96. Early Beta
2018Show notes
You can hear the after show and support Do By Friday on Patreon!
Show Notes
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity: David Allen: 9780142000281: Amazon.com: Books
- NowThis on Twitter: “This robot can cry and bleed… “
- Inside the Kanye-Helmed Pornhub Awards – Rolling Stone
- Front Page Reporter’s Notebook | Field Notes
- Joe Rogan Experience #1169 - Elon Musk - YouTube
- Elon Musk worked at Tesla on birthday for 24 hours without friends - Business Insider
- The Toyota Way - Wikipedia
- Worst Dedicated Fan Base Tournament 2018: Introduction And Round 1 Results
- Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol - Wikipedia
- Superhuman
- Hypercritical
- John Siracusa - Relay FM
- The Dark Side of OneTaste, the Orgasmic Meditation Company - Bloomberg
- Getting Things Done® - David Allen’s GTD® Methodology
- Productive Talk Compilation: 8-episode podcast with GTD’s David Allen | 43 Folders
- 5by5 | Back to Work #95: She’s Five for a Living
- Slaughterhouse-Five - Wikipedia
- You Look Nice Today | A Journal of Emotional Hygiene
- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right: Atul Gawande: 9780312430009: Amazon.com: Books
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life: Anne Lamott: 8601404243813: Amazon.com: Books
- It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff: Peter Walsh: 8601419123933: Amazon.com: Books
Transcript
Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakesMaxWhat is this music?
AlexThis is Green Day's... Oh, easy, Merlin. Okay, fine. Fine. It's totally fine now. That's not...
MaxWhat's that quote from Nick Cave where he's like, I'm perpetually at a party going, what the fuck is this bullshit?
AlexAnd it's always Green Day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was such a funny tweet. Everybody retweeted that.
MerlinI don't have the time to listen to him whine about nothing and everything all at once. Pachelbel's Canon, look it up. You're playing Pachelbel's Canon. Stop it.
AlexThis is Dubai Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox, and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, read Getting Things Done.
MaxPop up in those kombuchas, folks. Folks, we're here with the live Dubai Friday coming at you live. Oh, boy. Live, live, live. Friday, Friday, Friday
Speaker BStrap it on and rip it off Hit your principal in the face with it Nice Tough job principal fuckwad, this is live Tear off the knob and shove it up your ass You're gonna get an oom massage 15 minutes but don't make it weird Weird, weird, weird It's probably a cult cult cult It might be a cult Boy that's a hell of a story
Speaker AHey everybody, it's two by Friday
AlexWoohoo What a great episode to do somewhat kind of sort of maybe live.
MaxWhat? Can I show you guys something just right off the top that I want to share with you on our super secret channel, and then I'll also put it in the Discord, but just click on this. I don't even have anything to say to set it up.
MerlinFor people, hi, this is Merlin, who's not in the studio. For people who are listening to this show when it's not recording, we're trying something different this week, and people are listening to this supposedly on the Discord. So hello, Discord.
MaxHi, Discord. Hello, Cox's Cox. Just click on this video and just enjoy it.
Speaker AOh, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's a little boy. Alex, I thought... He looks like a monster factory character. It's a tweet.
MaxIt's a tweet from the media outlet, Now This, which we should probably talk about in a second.
Speaker AOh, no, oh, no. The caption is, and it's a somewhat crash test dummy.
MaxI'm good. It's my birthday. It's a somewhat sort of fleshy, crash test dummy looking boy. He looks like Bobby Hill. He looks like a slender Bobby Hill. And it says, this robot can cry and bleed.
That's the subject line. Oh, no. Play the audio.
AlexOh, yes. You know what?
MaxAll right. Hang on. I'm going to turn it on from Now This, the media publication that we all know and love. It's like, oh, the eyes. Look at the eyes. I didn't get to hear his cries.
One of the hallmarks of the Now This program is I think that they don't have real it's like a music bed. It's not like actual audio. Oh, I thought of her crying at the beginning. But it's like a thing. I think it's a thing for surgeons to practice cutting into children. Look at its little pupils dilating.
AlexAlex, do you like it?
MaxAre you repulsed by it?
AlexI mean, I...
MaxAre those moles or is that where the blood comes out? It seems like it's right in your wheelhouse.
AlexIs it? Yeah. I'm trying this. Okay. This is one of those videos that doesn't, it thinks it provides context, but it really doesn't. Like, okay, so what's it saying? Can offer more than real... By being hooked up to real hospital machines and simulating different respiratory preferences, Hal is expected to cost $48,000. Well, how does that help me? I don't... Okay, what does...
MaxDo you think that robot's gonna gain... What if that robot has some sort of... It's like powered by IBM Watson and it's the thing that gains sentience. He's gonna be so fucking mad. He's so fucking mad. Why won't you let me die? I was built to suffer.
Speaker AHe is. He's built to suffer.
MaxHe's the suffering boy. Oh, God. What is my purpose? To get caught on by surgeons so they can practice making mistakes with the scalpel. Oh, God.
Speaker AI am for medical mistake practice. Let me die.
AlexI'm going to put this in the show notes.
Speaker ASorry, guy. Let me die.
AlexOh, no.
MaxWhat else did I have for us this week? Rolling Stone.
AlexOh, I know where this was going.
MaxIt wasn't the usual start to an awards show, even if the awards show was for the adult industry. Without any kind of announcement, a parade of porn stars, all wearing sheer monochromatic garments designed by Kanye West's Yeezy brand, took the stage. The erotic photographer Richard Kern snapped their photos, ignoring the audience altogether. It wasn't until minutes later that West himself strolled on stage, adding to the confusion rather than clarifying it. The rapper and fashion designer alternated between shouting directions at Kern, Yo, Richard!
And silently posing for photos, as if this was his own private photo shoot that we'd all stumbled into by accident. But of course it wasn't. This was the first ever Pornhub Awards, hosted by the behemoth internet porn site on Thursday night at the Belasco Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Unlike long-running industry events like the Adult Video News Awards or the AVNs, that's the award ceremony. This isn't aside from Dubai Friday character Max. That's the award show that David Foster Wallace went to in Consider the Lobster. Oh. in Big Red Sun.
Problematic. Which honored top talent over the course of a week in a Las Vegas hotel and a casino. This one was held in an intimate historic theater and used fans streaming data to decide the winners. It also claimed to be the first award show to broadcast live over the internet in virtual reality using a website called Oasis.game. This sounds like something
Merlinfrom 1998.
MaxThe chaos began early on in the evening even before Wes transformed the award show which began more than an hour after its scheduled start time into a fashion shoot, supposedly set in the year 6918. Although you wouldn't know that from the event itself. I hope in 6918 that we're past like, you know, in Star Trek in the year 6918, everyone wears like a jumpsuit because we don't need to signify anything with our clothing anymore.
MerlinNo, it's about exploration and friendship. You don't have currencies anymore. You just did a cunnilingus. It's just how you, it's basically, it's like the Bitcoin of Star Trek. You just own each other.
MaxSet a course for ohm, 15 minutes only Well, you know where they would probably practice ohming is on Ryza I'm Sean Connery
Speaker AApparently, head of the Starship 69
MaxMaybe they're going to go to No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to fillet Maybe they're going to go to Ryza, the pleasure planet And they'll practice ohming each other I think that actually is a plot of Isn't there an episode of the original show where they're all horny?
Speaker AYeah
MaxThey go through like a cloud and it makes them horny Yeah, but like fun horny, like 60s horny
Merlin60s horny.
Speaker AWhat does that mean?
MerlinIt makes them a little randy. Okay. Now, Max, are there any breakout awards? Are there kinds of characterizations? Are there awards that we wouldn't expect at the Pornhub Awards? Are they doing anything that would be unconventional to us?
MaxBasically, what I'm taking away from reading this is, so it was sort of a publicity stunt for Pornhub, and it went horribly awry. It started an hour late.
MerlinBecause, you know, they need the publicity.
MaxBy the last half of the show, the room was so empty, the presenters had to nearly beg the winners to come accept their neon dildo-shaped awards.
Speaker AOh, no.
MaxQuote, anyone with a penis, please accept this award. Porn star presenter Sherry Deville said after Johnny Sins voted most popular male porn star by women turned out to be a no show.
AlexOh.
MaxSo it sounded like a total fucking fiasco. And then Kanye showed up and sort of turned it into his own personal fashion show. Kanye did that. Kanye made it all about him? Somehow. We should have him on. Kanye, come on, do by Friday. We should have him on.
MerlinCome on, do by Friday. I think that would go well. sweetie i thought we were trying to get kim kardashian um no sorry she's problematic now what about what about chance chance the rapper which is the rapper come on does he live in chicago i would love it i would love it if chance chance come on do i like that guy come on do
Maxif anyone in the discord knows chance could you make an intro for me who else lives in chicago
Merlinthat we should have on the show oh boy what about joe wine banks isn't she from chicago what about she's a lady on msnbc with the brooches oh does she live in chicago what about uh what
Maxabout uh jim kudal the creator of field notes i i just bought me a whole bunch of field notes i
Merlinjust got the i just got the space one do you know do you have the dickerson pad yes isn't that i
Maxhave a i have a collection of notebooks i don't use oh i so i bought a carton i went to the field notes office when the dickerson came out um i got one and i was like this is it this is my pad and i went to the field notes office and i was like i'm scared that something will happen and these won't be available anymore so i want to buy a carton of them from you and i have like 60 of them like hidden in my in my little space in the office what i really like though yes but
Alexbut the best part of the story is that they you know they they re-released it and they're like okay this is a permanent part of uh the field notes official line and they made it better and now max just oh he's stuck with the old one how did they make it better he hates that it's it just feels better the paper is a better oh no max what i want you gotta make another yeah you gotta go you gotta get jim on the line better it feel i love the paper so like it just is nicer the the uh the spiral binding is different too damn it yeah i get cocked you got you got cocked so hard in the
Maxdiscord want to buy a carton of john dickerson reporters notebooks from the field notes corporation Oh, God. Asteriskly, don't feel nice. Let's see. I had a couple of other news items we could do.
AlexI have a brief story.
MaxPlease.
AlexI was in Portland this weekend, and thank you for everybody who said hi. However, the last day I was there, Maddie and I were getting into a lift, and they were halfway inside of the lift and said lift just started moving because the Lyft driver had still started. Yeah, yeah. It's still.
MerlinThat's happened to me. My daughter almost got run over once. They just, they love getting on their way.
AlexYeah. So, so they were dragged about half a block. So it went, including Skull Face, one of our amazing moderators was like, oh my God, hi. And if it was that last day, I was like, oh, sorry, I got to go to like a dozen people as we went off to the urgent care. They're fine. Other than the trauma of being dragged half a block. Oh my God. But it's okay. Portland blocks are really half blocks. So really it was a quarter of the block.
MerlinWell, I'm glad Matchy's okay. But the question is how many stars?
AlexOkay. Oh, God.
MerlinYeah, that's a, that's at best. That's a, because you know, if they drop below 4.7, they get shit.
MaxAt best, that's a three point ride. I mean, that's the ceiling.
MerlinDid you get to play your own Spotify list, Alex?
AlexI gave him four stars and I didn't. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker AWelcome to the resistance. I was like, it was an accident.
MaxIf you give him low stars, you're no better than him. I mean, you're proverbially dragging him behind the car of your app rating. Let's be honest. Matt, she could have gotten dragged a lot longer. They could have died. Admirable restraint. It was to his credit that he stopped when he did.
AlexIt was great that he heard the screams.
MaxDid you get the vomit fee? Did you get the... Vomit fraud! Oh, well, for sure you're going to be assessed a cleanup fee. I mean, there's going to be blood.
AlexThere was blood.
MaxYeah. Oh, no. Yeah, you're getting that $175 cleanup fee. Poor Matchy. For sure.
Alex, your problematic boyfriend, Elon Musk, went on the Joe Rogan. So first of all, I want to ask, did you guys sort of read the profile of him where he seems to be in the midst of like some sort of mental breakdown?
Speaker AMm-hmm.
MaxHe didn't cry.
MerlinHe's been very clear he did not cry in an interview.
MaxHe started crying because he's like, I missed my birthday. I was supposed to get treats for my birthday and I didn't get any treats. He's working literally 80 hours a day because it's the only way this thing's going to be done.
Speaker AWhat do you think he's doing?
MaxApparently, like, I guess... He still finds plenty of time to be a dick on Twitter, so he must be managing his time well. I guess allegedly one thing that happened was that he, one of the workers, like, tried to stop the line because he saw a safety violation. Do you guys know the Toyota Way?
AlexNo.
MaxThe Toyota Way is a famous business book.
MerlinToyota Way is anybody can stop. This is total quality management. Anybody can stop the line at any time for any reason.
MaxRight. And this was like when American car companies went to go see how Toyota was making cars so consistently well, this was the big takeaway. It was like the workers were very empowered. Everyone had a lot of pride in making the safe work environment and the best car. And if you saw anything go wrong, you'd pull a cord and it would stop the line. And this was like the whole world of manufacturing changed because of that. and what was funny was that the Tesla plant a worker basically tried to like pull the cord and stop the line because he saw something wrong and Elon Musk like berated him and said how dare you stop the line for a
safety violation and fired him I guess like flew into a rage and fired him but what do you think he's doing is it like a Captain Ahab situation like he's pacing around some little crow's nest muttering to himself
AlexI think he's gonna coney 2012 this like he's gonna snap and then go away and we'll all forget about him
MerlinI don't know, man. He's under, he's obviously, he's under, he's under a lot of pressure. And it seems like so far he's, and you can correct me on this, Alex, you know this better than I do, but it seems like he's written a lot of existential checks that are coming due. And there's some problems apparently with being able to deliver. They've had to basically cut the number of skews on the latest line because they're not gonna be able to make as many as they thought. And he's got pressure. He's pressure. He's created for himself on all sides. And I think the man's cracking a little bit.
AlexHe's not doing his weekly reviews.
MaxI have a word of advice. I have a word of advice about this to our listeners, because I think we're living in an age where everyone's going to get, you know, it's very much the Andy Warhol thing now. Like, everyone's going to get famous for something for five minutes. Like, it's going to happen to you, and you might get famous for something that you're proud of or that you like, or it might be that everyone, like, turns against you and there's a mob, and that's another kind of being famous. But what comes with being famous on the Internet and having people talk about something that you do is there are going to be negative comments. It doesn't matter what you're doing.
Like I think it's everyone has seen the idea of like if you're like if you just post on Twitter and you're like I'm even trying to like oh I adopted a cat today. If that tweet gets enough retweets at some point there's going to be people in the replies explaining how it's immoral to adopt a cat.
MerlinWhy don't you adopt an unsighted cat or a cat without an anus? Like a cat that could really use it.
MaxRight.
MerlinYou're out there getting those really pretty foster cats.
MaxRight. That's what they would say. Why didn't you get a transgender cat? But anyway, so I'm just saying, then it becomes maddening because you feel like that you want to engage and you want to correct, if only everyone could see it from your point of view, that you want to converse with them. And you're like, no, you must be misinformed. I was actually a good person when I adopted this cat. And you start replying to them. And then the replies become the thing that everyone makes fun of. And then you reply more and you get more and more desperate.
And you're just whining yourself up.
MerlinThis is setting aside his brigade of flying monkeys, which are their own. I think they were recently voted the worst fandom in the world. Oh, did I?
AlexWait, did I win the bracket? No, I didn't. Let me see. This is very important. Everyone else's bracket.
MerlinSorry, I didn't mean to take you off that.
MaxNo, no, that's okay. But we did the worst fandom bracket in the office. Everyone filled it out. I was the only one who had Elon Musk. Everyone else busted their bracket. And I was the only one who had Elon Musk going all the way to the top, baby.
MerlinI have one more thing to say about this before you pivot, which is this. I watch a lot of videos on YouTube and I want to state something very obvious that I think helps explain this phenomenon in a way that's very frustrating but useful. Which is there's no video on YouTube with more than a couple of views that doesn't have a thumbs down. like somebody either hates and there's somebody who hates everything or there's somebody who wants you to know that they're on the they're on the other side of the people who like it and i'm not saying everybody has to have thumbs up for everything on youtube but to me it's very
informed no matter what it is there's somebody who fucking hates you and you can't do anything about it and now you have to decide how you're going to change the way you roll based on that if you will and that way lies madness if you're frustrated about how you're behind on your production and your space loops like fucking hey man walk away just walk away you're not gonna you're not going to solve this fucking you're a billionaire that's where i was gonna that's what
Maxi was gonna go with this was was this is kind of my piece of advice of like when it happens to you and i mean i mean you person listening to this because like i assume it's going to happen to everyone at some point you'll say some some tweet or something will blow up or everyone get mad at you or or it'll be good or something everyone's going to get get well known for something at some point and when it happens to you please remember that it's an option to not say anything you don't have to keep saying things you can just shut your fucking face and and let people be mad you actually don't have to respond and when and if you talk you're kind of you're kind of um giving them
fuel you're giving your feet you're giving them energy and if people are mad at you what you want is for them to just forget about it and move on to the next thing well at the very least at the
Merlinvery least realize there's not really a way to categorically win now if you feel like you have been actually and try to do this try to try to do this no more than once a year but if you honestly feel like you are legitimately misunderstood or mischaracterized correct it but then fucking walk away the more that you keep talking about that the less credible it seems someone very smart
Maxvery smart once said no one ever remembers who won if that you won an argument online all they remember is that you're an asshole who argues on the internet i think that's all that most people I think who said that I think that was a lonely I forget probably he's a good man and thorough anyway um so Elon Musk Elon Musk stop stop just stop oh and then he went and smoked that weed on Joe Rogan and they fondled a samurai sword this sword was made in the old way oh you guys see
Alexthat yeah my favorite part though really is that Tesla Tesla's stock went down like the minute the interview went out.
MaxYeah, because it was humiliating. It made me feel like he's not well. Cal Dimash.
MerlinI mean, fuck it. What do you think is going to happen, you dipshit? You need to go do things that are more credible and less fucking crazy pants. Well, he did say it's illegal. When you have the continuum of credible versus crazy pants, move to the left. Move to the left.
MaxYou need less crazy pants, less pedotong. Alex, where are you on Elon Musk nowadays? Oh my god.
AlexYeah, Alex, come clean. Where are we on this? It's the 2018 Alex Musk apology tour. Alex was so wrong and was blinded and just wants- Oh, no, really? Alex just wants apparently a white man to look up to who is good at making batteries. You're welcome. Yeah. What am I, chocolate? You don't make batteries. You just, well, you do buy a lot of them.
Real-time follow-up. Tom won the bracket and Max tied for second.
MaxHow did Tom win? He didn't have Elon Musk winning.
AlexI don't know. Basketball rules. What does winning a basket mean? Yeah.
MaxWhat does it mean to win the Bastic?
AlexWell, we bought him alcohol, and that was it. That's my alcohol.
Speaker ABut how did you decide he's the one that wins?
AlexDidn't Tom score it? Did he come up with some arbitrary algorithm? No, no, no, no, no. This sounds like a jam up. Alex, this sounds like a jam up. A friend of the show. He does not listen. Joe Kim did the NCAA rules and taught us how to sports. So, yeah.
MerlinYou're not allowed to pay them?
MaxNo.
AlexNo.
MaxAll right. I had a quick follow-up from last week, but it's a follow-up of something that I believe we edited out of the podcast. So, last week, I just want to mention it for two seconds. So, last week, I had been invited by my friend Sam, who's a designer in Chicago. Sam was was was using this new email thing and he was like hey I think you might like this it's called Superhuman and it is an email out it's cut I know we edited it out but what happened was I was telling you guys that I had to meet that the way to get onboarded onto this app it's an early beta very
early beta and I'm I'm like skip the launch you're an early beta I got I got skipped to the front of the line to try this thing because I got an intro and they were like the onboarding process is you have to do a Google Plus hangout for an hour with the founder of the company Superhuman and you guys were like this sounds like an asshole app and it's going to be bad and the other feature the other feature that you guys clocked was that has that it adds that context bar that like if you hover over someone's name it shows you their like linkedin profile and their twitter profile and stuff but i just wanted to come in with a and we did and i made you edit that out
because by the time we were working on the episode i had been onboarded and tried this thing and let me tell you you guys know i've been on my quest i've been on a quest to find an email app that works on browser, on my computer, and iOS that is simple, keyboard-based, and fast. Like, I need an, like, don't you guys ever get that thing on Gmail where you click something and it takes a few seconds to load? It drives you crazy.
MerlinYou hate it in Spark. Just show me my mail. It's text files.
MaxYeah, why does it take so long? So, this is that. To the rescue! This is that. Comes the asshole out. So, the way it works is they cache your emails locally in your copy of Chrome. and it they load it is so fucking fast and you and they've they have keyboard support even better than gmail so you never have to take your hands off of the keyboard you never have to touch the mouse when you're using this thing and there's just and then i wrote down three features that i want to tell you about that i think you might like so the first one is um they have this thing
called send later which there's like a thing on gmail called boomerang that i've used so like sometimes i do email at like two in the morning like a sociopath and i don't want my employees to feel like they have to read an email for me at two in the morning so i'll do send later send at 9 a.m local time this send later does that but not only that it also has like local time zone support so if i'm emailing sherry our printer sherry who's in china a lot i could say email this to sherry at 9 a.m in shanghai and it figures it out and sends it at the appropriate time nice you guys are just
Alexsitting there in silence but that's pretty impressive because i can't use it yet what's
Merlincool is what's cool is uh three months three months from today is december 12th and it happens to be a Wednesday, so we'll be recording to you by Friday. And I've given myself a reminder to ask you on December 12th, is Max still using the AskLaymail app? So, we'll find out how excited about it you are on December 12th, and you can tell us how good it's been for the last three months. I await the challenge. Let me tell you, and then two other... Because you get mad. Here's the thing about you, whom I love. You get mad at everything. I'm wrong on a time scale.
AlexSo, you're infatuated
Speaker Awith this. I'm telling you. You're a cuckboy. You're a cuckboy for the email disruptors. I like this email app. You're editing stuff out of your show because you love them so much.
AlexWait, so is it on iOS as well? They have a native app on iOS
Maxand it's fast as shit. They have an iOS app?
Speaker AIt's a native app on iOS
Maxand it is so fast. Wow, you're going to be at inbox zero later.
Speaker AWait, can I tell you
Maxtwo other features? So do you guys get this? Are you being paid? Do you guys get this? No, can't I like something? I never like anything. I know it's surprising to you guys, but this is good. I've been waiting for years. I've been complaining for years that email sucks ass. And if someone finally made a good one. You've known about it for almost four days. It's so good. It's so good. So another one. What else does it do, Max? What other kind of features does it have? Do you ever get that email where it's like introducing you to X, Y, and Z,
and then everyone's like on the chain? And then what you have to do is you move the sender to BCC, and you go, thanks, Merlin, moving you to BCC. Everyone else, nice to meet you. there's a keyboard shortcut you can do and it fucking automatically does all that shit including it moves the sender to BCC it arranges the email addresses and it does it with like one what is it like command shift I or something and it's just like boom it composes it and then this is the killer one this is the one that I think Merlin you're going to get into so they have a support for snippets
which is you know as you know it's like text expander and you can use it however in whatever way you want But in this app, their snippets support format of the email. So the snippet can do things like CC a person or put something in the subject line or attach like a...
MerlinSo if you frequently send stuff to your assistant for action, that could be a snippet?
MaxCorrect. That's cool. Or you could say, let's say that you... So here's something that I've been using. Let's say I wanted to send you guys something for Dubai Friday. right I could um what I could do is open the share I'm I'm in Chrome I'm on sorry I'm on mobile safari and I'm like I'm reading an article and you know I let's see I'm in mobile safari and I see this article called everything we know about Toronto's new sex doll brothel and I'm like and I'm like oh this Alex and Roland will enjoy that so I could do hit the little share sheet and email and then have a snippet that sends it off to Dubai Friday and like and appends it to
whatever that, you know, you can get really workflow-y with it. Anyhow,
Speaker Ait's, it's a fucking,
Maxit's a fucking, well, congratulations. Thank you. I'm, I'm over, every time I use this thing, I'm overjoyed. Get it, listen, sign up now on the mailing list before it gets, it blows up. So that's,
Merlinthe action item is that Dubai Friday Nation should go sign up for the SL email.
MaxI think, what's it called again? It's called Superhuman. It's called Effectiveness? Superhuman. What is it? It's called Susan, it's by Susan Effectiveness. Susan Effectiveness. Superhuman.com and Merlin, and Alex, if you guys want to tinker with it, I'm pretty sure they would let you skip the line.
MerlinI don't use any new app unless I do a Google Hangout with the CEO.
Speaker AOkay, well, I think that's what's set up. Is everybody here? Who just joined? Who just joined?
MaxAll right. Sally, can we do something about that buzz? God damn. Can I get a Diet Coke? I just get fucking savage for liking something.
AlexCan we talk about the Toronto?
MaxNo, no, it looks cool. It's called Superhuman. They have a real pretty site.
AlexIt's also a bad book.
MaxI'll sign up for it right now. I will say I also like the design of it. It makes me happy to look at it. I think it's a well-designed thing.
MerlinYeah, it's pretty. Request an invite. I would say invitation. My full name is Roland Mann, and invite is not a thing. Okay, thanks for signing up. Oh, thanks, Rahul. Oh, Rahul sent me a message here. No, that's probably who you'll be meeting with to onboard you onto the thing. Spread the word, and I'll bump you up the list, smiley-faced. Okay.
Speaker AAll right, I'm in. Gross. All right. Crack the encryption. I'm finally going to fix my email. The first firewall is down.
MaxYou guys all know how you hack into a computer and it shows a progress bar
Speaker AOh Yeah, every day It's only at 75% We need to buy some time Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
MerlinYou know what's good are those Mission Impossible movies They're really good, my daughter loves them I've never seen a one
AlexEveryone's into it now What is going on
MerlinVis-a-vis you just noticed it now start with uh ghost protocol is that the first one no it's like the third or fourth when they
Maxstarted coming out i'm you know i i bread bread bread i um when these mission impossible tom cruise movies started coming out i kind of did my my mental filing cabinet and i was like i'm gonna put this under under don't care and now i've clearly bet wrong because that everyone fucking
Merlinloves these movies now he's really he's it's funny because i mean say what you will about the guy you can really tell when he's in his element um stuff like this stuff like that um terribly marketed a named movie, Edge of Tomorrow, which was surprisingly wonderful. He's really good at these things. The stunts are great. It's got Simon Pegg. What are you going to say?
MaxThey're really good. I feel like the Tom Cruise jumping out of the helicopter was the, what was the Revenant? Who was in that? That was a very difficult movie to make. Was that Christian Bale in that movie, getting eaten by the bear?
AlexNo, no, that was Leo. Oh, right, that's right.
Speaker AYeah, Tom Cruise jumping out of the helicopter.
Maxwas Leonardo DiCaprio getting eaten by the bear of 2018. I fucking saw him do that stunt. It was like, and now an Arclight Cinema's behind-the-scene glimpse. And it's like, I'm Tom Cruise. I'm here about to jump out of this helicopter.
You guys didn't see that at theaters and shit?
AlexNo.
MerlinIt's a YouTube fly-swallowing stunt. Yeah, I think he's good at what he does.
MaxShould we do the challenge? We have a lot to say about the challenge, and the Apple keynote is upon us. Nothing to say about it. Oh, well, we, I mean, what do you want to say? We found this article and it turns out they're a very upsetting cult.
Speaker AOkay. Challenge. Do you want to get into it?
MerlinNo, I think we should do the challenge.
MaxI just want to make sure we have a lot of fun. I want you to close the loop on that. Did you have a next action item? Yeah, let me circle back with you and put a pin in the floor. Okay.
Alexall right the dig dog the challenge this week was challenge oh i don't say it that weird challenge the alderman says chicago and it drove me i was like the challenge was to read getting things done copyright 2001 david allen nice nailed it yep yep okay uh because i like follow up copyright 2005
Speaker A2001 john Syracuse yeah the only one why can't he just be remembered for something
Merlinis it too much to ask nobody's even heard of the little guy can't we at least remember that he come up with the idea of talking about something twice on a podcast that was his idea he asked so little
Speaker Arelax squidward you're good
Merlinit'd be so fun if you started playing clarinet
Alexdigga digga digga Alex challenge uh read the book what I told what I made you guys do this week was read getting things done I reread it for I don't even know how many times I've read this book now uh Max had never read it before and I think Merlin's somewhat familiar with it. I am mostly interested to hear what Max thought about
Merlinthis book. So can I just say, Alex, I agree with every single thing you just said. I just want to
Maxhear Max tear it apart. That's what I am looking for. The challenge this week was I had to read an entire book and then listen to an hour and a half podcast. It started out so simple. It started out so simple. It's like, hey, Max, check out this book. I kept giving you more and more. Then it It was like, oh, sure, I'll get that book. But then I got it and it was the wrong edition. And it's like, no, you have to get the old one. You have to get the first edition. Print these PDFs, watch this video, listen to this podcast, listen to this other podcast, listen to this six-part podcast, listen to this 90-minute podcast. The eight-part podcast, what I found was a compilation where it was all edited together.
So it made it quite easy to listen to.
Speaker AOkay.
MaxYou didn't actually listen to it, did you? Yeah, I did all those things.
Speaker AIt's very good.
MaxSo you guys, as you know, I never peanut butter on this show. I always come through. I always deliver. now you guys have read this already so I'm I'm kind of the only one who it's new to but did you
Alexeither of you reread it or do anything this week yes I reread it along with listening to Merlin's compilation of interviews with David Allen and the five-part series of back to work from like what you listen to both yeah I was on an airplane without wi-fi what did Matchy do what it was matches just tending to their wounds yeah they had a lot of pain killers on the plane ride back uh also we should be legal just in airports everybody would have just a way better time
Merlini um i technically peanut buttered i did not read the whole book for a seventh time but i have read it six times and this is slaughterhouse five are the two books that i've read the most um but i did reread a lot of parts of it and i did go back and listen to lots of things and this is sounds so super douchey, but I did go back and refresh my memory on stuff that I've said, or he has said in interviews, the interview I did with him. So yeah, I'm pretty up to date. I don't know if all
Maxmy loops are closed. So real quick, because I did, I have a bunch of notes and stuff to go through with GTD, but just to address the Discord. So what's going to happen is we are going to sort of turn the Apple keynote on mute, and we will continue doing Dubai Friday, and we'll kind of talk over it, and we'll riff, and we'll hang out and watch it with you guys. But if you're very serious about the Apple keynote and you want like actual Apple commentary probably just turn us off and switch over to that. We're going to kind of goof around. Is that accurate to say? Yes.
Okay, cool. And we may not tune in right when it starts either. Yeah, well we commit to nothing. We'll get to it when we get to it. But if you want a fun Apple stream, come and hang out with us. Okay. All right. So notes on GTD. So the first thing I did was I read the book. I did read the physical book and I did read the new edition, but I I also have the older edition, but I only have a digital copy of it. So I have not had time to sort of compare the old edition to the new one. So I don't know. So, okay, so big bullet points right up top.
First thing, I found it to be a pretty skimmable book. Like it was not, you know, it was not like a novel. Like so there were sections that I really read closely and sections where I was like, I don't need to know too much about this. And I kind of blew past them. um the whole first chapter was kind of his diagnosis about the changing knowledge worker technology workplace economy and i was not very interested in that like i really did not need to see to hear david allen sort of prognosticate about the nature of work well that that's an
Merlinidea that most of us especially in our communities have been very much people your age i imagine have
Maxinternalized at this point that's not a fresh idea there was nothing it was when i read that I found it to be almost like, well, like, have you ever tried to read Aristotle? And Aristotle was like, there should be categories of things. And the first time you read Aristotle, you're like, this is nothing. Like, this is, there's nothing here. Like, he's just saying that there's like some things are.
MerlinWell, it's like reading something from any previous age when there's a giant missing piece that nobody mentions unless you read the preface. Like, oh, by the way, you should know that a third of people died of cholera at the time this came out. You'd be like, oh, I guess that really changes the way I read this. You know what I mean? Right. Like, at that time, this was still, I mean, knowledge work was still kind of emerging as an idea. I don't mean to cut you off. But like, yeah, no, I agree with you. And even at the time, that's why 43 folders happened. It was because it needed an update for people who weren't like
Maxbriefcase carrying doofuses. Yeah. I mean, that's why I felt like maybe, you know, I almost feel like you could just start with, I think it's section two, which is the sort of learning about the getting things done system. The workflow thing. And that's because like, I also like very strongly accept the diagnosis that most people that they live out of their calendar their to-do list is a fiasco like they're not capturing things and they live these lives of like uncontrollable stress and chaos because they don't know what to do next and i i accept that i don't need to be
Merlintold that i and then and that you come to eventually realize or accept for yourself that it's inescapable that this is what work work has to be this unpleasant and chaotic or it isn't work
MaxYou know, the other thing that this is becoming, we're getting, I have so much to say and we're on the first bullet point here. But the other thing that was sort of I was reflecting on when I was reading that is like, you know, what's amazing is people get, keep getting more and more efficient. Like I think like the average worker now is like 10 times as efficient as they were like 20 years ago. Like they're getting exponentially more efficient, but nobody works less. Like if capitalism sort of like internally like made sense, wouldn't it make sense that if workers become more efficient that they would either make more money or work less?
In a way.
MerlinWell, this was always the conventional wisdom. The example people often give is in the 40s and 50s when automated washing machines and various kinds of household appliances came along. It wasn't that the people doing that work had less to do. It was that the standards were raised. So now you were supposed to do laundry like twice a week or three times a week. You know what I mean? It didn't actually save time. It just changed the expectations. That's what increases in productivity in industry tend to do. It doesn't make your life better. It's just, you know, it's like you're in a different Charlie Chaplin movie.
MaxYeah, I guess like there's this idea that if you reach that people dream of reaching perfect efficiency and the idea is like, oh, I only have to work a couple days a week or a couple hours a day or whatever. And I'll just I don't know what would do what with my time. I'll like lounge. I'll like lie in a hammock in my lawn. But like it never seems to materialize for anyone that they actually have more time. So I guess mainly thinking about a lot of that stuff in the first chapter, I was just thinking like there's probably like I appreciate that there's a very thoughtful system to help you mitigate the effects of this in your life.
But also like it is kind of a bum rap because like if you're just like a whatever, a worker and you become like ultra efficient and you're able to manage your priorities and stuff like, you know, it's like, I don't know, like, you know what I mean? Like it doesn't you don't actually have to you actually do more work, right?
Alexno what do you mean by you actually end up doing more work so so let's use you as an example right
Maxlike if you got if you had stuff right i well i go around the office like mussolini like pointing at things with a yardstick and yelling and i'm like fix this cable like you know do this do that and you're you're that's your stuff right and now if you become like ultra organized and you're tent you become twice as efficient you become like like uh dr manhattan alex and you're like floating around the office with your with your I love that a giant blue Alex Alex is floating around the office with her
hog hanging out wearing pants disassembling clocks she's got omni focus on one thing and tick tick on the other and she's becoming she's like Mike Curley she's got eight productivity apps her hog hanging out achieving peak productivity in that scenario in that scenario Alex would not do less work. She would actually, the end result would be she would do more work. Yeah. Because you're still here for eight hours.
Speaker AYes. Do you see what I'm saying?
MaxYes. So you become more productive and then I'm just like, oh, Alex has more, can fix more, she can organize more HDMI cables.
AlexAnd why is that a bad thing?
MaxBecause it's not a fair system.
AlexWell, okay. Then how about if my work's done? Because the owners are getting more,
Merlinthe owners continue to get more value
Maxout of the workers? Yeah, Alex should be, if Alex becomes twice as productive, she should make twice as much or work half as much. Doesn't that make sense? That's why. Is that great? Why? Am I crazy? Hey, Discord, I'm right here, right?
AlexThat's how capitalism works, though. Yeah, I don't think.
MerlinI don't think that's the case that he's making. At least your materialist interpretation of that makes a ton of sense. I don't think that's what he's saying. I think what he's saying is that I don't like that. I've never liked that word effective. I think it's a douche term. And efficient doesn't help all that much. But in order to do the work that you are nominally paid for, which is the work of deciding your work and then doing it, it does require a level of relaxation and creativity that if you're constantly keyed up and your shoulders are up around your ears because you're so stressed out, you can feel that busyness driving you and making you feel like you're doing a lot.
But have you really – I think what he's – at least in my generous interpretation, what he's saying is, well, you could be doing less better is a big takeaway for me. and that doesn't mean like you're a failure. You're not like fucking Snuffy Smith holding a jug with X's on it. But it does mean that you're not going to be running around as much. You're going to be able to accomplish more by having a framework for understanding how your work works. You know how to do your job. You just need an infrastructure and a scaffolding for making sure that you can implement it in a way that doesn't make you crazy. But with that said, your point does make sense.
Alex should definitely get double the money.
MaxBrian said in the Discord, he's uh so i keyboard maestroed about 75 of my job and my bosses hated it so i pretended i stopped but in reality i work about half as much for the same results and i i guarantee you that's like endemic in our society like i god knows i've done that in my job i've had jobs where i i had a 40 hour job that i basically was able to automate with like 100 lines of php and then i just showed up every day and played computer games and hope that nobody noticed yeah you guys probably have
Alexboth had experiences like that right i got hired right out of college here so no never but but like honestly really like the yeah i guess i would apply that to school stuff in terms of like i tried to once i got out of high school and realized that homework didn't matter i basically did find ways to automate or just figure out the most important things to do and then do more interesting things I guess if that makes sense like I definitely didn't adhere to do less things better um but I
like getting my mind out of the space of like oh okay this needs to be uh I need to make sure this is the correct screenwriting format like because there's all that steps and the infrastructure in place of I know that this is going to get done and it's going to be fine and I don't need to think about it while I'm doing something else creative that is sort of what was most helpful from the time I was 14 until now-ish, I hope.
MaxWell, anyway, so that was my first bullet point. Bullet point two is I feel like in general the book is sort of framed as like a self-help book. Like you might expect to pick this up to be like a life improvement or, you know, a philosophy, like a life philosophy book. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like an Oprah type book?
MerlinAs against, so like a self book within the pink cover section rather than the guy cover section. It's less of a business help book than a self help. You know what I'm saying? The difference between like a business book, like a who moved my cheese type shit, is less of that and more of a self help pink cover book.
MaxI almost wish that, I almost feel like if I could make an editor's edition of, if someone came to me and said, how could you package GTD in like a format that would sell, or you know, that's like rethink it or whatever. like my angle on it would be almost like a pamphlet like it would be like a very slim little volume it'd be highly technical in nature and it would be like here's a system that you can think about that will change the way you think about your to-do list and here's some some ideas and and and some hacks and technologies that will help you think about this because that's when the book
really picked up for me is when it got pretty technical and it started talking about um um you know next actions and and to to-do lists and stuff like that you know what i mean like the sort of
MerlinI agree to an extent, but let me posit a somewhat controversial point of view on that, which is that you are of a generation where you have already been very influenced by ideas that books and thought technologies like this have put out there, I will very modestly say. You are very ready to not need to be talked into this. You already think a lot about how you work. You're a designer. You think a lot about the context for things. Not context in the GCD sense, not at context. But you think a lot about how you work. That's part of your whole praxis.
I think in this case, not to be a defender here, but I think in 2001, he's making a fairly radical case to people who are used to mission statement bullshit. I think he's saying that all that stuff matters. All those high altitudes matter. But down here on the runway level, you're a wreck.
MaxI think you're right. You are right about that. I also had the benefit, and this also should be said, of like, Merlin, I've been listening to your podcast since Mac break, I want to say. So I was in, I think I sort of kind of discussed, so when did, what, do you remember what year, um, you look nice today started? Um, maybe 2008 or nine.
MerlinYeah. So I think 43 folders, 43 folders was September of 2004. Mac break was something like, I think 2008.
MaxOkay. So I, I must've been following. So I graduated high school in 2005 and I think that my senior year of high school, I probably found either Mac break or 43 folders. There were some posts of yours that were sort of like getting posted on boing boing or stuff that I was reading. And I kind of entered the Merlinverse. And I often like thinking back on college and like what did I get as a person out of going to college. I mean this completely seriously. Listening to your stuff and just learning how to think about GTD and all this kind of stuff listening to you.
And also like getting an app. I had a hipster PDA and I had a text note and a text app on my on my phone and my computer and stuff and just learning how to do that stuff Probably was the most valuable thing that had more than any class or anything else that I learned in college Probably the number one thing that I ever did for myself in my life And I and I would be living a very different life right now If I'd never got exposed to those ideas and you sort of heard you talk about in a thoughtful way And so you're probably right that I've like I'm also reading this book through the filter of having listened to
God knows hundreds and hundreds of hours of you talking with Dan about it and talking on Max Barkey's podcast.
MerlinMe pouring my tap water into David Allen's vodka bottles for years.
MaxWell, but it also made it fun to listen. It's fun to listen to you talk about it, right? And it's funny.
MerlinWell, I want to just say straight up, thank you so much for saying that. I'm glad it was helpful. I mean, part of this also is, though, this is, and this is maybe the 40, I don't want to make this about 43 folders, but I mean, when you read this book, holy shit, there's so much jargon in here. and there is so much like i love the guy but there's so much douchey business guy stuff in here and the examples that immediately come to mind to him all the time are such like business guy seat 1a seat 1a hole like ideas about life but like what was lacking from this though was a way to turn that into something where like the very very sensible pamphlet sized idea that you just
described what you just described remember you ever get those things those laminated sheets that are like here's everything you need to know about biology here's everything about chemistry like you could really kind of benefit from something like that with this but like but there's that philosophical case to be made that like a you are fucked up and be everything in your life is if it's important as important as you say like why don't you take it more seriously but then see how do we how do i turn that into something where you see a difference in the verbs in your life by having a different attitude and relationship with the nouns in your life and like i think that's an idea that is still fairly new to people or that people need to be reminded about is it like fucking nail those
verbs man if you haven't nailed the verbs the nouns are just gonna all just drift away well um
Maxso um just quickly gonna go through a couple more on my did you want to thank me also alex
Alexthis is a good opportunity no because then i'll think about the the email that uh i'll also put in show notes and then i'll i'll cry again um but i but uh in in terms of like i'm gonna say it circling back max you enjoyed the checklist manifesto that whole why that whole book could be a pamphlet it's make a checklist for fucking everything because it was stories of like exciting surgery stories no that's the thing the whole it was like a snuff like gtd book it was it was fun to read i don't care did you read that book marlon
Merlini'm familiar with the idea but i think you're also you guys are arguing about the same thing which is when you first see yourself diagnosed on the page by a stranger it can't help but be very engrossing. That was GTD for me more than any other book. Like for me, this Bird by Bird and It's All Too Much are three books, well, there's lots more, but those are three that come straight to mind of like, oh God, I had no idea how much a stranger could clock me and then appeal to me in terms of what the solution was for fixing that.
MaxYeah, I, Checklist Manifesto, I thought was a far more fun book to read because it just had fun stories and it had a vaguely... And this is about the idea
Merlinthat you can get a lot more shit done in life especially you look at pilots, you look at surgeons, this is a way to make sure you don't drop stuff?
MaxThe main idea of Checklist Manifesto, a little bit different than GTD. It's like if you have something where it's very important that it not go wrong, the plane can't crash, the patient can't die, the building can't collapse.
MerlinThese are actual real-world examples where there are talented RNs, veteran RNs who still pull out a checklist every time they do something.
MaxThat is correct. So this guy, Atul Gawande, got tasked by the UN to make, they were like, please reduce deaths in third world country, like operating rooms by 50% by some procedure. And he almost said no, because he was like, this is impossible. And then he basically started researching and he was like, okay, I'm going to go into other high stress situations like airplanes and find out like why don't they, you would think airplanes would crash more than they do, given that what it is. Or whatever, there'd be disasters.
and there really aren't. And the other thing is like, at one point he was like, or at least the story he tells is he was on his medical campus and they were building a new building and it occurred to him and this building is like some huge tower, right? With all these people all over it and all these decisions. And he's like, you know, buildings never collapse. Isn't that crazy that we build so many of them and they never fall down? And it is true that the building collapse rate in the US for new construction is like zero. And so- Everybody involved has never stopped,
Merlinhas never allowed themselves to think that this is something ordinary that we can take lightly. Right. Like there's still, there's a level of formality to all of these things, which is why we don't fuck up. It's just we don't do that for stuff that's not a plane or a building.
MaxYeah. And basically, yeah, basically like they all share this check. They all have a checklist. And then he identified certain properties of a checklist that it has to have to work. So it has to have like a very small number of items. There have to be low status people in the organization that can refuse, can basically say, the flight attendant has to be able to say this flight, this airplane is not taking off because my checks. Stop the line. Toyota, right? Yeah. So and that's a big problem. And he's currently battling in surgery rooms is like the surgeon doesn't want to listen to the nurse if something is wrong. But a lot of times the nurse.
Oh boy, they sure don't. A lot of the nurse is like, hey, this drug is wrong. We forgot to do this step. He talked about one of the common causes of a surgical disaster is like the oxygen tubing isn't done right. And the patient gets set on fire. if they have to like oh my god sometimes you have to shock the partner you have to shock the patient right and if there's oxygen that can set on fire and that's a disaster and sometimes the person who notices that is not empowered to be like uh wait we cannot recite we can't shock this patient to start their heart because my checklist isn't done but that's a pretty big one right it's a
Alexproductivity snuff book like it was fine i don't understand the snuff part i think you mean well
Speaker Ayou mean people have to die for you to crank your Manhattan hog?
AlexNo, no, no. This whole book is like, this was a disaster. I want to watch our checklist die. Because someone didn't.
MaxI grow tired of these medical patients and their problems. Lori.
AlexI mean, I... Reading the checklist manifesto just got me more into GTD because it's like, yes, there are all of these things, but you need to recognize that there should be checklists for everything.
MaxMy distinction is checklist manifesto philosophy applies to like mission critical, like cannot fuck this up or people will die kind of a situation. And GTD is like your own life organization. So day to day, I use OmniFocus to tell what to do. But if we have a show in a theater and we are like literally responsible for the audience's safety, like and we need to do certain things for the theater to be a safe environment and a pull off the show and it cannot fail kind of a thing. We have a fucking checklist for that.
Alexwell no you just export from you use a workflow to export your omni focus template and there it
Merlinis there's the checklist but there's also there's another like this this sounds like one of those really dumb things where people roll their eyes here's the other part of the checklist though is like and this is you know it's you're good at taking the reservation but you're not good at holding the reservation that's the really important part uh you can make all the fucking checklists in the world but it has to be again this is a little bit gtd it has to be something you can personally see in this moment has been there's so many fucking sub bullets to this that something that you can see at the moment has been done properly there's a lot to that and
here's what you don't do you don't assume that it's done and check it off unless you just personally yourself saw that that shit was done and done properly that's a huge part of it a lot of people make checklists and they're just like oh i'm pretty sure i did that oh i know i'll do that later so i'll check it off now you're like no you've just subverted the entire idea of the
Maxchecklist is like you have to personally watch it he also goes into the idea of like how do you have accountability so like everything has to be checked by two people and then they also have checklists of checklists so you can't actually take the plane off unless your checklist of checklists is complete in every check you verify every checklist has been checked so it's like so fine with that but you know there's no plane crashes along those lines Merlin one of the things I highlighted in the book one of those lines that I just fucking loved was he said it's one thing to write down that you need milk it's another to be at the store and remember it that That speaks to what you're saying to me.
It's like... It's so difficult to...
MerlinPeople who think they're smart have such a difficult time sometimes accepting that until they're sitting on the shitter a day after they've been to the grocery store and they're sitting on the shitter with no toilet paper. It's like, what are you going to do now, smart guy? You're going to wipe your phone. We're going to wipe your ass with your goddamn phone. You only think of toilet paper when you're on the fucking toilet. Like, that's the beauty of this. Part of the beauty of this system.
AlexHere, I hate this. This example drives me crazy. No, again, this is such a man thing of like of course okay no all right so what are you mad about no no no but you're mad i want to hear the rest okay i want to hear any of it i yes tell me any part of it yeah yeah just just just get like any part of it all right so there's a thing that men do i must compose myself because men use like half the amount of toilet paper than folks who don't usually stand while peeing and every time
a person sits down to pee they're like oh okay clearly there's a little bit less i'm gonna put this on a checklist so but there are there are other people who don't do that and don't think about it and then they use the rest of the toilet paper and they don't think to tell anybody because I might be projecting I'm not sure I followed that I'm done
MerlinSomebody used the toilet paper And didn't make a checklist And there's something about men What you're trying to say I think is that men Finish the toilet paper and don't replace it
AlexOh men are bad The end Have you thought that you might be using too much toilet paper
MerlinI bet you're a rapper
AlexIt depends on the situation
MaxI found this book overall incredibly stressful to read. I had a really hard time sitting down and reading it. So many people say that. Because as I was reading it and he was talking about things, I kept remembering shit that I needed to do. And it kept driving me crazy. I literally had to get up and walk for a minute and be like, okay, just read the book now and I'll fix this later.
But as he would be talking-
MerlinA rising sense of anxiety about what you realize you're not doing.
MaxYes. And things in my life that I'm like, oh my God, I'm holding that entire project in my head and I never wrote it down. Just realizing it as he was, even thinking of things that are allowed to be projects, right? It was pretty crazy reading it. I got very stressed out about my own personal life organization. And for that reason, it was challenging to read in a sustained way because my mind would wander.
MerlinThat becomes very real if or when you ever do a mental sweep, which it's hard to describe to somebody what it feels like to do the mental sweep. But the basic idea is one of the first things in GTD, I've been to his seminars, and this is pretty much how it starts. After he explained the basics, you have a piece of paper, and I believe it's 20 minutes. For 20 minutes, you're not supposed to stop writing. You're supposed to write down every single thing that's on your mind. certainly the five things that you can think of right now to do, but also every project you might want to do. I think this is basically how it works. And the key part of that is you have to keep doing that for that entire time.
And there's this very, very strange thing that happens where at first you're like, well, obviously I got the Henderson report and I got the quarterly updates. But then you're like, oh, shit, I guess I want to retire someday. Or like, oh, God, I still have not fixed the wheel on my Segway. And what's weird is then you get a little bit of stress. And then you start thinking, oh, I can't do this for 20 minutes. And you suddenly find this other vein over here of like, holy shit, I never got back with that friend of mine who I haven't seen since the wedding. And once your brain like unclenches, it is exhilarating and terrifying.
Like you just described it exactly, precisely right, Max, which is you had no fucking idea how much shit you're doing or not doing right now. The not doing is important because the not doing does not mean it's not on your mind anymore. It just means it's not getting done. And you realize how much it bugs you that you're thinking about stuff that you're not doing and you never realized it until you spent 20 fucking minutes writing it down
MaxHe had a line in the book. He said clear your deck of mundane stuff so that you can have a new idea And I thought and I I I thought that was very powerful It's again. This is right. It's another idea that I've like deeply internalized in my own life And I feel like I you know, it's not a new idea to me, but it was just well stated by him and I just can't overstate to people how important that is you know I think especially creative people like I get a lot of times I think people will say like how did you come up with this or or how do you make you know questions like how do you what is your creative process or how do you
do this or whatever and there's no seek there's no secret like it's a lot of fucking work and you have a million ideas and you say well you know for cards for example we'll come up with 20 or 30 ideas we say no to all but one and then we do the one and we execute it but I'll say it is very hard to come up with those 20 ideas if your plate is full of mundane shit in your life that's piled up and you can't stop. And like you said, you can't unclench. Like those new ideas come when you're unclenched. And I know that- It's also that kind of,
Merlinthat super difficult kind of advice that involves all, I don't know how to tell you how to do this. The only way I know how to describe this is by it's a very punk rock approach. All I can tell you is what this is not. And here's 11 things you've got to stop doing if you want any chance of this thing to work. I cannot tell you how to be creative, but I can tell you if you're doing like seven of these 19 things that's probably part of what's fucking you well and i'll say like you know
Maxi was thinking about this and i was like you know that's gonna go this this idea of like clear your deck of mundane stuff you know like don't you need to you need some sort of system so that you're not you're not kind of burning cycles on like getting groceries and stuff and i already can feel people going like oh that's a that's nice for merlin kind of a thing or that's nice for max to have that luxury to do that but what can i say it's not a that's nice for max or that's like for merlin Like it's not it's not fucking free or easy for anyone for any creative person to do that. That is the work. That's part of the creative process.
MerlinLike you have to own that if you kind of that's your that's your comfort you walk away with is that like you're just not allowed to have a good thing in your life. Like how does that make your life better? What do you like? No, no, not you. But but the person. Yeah, right, right. It's incredible. It's an incredibly depressing way to look at your life. It goes back to what I said earlier, which is like there's no way to make every job fun all the time. but it is it is it is really sad and painful and a little tragic to think that i don't feel like i'm doing work unless i hate what i'm doing and i'm stressed out about it like because you are so
encouraged this fucking system that we grew up and look what they did to poor alex you grew up this fucking system that says unless you feel ground down by what you do you're not actually working like if you're not stressed out well you're not you're not you're not doing anything and it's like you know you're allowed to have a fucking life you're allowed to have a handle on what is happening in your life and if you if you at an age under 70 have reached this point where you think i just can't have anything good in my life because that's how it is you need a serious
Alexfucking reboot well let's say you're like me though and you are i'm talking mostly about high school high school well no like current alex who's always sad and stressed out and also if people who have brains that are like mine and that are kind of broken where you have intrusive thoughts that most people don't have. And I don't know how, if this book would have been helpful to me, if it weren't for OmniFocus, because my, like, even after doing a mental sweep, which is amazing, and it's, oh God, it's like a massage for your brain. I love it. And, but then you are like,
did I write this down? Did I, did I, did I, even if you have a trusted system, like it can drive you literally crazy and having the search of this and like seeing all of your projects and seeing like okay I didn't fuck this up oh I remember this okay and this is exactly exactly where I
Merlinleft it in the state that I left it and I can trust that he had a quote he had a quote in the
Maxbook um from a guy named uh David Keckish who I don't know who that is but it it's it was uh anxiety is caused by a lack of control organization preparation and action and I thought You know, on one hand, that's somewhat like of a, it's like almost like a tautology of like, you know, yeah, no shit. But also like those are things you can address in your life. Like if it's certainly a handy little worksheet for debug. Yeah, right. Like if you if you if you are feeling anxious about a project, consider that maybe it's because you have no control over it.
You're disorganized or you're ill prepared and you're not taking action on it. And those are those are things you can. Those are things you can fix.
MerlinAnd it's part of that thread that runs through all of this that is like, and again, I feel like I do fall back on this a lot, but I used to hear from so many people who think of themselves as smart people who are in control of things, who refuse to be vulnerable about realizing what they're not very good at. And I think that one thing that runs through this whole book is if you employ this system in a way that is wholesome, authentic, and honest, it can't help but fuck you up. If you can get through this book and you think everything's wired, something's wrong with you. like because it really honesty is such a big part honesty with yourself i'm not talking about like
fucking you know public figures but i'm saying like if you admitted how much shit you're not actually going to do that you pretend to yourself in the world that you're going to do you fucking pretend all the time about all the shit who you are what that represents about you to the world if you were really honest with yourself it would curl your hair because you would do such more interesting stuff if you could be straight up about saying there's so much shit i'm never going to do there's so many people that i'm never going to respond to if you were honest about that You could do so much better, but your brand and your personality and your sense of integrity comes from propping up this busted ass idea of who you are.
And if you can get through this book without wanting to knock down some of those things and start over, you're a better person than me.
MaxThat's what I like to call the JXE lifestyle. JXE. JXE, JXE, JXE, done.
AlexWhy don't, what?
MaxThat's just like how you, that's how I read my email. Just next, select, archive, next, select, archive. Oh, there we are. Left bracket, left bracket, left bracket, left bracket, left bracket, left bracket, left
Merlinbracket. I should just get one of those drinky birds that just hits left bracket
Speaker Adown down
Maxlet's see downside of this book I did think that there was I did think there was a remarkable amount of jargon I wrote down a couple of examples that there was the diagram the crazy wall diagram page that looked like something out of Heidegger but then there was like here's a quote here's a quote funnel all potentially meaningful inputs through minimal channels directed to you for easily accessed review and assessment about their nature.
Speaker AClick to continue. Holy shit. Read that again. That was amazing.
MaxFollow all potentially meaningful inputs through minimal channels directed to you for easily accessed review and assessment about their nature.
Speaker AYou know, just simply do that.
AlexWell, remember, he read the revised edition.
Speaker AHe's worked with some of the busiest
Merlinand brightest, some of the smartest people. Fortune 50.
Speaker AOh, God.
MerlinSo you funnelize the content analysis in a way that mutually assures destruction. All right.
MaxMerlin, I had one more thing I wanted to, this is my last thing, and this is more of something I wanted to kind of wind you up and hear you talk about for a minute. But one of the big revelations for me of the difference of hearing you talk about this and absorbing GTD through my own world or whatever versus like sitting down and reading the book was the nature of a project. So I thought it was very interesting the way that he defines a project and an example here is he defines a project as something that could be completed in one year And to give you an example of how my personal OmniFocus is set up is I have a project called Cards Against Humanity
And I just put and I just put actions in there when I need to do them Like I have projects I have one called personal finances, right? That's obviously not something that can be completed in a year so I would like to ask you could you kind of talk about this for a minute of like what is how do you think about it what is a project and also like and then also what so what is a project is part one and then part two is like what what should I how what is a better way for me to think about something like I have an item in my inbox that's like itemize this thing for my accountant
where does that go does it get its own project or does it go into a project called personal finances
Merlinor i love you so much yes yes this is one of the most powerful ideas in the book and this is all riff a little bit um so his basic i think his basic definition of a project as opposed to a task or to do or whatever an action um is that a project is any is any desirable outcome that requires more than one action step so that's jargony but it's the idea that anything can be a project pretty much but with that said i think i think one really smart way if you think about your life in terms of like the way OmniFocus has encouraged us to think about our life.
If you could think about an outline that's an alternation of nouns and verbs, this sounds nuts, but like, I don't think there's any problem at all with having, I don't even know what the exact structure is these days. But if you've got, you might have something that's a noun that goes under what you call areas of responsibility, as David calls it. So I have an area of responsibility called work. You could even say, I have an area of responsibility called Cards Against Humanity. Now, inside of that giant noun called Cards Against Humanity, you might have lots of verbs or other nouns. So every noun, to me, a project is a big noun, right? Because what is a project? A project, you should be able to, not just the action step definition, you should be able to say in a sentence that when the following thing changes in the universe, this project is done. And it should be like a verifiable when this is done thing.
And then, so that actually, I would call that a noun, right? So it would be something like, it could be something like go to Disney World, right? But that's getting to Disney World and being at Disney World and having a fun time. That's the project. Now, under that, you have a further series of nouns and very importantly, verbs. And I think whenever possible, a project has to be, it's a big noun made out of a bunch of tiny verbs. And so my tips are these. Break out into as many projects as is sensible, but not too crazy. Like don't go nuts. And all of these things don't over-engineer it to have too many subsections unless you need a subsection.
But every project needs a next action. The next action, this is straight David. Title. Every to-do needs to be a physical action that you could describe yourself doing or somebody else could describe you doing. So brainstorm is not an action. Brainstorm is a project. So what do you do when you brainstorm? I sit down with a piece of paper and I write on here. So that to me is so important. And like, and I don't know, I mean, he might've said this, I don't remember who said this, but that noun versus verb thing becomes so important. One reason your life gets undoable is it feels like a bunch of nouns because you haven't
turned it into a ton of verbs. So whenever you're trying to do anything, you have to be able to imagine what success looks like. Do I break this down into sub projects based on how it gets done, who I work with, where the things happen, but then so importantly, just spend so much of your life thinking about those verbs. What will it look like when I'm doing this? Now, I don't know. I mean, there's other kinds of things just super quick that I would say. I would say get good with figuring out what the atomic weight of your tasks need to be. And I think this is something people struggle with where they have, obviously, you start
with something where there's so much wrong, it's not even right, where you're like, well, I have a task called Paris. And you're like, what? That's not a task. It's not a, what? That's just a five-letter word. That's not even a thing. And if you actually break that down all the way, then you get down to that task level, that verb level. And my rule of thumb has always been, um, never have a task that takes more than 15 minutes, unless it works for you, unless it works for you. But depending on your life, come up with verbs of a certain atomic weight. So you, so the thing is, if you've got a verb,
if you've got a task on your list that takes four hours, is that really a task? Cause I'll bet you somewhere in that as a project, cause there's actually multiple parts to that. Remember to treat yourself like a future idiot. You are an idiot act like you will never understand what you wrote down here. Never write anything down that somebody couldn't read and understand just by reading back to you. Act like you have an above average intelligence assistant that you're assigning your entire life to.
MaxCan I give a real specific example of that? A big one that goes on my list is call someone. Like I need to like call my plumber about something, right? And I think of that at one in the morning when I can't call the plumber. So it needs to go on my OmniFocus so I remember later. The worst thing in the world is call plumber. Because then I see it and I have to sit there for five minutes going, what the, why was I thinking about that? Call plumber why, call plumber what. Right, and so what I'll do is I use the note and I say, call plumber. I have a bullet pointed list of all the things
to tell the plumber. And then if I have the time, I'll actually look the phone number up for the plumber and put it in the thing. So it's zero friction. When I come across that to-do item, I'm just like, boom, good to go. Tap the thing, the phone calls him and I sit there and read the bullet points to him. Perfect. Okay, so let me give you a real specific question. We can use me as the example here. So I come across something, I capture it. My accountant emails me and he's like, I need you to itemize these things, right? So I'm not going to do it right now because it's more than two minutes or whatever.
So it's going to go in OmniFocus. I throw it in the inbox. It's like itemize these receipts for my accountant. Now, what happens with that? What project is that? Do you know what I mean? like how do I get that out of my inbox right and and put it somewhere if I because it sounds like it would not necessarily be appropriate to have a project that never ends called accounting what
Alexdo you think Alex I feel like the itemizing is the project because it's like okay do you have all of or the you haven't really talked about folders Merlin but like I would have accounting as a folder and then as something comes up each time make a new project for it or make a template for every time you need to itemize things.
MaxSo in your OmniFocus, both of you, do you have like a million projects?
AlexNo.
MaxI used to.
AlexIt depends on the time of year, really.
MaxDoesn't that also become its own kind of, it becomes almost impossible to decide what to do?
AlexLike in Canonical GTD,
Merlinif you're doing the review every week, it's not a problem. The problem becomes if you get so good and efficient at throwing stuff in there, but never doing anything about it, you're just doing a slightly advanced version of where you were before you started yeah i get real
Alexfucked up if i don't do reviews like that's that's where the deciding happens is while i'm reviewing
Merlinstuff um the other thing max is that it's totally okay uh to have what do they call it in omni focus the like i call them quick lists but those little like everything is just a single action they're not dependencies what are those called anyway single action lists something like that But I've got one that's just like, this is really dumb. But for years and years and years, I've had a repeating task that comes up every Monday at 4 p.m. It's a project called Take Out the Trash. So item number one is take all the trash out of the house to the cans.
Item number two is take all the cans to the curb. The next task starts at 7 a.m. the next day, which is bring the cans in from the curb. And then when that is completed, it marks that project as done and starts it again next week. Stupidest thing in the world. But that is so powerful because that falls under the ages of what I would call infrastructure. And infrastructure or whatever you want to call it, maintenance, there's all this shit that you have to do in life. And why would you want to remember that or have to remember that? I put garbage, watering plants, buying soy milk, whatever it is, put that shit on repeat, get it automated, get a push notification where it's variable.
And then in my case, a lot of OmniFocus is really just read-only. I don't add a ton of stuff. It reminds me of all the shit I don't want to think about. And that's huge. Now, in your case of the itemized thing, that could be an infrastructure project. Or there's things you do with lawyers and accountants. And maybe that's part of this area of responsibility. But that could also go on, like I say, a quick list. There's stuff they've got to do with podcasts where it's like, these are five seemingly unrelated things that relate to reconcilable differences. Just stuff I've got to do. and I think it's totally okay to have those kinds of lists
if it helps you for little things. You don't have to over-engineer it. You just need that next action and a way if there's stuff that's not a next action but it's just a thing to do, you just need a tag for the right project, the right context and then it'll come up totally organically. All right.
AlexWell, for example, I have a million, not a million, like five projects under Dubai Friday and posting Dubai Friday, you'd think that I would-
MerlinAll it is is more than one action step.
AlexYeah. And you'd think that turning the speed back to zero is what I should do. Because I do the same thing. I bounce the after show and send it to Merlin. And then Merlin always has. Double speed every week. And then it's because I don't. Because, hey, go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com. Checklist manifesto.
Checklist.
AlexYeah. And I always. That is on my checklist, though. And I always forget it. Because I get all. I don't. I was like, oh, yeah, it's out. Hooray. Done. Um, that's why, man, if there was, oh, I'm so excited for marzipan. If OmniFocus could like, oh, bleep, bloop. Hey, you're bouncing this. Remember, bounce it. Like, does it, does that make sense? Does, I bet there, Rosemary Orchard probably has a way to do this.
MerlinRemind me to do things and have a state of mind. At times it might not occur to me to do that.
AlexYeah.
MerlinAnd I mean, like the way your Fitbit, your Fitbit will tell you it's almost time for bed. That's not the most super interesting actionable item in the world. But if I get that every night and consistently miss it, I'm not doing my job. Like, you just need environmental warnings. You can have your hue lights flash blue.
AlexI thought about it.
Speaker AIt will rain. It will rain. It will rain.
AlexNormal speed. Normal speed.
Speaker ANormal speed.
AlexHue, stop.
Speaker AStop.
AlexHue, stop. Stop.