[00:00:09.04] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.15] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.26] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.21] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.23] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And thank you so much for joining us.

[00:00:24.18] - Taylor
Welcome back.

[00:00:25.08] - Gordon
It's been a busy two weeks, in fact, because I had a holiday. I just went away for a week to Tenerife and sat by the pool drinking Pina Coladas and resetting, as it were. It's always good to have a bit of relaxation every now and then and just get away from everything and reset, ready to come back fresh and renewed. Do you find that?

[00:00:48.14] - Taylor
Yeah. Sounds like you had a very busy week.

[00:00:51.19] - Gordon
Not really. No, not at all. That's the point, isn't it? That's the whole point. Any news from you before we start?

[00:00:59.25] - Taylor
No.

[00:01:00.24] - Gordon
There's a little bit of news with WP Engine. If you're a WP Engine user, then Matt Mullenwer. Mullen...

[00:01:10.05] - Taylor
Mullenweg.

[00:01:10.20] - Gordon
Mullenwag.

[00:01:11.23] - Taylor
Weg.

[00:01:12.13] - Gordon
Weg. Mullenweg, thank you, is having a bit of a pot shot at them at the moment. I don't know the ins and outs of it completely, but it seems to be blowing up a bit in the WordPress community at the moment, isn't it?

[00:01:27.11] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:28.03] - Gordon
So we'll see how that pans out. If you are with WP Engine, I'm sure you would have already heard about it. And if not, well, nothing to worry about. Let's get straight into our topics. Would you like to go first today?

[00:01:41.09] - Taylor
No, you can go first this week.

[00:01:42.28] - Gordon
So I am going to talk about AI. Now, I realise that we've spoken about AI in the past, but this is something that's moving at such a pace at the moment that it's something I wanted to come back to and catch up with where we are at the moment. Because when we originally spoke about AI, it was really just open AI with ChatGPT, and that was it. And there's so many other uses and people creating their own GPTs and AI services now that I thought it was worth coming back to. And in particular, there's been a couple of services that I've recently purchased that use AI that I wouldn't have even thought possible about a year or two years ago. It's just moving at that pace. So the first tool I'm going to talk about is called Pismo. Now, I purchased this on AppSumo. If you don't know what AppSumo is, it's a website that sells software as a lifetime deal, which means you pay once and you get the service and use the service for as long as the service is in existence. Now, it used to be really, really good. Every single tool was really, really good. You've now got to do a lot more due diligence on it and look through and test things yourself to make sure you're getting a good deal. And there has, sadly, been lots of services and products that have just died after a year or so. And there's no come back to that; you just lose your money. But if you get some use out of it, then maybe you could argue you got a year's worth of use out of that money. But I've been a customer for a long, long time, and Pismo piqued my interest. So it does something very similar to what Apple Intelligence is going to be doing. So for those of you who don't know what Apple Intelligence is, this is Apple's AI, and this is going to be integrated with all their software and their latest devices. So that includes the iPhone 15 Pro, the iPhone 16, all the models, the latest iPads, and also the Silicon Max. So the Apple Silicon Max. Anything that's not Intel basically, it will run on, to different degrees. It'll have different capabilities depending on the device you have. But it's built into the operating system, and it will allow you to basically do a lot of tasks that you would do manually in one sentence. So you can tell your computer to add a calendar entry, and it will be smart. It will know what you're talking about. It will be able to look into your email and see if there's any information about this event you're talking about. It'll look into your calendar, see if there's anything already at that spot to let you know that there's going to be a clash, that sort of thing. And it's also going to make Siri a lot more powerful because it's going to give it a lot more intelligence. So that's Apple Intelligence. That's coming out soon. Now, the iPhone 16 has just recently been released. In fact, people started to receive their orders last Friday, and mine is on its way. It should be here. It should be here by now, actually. So hopefully it won't be very long. And then I get to play with that. And the AI part of it, the Apple Intelligence part, is coming in a few months time. And then we'll be able to use it and they'll add to the capabilities over the next, well, years, in fact. I'm sure they'll just keep adding to it. But Pismo does something that Apple Intelligence does, but it adds some new functionality that Apple Intelligence, as far as I can see, doesn't do. So Pismo allows you, it's a desktop application, so it runs on Mac and Windows, and it will allow you to select text within your application, whether that be email or your WordPress or a document that you're creating. I think it'll even work on things like Google Docs and things because it's just taking the text from your browser. And it's bringing it into Pismo and allowing you to do something to it. Now, it could be that you want to summarise it. It could be that you want to rewrite it in a more professional tone or a friendlier tone, or you want to make it shorter, you want to make it longer, or it's in a different language and you want to make it English so you can read it, or you can add your own prompts because all it's using is GPT 4.0, or GPT 4.0 mini or 3.5 Claude Sonnet. So it's using those as the underlying technologies, the AI, to create what you're asking it to do. And you can create your own prompts, which is the bit I don't believe Apple Intelligence can do. So you can basically give it a long prompt, really specific and detailed, and apply that to any text that you write or you copy and paste from the web or a document that you're trying to send out to someone, or you've got a really long document you want to summarise, that sort of thing. And it looks really good. You've got it as well, haven't you?

[00:07:43.19] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:07:45.01] - Gordon
So I've only recently got that, so I'm going to be playing with it. I like the idea that it's on your Mac, on your desktop, because that means I can use it in any application rather than just being available on the web.

[00:07:59.21] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:08:00.01] - Gordon
So that's really good. The other application I got is called, and I'm not sure how you pronounce it, but I'm pronouncing it IKI, I-K-I.ai. We will put links to both of these tools in the show notes. You may have missed the AppSumo deal when you read this or hear this, but go to AppSumo.com and have a look, see if they're still on offer. And if they are, take a look. They do offer a money back guarantee. So you've got, I think it's 60 days to try something out and then you can get a refund if you decide it's not for you. So nothing to lose, really. But IKI allows you to upload documents in PDF or text format or CSV format. It also allows you to paste links for YouTube videos, for example, and it will then transcribe the content of the video. Although at the moment, that bit's not working. There's an issue, and apparently, it's an issue for everyone who has this service, but it'll be fixed at some point, I'm sure. And then what you can do is once you've got all of this information inside IKI, you can group it together into collections, so you can have very similar documents together, and then you can query those documents using AI. So for example, if you had a user manual for your car in PDF format, you could upload that to the service, and then you could query that one document, and you could say, "I need to change my headlight. How do I do so?" And it will then go into that document. It will find all the relevant bits and bring it back and summarise it for you. So you can actually get the information you need really, really quickly without having to search through. And that's quite useful when you've got maybe a technical document and you want to get something specific out of it that could take a long time to actually search through because there's so many pages, it might be hidden, it might not have an index, that sort of thing. And I really like the idea of being able to not just search, which is what you would normally do. If you opened a PDF file and just did a search, it would just show you where all the terms that you are searching for appear. But this is actually using artificial intelligence to actually come back and give you a meaningful reply to the query that you're asking. And I really like that idea. And it's early stages with this software as well. You'll find a lot of that happens with AppSumo. You get lots of early stage software. It's just come out or they're just coming to market. And you're taking a gamble as to whether you jump on board with them. And I've done that with many things. And in fact, a lot of them have panned out for me. I believe Fluent Forms was one, and that is something I use on every single website that I build. So there are some really good gems there. But just finishing off with the AI bit, I'll play with them a bit more and come back to you because I love the way the AI is going at the moment, although I still have some concerns as to how people can and do use it, especially the image generation AI, where you can create images that look very similar to real people, actual people, which makes it difficult for anyone viewing to know if it's real or AI generated. I think I've said it before, I think there's going to be laws that come in at some point to prevent us from doing that. I know a lot of AIs are putting filters on so you can't say "Create me an image of Trump at a swimming pool," whatever you want. That's just off the top of my head. But I think things like Trump and things like that is being monitored and maybe they'll query what you want to actually do and why you want to do it, so that it's got some ethics going on there. But there's an awful lot going on and it's moving really, really quickly. So we'll come back to this, I'm sure, because AI does affect what we do ourselves quite a bit.

[00:12:36.05] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:12:36.11] - Gordon
What would you like to talk about today?

[00:12:39.08] - Taylor
I want to talk about consistency. So I was reading something online and it just made sense and explained a lot of things that I felt and feel. So I struggled with consistency over the years where I always compare all of my days to my perfect day.

[00:13:11.02] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:13:11.20] - Taylor
So the perfect day for me would be basically being as productive as possible, getting all of the tasks that I wanted done, making sure that I went to the gym, making sure I'm eating properly, making sure I'm having healthy meals, hitting all my calorie targets, macro targets, making sure I'm socialising. And that would be the perfect day for me because I've hit every single goal that I want. However, I know that is not possible. And what I do or have done in the past is compare the day to the perfect day.

[00:13:50.07] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:13:51.01] - Taylor
So what happens is if I plan to go to the gym in the morning and I either sleep in, don't manage to get to the gym in time in the morning, or I go to the gym, I have a good session, and then my bag leaks, for example, I will then-

[00:14:06.20] - Gordon
Your Stoma bag, for those who don't know what you're talking about. Yeah.

[00:14:09.29] - Taylor
I will then basically write the day off and I said, "Oh, I failed." And so I give up for the-

[00:14:16.10] - Gordon
Right at the beginning of the day?

[00:14:17.11] - Taylor
Yeah, because something's gone wrong.

[00:14:19.03] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:14:20.02] - Taylor
And then the next day I'll be like, "Okay, well, I need to make up for the previous day, so I need to do yesterday's work and today's work." And then obviously it's not possible. And so that's a failed day. And so what ends up happening is all of these days stack on top of each other. And then I'm trying to do a week's worth, a month's worth of work in one day. And it's changing the way that you approach this and accept that there are going to be things that come up during the day that you just can't plan for. Things take longer than you expect.

[00:15:00.20] - Gordon
Always.

[00:15:01.10] - Taylor
Having lunch isn't a matter of just eating. It's going down to the kitchen. It's making, preparing your lunch. It's eating your lunch. It's putting stuff in the dishwasher. Going out and buying your lunch. There's so many things that go in to doing an activity, a task, things that just happen and come up during the day that you can't account for sometimes, or you underestimate how long things take. And so it's changing the way that I think about a day and go, "okay, I wanted to get that done, but it wasn't possible because of certain things." And so it's then using that knowledge and going, "okay, let me adjust tomorrow's day to account for these things." And over time, I should hopefully get better and better at being able to judge how much work I can get done in what amount of time, essentially. And it's really, really helped because it stops me thinking of a day as being failed, because if I said I wanted to do 10 things and I got nine of those things done, in my head, that would be a fail because I didn't get the 10th thing done. Whereas actually I've done nine things and that's ticked a lot of stuff on my to-do list off. So, yeah, it's something that I would try and see if you can... If you're having these similar situations where you think you're failing or the day's failed because you're trying to compare it to something that... What you perceive as perfect, then just rethink of how you think about it.

[00:16:44.22] - Gordon
So the other way of looking at it is to look at an average day. So how does an average day look? And then you can compare your day as to was it above average or was it below average? And I think you'll find that most days are going to be average or above average. You might get the odd, occasional, below average day, but then you're just that little bit lower than your normal day, as opposed to being a huge amount under your perfect day.

[00:17:13.24] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:17:14.28] - Gordon
Yeah. I think, so, are you finding now that you're not writing days off at nine o'clock in the morning before you've actually had a chance to get back again?

[00:17:26.29] - Taylor
Yeah, I'm going, "okay, well, that something small went wrong, that's fine. We'll just keep going and just try and continue getting as much done as I can." And taking it in my stride rather than thinking I've failed for the day and taking it as "I'm improving, I'm going to make the rest of the day really good" instead.

[00:17:50.11] - Gordon
It's a change in mindset, basically, isn't it?

[00:17:53.02] - Taylor
Definitely.

[00:17:53.29] - Gordon
Yeah. And when you work for yourself and you're not surrounded by people who you rely on to be part of the process, you've only got yourself to motivate yourself, effectively.

[00:18:08.08] - Taylor
And only yourself to compare to.

[00:18:10.09] - Gordon
And only yourself to blame also. You are everything. So if you have decided at nine o'clock in the morning that the day's a write-off, there's not a lot that's going to convince you to actually do anything. You're just going to sit around and waste the rest of the day, right?

[00:18:28.17] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:18:29.06] - Gordon
Whereas if you base it on an average day, well, you haven't got to the end of the day yet, so you don't know what sort of day it's going to end up being.

[00:18:36.08] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:18:37.02] - Gordon
Yeah, that's really good. I don't think I've ever had that. Every now and then, I do find, actually, when I do a show on a day and it's in the middle of the day, I struggle to get a lot done in the morning because I know the show's coming up. So I get myself all ready for the show and then I've got an hour or two or three left before I need to actually go. And I don't want to start anything because I might get into it and lose track of time and be late for my show. That's what's going on in my head. So I try not to take on big jobs, and I'm just flitting around and doing little things. Sometimes little things that have been waiting to be done for a long time. So, yeah. But I don't think I've ever written off a day quite as early as that. But then I don't go to the gym. I'm not up that early.

[00:19:33.22] - Taylor
It doesn't have to be the gym, though. It can be anything. It can be anything can happen. Even with work, I've tried to do something of what I wanted to work on, and then I wasn't able to do it. And I'm like, "what's the point? That's really important, but I haven't able to do it."

[00:19:51.00] - Gordon
But again, you then put that to the side and you can come back to it because maybe you're just not in the right frame of mind for it.

[00:19:58.04] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:19:58.21] - Gordon
That could be all it is. I know we've worked on various things at points and you've got to a point when you've gone, "Do you know what? My brain's fried. I can't deal with this anymore." And you just want to go and do something completely different to clear your brain and come back to it when you're fresh again.

[00:20:14.29] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:20:16.04] - Gordon
Very good. So there you go. Lots of things to think about. If it affects you, please let us know. We'd love to hear. Leave a comment in the section below if you're watching on YouTube, and get in touch with us if you are listening to it, we'd love to hear from you. That's it from me.

[00:20:37.14] - Taylor
And me as well.

[00:20:38.12] - Gordon
As always, we can be found on YouTube and please like, share and subscribe.

[00:20:43.29] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:20:48.23] - Gordon
And we're on all of your favourite podcast channels. If you find we're not on one, please let us know. We'd love to know that as well so that we can make sure we are on there for you. Until next week, we'll see you at 1pm on Friday. My name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:21:04.22] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:21:07.11] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:21:07.27] - Taylor
Bye.

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