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Streamlined Tech: Embracing Minimalism for Maximum Productivity
32 Plays7 months ago
Join us on the CodePlay Culture Podcast as we delve into the concept of tech minimalism in our latest episode.
Discover the power of decluttering your digital life as we discuss strategies for reducing files, folders, apps, and devices to enhance productivity and enable deep focus. We explore the benefits of a minimalist approach to technology, from improved mental clarity and reduced stress to increased efficiency and effectiveness in personal and professional environments.
Our discussion provides practical tips and insights on how to simplify your tech setup without sacrificing functionality, and why less often means more in the digital world. Tune in to learn how to streamline your technology and focus on what truly matters for achieving your goals.
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Transcript
Introduction to Minimalism in Various Aspects
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Codeplay Culture podcast, where we discuss tech, gaming, health, and the world around us.
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to today's episode of Codeplay Culture, Minimalism Approaches to Code, Play, and Culture. There are many ways to apply minimalist concepts to our lives. Coders and interface designers can apply these principles to promote user interaction, improve productivity and engagement, and even improve the physical reactions to the tools they develop. Today's episode is going to explore the coding impacts, while also exploring the impact minimalism can have in gaming, our environments, and more.
Logan's Personal Minimalism Journey
00:00:37
Speaker
What's going on, Logan?
00:00:39
Speaker
It's just another beautiful day trying to minimize things that are not as important and maximize things that bring true value. That was a pretty good intro. When I say pretty good, I mean, it was awesome. It was amazing. Maybe my word choice was minimal when I should have give it maximal attention. How are you? I'm doing pretty good.
00:01:01
Speaker
Speaking of minimal, we have minimal people here today. This is the first time we've had no Rui from hobby learning join our trio. So Rui, if you're listening, hopefully you join next week and after that big application launch deployment stuff you got going on and
00:01:24
Speaker
We hope you maximal success and minimal bucks, but, uh, just yours loving them in max comments, aren't you? Maybe we should minimize the language used. Well, I think we hop right into our top three. So in this segment here, uh, why don't we each give three examples of applied minimalism that have had an impact on our lives? Do you want to start with one and we'll just bounce it back and forth.
Efficiency in Coding: C# and Visual Studio
00:01:51
Speaker
Yes, so minimize, in terms of coding, and it could be technological debt in general, like files, folders, think of that all as code, but one thing that's really been impactful in my personal and professional life is minimizing code specifically. Now, in coding languages like C sharp,
00:02:17
Speaker
minimizing typically means that you're taking shortcuts and it's not the most optimal code, but that's not what I'm saying. I've made it a passion of mine to write a lot of C sharp source code generators using Roslyn. And what it will allow is a single line of code automatically generates potentially a thousand lines. Now that thousand lines is so highly performant and optimized
00:02:47
Speaker
and less technical debt. So I've written a single line which automatically will unpack a thousand. So it's the most efficient, it's minimal, and the maximum performance. You're not necessarily saying these are libraries.
00:03:06
Speaker
This is just the creation of code. Yeah, it's libraries, but they're private libraries. They're not public. It's used to really accelerate. You're not talking about like AI generated code. You're talking about actually creating your own private library. Correct. Exactly. Yes.
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, imagine when you create a C-sharp file, you have to have four methods. One is get the data, one is delete the data, one is update the data, like four methods. They're all very similar. Maybe they're a couple of spots that's changed, but that file is probably for different entities like customer, person, address, a lot of duplicate code everywhere in the world, very similar files.
00:03:49
Speaker
So what this does is you say you make a class and then you put a little magic string on the top. And the code generator is watching to see if anyone puts those there. And then it will make all those other methods for you. If it doesn't work, you have to go back to your private library and then update it there. But it is code that writes code. Why send a human to do a robot's job?
00:04:15
Speaker
Depends on what the robot wants to do with it.
Tools for Focus: Scrivener and Visual Studio
00:04:19
Speaker
Speaking of robots and sci-fi and nerdery, that's a great segue to one of my top three, which is actually a writing app called Scrivener. Scrivener has been around for a very long time, and at first blush is actually not minimal. It's more
00:04:36
Speaker
There's a really good iOS app. I mean, I don't know about Android and Mac. I know there are options there, but I use the desktop PC version as well. So everything sinks through my Dropbox. So it has the data security features, which if you're writing a novel over the course of one to two or more years is really freaking important. But not just that, but it's got a really good way of every step of the process, whether you're doing your research, you can have all that information within the app in its own section. You're writing your manuscript the way it lays out.
00:05:05
Speaker
the different chapters, you can get a high level view, basically, basically it like index cards. Like you'd see here, it actually looked like index cards, like chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, you complete create sections in your documents. So it doesn't matter if you're writing a short story or you're writing this giant thousand page manuscript or even a research paper, it's got tools. And then when you're actually doing the writing, you just go full screen mode and it's black with just your water, just your words.
00:05:30
Speaker
really enables focus. It's very minimal. And it's been the way I've written the majority of my novels. And I paid $20 for it one time seven years ago. It's... Scriven? Scrivener. Scrivener. S-E-R-I-V-N-E-R. So highly recommend it. And again, I can write on the fly remotely if I needed to. Not that I use it too often, but it has the same just black screen text. So...
00:05:54
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, it's interesting how maximizing something or going full screen like a video game where there's no like close button, you know, like in Windows is
00:06:07
Speaker
minimal, right? Because it sets focus single-pointed, so it's minimal distractions, but you have to maximize the window. It's funny, it should be called minimize because it kind of minimizes everything else. It's kind of weird, but in Visual Studio Code,
00:06:24
Speaker
Um, I think you use that as well, right? Like probably one of the world's most popular, I think it is the world's most popular. But the customization, the customization options, like providing them in there for the user to determine what their optimal flow is, right? Like what's minimal to me might be very different from minimal to you actually, how they're doing in C sharp, right? Like I'm goofing around, you know, I'm making a random number generator. Like I just want to sit with a code, but I might want the, the help menus and maybe,
00:06:50
Speaker
like another screen with the libraries. I'm probably using two monitors to like, here's the, you know, web, the web three HTML, whatever it is I'm looking at, right? Like, you know, if I'm on a learning mode, I'm needing more resources. Whereas you're just like, all right, like write my one line, generate my thousand lines, check it, go.
00:07:08
Speaker
So it must be difficult for application developers to make an app that suits all types of focus and work styles. The one thing that comes to my mind is in Visual Studio 2022, it was a feature that they have a YouTube video on, they showed it. I think it's been around for a very long time, but you can save what Windows are open and what menus per project.
00:07:34
Speaker
which is think about that for a second. Imagine if you, I mean, it might be in Notion or Evernote, but imagine you opened a note and then the menus were completely different for each one of those notes. Cause you've set a, like a workflow, like look and feel like you save it directly to the project as these are the things I need open.
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's almost like a user interface template. Adobe does this with Photoshop and Illustrator too. I believe you can say, but you don't do it on a project level. I think you just do it as like, here's my graphic arts one. Here's my hand drawing one or so. And I don't know exactly what they call it and how it works. I haven't used that feature in quite a while. And with Creative Cloud, they're constantly iterating and updating. I guess our top three are just blending into our conversation. But I see this happening a lot
Minimalism vs. Intrusive Technology
00:08:24
Speaker
now. Whenever these apps apply AI,
00:08:26
Speaker
It's now like they have to keep telling you every single time with an interrupt or a pop up like, Hey, try this AI feature. You can do this AI. Like, no, I want to turn that shit off. And you don't have the option in a lot of cases. Yep. So I think, I think that's it's the app itself, but then also how it's interacting with the user can create a lot, you know, what might be a minimal design. They might ruin just with popups or something, something that's annoying that takes away from the focus.
00:08:50
Speaker
Yes, the deep focus, isolated solitude, no distractions. You have earplugs in and then headphones over your earplugs like you're in a cave. To achieve that deep, there's a lot of YouTube videos right now on deep flow or deep focus because we're in a world that's becoming
00:09:17
Speaker
way more distracted than it was last year.
Simple Organization: Apple Notes and Notion
00:09:20
Speaker
And I think that trend will continue. But yeah, my wife, she uses notes, Apple notes for her. She just puts a little checkbox beside, you know, you can do that like bullet points. And that's worked for her for her day, her to do. And then she just clears them. And, you know, I showed her notion. And, you know, there's a lot of different things you can add. There's a lot of like, what is all this stuff? Sometimes people just want like,
00:09:47
Speaker
You know why you put a sticky note of your passwords on your laptop and monitor is because that's really minimal. That's really easy. It's easy to understand. I feel like if we haven't made it that easy as application developers that it's very, you don't need a manual to understand how to use this program, then we haven't done it right.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, no. Notion is one of my top three. Again, I've been using, I probably bring it up every freaking episode of not just this podcast, but my own. It's great though. And the fact when you first start, you do have the blank page and they just type slash and then the options pop up. Like I said, aside from their AI nonsense, but that's a whole different rant. But again, you can customize your things. You can create templates, which you can then use like almost like your line of code. Like, Hey, I tend to create pages that have a business plan or
00:10:41
Speaker
Um, I have a template for podcast episodes, right? Where I just can just duplicate. Okay. Now I'm talking episode 59. Here's the things it's got all the usual bullet points I use, which I then convert to the episode notes. So there, you know, it's, it's nice when you have these blank slate sort of programs where you create the formats, you can, you can.
00:11:03
Speaker
move things around. You can have sub pages. If you want to keep it real clean, you can make it as complicated as you want. If you want to have fewer pages, right? More simplicity and simplicity in terms of your folder structure, like you led the episode with. So, you know, that's why I really gravitate towards programs like that. Just because the amount of things that I do should probably be minimized, but yes, it's so diverse in what I do that having, I like having fewer applications that I use period. I like minimizing the number of programs on my bottom bar more so than
00:11:32
Speaker
the options I have available to me. I got into minimalism and I'm not like a hardcore minimalist. You could think with your head conceptually what a hardcore minimalist could be. Yeah, exactly. So I got into it because of that.
00:11:49
Speaker
I love like that whole, um, Marie Kondo. Yeah. Yeah. Four billion copies, 6 million copies of this printing, which was years ago. So it's nice to go through. Yeah. It's nice to go through each drawer and say, do I really love this pen? Like, no, I have a billion of them. So I'm going to throw out this one. It's if you don't bring it into the house, you don't have to manage it like inventory and like,
00:12:14
Speaker
more money, more problems, or more things, more things that break down. But it's not saying, I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket, therefore when things fail, everything fails. That's not the same. It's like just having things that you love and that are reliable and minimizing the minutia or periphery.
00:12:35
Speaker
But don't hesitate to shy away from the why behind it, right? Even even Marie Kano's books, a great example of that were like, yeah, that thing could be a pamphlet, right? But she wants to go into the why behind it, the feelings, the emotions behind it. So true. But it's not too long. It's not too long. It's not too long. It could be like the actual practical of like cleaning out a drawer, do like do these five things. Like it could be a 10 page pamphlet. But what's nice about it is she blends in like,
00:13:02
Speaker
animism, right? Your clothes, your objects have a soul. Just that concept of animism, she basically took a very complicated Eastern philosophical concept and applied it and got it into the heads of 6 million plus people. Some people glossed over and went right in one ear out the other, I guess in one eye out the other would be the reading equivalent.
00:13:25
Speaker
But it's still like people got exposed to that idea, but she gave the why behind her theories and added a depth to the book, which was very entertaining for someone who's steeped in Eastern philosophy. But it made a book out
Emotional Minimalism: Marie Kondo's Approach
00:13:38
Speaker
of it. And yeah, it's not minimal in the traditional sense. It was a book about minimizing, right? Yeah. I do love that part about how when you pick up
00:13:46
Speaker
something from your drawer and you're in the process of going through and evaluating whether it's your favorite and you hold it in your hand and close your eyes and I do I did do this because I feel like it's essential to the letting go process and you basically say if you're about to let it go
00:14:05
Speaker
you're like, thank you for being there when I needed you. Thank you for that one time that I couldn't find a pen and you were there and it wrote right away and I didn't have to shake it. You have an appreciation for things being there for you in your life that maybe it was a special moment, special memory and sentimental things are so difficult to let go. Those take much more
00:14:33
Speaker
I don't know persistent contemplating oh is it now the right time or you know.
00:14:42
Speaker
Well, there could be a catharsis with parting with, you know, ideas or objects, even software programs, right? Like, you know, it was actually hard for me going back to the Notion example. I switched over from Trello, which I'd used for a decade and still, every once in a while, I miss Trello, but like I love Notion. I don't want two apps, right? Yeah. And there's a way to kind of shoehorn one to the other. I want to keep it simple, but still, it's like, you know, you kind of have that longing, but like, I just, I'm not, I can't go back, right? I just don't want to do the two apps.
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah. I love Trello's Kanban more than the Kanban in Notion, but I love Notion in general more than Trello. I think that's maybe the similar thing that you're dealing with, right? Or why you switched its Trello. Yeah. And Trello is better if you're interfacing with a team versus a project. So I had less of that going on in my current roles and responsibilities, but yeah. And again, there's nothing saying that three years from now, the bees' knees might come out and be like, yeah, all right. I gotta switch over from Notion.
00:15:39
Speaker
there will be some melancholy considering the amount of years now and things that I've done in there. We have to think about the code, the programs, the art we enjoy, the games we play, the role they play in our lives. So minimalism is a way to really, it's a framework to have that conversation, right? Yep. And I like how minimalism will, if used the way, at least I used it,
00:16:08
Speaker
You only really bring things into your life that are truly high quality value and worth your time. In video games, for example, there's new games all the time. But do you really want to sink your teeth into that generic version of this game space number six? Or is it there's something new? Whatever you equate your time value to,
00:16:32
Speaker
There's so many good games to play. Let's say you had to pick one out of the top 10 of that came out in the last six months is minimalism really facilitates you bringing in high quality only to your time and awareness, which I love. Yeah. You're treating it more as a well thought out decision than a buffet.
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, right. It's I see people even in the in our local game store here. Shout out to short gamers in Red Bank, New Jersey. But, you know, free ads all day. But, you know, there's there's players that I just got into the Disney Larkana game and like we're playing games and really into it into it. Next day, the Star Wars game comes out and I just switched over completely.
00:17:15
Speaker
Like, ah, you know, and then the next day another game comes out and they start playing that and they're dividing their time and attention between four or five different card games, which are all legitimately good in their own
Minimalism in Gaming Choices
00:17:23
Speaker
right. I'm like, I'm going to stick with the one because I don't have time or bandwidth, right? Like I'm choosing to say, well, you know, I'm not, my time is already limited for that task. My finances do have a finite limit, right? What I can spend on pieces of cardboard with art on them. But you know, I'll stick with that one, that one lane. And yeah, maybe I'm missing out on, you know,
00:17:42
Speaker
Friday games, you know, magic or whatever, but it's fine. It's a choice that I've made. I see people that just like want to experience everything and like play every single game, but like they'll play every game one time. They don't understand the depth behind a game. Whereas, you know, there's some games I'll play hundreds of times and yeah, I miss out on playing all the hot stuff and I might be behind by a few years, but
00:18:05
Speaker
Yeah. I'm the same exact way with video games where I can't have like six different ones on the go. I'm a single player gamer, so I like work through the story and I use it as a way of like
00:18:19
Speaker
I fell in love with reading based on video games that weren't narrated. And then I'm like, wow, this is just my favorite book, but now I get to play as these characters. It's pretty cool. And I said to myself, fine, this is what I'll do. I won't pay seven games at once, but if I have a Nintendo Switch, an Xbox Series X, and a PS5 in a perfect world,
00:18:42
Speaker
I'll just put one disc into each or one cartridge and two discs and then I just won't change the disc. And until I beat those ones, as soon as I get frustrated with like, you know, God of War Ragnarok, because I get my butt kicked, I'll flip over to whatever one on Xbox or, you know.
00:18:59
Speaker
I feel like that's okay, but then there is a diminishing returns for deep appreciation and focus for your craft or your media or your passion. If you split it between, oh, what do you do? Oh, I skateboard. Oh, what do you do? Well, I do basketball, baseball, golf, soccer, and I do it every other... It's like, fuck. Pardon my French, but how could you ever give anything, the attention that it deserves
00:19:24
Speaker
It's a whole thing if you have like 21 kids, how could you spend as much time as each kid wants with you? We realized once we had two that we're like, no.
00:19:36
Speaker
I want to make sure that our kids don't get any less attention than they get now. And they get a perfect amount, right? Always feel like you can do more, but I don't want to feel like I can- Oh, should we survey our kids and see if they actually say that? Yeah. I know it's easier with work from home because I do find that, you know,
00:19:57
Speaker
There is like, I think it's statistics Canada, like divorce rate and suicide rate all time high due to people getting on each other's nerves. My dad was nine to five, nine to six, I don't know, five to five outside. I didn't almost see him, right?
00:20:14
Speaker
And then I'm home all the time. So my kids don't really remember a time that they couldn't smother me and vice versa. So having a break absence makes their heart grow fonder is a really good mental parenting. Is that where we're headed now? Yeah. I mean, sometimes it just looks back and you're like, Oh my God, they're doing good on their own. And I don't have to get involved and like helicopter parent and hover, right? Um, that's when you know that it feels good.
00:20:42
Speaker
I guess there is something to that too, right? It's getting too involved in things that you don't have any control over. And listen, going back to the previous point, there is a place for trying different things, right? Even sports, you see there's people, there's players that will develop other skillsets that they can then apply to their core sport. A lot of hockey players will play other sports for big baseball, for hand-eye coordination. There's an advantage to having played multiple sports, not to railroading one sport for everything you're doing because
00:21:08
Speaker
you can get too specialized with that and you could miss out on something that you find you fall in love with even more, right? Um, you know, there's a, there's a famous story of a Stanley cup winning hockey player that was in college, um, for football, broke his neck, healed, went to the hockey team and like being through the NHL, like, like, I mean, these kinds of stories are rare, but you know,
00:21:33
Speaker
You don't want to just cut yourself off saying this is the one thing I can't have more than X things, right? So you got to find what works for you and to your video game example, I do the same thing of books.
Physical Fitness and Minimalist Principles
00:21:42
Speaker
I'll have an audio book and a physical book and some cases too, but I don't like having a lot on my, on my bookshelf, you know, the to be read pile, you know, hundreds of books. Sure. Like every, every book lever kind of has like the, the amount that they can read versus what they want to read or just as always disproportionate. But sometimes having that, that filter system is great. Like, Hey, I have to only do one thing at a time.
00:22:04
Speaker
Yep. Also, when you do multiple sports, it can enhance your physique and certain muscles that you're not developing with your core sport. Like skateboarding is very like leg, core, you know, crouching, but like it does nothing for my chest and arms and shoulders. So like things like baseball, basketball, obviously weightlifting,
00:22:29
Speaker
you know, build a better, but then you'll realize like all skateboard and be like, wow, because I worked out my arms like two weeks ago, I can now do this trick better or like it is weird. It is a full body sport, but I would say 90% of the load is like core and legs, right? Yeah. You can augment with different, like yoga is probably a nice compliment for skateboarding. Probably most sports, but, and that's the thing that maybe bringing it back to some of the tools like, or that, you know, from a coding and playing standpoint,
00:22:59
Speaker
You can augment your core tools in different ways, right? I think you may have your IDE for Visual Studio, but you might augment that with GitHub or this. You may have to use multiple different tools, but you wanna, it's not just minimalism in the number of tools, but also your user flow.
Automating Life for Efficiency
00:23:22
Speaker
Right? Things like, I think, I think why we're seeing a lot of improvements in terms of productivity or, or time to information or data analytics is because now you can set up Zapier, you know, automations, or you can make connections between programs or you don't have to manage, but you know, you can utilize what's good about different tools to fit it together into a workflow that's minimal and more focused. Like you're putting more time into the work itself rather than all the different doohickeys copying, pasting,
00:23:51
Speaker
making square pegs fit in round holes.
00:23:55
Speaker
I'm curious your take on that. I mean, again, you're more of a coder than I am. For sure. For social media posts, for example, I was like, okay, what's a lazy man's way of posting on Twitter? I'm like, so I used if this, then that back in the day. And like Zapier now is more prevalent in terms of integrations and automations. But every time I made a, I think it still works now. I might've just
00:24:21
Speaker
Once in a while, you want to go around to all these services that have access to your information and delete your accounts because sometimes a door left open is a sneak attack, back door attack. Your information gets stolen. Yeah. I mean, you don't want to just leave them out there and, oh, I don't log in. We'll close it or just whatever. Anyways.
00:24:42
Speaker
So, I'd post a YouTube video and then it would just take the title and put a link directly into Twitter. And that was automatic. I didn't have to pay. It was just like, boom, because I don't, you know. Yeah. MailChimp does that for my newsletter. So, the monthly newsletter, it goes out. It's like, I have to click the button and say, here, you know, I connected the one time. I don't go on Facebook ever, but at least like current studios will have it. If you look at every post, it's just the last five or six monthly newsletters, right? There's not another post saying, you know, my political views or anything like that.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, I want to keep that account active, but I want the lazy man's out when it comes to marketing. I just want to focus on the content, much too much sometimes. Yeah, like you want one, I guess, chamber, and then you want when the bullet leaves the gun, it should go to 20 different platforms with the highest quality. What I found is
00:25:33
Speaker
When I use something like Hootsuite, like when I upload a video or a photo, when it would multi-target different social media networks, it would degrade the quality significantly. So I said, okay, take the non-lazy man's approach and go around and post everything individually. But that's because of 4K 60 frames a second video that I needed to... It is very difficult to make sure that you have the most quality on every platform. And I put out a...
00:26:03
Speaker
how-to video on how to get the maximum quality from an Instagram reel or how to get the maximum quality. They're all different. The settings are different places. It's a nightmare. You'll go naturally more viral or have more views. Not that it matters, but
00:26:21
Speaker
if your quality is superior. I noticed on TikTok, for example, they've patched this, but you could literally make a video outside in the sun for anywhere from 19 seconds to 21 seconds
00:26:37
Speaker
And you can say nothing. As long as it's the latest iPhone, 4K, 60 frames a second, and the sun is out, it will do like 30 grand views. It could be about your shoes. It could be filming a trash bin. It didn't matter because their algorithm was saying
00:26:57
Speaker
majority of the kids that are posting have such crappy phones. So anything that's above this stellar level of quality in terms of brightness, saturation, resolution, file size will pop to the F the for you page and make it go mini viral. So like quality matters trapped inside and not looking at the sun. So yeah, it's all like bad, like dark photos of like, you know, you know, it's funny, but uh, uh,
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm like I want to have high quality. So unfortunately, I'm like in that perfectionism trap I'm like I'll go around and post it but I don't know man, you know the diminishing returns on social media just
00:27:39
Speaker
Yeah. Don't get me started on that rant. Yeah, for sure. That will not be a minimal podcast. It'll be a maximal rant. Yes, exactly. Cal Newport. That's his name, right? Yeah. I would say Carl, but he says like phones aren't the problem. Social media is just delete your social medias.
Digital Detox: Social Media Reduction
00:28:00
Speaker
Like that's got a lot more minimized and yeah, like my stress level goes down.
00:28:06
Speaker
So good. Yeah. All right. I don't get it to market my business. How, I mean, I actually just the latest episode of Mike Pack, Chris deals with it. Episode 58. I actually took my, I did a monthly newsletter, like 800, not thousand page, a thousand word essay, basically just on virality and
00:28:23
Speaker
what the price that I pay for not trying to engage with it, but what I gained from it. So I did go in depth in that people are interested. Okay. I'm not just here to plug stuff, but I just didn't, I kind of keep this small by pointing people towards that. But, um, they, right. I mean, it's just a lot of the people that are gatekeepers for popular media do care about your following and things like that. So if you're not trying to build an audience, it does make it harder.
00:28:48
Speaker
I think you're seeing a lot of artists in particular push back against that notion, no pun intended. But by just building their own websites and moving their content out of the algorithm mindset. And yeah, you're going to have slower adoption, but you're also going to have a more loyal following when you get there.
00:29:03
Speaker
There's no reason why our networks, and Cal talks a lot about this, peer to peer, real true social networks, not on social networking sites, are, I think, a better, cleaner, more friendly internet, right? Why do I need to have 30,000 people seeing my stuff, right? Like you post a picture of your cat, and then some troll's like, yo, your cat sucks.
00:29:29
Speaker
And then you're like, damn, I'm sad now. I need to go to my therapist. Like what's the value in like that situation, right? Just kind of like juvenile, but like, you know what I mean? Oh yeah. And there's millions of people that are on this hedonistic trap of just, you know, whatever. I mean, this is the right word, but you know what I mean? Like the, the scroll loop. No, just getting those, getting those little dopamine hits from every single little like or thumbs up or, you know, get bored easily.
00:29:55
Speaker
So it's funny you talked about focus before I use the analogy, use the example of like just, you know, the gun, right?
Productivity and Environmental Changes
00:30:01
Speaker
And, and, you know, talk, if you ever hear like, you know, professional military snipers, right? And like some of the people that really have to focus in, like, if your breathing is out of whack, like if your physiological state is not conducive to shooting, you are not going to hit your target. I think that's also true. It's like being minimal in terms of your environment as much as it is what you're actually doing within it.
00:30:25
Speaker
So if there's lots of noise in your environment, you're trying to write, like for some people that's great. I can get very productive writing in a coffee shop as long as I'm like, that's kind of where I'm tuned in, right? Other times I want, like if I'm writing, it's probably silent and there's a garbage truck outside. Like it'll rock my rhythm. Um, it could be your work environment. That's, I think there's a, there's a, why people are still doing off open office floor plans. I don't understand because they're just not sure.
00:30:52
Speaker
There's lots of different theories, and what works for A isn't going to work for B, but what do you find in terms of environmental minimalism and the impact it has on your work? I'd say that two things. One thing I wasn't expecting is
00:31:13
Speaker
If I'm in the same spot for more than 90 minutes, like Huberman talks about ultradian cycles, which are weaved into circadian cycles. And every 90 minutes, if you don't move to a different level of the video game or like area of the world, meaning that after 90 minutes I'm at my desk, I'm going to go to a coffee shop. And then after 90 minutes there, I'm going to go to a different area, like a field in my car, roll down the windows in code.
00:31:41
Speaker
where biologically programmed to go into death and self-preservation mode as opposed to growth if we're always in the same place. You hear that metaphorical, I feel a bit stuck. Well, go to a different part of the video again, whatever this thing is, and you'll notice you'll get inspired or talk to other people or just a different point of view. That really helped me in terms of
00:32:11
Speaker
I would just go into some area, listen to nature. There's no one around, right? Roll down the windows, have a coffee, just be coding. Close down all social media. There's no communication that can come through. No teams, no text messages, and you're just writing code. That's helped a lot.
00:32:33
Speaker
Nothing wrong with going dark. Sometimes I'll send you messages and I don't hear back for hours. I know. That's totally fine. And vice versa. Yes. But as for me, in a very similar way, I just like natural light and nature, right? Yes. Not where I'm recording right now. This is our standard office. But most of the time I'm working in my garage office, which has got open windows. I just see my backyard and nature. And yeah, there's some sounds annoying. And I got the train that I go below past.
00:33:03
Speaker
Yeah, that just works for me and you get variation within that environment, right? Sometimes it's cloudy, sometimes it's raining, sometimes it's bright and sunny and gorgeous like it is today. Yep. But even within the same view, you might have different, you might be in the same office and if it's later in the day when no one's there, it's very different than the middle of the day when everyone's
00:33:21
Speaker
bombing through the hallways. For sure.
Optimizing Work Environments for Productivity
00:33:24
Speaker
The sun makes a big difference. You work with the rhythms of your environment too. Yes, that's true. It's hard to plan for optimal time management because the now, like right now, things are going to be different in five seconds. So like other people's needs or other things that come up
00:33:48
Speaker
there is something about, okay, I'm taking care of everything I think I need to take care of. I'm going to shut down and go into like a deep focus isolation for like an hour. And then the level of work that 20 minutes in and you feel like you're still scatterbrained like
00:34:05
Speaker
getting used to the hot tub water. You're like, oh, that burns. But then when you reach flow, you don't want to be interrupted because then you're going to have to go through that 20 minutes again to get back into flow. So I found it works really well like a doctor. Sometimes you're seeing patients, sometimes you're in surgery. And if you're a brain surgeon or just any surgeon, you kind of want to be in a flow. Oh, yeah. No, context switching is just really punitive to whatever type of creative or
00:34:34
Speaker
you know, detail oriented endeavor you're doing for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Minimizing context switches with applications or with whatever, like this is tasks. Like how much do you have on your plate? Minimizing that can have a direct impact on the quality of the work that you are doing.
00:34:50
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Which is, which is probably a good place to start landing the plane here. Just, you know, keep the, keep this minimal in length. Yeah. Sorry. I'm now I know you got me do it. You started. I'm ending. Yeah, we could probably, yeah. See if we can make this the shortest podcast ever. No. No.
00:35:06
Speaker
Yeah, we haven't done our outro here, which is like, you know, so what are you coding these days? All right.
Innovating with Free Tools: Logan's Background Remover
00:35:14
Speaker
So what am I coding these days is, so I finally finished the free replacement to the automatic background removal Python, Microsoft, Azure,
00:35:27
Speaker
API, which means that instead of going to remove.bg, which everyone does to remove the background, there's going to be a free offering. It's free to go to remove.bg, but you have to pay for the full quality. I built a service that gives you back the full quality. Not only can you remove the background, but you can pick any color you want to replace the background with.
00:35:54
Speaker
So I go one, I think you might actually be able to do that on remove.bg, but really what sets it apart is the high quality for free. Nice. What about you? On my side, within my company, we have a specific business process that uses an Excel tracker.
Streamlining Business Processes with Airtable
00:36:13
Speaker
It's not very efficient. It doesn't give a lot of visibility. So what I'm working on now is using Airtable to provide a cloud-based solution for that tracker, which is obviously under
00:36:24
Speaker
secure password protection and everything like that. It's going to empower interfaces not just internally but with the customer and it's going to significantly reduce the amount of copying and pasting and reports and generation that has to happen when it can all be done through automation.
00:36:43
Speaker
I'm playing Alone in the Dark Remastered, and I never played the original Alone in the Dark, but man do I, I love this. So like they changed though, like all the Resident Evil games aren't like they were before, so it's hard to get like an OG feeling survival horror.
00:37:02
Speaker
But you know the cop guy from Stranger Things? I forget the actor's name. So they put him as the main character of Alone in the Dark. So they're doing that a lot these days where it's the voice and the 3D digitized likeness of.
00:37:23
Speaker
So it's not the same like protagonist as the old alone in the dark, right? It's like literally the guy from stranger things or, you know, that's definitely there for marketing, right? Yeah, for sure. And probably to get some funds and yeah. Well, we're getting a newer audience excited about it. Cause it's something that maybe identifies closer. Maybe the other one was modeled after a popular TV show actor in the nineties. And we just don't remember. The only one in the dark was in the nineties, right?
00:37:47
Speaker
Yeah, it was like it was like we're like very like before I think we're at the same time as PlayStation one. So 90s were an evil era. Yeah. Yeah. And then what about you? So I actually said Disney and can't. Lord Connor is a card game. Yeah, I mean, that's that's not very good. That's kind of an ongoing thing. But no, actually, oddly enough, I
00:38:15
Speaker
was looking for one or two things I can put on the phone. My daughter's beginning into video games and want to find things that are easily accessible, but aren't going to take up too much. I don't load my phone with a lot of apps, but actually really enjoying Super Mario Run. I thought I was stupid just for a while. I liked it enough where I actually paid the 10 bucks to get the full unlocked version.
00:38:33
Speaker
That's good. Again, it's minimal controls, but you get a really awesome experience that feels a lot like Mario, all the usual stuff, but actually introduces its own challenges. You're trying to find ways of interacting and doing the things you want to do with a very limited subset. I thought it was a nice thing to mention here on this podcast.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yes, the minimal controls nail on the head I loved like I wouldn't play like a non-nintendo game on a non-nintendo platform, but I loved that one Yeah, because of the you just hold down run and then move it to tap. It's like a single tap thing, right? Yeah, but you tell you tell even within that you're starting to learn those little tricks and different characters do different things like gesture based with a very simple and
00:39:17
Speaker
set up. They just accomplished a really fun and entertaining game with a lot of depth, which I think is a really tough trick to pull off. So late to the party on that one. And then what are you watching these days or culturing? So I'm working my way through, I forget, it's a Guy Ritchie show on Netflix. Oh yeah, what's the name of that one?
00:39:39
Speaker
So like, you know, like from snatch and lock stock and two smoking barrel, but like this is, I think it's like just in your top 10 on Netflix, but it is, it is so good. Um, I forget the name of it, but if you go to Netflix right now, you'll see it at the, um,
00:39:56
Speaker
the top, but that's really good. And then what I'm like, yeah, exactly. What's the name of it? It's like, uh, I watched it. I just clicked the button. It was really good. Very minimal description. A gentleman, the gentleman. Okay. There we go. The gentleman, uh, pretty amazing. And then what am I culturing of? I'm really trying to
00:40:15
Speaker
cultivate more emotional intelligence lately. I find that on science, analytical thinking, I'm pretty good. I really want to start internally discovering how to cultivate more emotional intelligence and being more in tuned with like, okay, what does that feeling invoke in me? Being more connected in that way. I feel like I'll provide a better
00:40:44
Speaker
empathetic version of myself. Yeah, reading the room, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. What about you? Yeah, for me, I just finished season one of Shogun, which a friend who was really into samurai stuff said was really cool. I'm like, all right, I'm usually not into things that are that violent, but a story well told doesn't really matter the genre, but that one was really well told. What's that on?
00:41:06
Speaker
Hulu in the US. I don't know. Disney Plus now and Hulu is all one big combined app, but 10 episodes. It's based off an old James Clavell novel, a very famous samurai novel. Apparently, it follows the books pretty well. Again, not having read the book, I wouldn't know for sure, but it's based on what I've heard.
00:41:24
Speaker
But well, beautifully shot. Cool story. Um, not overly gratuitous with the violence, but perfect. You know, I think it's a lot like the culture, like when it's violent, it's violent. Yes. Um, but there are a lot of quiet moments, you know, minimal in terms of the action on the screen. So it's all tied into the episode, right? But, but it has a lot of emotional depth and resonance. So you really stay with the characters. You kind of see, you know, what's kind of through their small facial expressions, which is, you know,
00:41:55
Speaker
It's very, having spent time working for a Japanese company and spending some time in Japan, like it just, it feels very accurate even today. Like you kind of understand a little bit more of like maybe from a, from a,
00:42:07
Speaker
historical standpoint, why their culture is the way it is today. It's again, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it was just an entertaining, really entertaining show. I'll have to check it out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wicked. So like I said, maybe this is one of our shorter episodes. Obviously we will miss you. Come back soon. But anything else you want to add?
00:42:28
Speaker
Yeah, like find the things in your life that you could minimize, so you could focus on the things that are much more important to you and that bring you more joy in your friends and family. It's great.
00:42:42
Speaker
Hey, one thing we don't really do a lot of on the show, we'll start from our audience. If you're listening, you have some ideas, thoughts you want to have. We're all for just open discussion here. As much as Logan and I love talking with each other and with Rui, we're trying to do a little bit more to get the audience engaged with the content that we're providing, the ideas that we're trying to band it back and forth. So you'll see more from us in the coming weeks and months from our Discord channel. If you want to join that,
00:43:08
Speaker
you know, get on that server and we'll have an open areas where you have conversations about minimalism or our favorite video games, things like that, and really start building a community. So that's the direction we're trying to take this. Yeah. And, uh, and if you guys want to email any thoughts, suggestions, comments, we are info at codeplayculture.com. Um, yeah, thanks everyone for listening. Hopefully you found it was useful and impactful. And, uh, thank you very much, Chris.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, thanks. Have a good one, everybody. See you guys next time.