[00:00:00.00] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.13] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.29] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.29] - 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.

[00:00:23.20] - Taylor
Welcome back.

[00:00:24.13] - Gordon
It's been an interesting week for me. I've got lots of little things, lots of frustrating things, lots of tasks that I've been doing and monitoring through your new system, which is very good. Shall we get straight into our topics? Any news, first of all?

[00:00:45.26] - Taylor
This week has been pretty busy for me. I had two six-hour coding stints this past week for a client where we've been building a quiz, essentially. But it's pretty complex and it has lots of analytics and data that is really insightful and will hopefully help push the business forward.

[00:01:10.08] - Gordon
Very good. All right, let's get straight into our topics for the week. Would you like to go first or shall I?

[00:01:16.12] - Taylor
You can go first this week.

[00:01:17.01] - Gordon
So this week I would like to talk about Blackpool Magic Convention. Now, this is something that I've spoken about before because it happens every year and it's happening next week, which means that next week there won't be an episode. But what is Blackpool Magicians Convention? Well, it is a collection of about 5,000 magicians all in one place. It's normally for three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But this year they've changed it to four days, so it's now Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And it's incredibly long days of lectures and networking and discussions. And there might be some drinking involved, and then shows in the evening, gala shows. And it's put together by a group called Blackpool Magicians Club, which was just a little club who decided they'd do a one-day event, which has grown and grown, and it's now become the world's biggest magic convention. They have people who sell magic, and there's people from all over the world doing that. And it's really nice. In fact, it's one of those places where I go to see people because I only ever see them at Blackpool, because maybe they live in Scotland. And I can't then obviously go and see them on a regular basis.

[00:02:51.23] - Gordon
And I only ever see them in Blackpool because they're coming-

[00:02:55.03] - Taylor
Or they live abroad, in other countries.

[00:02:55.11] - Gordon
Or they live abroad, yeah, exactly. That's right. And so this is the place to go to meet up with people that you don't see very often, catch up with them. And quite often, I end up talking with them and it's as if I've been speaking with them every week. And for some of them I do, because social media allows you to do that, and Zoom calls and so forth. But most of them I don't. There is a core little group of people that I go to the shows with. We book our tickets together and I go out and eat with. And they're people I do see on a semi regular basis. Again, some of them are only at conventions, but others are more local to me or members of The Magic Circle. So that is going to be my next week. And it is always really tiring. I find that I come home from those incredibly tired and sleep for two days, if I can. I mean, in the past, I've actually gone straight to Las Vegas to then work on a stand, or to Texas, where I've been going to see my friend Marc, a friend of the podcast he's been on before at Christmas time. Or Spain, again to see Marc, and help him with various things that he's been working on. But this year I'm coming straight home, which is just as well, because we've got another convention that we're going to, which I'll talk about another time. But it is very, very tiring. Apart from WordCamp, have you got any other experience of these sort of events? I mean, you have actually been to Blackpool thinking about it. You've been to the event when you were younger. You don't fancy coming back again and joining in the fun? Not this year, but maybe next year?

[00:04:49.24] - Taylor
Maybe.

[00:04:50.16] - Gordon
Yeah. It's a good weekend, actually, although it's getting longer. The shows are good, and there's lots of people to talk to. If you like magic, which you do, then it's a great place to be because you just say to someone, "Show me a trick." And in return, you show them how you do the Rubik's Cube, right?

[00:05:13.28] - Taylor
Something like that.

[00:05:14.20] - Gordon
That's what you were doing last time you went. As a teenager, I think you were. It's been a few years now. But yeah, it's going to be fun. It's going to be tiring. There's a lot of walking involved, a lot of late nights and early mornings. But yeah, I shall report back and let you know how it all goes. That's me done. What would you like to talk about?

[00:05:38.16] - Taylor
So this week, I wanted to talk about booking meetings with your friends.

[00:05:42.11] - Gordon
Oh, okay.

[00:05:43.11] - Taylor
And family, and pretty much anyone that is in your inner circle. So something that I have been looking at and trying to make conscious decisions about is making time for friends, family, and people that are important to me. It's very easy to just have excuses, "Oh, sorry, I was busy, I was working," or whatever it is. And sometimes you say, "Oh, let's do something every week," and then something comes up because work was busy, or you are doing something or all the excuses that you come up with. And it's something that we've both done. So we go to the cinema every single Wednesday, and it's a non-negotiable. If somebody asked to book a meeting with us for work, someone asked us to go out or anything like that, it's always, always a no. Unless it's a conference or somebody's ill, it's always a no. And that's because it's important. It's something that I want to do. I want to spend time every week with you. And we have a really good time, hang out, get to eat and watch a film.

[00:06:53.23] - Gordon
It's good downtime as well. You know that you're going to have a time just to not think about work and not do anything and just enjoy someone's company and a film that you can just lose yourself in.

[00:07:07.20] - Taylor
Yeah. I also have this for two of my friends that I play tennis with. So I play tennis on a Wednesday and a Friday. It's not as strict, but we do try and keep every week unless there's something that has come up. And it's something I think that a lot of people should have a look at, especially if you've got partners or you're married and things like that. Sometimes you forget to spend time, and sometimes you push the people that are important to you away. If you have kids, a lot of people say, "I really want to spend time with my kids," yet they watch their kids grow up or should I say, not grow up because they spent the entire time working. One of the books that I was reading recently was saying that they booked a semi-meeting with their wife, and they would basically go on two-hour walks, or they would do something twice a month, which was like something special. The same for his children. It was a period of time in the day where his sole focus was spending time with his children. If they wanted to do colouring or if they wanted to go to the park, then they had their sole attention.

[00:08:21.25] - Taylor
It was something where it's like, put the phone down, don't check emails, and being present. I think that's something really important to think about, especially when you work for yourself. It's very easy to get caught up spending hours and hours not really talking to anyone, not seeing anyone, and neglecting the people that are important to you. Not on purpose, but it happens.

[00:08:43.28] - Gordon
I think a good example is our friend Marc that I was talking about previously. He has time that he sets aside just to spend time with his son. And he'll be doing whatever is of interest to his son. He'll become interested in those things so that they have something in common. So for a long time, it was Minecraft, and then it moved on to Roblox and all these sort of things. As your children change and their interests change, it's good for you, even if you're not that interested, to change with it so that you've got something to talk about. And they can then talk to you about it. But he does that every week, I think. He's got time scheduled in his diary for making sure he's going to spend time with his son.

[00:09:42.15] - Taylor
Yeah, and if it means actually scheduling it on your calendar like you would any other client meeting, well then do that because you're more likely to commit to it, especially if it's something that's shared with your family or with co-workers or whatever. They will know, "okay, well, I can't book anything because he's already busy." You don't have to show what it is, but it will say that they're busy.

[00:10:02.20] - Gordon
That's one thing that we do that I'm not sure lots of other people do, and that is we have a shared calendar, like an online calendar. And each of us in the family have our own separate calendars that we manage, but we allow the others to view these calendars. So we can very easily see what each other is doing. And we've got a joint calendar. Anything that we do that is going to be for both of us goes in the joint calendar. And it's nice because then you can see what the other person is doing. You can then schedule things in, or at least you can talk to them and say, "can we book this time slot in to do something?" And it works for our projects as well. So we've got a new project that we're doing at the minute, which is being fitted in and around other things. But you know that you can see my diary. And if you want to work on it and you need me to be available on the end of a phone, for example, you just need to put it in the diary, let me know, and then I can put it in my diary.

[00:11:09.14] - Gordon
So I know that you're going to be potentially asking me questions that will need answers and I can make myself available for that. Because there's nothing worse in a project like this when you've got limited time to do it, to stall because you're waiting for information or content or whatever it happens to be.

[00:11:32.09] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:11:33.15] - Gordon
Yeah, it's very good. It doesn't seem like something you should do as a family, schedule time in for each other. But when you work for yourself in particular, you're working 24 hours, effectively. I mean, you're always thinking about work, even when you're not working. If you're doing a nine to five, it's a lot easier to spend time with other people because you can go to the pub in the evening and spend time with your friends and whatever. But with the jobs we do, it's difficult to know if you're going to have that time available. And I'm not really a 'go to the pub' sort of person unless it's for a sociable reason. I do it when I'm rehearsing shows, for example. But that's pretty much it. I don't go as a regular thing. But, yeah, make time for people. It's a good thing to do.

[00:12:15.25] - Gordon
Well done. Anything else you want to say about anything we've spoken about today?

[00:12:19.26] - Taylor
I don't think so.

[00:12:20.16] - Gordon
If you've got any thoughts on anything we've said, then you can leave comments on our videos on YouTube. And please like, share, and subscribe as well.

[00:12:30.22] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:12:35.20] - Gordon
And if you would prefer to listen to us, we're on all the major podcast platforms and your smart speakers. So just say, "listen to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon."" or do a search for it. There's other This Week Withs, so make sure you include the Taylor and Gordon bit. That's it from us. We won't be with you next week because I'm away. But the following week we'll be back with you on the Friday at 1pm. Until then, you get a week off for half term in the UK, which is good because you can spend time with your families.

[00:13:08.05] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly.

[00:13:08.29] - Gordon
So until then, we'll be back with you in two weeks. My name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:13:16.05] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:13:18.21] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:13:19.05] - Taylor
Bye.

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Show Notes