't have a mixed system, right?

59:15

Yes. Which a surprising

59:17

number of countries do. That's like

59:20

the UK, India, Canada.

59:22

Like they've got these mixed systems. Like

59:25

guys, pick a size, right? Pick

59:27

a size. Anyway, apps. Apps,

59:30

let's get back to apps. Anyway,

59:33

unit conversions. You know what? They're

59:35

really annoying, so you can make shortcuts to

59:37

do it for you. I'll just

59:39

point out, the two you asked

59:41

about there is like plate calculators and Smith

59:44

plate calculators. So I was

59:46

really just doing the math in my head and I was like, this

59:49

is dumb, right? This is what machines are for. Just have the machine

59:51

do it for you. And the advantage of making your

59:53

own little shortcut is when

59:55

doing things like the bench press or whatever, you

59:58

can have the shortcut. Because

1:00:00

I'm thinking in pounds right, but it's like I want to think in kilograms

1:00:03

also then round to the correct Unit

1:00:07

of the plates in the gym that you're in

1:00:10

and kind of like spit out the number in a format

1:00:12

that you want Right because you're putting plates on the bar. So

1:00:14

that's partly why I have these shortcuts there is like

1:00:16

there's the regular machines There's

1:00:18

the Smith machines, which I don't love

1:00:21

and for incomprehensible reasons They have a different

1:00:23

bar weight than just like a regular Olympic

1:00:26

bar I always feel like curse you

1:00:28

Smith inventor of this stupid

1:00:31

machine I hate it, but oftentimes

1:00:34

it's if I don't want to wait around in the

1:00:36

gym forever Like the Imperial version of the weight

1:00:38

equipment Yeah, I don't know what it is. Like I hate it

1:00:42

It's like it's clearly designed so that people don't

1:00:45

injure themselves But I like I just don't

1:00:47

understand how it's been elevated

1:00:49

to be like every gym has one

1:00:51

of these and it always feels like It'd

1:00:53

be much better just to have a regular Olympic bar

1:00:55

here. That's what everybody wants Nobody wants this

1:00:58

fifth machine, but whatever I'll

1:01:00

use it if it's the only thing that's free So that's why I have

1:01:02

it there These are like shortcuts

1:01:04

that do real work for me all

1:01:06

the time, right? It's like just I'm putting in a number

1:01:09

give me the thing great. Boom. Boom. Boom. Those

1:01:11

are the three plates I need put them on fantastic

1:01:14

the last little thing there which I'll talk

1:01:16

about later in the year But I've been very intentionally

1:01:19

doing a lot of like zone to heart exercise

1:01:21

this year Yeah, and on

1:01:23

the list of things that's incredibly frustrating It's

1:01:26

like Apple doesn't track

1:01:28

this as a separate metric like they'll

1:01:30

tell you after each exercise How much

1:01:32

time you spent in zone to heart rate?

1:01:35

But there's nowhere to get this data

1:01:37

just as an aggregate out of the app I

1:01:40

was even looking into with shortcuts

1:01:42

like time manually pull out like

1:01:44

the heart ranges and backwards cut No, you

1:01:47

can't get access to this very frustrating So

1:01:49

because I want to keep track of how much time

1:01:52

per two weeks am I spending in

1:01:54

zone two? Again, just made a little shortcut

1:01:57

that asked me for a number of minutes

1:02:00

which I'm getting at the end of the exercise.

1:02:02

And then that shortcut just, boop, it spits it into

1:02:04

a little spreadsheets in numbers. So

1:02:07

you're doing some manual entry. Doing manual entry here. So

1:02:09

you're going to the health app, looking

1:02:12

at your workout, it tells you the

1:02:14

zone breakdown and then you're putting that in.

1:02:16

That's an annoying system, isn't it? I'm putting that

1:02:18

number in. It's incredibly annoying,

1:02:21

it's very frustrating. It's like, if I didn't care

1:02:23

so much, I wouldn't bother doing

1:02:25

this, but I actually really care about this metric.

1:02:27

But every time it makes me curse the

1:02:29

Apple health app, like again, all

1:02:32

year there's been this theme of like, Apple health

1:02:34

app, right? I give you like my anti-app of

1:02:36

the year award. Like there's nothing that I use

1:02:38

more that is also more frustrating.

1:02:41

And this is like one of these key things

1:02:43

of like, you know this number.

1:02:46

I know you know because you're telling

1:02:48

it to me when I'm done with the exercise.

1:02:50

I wonder if it's in the API. Yeah, it's an

1:02:52

interesting question. I wonder if you can. Under school,

1:02:55

can you let us know? Yeah. Can

1:02:57

you tell us? See if anybody knows,

1:02:59

David. Yeah, you can copy

1:03:01

paste some code just to make it work. Right, just like copy

1:03:04

paste the thing. So that's what I'm doing with Input

1:03:06

Zone 2 there is just like throwing it into my own

1:03:08

spreadsheet. So then I can just see like, okay, cool. I'm like

1:03:10

above or below the average that I'm looking for with this number.

1:03:12

Yep. Okay, so that's that blowing

1:03:15

past my very easy method, just speed.

1:03:17

So we're up to Saturn. So

1:03:19

Saturn, now Mike,

1:03:22

what

1:03:23

mode is going to be Saturn? This

1:03:25

one you must associate it, please.

1:03:28

Well, I guess based on what you said, it's like the most showy

1:03:30

off of all of your focus

1:03:33

modes. Do you have fashion focus?

1:03:35

What is it? It's the weekend, Saturn.

1:03:38

Okay. For Saturday. Saturn

1:03:40

day. Yeah, Saturn day, that's where it comes from.

1:03:42

Oh. Don't you say

1:03:45

that to me because I'll tell that to other people. Did

1:03:47

you be great, told me. Oh

1:03:52

boy, okay. There's not much to

1:03:54

say here. Saturn is for Saturday for the weekends.

1:03:57

Again, other like pretty clear thing. I just want

1:03:59

the weather. I have a little yellow watch

1:04:01

face that I kind of hate to match that

1:04:04

just shows me like the top thing in OmniFocus.

1:04:07

I don't like this color for the watch face. Yeah, though.

1:04:09

We're just in general the yellow I don't

1:04:11

like yeah, it's like puce

1:04:14

almost like it's not even really yellow It's

1:04:16

got like too much green in it. I feel like I

1:04:18

don't like it This is a this is kind of

1:04:20

like a compromised color. Yeah, this is what

1:04:23

it is Like I've got too many things clashing up against

1:04:25

each other I've always used yellow

1:04:28

as free time and all of my calendar blocking

1:04:30

and I'm tracking This is a problem

1:04:32

just with human eyes. We don't perceive enough

1:04:35

colors, but you really only have seven

1:04:37

and It's a surprisingly few

1:04:39

number to work with for lots of different things So

1:04:42

I go with the yellow Saturn is like basically

1:04:44

a yellow we kind of planets But if

1:04:47

I actually as I did with a little eyedropper

1:04:49

match the exact color of Saturn

1:04:52

to be the yellow That's going to be displayed. It

1:04:54

doesn't look right at all. It doesn't read as yellow on

1:04:56

pure black. So Yeah,

1:04:58

this is my least favorite aesthetically. It's

1:05:00

a compromise. I acknowledge that Well, I

1:05:03

got a goldy color, but then I'll do the job. I

1:05:05

could try something like that. Yeah, I might

1:05:07

want to try that the real frustration is

1:05:11

when we go over to the watch face that

1:05:13

I

1:05:14

can't quite get a yellow that works right

1:05:16

for the focus mode And so it has to have like

1:05:19

this little green dot on the top This

1:05:21

is another one of these things Apple, please

1:05:23

I'm begging you your watch faces are

1:05:26

so ugly so often already

1:05:28

Do we have to show the icon

1:05:30

for the lightest mode on top of the

1:05:33

watch? It's just there

1:05:35

to ruin the look of the watch constantly

1:05:38

You know what goes on the top of the

1:05:40

watch is the notification dot right? Yeah

1:05:43

So why is there now something else up there?

1:05:45

Yeah, I hate that. I hate it

1:05:48

So much right on the watch.

1:05:51

Why does that to persistently tell me? Yeah

1:05:53

what focus moment? It's crazy because again when

1:05:55

you pull up a control sensor on the watch It's

1:05:57

also right there like which focus mode are you

1:05:59

in? And I don't understand. The only way

1:06:02

to disable this, as far as I can tell, is to

1:06:04

disable the watch paying attention

1:06:06

to focus modes at all, which completely

1:06:10

cripples all of its functionality.

1:06:12

It's infuriating. I swear,

1:06:15

if I could lift up the screen

1:06:17

of my Apple Watch and with a pin,

1:06:21

manually blind and

1:06:23

break every one of the pixels that

1:06:26

displays the focus mode, and

1:06:28

just have them be permanent, black, I

1:06:31

would do it. I would do that to get rid

1:06:33

of this and just deal with a black hole

1:06:35

on the top of my watch. I hate it so

1:06:37

much. I think we have one more? Yeah,

1:06:40

I was going to say, we've got just the final one, also

1:06:42

boring, which is Core. So

1:06:45

we go out to Neptune. Core.

1:06:48

Core. Neptune,

1:06:50

another perfect,

1:06:53

perfect emotional planet here. Oh,

1:06:56

great. I've just gone to the home

1:06:58

screen. They have such

1:07:00

little on this home screen. But

1:07:03

just so you know, for the next 54 days,

1:07:05

St. Nick's Day is coming. Make

1:07:09

sure you don't forget, you count it down every day,

1:07:11

you know? St. Nick's Day. So Mike

1:07:13

is making fun of me because last year you

1:07:15

recommended a little app called Up ahead, which

1:07:18

is just a simple little like, hey,

1:07:21

what's up next kind of app. I

1:07:24

really like it. And I am

1:07:26

indeed counting down to St. Nick's Day. You

1:07:30

laugh. I do. I

1:07:32

do. You're right. But it's

1:07:34

very serious to me because St. Nick's

1:07:37

Day is for me basically

1:07:41

the mark of the end of the year. Like

1:07:43

all serious work should

1:07:46

really be wrapped up by St. Nick's

1:07:49

Day. It's not that like work doesn't

1:07:51

happen after that, but this

1:07:53

to me is really like big

1:07:56

things are done now and you

1:07:58

need. to set aside

1:08:01

some time to actually enjoy

1:08:03

the holiday season. So that's why

1:08:05

I have it there. That's why it's on my

1:08:08

core work screen is it

1:08:10

is a countdown of like, how much

1:08:13

time do you really

1:08:15

have left for serious

1:08:17

work? If you're going to have a video

1:08:20

up in December, you should really

1:08:22

try to have it done before St. Nick's day, if

1:08:25

you don't want to ruin your

1:08:27

whole month, right? Trying to get this done

1:08:29

before the end

1:08:29

of the year. That's why that's up

1:08:32

there. It's the sixth of December.

1:08:34

I didn't know this. I had to Google it and I'm just helping

1:08:37

people who were like, what is St. Nick's day?

1:08:39

Uh-huh. Cause I also didn't know what St. Nick's day was.

1:08:42

I have St. Nick's day as the fifth of December,

1:08:45

but different places celebrate St. Nick's

1:08:48

day on different days. And there's

1:08:50

a St. Nick's Eve, which is on the fifth.

1:08:52

Wait. So do you observe Imperial

1:08:54

or Metric St. Nick's day? I observe

1:08:56

Imperial St. Nick's day

1:08:58

as all good Dutch descendants do. Ah,

1:09:03

okay. I wondered why, like, why have I

1:09:05

no idea about this, but I guess. Again,

1:09:07

as the child of a Dutch immigrant,

1:09:10

St. Nick's day was an annual thing every

1:09:12

time growing up. It's like similar to how like

1:09:15

a lot of European countries, they celebrate Christmas

1:09:17

and Christmas Eve. Like it's when people open their

1:09:19

presents and stuff. Yeah. So we also basically

1:09:22

did Christmas on Christmas Eve for the exact

1:09:24

same reason. Yeah. This is how things were done in the

1:09:26

old world before we emigrated to the

1:09:28

United States. I have no idea what

1:09:30

happened there where like it's the same

1:09:33

traditions, but people do them on different days.

1:09:35

Like in the days off by one, like I have

1:09:37

no idea how that happened. And I need

1:09:39

to know. But yes, you're exactly right. It's like

1:09:41

St. Nick's day is kind of like Christmas and

1:09:43

this, is it St. Nick's day or is it

1:09:46

Christmas Eve or is it St. Nick's Eve? Like

1:09:48

this same confusion has totally happened

1:09:51

in different places. Well, only 54 days

1:09:53

to go. So. Don't remind

1:09:55

me. I don't need to. I don't need enough every

1:09:57

day. I don't need to. You have an app

1:09:59

that does it. Yeah, so that's the core one.

1:10:02

Then just lastly, my watch face

1:10:04

for the core. Kind

1:10:06

of happy with it. Again, it's that ultra face. I

1:10:09

think it looks pretty good in blue. I've got OmniFocus

1:10:11

in the center for what I need to do. And that's

1:10:13

it. That's it. What is that on the bottom, right?

1:10:16

On the bottom, right? That's the fasting timer. Again, in

1:10:19

the middle is a very

1:10:21

old app, which is called Better Date,

1:10:24

which just shows the current date, but it has

1:10:26

a little progress slider for how

1:10:28

far you are in the month. I

1:10:31

should probably have this more prominent because I'm just constantly

1:10:33

forgetting when it is, but I do

1:10:35

like this one of like, oh, we have a progress bar

1:10:38

throughout the month. How close are we to the end? I don't

1:10:40

just want the number. I want to see the little visual indicator.

1:10:43

And so there we are. We've wrapped up the

1:10:46

introduction to state of the app.

1:10:49

We've done an entire episode already.

1:10:51

We could just

1:10:53

be done and that's it. But

1:10:56

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system is the Todo app. It

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is the Todo app. That is

1:13:29

the absolute core. You know when

1:13:32

I sat down this year, Gray, to start

1:13:34

my notes, I thought to myself, I'm

1:13:37

very content with Todoist as my Todo

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app. It does everything the way

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that I want and I have no desire

1:13:43

to move apps anymore. I'm very

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happy with Todoist. Gray, how are you

1:13:47

feeling? I'm feeling

1:13:50

nervous, Mike. Yeah. I'm

1:13:52

not going to lie. I'm feeling a little nervous. Honestly,

1:13:54

I feel nervous for you. Really? Yeah.

1:13:58

So the situation is, obviously I've been using OmniFocus for years. years.

1:14:01

But also for what is now a

1:14:03

like growing percentage of

1:14:05

those years, I have been hearing

1:14:07

about OmniFocus 4, which

1:14:09

is in the works. The OmniFocus 4

1:14:13

first look was published

1:14:16

on May 10th, 2021. Right.

1:14:20

That was when they started the beta for

1:14:22

OmniFocus 4. That's when they started the

1:14:25

public beta of it. But I know

1:14:27

like I spoke to people in person about

1:14:30

OmniFocus 4 before then, when

1:14:33

I was a bit like, hey, what's going on

1:14:35

with this thing? Yeah.

1:14:38

So the OmniFocus blog

1:14:41

has been over this time, like publishing

1:14:43

updates about what's going on and like how

1:14:45

they're moving forward. And the

1:14:48

entire time they have been insisting

1:14:50

that they are like on schedule to release

1:14:52

the next version of OmniFocus and that

1:14:54

this is not any different than

1:14:56

the amount of time between the previous

1:14:58

versions of OmniFocus. And I think all

1:15:01

of that is true. I kind of take them at their word for

1:15:03

this, but the

1:15:05

end result though is like, boy,

1:15:08

if it is going to

1:15:10

be years between

1:15:12

major updates, it starts to become

1:15:14

a problem. And I feel like the

1:15:17

latest release of iOS and

1:15:19

particularly Sonoma has just like

1:15:22

pushed this really over the edge.

1:15:24

And I was feeling like, boy, I just,

1:15:27

I hope OmniFocus is there like right

1:15:31

after the OS goes out

1:15:33

and it wasn't. And boy, OmniFocus

1:15:37

just feels so old

1:15:39

and creaky on the current operating

1:15:41

systems. They're saying later this year. I

1:15:43

know that they're saying later this year, but I

1:15:45

feel like it's really bad to miss

1:15:48

the iOS launch and the

1:15:50

Sonoma launch. Even if

1:15:52

that was always your plan, like, oh, we're going to do it

1:15:54

later this year. I just don't think it's good.

1:15:56

And it particularly doesn't look good because

1:15:58

there's no. interactive widgets

1:16:00

like none of that widget stuff works. The

1:16:03

widgets that exist on iOS

1:16:05

like they are fine

1:16:07

but they feel very crowbarred into

1:16:10

the system and they just kind of don't look

1:16:12

good they don't scale properly with

1:16:14

anything. I will say to do ist widgets

1:16:17

are terrible. Okay. They're really bad

1:16:19

they've always been bad but I don't want

1:16:21

a widget of my to-do app

1:16:24

on my home screen anyway but

1:16:26

they are very bad. Yes like

1:16:28

on my Mac I was trying to

1:16:31

use the widgets but like OmniFocus

1:16:33

was showing up as a like you could see

1:16:35

the square block that was getting rendered

1:16:38

for the widget like inside the round borders

1:16:40

is like ooh that does not look good.

1:16:43

Wow. Anyway it's just one

1:16:45

of these things of like boy they're just slowly

1:16:48

adding up things where it feels like it just

1:16:50

does not work

1:16:52

great in the system. Again I want to emphasize

1:16:54

I've stuck with it because nothing is

1:16:57

broken but it just

1:16:59

feels increasingly like

1:17:01

oh my god this is very

1:17:04

out of step with the current operating systems

1:17:07

and like little things just keep adding up

1:17:09

just like the the minimum

1:17:12

physical size that OmniFocus will

1:17:14

take up on the screen is like quite large

1:17:16

it's like trying to you know make it fit in the little corners

1:17:19

can be really frustrating. So what I dream

1:17:22

happens is like oh OmniFocus 4

1:17:25

gets released between the time that we record

1:17:27

this episode and when it goes live

1:17:29

and I don't have to worry about anything anymore

1:17:32

but the truth is I am

1:17:34

just concerned and I was

1:17:36

concerned enough that last

1:17:39

month I did a kind of tour of

1:17:42

the other to-do systems that exist

1:17:45

I was like I just want to I want to like refresh

1:17:47

my view of the field like what

1:17:50

is out here what's available this

1:17:52

tour went all the

1:17:55

way back to remember the milk. Let

1:17:59

me survey. everything

1:18:01

that I would reasonably use. Remember

1:18:04

the milk was extra hilarious because

1:18:06

I found my super old

1:18:08

account and logged into it where it had

1:18:10

to-do's left over from my

1:18:13

teaching career. Like to-do

1:18:15

list archaeology of like wow look

1:18:17

at this whole system that's amazing. I mean

1:18:20

the truth is though I have one

1:18:22

just such an incredible deal

1:18:24

breaker for to-do systems and it is

1:18:26

this concept of the start date, I

1:18:29

am still just blown

1:18:31

away by how many apps don't

1:18:33

have this implemented at all or

1:18:35

implement it very badly.

1:18:38

Like there are lots of things that OmniFocus does

1:18:40

that are great but like this

1:18:43

to me is the key and it is the single

1:18:45

thing that makes it the hardest to move from absolutely

1:18:48

anything else. So after

1:18:51

my survey of the field I kind of had to make

1:18:53

a decision. I was like all right assume

1:18:55

that OmniFocus will

1:18:58

not release this year. Will you still

1:19:00

use it? And the

1:19:02

answer I came to was yes. I

1:19:05

will still use it because the other

1:19:07

options are significantly

1:19:09

less appealing to me but boy

1:19:12

I would not be happy about that. So I

1:19:14

have not used OmniFocus for

1:19:16

a long time. I was on the beta but I let my app

1:19:18

have it or expire at some point sometime

1:19:20

last year or whatever. And I will

1:19:24

be frank and say like I did not like

1:19:26

the way the app felt to use. They

1:19:30

were moving to SwiftUI and

1:19:32

that's what they have stuck with and the

1:19:35

app just didn't feel right to use.

1:19:38

And maybe they've changed it I

1:19:40

don't know but let's just imagine that enough

1:19:43

has changed about the application that you don't like

1:19:45

using the application anymore. Well then what do you do? Because

1:19:49

it is a new design. The

1:19:51

design is changing. You can see it

1:19:53

in the imagery that I've shared. It

1:19:56

is very similar of course to

1:19:58

the OmniFocus that you know. But

1:20:01

it's different. Yeah, I mean

1:20:03

I haven't used it in the beta. I've only

1:20:05

seen the screenshots. I actually don't

1:20:07

really have any problem with the screenshots. I'm not quite sure

1:20:11

why people don't seem to like the design

1:20:13

of that. I didn't like the way the app

1:20:15

felt to use. But again, it was in

1:20:17

beta, right? Like I've got to be fair and

1:20:19

say like it wasn't finished and it was a

1:20:21

long time ago. But there

1:20:24

was just something about it where it did not

1:20:26

have the pleasant feeling

1:20:28

that I'd had using the app before. But who knows

1:20:30

where it is right now. I genuinely don't know. Yeah,

1:20:32

but this is a problem with like so when I was

1:20:35

surveying the field of to-do list apps. This

1:20:38

is a recurring problem where lots

1:20:40

of these apps because they have an idea of

1:20:43

working with teams or whatever like they're using

1:20:45

different systems. So some apps like did

1:20:47

have start dates, but it would be

1:20:49

the same thing where I feel like I just

1:20:51

clearly don't like using this. Like this

1:20:53

is unpleasant to use in a way

1:20:56

that is difficult to pin down. Like

1:20:59

I can't exactly articulate

1:21:02

why, but I don't like it. It's

1:21:04

a funny thing. Like we used to say on the show that

1:21:07

the market for to-do apps was

1:21:09

infinite. But I think I was also

1:21:11

quite surprised in how

1:21:15

remarkably unchanged this whole

1:21:17

world is since the last time I really

1:21:19

went to look around. Like

1:21:21

I kind of thought, oh, I'll find some new apps that

1:21:23

I was unaware of since the last time. The answer

1:21:26

is like, no, not really. Like it's the

1:21:28

same few ones that are the

1:21:30

default answers for absolutely

1:21:32

everyone. So you've got OmniFocus,

1:21:34

you've got to-doist and like, and

1:21:37

all of the friends and like, these are the things to choose from. So

1:21:40

I might have to amend that to be something like, oh,

1:21:43

the desire for to-do apps is

1:21:46

infinite because everybody always wants them to

1:21:48

work in their own specific way. But

1:21:50

maybe something about the actual market

1:21:52

market just can't support

1:21:55

a large number of these things or there's

1:21:57

other like non-obvious reasons. there

1:22:00

aren't a ton of brand new ones that

1:22:02

have popped up. So that's

1:22:05

my situation is I am using

1:22:07

OmniFocus. I will probably still continue to

1:22:09

use OmniFocus, but I

1:22:11

am concerned at this point

1:22:14

in time where things

1:22:17

feel potentially uncertain.

1:22:19

And even if there is a transition, like

1:22:21

I'll have to see what it is actually like

1:22:24

for the next version when

1:22:26

it comes out later this year. I

1:22:29

hope for success for them and for you. Me too.

1:22:32

I really do. And I understand that

1:22:34

like, you know, this takes a long time,

1:22:37

but it's, I feel like they're going

1:22:39

in a different direction and I hope it plays off.

1:22:41

So that was a bummer. Yeah. Tell me about

1:22:44

how you are happy, Mike. Oh yeah. Well,

1:22:46

I mean, just in general, to do it does exactly what I

1:22:48

need. Lucky you. Because I

1:22:50

keep things relatively simple and

1:22:52

you don't. People have different systems. I keep

1:22:54

mine relatively simple, you know, tasks.

1:22:57

All of them have a due date and they

1:22:59

all go in a project. That is essentially all I'm doing.

1:23:02

And I like that Todoist

1:23:04

has a couple of views. She can show me my tasks for

1:23:06

today. She can show me all my upcoming tasks

1:23:09

in a chronological list. And then if I want

1:23:12

to, I can go into any of my projects. It's

1:23:14

just a simple system, but

1:23:17

it works well for me. So I'm

1:23:19

happy with it, you know? Yeah. And like a

1:23:21

good Todo manager should in many ways

1:23:23

be kind of invisible. Yeah. Like

1:23:25

it's not the thing. Exactly. It's the thing

1:23:27

that's pointing you to what you actually

1:23:30

need to do. Again, I will ding them for the

1:23:32

poor widget support. I think that that is a very

1:23:34

strange thing that they haven't done it because a lot of people would

1:23:36

like it and their widgets last year

1:23:39

weren't good anyway. Like the widgets

1:23:41

that they added, like it was just like a weird list

1:23:43

of things that was like cropped in a strange

1:23:45

way, just like lines of text. As

1:23:48

of right now, they've not added any kind of interactivity

1:23:50

to their widgets. I don't understand

1:23:52

why, but that's where they are. But the

1:23:54

thing that I am most in love with when it comes to my

1:23:56

Todo system right now is the action button

1:23:59

on my... iPhone 15 Pro Max. Oh,

1:24:02

okay. So on the Mac,

1:24:05

it's very easy to put tasks

1:24:07

into Todoist. I just hit Command,

1:24:10

Option and the space bar, and it brings

1:24:13

up the Todoist Quick Entry window. And

1:24:16

I can just add a task, no matter what

1:24:18

I'm doing, right? There

1:24:20

is no way to do

1:24:22

such a thing when I'm using my iPhone. I

1:24:24

can have a shortcut,

1:24:26

but

1:24:27

I have to go somewhere else to activate

1:24:29

the shortcut. Like if I'm in Slack

1:24:32

and I wanna add a task to Todoist, I

1:24:35

have to leave Slack. Oh,

1:24:37

right, okay. Or

1:24:39

I have to pull down my notification shade,

1:24:42

slide to the left and hit a shortcut or

1:24:44

whatever, or like pull it down and maybe I can hit the

1:24:46

shortcut from the lock screen, whatever. But there's always a leaving

1:24:49

of the app to do this.

1:24:52

Enter the action button, where

1:24:54

now I can just press and hold

1:24:56

the action button and it will

1:24:59

pop up a shortcut that I have written to

1:25:02

add a task. And it doesn't leave

1:25:04

the app. I can still see things

1:25:07

that are in the window. Oh, right,

1:25:09

okay. So it's just pulling down the text entry

1:25:11

from the top. Yeah, and I just use

1:25:13

the keyboard. So this

1:25:16

was a suggestion that our friend Federico

1:25:18

made when we were thinking about the action button.

1:25:20

And I've kind of adapted it a little bit further

1:25:23

as well. So at first it was just like, give

1:25:25

me a little Todoist task. Awesome,

1:25:27

I would do that. But then it

1:25:30

became like, well, what about if

1:25:33

I wanna add something to do as

1:25:35

well? So what I've done

1:25:37

is it says, what's your task? I type out the name

1:25:39

of the task. It says, what time do you

1:25:41

want it to be? And I can put that time in natural

1:25:43

language if I want to. It can make it look very

1:25:45

simple. And it says, what app do you wanna

1:25:47

add it to? And I choose either Todoist

1:25:50

or Do. Hmm, and

1:25:52

then it will just add it to the app that

1:25:55

I've chosen. So it's just like a pretty simple

1:25:57

shortcut that just uses the native shortcuts

1:25:59

for Todoist. do to just add in the information

1:26:02

that I'm putting in a text box. It's very simple.

1:26:05

And then also Federico built a shortcut

1:26:07

called MultiButton which lets

1:26:09

you add a second action to

1:26:11

the action button based on a timer.

1:26:14

So like if you press the

1:26:17

action button and like do the action or press

1:26:19

cancel and then press it again within

1:26:21

seven seconds it will run a second

1:26:23

action that you've chosen. It's very clever. Certainly

1:26:26

I have this set to reminders but I'm thinking of adding

1:26:29

that into the first one. I'll get

1:26:31

to reminders in a minute. But like I'm enjoying

1:26:33

playing around with the actual button stuff.

1:26:35

Federico's thing is super cool. I'll put a link in the show

1:26:38

notes too if you want to read more about it. But my very

1:26:40

favorite thing is just how easy it is for me to add

1:26:42

things to my to-do system now. Okay.

1:26:45

I think you've totally sold me on what should the action

1:26:47

button be. Yeah. Because

1:26:50

I just haven't – so bored

1:26:52

by the colors and the new phone

1:26:55

stuff. So I haven't even like ordered the phone. I don't have

1:26:57

the action button or anything. So I

1:26:59

haven't really thought about it. I'm just like in a vague

1:27:02

way I was like what might one

1:27:04

do theoretically with an action

1:27:06

button? And I was like I guess the camera?

1:27:08

The camera makes most sense? But you've totally

1:27:11

sold me on. No, the correct thing here is input.

1:27:14

This is a button for inputting into other

1:27:16

systems especially if T.G. has

1:27:19

magicked his way into doubling

1:27:21

the functionality of the action button then

1:27:24

I feel like yeah it's very clear like this is a default

1:27:26

input button. Yeah. I really like

1:27:28

it. It's just like I could just press that button

1:27:31

and add a task to my system

1:27:33

and it works very well. I mentioned

1:27:35

reminders using this for family tasks

1:27:37

now. We previously used Trello. I didn't like

1:27:39

Trello. But now reminders

1:27:41

has their kind of column Kanban

1:27:44

view. It's finding the middle

1:27:46

ground but who both want me and Nadina wanting. She really

1:27:48

wants a column view. I don't really want to use

1:27:50

Trello. And so – Yeah.

1:27:53

I really like the way that reminders works from an entry perspective.

1:27:55

It's very simple and I can access

1:27:58

it from anywhere in the system. like

1:28:00

reminders as much as I like to do it. I think for

1:28:02

a lot of things reminders you have to tap

1:28:05

too many things. If you want to add

1:28:08

a time to a task you first have to slide

1:28:10

a toggle to bring down the time thing which is

1:28:12

just very strange to me. But I

1:28:15

like this more than I like Trello

1:28:18

as a system. So that's

1:28:20

working fine. And then because why

1:28:22

not just put another one in the mix. I also use Things.

1:28:25

I love to do apps. I love to use all of them. I use them for

1:28:27

very different things. Things is used

1:28:29

and has been for years for just checklists

1:28:32

for me. I use it for my Cortex

1:28:34

checklist. And I mentioned earlier

1:28:36

I also am now using it for a

1:28:38

packing checklist that I moved out of

1:28:40

Notes. Things made some new shortcut

1:28:42

actions to make it very easy

1:28:45

to duplicate a template project in

1:28:47

Things and keep all of the formatting

1:28:50

like the headers and all that kind of stuff.

1:28:52

So I now just have these two shortcuts. One

1:28:55

for Cortex editing and posting and one

1:28:57

for my packing list to

1:28:59

just very easily duplicate these projects

1:29:02

and have them become active. And so I use Things

1:29:04

for that. It's very nice. Yeah I mean

1:29:06

Things wins clearly the award of

1:29:09

best looking sort of most pleasant

1:29:12

to do app to use. Like it's just

1:29:14

the design of things is amazing. And

1:29:16

I always find myself like drawn

1:29:18

to things and also just kills

1:29:20

me because they sort of but

1:29:23

not fully have start dates. Like they have

1:29:25

fuzzy start dates might be the way to describe

1:29:27

it. But yeah like I find things is like

1:29:29

just a great looking app. It's been around for a long

1:29:31

time. And it is also interesting to me how

1:29:34

Reminders does keep improving year

1:29:36

on year. It's also something I was like oh if

1:29:39

Reminders ever added start dates like I

1:29:41

would be willing to simplify my

1:29:43

system down to maybe use something

1:29:46

like that. Because yeah I guess Reminders is for me

1:29:48

the only other task manager I really use.

1:29:51

And that's purely because the Siri

1:29:54

integration is just so dead

1:29:56

easy. I will just constantly

1:29:59

buy voice. throw to Siri

1:30:01

things that I want to be remembered like in

1:30:04

X units of time. Remind me in

1:30:06

two weeks, remind me later this afternoon,

1:30:08

remind me tomorrow morning. Like for those kind

1:30:10

of one-off things, talking to Siri to just add

1:30:12

stuff into reminders at a time is

1:30:15

amazing. Like I use that constantly. Do I even

1:30:17

want to ask what notes app you use?

1:30:19

I always feel like this is such a minefield that

1:30:22

I step into every time I ask you this question.

1:30:24

I use the notes app, like what else would I use?

1:30:27

Okay. No complicated conversation to be had

1:30:29

here. What do you do in the notes app

1:30:31

then? What goes in there? Notes

1:30:34

go in there, all sorts of notes go in there. I feel like this

1:30:36

is like a logic puzzle. Because

1:30:40

like I use the notes app for

1:30:42

everything,

1:30:43

right?

1:30:44

I have a bunch of show notes stuff in there, I

1:30:47

have personal notes in there, you

1:30:49

know I have 762 notes in the notes app.

1:30:52

I'd never delete anything, it just all goes in there

1:30:54

and it's great. The

1:30:56

only work stuff that doesn't go into notes

1:30:58

is Cortex brand stuff which goes into Notion.

1:31:02

Right now what are you using? Like what is going

1:31:04

into, I'm assuming, Apple notes.

1:31:07

What are you putting in there? I'm not using it for

1:31:10

notes really. It's more like I

1:31:12

throw stuff into the notes app

1:31:14

that needs to be properly sorted

1:31:17

later. 80 to 90% of that

1:31:19

stuff is really a question

1:31:22

of where in obsidian

1:31:24

should this go slash does

1:31:27

this deserve to be put into

1:31:29

obsidian. So I do

1:31:32

use it as a kind of junk

1:31:34

drawer for stuff that's later.

1:31:36

Like oh here's a thing to read,

1:31:39

here's a paper that's related to a video

1:31:41

topic that you might want to look at later. I don't,

1:31:44

for reasons we might get to later, I

1:31:47

don't have a good way to throw that into obsidian

1:31:49

directly. I'm not a hundred percent sure I would even

1:31:51

want to because a lot of this

1:31:53

stuff exists for me as a kind of limbo.

1:31:56

Like notes is a very transitory

1:31:59

area. Nothing should ever permanently

1:32:01

live here, but it's a useful place to put

1:32:03

all of the stuff before I decide

1:32:06

where does this go slash

1:32:09

do I just delete this because future me doesn't

1:32:11

care at all, which probably happens to the majority

1:32:13

of stuff I put into notes. It's like,

1:32:15

oh, this might be interesting. It's like, no, it's not

1:32:18

really. Then I just delete it. So that's how I use

1:32:20

the Notes app. Where do they go? Okay.

1:32:22

So like here's an example, right? Earlier today, we were

1:32:25

talking about a Future Cortex brand project.

1:32:28

And you showed me an example of like,

1:32:31

here's a thing that we could do that's like this. And you showed

1:32:33

me a website. And so I said,

1:32:35

ah, great. I want to check that out later. And

1:32:37

so what I do with that is I just like, boop, share

1:32:39

it. So it just becomes a note in

1:32:42

my notes folder. Okay. Because

1:32:45

this to me is the perfect example of what happens

1:32:47

all the time. It's like, there's not

1:32:49

really a task that's associated

1:32:51

with this. We're not on any kind of remote timeline.

1:32:54

It's just like, Future Gray should

1:32:57

take a look at this website and he

1:32:59

will decide if any actions

1:33:02

come out of this. Do we need to get in touch

1:33:04

with anybody? Like what's the next step in this project,

1:33:06

right? But right now it

1:33:08

isn't anything. It's just like, oh,

1:33:11

hey, take a look at this at some point.

1:33:13

And I go, I will. Where do I put

1:33:16

that? I think where this threw me a little bit

1:33:18

is like, this is the like inbox

1:33:21

model, right? Yeah. It's totally the

1:33:23

inbox model. That's how I use notes. Why

1:33:25

not use the inbox

1:33:28

in OmniFocus for this? I

1:33:30

don't like using the inbox for that kind of stuff because

1:33:32

it's not flexible enough. I

1:33:34

hear a lot of people have these kinds of things. They have like a

1:33:36

scratch pad note or whatever, right? Or

1:33:39

like this little note where there's just one note

1:33:41

where stuff gets added. But what I don't

1:33:43

understand, like for me, is what

1:33:46

prompts you to ever look at it? Like,

1:33:49

why does it not just become like a

1:33:51

graveyard of things? What

1:33:54

prompts me to look at it is that in OmniFocus,

1:33:57

I have a repeating task, which is

1:33:59

like clear out your notes. That's

1:34:01

the only reason that this system works. If

1:34:04

I didn't have an actual reminder

1:34:06

which is like, clear this out,

1:34:09

it would just be a graveyard of like, oh,

1:34:12

stuff I thought once and never

1:34:15

thought about again. Goodbye

1:34:17

thought. So that's the only reason that this works.

1:34:20

There's a task. All right, fair enough. There

1:34:22

is a task. But again, the other reason I don't put it as an inbox

1:34:25

item in OmniFocus is because

1:34:27

I have learned from experience,

1:34:29

right? I can't always count on future you

1:34:32

to know like, what was the thing about

1:34:34

this, right? I will often just

1:34:36

like, write something quick in the notes

1:34:38

itself about like, what is this for

1:34:41

future me? What are you even thinking about? Or

1:34:43

like, who gave this to you? So I

1:34:45

like the free formness of it. And

1:34:48

also for me, it kind of does just

1:34:50

act like a traditional to-do

1:34:53

inbox because I'm not adding things

1:34:55

to a single note. Each

1:34:58

item is an individual note

1:35:00

so I can delete them one at a time as I'm going through

1:35:02

things. So that's the way that I use it.

1:35:04

To be productive, you must spend your time well. How

1:35:06

is time management going for you? Well,

1:35:09

how is time management going for you, Mike? Oh, no change.

1:35:11

It's great. I use Time-Rey, full

1:35:14

of Time-Rey widgets. I will,

1:35:16

maybe some point next year, we'll do my little

1:35:19

review of how I've been spending my time.

1:35:21

But you know, Time-Rey is just continues

1:35:24

to just get better and better and better all the time. I

1:35:27

don't understand how Joe

1:35:29

manages to do it, but I just am

1:35:32

more and more happy with the app. I

1:35:34

love having the Time-Rey widget

1:35:36

on my Mac now, like on

1:35:39

the desktop of my Mac. Another

1:35:42

quick way to get to it. I

1:35:44

have a little widget on my watch as well

1:35:46

as on the complication. It's

1:35:48

everywhere I need it to be and it's super important

1:35:50

to me that it's easy to access in

1:35:53

so many different ways, whether it's through a

1:35:55

shortcut or whatever. It's just

1:35:57

a good way for me to keep track of what I'm doing.

1:36:00

I think for me right

1:36:02

now, the reason that I time

1:36:04

track is so I can review

1:36:06

it on an annual basis. That's

1:36:09

my reason now. That data

1:36:11

to me is so important when

1:36:13

I'm thinking about my theme. It's so

1:36:15

important when I'm thinking about how I want to spend

1:36:18

the time in my life and in my work. I'm

1:36:21

just so happy with the fact that this is an important

1:36:23

tool to me, but what's important

1:36:25

is the data. So what needs to be good

1:36:28

is the way in which the data is collected. And

1:36:30

so that requires TimeRee to be easy to

1:36:33

use, easy to access and exactly where I need it

1:36:35

on all the platforms that I use. And it is. And

1:36:37

that's why I continue to use it religiously

1:36:39

every day. Yeah. TimeRee is

1:36:42

amazing. I have an upset though this year. Oh!

1:36:45

Right. So I have switched from

1:36:47

TimeRee. Wow! I'm using

1:36:49

an app called Timelines.

1:36:52

This is huge news. Huge

1:36:54

news! So

1:36:57

TimeRee is amazing, but there is

1:36:59

one specific use case where

1:37:01

it does not work. And it does

1:37:04

not work if you're offline.

1:37:06

I've been doing a thing this

1:37:09

year where I'm having

1:37:12

big blocks where I'm just

1:37:14

completely disconnected from the network

1:37:18

at all. And so when

1:37:20

I started doing this, I realized very

1:37:23

fast, I need to find

1:37:25

a time tracking app that can work

1:37:28

offline, that does not require

1:37:31

an internet connection to start and stop

1:37:34

a timer.

1:37:36

I looked around, there's a bunch of

1:37:38

time tracking apps, but for me there was one

1:37:40

that just clearly stood above

1:37:42

all of the others and it is called

1:37:45

Timelines. The interesting

1:37:47

thing about this is the difference in our

1:37:50

use cases. So like you said, you

1:37:52

really care about the data. For

1:37:54

me, I do not care about the data at

1:37:57

all. This year in particular

1:37:59

is... like, Oh, wow, my data is just totally

1:38:02

messed up, right? Because I was trying out a bunch of different

1:38:05

time tracking apps. And when

1:38:07

you do that, things don't work right. So

1:38:09

you get timers that are running for like 36 hours

1:38:12

and you miss all kinds of stuff. So like my data

1:38:14

this year is totally messed up, but

1:38:17

I don't care because I have

1:38:21

always viewed the time tracking as

1:38:23

much more a tool that assists

1:38:26

in intentional decision-making.

1:38:28

And it's a tool that I use on a

1:38:30

scale of how

1:38:33

is this day going compared

1:38:35

to other days. And the thing about timelines

1:38:38

is that it's clear that

1:38:40

the developer of this app also

1:38:43

kind of thinks about time tracking

1:38:45

along the lines of how

1:38:47

I do it, where they

1:38:50

have things like, do you have

1:38:52

a goal for how much time you want to spend

1:38:55

on this task today? If you do,

1:38:57

cool. We can put a little

1:38:59

widget on the home screen that fills in a bar

1:39:01

for like, how much time did you spend writing

1:39:03

today? How much time did you spend exercising

1:39:06

today? The one that I always feel like

1:39:08

I'm fighting against is what I call like transition,

1:39:12

which is I'm between two tasks.

1:39:16

How much time in my day do

1:39:18

I spend in transition? And

1:39:21

so that one's a bit like, okay, I want to try

1:39:23

to set a limit of like, don't go over

1:39:26

this amount of transition time in a day.

1:39:29

And then I can see a little bar of like, Oh,

1:39:31

you're getting close. So I think

1:39:33

it's, it's a very nicely done app. It

1:39:35

looks good. Like I said, for me,

1:39:37

the main thing is that it works offline. I

1:39:40

will say like, there

1:39:43

are so many features from

1:39:45

Time-Ree that I do miss. And

1:39:48

there are some decisions that I find

1:39:51

kind of weird sometimes

1:39:53

in the way that like, for example, when you're looking at

1:39:55

a pie chart of how you spend your time, it

1:39:57

doesn't automatically sort. the

1:40:00

wedges by size, which I

1:40:02

find just a very strange

1:40:04

decision on how to actually show information,

1:40:07

but again, because

1:40:09

it is not critical for me to review

1:40:12

at the end of the year, how my time

1:40:14

was spent. I've really been liking

1:40:17

this app is like solving a

1:40:19

particular problem of I'm

1:40:21

spending more time, like not connected to

1:40:23

the internet at all, but I still want

1:40:25

to have a time tracker that works for

1:40:27

me. And this one is

1:40:29

somewhat more aligned with the

1:40:32

general way in which I'm wanting

1:40:35

to use these apps anyway. So,

1:40:37

uh, yeah, I've been using timelines

1:40:39

for I think about two

1:40:42

or three months at this point, and,

1:40:44

uh, I like it. I like it a lot. Yeah. Interesting.

1:40:47

Visually. I do not like this app. Yeah,

1:40:50

I can totally get it. Yeah. It looks

1:40:53

old. So yeah, I think when you dig into

1:40:55

some of the screens, like

1:40:57

it definitely has a kind of older

1:41:00

feel for it. This is also

1:41:02

a case where with the new live

1:41:04

widgets and things, so like on my

1:41:06

standby lock screen in my office,

1:41:09

I can just have it set to be like, show

1:41:11

me the pie chart of how I've spent my day and

1:41:13

then show me the bars of have I gone over

1:41:16

or stayed under the times that I want. And it's like, that's

1:41:19

what I want, right? That is like a hundred percent

1:41:21

of my interaction with this thing. Maybe in fairness,

1:41:24

this is being skewed by me looking

1:41:26

more at the website than the app store screenshots

1:41:28

because the website, I mean, they use anything

1:41:30

iPhone six and so that's skewing

1:41:33

by like, how does it look? I

1:41:36

mean, what I say is when looking at the app store

1:41:38

screenshots, it's just a plain app,