Productivity Apps and Apple Invites!

0:27Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new. Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer. Do you know that meme of like, you know the meme that's the chart and it's the guy that's really dumb and then it's the mage and then it's the guy that's really dumb.

1:11And it's like, it's the curve. And it's like Apple Notes, Notion, everything else. apple notes yeah i mean that's correct i'm on one of those sides i can't say which but i i'm i use the apple what is up people of the internet i know that i sound exactly a marquez because i am marquez welcome back to the another episode of the wayform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez i'm andrew and i'm david jk marquez is not here he's not audio listeners are probably very confused because you sound so similar. Yeah, we're the same person. You can, we, yeah. Everything about us is the same. Marquez is, there he is.

1:55He came back. He's in Australia for Ultimate Frisbee World Championship. He's playing on the mixed team for USA. You're out there, the Gold Coast of Australia. Don't know where that is. Me neither. But enjoy it out there. I know there's a lot of dangerous animals, so be careful, Marquez. I told him to fight a kangaroo. He said he would. That's terrifying. Yeah. That's a lot. He would most likely lose. Yeah, you would definitely lose. I don't know. How old is a kangaroo? Well, that's what he's fighting. Yeah, is it a Joey or is it a... It's a Kevin. All right. In today's episode, we have Apple event predictions, new Garmin releases, a new pair of headphones with the best transparency mode ever, possibly, and a bunch of other small hits.

2:39I kind of think we just jump into Apple event predictions because they have consumed our week so far, mostly because it's on September 9th, which is a Monday, which, f*** you. Come on, Monday? This sucks. All right, from what I heard, it was supposed to be Tuesday like it is every single year, but there is a presidential debate now on September 10th, Tuesday, and apparently Apple moved it. Now, if you have been in this community for way too long like we have, this is really funny. It is. Because in around 2018, Apple or OnePlus was supposed to have a huge launch event for like the OnePlus 6 or the 6T or something and they had set it for sometime in October and they set it months ahead of time I thought it was in like March I don't know I think it was October okay it was months ahead of time and then Apple randomly decided to announce their event two weeks before and OnePlus was like whoops well because it was on the same day yes exactly the same day so OnePlus moved their event to like a month later which had already been invited sent out for like a while people People booked their flights.

3:44We're booked, yeah. And they had to be like, well, we cannot do this on the same day. So now this Apple event is Monday, September 9th. So yeah, it's consumed our week because we've been managing hotel bookings and flights. Yeah, because we were like, we're finally going to get ahead of this. We're going to book all our flights and hotels early. We're going to get this done. This is what we get for trying to be proactive. We have a pretty good idea. It's usually the second Tuesday in September. We got this. Yeah. It wasn't. Yeah. It was really funny because there was a rumor that went out that said it was going to be September 10th.

4:13And then Marquez put in Slack, I'm feeling like a genius. I blame that post. It wasn't the debate that changed it. It was that post that changed it. Right. They couldn't be accurate to the leak. So they had to move it. Funny enough, I saw people speculating if Marquez was going to be able to cover the Apple event because he's in Australia, which also made all of this much more annoying as he is flying into San Francisco to go to the event from his tournament in Australia. Yeah. now that is a much tighter timetable yeah but he marquez is not gonna miss this event no no shot i think he's showing up the morning of the event i don't even know he's not really i think he is he is crazy i know he's parachuting out of the 17 hour difference or something and he's yeah it's it's a mess anyway uh let's get into the actual predictions uh the event invites went out this week and the tagline this year was it's glow time clearly a it's showtime plan words i don't know how i didn't get that but thank you clearly um and then there's an animation that shows it basically turning into siri the apple new siri new siri so clearly apple is going to be highlighting the new version of siri and apple intelligence at this event which is funny because it's not going to actually launch on the iphones right do we think this is going to change anything we all assume it's not going to be launching at the actual time.

5:36I don't think so. I think it's coming out in 18.1 which is scheduled for October. Okay, yeah. This are, with this also like, this clearly means they're going to spend so much of the event talking about this. Oh yeah. Is 2024 going to be the year of like the really boring smartphone events because they all just feel like, like this is just going to feel like Dub Dub where the Pixel 1 just felt like IO. Yeah. Like they were IO Jr. and Dub Dub Jr. That's true. That's what we're seeing this year. weenie hat junior it's so boring yeah which is such a shame too because the new pixel hardware was incredible and just completely overshadowed by all this stuff i don't think that an iphone hardware is gonna be much different this year minus the brown color yeah we can go over some of the rumors yeah let's do it so the pros are supposed to have bigger screens again which is crazy and we have very yeah very very big screens and also there's apparently going to be a dedicated shutter button for the camera oh on the 16 pros okay yeah cool that's interesting yeah wait so the but what about the volume rocker what about the volume rocker that already takes no i think it'll be it'll be on the bottom right side because when you turn your phone sideways to take a photo your natural resting position uh i yeah would find that super interesting first first question the action button the remappable one did you have the opportunity to map that to a shutter you can make it open the camera and i think when the camera is open you can use that as a shutter but it is in the less ideal spot in the left because when you're crunching your finger up like that you have a better shot of your other fingers blocking the camera lens right there so the right side does make more sense yeah i don't know why i feel like it would be so weird seeing an iphone with that extra button on it i mean it's gonna be it is but i think that they're on this weird campaign then they have been for years where they just want you to see your iPhone as a replacement for a professional camera.

7:29Every Apple event for the last like three to four years has been like you could replace your entire cinema setup for this. Use Final Cut camera with five iPads and five iPhones. And attach a hard drive to it with like Thunderbolt and use cinematic mode and Boca and all this. Do we think it'll be the same button as the action button? Like the same shape? I think I'm also... I don't know. Might be circular. if i had a thread mount and you could use a long exposure that'd be cool it won't it would be sick it would be sick um yeah that are there any changes to the um weren't there some rumors that like the camera was gonna look different is that on the regular iphones that's on the regular one those are then that's gonna be the like stacked camera similar to like the iphone to and yeah to enable it to do spatial video in horizontal mode okay yeah because currently they're they're uh diagonal and for spatial video you have to have the parallax so they have to be right on top of each other yeah but what's interesting about it is the bump itself also is smaller according to these rumors the leaks are we looking at the same yeah some of the leaks are showing it i don't know if they're leaks or renders that are just rumors but showing it a little more like the iphone 10 yeah yes i think it looks really good it does i think it looks good i think it looks good i do we think that's actually going to happen i think so yeah yeah because they tend to release new software stuff with the hardware in the pro models and then the next year bring it to the cheaper model okay and so spatial video i think there were some one of the highlights this year yeah yeah i just think like the two so diagonally in the square camera bump looked fine yeah but stacked in the bump like it was on the 11 i think looked bad because there's just so much extra like square bump for no reason yeah yeah i think this looks way sleeker and nicer yeah besides that it's kind of just the bigger screens on the pros uh we might get a i think that they're supposed to be a higher resolution one of the other cameras is higher resolution now cool you know how much bigger is the screen uh let me see is this going to be like significantly bigger or is this going to be like we made the bezels one millimeter smaller and like no one really can tell the difference it says the 16 pro max will be 6.9 inches where last year it was 6.7 oh which is significant that is a significant yeah that's pretty huge okay so that's the rumor anyway boy yeah so that's it for the phones generally and i think that they feel like they can do that this year because apple intelligence is going to take up so much of the keynote but there are some other big things coming out like for example this is the 10th version of the apple watch so whether they whether or not they go with series x yet again apple watch x or if they just do series 10 i'm not really sure um but it is supposed to be slightly redesigned with it's going to be a thinner watch apparently and have bigger displays even bigger and the apple watch se is apparently going to be made out of plastic which fun i find ironic considering every company is like we're reducing all plastic in our entire supply chain except the actual device i guess if it's recycled maybe that yeah but i i don't know the inner workings of plastics that well maybe that's an easier way for them to recycle it and be cheaper and be able to fit more into it my guess is also that a lot of these companies are moving towards trying to capture the kids market like fitbit just really stay for kids band and there's all this like i think that a lot of these companies see that as a potential like market opportunity which is weird but here we go uh so i think that they basically see it as like oh well if we have a plastic smartwatch parents won't think oh my kid's gonna destroy this really nice piece of hardware which is funny because the top of it is still all glass or is you saying that that will be plastic no i think the body okay that's just a rumor that's just a rumor yeah so they're still gonna destroy it most likely yeah most likely um but yeah we don't really know anything else about the actual apple watch series 10 so i think seeing that in in real life is going to be really interesting it will be if you had to bet on it being apple watch series x x you think so i think so 10 but with the x or just 10 well isn't that what the 10 i know but let's just call it x but people are gonna get mad they wasn't called the x it was the 10 yeah i like x better they'll probably say 10 but use an x cool yeah i'm going straight x they're gonna say x on the stage series x.com um also there are apparently going to be new airpods but unfortunately not the airpods we were hoping for uh the rumor is there are going to be two new models that are low and mid-tier models they look more like the pros but just have worse hardware internally okay the mid-tier will finally get anc for the first time that has been a thing that has been reserved for the pros in the past.

12:30Interesting. And when you say looks more like the pros, are we talking silicon tips in the... Yeah, short stems, silicon tips. I know there's a lot. Will there still be a model without that? I know there's a lot of people who really don't like silicon tips. It's a great question. I don't understand that. I have a feeling they may sell them alongside each other. Is it going to be like the Apple Pencil deal where like there's AirPods and then there's the AirPods that are the same, but they're kind of different. Right. And then there's AirPods Pro and then yeah do you have to use a dongle to charge straight lightning into each air pod yeah and i'm assuming the cheapest model will probably not have mag safe and yeah you know that kind of stuff maybe even still charge with lightning maybe they haven't been forced yet so yeah we'll see and no airpods max right yeah this is the craziest thing the airpods max came out so long ago like three years ago i think mark has said in the dyson video four years yeah wow i don't think it was quite four maybe oh oh no i saw you guys whispering oh wait oh sorry i'm getting a phone call oh do you all know about this and i don't know we'll have to come back to uh we'll have to come back to this apple thing i think i'm getting a phone call oh my gosh look who it is hi friends hello we brought david pierce back so that he can help you get through your feelings about productivity apps that you guys did all those months ago all those months ago people have been dying for you to come back i i have gotten many messages i have been called i would say everything from like correct about the world and and a saint saving andrew from himself all the way to like you're a monster leave poor andrew alone he's just doing life like the rest of us That?

14:15I've got the full gimmick. David, David, thanks for joining. I know you're about to grill me with productivity apps, but we're going to take a quick ad break first. I know you love ads, David. And then we'll get back and talk about Google tests. Let's do it. Do it.

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16:44There are a lot of people who were like, I know what you mean. There are a lot of people who are like, I'm just like you and this is super helpful. But overall, that video did great. Yeah, it did great. One of our best episodes, I think. Glad to hear it. Yeah. A lot of productivity nerds out there. There are. It turns out. It makes me very happy. Yeah. These are my people. They are. I am kind of one of your people. What did you end up using? People went, I'm solely on Google tasks. Uh, I went to it. I enjoyed it. It was the nice, simple stroll in. I think I remember talking to Marquez early. I walked into it and I was like, cool, this isn't doing enough.

17:19I want to do more. And then I think I downloaded tick tick and then didn't like it. And then I downloaded to do list. And then there's something really strange about adding everything to my calendar, but I had to buy the pro version in order to get certain notifications and I didn't like that so I've just been on Google Tasks and I love it okay I have I have so many questions please do this is good because I was we left if I recall this was like almost five months to the day the episode that we did published as we're recording this now and we left you were going to try those three apps but I feel like I left completely unconvinced that you were going to do any of this that you you were like you were kind of in this headspace of like whatever my system sort of works sure it's slightly chaotic but it gets the job done please leave me alone and go back to yelling about tick tick so i'm curious like i think it was smart that you started with google tasks actually that was that was very smart because i think if you had started with one of the like more intense ones it might have freaked you out and you would have bailed i agree so i think starting small was was a good call but like what what did you start putting into google tasks like first day first day it was i think i kind of just did like a bunch of test things things that i like didn't i knew i would get done but i kind of did them anyways um i can't remember exactly what but lots of i think there was a lot of like clean the garage mow the lawn things that i had to do over the weekend remember i told you like my weekends were at some point i would know i will get these done but a lot of that is sunday at five o 'clock and after wasting the whole weekend so i did a lot of stuff like that and then a lot of small things at work here that didn't necessarily need to go into like notion or our calendar but small things i personally wanted to do or like things that i knew i had to get done and the fact that it's on the side of gmail great but i don't think we talked about this in that but i've complained about it multiple times the gmail task sidebar doesn't is only in white the background is only white it does not match with the theme of your gmail oh interesting that is nuts to me who would have thought google can't figure out to change a hex code color in the background to match insanity so that really bothers me so what okay now i need to know what your gmail theme is just how how just oh you're a dark mode guy it's weird though because gmail doesn't call it dark mode they just call it theme they're just themes and it's just black which i think is part of the thing with the gmail themes this is a complete diversion from everything some emails you get when it's dark and it like it darkens the email and everything looks nice and then other ones you get that are like the the marketing email from llb or whatever and they're still white and they're like blinding against the black background so i just gave up on theming it because some emails are just like screw your theme it's gonna be it's gonna be so bright you go blind that's super so i admire the dark mode but i i could never do it it's too much well i do my work email in light mode and my personal email in dark mode so to me that's the differentiator of when i'm at work i know what i'm doing in work and what i'm doing look at me more organized than i thought i know look who would have thought um but now tasks is like a completely integral part of my oh really i would say i have multiple re like uh reoccurring apps or tasks i have like some really stupid ones like i fill my wife's cup with ice and water every morning before i leave because she's on summer vacation and taking care of them.

20:40So that's like one nice thing to do. I have making disc golf putts every night for practice, but I also have stuff like doing my laundry every weekend and cleaning the car every weekend. Like things that I never would have done. My laundry would be like, I have zero clothes left. I have to do laundry now. Now, just do it every week. I have a question for both of you guys. So I was not in the episode where you guys got roasted. Well, you were in Japan or something. I was like, oh, David, I'm so excited to see you. And you were like, sorry. Sorry. You were David today. Yeah. So I have traditionally just used Google Keep for my to-do list stuff.

21:21Recently, I started playing around with Google Tasks. It feels a little bit similar. So you said that you put tasks for like washing the car and all that stuff. do you feel that you need those to be on your phone instead of just doing them because my thing has always just been like i'm just gonna get into a habit of doing a thing but i haven't found productivity apps to actually help me do the thing they actually just feel like they get in my way are you successfully executing all of those habits without fail every single time that's a no no not consistently i mean the one thing i am consistent at and actually uh dan Seifert got me into this habit is making my bed.

22:04Okay. And he got me into this habit by saying it on threads, not by being in my apartment. Not by being in my apartment. I'm telling you to make my bed. Like our eighth sleepover in a row, Dan just had me doing it. That was it. That's all it takes. But yeah, the making the bed thing, life hack to people. I'm fully convinced making your bed makes your day so much better because it is the quickest thing that you can possibly do. It's really true. It takes like 30 seconds. it looks good and it starts you off on this like rolling movement of like i'm gonna do good things for myself today and the worst is being really tired and laying down in your bed where your sheets are all messed up yeah and getting home and having your bed look clean and laying in the bed feels great so it's a good it's a good thing yeah so anyway back to the tasks besides the bed um i just yeah i don't know i don't feel like there are things that i need to get done in a like specific order or a specific day i usually just have on my google keep like these it's not recurring they're hanging tasks that i need to get done like to do day of x and then i just check them off what is different about your guys's productivity apps that allow these to be better i feel like you just kind you like opened up a perfect question for me to explain why google tasks work so good so i like this um perfect i think it's like tasks to me feels like the perfect in between of like it's a little more nagging than google keep is where like it gives me some reminders but it's not this like why aren't you doing that why aren't you doing that why aren't you doing that so for me i have things that i set whether that's it's set for a day like my laundry and clean my car cups up on saturdays i have i have like a septic system that i have to clean once a month so that's a monthly task or i have daily tasks each of those they come down as a notification once whether or i'll have something that's like uh trash needs to go out 9 p.m on thursday so that has a time with it so it's a little more specific that pops up i can do it right then or i can swipe it away the like ones that aren't specifically on times swipe that away but then my list starts growing and now when i see my list that's grown then it's a little more like okay I put some of these off on the day that I wanted to do it got it now I'm two days away and my my list is like five or six knocking those off feels so good and feels like taking this huge weight off your shoulder and then seeing that task think of it as like I'm looking at my task cap that's clean that's my made bed of my right right there okay are you an inbox zero person with your email I feel like that's the same kind of impulse yes my inbox is pretty low-key so it's easy but yeah I'm an inbox zero person I I hate that I am I am every eight months when I get really frustrated with it but so actually I think that's that is a perfect case for a task manager in general right is that like you want something that annoys you just the right amount yeah and honestly like if you're if you're disciplined enough to like sit down and review your list every day and say here are the things that I intend to accomplish and make time to go accomplish those things and actually do them without any prompting or help god love you congratulations on all of your accomplishments uh i am not one of those people and so having a thing that i can just like dump it into and i know that a it's all there and b the things that i need to remember at a certain time it will tell me about at that time like the the mental load that disappears because of that i just like that's the thing that i keep putting way too much of my life into these systems trying to do that it's just like i i don't have to worry about this anymore because at some point i will remember that this exists because i have just this list that i look at or it'll yell at me when it needs to hmm i have a question for you david you i i saw you posting about some new app that you were using recently that i think you got recommended from casey newton can you can you casey and i spend the vast majority of our time together just talking about productivity apps uh it's it's a life this is this is what we've chosen so the app I started using now is called it's an app called Capacities and it's very good and I would say it's less like a to do list app and more sort of a Notion competitor it's very much a like place to put all your notes and dump all your stuff and keep everything organized and I think Notion is a basically perfect piece of software except it is so slow and it sucks to use and I hate it and other than that it's incredible.

26:31And the mobile app is like the worst thing ever yeah oh it's awful i mean one and one of the funniest things that you see now is like there's this whole i go on the notion subreddit every once in a while and the most popular thing is like notion but faster is the pitch for like 700 other apps on the internet now it's so funny but capacities is like they have this idea of objects so you basically you put different types of things into this app where you're like i'm reading a book i put this thing in and it's a book and then you can sort of organize and manage all that stuff the way that you want to and for me i have this like massive overlapping set of stuff going on usually at work between like stories i'm working on a podcast we're doing and video stuff and meetings and so just having a place i can put all that stuff and keep it in order ends up being like necessary and i just sort of need a system like that so i am perpetually building systems in these new apps trying to find one that works capacities is very good uh it's uglier and a little more complicated than notion but oh it's so fast it's so fast and it works offline and so i have poured my entire life and and joy into it um i probably won't use it forever i'll probably be back on obsidian or notion or something else by the time this pod releases you'll probably be on something different it's honestly it's a good test like will this come out before i ditch capacities is a useful test do you know that meme of like you know the meme that's the chart and it's the guy that's really dumb and then it's the mage and then it's the guy that's really dumb.

28:00And it's like, it's the curve. And it's like Apple Notes, Notion, everything else, Apple Notes. I mean, that's correct. I'm on one of those sides. I can't say which, but I use the Apple Notes and the Google Keep. My Google Keep is one of the most terrifying things you've ever seen. I hate it. Because I color code my Google Keep, but just because I want it to have a color, I don't, the color doesn't mean anything. It's just because I was like, I feel like this is crazy. Do you do that in like Final Cut or Premiere also? Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Nothing makes sense. It's organized chaos. Wait, is this like a synesthesia thing where you just like look at a note and you're like, this note just feels blue to me?

28:45I wish it could be. I just make decisions. You should just say yes to that. Like that's a way better answer than I just give it random colors. So synesthesia sounds so cool. Just lean into it. Just go for it. Exactly. When it's blue, I know that it means I have to do it on Thursday at 4 p.m. Impressive. Okay, so Andrew, back to Google Tasks. Sure. If I remember right, one of the things we talked a bunch about was whether the right solution for you was to just pour everything into your calendar. All of the tasks, all of the things I need to get done today, should I just be making them all-day events on my calendar so I find them there?

29:23Did you try that? Why does that appeal or not appeal? I don't do that, and I don't like that, because already even without all my stuff in there and in Google Tasks, my calendar is such a mess, and there's so many things. And I was just talking with Adam about this the other day. It's really annoying how on just Google Calendar, how you can display this only in terms of all the different calendars. So we have work. I have me and Claire's shared calendar. I have mine. But then we also have calendars now for the different rooms and how they're booked inside of the studio on top of vacation days and stuff that I'm keeping track of.

29:59So I can click a calendar and display this only. But then if I want to go back, I have to check all the calendars back again. And that is miserable. Yeah, it's very bad. So there's just way too much in my calendar already to do that. I had my tasks there for a little while and it was too much. And I didn't like it. That's fair. So for you, a calendar is like a sort of snapshot of the universe rather than like a list of things I have to do today. Yeah. And if you're one of those people, that approach totally doesn't work. That makes total sense. And I would also say my calendar is probably 90 % work related, whereas my tasks is way more like personal stuff or even just like the things that I want to do at work.

30:37But the things that I'm like setting up for myself to do at work that the rest of the team doesn't need to know, just that I want to like make sure we're getting done. Yeah. Do you see your tasks in your calendar? No. Because that's one of the appealing things about Google Tasks. Really, you just didn't want it at all. No, I like my task to be its own thing. Like I said, that's why it's this perfect mix of, when even if I swipe away a notification and I don't do it right away, that means the next task that comes up, I'm probably gonna look at my app, my widget for it, and be like, oh yeah, I didn't do that.

31:05Now while I'm doing this, let's knock a couple of them out. So that's why it works for me pretty well. Other than ones that are like, this has to be done at 9 a.m., then it's like, okay I remember this was specifically this time so I'll do that right now how did you set up Google Tasks? are you like a one list for everything kind of guy? so first of all I've never had ever secondary screens I hate any extra screens I like only app drawer stuff or folders this is one of the things we left the last recording being like we tried to convince you to put a widget and we're just like it's never gonna happen wow I have my calendar above it just to like so it's not all of it so i just have daily calendar above it to quick look at some of the things happening or like who's out or remote for the day and then under that is my google tasks list i use this so much i pretty much add everything from just this widget i look at it this is the thing where you know if i've swiped away a task or a task comes up and i come look over here and i'm like all right there's six or seven things on here now let's knock out three or four of them and feel really good about it i think the widget here is what's completely changed it not only that i've talked about this at home so much now literally like a week ago claire was like what's that task app you use um and i installed it on her phone and she's get claire on the podcast i don't think she would love that but yeah my wife is now on google tasks and she's enjoying it as well she has a lot more stuff to do because of lane but i try and put some things on to help as well so you you just totally validated two theories i've always had about productivity apps uh one is that having it be like a thing that is sort of near you otherwise is really valuable like the the google sidebar thing is so real just the fact that you're in your email and it's right there is a huge deal and people always say like on mobile whatever it's just a swipe away just use the app switcher or on desktop like oh you can have both windows open like the fact that it's in the sidebar is a big deal uh and also i have been convinced forever that like capture speed is actually the whole ballgame.

33:13Like if it's really quick to write something down, you will. And if it's slow, you won't. And that's how the system breaks, right? And I think, especially with Google Tasks, one of the things that Google has done a garbage job of over the years is making it easy to add stuff into like its reminder system because its reminder system was 45 different apps that didn't speak to each other. And that is like very slowly getting better. Do you use the voice stuff at all? Like, are you yelling reminders into your phone all day? So I remember, I remember, I think the reason I tried to use Todoist is when you were talking about natural language processing and like being able to do that through just adding things and Google Tasks in the task app doesn't have that.

33:53Or at least I don't think it does, but through just Google Assistant, as long as I say add it as a task, it does. And honestly, I think doing that is where Claire decided I want this because the best time you can do that is clicking the little microphone on your Android auto in the car when you don't want to use your phone in the car and be like, can you remind me to do this? Especially when I'm driving home. This is where I use it so often with specific times is my commutes an hour. Claire will be like, pick something up on the way home. And if I don't in my car, click like in one hour or at, you know, five 55, when I'm just getting around off my exit to pick this up, I will get home and she'll be like, where was the dry cleaning you were supposed to pick up and I'll be like, it is at the dry cleaner because I did not remember to do that.

34:36So it has saved me so many times on remembering to do stuff like that. So yeah, it doesn't have natural language processing, but the fact that Assistant will do it as long as you understand how to ask it correctly, which is the most fun thing about Google Assistant. The syntax is a little wacky and just having to write, you have to say like add as a task. Otherwise it'll be like, which of the 12 apps should I put this in? Yeah. But I feel like that's when you use Google long enough, it's like how you have to learn how to search on Google. You just have to learn how to talk. You know, maybe Gemini will get to do something in there one of these days.

35:08Who knows?

35:12Yeah, probably not. David, meanwhile, is just sitting here being like, I just always remember to pick up the dry cleaning. Who needs a task? I do. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. All because he makes his bed. I guess my brain is huge, you know? Yeah, apparently. He's on an iPhone a lot of the time also. So he's probably not going to use Google Tasks. I wish I had to video call this guy the other day, and it took us like 10 minutes because he switched to Pixel. Because nothing worked. Well, me? Oh. Yeah, you. Yeah, sorry. You don't want to use Google Meet parentheses original? That was what we ended up settling with after Slack huddles failed continuously.

35:42Okay, but I thought that your audio was not working on your computer. Everything we tried didn't work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. You're right. Set a task to go back to the iPhones. I'm just doing my job, man. Yeah, no, I don't doubt that if I actually tried to use productivity app, I would be more productive because there are definitely times when I tell myself that I need to get stuff done and I just never get around to doing it. Your keep stuff, is it generally things you have to get done or is it just things you want to remember? It's a mixture of both. sometimes I'm just like video idea that I had title idea for that video that I have but it's uh and then sometimes it's a literally a running list of things I need to get done that's pinned to the top to be fair um so I think that first thing is like a perfect use of Google Keep yeah Google Keep is really good at that for like the sort of transient notes that you're like I don't need this to be like a big beautiful document that I show somebody I just need to write down this title idea that I had and then eventually I won't need it anymore yeah Keep is awesome for that uh-huh it should be better as a task manager because google also owns it and google owns google tasks and just it's just all sitting right there uh and i think at some point google is going to put those pieces together but they've been telling me that for a decade so i go off topic out of theories please okay you're saying those two should just be together what are your thoughts on the screenshots app not being part of google photos so what i think is that google really would like you to be able to just make up horrifying photos no problems easily enough but do useful things with your screenshots they have to make more complicated makes perfect sense great job everybody what are we doing here uh i know i think in general a lot of this ai stuff is probably better suited in its own app for now um my guess would be if this stuff is popular and any good it's all gonna end up in photos and camera before too long but i think for now like it is probably the right trial balloon to at least just make people do one more thing to access some of this stuff it's weird that google is doing it even while it is just railroading everybody's android phone with gemini uh so to pick that one spot to be kind of cautious doesn't really make any sense but i think for the first run of this thing yes but pixel screenshots long term if it's any good should absolutely not be its own app yeah i keep in tasks together i hadn't thought of but it makes perfect sense because what you're saying is just all the the pin tasks or the pin to-do list should just be if that was in keep it would be an easier way to remind you and turn it off and in a widget where keep all the other stuff should be in keep that's where i have like recipes or gift ideas for parents or siblings this is where i just don't want like there's so much segmentation on things that are only slightly different and it's the same analogy with the screenshots app versus the photos app because with keep it's like with gemini now you can ask gemini to make you a grocery list and what does it do it creates a bulleted list in google keep but to me my brain my apparently massive brain doesn't really like separate the difference between a checklist in keep and a checklist in tasks and i know that that's google's fault not your fault okay thank That's bad product.

39:01That's all it is. What tasks should be is a list of all the tasks you have in Google Keep. Google Tasks at a properly run product organization would not need to exist because Google Keep would already have that feature. But at Google, it is easier to be successful launching a new thing than maintaining an old thing. And this is why we keep getting new Google products. But the thing you're describing is exactly right. I think what Google is doing is sort of backing its way into that connection where like if you if you add a reminder to a thing in google keep it makes absolutely no sense that that doesn't immediately appear in google tasks right and i think that's what we're gonna get where there's like a little bit of that cross-pollination uh again they've been saying things like that for a very long time i'm not super hopeful it's gonna happen anytime soon but it like you can see how just that little connection would make both apps much better right i would be very excited no definitely some sort of just like universal protocol you might say where everything can talk to each other yeah what an idea yeah i don't know i guess my i just i my brain doesn't easily segment the difference between tasks and notes so i think that's probably why my keep is so messy just because i just want to throw everything that i think of in one place if you physically segment it then your brain doesn't have to segment it yeah i guess you're right so if you david well we're just going to do the same thing with you that we did honestly you should because i think i'm worse i think i'm worse that podcast was very long we're just gonna do it again let's go let's run it back okay uh so if you have a thing that you're like i need to do it at 4 30 p.m on thursday yes i have to send a form to the government uh-huh how do you make sure that that gets done at 4 30 p.m on thursday i usually just remember Sheer will.

40:48David gets arrested four months later. I usually just try to remember and there have been times where I have forgotten. Google does do a good job of before meetings and stuff like sending you a 10 minute to your meeting reminder or like Google Calendar. I did start using Google Calendar about a year ago like much more aggressively. So now when I'm getting dinner with someone or when I'm supposed to like hop on a call with someone, I usually put in my Google Calendar. So there's that. End of fact. and events but most of the time you're just like if this if this is important enough i'll probably remember it usually yeah which that's even worse than andrew just setting a million alarms like andrew andrew suddenly looks like thoroughly organized that's what i was saying when he was like oh yeah i'm an inbox zero guy i'm like what are you talking about have you seen my desk man like yeah i think we need the studio video of you coming into david and you can just follow him around for 24 hours and i i would love to just be your productivity coach like i will just i will i will teach you all of my ways and you will do none of them because it's insanity uh i would but i think like look if you if that works terrific but right i think the the case against that approach in a lot of ways is like mental load right like all the people who write about productivity and talk about this stuff and research it it's less like fear of forgetting something even though you will like we all forget things uh and it's more just the the mental load it requires you to keep that in your brain that you have to do that at 4 30 on thursday right just the the brain the mental cycles that it takes up between now and then that if you just offload it somewhere else you get to spend those cycles on something else and as discussed your brain is enormous so maybe this is not a problem this sounds uh this might sound dumb i think that i have had a a nervousness around offloading too many of the things from my brain to a computer because i am worried that i will just start not naturally remembering anything and i don't want to rely on something that's not me to get to make sure that i do the things i need to do i get that so play more video games man keeps the mind strong yeah but this all said i actually would like to get better at especially the tasks because like we were saying with the making the bed thing being able to like do smaller things to like get the ball rolling and like make yourself more productive in general i think would be very good because usually what i do now is like if i'm not being productive i have a panic attack So then I just force myself to be productive.

43:28I think I can also say the reoccurring daily tasks of super minuscule things that I've done, I would argue after you do it so many times becomes enough of a routine like making your bed. And at a certain point, you don't have to really put it in your task app anymore. Or you leave it in there and you love checking that box because it's that easy peasy one every day you're doing normally. But then it doesn't do anything for me. I've tried to use a bunch of different tasks app task apps that have like recurring tasks and it just feels like like unnecessary work to have to open it up and hit check to me i don't know that's fair i i only really use the recurring stuff for things with a long enough time horizon that i'm probably going to forget like i have one i have to change the air filter in my furnace every three months and i just will forget when i did it last right so i'm like even if i'll suddenly be like oh i should change the filter when did i do that last being able to check and be like oh i don't have to do that for that makes a lot of sense that's great yeah but the the i'm with you on the daily stuff like there are lots of people who who have literally like brush teeth make coffee breakfast on their students to work lots of drive to work dude i see marquez's calendar sometimes there's a lots of people on this podcast he has drive to work and i'm like dude i don't think you need that i think he did explain it Well, in the last episode, he can't schedule something in that time slot is what he has it for.

44:51That makes sense. He's clearly an extremely productive guy, so I'm not going to say that he's doing it wrong. There is plenty of good theory behind that. One of the things I've heard from a bunch of people over the years is a really good thing to do is schedule downtime. If what you're going to do is just rot on the couch for three hours, put on your calendar that you're going to rot on the couch for three hours. Because what it does is you've scheduled all the things that matter such that when you want to sit on the couch and rot for three hours while you watch shows, That's actually a thing you have declared your intention to do.

45:19Right. And that actually ends up being really important. That does nothing for me. Never, ever has. It feels ridiculous to put on my calendar. I can't make myself do it. But I do sort of buy the theory behind that. For me, yeah, the recurring stuff is only useful kind of. And I have mine set up so that it goes three months for the air filter. It goes three months from when I check it off, not when it was last due. So it actually is now on the correct cadence no matter when the original due date was, which has been very handy. I think the reason that the rotting on the couch three-hour thing doesn't really feel like it works is because when you're usually scheduling tasks for I need to do this during this period of time, it is the thing that has friction.

46:01And sitting on the couch doing nothing only has friction because you might want to do something else, but then you feel like you're not allowed to do something else. And sitting on the couch and rotting is not something you have to do. So it's just something you want to do. and those are sort of different things that's why it doesn't it wouldn't work for me at least yeah i get that i don't want to do first of all i put rot on the couch on claire and i shared calendar right now and i'm gonna see how long it takes her to text me for what that means but yeah i don't think i can schedule that for me the reason i don't schedule that is because rotting on the couch is the reason i'm not doing all the other tasks because i'm like sitting on the couch debating on what i want to do next which just means turning on youtube and then thinking too hard about what I want to do next and then doing none of it yeah so being able to rot on the couch get bored in 20 minutes and then look at my task app and be like oh I could get quit a few things done right now right this helps significantly that was the thing you said the last time yeah I was like oh if Andrew gets into this it'll actually really work for him because you what you're saying was if I remember right you're like I have these moments especially on the weekends where I will all of a sudden get real energy to be productive I'm like I have I have I feel good right I'm like I have 90 minutes of of go be useful energy right and then you were saying basically like you spend some portion of that time just sort of spinning around in a circle trying to figure out what to do uh and the idea of being able to be like I have time to do all the things and have all the things just sitting there in front of you uh and and the way you described it at least it sounded like that list would not be daunting it would be like inspiring and it sounds like it sort of has been which is really cool I would say it's done two things which is One, it's that.

47:37It has inspired me to be like, I have all these things. They're listed right here. If I just get them done, this is 30 minutes top. And I knock off more than half of the things I have to do right now. And the other is when I am in that productive mode and I just look at my list, rather than ping-ponging back between different things, it's much easier to just be like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. And then they're all done. And then I can rot on the couch forever with nothing hanging over my head. And it's great. Well, now Lane can crawl. So that's making it much harder.

48:09But David, do you organize these tasks by like things that are much bigger versus things that are smaller and easier to get done? Because, for example, I have like, you know, I always want to be working on this video project. And sometimes I have the energy to go work on the video project. But sometimes I get home from work and I'm like, I want to do something, but I'm kind of mentally drained. And I don't know if I have the energy to go to the coffee shop and write for another three hours. so how do you how do you like segment out the load of the mental load that it takes to do these tasks it's it's tough and i think one of the things i do most days at the very beginning of the day is just sit down and basically write a list of what i think my day is going to look like uh and it's just like write down all the meetings write down a whatever like stuff i have to get done today work-wise and then at the bottom i have just like a list of things it might be nice to work on.

49:02Some of it is like longer term stories. Some of it is things I owe other people for work reasons. Some of it is personal stuff. One of the things on my list for this evening is I have to buy blinds because that window lets in a lot of light and looks bad on camera. And like, has that been on my list every day for two weeks? It sure has. But so I think the way that I've come to do it is like the list I have is like, this is the stuff that is going to happen today because it has to, because this is what my day looks like. And then at the bottom, it's kind of, I don't know, hopeful. It's aspirational, but I've learned to like, I don't feel bad when I don't get that stuff done at all.