Anything But Idle is currently on hiatus but Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) are occasionally doing episodes for commentary on major news/events in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

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Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Art Gelwicks, a productivity and collaboration consultant, blogger at Gelwicks Tech, and host of the Being Productive podcast, CrossPlatform podcast, as well as a collaborator on ProductivityCast Podcast.

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Ray Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And unfortunately, Agusta pronounced is not joining us today as he normally would. He’s dealing with some family issues. And so I’m going to be solo today for hosting purposes. But either way, this is episode 124. And we’re recording this on January 17 2024. Today was Samsung Galaxy unpacked. And they announced the new Samsung S 24. Series phones. So we’re doing this special episode, mostly because we wanted to geek out about all the technology and possibly productivity embedded in these new devices. Also, I have on the show today, art Gelwicks, our Samsung aficionado and our blogger podcaster. extraordinaire, over at Gelwicks tech. Welcome to the end, but idle art.

Art Gelwicks 0:52
Hey, thanks, Greg, I appreciate you for having me on. For this. As always, I’d love to talk Samsung. So

Ray Sidney-Smith 0:59
absolutely. And I just love to talk productivity in tech. So this is a really great opportunity for us to bring this special episode of Anything But Idle online. And so hopefully folks who are inside of personal productivity club and those of you who are watching on YouTube will join along with us as we get into our first kind of impressions of Galaxy unpacked here as we start 2024. What did you think about the show itself?

Art Gelwicks 1:25
It started off with that big stadium feel. I mean, definitely back in front of a live audience, that kind of thing. They’ve been building back to that since post pandemic that had a good opening. But the overall show itself. It felt I want to say awkward at times, not negatively. It just it didn’t feel like it had the positive energy. That other you know, big hardware releases, we’ve got this thing that everybody’s crazy stoked about. It just had this underlying feel that they know they have something that I hate to use the phrase game changer, they know they have something that is a game changer. They’re just not quite sure how to convince everybody else to that fact yet. And you could see it to me, you could see it in the handoffs between people, you could hear it in their voices. They were trying really hard, but sometimes almost a little too hard to get that message across. But from if I had to give it an A rating, you know, we normally give it like a grading, I’d give it a solid B, I’d probably give it a solid B. They did well, they did a little extra effort, but certainly nothing to put them at the top of the class of their other presentations.

Ray Sidney-Smith 2:56
I really found the pre recorded material against the live speaking pieces of it very contrasted. And that created a real, I don’t know, it just it created the deleterious effect for me that I felt that the whole model of Galaxy unpacked seems stayed at this point, it seems a little bit boring. And the the big screen actually, quite honestly, it was the most thing I was interested most in the curved, you know, display they had on on the stage. That was the most interesting thing I found about really the presentation.

Art Gelwicks 3:28
There was a point where I actually found myself going, I missed the pandemic presentations, I missed the pandemic unpacked, because you know, they were put together a little bit differently. They had an opportunity to mess it up and come back and things like that. I did have to chuckle a little bit though, I watched the entire presentation live off of Samsung site. And they had closed captioning running. Their closed captioning was I struggled a little bit with some of the people they didn’t feed it the script, they they let it go off of the audio. And there’s a couple of them where the accents were just like, yeah, that’s not quite what he was saying. Or she was saying but you know, all in all, like I said, I’ll give them a good solid B. And they started the whole thing off, which with I think is probably the biggest thing across the entire line. And that’s the updates.

Ray Sidney-Smith 4:24
Right? So seven OS seven operating generations and seven years of security updates, starting with the S 24 series will be supported now. And I feel like that that’s a fantastic way to kick off the show and a real testament to Samsung standing behind their products for especially their flagship product. So yeah, that was a great, that was a great start to the show.

Art Gelwicks 4:49
That just floored me because I had to think how many people are actually holding on to their device for seven years. You are they are literal We committing to you being secure on your device and having the operating system updates for the life of your ownership of the device. Because honestly, nobody keeps it that long, unless it’s a flip phone, and my mom still has it. Nobody else is keeping their devices that long. So to me, that’s a, that’s a spectacular commitment. But it’s also, I think there’s a little bit of a different or a deeper layer to that to what they’re recognizing is that all of their updates coming forward for that next seven year period, have to be backward compatible on those previous devices. So I think it’s a great indicator that the hardware has gotten so powerful, that it is worth using for up to that period of time, it will support it, it will continue to run, you’re not going to be looking at diminishing returns on hardware. B just because you can’t get a software update. So I thought that was a great way for them to start. I was revved up at that point. I’m like, Oh, this

Ray Sidney-Smith 6:04
is great. Yeah, the cynic in me, of course, understands that people typically in especially in these flagship phones are keeping their phones for 18, you know, longest, probably 24 months. And so they know that people are already doing that. But that means that these phones are being handed down a second hand devices to, you know, whether that be spouses, partners, sisters, siblings, and of course, children. And so these devices need to live longer, because they are being passed down to other folks. And this gives a little bit more longevity to those devices. And I think you’re right, the hardware is good enough that especially with these new SOC s, that are really stellar, even after they burn for you know, several years, they’re still going to have enough oomph left in them that it’s going to be good enough for, you know, your daughter or son or otherwise, to kind of use for a couple more years before you have to kind of turn it in and hand it along. Alright, so that

Art Gelwicks 6:58
that hand, that’s a great point, I jumped in there that the hand me down factor, I didn’t even think about that. But that’s now you’ve got a device that is worth handing down. Okay.

Ray Sidney-Smith 7:11
Yeah. And, of course, I’m very much concerned about giving a hand me down, that’s not going to get security updates, right. And that kept being the prime. Right. So I don’t even care about the OS generation updates, I really care about the security updates. And but I’m really glad to have the seven and seven, so that you really have strong support there. Alright. So I mean,

Art Gelwicks 7:32
this is just to jump in there. This is a this is a kind of an underpinning of multiple times throughout the entire event, security was raised, security was raised as a feature as a factor and as a requirement, which again, made me feel pretty good.

Ray Sidney-Smith 7:46
Absolutely. So they kind of segue us into really the the flashiest piece of the of the show. You know, I think, and that is, you know, all of these new call functions that allow to to utilize AI on the device, so that you’re able to do things like live calls where you have real time translation happening. They call it call assist, there are 13 languages that it currently supports out of the box. And they also provide text translations using the Samsung keyboard. So what did you think about the live call demo that they did on screen?

Art Gelwicks 8:25
I think that the demo is a great indication of where AI will make its difference in these devices. For a couple of factors. One, the demonstration itself was, it was interesting, but it’s similar to other demonstrations we’ve seen, such as when Google initially released their earbuds, you know, it’s that live transact or translation back and forth. That’s great. But there are some factors in this that I think really differentiate one. All of that is being done on device. It’s using Gemini nano from Google to do that AI component within the device itself, which means that only one device in the equation needs to be able to do that language processing. So and as they called out, it’ll work even all the way if the other person is using a landline, which makes perfect sense. The second thing is it looks very smooth. Previous translation mechanisms have been kind of jerky, you know, a little Herky jerky, there’s delay. You weren’t totally sure. This gave you a sense of confidence that the translation was happening. And it was accurate. So I have to say I do like it. I don’t really have an opportunity to use it. But I I really can see for somebody who needs this kind of functionality. This could be a significant feature for them. Yeah,

Ray Sidney-Smith 9:56
I’m currently using this feature inside of Google. it’ll translate in meetings currently. And, and so it’s very similar except that that’s all happening on the chip. It’s happening, you know, in this kind of sandbox environment. And as you said, you don’t have that latency issue of having to worry about translation, going up to the cloud being translated coming back down from the cloud, and then being spoken. But the idea is, is that you have the choice of speaking, it then does the translation and speaks it to the person on the other side, or turning off your voice and their voice altogether. And all you hear is the translations between the two. So they’re hearing the translation in the language of their preference, and you’re hearing the language in your preference. And so it gives you a real powerful capability, there even remembers which languages you used with that person in the past. So when you call them back, it basically picks up where you left off.

Art Gelwicks 10:54
Those are the little things that I think make a huge difference with this kind of thing, when that when they start to tie that to a contact record, so that the system knows when you start talking to that person, or you call that person, it needs to do that translation in real time from that language. That’s huge, because it becomes more transparent. And I think, across the board, that’s our expectation, or should be our expectation of AI. Not that it’s going to stand up in the middle of everything. But it’s the grease on the wheels, it’s what makes everything just kind of happen. And I think this is a perfect example of how that can function.

Ray Sidney-Smith 11:33
Right. And I know that right now, everything is going to have the word AI in it. Once upon a time we called AI, programming languages, we called it code. So it’s just basically a new iteration, utilizing some of these large language models and other other models that are coming online. It’s just code. And so we are we are seeing a lot of this being done because it can process such a large amount of data, and also start to do some interpretation that is novel in a lot of ways. And so I liked the idea of being able to transact in multiple languages, I really enjoy the text translation features built into Samsung keyboard. So you can type in one language, you see it in your native language below it, and you’re just typing, you know, and you’re just having that conversation. Again, I use something similar currently in the Google keyboard. So folks who don’t don’t know, if you’re using G board, which is an application you can install on Android and iOS, the G board application itself has a Google translate function built into it, you just click on the little, you know, on the little bar icon, there’s a little for widget icon, and then you’ll see the little translate button, you click on it type in whatever language you’d like. And then you type in it automatically translated, translates into the language that you want to. But what I liked about the Samsung keyboard demonstration was that they had that kind of layer, right, so you’re seeing both languages side by side, kind of the way in which Facebook and other social networks have applied that level of like clicking on a button and you can see the translation, and then you just are kind of continuing the conversation without really a lot of, of slowing down of things. Whereas with this, you’re you’re you’re only seeing the translation, you just typed in not both your language and there’s so you have to remember what you typed, which can be difficult if you’re typing in a language that you’re not comfortable in like it for me that’s Russian or, or you know, Japanese or something like that you’re typing to somebody and you don’t know what you just typed, because you typed it in English. And now it’s only showing you the kanji. You know, that’s a real problem. Exactly.

Art Gelwicks 13:34
I was just thinking about that with English to Korean. I mean, you’ve got a language there that doesn’t use the same letter structure. So you have no context whatsoever, you don’t have that feedback. So yeah, it’s it’s definitely worthwhile, I think. And you’re right, I liked the fact that they called out that it’s now built into the Samsung keyboard. That’s not the only time that Samsung pushed one of their own apps as part of this presentation, which I thought was interesting, because as of late, they haven’t really done that they haven’t really showcased their own stuff. They’ve always been showcasing everybody else’s. But there were two other times that they took apps that are just built in and kind of elevated them to a higher platform. And I’m like, Well, okay, that’s good. Yeah.

Ray Sidney-Smith 14:21
I’m going to skip to one of those, which was when they talked about speech to text, and also their note assist capabilities, because they really talked about the flavor of Samsung notes and how it really shines. Now. Talk to me about what you thought were kind of the key points of them talking about the speech to text and the note assist capabilities. So

Art Gelwicks 14:39
I have to admit, I was watching the opening rolling graphic that they always have, you know, in the like the hour before, and you’re always looking for those little visual cues as the giveaways and part of the image was the Samsung notes logo and I’m like, No, they’re not going to talk about stuff. No Yeah, sure enough they brought up. And what they brought up about Samsung notes is the fact that one, it can do handwriting realignment, it can summarize the notes that you’ve taken. It’s, they’re building that functionality into this tool. And I think that’s fascinating. Because they’ve been so much the last time we went around, they were touting about how we’re integrated into one note, and, you know, we have this, they’ve never really given Samsung notes, its own place on the stage. And now it’s one of the first apps to get this kind of AI functionality. And I think it, it’ll be interesting to see if this just happens to be an app that had a use case, or are they planning to make it bigger and better and more important as part of this overall platform equation, and there was an undertone within the presentation about how your phone should almost be able to be considered the do all be all for all things, you should be able to do everything there, do your photo editing, do your productivity, that should be the center of your world, because for most people it is. So it was interesting to see that I do like the handwriting cleanup. I know a lot of people struggle with that. Even with the new S Pen configurations, no, that’s still still an iffy thing. The note assist, I liked the functionality, I like its capability. Unfortunately, it happens to be one of those showcase features, that doesn’t offset some of the other weaknesses of the application. So I think they’re gonna have to kind of kick the application in his pants to really bring it up. But I think this was a good place for them to be able to take this and showcase functionality. So yeah, it’s a harmless app if they don’t do it. Yeah.

Ray Sidney-Smith 16:53
And I always take it from the perspective that I mean, I still use Notepad for taking some notes in meetings, right, and then it’s a copy and paste into my my note taking application of choice, right. So whereas I believe Samsung would have probably showcased to OneNote, in the past, maybe even a partnership with Evernote, while many, many moons ago, you know, those things are going to happen. Now, like you said they had a use case, I think that the the, the real concern for me with regard to the AI in in the note cleanup sense, is just like with with Evernote note, Ai no cleanup tool, it’s useless to me, right. And if I take really good notes, I know how to structure notes, I know how to, you know what I mean? So it’s like, it seems kind of like, okay, if you’re really, really bad at capturing notes, then then great this, this helps you. But the the flip side to it is that I can see the genesis of something really powerful in the future, right, where this can actually do a lot more in the future. This is this is a building, this is a foundation for something that’s going to come that will be much more powerful in the future.

Art Gelwicks 18:02
Yeah. And this may be one of the cases where Samsung notes actually doesn’t do themselves a benefit. But for Samsung doesn’t do themselves a service by using Samsung notes as the case for this. Because I really can’t imagine anybody taking lengthy notes on Samsung notes, using anything around the shape of a phone, it would just take forever to type the keyboard interface. It’s just, it’s not a good experience. I’ll admit that. However, Samsung notes if you’re in the ecosystem, and they’ve made it, so it’s only in the ecosystem, you can get the notes on your tablet and on your Samsung laptop. So you do have that cross compatibility, but it’s still it’s still not perfect. So I think this is one of those cases where for people who maybe aren’t efficient at keeping notes, or maybe just capturing things on the fly during a discussion, or a better example is what they talked about with voice recorder. That is a good use of this functionality. I just think that it was a neat thing to see. But it was more of just an illustration of functionality than a practical solution.

Ray Sidney-Smith 19:15
Yeah, and I felt the same way with the speech to text functionalities. And it being able to provide summaries. These are things that we’ve seen now in chat GPT and Google Bard. We’ve seen that in anthropic Claude, and many other you know, kind of chatbot focused AI tools today. And one thing I wanted to step back and as they actually showed in the, in the demo, their photo Moji capabilities and again, this is just bringing that flavor of AI and and how they’re handling, photo editing and video editing and so on so forth. We’ll talk about that in a bit. But the idea was that you can now take kind of a, a section of a photo and turn it into a is a kind of a MIMO G style image that you can then post into the chat, utilizing Google messages is a really, really powerful tool takes a lot of work under the hood to make it happen. And it looks pretty seamless. And so I’m really looking forward to seeing folks with Samsung devices utilizing that and seeing how it works across device, whether it’s only going to be within the ecosystem, that it actually looks good. If it’s if it’s just going to text message be an image, you know, or is it going to actually give me any other flavor of what’s going on under the hood. On the other side, within Google messages I’ll be I’ll be curious how that will all work.

Art Gelwicks 20:37
This is a feature that could be very strongly supported by the RCS availability, through messaging. Without that, it’s going to be kind of useless. It’s just a flat image. But the fact that RCS is now standard across the back, that makes a huge difference for this kind of feature. I personally, I don’t see a lot of use for it, because I don’t really use that kind of capability of it. But I know a lot of people who would just live for that, I mean that every other thing would be that kind of thing coming through. And again, RCS is going to make that that really powerful.

Ray Sidney-Smith 21:14
Yeah, it’s not going to be supported by SMS or MMS. Anyway, it’s going to be supported by the RCS protocol. And I think that it would be really good. But I just wanted to make note of that, because I know, I know, it was kind of interesting how they pointed that out, back onto the note assist piece and taking notes by hand, I know that you and I would never do that it’s not a comfortable experience to do that on your phone. That is taking lengthy notes or, or, or copious amounts of notes on there. But I will say that there are a lot of people who do, and there are a lot of people who are of a younger generation where that is the only device they’re utilizing. And so therefore they are doing it there, I see it all the time in seminars, and I I’m baffled because I see them, you know, to fingering, like notes and, and it hurts my heart to watch them doing it. I’ll say this though, the the idea behind a something that can fundamentally capture audio, capture the various photos to say, you know, someone pulls up their camera takes a photograph of a slide that I’ve done, I might have up on screen, and is also taking some lightweight notes. This is the part that I think from a productivity perspective can be really powerful, because it can, it can, it knows all those three pieces of data have come into the phone in that time signature in that time period. And so it can then go ahead and bring those those pieces together and potentially provide me with more rich information than before. And I think that’s the real thing that I hope Samsung does.

Art Gelwicks 22:45
And if we keep Samsung notes in its proper context, it is not designed to be an Evernote, it’s not designed to be a OneNote. It’s not designed to be a notion or anything else. It is a very powerful competitor to like an apple notes or a Google Keep. And it’s designed. Remember, for the S Pen, that’s what they want you to use it with. That’s its base structure. So when you go to type with it typings. Okay, but that’s actually not the fastest way to enter information into Samsung notes. So when you start to see it doing things like cleaning up your handwriting, well, what they didn’t mention is when they clean up your handwriting, there’s a tap button that converts that handwriting from handwritten to text. And we’ll do it right on the page, and then you move on. Well, that’s a single tap. And that’s exists now. So if you’re able to have cleaner handwriting, you get better text or handwriting to text conversion. So this naturally dovetails into this process, what you do with that text, that’s completely up to you. It’s a good Passover tool, though. And I think it’s a good dynamic tool at the platform level. So I’m

Ray Sidney-Smith 24:02
just gonna make mention of this because they talked about it, Android Auto got some updates within the Samsung ecosystem, you know, they’re providing some message summaries, replies and some smart actions within the within the car ecosystem. I

Art Gelwicks 24:14
have to say as as an Android Auto user, I actually installed a third party heads up display in my in my car to connect to Android Auto, them showing the one button reroute based on a new address gets sent to you through a text message. That’s a nice feature. Being able to one button send your ETA. That’s a nice feature. Those are the kinds of things that when we talk about AI in quotes, that’s the type of artificial intelligence that is useful, because it’s just enhancing the experience. It’s not trying to out think me, it’s assisting me and that’s a perfect opportunity to have that as well. that and they didn’t they talked about it, but they didn’t show it, I want to see it the way to get a summary of a group chat. Okay. Now, as a person who has like seven people in his family in one group chat and can’t follow any of it, if you give me a feature that will give me a summary of that at any given app, just take my money, right there. So I like that idea. Yeah,

Ray Sidney-Smith 25:24
I think anything, keeping your your eyes up on the road and, and being able to facilitate a more seamless driving experience is really fantastic. And I appreciate both what Apple is doing and what Android Auto is doing. So CarPlay and Android Auto are both really doing great jobs there. It’s good to see Samsung, kind of add these new features. And I hope when it comes to across the board to all of the Android Auto vehicles. So before

Art Gelwicks 25:50
we move forward, I do want to highlight one thing they talked about with the voice recorder app, its ability using AI, to pick up different voices during a recording and create a text summary based on the different voices. So if you imagine having a meeting and you’re sitting there with five people, you can take the phone, hit record, throw it in the center of the desk, and at the end, get a summary from everybody, based on who was talking. That’s like zoom level functionality. That’s the kind of thing we expect through virtual meetings. But now you can have that in the meat space that you’re operating in, that I want to play with, I think I’m sure it’s gonna have some issues. It’s all based on mic quality and ambient sound and things like that. But just having that as an option. That’s a big step. Yeah,

Ray Sidney-Smith 26:44
be curious if you can, I’m not sure if on your Samsung Galaxy phone right now, you can sideload, the Google Recorder app. But basically, the Google Recorder app does exactly that. And I’ve had it for several years now. And it’s phenomenal. So if this voice recorder app is anything like what Google has already created, where it just it knows who the speakers are automatically, it’s, it’s Trent, it’s transcribing in real time. And then of course, it’s, it’s then synchronized to recorder.google.com within your account, so used to authenticate into your Google account. And now you have those synchronized, you can download the source file, you could download the transcript. And so the Google Recorder app is basically what Samsung has caught up to. And I was really glad to see them bring that to the Samsung S 24 series. And hopefully it becomes legacy compatible for prior S series phones. Because it is, as you said, it’s such a benefit to be able to take your mind off of notetaking so that you capturing every word and every concept, and you can just experience something and still capture what was being said. There’s something to be said about that. And I really find that to be useful. Oh, absolutely. So so moving right forward to what I thought was kind of the most important and most interesting piece was Samsung’s partnership with Google, kind of in two parts. So we have circle to search. And then we had the quick share for Android partnership. So obviously, Samsung and Google have partnered on many things over over over time, this one seemed to be fairly special to Samsung, they spent a lot of time and brought Google on stage to talk about it. And so circle to search just for everybody’s edification here is the idea that anywhere on the screen, you are now able to basically twit a small gesture from the bottom of the screen, trigger your Google lens, basically, you circle something on screen, and then it automatically and I mean, just you have to watch the video, the speed at which it is doing this is phenomenal. And of course that’s you know, internet connectivity, and you know, all kinds of other things going on. But but it was really fluid, you circled a pair of glasses, you circled a dress, you circled a car, and Google lens comes right up. And the Google search shows you what you searched by just circling the image. And so I can think of all of the the times in applications where this will just speed up the search experience for people and solidify, I think solidify Google’s place in search in the future. This is a really powerful piece.

Art Gelwicks 29:20
This is one of those fascinating things because we’ve talked about multiple times in the past. How does Google transition from text search to visual search primarily, or voice search primarily, because we’re moving away from heavy text search? I mean, we’ve got a device in our pockets that is eyeball based. So when you look at something like Google search or circle to search, this to me is fascinating because one it works with anything that is displayed on your phone, whether it’s a live image, whether it’s a video image that you paused, whether it’s a photo that you took now or in the past, doesn’t matter. And it’s a granular part of that image. And they stress this. From a privacy and security standpoint, if let’s say you have a family picture, and in that family picture, there’s an antique table, and you want to know more about that table, so you draw a little circle around that table or you scribble over it, you know, they’ve got like, four different gestures for it. Only that image of that table is sent for the search, it doesn’t send the whole image, it only uses what it absolutely has to as part of the security component. So it’s one of those things that I think, yes, it is an extremely interesting feature. It’s not limited to S Pen, because we say circle the search, we think, okay, maybe it requires the stylus know, if you watch some of the, because everything that was on waiting for the release, all the YouTubers have released all their stuff, and everybody’s demonstrating with their their finger finger searches. No, I just liked the fact that it doesn’t care what you’re searching for. Sometimes we’ve had the ones that are like product searches, like it’ll indentify the products in an image, or they know that I saw demonstrations today where somebody had vacation photos, and they were trying to identify a store in the vacation photo. So they circled it and it went and it looked it up and it found it, that would be arduous, trying to do it manually. Here, it’s almost second nature. So everything now becomes a link to more information, which is really where it needs to be.

Ray Sidney-Smith 31:40
That’s,

Art Gelwicks 31:41
that’s huge.

Ray Sidney-Smith 31:42
Yeah, I think I think the, the, the stage before, this was the ability for you to hum lyrics into Google and for it to go ahead and identify that and tell you the song, that kind of thing. Or tell you the you know, you recite a couple of lines of a particular book, it’s going to tell you the book. Now being able to add this to visual search in such a fluid way. I think it’s really, really the next generation of that kind of being able to search everything right. And if Google’s ultimate mission, right is to organize the world’s information and make it usable, and accessible. The idea here is to is to continue and extend with partners to make sure that happens, certainly on the Android brand devices. And I think this is a fantastic moment of Google doing that. And I don’t spend enough time lauding Google for things, you know, being a Google fan, right? Well told, but I criticize them more than I do anything else, because I want them to be better. And and this is one of those cases where I saw this demonstration, I saw what Samsung and Google did together. And circle, the search is a fantastic tool, I’m really pleased with them. It looks like it works. It works out of the box, it doesn’t seem like it requires you to really think too much about how to do it. And it just does its job. And and that’s what you want from search, you want search to get out of the way and give you what you are trying to navigate toward. And and so I’m looking forward to seeing more of that, especially in a home assistant search, where you might say, Hey, Big G, you know, and do a search and just a lot more fluid with regard to navigating between the mobile device and voice search. And then of course, visual search on top of that. So I can take a photograph of something, and for it to automatically just do what I need it to do without. And this is where AI can really be powerful here to make sure that we’re we’re getting moving forward on those pieces. All right, there’s

Art Gelwicks 33:42
there’s no question. You were talking about? The other one quick share.

Ray Sidney-Smith 33:47
Yeah, let’s do it.

Art Gelwicks 33:49
Google AirDrop. Yeah, that’s what it is. Okay, so let me let me just clarify to anybody who isn’t familiar with what quick share is, and I just kind of gave it away there. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, there’s a thing called AirDrop where you can send whatever a file media image over to another phone device, another iPad. Samsung has had quick share for a while. And you can share between Samsung devices. And I use it a lot. I use it quite a bit. And it works really well. It is consistent. It’s bulletproof. There isn’t a lot of configuration or anything. It just kind of works. In the middle of this. Microsoft tried to do something and it’s still doing something with a drop function in their Edge browser. So it’s like, oh, okay, wait, we have something now. That’s a second one. Well, Google and Samsung, supporting quick share as the standard for all Android devices, that meaning that Google is saying that we will use this to allow any Android to send to any other Android. That’s huge that gets rid of this whole issue. You Don’t have to text people images anymore, you don’t have to email the images anymore, you can use a tool that is basically bullet proof for that transfer. And it’s about time, but to see that kind of throwing behind it, honestly, did not see that one coming did not see that quick share would be one of those big things, but as an advocate, and as a user for it. Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s great that they’re doing that.

Ray Sidney-Smith 35:27
So it sounds to me and clarify me if I’m wrong there, they’re bringing, they’re bringing the nearby share features of Android underneath quick share, and quick shares, basically, coming to the all all encompassing tool for all of the pieces. Fantastic. Yeah, like, a lot of times, you’re just like, I just want to give you this file. Right. And, and all of the rigmarole that is required for you to be able to do so this really flattens the, the playing field on the Android side. And so I think, again, this goes to Samsung and Google understanding their competition, they understand the need for them to be able to continually collaborate, and it kind of is a it’s an olive branch, I’m, I might be reading too much into this, but it’s a it’s an olive branch to Microsoft. In a lot of ways, it’s Microsoft an opportunity now to embrace quick share, and kind of get rid of some of their legacy, you know, features on the windows 10. side. And, and, and Windows 11. side. So I’m hoping I’m hoping that they they see this as an opportunity to really help the entire ecosystem outside of the Mac OS, and iOS and iPad OS, to really have a strong function for being able to share files, again, securely, conveniently. And, and just seamlessly, right, you want it to be a seamless experience for people. So

Art Gelwicks 36:59
and here’s, here’s where I think the game changes significantly as because it’s not going to take long for somebody over on the Apple side of the fence to write an app that will allow you to receive and send based on this quick share. I don’t want to call it a protocol, but quick share standard, because you don’t have to follow the apple rules of sending and receiving through AirDrop. Now it’s basically like a messaging app. So I would expect in fairly short order to see somebody or multiple apps over on the Apple side, to start to tie all these pieces together. Now, to be able to send things through all of this now, there’s still, you know, there’s security and controls and file sizes and things like that. But just to give you a practical example, over the summer, I shot a video that was close to a gig, used quick share to send it to my tablet, edit it and send it back to my phone for then publishing out. It just never had to go to the cloud. Net didn’t have to worry about Wi Fi connectivity or anything else all happened locally. It is absolutely a great way to handle this kind of interchange. So yeah, it made me really happy to see that.

Ray Sidney-Smith 38:11
Yeah. And so I alluded to this earlier, when I talked about the photo emoji, but the whole idea now is that the Galaxy line of phones is bringing online in the s 24 series, photo editing and video editing, editing capabilities that are supposed to be professional level. And again, high level processing being done right there locally on the device. So that you can really have great images and great, you know, moving images video produced right there on the phone, akin to, again, you know, they’re competing with Apple’s notion of using your iPhone as a cinematic camera, in a lot of way, they want to really help bolster their opinion there. So they’re giving us new a quote unquote AI, photo editing capabilities, right, they showed that wonderful, you know, option of being able to circle a person and drag them up closer to the, to the basketball hoop, which again, is an outright lie. Clearly they weren’t that high. But you know, whatever. They’re making fake images. But you know, but but the actual the example that I liked was where the person was in the image, and they had kind of their own reflection behind them and you kind of wanted to get the reflection. And and it was really well done just that that’s a great example of just like you want to clean your image. You don’t need that reflection of the person behind them. And they kind of clean that image up and I think more of that is going to be really powerful and impressive. The two

Art Gelwicks 39:46
things that were interesting about that particular example is one the system who made the recommendation, do you want me to remove this it recognize that that was a clutter aspect of the photo. The second part is is something they mentioned across the board. At any time AI monkey’s around with an image, they are putting a watermark on the image. And they are putting a mark in the metadata of the image that it was aI edited. So, deep fakes are not going to be as easily accomplishable tampering with images, you know, is an image believable, well, it’s been retouched. And here at least there’s some clarity and they recognize upfront, we need to be honest about this. So I was happy to see that they were doing that it’s not perfect by any stretch, but at least it’s an effort. Now

Ray Sidney-Smith 40:33
I felt I felt like it was the right choice to be to apply it looks like two little stars, you know, larger star in a small kind of feels to me like Microsoft co pilots logo a little bit. And so that little superimposed image in the in any anything that has been AI altered, is is the right choice, I think it makes a lot of sense that they that they watermark it in that sense, and it just gives everybody a greater greater just feeling and feeling a sense of security there. With regard to what is real and what is not. Let’s let’s talk a little bit about the hardware itself, they have come out with a number of so they have three models of phone so that everybody is aware. So the s 24 line comes out with the s 24. The s 24 Plus, and the s 24. Ultra. And man, the s 24. And the s 24. Plus, they just they look familiar.

Art Gelwicks 41:31
Like I look familiar.

Ray Sidney-Smith 41:34
They, yeah, they’re basically iPhone bodies with.

Art Gelwicks 41:40
So there they are, there’s, there’s no, there’s no subtle way to state that there’s no way to hide that. I mean, they are identical in look and feel to the the Apple phones and honestly, I’m okay with that. I don’t have an issue with that. Because if that were a bad design choice on Apple side, and then Samsung imitated it, then yeah, I’d have a problem with it. But it’s a good design, it’s a solid design they’re using, if I recall correctly, those ones are using an aluminum outer border, it’s only the Ultra, that is using a titanium border as reinforcement, which again for that one make sense because the ultra doesn’t look like an apple, it is clearly the wreck. It is the monolith yet again. And it is a flat monolith, they’re finally getting rid of that lovely curved edge. And honestly, as a S Pen user, they can’t do that soon enough, because that just drives me nuts.

Ray Sidney-Smith 42:50
I don’t know why they ever have the curved screen with the S pen, it didn’t make much sense. I think it was just and so I’m glad to see it gone. I’m glad to see the flat design, I’m glad that the s 24 Ultra at that price point has the titanium edges, right, you’re going to have a little bit Jeopardy with the device, especially if you’re going to want to have that again just live on a little bit longer to have the the corners of your device be able to take a little bit of a beating that the corners of the s 24 and the S 24 Plus are not going to hold up up to as well. But you can clearly see Apple you know design elements in that we’re talking about a Snapdragon eighth Gen three processor inside of it. That’s across all three of them. The sizes of the screens go from 6.2 inch FHD to 6.7 Q HD, and then 6.8 Q HD on the Ultra. So we’re incrementing up in terms of the screen size, battery sizes are going from 4k Milla ampere hours to 40 905,000. So you’re not getting that much more battery out of the the plus to the Ultra. But hopefully there’s some

Art Gelwicks 44:04
Well, they did call out. Yeah, they did call out the fact that they’re going to leverage their AI processing to help optimize battery usage. So I would expect a bit more. I also expect a bit more of a drain on the battery because they’re talking about these displays going up to 2600 nits, we’d have crazy if they did that brightness in a dark room. You could read by the freakin thing. I mean, that’s just crazy brightness. But supposedly it’s smart enough through not only visual sensors, but three different tier layers of visual response to provide the correct display intensity in any given environment. So I’ll be curious to see what the real world battery life estimates are. I run an S 23 Ultra. And honestly, I’ve never had an issue with its battery. I mean, I can go full day and a half two days without having a problem and I live on the thing so I don’t think there’s really gonna be a problem. I did want to touch on little bit though on the glass, they highlighted an improvement in the glass on the ESP 23 Ultra, what they’re calling Corning Gorilla armor. It’s it’s an upgraded version of the gorilla glass that supposedly, and these are their estimates, it’s three times better than the latest version of the Gorilla Glass. And it has four times more scratch resistance, which I think is great. But the thing that they called out that I don’t remember them ever calling up before, is it’s supposed to reduce screen reflection, by up to 75%. That, to me is a big thing when you’re talking about, you know, again, the black slab of glass reflections around you are what really take away from it from that experience. But if it if it loses that reflectivity, now, it makes that screen look that much brighter, that much darker that much contrast here. So that’s to me, that’s a good thing. Yeah, I

Ray Sidney-Smith 45:55
think, you know, we saw this in at CES, you know, where they were, they were really touting the idea of having a glare free, you know, displays. So in the television space. So I think using the same kind of technology to be able to reduce glare is always going to be powerful. Let’s talk about these cameras. So they okay, they decided to go to a 12 mix a 12 megapixel ultra wide effect 50 pixel wide 10 mix, megapixel 3x telephoto and a 12 Mega megapixel front camera. So that’s standard across the s 24. And the s 24. Plus, when we when we move over to the s 24. Ultra, we get the extra 5x 50 mega pixel telephoto lens. And so somewhere along the way, they figured out that people weren’t using your your camera your phone has what’s your I think yours is 10x telephoto, and so they dropped.

Art Gelwicks 46:55
Well, and but they have a rationale for what they did. And this, this is the rationale. And it makes perfect sense when you play around with the zooms on these, that changed to a 5x 50 megapixel. What that allows them to do is to do a full zoom in at 50 megapixels, and then pull into just the center down to 12 megapixels without losing any image quality. So you pick up the equivalent of that 10x Zoom, without having that digital rendering version of the zoom. So that combination of lenses, combined with the system being smart enough to use the right lens at the right time. I think that’s an excellent combination. And they justify it, they said look, that mid range of people zooming into about 5x is usually where they’ll zoom into 10x, you got to be pretty far away from something to justify using 10x. A lot of times, what you would do is you would do a 5x and then, you know, pinch and expand. And that breaks up the image quality. But if you’re doing that five exit 50 megapixels rather than 12. Well, now I can instead of pinching to expand, I can crop to reduce and pull that forward, back to the 12 megapixels with what I had before. And I have a great quality of the image itself. So I think I mean, the s 23 Ultra and the S 23 line, their resume is just mind boggling. I’ve played with it in various locations. And it just floors me how good it is. And they use the obligatory Kpop concert demonstration to show how good it is. But they’re not kidding. I mean that is a that is a quality piece and they were focused around this is This is that kind of iterative growth of putting out the lenses putting out that functionality in the camera. And then listening to the user base and observing how the user base is using it and then modifying the camera structures in the hardware accordingly. Not trying to create this incredibly new different thing pop up lens, whatever. No, it’s just that iteration that makes it that much better. So I think this is an excellent step in the right direction for them. But if somebody is expecting to get like a 500 megapixel 30 times optical zoom on the back, yeah, that’s not there because 99.9% of the population doesn’t need that.

Ray Sidney-Smith 49:31
Yeah, I think I think I was just gonna underscore the thing that you said which is that they are paying attention to their users. And that’s really important for Samsung to both showcase. It’s good for people to be aware of the one change in the ultra from the other specs is that their megapixel, their their wide lens is 200 megapixel over the 50 megapixel wide lens is on the 24 and the 24 plus. So there you’re getting definitely a bump up in terms of capabilities on the number of of line CES and the megapixel density on those on that wide lens. And I think, you know, it’ll time will tell us whether or not that makes sense. But I think it makes sense that they paid attention. And they and they really watch what was happening on users devices and made those adjustments. Items. I

Art Gelwicks 50:19
think, just one last thing to call out, if you take the three devices and put them side by side. This is clearly another statement of Samsung saying s 23 s 23 plus s 23 Effies, s 24 s 24. Plus, those are the general population devices. The Ultras are just that those are the pro devices. Those are the high ends, we’re putting the big guns in there, putting the heavy duty stuff in there. And visually, they look like completely different phones. Functionally, they look like they’re different phones, even though they work the same. So to me, I think, again, as a longtime note user, and since I killed the note line, this again is another statement of saying, Hey, this is the big boy on the block. And everything else learns from this. So yeah,

Ray Sidney-Smith 51:12
so memory and storage wise, they’re starting out at 128 gigabytes going up to 256. It’s eight gigabytes in terms of of RAM on the devices. Curious on the s 20. Fours. What what that means, but I’m guessing that a lot of this is being pushed down to the different chips, and so doesn’t need as much on the primary. I’m not sure they’re

Art Gelwicks 51:39
the eight, the eight gig of RAM. I don’t think it’s an issue. I can’t see anybody who’s getting an ultra getting 128 gig of storage. If they do, they’re just asking for aggravation. If you’re gonna if you’re gonna buy the big, big joy, give him space to play. So

Ray Sidney-Smith 51:57
yeah, it starts at 256 for the plus and the end the ultra so they don’t even give you 128 there Yeah, you gotta go with the big 612 gigabytes of of of memory on the 24 Plus, and the ultra going up to a terabyte on the ultra half, half a terabyte on the plus. So you’re given quite a bit of storage space. Obviously you have the the KNOX cloud they’re calling it Noxon, Citrix. Now, let’s talk a little bit about I’ll actually cover pricing. So pricing, preorder started today, January 17 2024. It’ll be available June 31 2024. And that is across all of the three phones that they announced today. And of course, we’re going up in increments. So the es 23. Fe is coming out at 600. The s 23 is now 700, the s 2424 Plus and ultra 800 1013 $100 starting out, so it gives you lots of good reasons to enter the market. And I feel like for their flagship phones, this makes a lot of sense. And so And

Art Gelwicks 53:03
since we’re talking about things you could keep for seven years now, if you spread that price out, okay, you’re talking if you take an $800 phone, and I can make it run for seven years, well, technically, it’s $100 year phone, now we’ve got a different conversation. Right,

Ray Sidney-Smith 53:18
exactly that that s 24 you’re starting out on the baseline, that’s 800 you can spread that out, it’s 110 ish dollars over the course of that timeframe. So very, very reasonable people to be able to get a really nice phone that works for them. The I’m going to I’m gonna let’s let’s talk about Knox matrix, privacy and security dashboard issues. Because I think that’s for us to kind of circle back to then we could talk about this announcement around Samsung health, because I’m very skeptical. Let’s let’s talk about the KNOX matrix. Oh,

Art Gelwicks 53:56
did you so I’m, I’m a NOx user I have. And just to explain what NOx is. Nox isn’t a separate encrypted partition. I’m not going to do this justice. You can google for the details. But it’s a separate encrypted separate encrypted partition on your phone that allows you to store applications data, whatever and it requires separate authentication on the device to be able to access that now. Knox matrix, if I’m understanding this correctly, takes that encrypted data, synchronizes it to the cloud and then allows it to synchronize down to other devices. So for example, s 23 Ultra that I have and I’ve got an S eight or s eight plus tablet. Right now if I have Knox running on the two devices, if I put something in Knox on one, it’s not available on the other with not Knox matrix. It is. So think about a highly secured, encrypt Did storage that replicates across your devices? That’s really useful that takes Knox to the next level of making it a viable use platform, especially on these mobile things that can disappear that easily. I mean, it’s it’s a very simple thing with something like NOCs, if you take a picture of a receipt, you take a lot of times people like, for example, medical cards, or insurance cards or social security card, you don’t want to leave that in your gallery photo gallery. You don’t want to stored as a file, you don’t want to park it in Google Drive, you don’t want to. So where are you going to put it? Well, if you park it in something like Knox, in the device that you’re keeping, at this point, if you lose that device that’s gone. Because it’s a single device solution, Knox matrix makes it no longer a single device solution allows you to span across your devices. So I think it’s a it’s a good logical growth of how Knox works as a tool and as a platform. And I think, when we talk about these, this could be what kind of finally kicks knocks to the mainstream to get people to start using it and start using it more effectively. Because I really think they should. I mean, it’s a much better solution. I’ve started migrating a lot of the private information that I would park in secure cloud based services over to this, because you see how those secure cloud based services are struggling so much with breaches and things like that. There has never been to my knowledge, and please comment if I’m wrong, but there’s never been a Knox breach that I know of.

Ray Sidney-Smith 56:47
That’s fantastic. And hopefully there won’t be. Because, you know, really, Samsung’s reputation is on the line here as to their capabilities of security on the platform. And I do trust Samsung to be able to make that work. So, so that’s NOx matrix and this whole piece, and it’s just a kind of, unless you wanted to talk about anything else, they talked about Samsung health. And I wanted to close out the show, because they announced a new product, very vaguely. But they they talked about some interesting pieces about utilizing Galaxy AI on and with the Samsung health. And so I’m a former, you know, Galaxy watch where and I, of course, the pixel watch line, because I have a Pixel phone. And so it was interesting to see how Samsung kind of had their flavor of Samsung health. What are your thoughts being a Samsung health user? With these new features? I, I

Art Gelwicks 57:52
use Samsung health every day, all day long. I have it on my watch. I use it constantly. I do things like checking EKG, checking, heart rate, checking stress, water, all the all the things, check all the boxes. So does this help? I like the idea that AI in quotation marks will help with the interpretation and aggregation of that data. I like the fact that they’re talking about doing things like monitoring heart rate while you sleep, because currently it doesn’t do that. And that that’s a really useful thing. And they they brought up the point of sleep apnea and, and stress how much of a thing like yeah, good use good use case, they talked about a medication tracker, a reminder of, oh, that’s fine. That’s an app. And then they brought out this thing called My vitality score. Okay. I appreciate the fact of coming up with something like this, but unless you’re gonna have some really thick transparency on what this score is, how it’s composed, what it’s based out of what it impacts how you react to it, it’s just going to be another made up medical number. So I’m not sure how that’s going to come across. But I highly want to reserve judgment until I see this stuff in place in inaction. Samsung health seems to run just up to the edge of being useful. And then kind of trips over and over and over again, gets brutally close, but it’s not quite there. And they talked about things like booster cards with tips on better health. Okay, guys, you’re just filling in air now. If they are able to start using the AI capabilities in this to provide some better insight and some better learning, then it’s worthwhile, then I think it’s gonna be good. And again, I’m running a galaxy watch for the six has better sensors in it if they continue to build on those sensors, and we start to see new sensor sets for feeding data. And that’s really where all this, this benefits, more data we feed it, the more it has to work with. And then they highlighted the device and turn up the lights.

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:00:14
Yeah, so they announced the Galaxy ring, which is basically a competitor, competitor to the aura, potentially even competitor to the whoop band that some app competitive athletes wear. And so this is a health tracking device, akin to the Apple Watch, or to your Samsung Galaxy, watch four or the pixel watch where it’s tracking health data is tracking metrics. And it’s capable of then feeding that into Samsung health. They gave virtually no information on its round.

Art Gelwicks 1:00:50
It’s round, it’s got a hole in the middle. I was always said, that

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:00:55
was baffled. They don’t tell us when it’s going to be released. They don’t tell us any details about what it’s going to what the what number of sensors are going to be in there, what it’s going to track. I’m, I’m almost, you know, convinced that they have a 5050 chance of putting the product out. Like it could it could happen. So,

Art Gelwicks 1:01:13
so I so I got a question. And in the pre show, I was chatting back and forth with a Gousto. And he goes, Why would you have a ring? If you have a galaxy watch? And it’s a very valid question, if you have the watch. Why? What would the ring provide for you not knowing anything about the sensors that are on the ring or anything like that it’s life anything like that? That’s what we have to find out? What where does the Venn diagram of the watch and the ring intersect? Because remember, with the ring, you can’t have things like oh, I don’t know, a display. There are only certain sensors that you can have available. So Now granted, it’s all the time consistent recording. So there’s a lot more data you can aggregate. And if you can move some of the data capture from the watch to the ring, so that it’s not an duplication, but they’re, they’re compatible. Now you may be able to provide a much better set and I know people who who can’t sleep with a watch on they don’t you know, they don’t do that I do. But I do for the sleep tracking. If I didn’t have to do that, well, maybe that’s not a bad thing. But since we only know it’s a round piece of jewelry, this is all speculation we have no idea timeline or anything else. I think this may be I think it’s gonna come out. And I think maybe 12 People will buy it. And I’m not gonna be one of them. Because I got the other stuff.

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:02:49
I think I think this does this navigates the the very, very small place between non watch wares, right? If you’re, if you’re not a watch where then this solves that problem. And I can very much see this being a solution for those folks that are that are not aura ring, you know, compatible just because they don’t know, or a brand. Samsung is well known, they’re trusted. And it’s going to work, hopefully, both across Android and iOS, just utilizing an app, it’s probably not going to be as strong in terms of data collection. But really, the ring will still capture the data based on the sensors that it has, which means that it can do some really good stuff there. You’re right, there are opportunities where I’d like to take my watch off and go to sleep and wearing the ring for that problem. Also, it means that you know, some mornings I wake up and I have you know, kind of a watch shaped indent in part of my face. Because I will sleep on the wristband or I’ll sleep on the watch face that will drain the battery. And and Google has done really a good job of stopping as actually protects against that for the most part. But I still doesn’t stop me from having you know, sometimes an imprint of a face when I wake up and it takes it takes a little while for that to disappear. So you can’t really roll out of bed into it into a Zoom meeting with a with an imprint on your face. So I think that the ring solves for that problem, especially if you need to charge your watch overnight. Right? So there’s there’s that issue where oh gosh, I didn’t charge the watch, it’s not going to go ahead and capture the data. If you have the ring on, then it solves that problem because it’s going to last you over in that sense.

Art Gelwicks 1:04:38
And I would I would agree with you if it took that long to charge the watch. But thing is you can charge the watch in 45 minutes, not even you can get it back to 50% from almost dead and the time it takes to you know, shower, shave and brush your teeth done move on. So it’s not a difficult reason or it’s not a good act. Do you say, Well, you know, I can’t have it for an extended period of time. Like I said, some people just can’t wear watches. Some people haven’t, you know, there, there is an audience for the thing. I can’t help but think, though that they would be better served, releasing a device like their old Samsung Gear, fitness trackers, then putting in cars that you know, this thing is going to hit like a $299 price point, it probably, you know, I’ll speculate that I don’t know what an aura ring goes for. But I’m sure it’s, it’s in that neck of the woods. So now I got a device that is much easier to lose physically, then a watch, and it is much lower functionality. So I now here’s where I would like to see it do. And this is again, this is me just totally speculating. One, put a temperature sensor. And that actually works to have your O to sensor and three, have your EKG be able to do your EKG reading on it. If you can do those basic ones. Now you’ve got something that makes a lot of sense. Oh, and the one thing that none of them can do yet, when they figure out how to make it measure blood sugar gameover, if they can, if they can make that ring, measure blood sugar, and get FDA approval for it. Yeah, they’ll they’ll sell those things faster, and they can make them because that’s one of the perfect reasons to have it on all the time. Yeah, that’ll be heavier,

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:06:35
that’ll be Galaxy ring version 10,

Unknown Speaker 1:06:37
they can’t, it’s got to be a while,

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:06:40
you’d have to have very big ring to hold the battery to be able to do some of those to be able to power those sensors. That’s,

Art Gelwicks 1:06:48
that’s what I wonder. And again, somebody somebody who either has an aura, I don’t know, if you have an aura ring. I know somebody who actually just got one. So I’m going to talk to her about what her experiences with it. I have never worn one or used one. But I just can’t I can’t help but think it’s such a limited piece. So

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:07:09
yeah, don’t have an aura ring. I have contemplated it many times. But I’ve always felt as though my watch was capturing all the data that I needed to. And it was capturing more limited data, and therefore just didn’t really fit my use case. So but they’re getting better. I mean, the newest or rings are more and I’m hoping the Galaxy ring does well I honestly do, I hope that it does actually start to capture more data, if it can pull an HRV. If it can pull an SPO. Two, at the very least, then you’re given quite a bit of good information. You know, these devices are struggling to do continuous heart rate monitoring out the box, right. So this is this is a real problem, just because of battery life. So if we can figure out the battery problem, then we get a real opportunity to go ahead and expand upon the sensors and the capabilities of those pieces.

Art Gelwicks 1:08:04
So just out of curiosity, here I’m looking at. Let’s see, looking at the patent related to it. Supposed to, yeah, everything we talked about sleep apnea, blood, oxygen changes, maintaining heart rate, those are kind of nice things for for a ring type device. Because you could go if that’s all it’s going to measure, then yeah, it makes perfect sense. And it doesn’t have to be we think about a ring as something you’re wearing all the time. It may be an intermittent, intermittent device, it may be the thing you put on when you go to bed. Exactly, that’s and that does that measuring set, well, now you’ll have the watch to deal with or anything else. It’s like, okay, that may be and then you can let the watch sit in charge overnight. So it may be a very good, complementary device, rather than competing. So let’s

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:09:01
say so I also like complementary in the sense that like, if you get a weird reading on the watch, because there’s a malfunction, the ring can also reading and tell you, Hey, you’re not having a heart attack, you’re just working out. Right. You know, it’s, you know, there have been circumstances where people get weird readings from from a watch. And so having that other device to basically say, hey, no, that’s actually not the case. You know, that can be really, I think, comforting for people, especially, you know, you don’t want to distress somebody, you know that they’re having a medical event, even though it’s not ice telling you that you’re having some kind of medical event when you’re not. So it, I think there’s I think there’s a space here for this.

Art Gelwicks 1:09:38
And the more I think about it, it can actually be an extension set of sensors too. So if we think about for example, if you’re wearing the ring on your right hand, you had the watch on your left hand, well now you have a separation where you can do the body mass calculation without having to stand there with your two fingers on the watch. You can just say measure it, and it can measure it On its own, you can spread out the heart rate measure, and it can, you know, do water calculations, I think because it has an extra set of sensors to work with. And maybe that’s what this becomes, again, is an extension of the sensor set, rather than just a dedicated piece. I’d be curious to see.

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:10:19
Yeah, we’ll only see once they get it out into the world, and we actually see it being used in a large scale population among the 12 people who buy it. So

Art Gelwicks 1:10:30
alright, we’re about that one.

Ray Sidney-Smith 1:10:31
I know I know. We are coming to a close for this commentary on the Samsung Galaxy unpacked January 2024. event. Thank you art for joining us here for my pleasure. Thank you very much. All right, everybody, we are going to close out. As you all know, you can follow us on socials. If you’re inside personal productivity club, you’re where you need to be, feel free to follow along with us there. We’re currently not putting out new episodes on a regular basis. But I think this is kind of fun for a Gousto. And I want to do so when I are available. And these large scale events are happening to kind of poke in and do these special episodes. We’re going to do that for now until we’re able to come back and have enough time to do Anything But Idle justice in a full time perspective. So you can follow us on social you can see the links and so on and so forth in the show notes once those are out, but either way, I want to thank you for listening and watching along for the Anything But Idle productivity news podcast. Until next time, here’s to your productive life.

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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.

How to Start a New Job With a 30-60-90 Day Plan and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week.

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://anythingbutidle.com for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!

If you’d like to continue discussing any news from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Headlines Part A

Headlines, Part B

Tool of the Week

Featured Story of The Week

Announcements

Notes

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello, hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle. The Productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:11
I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:13
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 123, how to start a new job with a 30-60-90 day plan. And we’re recording this on July 24 2023. Each week of this year, I cover the productivity and related technology news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of productivity. And so with that, let’s get into our headlines of Augusto. What’s our first story this week,

Augusto Pinaud 0:37
on the first story come from the economic times. And he says strategies to deal with burn out and work related stress. And so it’s a good article talks about the hustle culture talk about things that I don’t do, but I understand and work for people, you know, like said, clear boundaries, I I don’t do that I have never done that I have never understood that part of the work life balance, I havea balance. But at the same time, the article talks about self care. And that’s something that is for me part of that balance. And I’m very clear on that part. And maybe that’s a reason why I’ve been so lucky into not needed, you know, that coming back and forward life balance. But and then in the conclusion, or then it talks a little bit about, you know, a survey from the Society of Human Resources Management that revealed that 89% of employees consider work life balance, an important factor into reducing that burnout. So what do you thought about the article?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:53
Well, as we’ve talked about, many times, in the past, I like the concept of life work integration, as opposed to the term work life balance, life work, and integration, gives me the sense that life is first and work is second. You know, and and then integration is better than balance, because it’s not about work being equal in terms of life. But the fact that we’re integrating our life and work together in a way that works for us. And that’s what creates sustainability and helps to to not just reduce burnout, but alleviate burnout altogether, right, we want to be able to to stop a burnout before it becomes a problem in our in our world, work related stress is necessary. And it’s only a problem when it becomes distress. And so we need to figure out whether categorically or volume wise, we have too much or too many negative stressors. So, again, this article is helpful for you, if you are feeling that sense of overwhelm that sense of, you know, low mood, whatever the things are, that that trigger you to know that you’re under stress, and you know, ways in which you can kind of mitigate that so I thought was really good article that for those who are may may be feeling this pressure at work, this is a good article to review to see maybe what things you might want to put into place to overcome it onto our next Article.

Augusto Pinaud 3:21
Article come from enjoying your mind, and some I was pleased to six minutes really feels a lot longer than that, but it’s called how to better manage your time and it’s from exploring your mind. And, you know, it’s it talks about, you know, a little bit of a journal or a study published on the Journal of Psychology and talks about the positive influence on perception and reduction of his trust and then talks about set clear goals, plan your days pricing, your to do’s and eliminate distractions, use time management techniques, we have talked about them in many podcasts ProductivityCast and others, and delegate whatever is possible. And that was when I started laughing, because normally, he said different kinds of stress, distress that that people need to have, but it doesn’t take to be with the stress you are referring to people cannot delegate it’s usually the people who is stuck with this kind of delegation. And remember, remind me when I start working in David David on getting things done, you know, 20 years ago, and they say delegate and I remember Yeah, the problem is my list is delegated to me and waiting for me to do it didn’t work very well. But now that does change a little on I do you now have access to things like TaskRabbit Sandow things that 20 years ago didn’t exist and they help but the still, for most other people who I feel this article is erected to delegate is most likely not possible. Anyways, they talk about that organize your workspace, it’s a good checklist to go and check what they what they have.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:12
Yeah, now, I will say this about delegation, most people think that they’re not able to delegate work down. But it’s not about always delegating down. Sometimes it’s delegating up. And so many times you have to say to your superiors or to your, to your, whatever, you know, the titles that are equal to you at your level, that, that some of that work needs to be done by them. And this comes to just like an understanding about your work culture, your hierarchy, all of those kinds of things. But if a, if an employer or a manager or supervisor comes to you and just keeps piling on you, going back to the prior article about burnout, right, that’s a recipe for burnout, right? If they keep thinking that you’re the most productive person on the team, and they just keep piling work on you, that’s not fair to you, right. And so you need to be able to, like number seven on the list, say, No, right, learning to say no, but stepping back and saying, Well, if you can do this part of the work, then I can actually focus on the priorities that you gave me yesterday, last week, the week before that I’m working on for this particular project, that’s more important. And then we’re still moving forward. And then I can take on the rest, once I’ve made X, Y, and Z kind of moved forward as well. So sometimes you do need to delegate up and out, in order to be able to do that. The other is in your personal world. I always feel like you know, having kids is, is sometimes helpful, because you can delegate down to the little ones, to do some things that’s that they listen, and I can see your face. But you know, you could delegate down, you can delegate just to a spouse or partner, you can also choose a friend, you know, I’ve talked about this many times, you know, if you have a friend who loves cleaning, and you love doing laundry, you can you can basically task swap, right and so therefore, you can drop off your laundry at his or her place at their place. And then you can go over and they can come over to your place clean, you can do their lawn, whatever, you figure out what’s appropriate for each other. And what you’re willing to do, you know, like, Maybe you love folding laundry, but you really hate washing the load, or you maybe hate folding laundry, yeah, hate folding laundry, but you don’t mind washing the load, maybe I’m just inviting them over. For to watch like, you know, your favorite show you that you and your friend loved watching together, and they’ll be willing to fold the laundry with you or their presence there just a presence helps to make the the, the experience a little bit more pleasurable. So think through these processes of how you can delegate and or task swap, so that you can share responsibilities with people that are not necessarily inside of your, you know, typical family structure, but are in within your sphere. And it can be mutually beneficial, right? Maybe you love grocery shopping, they don’t love grocery shopping. So you can kind of be their Instacart, right, and they could do your laundry and maybe clean your house. And that’s, that’s equal weight to them, right? They they hate it so much. All right, that they’re willing to do these extra things for you, as as replacement for you doing this one thing that’s really difficult for them. So you can kind of barter in essence, these kinds of delegated tasks. So give that some thought and let us know how it works. Onward very,

Augusto Pinaud 8:29
very interesting. Somebody wants to clean my office, let me know I do productivity coaching. Anyway, the next article comes the savannah post, and it’s called How to create a winning feeling every single day. And, you know, the article from this reading is started saying I am a progressive a professional procrastinator, when it comes to writer is this thing that I must want to do. Jet, I seem to never run out of ideas or inventions to distract myself from Guilty as charged. And I think we all have that thing in which it’s something that we really like, and we procrastinate on it and you know, we get it imagine the work work or get things I remember writing. Specifically when somebody asked me how long is the window that you need for right? And I look at this person and said, What do you mean, I want to have at least three hours. And this person started laughing at me in the call. So while you’re laughing and say how many three hours blocks are in their calendar. I said, Well, that’s exactly my whole and what we work was into how to make those writing blogs half an hour and how to make them very effective. So I can Both those into 30 minutes. And that one of the things that when you discovered some of the things that you are a professional procrastinator, you can start getting that winning feeling every day actually say it is about progress. It is about if you think is too big of a problem, collagen is smaller pieces. And if it’s still overwhelming, that piece start too big, because it is the process is what you do consistently, that will give you that success. And I don’t remember when this came probably a couple of years ago around pandemic time. Jeff Segal, who has been in personal productivity club, create a program that was called commit to sit if my memory serves me, well 30 days, okay, and he drives you to meditation. And he drives you to Darwaza commit to sit commit to sit and meditate and start from some short guided meditations to a much longer. And it was a particular time because it was a pandemic time. But that thing was very useful for me to really take my practice of meditation to a different level. And what make it was exactly that I was going to go there, and the minute meditation was already created, and it was already ready to go. And I didn’t need to do or invent or create anything, everything was there. So look for tools like that said, you can specify the process that what is what it is the purpose, and the 15, under sorry, call that I really enjoy. And it was write a failure statement. And we used to create this statements on our mind of how things are going to go wrong, I’m very, very good at those. And the reality is when you write them down, you may discover that, that in your mind is a complete disaster in paper. It’s not that. So that may allows you to continue moving forward.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:23
All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 12:27
Our next story comes from your story.com and is the power of music, transforming mood, and performance. And I will let you talk because this is a topic and an article that I not only really enjoy, but that I apply consistently. And I want to talk a little bit about it. So I’m going to let you go first, this

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:52
now I thought it was a really interesting article. And I think that anybody who is interested in how your mood and performance is affected by sound should definitely read. And as you know, we still I’ve been a huge fan of brain.fm for many, many years, and I’ve used many other types of I’ve used binaural beats, I’ve used all kinds of different technologies to be able to basically get your brain in particular wave states in order to be productive. And so, you know, this is definitely well within the kind of range of information that I really love. Because it it it’s an area where like you don’t have to really do anything to get get the productivity boost, right, like you just have to hit play and, and listen to music while you’re doing stuff, right. So it’s a really, really cool concept there. But of course, the more you focus on some of these things can also be really useful. So like not being just ambient music playing in the background, but then sitting and focusing on that particular music. Allah say meditating and listening to the sound of, you know, waves or the sound of rain and using that as a focal point for your mind can also be really useful in a lot of ways. So what were your thoughts regarding this whole article?

Augusto Pinaud 14:13
No, no, it’s exactly what you said. And you know, why don’t you just live examples I have said for many years, I do my quick review to batavi Nine symphony and have been doing it for now 20 years. So when the double NINE Symphony start my brain automatically start flicking or switch when review time. And I tell story that is very funny. Somebody knew that I really love Beethoven Ninth Symphony, and I was traveling in Mexico and they invited me to see the Mexican orchestra nine symphony. So we went there and a star and as soon as I started start getting this itch, I get what he needs. What do we suddenly what like, Oh, I’m getting ready for week review, but I haven’t been least appropriate place compiled out or i for i don’t remember it was the technology of the time it came out. And I did the quick review, I say enjoy the live concerts, because that was what the brain wants. That’s the power that it has. I use it, as you said, depending the kind of work, I have music, I have a specific playlist for writing for writing certain kinds of things and playlists for writing others, meditation concentration. So if you believe in this power of music, and I do look into that, and it’s been very fun to teach this to my kids, because they now especially my daughter was older, depending on her mood, you will pay if you pay attention, you will see the kind of music that she’s hearing. And it’s exactly that and for my son, it’s for for sleeping it there is a particular meditation that we use every night. And when we listen to that meditation, he asleep much better than when we don’t. And and what I said much better, is most of the times yeah, no nine words do not end up in our head. So it’s a win win in that case. So read that and if you like, enjoy it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:25
Yeah, and just one other point here is, is that the choice of music that you listen to is important. Alright, so this is not just like any, any old music will do. As I said, I listened to break down FM and that’s a specific type of music for for specific productivity purposes. That might be sleep, napping, having focus, those kinds of things. But at the same time, that’s not my personal music. And there have been studies done that show that when you get to choose your own music and listen to your own music, you can have a better and or different expectations of yourself while you’re working. And therefore have that beneficial mood lift beneficial productivity. So just kind of give that some consideration because what it might mean is that you’re listening to your own music, let’s say binaural beats generated underneath the music, that is you’re playing two different types of music in your ears at the same time, that can be out of the same device, it’s just you’re playing the binaural beats underneath the music that’s yours, or you’re listening to this pre created music that may not be yours, and may not also be your style of music, and therefore not may not be, you know, useful for you up tempo music is going to be a little bit more peppy and, and upbeat and happy. So you’re gonna get a little bit more of those feelings, if you listen to a fugue is gonna be a little bit more, you know, slow and kind of melancholy. And so you’re gonna start to feel that those levels of of sadness. So be mindful that, you know, if you really like sad music, and you try to be productive, maybe that’s not going to work for you. So just kind of keeping those things in mind as you as you choose your music selection, and also where you might be working, right. So if you have a coffee shop, and they’re playing music, that’s going to be caustic, because they don’t want you to be there. Right? That’s gonna be very different and difficult for you to work there. If their music is designed to irritate you and make sure that you leave because they want to turn over turn over tables. So and that is something that coffee shops, do cafes will play music that’s that’s a little bit more, you know, frustrating, so that, you know, you’ll you’ll have your coffee and move along as opposed to stay there and working. So just keep that in mind. All right, onward to our final productivity. Focus Article of the week.

Augusto Pinaud 18:41
This is where they they agreed with the article and because the article came from Microsoft from I was saying the pursue passive income and says productivity habits trusted by the world’s most successful and trip annoyed and the first one is get a birdie and let me clarify. I am a big proponent of wake up early. If that works for you. Warren Buffett have haggin das for breakfast every day on Hiplife and k is his breakfast. So if you go for what well would you follow that then it started at 345 in the morning with Tim Cook having Haagen Dazs ice cream, okay, if I have a Haagen Dazs every morning, I will roll to the office again there were no need for me to use a vehicle and but it works great for other people. So what I have said over the years about these articles is now this benefit these people there is people who works great from 11am or 11pm. Sorry, to five in the morning and that Easter time think not necessarily on what is working for Tim Cook on or others but what is working for you okay, When they say, outsource, and delegate, don’t fear, failure, learn to say now, again, all this requires you to build a system, it’s very easy for a person at that level, when they are the CEO of General Motors, the CEO, or the president of MIT, to have a whole system behind already created, they’re not creating the system, they are getting into the system, they may improve it, but they are not most people is not in those conditions. So it’s not that you cannot outsource and delegate. And and you mentioned early today, Instacart, I do Instacart. And when people asked me, he’s about a little bit more expensive, yes, it is a little bit more expensive. But the relationship, a little bit of cost versus me not spending an hour in the groceries is worth it. So things like that, when there is a couple of things that I do with my kids that require me basically to drive three hours around to drop them and then drive back to pick up the kid dropping them different plays. Okay, and when that happened, I get an Uber, okay, because Uber drive me, Okay, we just stopped here, he jump in, keep jump down, we drive, and then those three hours I can be working on the phone or writing or doing whatever I want. So that’s a way to outsource and delegate. But don’t think that unless you are at that level, or do you have built that structure, you’re going to be able to delegate and outsource us, these people do.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:39
Yeah, I just underscoring your statement there, which is that many times, if you are an elite, CEO of some major corporation, you’re dealing with a very different set of resources. And, and so your mileage may vary. So, you know, I think some of the statements here are very generic and useful, you know, just like the prior articles about learning to say no, and so on and so forth. learning to say no, for Jeff Bezos is going to be very different than learning to say no, for you in your corporate environment. So just kind of keeping that in mind, you know, checking the reality factor there, that these these folks are, you know, very well resourced. And, and if you are, well, that’s fantastic. I laud you for being in that space. But for most of us, the rest of us, we’re not quite in that space. And it can be frustrating when we think that oh, well, I should be able to do what these other folks are doing. And that’s not really possible, because they have, you know, umpteen assistants, they have people who are who are working, you know, to make sure they’re every waking moment is productive. So they are doing all of these, this externalized, they’re externalizing, all of this work on to other people. And that’s, that’s what allows them to get up at four 3am Because they can go to bed at 9pm. Because they’re there, they’re sleeping on the plane on the way to Singapore, right? Like it’s they get the opportunity to basically do those kinds of things that we we can’t do, you know, I can’t constantly be in a mode of transportation going to different places, and sleeping in those in those places, and making up for the loss of time by virtual flying across time zones, right. Like there are people who do that, right that that that actually play the time zone game, so that they get more sleep across various time zones as they’re as they’re making their way throughout their workweek. Good for them. But that’s not for everybody. So with that, that ends our headlines and kind of part A of the show. And the first part of the show which our productivity headlines are we’re going to now take a word from our sponsor this week, and then we’ll be back to do the technology articles for this week, we’ll see after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 23:41
Well, working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating and there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core. We provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie, visit anything but idle.com forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiast so you can find people who use methods and tools you do to, again, head over to anything but idle.com forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:51
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith Joined by of course good to pan out for a second half of our show. And so we’re going to talk about Our technology headlines now a Gousto what’s our first technology headline this week,

Augusto Pinaud 25:05
or first one is shiny frog release, Bear 2.0. And I’m not a user of bear, but I know a couple of my friends who swear by this publication, burr is basically a note taking on asteroids, you can do tables, you can do sections that hide footnotes, nested textiles, this Kachin really was, you know, an AI note taken in this an asteroids, you know, on on the way or it’s similar to to the limitations to obsidian or, or Rome or craft or notions. That’s what they tried to do. And they recode beer for the 2.0 version, and it’s now available on the Apple store.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:55
Yeah, I think I think bear came onto onto the market as being an apple focused notetaking application that was very friendly to those who wanted markdown. And so it gives folks who who write in Markdown that capability and they’ve done really well. Still small user base, but I think a very strong product. And I think that, you know, if you are interested in trying out a different notetaking application, check out bear, you know, have they have they released one that goes cross platform? Or is it all still apple? I believe it’s all still Apple

Speaker 2 26:29
things still old? Apple? Yeah, yeah. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:33
just kind of keep that in mind that it is an apple centric product. All right, on to our next technology article Augusto

Augusto Pinaud 26:39
are mixed article is about Apple, and they release product security update, took it down because of about release it again. Well, I think is a great thing that they can pull this rapid security responses, and the first release an issue had, so they pull it out, they release it last week. And then now this week, today, actually, they release Apple, see iOS 16.6 and the equivalent for the Mac and the iOS. And so if you have an Apple device, click the Update button, because there is update waiting free.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:23
Fantastic. Onward.

Augusto Pinaud 27:26
Now our next is Gmail is bringing Calendly like Calendly, it’s an application or service that you can pay and then integrate with your calendar. And then it will tell you, you know what, what availability you have, and they are even going to allow you to take paid appointments, that is one of the things that Kalyn Lee do. So those two news are very interesting for small businesses, especially those who already are in Google, because it will allow them one to use the service to eliminate maybe the extra service and integrate everything in one place. So again, I think this will be very, very interesting. I don’t know if they are already available for everybody. To be honest with you, I don’t know, it

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:23
should be available for almost everyone I’d be I’d be curious if anyone still has not gotten access to it. So just to give you an idea of kind of describing through what’s going to what you’re going to experience. Now when you are in in a Gmail compose window, you are going to see a new drop down menu or you’re going to see an icon that looks like a little calendar icon within the compose window. When you click on the drop down the three dots to give you more options, you’re then going to see an option that basically says create a calendar event, that’s going to be on an email itself. So you’re going to you’re going to basically take the subject of the email. And that’s going to give you the ability to create a calendar event from that particular email. And then, and then the other option will basically pop out a little calendar on the side, you’ll be able to select the times you’re available, and then it will place those into the email. And then you will be able to send that email to folks, when they click on the time they’re also available. It will then create the event and place it into your into both of your calendars. That’s that’s the fluidity of what you’re what you should be experiencing with regard to this particular item. So it’s a it’s a it’s really powerful. I’m I’m I’m really looking forward to seeing more of this come from Google. This is going to this is going to obviously be a huge challenger to Calendly and to many other tools that are like this once hub schedule once all of those various tools that are out there that are that are doing this process. So I mean should be rolling out to me everybody I’m trying to look at to see who doesn’t have it yet. But you’ll, you’ll have it soon enough, it should be rolling out pretty quickly within the systems. But this is this is Google’s goal to centralize power within Gmail and Google Calendar. And they have the power to be able to do so they have the user base to be able to do so. And I’m really pleased to see them doing this, especially the paid option, you know, getting getting this, this whole freelancer, problem solved for people just being right in your email, I think is going to be really great. They currently have the ability within Google workspace. So if you have a business, Google account, where you’re where you have your own email, you know, your name, your business name.com, you know, set up in your system, you have the ability to set up an appointment schedule, so you can share a link, and someone can directly book into your calendar, but it doesn’t integrate with external tools, right, so you have the option of either Google meet or choosing an option later in person, but you don’t have the ability to say I want to integrate with Zoom. And so therefore, you know, every time someone schedules is going to create a zoom link, and put you in a Zoom meeting. So there are some limitations there. In that sense, I hope that as Google moves forward, it gives you those external integration partners so that you can, you can have that capability. Alright, on to our next story Gousto.

Augusto Pinaud 31:21
Our next story is Google’s AI powered Notes app is now called notebook L. M, and it lounge last week. So the app formerly known as tailwind give you you know, more AI model. And you can now use it as notebook help him have you play with notebook LM, or you’re on the waiting list. As I am, I haven’t,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:48
I’m on the waiting list. I’ve not I’ve not gained access to this, I’m not sure who has gained access to this, I thought it was only being released to a very, very small number of, of testers. And but I’m very much looking forward to gaining access to it when it does come out. You know, this is again, in in the long, slow march toward some kind of artificial intelligence baked into every tool in the world, we’re seeing, you know, just different options of this, what we should really call a lot of this is automation, right, we should just call this not artificial intelligence, we should just call this automation. And this is just a new form of automation. There is some intelligence baked into it by machine learning. And, and then of course, a large language model. But this is not artificial intelligence in the way in which we typically think about artificial intelligence. So using AI with it, kind of is cloak and dagger for a lot of this. So this is a mixture of machine learning, natural language processing, and a large language model that allows us to be able to put these these technologies together to be able to use this in a notebook environment. I think this is going to be very powerful. And quite honestly, I’m I’m curious how tools like Evernote and OneNote. And bear for example, notion craft, you name all of them, how they’re really going to be able to challenge a company like Google that has the chops. Sometimes it lacks the the the fortitude to say with these products, right. So that might be the only reason why someone won’t invest in a Google notebook LM because, you know, Google might say in three years, whatever, I’ll get rid of this now. Right? They did that with Google notebook. By the way, Google used to have something called Google notebook. Before Google notebook, LM, there was Google notebook. And it was a notetaking application. And then they killed it. Right. And so it went to the Google graveyard. And so you know, we’ll see what happens here. I think this is a very interesting concept. And and so we’ll, we’ll see what happens again, this is this is using generative AI to basically help you structure your, your process of notetaking. So we’ll see we’ll see what happens. I’m, I’m pretty curious about how this is all going to kind of work together between Bard, you know, which is the the open AI chat GPT equivalent under Google, if you go to bard.google.com. You can you can play with Bard itself. Then you have the built in functions within Google workspace. So if you’re in a Google Doc, you’ll you can sign up and then you will see a little magic pen pencil kind of icon that will hover next to your text, and then you can start using generative AI within that space. And then you know, of course Microsoft has copilot and all these. So we’re seeing lots and lots of different ways in which we’re seeing you know, advanced automation right advanced automation is really what this is as opposed to you know, artificial intelligence so to speak, but the the the advanced automation of all of these various pools is going to keep getting baked into all of the things that we’re touching. So we’re gonna hear about AI for the next four or five years, you know, just new things being implemented in all of these various ways, until they basically like, just settle into the background. And then we just say, hey, it’s a new feature, right? Like, this is a new feature of this particular tool, which is where we should really be, I feel like in the dialog right now, he says, Okay, this is a new feature. But you know, all these new quote unquote, products, like notebook LM, it’s gonna get kicked into something, right? No book, LM is not going to be its own thing forever, it’s just going to become a piece of Google Drive, or it’s going to become a piece of Google Docs, you know, it’s not going to be its own thing forever, it’s gonna get bundled into something. So I’m really curious how and where it ultimately gets stored. Maybe it’s Google Keep, maybe it’ll just get caked into Google Keep in some way, shape, or form, or it will take over? What is Google Keep, right, so we have to kind of keep some thought there in terms of where it’s all going. Okay, on which our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 35:59
In our next story is Google one BPM switching from broad to more local IP addresses. And basically, what they’re trying is to use the IP addresses to instead of being generic United States, more local, nothing. But it’s important. If you’re using VPN, now, you will be able to address your needs more explicitly than before.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:23
Right. So if you are a Google one subscriber, meaning that you have a plan with Google Drive, that gives you access to Google one, Google one has its own, quote, unquote, free, it’s one of the benefits of being a Google one member, which is this VPN tool, you can turn it on on your phone, you can turn it on on your various desktops, and the Google one VPN will then give you a VPN, before it was a much larger geographic region. And now you’re getting the more localized IP addresses so that you’re not getting blocked from things by accident, or, you know, in many cases, your own device is thinking that you’re, you know, somewhere else. And therefore, when he tries to connect to a website, it’ll block you from doing those kinds of things. And, you know, much bigger systems like ExpressVPN, and others, try very hard not for that to happen. And that still happens when you’re using those tools. And you have to kind of like turn off the VPN, access your system and then turn it back on. Google was trying to eliminate that problem, to a great extent, onward to our next story of Gousto.

Augusto Pinaud 37:25
Our next one is what we will call a box. And the title for make use of is WhatsApp versus telegram. Waiting order is better.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:39
These are fighting words against Oh, geez,

Augusto Pinaud 37:43
I know green stone need to admit for our listeners, that he put this article into the theme only because he knew the reaction of his co host. And he needs to admit that he’s been laughing for over a week about this article.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:01
Oh, man. So So I actually didn’t a chance to read through this article because I I didn’t see it. So what did they what did they come up with with as being kind of the better tool? I’m very curious.

Augusto Pinaud 38:16
They come and they have you know, the texting quality. They compare the texting quality in which telegram seems to win your organization as a text messages. They seem to be giving a lot to telegram. The reality is, I like telegram a lot more. And for me, there is a big reason why I like telegram. Okay, Telegram works everywhere. Okay, I use WhatsApp. I have clients, friends who live outside of the United States, where WhatsApp is the main adoption thing. That’s the reality. You know, I I made like, Apple. But the reality is, I am some Venezuela my parents have iPhones because otherwise I don’t do tech support. Otherwise, they will have androids because that’s the common device. Same thing in Mexico, where my in laws are. So what is better or what is worse? It also depends on that and take that into an equation. And I have found that the WhatsApp it’s very, very big among people who have international ties. So if you have tight with people outside of the United States, you tend to use whatsapp more than anything else. When you have more or you’re tight or internal. You tend to use more telegram. That’s what I have found. How scientific that is. I don’t know which one is better. Well, I believe anything outside of metta and Zuckerberg is better. But that’s again, it comes to my personal opinions, not necessarily a technicality even that I use both.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:58
Yeah, I will say that my experience As with WhatsApp is not bad. It’s not it’s not a, it’s not something where I feel like I’m ever dealing with, you know, what’s happening in a frustrated sense. The only time that is particularly the case is with WhatsApp on the desktop. Because whatsapp on the desktop, I, I’m not sure what I’m using, I think I’m using the desktop application, I don’t think oh, no, I guess I’m using the PWA. And so I’m not sure actually, if there is a fully fledged WhatsApp desktop application, I’m not sure

Augusto Pinaud 40:33
is there the problem was a PWA is I have more than one device. And then when I tried to use it and disconnect, it works great. You have one phone, one device, as soon as you start adding devices to that equation, it break. And it’s very frustrating for me, therefore, again, I tried to push people to telegram because telegram works great. I can throw any rise, any brand, any system, any model. And that didn’t work.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:02
But and that’s really that’s where I was going with this is that when you install Telegram, whether using the web app, whether you’re using the progressive Progressive Web App, whether you’re using the desktop application, the mobile applications, the iPad app, they all just work seamlessly across all of them. And you get a what I feel like is a richer experience, right? There’s something about the details of the telegram application, their UX is just very, very well done. Everything about it just has these nice features, including the animated emoji, when you respond to emoji, even on the mobile advice on mobile devices. It’s a delight. It’s really just a very, very nice experience for you. So I feel like Telegram for me just wins across the board. I will note that of course, telegrams, security is, uh, you know, supposed to be a little less, you know, than WhatsApp because telegram requires you to activate a separate secret chat. If you want to have end to end encryption. I am not sure how WhatsApp does their encryption, except knowing that they use the signal application protocol as their mechanism mechanism for end to end encryption. But it’s meta. So, you know, I, I don’t know. It’s just one of those things where I have this on on a biased, very, very biased perspective that, you know, really, are they really, really doing it all

Augusto Pinaud 42:25
Yar, I believe firmly the I encrypt in between Mara. And you and Mara and the other person that mean

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:35
Correct. Correct. Like if you lose your whatsapp credentials, and you need to get back into WhatsApp, true end to end encryption would mean that would break so that they’re holding any of the keys then then it’s not truly e to e. So so that that part always bothers me because I’m like no, that’s not actually true. But But anyway, I don’t know that to be absolutely 100% Sure. So I’m not going to say that but whatever. Anyway, I feel like just across the board I have a better experience with with telegram and I find the video messaging worse the circles as just like just cute it’s just a nice feature about telegram is really nice again I don’t have any major qualms with WhatsApp I’ve always found it to be more limiting but now that they’ve allowed multi device and will tie you know one account having multiple devices you can still use it I don’t use it that much. I use it with all of maybe three or four people again as you said it’s because they’re out of the country or that’s their primary tool so we use it it’s fine but I’m not I’m not bothered too much by it because I’m I’m always in telegram alright on to our next

Augusto Pinaud 43:46
goal and this is the first look at the Onyx Books tab ministry in the ministry is the update of have talked about this device and it’s not shine but it is the Onyx Nova see, and this is basically the update of the Nova see Nova, she has been cobbled in years. It’s a color ink, it’s you know, it’s an interesting device. I bought it because he was eating I needed to replace my Kindle and I thought Great, I can replace my Kindle with colors, skin, it works for what it do. It’s an Android that allows you to install certain applications. It’s going to replace my Kindle ever. It’s not but it’s not processor wise. We have discussed many times in this show and others the processor can compete with the processor on my iPad is not designed for that. That set for the to compete with. I can go he needs um, my experience was a Kindle Fire tablets that the battery didn’t last long, the Sony Reader so I can charge and forget about that thing, charging into forever. But at the same time, I have the ability to install applications that I do not have, at least on the Kindles, readers that I have. So you get the it’s like sitting in the middle, you get some of the capabilities, and the slowness of the fire and tablets. But you get the e reader is the eating experience of the readers. And that’s exactly the reason I liked it. It’s not very powerful. It’s not very big. But he’s has a USBC, you can connect a pen drives as you want to it to have more capability, they offered you a books cloud, that you can store some devices, it comes with a pen, and it works. My only frustration currently is that they announced a tap mini C and they change some of the UI or user interface in this one, and they have not brought it to the last one. So now you get like the iPad or the tablets, you know, the Favorites application on the bottoms, but that you only get on this model, they have not yet brought it back to the old hardware. And I let my frustration with email.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:15
All right, with that, we have reached the the end of our technology headlines, or we’re now moving into our new tools of the week. And so with that, each week, as you know, gusten I come across many personal development, time tasks, project management tools, and and services. And so some of them we use some of them we just noticed and they stand out from the pack and therefore we go ahead and select a tool each week to share with you and let you know about them. And so, this week, I am pulling up my tool here to describe it to you hold on one second here. Okay, so we’ll go ahead and talk about Scrivener, then I’ll circle back and talk about plot.

Augusto Pinaud 46:58
So my tool is a Scrivener. In my case for iOS, I’m a writer, I write a books, and I write white papers in a red light or write long articles. And for none of them I have found anything better than Scrivener. I recommend obviously the one on the the iPad because I leave on the iPad, but Scrivener do the Mac as Scrivener do more than the iPad. So they do that they Sorry, I’m looking at it download because of course I know they do windows for sure they do Mac for sure. Yeah, Mac windows on iOS said you can access them wolfed with them on a windows when a Mac on iOS, they synchronize that you can put your files in Dropbox or that way you can open them in multiple devices, you cannot as far as this current release, you cannot work simultaneously more more than one person into the same document. But for organizing things, and moving things around and pieces of content as you are working, I have not found anything best than that. I use a different piece of software for short touristiques like like articles and blog posts. But for longer things, I can speak better things about Scrivener, I have not found anything that do other things that they do is they can compile so you can make it later into an ePub or, or an Amazon books and now that that format is leaving, but you can make them to an ePub or a PDF. So it’s really incredible. I’d recommend it to anybody who said I wish I ever write a book than Lotus Griffin

Raymond Sidney-Smith 48:54
antastic. So what I wanted to do was talk about a tool that’s currently on Kickstarter until like August 16, or something like that August 6 16, something like that. So you have a week or two before it leaves. I think it’s been funded way beyond its needs. But so it’s a tool called plod note like applaud without the first AP so PLA UD but plug note is a physical tool. And it is based on open a eyes whisper and chat GPT functions. So what you are capable of doing is it’s there’s an app connected to it. But it is a physical device that you use. You record your audio and then that recorder that is basically connected to chat JpT is going to go ahead and transcribe and summarize the conversations that you’re having. It’s MagSafe so it can clip right onto your iPhone if you are you if you have an iPhone. And so you get this tool that allows you 30 hours of continuous recording. It’s got 64 gigabytes of storage and the app location, of course comes with the device itself. So if you’re in a lecture, if you’re on a phone call with someone, just toss it on, you know, what do you call it speakerphone. You can take voice memos if you’re, you know, alone by yourself. And you can, you know, generate Mind Maps, you can do all kinds of fun fun things with the plug note itself. Like I said, it’s, it’s a Kickstarter, so I’ve not played with this yet. But I’m really curious about it. And, and I’m curious if any of you will be interested in doing that. It says it can do iPhone call recording that it supports Android as well, I’m not sure how that works. So I’m really curious to see how that kind of comes together. It is a very thin, it’s like, you know, point 117 inches thick. So it’s basically, you know, the thickness of a few credit cards. And so it’s just this device that gives you high quality audio recording with all the noise cancellation built into the AI. So it can clean out the that using Whisper it’s personal. It’s the data itself is encrypted. So you have all you know, encryption on the device, so you’re not going to lose. If you lose it physically, you’re not going to you know, to be be left in a situation. I’m, I’m really curious about it. I’m, I’m interested in seeing how it all works. With a physical product. I like sometimes having a physical product for that kind of thing. I am concerned about its limited use in that sense. So we’ll see what happens when it comes out onto the market. It’s I don’t know the company, the company is Isaac, Isaac, I don’t know something like that. But it is it is raised 600 $700,000 of the $5,000. It was trying to raise as its goal. So it has far exceeded its interest level, the product itself is roughly about 100 bucks, it’s going to be retailed at about $160 USD. But you can grab it right now for $100 comes to three colors. And yeah, and it’s MagSafe, as I said, really, really interesting. You know, thought there, so it can hold up to 480 hours of recording. But of course you can you can record 30 hours on a single charge. So something to kind of consider if you’re if you’re looking for a physical recording device. And you’re kind of interested in playing around with plod, and the app as well as plot AI which does the transcription and connects it to to the chat GBT functionality so it can do more and better things for you. So that is my tool this week. Already Gousto. From there, onward to our announcements who have any announcements?

Augusto Pinaud 52:48
Well, yeah, we have we have the story of the week. That was how to start a new job on 30-60 and 90 day plan. And then we have announcements. But

Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:58
but what story of the weekend then.

Augusto Pinaud 53:01
So story of the week is how to make a new job right 30-60-90 day plan. And you know, there is a lot of things that have happened since pandemic and now that seems like some of the dust is settling people is starting to look into new jobs. And how do you make it right? And this article from life hacker Lindsey go into the details will talk to your hiring manager figured out what is 30? What is 60? What is 90? And, you know, all this is fine and dandy. But most of what this article share may not necessarily apply to our listeners in the sense that the people listen to us, our productivity enthusiast, they most likely will pass over water those 30-60-90 day plan. And one of the things that I was discussing recently with somebody is you need to be careful into getting into the unit job and blowing everybody out of the water because you’re very productive. And the reason is, you would not be you may not be doing it in a mean way. But you are the new one in the house. And people don’t understand Inbox Zero. People don’t understand that you can organize label or do agendas. And I tell a couple of stories. I had a boss once back, you know, in my back into the cubicle and he saw my Outlook open with no emails. And he sure I was on the phone and as soon as I hang up he walked around and scare me What happened to your computer and I’m looking at him like I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You have no emails yet processing. Okay, and he was looking at me like I have two ads on one of them was read Okay, that happened to me. And many years later or some years later, I was in a meeting. And I begin, it was a large meeting. So I begin creating an agenda that I update before this bi weekly meeting. And someday, a very senior person in the organization join the call, and said, I’m so grateful that you update this agenda every week, because it is the first time that I know what is happening. And I’m looking at this guy like, but you’re very senior in the organization, you could have asked somebody to produce this. And these things that are very see and of use for productivity, and to share some productivity people are not necessarily for the rest of the organization. So as you as for your 3060, or 90 plan, take also into consideration, don’t put the jet in full trope, again, to store some little bit less of the power of

Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:02
Yeah, I think it can be, it can be perceived poorly, if you are so much more productive than your peers, and that pressures them to have to do so much more work than is necessary. So I think I think there is a kind of realism there, especially if it’s a huge change to the working order, or the culture of that particular business department, team or otherwise, you know, I’m of the opinion that if there are people who are just kind of skating along and not, and not pulling their weight, that shouldn’t make you slow yourself down to their pace. But I can, I can see where you’re coming from a Gousto, which is that, you know, a little bit of a little bit of competence sometimes goes too far. And so, and that will then not only make you enemies, right, that ends up being a social problem for you within the company, it may also be something that limits your growth, because if your manager thinks they’re more that you’re more competent than them, that can force you to be held down, because they don’t want you to surpass them in a way. So just being mindful of the politics of an environment, I will say that it is helpful to think about the, the way in which you onboard into a new company, and it could be just a new role as well. So, you know, if you change positions, and you’re promoted, was just I think the, the, the unfortunate circumstance of of companies is that, instead of just paying you more for what you’re already good at, they tend to put you in higher and higher positions of authority that pay you more, but make you change from the skills that you’re really good at, right. So they keep putting you up in higher and higher roles that takes you away from what you’re good at, and more what you’re probably not designed to do. And so it can be difficult. And so 30-60-90 days, it gives you an opportunity to be able to figure out what the things are. So 30 days into a new role. If you’re new to the company, you’re you’re learning culture, the roles and responsibilities, technology, onboarding, and such. If you are not new to the company, then you’re still learning in a way what’s required of you within the company. But culture and on technology, onboarding and whatnot are probably not as much of an issue, which means that changes your 3060 90 day plan. So just kind of keep giving that some some thought as you make your way through. The goal then though, for 30-60-90, is to set goals for those 3060 and 90 days, whether or not you share them with your hiring manager, you are going to be setting these goals for yourself. So you know what you’re going to be able to get to, and of course, documenting that so that when you do get to some particular point, you do have the opportunity to sit down with your supervisor, your manager, whoever is whoever’s higher up the new, and having that conversation about what’s working and what’s not working within the role. So that you can both, you know, exist with some form of life work integration, right? If you’re working 1617 hours a day, that’s not tenable, and certainly not sustainable. And you need to figure out why this is happening, and figure out how to overcome those pieces. So it’s a matter of of determining those pieces. And then going on from there. I think 90 is the most difficult part, because there’s a full quarter away from where you started. And so really determining those 90 Day goals is something that perhaps you should talk to a senior person in the company, maybe not your particular supervisor if you don’t feel comfortable with that. But other folks who have been there a long while who maybe share your same role in the company, or at least have been there long enough to know what those roles look like, and asking them, hey, at 90 days, what do you feel like is and what should I be doing in that particular regard? To make sure that I’m on track, you know, to staying safe solidly successful in my role. So just something to kind of kick the tires on, in that sense. Anything else Augusto about the 30-60- 90 day plan when you so

Augusto Pinaud 1:00:10
I think that’s it, so we ever go over announcements. One is, in the last couple of weeks Evernote announced that they are doing some layouts on the company, they are moving to Europe, some employees are planning to move to Europe, some employees decide not to move, and we’re let go. I don’t know if you want to comment, anything additional to that?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:38
No, I’ll just I’ll say, I’ll say this, you know, a shock to all of us, you know, to see the US-based Evernote staff, let you know, let go. You know, they were, you know, many, many people I knew. And so it’s just unfortunate, but it’s the way of company purchases, you know, the company bending spoons is based out of Italy. They wanted to centralize their development team and their management, inside bending spoon in Italy, inside Europe. And that’s what they’ve done. So Evernote, the product suite is not changing. I literally just spoke to someone today about some new development on the application itself, and things that they’re trying to move forward with on the roadmap. So that part I’m not fearful about Evernote is going to be around, it’s perfectly fine. A lot of people thought that because of the layoff that it was that it was somehow the end of Evernote and that is not the case, the Evernote, the product suite is just fine. It’s going to keep running and doing what it’s always been doing. This is not like Twitter, or now known as x. You know, this is not a CEO who’s not paying their bills or arguing with people or causing fights in public forums. This is just a company that purchased another and is going through the process of centralizing and creating efficiencies. And so while it’s sad, you know, I feel for the people who are who were let go, they got a great severance package and I hope that they land on their feet. And but otherwise, Evernote is going to continue to grow, continue to put out updates and new features. And we’ll see where things go from there under bending spoons leadership.

Augusto Pinaud 1:02:19
So on our last newsletter was last week, Omni focus rich his 15 years. So happy birthday, Omni focus for iPhone. It was 15 years ago when it was announced on the Apple Store. And there’s an article there from the Omni group and showing you that what you may not remember the original iPhone was original I came in when you see those strings, you want to cry, but that at the time was the edge of technology. So happy birthday OmniFocus. And our last news is he’s been making noise and they have doing something unusual. And the NFL, we are having a hard word event in September. It’s not that they didn’t do it. They do their hardware announcements. They do the echoes on their tablets on their Kindles. But this is the first time that they announced it was that much time. So the rumor of the expectation is that is something fun coming and something big coming. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:03:26
yeah. And it’s funny because they’re there. This is kind of in line with the fact that they launched HQ two, which is in Arlington, Virginia, which is where my company was based for many years. And and so it’s it’s funny to kind of think about all of the really major things happening at Amazon right now. And you know, they haven’t said anything about what they’re going to announce at this event. So it’s kind of interesting. They’re they’re kind of putting a little bit of mystery into all of this by announcing an event so early without telling anyone basically context. And of course, now the rumor mill will start. But you know, still interesting for Amazon to go ahead and do that. All right. And with that, we have covered the productivity and related technology news this week, thanks to Augusto for putting together the show this and every week. And so thank you guys. So we’ll see you next week.

Augusto Pinaud 1:04:17
It is my pleasure. See you next week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:04:20
All right, everybody on anything but idle.com, you’ll find our show notes of those include links to all the stories we’ve discussed the tools of the week, our extra stories that we couldn’t cover during the episode and text transcripts that you can read and download from the site, or just read directly on the page while you’re listening along. If you’ve looked at the show notes, if there’s something we missed, which can happen, feel free to go ahead and leave a comment you can tweet at us. You can also direct message us using our now x profile at Anything But Idle, Twitter. If you didn’t know rebranded today to be x, I’m not quite sure how we’re going to use that. lexicon now but it’s still tweet I think so. But either way you can post or tweet at us, whatever, it’s still Twitter to me in my head. So our Twitter profile or our X profile is at Anything But Idle, you can use our contact form on the website and use that to be able to go ahead and message us. The best way I think, to interact with Augusto and I is to come to personal productivity club. It is our free digital community for personal productivity enthusiast, and you must be because you’re listening to this show. So we have a group dedicated to Anything But Idle, the podcast, we have a whole section of our podcasts and the different groups for those podcasts. If you go to anything, but idle.com forward slash community, it’ll take you right to a signup page, and you’ll be automatically added to the group when you sign up for personal productivity club. As I said, it’s free, and it’s easy to then interact with us in that space. This is your first time watching the live stream. Welcome, feel free to subscribe to the YouTube channel. And therefore you’ll get notified when we do go live weekly or any of our special shows. If you’re listening to the podcast in your podcast app, and it’s this is your first time feel free to add us by subscribing or following following the instructions inside your favorite podcast app. And that way you’ll get a free download whenever we put out an episode. And with that, we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life.

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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.

How Productive is Joining Instagram Threads, and the Productivity and Technology News This Week

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

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Ray Sidney-Smith

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Headlines, Part A

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New Tools of the Week

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Notes

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. I’m Augusto Pinaud. And we’re hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 122, How productive is joining Instagram threads. And we’re recording this on July 10 2023. Each week Augusto and I cover the productivity news headlines of the week so you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and its related technologies. And so with that, Augusto, let’s get into our productivity headlines. What’s our first productivity headline this week?

Augusto Pinaud 0:39
Well, our first article is 49 life lessons in 14 years of living. So happy birthday, Mike guardi. And it is it is a short list. short list of 4090 minutes depending apparently as you get older 49 doesn’t seem that long. But it is up 49 themes dad, Mike Vardy has learned over like and was very interesting to hear read and to remember, and to Luke, one of the notes, some or some of the clubs, regardless if you agree or disagree. And you remember to put some of these things into perspective, you know, Joe’s going to read a couple, you know, always keep a book next to your TV remembered. And I in my case was good. And I always had a Kindle for four years. And now that I have kids, one of the best investments I have done as a parent is a Kindle, because they have it there. And is the only device that they are allowed to take too bad. Not only that I make this deal, that any book that they finish, I buy a new book without question, they don’t even need to have to go anywhere, they don’t need to need to do anything, they just need to go and get. So that make that be read really a lot, and a lot more than what they will read otherwise. So that’s one of them, you know, don’t forget to step back into nature. And that is one buddy applies to me. And that I need to remember because I like what I do. And I don’t mind a stain in the office. So I kind of stay indoors forever. You know, it’s one of those things that Don criticized her parents for what they do, she will do the same guilty of charge. And the only one I’m going to mention is the number 30. Take ownership of your devices for day one, be the master, not the other way around. And this is something that I love to do with people and I love to work with people with into, I understand not everybody has the time the patient, the inclination to learn all the different intricacies of the devices that they use, even that I believe they should. But if you don’t then hire somebody who can sit with you and do that process, and help you figure it out how to do those things, how to get those things really that work for you or not for others. And finally, verse 34. Journaling is an underappreciated productivity practice. And I cannot agree with even more, I’ve been using day one for the longest time as my journal app. And I’m very grateful to all the insight that is in there that I have never read. And the ones that I have marked, to revisit again.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:03
I’ll say that for me, number 18 really struck a chord, which is about having a day when you don’t have meetings on your schedule. So you can use that for flow work for deep generative, creative problem solving type work. And I know that when when I did that, it really opened up the floodgates for me in terms of my ability to get more done in a week, when I just recognized that there was there were days of my week when I should just not have meetings because I need to get actual work done. And it depends on how and what your manifested world looks like. But mine is one in which people can schedule directly into my calendar, which are clients and and then of course, I have colleagues who also can schedule into my calendar. And so I need to basically basically block out the time ahead of schedule so that they don’t get filled with time for me to be able to do that kind of flow work. That of course for me is generative, creative problem solving type work, and I want to be able to have that A time, you know, kind of cordoned off from others. And, and I just, you know, that one definitely struck a chord for me. And I think that it would help a lot of people to just know that that time is set aside for the work that needs to be done. All right, onward to our again, happy birthday, Mike, and so, on to our next article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 5:21
Our next article is from The Art of Nonconformity. And it’s called Winning doubt, change everything. I thought article radius chord for me, because I believe into this, Hey, it’s good to like your location. Whoo. In general, like your office would decorate, if you don’t, like, fill in the blanks do and he talks about his travel and he said, You know what, I went to the city medulla. Okay. So I went to Croatia, but unlike most of the Ghana, right, and I understand this, UK’s for people, like an auction, but I remember two things early, early in life, that Mark muesli that one was teaching again, from lavender, who said, If you don’t like a book, and one of his rules in life is if you don’t like a book passed, I don’t remember his percentage, it may have been 20%. Stop reading, there’s so many good books to waste time when a bad one. But that’s really, you know, stay with me. And the second one was actually David Allen, when in an interview, god knows how long with Eric back, where Eric Max said, you know, one of the things that always impressed me of David Allen is that he could buy a gadget or a piece of technology. And as soon as he identified that, it doesn’t work. Dumping regardless how much it goes. And those are two things that I have take as part of my life, if I buy more gear, and junk than I’m willing to recognize and buy a counter to appreciate bullet is that if it doesn’t work, I don’t, I don’t have if we go someplace, and we don’t like it, we go, walk away, make sure that whatever you do, whatever you all are, is where you want to be. And as he said in the article, this skill is so important, the ledger job, change it, you can change it from the inside, you can move to a different company doesn’t matter. But change it. You know, one of the things that I love, when I do coaching sometimes is help that help uncover that intrapreneur as I called it is not necessarily that people say you know what, no, I have 10 years, 20 years in this company at a one point if the company, but I’m done, I’m done with this job and help them really work into reinventing that. And that, again, I believe, I love the article, and was a very fun week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:00
antastic. All right on to our next article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 8:06
So the next article is for me to read the review. It’s vital, change the way you see yourself. And very important to understand what is on your world and how you see yourself. And because we don’t notice it, we don’t we think that’s normal. And one of the things I recommend people is sometimes have those self conversations loudly. Don’t do it on your mind. That’s how you’re used to start talking loud. That’s how you understand you people seem flattered by yourself. They will think you’re crazy. But it’s really worth it to do because you will discover how they really talk to yourself and how you see yourself on some install.

So this, this was a very, very interesting, very interesting article. I don’t know what what what have you done to change the way you see because you see yourself because over the years, we’ve seen ourselves in certain things very high and uncertain things very low. And obviously we don’t change the high change the low. But what have you done to change though thing?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:35
Yeah, for me, I think much of what I have done is using journaling, as you were talking about earlier with regard to one of Mike’s suggestions. You know, using journaling as a as a mechanism for identifying patterns of places where I don’t feel fulfilled, seeing places where I feel like I am not living up to my own standards of excellence. So not necessarily every day, you know, in the in the kind of Hellenistic, you know, Greco Roman, you know, Greco, Greek philosopher, Greek philosophical perspective, you know, which is more virtue or excellence in the moralistic perspective, but I do have my own standards of excellence. And so I’ve, I’ve enumerated those, or I’ve listed those for myself, and they fit in each of my life domains in life categories. And that’s been incredibly helpful. And the article talks about this concept of, you know, hiring, basically, external accountability, right, and so I’ve peer support. So you know, we talked about accountability in a self accountability steps up a level to individual one to one accountability and then to group and then to say, you know, larger group or you know, kind of public accountability, you want to call it that, and, and so at that, at that one to one accountability, you can hire a coach, life coach, you know, you can hire an executive coach, you can hire any number of coaches to help you through particular things, and digital coach, you know, all kinds of coaches, obviously, having a therapist or a counselor or mental health professional, who can go ahead and help you and provide you that kind of guidance is also really helpful. I’ve done that and been I’ve, I’ve benefited greatly from having a therapist, just kind of walking through like, Okay, this is something I want to I want to tackle in my life, how do I how do I approach those things. And then, of course, having a wide variety, a number of coaches, but also having having that peer accountability, you know, you, for example, you know, just being able to talk with you as a friend, and as a colleague, that, you know, that’s really helpful to me to be able to understand where I’m, I’m having deficits and where I can grow. And just talking those things out for me, as you are well aware, really helps me kind of understand where I am and where I need to go in the future. And that really helps with all of those kinds of self self perception issues. So very, very useful practice. And I enjoyed the article for that, for that reason, as well. All right, on to our next article about a positive attitude and success.

Augusto Pinaud 12:04
You know, the article, the article was a good article, it covers why understanding the power of that positive attitude, understanding, you know, the connection and the possibility of success. How that positive attitude help you overcomes obstacles. But more importantly, it’s unimportant. It wasn’t very good with an article, but what I want to share is my own experience on this, I did not grow up as a person with a positive attitude, I needed a very negative one, you know, I grew up in an environment where, you know, the glass was empty, liter matter how much what slump and how many things like that. So, having the learn to change the rate, or change my reticular system to look for these positive things, to change that attitude, to have a positive attitude, has really make a difference in in my life, and has really allowed me to attract things that it will have been impossible, not for other reason that nobody wants to be with their black cloud guy and you know, work with a black cloud around all the time, people prefer to be with a guy who has a sunny outcoming life when I didn’t understood that early in my life. Again, it the normal thing was a black cloud. So it was a pattern that needed to be broken. For me to change and start paying attention to the good things and to the positive things. And it was, you know, now it’s normal, but it was not. So I want to invite anyone who is listening to us to have you know, feels that they’re adding to this not always this positive to encourage that you can retrain yourself in to change that radar from that negativity to a more positive attitude.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:13
Now, that’s, that’s great experiential learning that you’re sharing, which is that, you know, if you keep a growth mindset, and you know, you and I both have an affinity for Dr. Carol Dweck and her work around growth mindset, the the the hope for you is to be able to understand that it’s the journey, not the destination. And so if you find yourself at a point where you feel like you are a particular way and need to move in a positive direction, all your attitude, you’re you’re not fixed in that place, you can change and if you if you believe it, then you can then you can do it in a lot of ways. That’s not always the case in a lot of other categories of life. But in this particular one It very much is if you can think positively The and continue to think positively you’re retraining your brain, in essence, to do that. And so I just highly recommend that folks kind of consider that as they move their life forward is to think, okay, if I’m, if I’m stuck in a rut, if I am, if I’m in a place where I’m thinking a lot of negative thoughts, it’s like, when you’re driving and you hit a patch of ice, your car will go where you are looking, you know, your hands and your feet, all of those things that engage the vehicle will guide the car are paying at the oncome your hands are going to turn you that way, and everything’s going to happen in that wrong direction. But you’re much much likelier to steer out of the way of oncoming traffic, and to get yourself onto the side of the side of the road and safe and so on so forth, if you are looking in the direction in which you want to go. And so if you’re looking down, you got to look up and start thinking I remember, this is sort of funny, just this is a memory that comes back and I was I’m tall. And so I’ve always just kind of looked down, it’s just the been the nature of my world. You know, I think my mom’s about five, three. So, you know, from the moment I hit here not not metaphorically, like literally draw I found was, was that it actually made me feel bad because I would walk around then like around town. And you know, this, I grew up in New York City. And so I would walk around the city and I would always have my head down. Mostly because I was worried I would trip on people and hit people or what you coming gangly, tall guy. And so I realized one day that I should just like hold my head up, I would feel better if I held my head up and kind of put my chest up a little bit. And, you know, remarkably, it changed my entire outlook on life, how just one little thing like that really changed the way in which I thought about myself thought about how I carried myself in the world. And it brought a level of confidence that I think is really important. And so that that positive attitude, really had a lot to do with my ability to stand at a room and say something confidently, you know, I ultimately became a professional trainer, you know, and I’m in this world, where I’m capable of standing in front of large audiences. And I’m never really feel, you know, any sense of of fear or anxiety. I think has a lot to do with just that little thing like don’t love debt. And any think I think it goes to show how powerful something like that can be. All right. So we have reached the, not the midpoint, but we have reached the end of our productivity articles. For this week, we’re going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and then we’ll come back and G articles articles for the week and then

Sponsor Voice Over 17:48
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:59
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. Who’s been outed myself, Ray Sidney-Smith. We’re gonna get into our technology articles this week. With that Augusto, what is our first tech article this week?

Augusto Pinaud 19:13
Oh, the first articles dedicated to you good Mykonian are in the earlier last week asking for do some of your apps been offloaded and why you had some space on your iPad that was on claim and is part of the cost of loading. So for our listeners in iOS, what they did was they offload or uninstall the application to reduce the space when you get to a certain dress or the app is not used. When I started on time. What their system does is uninstall the app, but leave all the contents of the app so that way you can install it and be exactly where you were. That is great. It’s great allowed you to save some space, but at the same time you don’t need to read couldn’t figure it out, you need to download it. That said, it will be all seven is what this article is a wish list from Jason Snell than Marlin for six colors is I really wish I could mark certain apps as this app should not be of load no matter what. And this was one of those cases for you. But I saw the article. And, you know, I just wanted to not the only one who have this on your wish list.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:32
Yeah, and there’s an important piece about this, which is that, for example, I had decided to offload my password manager, because my password manager was not, I wasn’t opening it, I was using it, right. But I was using it in other applications. And so since I hadn’t opened it in a long time, it just decided that it was going to go ahead and offload it. And then I couldn’t get any intensive applications. And I was like, What’s going on here? This is this is not right. So it would be nice to be able to kind of whitelist some applications and say, these are off limits. Don’t offload them that way. So I appreciate that. That wish list. All right, onto our next article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 21:12
You know, this is a question that I get, I have get multiple times Hey, how can I not? Because the morning law. We are we’re basically use the automation to create an alarm when you turn off your alarm. So basically, you can go give you the instruction built in shortcuts on iOS, the gate, tap accommodation, and you can say, hey, let’s create an alarm. And this time, every time I shut off the alarm, so that way, if you turn it off and say, Okay, I’m ready to wake up in two minutes. And in you know, 45 know that that has happened to any of us ever, then this is a way as the article said, they can go through the ration that even if you wake up, it will create this backup alarm. You know, there are other ways to do it. That is to have already, wherever the backup alarm created. That’s another way to do it and create multiple alarms. But this is a fantastic way in you want to have that backup plan. And again, it’s something that people have asked multiple times, I thought it was good to have it here on there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:26
Yeah, and there are other applications out there in things like sleep cycle and others that allow you to basically have an alarm that forces you to do say a math puzzle or requires you to do other things. So that you’re you can’t just easily say that your opposite really requires you to stay up for a little while. So by the time you’ve finished whatever the puzzle is, you’re like, Okay, well, I just basically did Sudoku, I might as well as well get up. And you know, I have I’ve taken at one point in my life, I don’t do this now. But at one point, I set the phone across the room, so I have to get up in order to be able to turn off the alarm. Unfortunately, on the latest version of Android, this is my iOS, but the latest version of Android, you can say the word stop out loud, and it will stop the alarm. And I do not like that. Because now you can just say stop, and then it stops the alarm. And you know, like, I could do that. And I could do that half awake, you know what I mean? Like I could potentially and accidentally

Augusto Pinaud 23:27
let completely sleep when you need to wait.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:33
Right? Right. It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous. So I’m sure there’s gotta be a way to turn that off, though you really shouldn’t be a feature there. But yeah, so there are so many different applications that are out there that give you some of those additional capabilities. So maybe look around the app store and look at some of those, I’m pretty sure sleep cycle does this. And it also will choose the right time to wake up so that you don’t wake up in the middle of one of your, you know, phases of sleep that will cause you to be groggy and that kind of thing. That’s really helpful when you’re taking naps, or just when you’re waking up in the morning because it’s going to wake you up in the right in the right period so that you’re waking up and you’re not going to go back to sleep very easily. All right on to what’s the best to do list app. Oh my gosh fisticuffs.

Augusto Pinaud 24:16
This is the Pleexy team. And obviously they compare the three apps that they connected. Okay, that is Microsoft to do Google Cast and Todoist and they went and did a comparison. You know, it was reasonably fair. At the end of the article before the completion they have a comparison table and you could see you know up to wills what level you know they do the same and then Microsoft to do is still can do comments and attachment where Google task cannot and then labels until Percy something that only to do is do. I think you need premium. But I know that’s not true. You can do filters and even on the free version. So Yeah, that was a great comparison. You know, I, I add to that comparison. Now Springwell, because I am, you know, part of their expert, church fi expert group, and you could do also was a premium version, you know, everything that it’s mentioned. And to do it. The reason lex giggsy, you know, put the streets because they are the treating that they want Plexi will do fantastically well is will integrate these three Santa’s with Trello with many others. So it will allow you to integrate the inputs. So in my case are certain projects that I worked with external company that are living in Trello, or asana and I can now pull them out and integrate them into my own platform, make the changes and everything gets reflected everywhere, without me needing to necessarily go and work into the other platforms. So it’s an interesting article, if you have been curious, we have to do is use a group in personal productivity club. And so if you’re interested in learn more, come leave us a question and a comment and interact with your Todoist. I don’t, there is currently not a Google task for Microsoft to do user group. But if you are a user of those two, and you’re interested, please contact us because we will help set you up. So there is others that can benefit from your knowledge.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:42
Yeah, and just like to give context for folks, the reason you would want to do this is say that you’re like Gousto. And we work with a number of different people in a number of different environments. And so they may be in Asana or Trello, or another tool, but you still want to track and maintain your tasks in your own system. This is why Plexi would be of use to you, right. So if you have a client who’s using Asana, and they’re gonna assign you things in Asana, but you’re not going to check into Asana every day, then Plexi can grab those and keep them synchronized in your Todoist system. And therefore you’re not losing or dropping the ball on these kinds of things. So I just think it’s a remarkable tool. I think that and I wish that more tools integrated. Our had integrations like this, I hope that Pixi and their competitor Unito, continues to expand the tools that they integrate with, because it’s very different than say, Zapier or ft, or others, I’ve said this before, but you know, that’s a step based, you know, tool, right? It’s a workflow. So it’s moving in one direction, only, it’s not synchronizing, and the beauty of, of Plexi and Unito, is that as a synchronization, the data is flowing back and forth, in near real time, so that you’re not losing that kind of fluidity in the application. But to get to this point, absolutely. If you if we’re if you’re looking for a Microsoft, you know, group or something like that in in personal productivity club, let us know, we can, we can probably figure out a way to support that, that group in the system, and I definitely have plans to to create a Google group. So we will we will ultimately have a Google user group where we could talk about all the workspace productivity things in there, so not yet there. But we can certainly create that we will certainly be creating that in the future. Alright Augusto, next up

Augusto Pinaud 28:33
on chirinos is video you know from motor, Laura Arabist and she’s talking about how she create one note book, Georgia she said that she reads a lot of books six to 15 books a month and she wants to keep track of that, you know what read what you know, and that’s happened you know, I don’t read as many but I read you know, also a significant number I’m sometimes you know, you want to go back and you remember it Okay, where is wood that I read this thing? And one of the things I tend to do is to take screenshots and send them to Evernote. Okay, because then in Evernote because of the indexing, I can type on Productivity Book Group, it will bring me all the books I liked nice avant that has the word productivity. So she her approach to this is using one note and she raised one note for this and she Do you know the books what was her qualification and then she go and make a little abstract of what her reading was. So she can refer to that later and having those kinds of rustlings are very, very, very powerful. It doesn’t matter get a need to get there. I’ve said this many times. You don’t need to get every detail from the book, but it’s important that you’re a We’ll do recall and find those that were very critical because you may not apply it today. But he will come on time and you say, Okay, I’ve heard this in a book where, and there is nothing more frustrating than he made when I’m able to get that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:18
I have definitely been there. And so a few Evernote certified experts, including inclusive of myself at one point created a template for book summaries within Evernote. And so if it’s not in the Evernote templates, gallery, feel free to reach out and I can send you a link to it. But it basically is a structured template that walks you through putting in notes into it. I also use clippings.io, which is a connection between Amazon Kindle, and in my case, Evernote, I think it works with other tools as well. And so when I highlight and make annotations of things on my Kindle, it automatically grabs those annotations and grabs those, those, you know, highlights and plops them into a pre formatted note in Evernote, which is super helpful for me. So it’s doing that on automated automated basis. And then what I do is I go, you know, once a month, I go through and everything that I’ve read, I basically copied into my own book, summary note, so that it’s in line with all of my other notes that I’ve taken in that in that space, because I like Hugo. So I will typically like you know, to take a screenshot or use my phone and take a photograph. And then I might mark it up on by hand, throw it into good notes, probably, you know, write some things on it on all of that ultimately, in the same note in Evernote. Now, if I’ve read the complete book in the Kindle, and I’ve done all my highlighting and annotations on the Kindle, then all I need to do is grab the, the clippings note and copied into my book summary. And I’m pretty much good to go. So, you know, there, there are different ways in which you can manifest that. But it’s, it’s helpful for me to have that all centralized in my own reading notebook. So that I can go back and reference like you, you know, man, it really frustrates me when I can remember where I read something and trying to share it with someone or though you know, especially it’s like really good quotations that I’ve I’ve counted how epilogue over time. I’m like, Ah, this is this is the perfect quotation for this article and writing or whatever it might be, and wanting to find that. So definitely worth doing if you’re if you’re doing a lot of that work. Okay, on which my next article?

Augusto Pinaud 32:30
Well, our next Galaxy unpack July 26, apparently, it’s going to be very focused on going and you’re coming again, with more devices. I’m surprised that by now they have not leak more, more of them. But but but they at least leak they haven’t. So if you’re a Samsung are looking into a flip phone, or that technology percent July 26, we will be and we will cover the news on the show, you know, after the event.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:07
Fantastic. Okay, onward to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 33:10
Our next two articles are about Google Calendar. Google Calendar is getting big Oh, great. That will for for tablets for Google Calendar. So I don’t use Google Calendar. On my tablets, I use just a regular calendar app, but you use Google Calendar quite often. So maybe you can share more of the advantages of this too. I didn’t see anything, you know, I mean, the fact that I can share each year in events was one of them. But again, I don’t use it very much. So I, I didn’t see any any major things other than that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:51
And major upgrade in terms of features is that you’re going to be able to take an individual event link and share that, which is I mean, it’s very powerful, right, if you think about it. To date, if you wanted to share an event, you had to invite the person via an email address. And and sometimes you’re in a chat, like you’re in a whatsapp chat with the person or your telegram. Now, you can just literally copy the link, share it via Telegram, and now they are opening up a calendar event. And now they have the ability to download the ICS you know, add themselves to the event, see the details of the event. This happens many times when people are like, I’m supposed to be going to this event, but I don’t know where I’m supposed to be going because he didn’t send me the address. And so you can just like literally copy your own event link and now text it to them, they can open it up and they see the address and kind of go from there. So that’s that’s the thing that I think is probably the most powerful piece that allows you to be able to go ahead and utilize the tool. Some of the other pieces are just kind of like dealing with the process of sharing within calendar events is being upgraded. That will be really nice. And we’re gonna see more of the material. You know, you perspective You’ve bought into the application over time as well. So we’ll see, we’ll see how that all kind of plays out as they as they make it more available. But I think just the inviting people part, to events not being as clunky at all. And, folks, I mean, how they’re inviting people and whether they’ve invited people. So that’s going to be cleaned up in the new version, plus, we’re going to see a whole new redesign of the tablets and Chromebooks apps. So everything seen in Google Calendar, you’re gonna see basically, it updated, and you know, where you’re on the mobile apps today. And so it’s, it’s gonna be it’s gonna definitely be an I think, interview, where you’re actually capable of seeing a little bit more data. And, and just seeing it in a two panel prospective, cleaner, I think the panel’s view is going to be cleaner, and you’re going to have the options with being scheduled day, week and month, so that you can just open up those sidebars and see those things without having too much of an issue. So I think it’s gonna be a nice refresh of the app, and soaps are gonna like it. Okay, on to our next article, this.

Augusto Pinaud 36:16
So our next article this week is not another how to it’s how to convert editable text using Microsoft Word, if you get an image, okay, let’s say a book, you can put it into Microsoft Word, you will follow the instructions converted into a PDF, and then open that PDF into directly from PDF into Word and the Word sorry, and that will make them an editable image and the text and everything else you will be able to grab. So it is an interesting workaround to convert images with the tools that you have on hand. So it is very easy to do and very interesting. So if you are looking to lose some of those, that’s, you know, a good way to, to do it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:08
Yeah, I think it’s fantastic that the features are available. And I didn’t actually even know that this was available. And so I’m really glad to know that it is. Alright, well, we’re gonna start where I

Augusto Pinaud 37:20
don’t use, I don’t use Microsoft Word that much. But yes, so our next release, again, another indestructible, okay, make their own printable calendar using candle. And there is people who would like that, so that they did you know, the calendars, the printable calendar color into, especially for big rocks, you know, you don’t need to have the detail. But you know, those big things. Hey, I mean, I remember when I used to travel a lot, I wanted to know, you know, when I was in Los Angeles, and when I was not in Los Angeles. And that was very important. And I needed to know that and I, since my life happened, basically, on four cities, it was very easy to have four colors, I could look at the wall and see that I know the colors that I knew were where I was, but it was very useful to have that and just refresh the page and print it again. So you can use Canva to print that, follow the instructions. And you will be able to, to get that very, very easily.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:24
And just so folks know, there’s an additional facility that you can actually have things pushed to print on demand by Canva. So it’s another opportunity for you to be able to give them money, in essence. But the idea here is that if you don’t want to deal with the printing of the calendar yourself, you want it to be printed and bound and whatever else, they have a whole printing service. So if you have like an annual report you put together and you want to have it printed, you know, well and shipped to you, they can do that for you, which is pretty brilliant, that it’s just kind of built into the platform. And so if you need printed materials, you can kind of have it printed on demand through the system.

Augusto Pinaud 39:03
Yeah, there is a bunch of services that do that, and I’m going to sidetrack in here, but they want to do the same thing. You know, as we’re talking about journaling much earlier, would you consider a print my 2022 journal, and then he will bounce it for you and send you now, a paper copy of all your journal entries of 2020 tubes.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:24
Does it does the the does it include the images as well that you might embed inside adults? Oh, that’s nice.

Augusto Pinaud 39:32
So I know people who put the images in there with the notes and stuff that they want to remember. And because you can depending on the plan you have, you can create different journals, then they have you know, journals for those purposes, and they bring those journals instead of every

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:51
now that’s fantastic. I know Google Photos, has the ability for you to print on demand photo books like that as well. And I’ve done that for a couple of vacations where I wanted to just have a photo book to give, to to mount that time the in laws. And, and so it was nice to just be able to say, Okay, this, this album charted into a into a photo book and that it’s a printed nicely, you know bound item that you can just give away as a gift. So easy, easy gifts, when you have the photographs in in one space. Okay, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 40:24
So our next is how to like great, I will say, say, post your Facebook posts and media to Google Docs and Google Photo. And you know, it’s interesting, because there is this is, with a lot of things that are happening with Facebook and Mara, there is a lot of people looking, wondering solely to the polls, but to the pictures, because there was a time where people upload pictures, you know, and there is a lot of memories in Facebook that now are only in Facebook. So this instructable will give you are showing you how to strike those media into Google Photos. So you can save them for the posterity.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:06
Yes, and so folks have an awareness, you can transfer photos to just several major platforms, Google Photos is one of them, drop boxes and other and they have a couple of other platforms where you can export your your photos and videos to those specific platforms. And so I’ve already done that I’ve taken all of my Google Photos and just exported them to Facebook, just so that I have a backup because you know, whatever happens to meta happens to meta, I want to make sure that I still have those memories saved to my system. Now, most of them are duplicated. Because, you know, I saw when I took the photograph in Facebook, I took the photograph, usually on my phone or in a camera and then I’ve uploaded it to Facebook, but it was still nice having the backup there as an as an additional backup in that sense. But you can do it, which is really nice. All right onto our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 41:57
So our next one is talking about early prime days or prime days is coming. You know, obviously the Kindles will come the Kindle eight now, the Kindle Fire HD A is going to be discontinued and our son is going to try to build whatever inventory they have. It doesn’t making a decent Kindle tablet. For I think it was $59. I mean that is is I think it’s your it is so cheap, really on the hook for what the download is, I understand it’s not a powerful download, I get it, okay. But for a color Kindle, where you can watch prime and Netflix and all that you’re not going to buy a cheaper TV. So what they also have some offers into the paper, the Kindle Paperwhite kits, editions and other stuff. So if you are looking, you know, to excuse to get out other gear, new Kindle, this may be a great time toward that. Yeah, so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:58
just for folks who are unaware of Prime Day runs from July 11 to July 12. So if you’re listening to the podcast after this today, for example, if your once the podcast goes out in the field, it’ll it’ll be July 11. So Prime Day will be in full swing. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have early deals. And if you’re listening to this in real time here on July 10 Target has already put out circle week, you know sales to get ahead of the game, I’m sure that Walmart and the others are trying to do their own thing as well to kind of get ahead of it. But there are some early prime deals across the board. So I would highly recommend going to the New York Times to wire cutter and look at the URL Prime Day deals. Because if you’re if you’re going to buy something anyway not don’t buy it because it’s a deal. Right that’s that’s not a deal. That’s that’s a waste of money. But if you are going to buy something anyway, and it’s and it’s here on the on the list, a lot of the Amazon and Amazon owned companies are going to have Amazon products, product lines are going to have really good deals. But there’s some really interesting deals outside of that. Now there are a couple of air purifier deals on here. So if you wanted to get an air purifier, there’s some mattresses, all kinds of fun things that are that are out there. If you love Legos, there are some Lego deals. So there’s some really good deals out there if you’re if you’re going to buy these things in the first place. But you know, Prime Day is a pretty good sales day, if you were already going to buy those things. Okay, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 44:24
I need you need a temptation to buy a Kindle describe this next article may be that the rotation that you were needed say there is a new update for it. Now you can do pen style sticky note on page writing, lasso contrast slider and subfolder. So that will allow you to do folder inside of the folder. And, you know, again, I said this was Amazon analysis described, I thought it was going to be a very, very interesting device because he’s going to make notes into the hands or digital notes into the hands of them. Everybody, and so far, Amazon has not disappoint. He has they have made this device, Amazon style, it doesn’t do everything. But whatever he’s doing, and they’ve been adding little by little and making this thing more and more powerful. And it’s a matter of time that I don’t need to be into my arsenal of the license,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:22
I have to say I own an Kindle scribe, and I use it every day. Now, it has become definitely a daily driver for reading, for being able to just take quick notes, I keep it here on the side of my table side of my desk. And it’s there for just taking a quick jot of, of capture items that I can’t do. Because I’m in a meeting with a client and you know, whatever’s going on, I want to still just be able to capture it. It’s a single click button. And with a stylus, I could just quickly jot it down, you know, I leave that page open. So that I could do that I just click a single button screen comes on, I take down what is the open loop, and I capture it into the system. And I know after the meeting to go ahead and process those items, sometimes I’ll sit down and I’ll actually take notes in the scribe and and then after the meeting, I’ll look at the the notes that I’ve taken and then type them into Evernote so that they’re in the final note as well. But the ability to go ahead and just open up any book and write on the on the actual Kindle book is incredibly helpful for being able to do that kind of annotation live, I just find to be just incredible. Like this is so helpful. I really like it. And so Amazon has really I think knocked it out of the park with a Kindle scribe, because it’s not super powerful, right? It’s not something that I want to start doing computing on. But it is all the things that I want a tablet to do in that very dumb sense, right? Like, I don’t want it to be good notes, right? I don’t want it to be converting text into an, you know, handwritten text into typewritten text. I’m not trying to do anything sophisticated with it, I just want it to be kind of like one of those boogie boards, but a little smarter, right? It’s like, it just got just enough feature. So it’s like, it’s just feature rich enough that it’s going to remember what I just wrote in it and not delete it like the boogie board would. So it’s got it’s got just that little extra oomph that I really like and enjoy. Okay, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 47:20
And this is our older article. So now we’re going to tool something

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:25
else. Okay, fantastic. So, as you all know, in new tools of the week of Busan, I come across many personal productivity apps and tools and services. We each bring you, you might wait till you bringing a competitor to the a prior tool that I talked about back in June. But I’ve been playing around with all of these various browsers. So this particular browser, and I hope I haven’t talked about it before, but if I have all well, it’ll, it’s just as good. So the browser is called sidekick. And you can go to meet sidekick.com. And sidekick is a it’s a, it’s a web browser. And that’s, that’s its core functionality, except that it’s provided this additional overlay, just like wave these productivity. So in, you have a left hand sidebar.

Or back then. So you have the left hand sidebar, and you have all of your apps, and whether it’s notion and Gmail, and you know, all of the other various tools, you’re capable of having all of those in there. Now, the, the idea is that you can open up your own sidebar, or a set of a full size weapon. Now, there’s two killer features that I really liked here. One is that Kenji wait box, you can use Chrome extensions. So because it’s chromium based in its chrome base, you’re capable of adding extensions in there. So you’re utilizing those applications, kind of in a web browser, but you’re also extending the applications that you can’t do if you installed notion on the desktop or slack on your desktop, you’re not gonna be able to utilize those Chrome extensions on those on those applications. So you can extend the power of slack directly there inside, it’s fine. The other piece is that those the sidebar gives you quick access to so you have to do as well, you can have your to do side panel, and now you have your tasks right there in next tear your Gmail. And now you’re capable of seeing both of those things. So as you’re reading an email, you can capture an action that needs to be taken care of right there in the sidebar. So it gives you a pretty powerful ability to kind of toggle between those items. But the thing that I like most about five six so far and I’ve been playing around with a lot of these tools recently is the ability to go into focus mode. And so focus mode basically allows you to go in and say hey, I don’t want to deal with Have these things right now. And you can just go into focus mode and whatever, whatever tool or app, you’re in, kind of Gray’s out everything else, and limits the notifications being sent to you around all of the other apps that you’re in. So you’re, you’re kind of drawn in to laser focused on the thing that you’re working on, as opposed to all the other things that can bring ending and distract you from what you’ve been working on. So I, I like sidekick. So far, there is a free version, as you can use that free version forever. And, and it’s, you know, that you can upgrade to pro and whatever else. But it’s available cross platform, so you can get them on all the various platforms. And you can go ahead and create recalled sessions. So sessions kind of grouped together all of the things oh, one of the other features that I really love about it is, it has a universal search. So you can go ahead and just, you know, whatever it is Command or Control F. And it’ll open up kind of like spotlight on the Mac OS operating system, or iOS operating system to have you kind of open up spotlight, and you can search across all of your apps. So you can search, you know, across those that all. So it gives you that kind of centralized search capability that is really, really helpful, which I really like. So you can search across LinkedIn, and telegram and you know, all of the all of the different applications that are that are connected inside of phytic. So it’s pretty strong and powerful way to search across your apps as documents or workspaces. So, something you might want to check out in terms of if you’re looking for a productivity browser, specifically for work. This can be really useful, at least what is your

Augusto Pinaud 51:41
so I will start with a story before I go to my to my tool. And the story is a client of mine who getting old, okay has happened to many, and his main device is the phone and is starting to get to the point where typing on the phone. You know, he cannot do it as fast as you wish. So that was part of the reason of the consultation with me. And we found ways to get dictation get to him to work. But the dictation works great, you know, musical keyboard or Siri, if you’re doing something short, and you are doing a ray called me by date, those things were great. When you now want to go and do a much longer dictation when you want to write on a document. Those not necessarily are the best tool. And this was the issue here was you know, that’s the main device that made the right cell phone. And he would need it to be again, that productive, he is losing that productivity. So we play do many other things with new ones Dragon Anywhere new ones. It’s been doing transcription software for years of years of years. And they’re up there, their version for the iOS, they’re powerful, you can do it on device and go and basically dictate will do the translation right there. And it works great. Another option is otter, you record the audio or date an otter will do it for you. But in this case, no one’s Dragon Anywhere was the choice that this client picked. And it was fantastic to see him go back to that productivity on the phone. The issue was again, he cannot I used to be able to type for hours on this phone, I cannot I cannot see properly. Instead, he can put the phone in there, get his urban dictate the rest of his life and be very, very happy. So that’s the tool of the week. No one’s really going anywhere for iOS works on the phone. And they are

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:52
fantastic. And moving on from new tools of the week. We are now going to head into our featured story this week, which is that Instagram has launched a competitor to Twitter called threads. And so what do you think about threads of Gousto?

Augusto Pinaud 54:10
Well, if you don’t care about privacy, and you don’t care, you don’t care about privacy is a great tool. I haven’t played with it because I like my privacy. And when an application starts saying we will need you know the privacy laws in Europe are way more strict than the United States. We know that and when man on threat said oh well. It’s going to be some months for us to get to UAE because of the privacy issues. That was another red flag for me to say. Not tested. So but but it’s still it is the application I get there is so many people still living on Facebook that are okay. Was their private See them the way Facebook handle itself. It’s an alternative to Twitter. You know, sadly, Twitter was a great platform. And lately, it’s been imploding, and by their own management, so we don’t know what’s going to happen with Twitter, you know, one of the articles we have in their Twitter warms, that they’re going to sue them no matter how great do it on, I don’t, I don’t know what it’s going to be out of that. That concept of that kind of communication, as threads as Twitter is something that really gets my attention. But I also want to make sure that if we are doing microblogging, we do it in a way that is, okay. It’s there is some privacy issues there that I want to ask, you know, microblogging to just give more content to Mr. Zuckerberg. It’s not something that is on my interest. And that’s all that I’m going to say on my soapbox.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:05
Yeah, so So I just want to talk through a couple of things here. One, threads is, is embedded with Instagram. So folks who are not on Instagram, you’re going to be forced onto Instagram in order to be able to create a threads account, it is bound to your threads account. This may be kind of hidden, but you can have multiple accounts in the same threads app. And there’s a link in the articles I’m pretty sure we put in there, that leads you to how to set up multiple accounts, if you have multiple Instagram accounts that you want to have in threads, you can do that. And, and so there are some privacy issues with regard to threads, it is trying to collect more data than before. But that’s a reality factor. And, and so I have joined threads just to see what it’s all about. And, and I think that it’s still nascent. But I will also say there’s two things that are really important here. And then we’ll talk about the productivity implications, which is really where we should be focusing. But one is that threads is the fastest growing social network in history. It’s at 100 million users after five days. That is remarkable. And it’s it’s a testament to obviously meta and its power of attracting people. And, you know, Twitter would love it have that kind of growth in their on their platform. And I hope that I hope it is sending a message, I don’t care one way or another about Elon Musk. But I hope it’s sending a message to the Twitter leadership team, including musk, that the way in which Twitter is going is not the right way that obviously, so many people are flocking to threads in this way to is that they are embracing the open source activity pub protocol, which means that you don’t need to join threads, as soon as threads is actively integrating with activity pub, you can join any part of the fediverse that also is activity pub, and you will be able to have an account that interacts with those threads. So that is just you know, you may not capture the scope of it, but it’s very, very powerful that it is integrating with an open source platform. And I give great credit. I can’t believe I’m saying this, I give great credit to Mehta for for choosing to do this it may be Instagram specifically right, you know, because Instagram does run, you know, somewhat independently in terms of its decisions. And this is an Instagram app, it’s not a solid Facebook app, it’s and so on so forth. Right? This is an Instagram app that the idea to but but tying to an open source platform, like activity pub, the protocol really does extend its abilities in a lot of ways. And that’s what gives me solace in some way shape or form to the privacy issues. Because once we’re kind of available on the activity pub protocol, I don’t see myself really using threads as much as I see myself using my existing Mastodon as well as I’m on multiple other, you know, Mastodon servers, I’m probably gonna go to those, and then I can interact with threads, threads there, you know, and without the concerns about what threads is collecting about me in some way, shape or form. So flipping forward then to the social network issue, right, which is that you want to be utilizing social networking for productive purposes in your life that could be entertainment, there’s an entertainment value, right? That’s, that’s a productive use of your time. There is connecting with family and friends in a particular way. You might be promoting yourself through your business or otherwise, utilizing social networks and putting out social media. So utilizing a microblogging platform like threads is akin to using Twitter and quite honestly, I continue to use Twitter in a lot of ways now Uh, you know, even though it’s a dumpster fire for other folks, you know, I’ve curated over the last, I’ve been on Twitter for probably, you know, since 2009, something like that. So I’ve been on there a long time, I’ve curated a group of people that I enjoy interacting with, most of that happens behind the scenes, you know, I’m sending messages back and for the folks behind the public sphere, and, and so I appreciate Twitter on that, on that level. And until Twitter dies, I will probably still be involved on in on Twitter on some level in some way, shape or form. I’ve been playing with threads, it still lacks some features. But the more features it gets, the more appealing it looks to me. In terms of things, I think the interface is clunky, the fact that I can’t, you know, use the the threads environment on the desktop is just out the gate unproductive for me, I like to be basically have a full keyboard, and the ability to be able to do work on my desktop, and for it to flow onto mobile. So there’s that limitation as well. But back to the point, which is like,

Augusto Pinaud 1:01:02
Instagram playing Instagram has been like that forever, too.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:01:06
Yeah, but they’ve now I mean, you can do almost everything on the desktop now that you could do on Instagram, either through the meta business suite or directly on instagram.com. So you’ve very, there are very few limitations. Now to being able to post to Instagram on the desktop, I felt like they should have had threads, embrace that with a PWA or something else like that, from the start. And I feel like they will get there, especially considering the activity pub, and the fediverse connection. So I’m hoping I’m very hopeful that they’ll go in that direction, especially if they plan to overtake meta, I’m sorry, if they plan to overtake Twitter, in that, in that sense. And in that space and place. That being the case, you use a social network for purpose, don’t just jump on the bandwagon and start using threads. without a purpose, think about why you’re going to be using threads. If you didn’t use Twitter, why would you use threads, you know, stay where you’re at currently on your social network. That’s where I come at this from a productivity perspective, you really don’t get any true benefit from joining threads. Unless you’re looking for a new community of people to interact and engage with. I don’t quite yet understand how you do that. Because they’re there, I hashtag things, they’re not really hashtags. And you can tag people but you can’t hashtag things, it doesn’t seem like you can look for patterns of things other than by searching. And the search seems fairly, like just very broad, right? You’re like, you want to be able to have kind of like an Instagram or Facebook or anyplace else like that you kind of have an Explorer tab and Twitter, where you can kind of see different topics, different communities of people coming together. don’t quite have that in threads yet. I’m pretty sure they’ll get there. But right now, it seems just a little bit whatever i i created a few quote unquote threads, you know, one message after another after another trying to create a thread and it didn’t look like a thread may look like I had written two messages, and then a reply to another. And I was like, No, it was supposed to be three messages in a row. Come on, get it right Instagram, right. So there’s some some limitations in terms of how the platform is really operating. And I think that it’ll take a while for them to get those pieces up and running in that in that in that way. So anyway, that’s my thoughts on threads. Any additional thoughts good, too. And then I have just one announcement before we get on to our the rest of our items.

Augusto Pinaud 1:03:24
No, that’s okay. So yeah, I

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:03:27
do want to just make a quick note that and I’ll put a link to the to the article in in the announcements for everybody. But Evernote did lay off the rest of their American staff that’s inclusive of most of their developers, that didn’t move to Italy. But in essence, bending spoons which purchased Evernote earlier this year, has decided to, you know, centralize all of their operations in Europe. And and so they decided to just get rid of the folks who were left, you know, the probably just about 100 folks who are who are developers and otherwise in the States, and so this is just part of the consolidation. I am never an uncertified expert. I am saddened to see those people go. But this happens in you know, in business, it’s just business. Nothing is happening to Evernote, the product, right Evernote is going and as a software is going to continue to grow, continue to be developed, all of those things are going to be fine. pushing for, you know, updates and all of those kinds of things to all the things that we want Evernote to do. But I just wanted to make a note there that I’m sure many of you have heard perhaps through the grapevine through the Reddit vine that Evernote had this round of layoffs, but but I would say don’t fear jumping ship from Evernote or anything like that. For that reason, you could leave Evernote for any other reason, but I wouldn’t leave it just because they’ve consolidated their staff in Europe that has that’s a business decision and not a bad business decision. It’s a good business decision for bending spoons. It just happens to be a bad decision for the employees who are working in the States. And then launches over the over the years, but it is what it is. They can’t fire me because I’m a volunteer. As far as part of the deal there, so, but I just wanted to let everybody know about that onto what you’ve been reading and enjoying a usto. So there’s

Augusto Pinaud 1:05:31
a couple of things. One is Canadian judge and rolls rules that thumbs up emoji count as a contract agreement. And there is a farmer in Canada, who in Spain really bid over $6,000, Canadian, for agreed on a contract with emoji. And it is interesting, because it is the signs of time going up digital signature on this thing are going to come. So it is an interesting, interesting reading. Especially if you, you know, when you can see there how currently, sometimes we respond to things on the digital world. And the last thing is an article I just want to share.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:06:19
Now one thing he here, it states, President Clinton signed the global ESign Act. And so just be very, very mindful of the fact that just because this is a Canadian judge here in the States, I don’t know about anywhere else, but at least here in the States. It is well understood that if you agree to something via any digital means text, message, email, ie, you know, sign, you can sign by email, in essence, and that doesn’t mean you have to put a signature on paper, you can say I agree to something via an email response. And that will count, you know, as a contractual agreement of some kind, talk to your will, or your own legal counsel. But what will ESign Act, piece of ledge just gives you the ability to accept contracts. So just be very, very mindful of that reality. Okay, onto your other articles now.

Augusto Pinaud 1:07:17
So our next article is from Google Arts and Culture they have on built inside the genius mind of Leonardo da Vinci with, you know, participation or collaboration of 28 institutions. If you have time, and you really want to be fascinated this is it’s not a quick view, it is not going to take you a couple of minutes, it takes the article read, I think what they do rabbit holes takes a little bit longer, very fast.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:07:50
Fantastic. All right. And with that, we have reached the end of our time together, we’ve covered the productivity and related technology news this week. Thank you, Augusto, for curating our list of articles every week, and putting it together for us to be able to do the show. All right, on anything but idle.com, you’ll find our show notes. Those include the links to all our stories, the tools of the week, the new equity, the extra stories that we didn’t have time to cover, it also includes a text transcript for you to read and download offline if you need to. So you can click on the read more, it’ll expand right there on the page, or you can click on the PDF, it’ll download it. And you can of course, read along. As you listen, watch the replay. If you look at the show notes, and you want to contribute in some way, shape, or form, give feedback or otherwise, you can head over to anything but idle.com You know, go to the episode page. And you can go ahead and leave a comment right there on the page. If you want to interact with us and you know, talk to us about things. Or you can go ahead and join personal productivity club by going to www dot personal productivity dot club, go ahead and join the community and there isn’t Anything But Idle community in the system. And go ahead there is actually if you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community. It’ll take you directly to the signup page to join Anything But Idle group. So in there, you can go ahead and interact with us share stories, talk about all those things together with us in the community. And that’s the primary place for a goose stone I can integrate with you and interact with you. Feel free to if this is your first time listening to the podcast feel free to subscribe so you get the notification and automatic downloads of the new podcasts that subscribe or follow us on your favorite podcast app. But otherwise, with that we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life.

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Remembering Your Notes, and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week

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Headlines, Part A

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community. Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:12
I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:13
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 121. Remembering your notes, and the productivity and technology news this week, we’re recording this on July 5 2023. I hope you all in the states enjoyed a Happy Independence Day weekend, hence the late recording date. But of course, each week, we cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and its related technologies. And so with that, I’m going to have Augusto lead us into our first headline this week. Augusto,

Augusto Pinaud 0:44
the first article came from 14th. And this is going to be a short section today covered by three articles. The first one is the forced Return of the office is the definition of insanity. And being a person who don’t want to go to an office ever again. Since 2004. Okay. I agree. Okay, there is a myth that people work better in the office that there is something that the office will provide, other than distraction and bad coffee. So that’s what the article goes talk about the roadblocks of productivity, and how CEOs are founding this hard balance into let’s try to go back and really what productivity is doing with those.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:35
Yeah, so So this article is, is very well in line with the next two articles that we’re going to be discussing. So I’ll kind of put my piece here and then we’ll go on to the next article and how it kind of leads into it. But I have a lot of thoughts regarding this forced return to the office, I think the article author makes some really salient points here. And this is a this is a fortune article, it’s written by Dr. Gleb Tsipursk, hopefully got that name, right. But this is a is a person who helps tech and finance industry executives drive collaboration, innovation and retention in hybrid work, according to the little bio that’s there. And so this consultant is kind of in that space. And for me, it seems pretty intuitive, that this would be the problem that we see when there is any forced culture change. So we had this in impressed upon us, right, we were we were forced into a cultural change by virtue of the combination of the COVID 19 pandemic and many other issues as we came out of it. And so people were in this hybrid and remote environment. And here we are now on the other side of that with people who are who are basically overworking to a great extent, we saw a lot of people during the pandemic worried about their job. And so they were, they were working many more hours than they probably needed to they were overworking this high level of productivity. And of course, that couldn’t, wasn’t sustainable. And so we’re coming out of that. And of course, I think, you know, managers who just believe that they have to have people in person are causing this kind of problem. What I really liked was how the author talked about this Gallup study, and, and how coming out of the pandemic, the this Gallup work this the state of global workplace 2023 report, and it talks about what people really are feeling and needing in light of this, this whole new perspective. But one of the things that I found really kind of interesting about this, is that the author talks very clearly about the hidden roadblocks to productivity. And how if, if employers and F folks are managers generally or at large, are not doing the right collaboration, the right socializing the right mentoring, and giving people those opportunities, then they’re really going to be up a creek because those people are ultimately going to burn out and or be less engaged and leave. And so they actually also talked about this recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard University in the University of Iowa, where they had software engineers located in different buildings on the campus. And what they what they posited from the study was that while you have higher productivity, clearly higher productivity when people are distributed, you have less mentorship. And you and I’ve talked about this consistently, which is that, you know, we need to have different and better ways of being able to elevate and to mentor and to guide new members of the workforce, right, we need to be able to help them in some way shape or form. There are ways to do that remotely, and we are

Augusto Pinaud 4:44
you know, one of the problems is we are assuming that these people want to be mentoring this way that we were mentored many years ago and these people is different you know, I I don’t do as many coaching on business as I do with families, and one of the things that I laugh very often with my clients is how do you communicate with your kids? What do you mean, I call them and I want them to pick up the phone. So you understand that concept. Application your kid do not understand his phone has is capable of, they understand text, they understand snap, they understand other things. Phone call, they don’t video call, maybe phone call, they don’t. So when you call and inspect that callback, as a parent, that is not going to happen, why the client doesn’t understand it, the kid can relate if I call my kids 11 and 15. Okay, sorry, they understand video calls, they understand your FaceTime in that, if I dial the phone, okay, it’s annoying for them. They don’t understand why even you want to call without seeing why do you didn’t text and it is the same thing for many of these people entering the workforce, they work in a different way. No good, no bad, different. And the mentoring to be effective, really need to be adapted to that this is people who use technology, and are much more comfortable with technology than many of the people who are doing that mentoring.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:22
Absolutely. So you know, as this article notes, when you force people back into the office, employee engagement is the thing that suffers, especially those people who want to continue working remotely. And so we can have structured mentoring, that is in a hybrid model, where you’re not forcing people to come back into the office all the time. And, again, this is all fairly new, we still have a lot of culture to shake out shake, you know, culture is to is to organizations, as habits are to individuals, they are slow to be creative. And once they’re created, they’re tough to break. So it really takes time for people to be able to get used to some of these things. And so I think that this preliminary research, and I think these studies are very interesting to watch, because it gives us some sense of it. And again, a lot of this is really intuitive, that productivity would increase as people are not forced into, you know, having to have their time taken up by chit chat and other kinds of things happening around them. People are generally self directed in their positions. And the other side is that, you know, employee engagement is going to obviously, be lower, because they’re not consistently interacting with each other. That’s probably where the productivity increases are coming from. But we also have to force we have to structure that that level of mentorship of that employee engagement so that we do have a culture that is retained by virtue of this remote or distributed work environment. And with that, let’s continue on the subject of remote work in our next article. Okay, step Oh,

Augusto Pinaud 7:49
since Doom, probably mispronounced our first article, I’m going to say that the second article is right, written by Aki Ito. So I get the responsibility of butcher the second one, but his Business Insider, and he’s in the war of remote work. Companies are turning full time jobs into low paying gigs. And, you know, yeah, we can argue about how these corporations are getting more temp people and more outsource people for do these jobs and more of, you know, independent contractors. And there are a couple of myths that are are good to dispel. One is independent contractors are more expensive than full time employees. In most organizations, they are not cheaper. The advantage that gives to the organization is flexibility. That’s it. It’s not a cost issue, it’s a flexibility issue, when you are your employee, if you need to replace that person, there is a complex process an independent contractor, you can end up a contract right there. So people need to understand these things. Yes, there is a hidden reaction to remote work as the article said part time employees independent contractors, but also we are ignoring in this case that there is not everybody who wants to do the full time employee who is fine into the independent contractor work into the temp into their, you know, being able to work now with a company that is in Europe, okay, being here from the United States or the other way around. So one of the things that all these things did was that all these things that were happening underground, hey, independent contractors, outsourcing, okay, offshoring that was happening before the pandemic, but he was hearing nobody was talking about it. Now that all came to light and there is many companies and many people shocked by the realities. Now there is not I don’t think companies Returning full time jobs into low paying gigs. Companies are evolving jobs, some of them are going to be smaller things that they’re going to pay less. And some of those are going to be things that can be done in a better way. The question is, how are you ready to evolve to use your skills and translate that into the way you want to work? And leave? You know, that point of the article says, well, people is losing the benefits of the W two? Well, most likely the benefits of the W two are dead anyways, it’s a matter of when not a matter of if so many of these people may be ahead of the curve and figure it out how they can make it differently.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:49
Yeah, I come out with come out with a slightly different perspective for folks to kind of consider. And I agree with everything that Cousteau said. And the the other perspective is for the small business entrepreneur, who is a service based business that is providing these kinds of services to others, right, they now have greater competition. And because more and more basically, gig workers side hustlers are coming onto the market, because they have that capability, plus FTEs, full time employees are now being shifted into this gig work and or this gig of fied economy. That creates a number of problems here in the United States and probably globally, but I’ll focus on the state’s issues, which is that we here in the United States have a bunch of benefits that are tied to our primary employment. One is our tax bases, right? Our tax base is tied to our full time employment status as a W two employee, when we’re 1099. Contractor, we’re we’re being taxed higher. Because we’re you know, the employer in essence is paying part of that payroll tax to the federal government on your behalf. There’s also things like retirement benefits, those are usually strictly tied to them, you’re usually getting benefits from the employer, whether that’s a 401 K, or some kind of SEP IRA program, or something like that you’re paying as a small business entrepreneur into your own IRA, or you’re paying on behalf of your employees. And then of course, healthcare. Healthcare is usually directly tied to your FTE status. And you’re a part of that group benefit policy, sometimes you’re also getting long term disability short term disability policies, so that if you do go into some kind of, you know, incapable state, right physically or mentally, you are covered by some kind of policy, depending upon where you are in the food chain in the organization, all of those things go away when you’re when you’re a gig worker. And, and we need to figure out as a, as a global workforce, how to deal with those issues. People need some kind of safety net, this is not the Wild Wild West, it’s 2023. And so there is this reality here that we all have to kind of come to terms with, do we want a traditional work environment? Or do we have a government that’s going to step in and provide some of those things, whether at cost or otherwise, to be able to provide those things? That is a political and a public policy problem that is seemingly intractable right now, but it’s something that we have to deal with. And it’s going to start affecting productivity? Because if people I mean, we talked, what was it last week or the week before it goes to about how financial stress impacted people’s productivity, if people are constantly worried about their health care about their retirement, about, you know, bringing in the next contract, because now, the company could let you go at any moment, and you have no, there’s no unemployment insurance for a 1099 contractor, you’re just done. When all of those financial stresses start to compound on people, even when someone is getting a lot of contracts all the time, there’s still that financial stress involved, because you’re basically a self employed individual, that financial stress is going to compound and ultimately hurt productivity across the entire labor market. So just be mindful of that as we move forward. If you are in a position of leadership, if you’re an executive, start thinking about how you’re going to handle employer based health insurance for your folks, especially if you’re a small business, and all of a sudden you go say you had eight employees, and then you go to three because you decided that you could save some money. Well guess what? Your group health insurance policy may or may not want to cover only three people, right? So you may need a requisite number of people to even have a group policy. So all of these things are kind of intermixed, and and then of course, you have less control over that individual right. You can’t ask them to work overtime or otherwise, they have the ability and right under the IRS regulations, right. IRS has a checklist of things they say this makes someone an employee and the moment you start checking more and more of those less and less of those boxes, the more likely they are an employee and therefore deserve the the Employee Benefits rights of a regular employee. So just kind of keep that all kind of rolling around in your ecosystem, as you’re thinking about all of the things around job security for the people who are working for you, and the benefits that are provided to them traditionally, you know, I, I consistently say this, you know, an organization’s most precious asset are its people. And so treating them like a disposable commodity is not going to get you the best performance of those people. And I think that’s something that we all have to kind of keep in, keep in mind as we move forward in this very tenuous, you know, back and forth between that which is the gig economy and the traditional work economy. With that onto our next and final article in our productivity headlines related to this whole remote work world,

Augusto Pinaud 15:50
as we have discussed multiple times during the show, you know, about a phenomenon called Quiet quitting, where people are stopping, you know, doing the minimum to stay the job and keep the salary now, what they’re describing is that frustrated employees are loud, weary. That, you know, I was a little confused, because loud quitting, I thought was what people used to quit before. But okay, let’s call it something new. You know, as they said, everything gets recycled and new. But, um, they’re talking about, you know, that this resignation trend is even worse for the business leaders. But he’s exactly what you said it’s not about location is not about remote is not about the office. It’s about what these employers are feeling. What are you letting your team feel? Are your team feeling a we are part of this, are we moving forward together, or we’re not it doesn’t matter if you are a gig, an independent contractor or a W two, what matter really is how they feel when people feel fair, contributing, and moving forward, there is no quiet or loud, quitting, loud and quiet quitting happen when something on the organization broke. And normally what it broke is that is people stop pushing to make sure these employers or employees are well and are taken care of. And more importantly, they feel taken care of.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:31
Yep, all all of those things. And I this, I’m not quite sure if I’m I miss, read the first article and whether that was also part of gallops 2023 state of the global workforce report. But this article also covers that report and talks about it in this other in this other vein, and I just want to underscore something of the article notes about the report. Specifically, it says, quote, but management is largely to blame with 70% of team engagement attributable to the manager, according to the report and quote, and, you know, we I’ve said it many times, and I will keep saying it, when we have these arguments over. And I think they’re legitimate rhetoric, right? This is all good conversation to have when we have these arguments over remote work versus in person or in office work, when we have these arguments over, you know, quiet, quitting, or loud, quitting, or otherwise, many times where we’re forced into this idea of the moral culpability of the individual who is who is doing it. And there’s, there are examples of that, obviously, there are some bad employees out there, there are bad apples. However, by and large, by and large, this is management’s responsibility, and is typically men and management’s fault, and not creating an environment in an ecosystem that supports their workers. And this comes all the way down to you know, salary and benefits, all the way through to creating a team culture and, and fostering an environment that is supportive of those people. And I just like it seems so on its face, simple to understand to me, yet, it seems to be such a difficult thing for most organizations to recognize, which is that it’s not the employees that are disengaged, or, you know, purposefully, it’s not like they’re just wanting to be disengaged from their jobs, they want to get paid, they want to do their work, and they want to do their work well, they want to they want to have meaning associated with their work. And so often trust is the thing that is so marred between management and employees, that that’s why they disengage and then loud quitting, you know, causing this harm to the organization by going out there and lambasting their their employer. They recognize, I mean, you have to have a really, really difficult situation to go out there and ruin of a future recommendation, right, you’re not going to get a recommendation from a company that you basically you know, out loud fire, you know, in that sense, and that you leave and kind of a huff but these people are compelled to do this because of their this lack of time. Justin, this, this breakdown in engagement with their managers. It’s not the organization, it’s not like, oh, this big, you know, conglomerate hates me, it’s that this person, this person is causing me problems. And so often than not, I really feel like we’re not taking advantage of elevating the knowledge set and the skill set of our managers. And we’re not dealing with a mental health stress the the absolute distress that managers have, when they are managing teams, both in person and remote, right, we need to be able to give professional development managers because bad managers create bad teams. But also as a high level of stress with managing people, I know it, I got the gray hair to prove it. And so we want to make sure that we are we are helping to kind of, you know, have a stopgap measure some way to defuse the stress associated with managing people. And it’s tough people management is tough. And we’re not giving enough of credit to managers in a lot of ways for the for the tough people work that they’re doing. So I just I really enjoyed the series of articles because it gives us time to really reflect on how difficult it is to create a an environment that is fostering productivity, and that we have an opportunity here to do that. And so with that, we’ve covered the productivity headlines for the week, when we get back, we’re going to go ahead and head into our technology headlines. And so with that, we’re going to take a word from our sponsor this week. And then when we get back, we will head into our technology headlines. As I said, See after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 21:32
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:42
And we’re back welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle with acoustic bonauto myself Ray Sidney-Smith. And so we are going to go on to our technology headlines. Augusto what’s the next Headline?

Augusto Pinaud 22:54
Headline is a review from good e readers on the Amazon Fire Max, they call them a decent tablet. And I it’s a good review. Okay, and they talk Hey, some of the you know the displays are good display the performance, you know, the battery is good. And you know, they make the accessories are cool. You know, they say they love and display the price, the fingerprint sensor for unlocking the device, the number of speakers so you give good, decent sound quality. And they complain they found three things. One is the lockscreen has ads Well, Amazon hat and higher version you can buy without the ads, the lack of Google Play store that has been a standard on any Fire tablet since 2012. And if you’re a vendor enough, you can figure it out on the web how to how to fix that. And then thank you and then this screen ratio. And I wanted to bring it because this is the kind of reviews that people read and say, Oh well, great. It’s a $250. Let me buy it. And there are two things that are important to remember. Yes, this is a $250. But it’s a device that is designed to be upgraded consistently. This is not a device that you’re going to buy and keep it three or four years. Amazon has no interest into this they will come 24 or 25 with the next 11 inch and they want you need to upgrade and they make it in that way. And I’m not criticizing Amazon. That is their model their model is, is they bring a very cheap tablet that you can consistently upgrade and buy a new one and buying products through them. So be aware of that as you read these reviews and consider this tablet. Is this tablet decent. Yes. It’s going to last you three years. No so be Be aware of that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:03
Absolutely. All right on to our next particle.

Augusto Pinaud 25:07
Our next article is Onyx Onyx do a tablet call the books, the B O X. And they lounge, a new Pocket PC one that has the pencil very similar to the Nova Ersi that we have review and I have talked about it. It’s the specs are very, very similar, except that they add something on the bottom like the iPhone where you can put now some applications that I’m very, very, very jealous because mine do not do that. So, but this is another tablet. Another thing but remember, this is when people ask me how well do you use the tablet? No, no, this is an Kindle in asteroids. Okay. It’s better. It’s better than a Kindle. Yes. is faster than a Kindle? Yes. It allowed me to install applications. Yes, it has substitute for a tablet. Now. So if you are looking for a more powerful, then this is an option. If you are not, if you are looking for a tablet, this may not be the option you are looking for.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:18
Yeah, I think that again it the article actually tries to compare it to the Kindle scribe or the remarkable two tablets. I don’t think that that’s a an appropriate, I think in functionality, I suppose but certainly not in quality of the experience. This is This is in essence, it’s running Android. Right? This is an Android device. Yeah. So it’s running Android. You know, I think that it has a pretty good set of specs. I wasn’t actually dis disapproving of the specs. I do like the fact that it’s a color tool. And I think that it’s important for us all to kind of take heed to the fact that this is this is Onyx is entry into this space to compete with scribe and the remarkable to vertical to though is very high end technology, right? It’s a high end device. The Kindle Scribe is like any other Kindle quality build, right? It’s nice, but it’s also as you said, with the with the with the Macs, you know, it’s just something that you’re going to replace on a regular basis, it’s not going to last very long. Although I will say that I own every single one of my past candles,

Augusto Pinaud 27:27
the candles last but the timeless, the fire is a different story. The Kansas is a reader, they will last forever because they are indestructible apparently according to the ones I have at least. But the fires will not the batteries and the processors are not fast enough to continue lasting for a really long,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:48
right. Totally, totally understood. And so again, I’m I’m actually very interested in this from the color perspective, I like the the ability to be able to play in the color, I like access to the Google Play store here. And I like having the additional functionality for someone. This is not for me, because I do not want the additional functionality on any tablet that I’m using except on my iPad, right? So my iPad is that tablet that has that functionality, which is a full purpose computing device. Anything else must be must be context specific. Right? My Kindle is there for reading. The Kindle Scribe is there for taking notes and annotating documents, right? So it’s it’s all about giving the tool a purpose. And many times what we try to do is we try to say we want all of our devices to do all the things that’s not as productive as giving the tool a purpose, and then using it for that purpose effectively. Which also means that you don’t have to learn every feature of every every device, you’re learning the features of the device that that it works best for. Right. So, you know, like the Kindles have a browser built into it. And you can do all kinds of things on those devices. Why would you fight a browser built on a Kindle? To get things done, I get it, if it’s in a pinch, you need to be able to access blah, blah, blah, but it’s really not worth it in my book, to fight that uphill battle on a device that’s inferior to browsing for browsing the web. So just kind of keep those things in mind that this is doing some really sophisticated things. But it’s also a fairly, you know, overpowered you know, like, basically reader and and so yeah, it can do some extra things. And you got to keep that in mind. I do like the fact that it’s on Android 11. And so it’s pretty, pretty high up there and the androids, doing doing its thing. All right, on to our next article about Android getting a brand identity facelift.

Augusto Pinaud 29:42
And that’s all yours. The Android is changing their brand identity once again, and I don’t understand this game from Google. But

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:55
I think it’s I think it’s like well worth an effort to tell appears through. So Android for a very long period of time has been in this lowercase older view with a very two dimensional Android head. So kind of the head of the robot has been, has been very two dimensional, this rebranding, which I started noticing some time ago, but I’m guessing it’s like kind of official now, which is that they have now capitalized the A and Android. And they have kind of three deified the, the head of the Android robot. So now we are seeing just a little bit more kind of just updated, modern look to the Android logo. And honestly, I like it, I like everything that I’ve seen about it. So far, it looks crisp, it looks modern, and it was just looking a little dated. And I think they recognize that and this was an opportunity for us to be able to do that. I think there’s probably some more refinement to come as, as Android continues to grow. But I think, you know, as we kind of move with the cheese, in terms of brand identity, you know, just modern trends and brand identity, especially with material, you, this is just a good opportunity for us to be able to see Android make that that upward, you know, movement in the brand identity. All right, onward to the introduction to reminders on Todoist. And I will say I didn’t know that Todoist didn’t have this feature already. So I was little

Augusto Pinaud 31:26
Todoist had its has our version of this future, what they did was they really, really expanded so you could do reminders before but he was a little challenging and not very intuitive. So as a coach have to do is I have helped people set up reminders and use them, what they really did was when explain it better classify who have access, so you need to have a pro or a business account. But third, they really extend what they can do. So one of the things that to do is do that is very nice, is you can type I want to call re Monday at 12pm. And this belongs to this project and this tags or categories, okay, you could type all that or verbally do it. Reminders require you to do two or three clicks before now you can even do it on that syntaxes that improvement is fantastic, you can now set them to be automatic. So saying, Hey, I have a deadline at 4pm. So for example, this show has a deadline every week, I need to finish the agenda. So under a certain time. So that in my to do is has okay agenda for Anything But Idle. Okay, on a time. Now I can say to you know what, remind me of this two hours early. So I get a reminder that, you know, I have two more hours to submit this agenda before I get in trouble. So that’s very, very useful. And again, what they did was make it very, very easy. And that helps significantly for the heavy user of two dudes.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:14
antastic. Great, great on them. All right, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 33:18
Our next article, it’s on the Reddit. And it’s more to share. Okay, somebody’s implementing two week gear in Todoist. And they went into the detail, what is a 12 week gear, what is and why to do is and how they have done it successfully. I thought it was very worth it, to spend the time reading this and really understanding you know, how you could do do this many people is looking for more productivity ways to be more productive, you know, we’re talking early I we’re going to do more? Well, this is this may be something that you will be interested in in to look at a study.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:03
Fantastic and just know that we do run a 12 week year group here in personal productivity club. So if anybody’s interested in the 12 week year, you can hop into that 12 week year group. It’s an under channels currently. And you can kind of ask folks how they set up their 12 week year how they set it up in Todoist. I’m sure that their Todoist users in the 12 week year group. And so that’s all kinds of fun there. Wonderful. All right on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 34:31
Interesting thing on this article and we have mentioned when we talk about the Apple vision pro how exciting that is, and there is a new podcast in which the co founder of Oculus Oculus is one of those VR headsets is sharing how excited he is how this can change things and how much you know he’s excited about the price. Everything about it you know and even he’s he said on the on the interview and I think if Apple will have tried to go after the low end of the market that will have been a mistake. And I share my opinion of this apple is going to go on apply this same strategy they have done already twice very successful. That was iPad and Apple Watch, they lounge those devices, underperforming, expense expensive. They conquer, discover what the market was really going to use with these devices, how they were going to use it and then change the product for the third or fourth generation to make it mass push. And I think they are going to do exactly the same this time.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:38
So for folks, just to have background on this Oculus is the company that was bought by Mehta. So as the Oculus quest, it’s now the meta quest. And so the Oculus co founder, he’s speaking I’m presuming not on behalf of any longer of meta in terms of your so. So just keep that in mind that this is not someone who’s speaking on behalf of meta and so the you know, it’s just interesting to hear someone who has left that environment and is talking about how Apple is really doing well here to step into this new market with the vision Pro. And so we’ll see once it’s in people’s hands, and in the next six to nine months. And and what people are really feeling about it, these are predominately going to be developers and folks who have had the vision pro in kind of an embargoed state, as journalists or YouTubers, or whatever else they are. And so it’s gonna be very interesting to watch that whole, you know, kind of market unfold, and what Apple really has envisioned for vision Pro, ultimately, because Penultimately, they have been talking about productivity, right, and really focusing on productivity. All of the other headsets have been focused on entertainment, specifically, in the gaming field. So how are they going to navigate those waters? And will they shift to gaming? Because that’s going to be somewhere that they can find immediate traction? Or will it be both right and go apple arcade have arcade available, plus these productivity applications as well. So it’s gonna be pretty interesting to watch this develop and, and go from there. All right, on to our next story of Gousto

Augusto Pinaud 37:25
hobbled Apple glasses, according to nine to five Mac and Android Central is not going to face competition right now for Google Google House announced that they’re canceling the iris smart glasses. And I’m sad about it, because I really want to see competition. And I was hoping Samsung or Google will be that competition. But it may be later Windows.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:51
Yeah, so Google Glass obviously didn’t make a huge Google Glass made a huge impact, I think on on on on the industry in the sense that it came too soon, people rejected the notion of being recorded in some way, shape, or form. And, and that was, that was really difficult. However, while Google abandoned the consumer side of Google Glass, it actually was embraced by an enterprise. So Google Glass lives on in the enterprise space. And, you know, think about, you know, we talked about this actually, way back in the day, you know, the idea of having a heads up display, while you’re on say, you know, you’re a cable runner, you know, you’re you’re a cherry picker up there really high, you need instructions, or you need overlay of kinds of instructions, that kind of thing, the enterprise world is, you know, pretty good. And, and then, of course, Google decided to get rid of the Enterprise Edition, as well. And so, you know, I think that Google Glass will live on in some way, shape, or form in the vestiges of the technology in something new, I will be curious to see how this, this whole environment of having a heads up display, especially for the augmented reality space continues to develop, there’s, um, was it Sony, that was collaborating with either Snapchat, or it was it was Ray Ban that was collaborating with Mehta with the Facebook glasses. So, you know, everyone is kind of trying these different things out, and it’s just going to be a matter of time before we find a an effective set of glasses that people can wear. And that ties to the computing system. This was being done in the 80s folks, so it’s not a new thing. It’s just a matter of of getting it into a small form factor, right. This is all about battery power for the most part right because if you put a pair of glasses on, you have to be able to have enough battery power to be running such high processing power plus heat conduction, you know, heat dissipation that is so that you’re not having your glasses. burn your face. So you know, there’s just a lot going on in this whole thing. You know, Apple glasses is an interesting concept where you can have, you know, a pair of glasses you put them on, and they give you an augmented view of the world. I think that we have seen already some of this, you know, Bose and others have put out glasses that play music, Amazon had a pair of glasses that had music as well, they were typically sunglasses, you know, you go to the beach, you put your sunglasses on, you listen to your music, some of them use bone conduction, or otherwise. But this is the future. I mean, until we get contact lenses, where the contact lenses have the superimposed lens, and so on and so forth. Google has been playing around this with regard to glucose monitoring, in their in their health project. And so I see that I see that movement in the direction of now a display, you know, on glasses that you can put on, and it gives you just like you’re walking around town, you’d like to be able to see directions, you know, right now, if I have my Google Pixel watch on and I’m running, you know, around the block, you know, I can turn on directions, if I get lost, which happens, I can go ahead and say, I need directions back home. And now it can go ahead and just show it to me on my watch, it’d be much nicer find my sunglasses on. And it just showed me the directions in which I should be going. And now that can facilitate my getting home safely. So those kinds of things are, are just have to it’s the natural progression of where people can go, you know, if you’re not a watch, wear or if you’re not sunglasses wear, then you’re not going to probably lean into this as quickly and readily. But for those of us like myself, who was always a watch were having a smartwatch was the next logical thing for me, I wear sunglasses. So I’m going to naturally want a pair of glasses to be able to have that heads up display and apply that augmented reality. So I see lots of opportunity here. It’s just getting all of the companies together to make this work together, just like the matter protocol for IoT for Internet of Things, technology protocols, that that matter, protocol. While you know, I’ve heard you no good and bad about it. If Apple and Google and otherwise can have an interoperable wearable, and they can at least protocol regarding those wearables. Because if I buy Apple glasses, and I can’t use them with my, my Google Pixel phone, it’s dead on arrival, right? But if I can, if I can use it across the system, yeah, sure. It’s not gonna be as good, right? As it might be, if I were pairing with an iPhone, fine. But I should be able to use 80 to 90% of its functionality just the same way. And then it becomes powerful enough for anyone to buy those that kind of heads up display, and put it on and use it. So I see all of the productivity benefit benefits of this kind of technology. And I really hope that they, they just set aside their differences for the future of a huge market. I mean, there’s a huge market here for those who can make it work. All right on to managing your notes with OneNote and Google Tasks.

Augusto Pinaud 42:57
Comes from Flexi I use Flexi personally, it’s a great application. And they have come to work, how to integrate, you know, these things that supposed to be universal how to integrate all the things and they’re not. And now they are talking in this article, how to integrate your OneNote with the Google task and how to make them work together. It’s a short article. But if you use those two products, or you use products that we love to have integrated, I will recommend you to go and check out flex.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:34
Yeah, and it’s Plexi, right. It’s p l e x y, right. So for anybody who may be confused by the weird spelling, there are two E’s in the name, I don’t know how they actually pronounce their name, I’m gonna go with Plexi. But either way, they have the ability to synchronize between many different tools. So Microsoft to do to do list and Google Tasks are kind of like the Mainstays and then they are capable of then integrating with other tools across the system. So you can you can synchronize to Trello and asana and JIRA, and Evernote, base camp, you name it, all of those can kind of synchronize back and forth, which gives you that much more power to be able to work in the tool you want to, while still integrating with potentially the tools you have to use for work or otherwise. So this is just a really, really great tool. It’s, it’s akin to the tool I use, which is Unito, Yuen Ito, that allows me to fully synchronize between asana and Trello as well as many other tools and and so you can kind of use these tools and this is different than say, Zapier or a Microsoft Power automate or if because those tools are like step based tools, right? If you do this, then you get this particular result. Please see as well as unito are synchronizing those tools are staying in a near real time synchronization between those things. So as you’re making changes between one or the other, those things are going back and forth and making them it synchronous, would that that’s the power of these things, and I please see is, is much more affordable. So that’s the thing about Plexi, unito was just a bit more expensive. But, you know, by a bit more, I mean, a lot more expensive. But you know, that’s what it is. So I think that it’s great that they’re adding more tools to make the integration, synchronization more robust. Okay, on to our next and final

Augusto Pinaud 45:32
activity, technological is now you can add notes to cite password, save it on Google Chrome. So in the latest version, you can go to Chrome, you know, go to Settings, Password Manager, open your password, and add notes, Hey, you want to give things I will help you to find a search faster and things that you may want to remember. So I think this is something in the right direction from Google passwords.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:00
Yes. So the reason why you would want to take notes are things like if your username and password are not your email address, but you want to know what email address is tied to that particular account, you know, you can go ahead and put that in the notes. It’s not going to compromise, necessarily your security that much. And it gives you the ability to go ahead and know what those things are, I see that all the time, you know, you’ll have to you have a username and a password. But you need to know what email address it’s tied to because you do a password reset, and you have no idea what email address it went to. And so you’re just stuck there, you know, going from email to email to kind of figure that out. But there are also things like just having a pin associated with your passwords and knowing what that pin might be, you might want to put those into the notes as well as again, being mindful of that security risk, you can go ahead and play some of those pieces in there. You might even put in a hint as it relates to your password. So you can remember say if you have a mnemonic for your passwords, you can put a in the note that particular mnemonic and you don’t need to actually expose the the the actual password, you could just look at it. So if you’re in a group environment, the mnemonic will help you know what the password is it okay, and now you can go ahead and type that into another device, especially if you’re not, you know, the password manager is there. So it will automatically put it in as on the device. But if you’re trying to put it in on your phone, and you don’t have access to your Chrome browser, say it’s a brand new install, you can use that mnemonic to go ahead and remember the password and Sound Support. So you have lots of really good options for that. All right, that closes out our productivity technology headlines for this week, and moves us into new tools of the week. I guess when I of course come across many personal development time tasks, project management and productivity, collaboration tools and services each week. Some of them we use, some of them just stand out because they’re interesting. And so here in new tools of the week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like and so this week, I am going to talk about two different tools, but in a different way. So the tool I’m recommending primarily is called Glass. And glass is a tool that I’ve been looking for for a very long time. glass glass is basically a highlighting tool and an annotation tool for the web. And this is in line with another tool that I have been using for quite some time, called hypothesis. And there are kind of two pieces to hypothesis that I really like. But let me talk about glass first. So what glass allows you to do is you install a Chrome extension. Unfortunately, this is not a desktop application. I really, really wish this was the desktop application, but it’s not. So it’s it’s fixed into the web browser, whether that be any chromium based browser or Apple Safari. And what you do now is you can go ahead and highlight any text that appears in a web page, you can highlight it a specific color, and they give you a selection of colors. And you can also add notes to that highlighted text. So think how you have a Kindle, right, you highlight a part of the Kindle, you go ahead and add a color if you’re using a Kindle app, as opposed to one of the Kindles that are black and white. And you can go ahead and apply color, you can also apply a note you can comment on that particular item. And then you can go ahead and export those, copy those highlights. So say for example, I go through an article for today’s Anything But Idle, I will then be able to see all my highlights within the article, exhume them right extract them from the document the webpage immediately from the article and copy them into their own note in Evernote, or OneNote or wherever I want to. And now it’s in that space, it’s inside that note, and it’s just the highlighted things plus my comments associated with it and sourcing back to each of those items. So I’m capable of clicking on a link being taken directly back to that thing. You can create a portal where you have all of your various comments, highlights and notes, and you can share them with other people. So glass is a really really powerful tool that allows you to do this with YouTube videos, you can do this in many, many other tools. So you can kind of do that it has a direct injury integration also with read wise, which is kind of like the the ability to synchronize all of your various notes when you’re reading across different environments like Kindle or otherwise. So I just am I’m really pleased with Glasgow so far. And I’ll just add a side note to this, which is the reason why like hypothesis hypothesis allows you to basically implement this kind of highlighting. So if you know medium, and how medium.com you go to medium, you can highlight something and just apply an annotation directly in line within the text hypothesis has a function for adding that to your website, if you have a WordPress website, so you could just install that WordPress plugin. And now someone can visit your website, they can highlight text and leave a comment directly on the text that they’ve highlighted, which is really freaking cool. And so it just gives you that ability to have that level of inline conversation with people and knowing the parts of your your content that are actually relevant to the reader, right? Because if they’re highlighting that specific text, you know a lot more about what they’re talking about than them going down to the bottom of the page and typing a comment that is maybe quoting maybe not quoting the text that you are that’s relevant to their to their comments. So glaspie and hypothesis, I’ll put links to those in the show notes, of course, so you’ll be able to access them. But the the hypothesis plugin that you can implement on your website, is this really powerful as well. Okay, so what is your tool this week?

Augusto Pinaud 51:37
Oh, my tool is weak, it may not be a new tool. It’s not me. And the productivity tool. I’m one of their certified experts. So I spend a lot of time talking about nursery but the reason this became was because Michael publish an article talking about the article step titled nuts be a trusted productivity system for life. And regardless of the application, what I like to highlight is this article because as much as I believe nothing is great. Really, this is the article brings what I think most people should look into productivity, or you bring them or building a trusted productivity for life, or are you playing with the next app? And you know, I remember when I begin in the world of productivity some months ago, I remember people saying, well, when you find that system, you will not change it. And it’s true. My system, it’s been very, very stable. I begin OmniFocus. And I move into Todoist. And even as a certified expert, there are some things that listen, there may not be many things lives in Todoist. Today, nothing left in Omni, but I still teach the three of them. And what he, what I help people to do is to build that trusted system doesn’t matter, you can blow my thing. And I will be able to move my system to the next application and build it exactly the same way. And I think that’s one thing that nos B do incredibly, incredibly well. So my advice, go and read that article quickly and get a little more into what that means.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:37
Fantastic. And we’ll put a link to those be in the show notes as well. So with that, let’s go on to our featured story of the week. This week, we’re talking about how to remember what you type with digital note taking. So what’d you think about the article?

Augusto Pinaud 53:58
The article was very interesting. And we have talked about digital ink we have talked about things but you know, the reality is we still type more than what we write. I love good notes. I leave on good notes, but I understand I carry multiple devices most people carrying our device or things like OneNote it’s great when you are typing Evernote, great when you’re typing. The question is what is what you have to remember though things are you trusting search? Because if you’re trusting search, you may be in trouble if you use different terminologies. How are you going to remember what it is? Are you typing and processing? What is what you’re using? I thought it was a good article to remind people that is not only the content is not only captured and created, it’s also how you’re going to retrieve it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:58
So so the article actually walks through some techniques for being able to help you remember what you type. The first thing, though, that it recommends is the idea that you can go ahead and capture handwritten notes, digitally, right, just taking a photograph of your notes. And it uses Evernote as it’s a specific example. And obviously, you all know that I’m an evidence certified expert, but you could do this just on your phone, right, you could literally just, you know, take a photo photo with your phone, both Android and iOS have an ability to extract text from images. So you don’t need an exterior tool to basically lift the text from handwritten notes, which means that you then have the ability to move those that that OCR text to wherever you want to be able to place them. So you get the benefit of those things. Now, I have a working hypothesis, and is hypothesis not a theory, but working hypothesis that the whole reason why some of these social studies that have come out have shown that people, quote unquote, learn better or retain more from handwriting versus with typing is purely concentration right there. If you’re typing, you’re less engaged with the material, there’s less time being dwelled on what you’re writing, right, because you’re putting more effort into the writing process. However, I think that as new generations come onto onto technology, you’re gonna see more and more students who are dwelling on the material that they are typing. And therefore, you will get the same level of retention and capability. What What I’m really concerned about, though, is the fact that, you know, students can just like click a recorder, right, you turn on your voice memos app or Google recorder, and you can audio record and transcribe the entire lecture. Many times professors are already doing that and providing that in a portal. So kids are are less likely to take notes, and therefore they’re less likely to learn a very, very powerful skill, a skill set, really, that is necessary for being out there in the world and being successful as a professional. That being the case, if we can, if we can digitize our notes, we get a central source of truth, right. And we want to really get to that place where we have that central source of truth. And then the article basically walks us through different things we can do to better do that level of comprehension, retention, and then our ability to be able to not just retain, but then what do you call it, when you bring it to memory again, so, you know, recall, thank you, retention. And recall, I couldn’t recall the word for recall, that’s a bad sign. So being able to go ahead and recall at at will, those kinds of, of datum, or data that are that are living within our system. So I think that what we all need to do is we need to recognize that there are different modalities for taking notes, learn some some different modalities that work for you. And then going ahead and making sure that you are, you know, just like approaching the material on a regular basis that allows it to move from short term memory and working memory into long term memory so that you have better retention and recall. So that can include spaced repetition, where you use some space repetition applications, like Anki, or otherwise, that allow you to see the material over and over again, on a particular spaced repetition, pacing, so that you’re capable of remembering the things that you remember, and then being reinforced of the things that you don’t remember as you are making your way forward. And that gives you the ability to reinforce and and strengthen those neural neural pathways. So good article, I think it’s always important for us to think about the fact that we still have lots of digital notetaking, that is handwritten note taking, we have lots of note taking that is physically writing on paper, and that we have that capability, even if we don’t utilize it as much. And quite honestly, like, I like using my iPad and taking notes directly into Evernote. Using the digital tool. I use good notes as well, I use the Kindle scribe. So I take notes in handwriting in a lot of different environments for very differing reasons. All right. So if somebody is going to give me a document that I’m going to need to mark up and then show them, I’m likely going to use the Kindle scribe, not because the iPad or Evernote can do it. But because it’s a little less daunting for that individual. Right? If you put put an iPad in front of them, they think about all the other things they could do on that iPad, and all the other things that I could be doing on that iPad, but because it’s a very limited device, it’s just like, No, it’s just a document that happens to be digital. And we’re going to look at it together. And that really helps reduce some of that immediate kind of response that some people have to touching an overpowered device, a powerful device. So I think the dumber the device for the first purpose, the better and it just makes it for a much easier experience. And that just may be with an older audience. You may not have any of that response to a younger audience that’s much more used to a tablet, being in front of them and working in that in that environment. So Any final thoughts that you stow?

Augusto Pinaud 1:00:02
Yeah, no, I don’t have any more thoughts with our story of the week. The only thing I want to add is, there is an article in our notes, but it does what I read in an enjoin. It’s an article from Paul Graham, it’s a long article called how to do great work. And it’s something that I found last week, and I’ve been sending to a bunch of people, especially young people, because it’s a fantastic description of what we should have been, somebody shouldn’t have shared with us many years back. So I just want to leave the link in there. And if you have a time, go and enjoy.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:46
Yes, and when you do read it understand that Paul Graham is, is explicating an interesting perspective for being able to find how to do great work, he, he gives some, some recommendations, the one area where I feel like you may struggle is of course, where he talks about the idea of finding that thing that you may want to work on, right, that thing that you want to do great work about, and how difficult and challenging that particular task is. And the fact of the matter is, is that as he kind of underscores in the article, when you are younger, and you have to decide on that thing that you want to do great work about, you’re probably too young to know what that thing is in the future. So I kind of liken this to arranged marriages, for whether you like the idea or not arranged marriages typically work out, whether that’s because of the culture in which they typically are, you know, enforced, or otherwise, when we are given fewer choices, we have a tendency to just fall in line with those choices. And we thrive in those choices. So it’s not a bad thing, to be thrust into something. So one is really, anything is better than nothing, right? So, like we talked about in productivity, right? Many times action is always better than inaction. Right? Obviously, there are edge cases where, you know, inaction not walking off the cliff is better than walking off the cliff. But those are few and far between, especially when it comes to learning about what you want to do in in with your life. Right, you can always change course. But the other side to this is that many people in at least in the Western world, fall into this individualistic perspective that they have to love what they do, in order to start, when in reality is actually the flip of that, the more you do something, and the longer you do it, and the deeper you understand it, the more you you create a sense of motivation and, and passion about something, passion is earned. For most people, some people come to it, you know, they love baseball cards, they love baseball, they get into the baseball industry, and they have a wonderful, you know, fruitful career In, in baseball, fine. Good on them, pat them on the on the back. And, and kudos to them, for the rest of us how we have to create meaning and passion. And therefore, it is through doing something deeply for a long period of time, that actually creates that level of mastery, and therefore passion about that thing. So don’t get too hung up on the idea that, that what you’re doing is not something that you’re passionate about. Because the reality is, is that some small percentage of you will dislike that thing and need to move away from that career, but you will have learned something and that learning something is deeply learning about something, right. And now you can apply that to learning deeply about something else. And the other side is that for the vast majority of you, you will find passion by virtue of having been with it for an extended period of time. And so that’s the piece that I really focused in on in Graham’s work. And I felt everything else about it was interesting enough, from from a how to perspective. But that piece specifically I think, is really important for us all to really take to heart, especially if we’re young enough to have a first career or a second career or for many of you who are much younger, you’re going to have fourth and fifth careers, because folks are just moving between careers more and more and faster and faster throughout the generations. And so thank you, Gustavo. And with that we have covered the productivity and related technology news for this week. I want to thank you Augusto for putting together the show this and every week, and we will see you next week. All right, on to anything but idle.com Which is where you will find our show notes links to all the stories, the new tools of the week, and any extra materials that we have provided for this particular episode. That includes our text transcript, which you can read through Click on the page, just click on the Read More link. And then the Download PDF, which has the transcript which you can read offline and listen to along the way. If you go to anything, but idle.com, forward slash 121, which is this episode number, you will find the specific show notes. If you’re watching the live stream, you have to come back the next day. Because it’s not available right here and now during our live stream. But for those of you who are listening to the podcast episode, it is available of course, right now, after looking at the show notes, if there’s anything you want to discuss, if you feel like we missed a story, you can go ahead and leave a comment directly on the episode page. But you can also join our community and discuss it directly inside of our community. It is embedded within personal productivity clubs. So if you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community, you will be taken to a landing page to sign up or sign in. If you already are in personal productivity club. You’ll then join our group for Anything But Idle think go ahead and discuss with other listeners. But also ask us questions and interact with us in that space. So that’s the appropriate space to be able to do that. And so we always enjoy and appreciate the dialogue, and so on and so forth. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast or follow it in your podcast app of choice. It’s free. It’s available when it goes live. And we enjoy the ability to bring that to you each and every week. And so with that, we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life.

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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.

Microsoft Makes a Big Update to OneNote on iOS and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week.

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://anythingbutidle.com for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!

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Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

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Headlines, Part A

Headlines, Part B

Tools of the Week

Featured Story of the Week

Announcements

Rumors

Notes

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello, hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:12
I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:15
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 120. Microsoft makes a big update to OneNote on iOS. And we’re recording this on June 26 2023. Each week, Augusto and I cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and its related technology. And so with that Augusto. Let’s get into the headlines, what was our first headline of the week?

Augusto Pinaud 0:41
Oh, the first one headline is from publishers paper and his trim forming your home office designing a productive and inspiring workplace. And then I talk a little bit about furniture, lighting. And ironically, as we were fighting with lighting on a pre show organization and storage, solutions, personalization and branding, technology integration, and no, it is very interesting for me, because as the hybrid environment has come more and more and more, this ability to customize your environment is changing, you know, offices are now many offices are now using the concept of hotel and so you are not really decorating or customizing your environment because you are coming to a place where you are not going to be able to stay. But now you start having that option at home, in my case has always been a bag I I’ve been remote now for so long that you know like Hotelling, it was a bag and the bag had everything and the bag was important thing on that tool. But it is important to keep that for productivity and to really make you effective on what you’re doing. Working with better tool and better means that works best for you, it really gives you a competitive edge over the rest of the world.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:19
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more on on all those points. And I, I also, as someone who for many years spent as a road warrior, I think that it’s important that your travel bag also contains some level of personalization that is good for you. You know, that might include like just having like a little digital frame, I’ve actually been thinking about that for myself, like buying one of those little you know, eight inch digital frames, that has kind of pre loaded or you know, synchronizes with your phone or whatever, with photos of your family. So you show up at the hotel, or if you’re hot desking or Hotelling at your office, you can kind of set up the little screen and it’s going to, it’s going to feel a little bit more like a place that you should, should be, you know, like, I think that these these Hotelling and hot desking environments and corporate environments can feel sterile and clinical and, and feel like you know, it’s not, it’s not where you’re supposed to be you feel kind of out of place in that sense. So anything that can make the environment more appealing to you. I would also say that, you know, to your point about home office and working from home, the ability to be able to make sure the colors in the space match your needs. Color Psychology is a huge component of our everyday lives. And making sure that the room is not a color that’s going to cause you more anxiety or just be caustic to your overall productivity is really important. It’s just you know, the cannon or to have paint and some time and you can you know, you can solve that problem. So just certainly keep color in mind when when it comes to that. Okay, onward to our next article from the economic times on kaizen.

Augusto Pinaud 3:51
Kaizen and how to overcome laziness and casein. It’s basically the definition of continuous but a small incremental changes and basically what the article refers to is how you can use this the first is recognize Okay, well, I may have some issues with my habits and then how to start identifying but don’t expect Okay, fine. I’m going to change them now overnight star as the article says, little things what are the little things that you can start implementing to change that? Those habits, tiny habits and atomic habits are two great books to talk about that where they really spend a lot of time working into the psychology of these habits, the good and the bad ones and how to little by little improve them, so you can really have solid ones.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:55
Yeah, I think that the the important piece here is that they’re talking about taking time and to reflect on your behavior routines and thought patterns, checking to see where they’re talking about this as laziness. I don’t I don’t think that any of you listening are lazy. So these are just areas of improvement so to speak. But the idea here is that, yeah, you know, the idea here is that if you feel like you are not living up to a standard of excellence for yourself, which is different than perfection, right, so when we talk about perfectionism, perfectionism is a is a an unachievable state of being, that that, ultimately causes you to procrastinate, to feel overwhelmed, to feel all of those various negative responses to that feeling. But the idea here is that if you can, if you can manifest a sense of what is happening in your world, you’re gonna get a much better idea of what can be broken down into small achievable, wins, and then use Kaizen for that process. Right? So what is that one little bit that I can do? I know a lot of people use the 1% rule, you know, if I’m, if I’m 1%, better every day, then in 365 days, I’m 365%. Better. That’s a, that’s a, just bad math, but it’s. But the point is understood, right? small, incremental changes, beget compound results over time. And that’s a really good, good thing for us to be considering over time. Now, the the, the piece that’s missing here from this article that everybody has to kind of take to heart is that you really do need to create a syllabus of a kind, right? Like it just like any good course or program that you’re going to go through, you have to create a plan. And you have to kind of map that out for yourself. Because the easier it is, at those small little levels, the easier it’s going to be for you to be able to adopt them, right. Because if you think you’re going to do, you know, some kind of continuous growth and be deciding today, what you’re going to do tomorrow, for that little incremental growth, you’re gonna get decision fatigue, and you’re not going to be able to make that change. So just remember to plan this out for yourself. Maybe it’s planning it out a month at a time or a few weeks at a time. But certainly don’t try to decide how am I going to be better tomorrow, and then write a list of what you’re going to do tomorrow. And then and so on, and so forth. Because it’s just going to, it’s just going to break you down, and you’re ultimately not going to be able to make much forward movement. All right, on to our next productivity article from leadership freak.

Augusto Pinaud 7:28
You know, the next article, quote, market rallies, and, you know, the Stoics and meditations for 24. It says, If you fear, overwhelm, do less. And now it’s a good article, good read an article and remind me of something I said in productivity, often, when your level of stress because of overwhelm, it’s high, that is the moment that you do more review, not less, because that’s the moment that you cannot make decisions that will make your waste time. So every step that you make, need to be right. And the only way to accomplish that is review, review, review and review again. And I think, for me, that’s the essence of this is not about do less better, or as they say on the article do less better, it is really about understanding. If you feel overwhelmed, the first thing you need to do is to stop and identify what’s going to take you out of that, okay, because just trying to do to do to do more to do faster, most likely is not going to do it. So it’s not only do less, as the article says do better. And in my experience that’s done through review, make sure Hey, make the list reviewed again, check it twice as a song set. Okay, and make sure that the steps that you are making are going to take you there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:04
Yeah, I think that part of the kind of backdrop of all of this is that overwhelm is a is a is a feeling. And when we think about overwhelm, overwhelm is because we have literally overwhelmed our conscious mind, you know, it has too many things and it’s being overwhelmed by those things. Many times it’s anxiety or some other kind of welling up of that, those feelings. And so in order to reduce that, you literally have to do literally have to feel less, or at least distract your mind less so that you’re capable of opening up the floodgates again to actual action, actual forward movement. It’s kind of like you’ve, you’ve you’ve tossed a bunch of if you’ve ever you know like talks about flooding an engine right you if you flood an engine you basically put too much into the engine all at once, and so the the pistons can’t fire and properly create energy and So this whole concept of doing less than doing less better is a necessity, it’s absolutely necessary for you to be able to do that some, for some of you, it just means taking a moment, right, like just letting your body rest and relax into the fact that you have had this level of anxiety, and then going forward and making action. But it may also mean sitting down and saying, okay, these things can’t happen, I need these projects to set aside. And I need to just do this one thing. And I think you and I have had this conversation many times, because do about the fact that you have to slow down to speed up. And I think this is one of those cases where whenever there’s overwhelm you, you actually have to recognize that you’re doing less when you’re overwhelmed. Right, so the idea of doing less just means that you’re actually doing more focused work in one particular area, and you will then start to make your way forward. So on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 10:57
Our next article, titled was this overwhelming, it is financial stress, a tread for productivity. And, you know, in a new survey, done by plan is saying that, you know, that the rising of the interest rate, the volatility of the market, you know, 92% of employer employees are stress about their financial situation. And honestly, I think that’s right. And we, as a society tend to forget that the good times had another side of that, that are the tough time. And yes, we come from a pandemic, and these things cause stress, and then we came to now this race, in volatility, and all the stuff are this affect your productivity? Well, it will depend, it will depend what is the level that is overwhelming, this has nothing to do with having or not having the income or the financial stress? In my experience, it is, there is a big part that is real, obviously, but there is a big part that is psychological. And I always tell people this, remember when you were a college student, okay, as a college student $20 was significant, or at least for me, were significant, okay. And as I begin going into my professional life, that number grow, from 40, to 60, to 82, whatever. So, you need to remember that because you may be stressing out about a number, that is your current reality, but it doesn’t mean, you may still have, in your mind, the stories that you will tell you at college, about the $20, when you are now worried about a $2,000 problem. So make sure that the story you’re telling, when you are getting financially stressed and is threatened, your productivity is actually updated, and you are not working on those. And that was something that happened to me. Years ago, I was getting the stress out of somebody who was coaching me, asked me What do you mean, what is the problem, and then we went on all my things. And most of those problems, most of those stress, were really at the level of college level, or the level of college income. And at the level I was is not that they were not others, but they were completely different. So it is important, as you see these kinds of things affect your productivity, to understand what is the story you are telling yourself, and what is the stress is real or it is self induced.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:54
And also note that this is an article coming out of Australia. So this is a country with a nationalized health care system. So if you are if you are hearing this in the States, or in a country that doesn’t have a public health care system, like Australia does, so they have Medicare and private hospitals in that sense. So you you if there’s free health care, in that sense, my paid by taxpayer so you know, when people say free health care or whatever. So to say that the the debt that they’re talking about is 48% of the reported folks had more debt than they could manage. And 35% said they had no savings or only enough to keep them afloat for two months. The reality is, is that if you take that to a United States perspective, I imagine that number is far worse. And so the the exacerbation of financial stress on productivity cannot be, you know, kind of under understated. It’s something that does affect your employees, and it may be affecting you. And I think to Chris’s point, this is a good time to kind of reframe how you see your finances to do that kind of, you know, back Could the napkin work and say, Okay, what can be done, because brushing this under the carpet is not going to solve the problem. And we always make better decisions, when we make it from a place of abundance from a place of strength and clarity, as opposed to when we’re distressed, we’ve lost a job, you know, we someone’s gotten sick. And now there’s a big bill, you know, all of those kinds of things that happen, we want to make those those choices about work and family and life generally, from a position of strength. So make those decisions now and set yourself on a proper footing. All right, onward to our next article, this week, it goes down,

Augusto Pinaud 15:36
let’s go to go for this section is workstation, some forms, balancing work and vacation for an ultimate career performance. And you know, it’s talking about is becoming more challenging to balance work and personal life, you know, we’re connected, most people feel that they need to be connected. And again, we keep a lot of these old things, as I was reading the article, it made me chuckle a couple of times, because some of the things that they are having in there are things that I have understood for many years, I, you know, the first thing I understood many years ago is I go on one, two weeks vacation, and get on one, because the issue for me is fine, you go the two weeks vacation, you have fun, but then you come that Monday after an even if you book time to recover and ramp up speed, the amount of work that gets to you, it ruined my two weeks vacation. That’s my experience. So I quit on that idea a long time ago, I prefer to have a small burst, I prefer to take a turn to send a Friday here on their Monday on a Friday here on there, whatever it is, and then do something that is enough for me to recharge, and it is not but it’s not enough to feel buried when I come back. So this and this is that concept, okay, being able to pack your office and say, we are going to go somewhere out of the X days we are going to spend there we are going to be working X number of days, you know, for the Fourth of July, we are doing something like that we’re going somewhere and out of the days, we’re going to be there most of the days I’m going to be working is just going to be working with watching the ocean instead of the house. So that concept really, for most people is enough to recharge to have that to feel that you get some of that balance between your personal and your professional life, and at the same time is enough to allow you to keep that performance. So the last thing I want to add that it’s not mentioned here in the article or but, you know, they talk about planning and time management. And one of the things that I teach when I do coaching is how long? What is the minimum recharging time unit that you need? For some people that’s an hour for some people that 30 minutes for some people is to the unit that you need is irrelevant. What is relevant is where is that? And when can you take that? If it’s a half an hour, and you feel you’re completely overwhelmed? Can you take a unit of that? And how fast can you rearrange your schedule to do it? And some people will tell you Well, I cannot that’s the reason I get overwhelmed and the reality is yes, you can you just need to be able to understand one what are those activities and create a list when you are in the heat of that overwhelm. You can think okay, it’s forget about it, you need to thought before and you need to have them one to 10 this is the best thing I can do. This is the worst thing I can do. But hey, sometimes it’s the one you can do. So that way you can really keep yourself on at optimal performance speed.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:24
Yeah, and I think that a lot of this has to do with whether or not you have kids, you know where the kids are in terms of their school year and many other things when it comes to the workstation concept. You know, I like a good staycation. I like the idea of you know, for the rest of the world I’m gone but for me I’m just home and I’m capable of just taking care of myself in that in that way. So I really do like a good staycation I wish that I took them but, but the but the workstation concept you know obviously this has been More and more prevalent because of the COVID 19 pandemic. And folks, you know, taking this time away and getting away and kind of working from wherever they are, and having the flexibility to do so. But the, you know, the core concepts that they talked about in the article, if this appeals to you, this kind of harkens back to the idea of Tim Ferriss mini retirements, which is to design a life where you don’t defer your entire retirement life to the end of your life, when you know, you can you could do some of these things. And I think the workstation concept gives you that kind of flexibility in order to do so there’s, there’s some good points in the article, and I highly recommend anybody who where this piques their interest to go ahead and check it out to kind of start thinking through what what that might mean for you. But for me, I think that this is definitely something that interests me, it’s something that I want to start exploring more and, and seeing, you know, what I can do about it, because my work is and starting to become much more flexible, even more flexible than it has been in the past for me to be able to work basically from anywhere. And as long as I have an intranet in a quiet space, you know, so I can’t go work in an airport lounge. But But the idea here is to is to be able to basically build yourself, these opportunities to be able to do things that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t work when you’re away. It just means that you have the flexibility of being in those places and toggling between those two. So with that we’re going to take a quick break for word from our sponsor, and then when we return back, we will head into our Technology News for the week.

Sponsor Voice Over 21:37
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:48
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith With Augusta pinout. We are going to get into our technology articles for the week. Augusto, what’s our first article this week?

Augusto Pinaud 22:59
Oh, Chromebook is launching a new Chromebook, a new brand, the Chromebook X. And he’s trying to make that a new high standard. And it was talking to you offline about something that happened that I wasn’t aware of from my perspective, I have maybe not thorough enough but thought for a while. Chromebook is not more adopted, you know kids, known Chromebook. That’s what they breathe in, in many schools day in and day out. And it was now that my daughter is going to high school that we needed to buy a new computer and I asked her, you want a Chromebook. And I and I was looking for something equivalent to that Chromebook X, a high end Chromebook for her. And she looked at me and say, I don’t want a Chromebook. If that’s what you want to give me. That’s what I will deal with. But I prefer a Mac. And I, we had a conversation with Sid and asked why. And the cheap hardware that she used for three years, four years. And Kate was enough for her to say, Well, the problem is the Chromebook is fine, no operating system escape, but the computer there are cheap and unlike them. And you know, look at the difference between this and the iPad. Look at the difference between this and the MacBook. That’s what I want. And I couldn’t blame her. And I had not realized until that moment that that all that cheap Harward. What it does is ruin the experience for the potential user exactly the opposite of what Google is trying to do, you know, Google Docs and Sheets and all that they’re very, very powerful and very easy to be the standard. But if the experience is going to be that poor with a hard work, it’s going to stay being a software issue. She’s going to be late. Even on Chroma on Google Applications anyways as she goes to high school, but she don’t want to leave in a chrome harworth. Why? Because of that. So that all that story is to say that this is something very exciting. What I don’t know, if is a little bit too late. Why? Because when you go to Chromebooks, Chromebooks has been premium and plus options for a long time, you know, the Samsung, they consider that the premium they can do multitasking, advanced workloads, the plus, you know, our fastest move, etc. But that’s not what most people is getting access to. What most people is getting access to is $110 device. So is the chrome x going to be enough to divert people from that, or, sadly, is now something that it’s going to be very hard to change?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:58
That’s, that’s a question to be determined. I mean, you know, once upon a time, if you had a Hyundai, it wasn’t a great car today, they’ve completely redefined what a day is. And people love Honda’s. So you know, brands can change, and they can go through iterations that produce a better, more premium build. I think that what chromax Chromebook X does, the brand itself is a standard. So just so that everybody’s aware, Google’s not putting out another pixel book, you know, they put up the pixel tablet. And that’s really the end of that story. But Chromebook X is a set of hardware standards, that that then allows Chrome OS to be able to turn on features, because it knows it has the ability to do so. And so Google is going to basically say if these manufacturers use these hardware specs, then when you install Chrome OS on that device, and you boot it up, for the first time, when you open up your new Chromebook from these manufacturers, you’re gonna get additional features, features that wouldn’t otherwise be available in the $110, you know, Chromebook, but now that you’re in that 300 400 $500, you know, range, that you’re now going to get a more premium experience. Now, from my perspective, I think that the you’re right that Google could and should make for a much, much higher and Chrome OS run devices. I think that many of our tablets that are Android run should just be Chrome OS. And, and, and since it since androids already kicked into it, you just get a better experience, you get a desktop environment, and you get the Android experience inside of the criminalist experience. So I’d love to see Chromebook X, build upon that success. I really, I mean, you know, the probably the highest end one right now is the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook two, which is a very, very nice, you know, Chromebook, I’m presuming it is in that plus or premium Chromebook space already. I know it is. I’m not sure which one, but it’s going to probably get the Chromebook x whatever the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook three is, will probably get that level of it. So will the Acer spin seven Thirteen’s and similar ones like that? I’m, I’m really curious to see where and what Google wants to provide here in terms of the the additional features. So so far, you know, we’re hearing about additional sensors, we’ll have a better video camera, you’re gonna get some more video features, and live captioning of video calls, those kinds of things. But I would really love to see what other advanced features Google can provide on the Chromebook x side to make it worthwhile for even schools to spend a little bit more money on a Chromebook X model device, as opposed to the really cheap ones. Because you what you’re saying is true. You know, if kids grew up with a Chromebook, but they think about them as basically garbage, you know that the school was forced to, you know, use because it was the cheapest machine. That’s not a good brand for the future. Right? So they need to be able to give people an opportunity to enjoy and appreciate using it. All right, onward to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 29:13
Our next story, it’s all yours is the pixel Google Pixel tablet that is officially available with the dog. All yours.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:28
It’s so so Google has really officially released the Google Pixel tablet. It is a is a tablet plus a smart display. And so you have these bases. And the base is a magnetized surface. So that your your pixel tablet, which is Android based, I believe, it’s I don’t think it’s future based. I think it’s Android based, but it does have a tensor chip in it, which is pretty remarkable. And so you have this idea of you have like pogo pins on the back and you go ahead And you, in essence, can snap the display onto the base, and kinda looks like a really big nest hub, right next to Home Hub, or whatever they’re called nest hubs. And, and so it’s supposed to turn into a display when it’s not being utilized as a tablet. This is pretty interesting to me, except that all of the reviews I’ve heard so far from the very few people who have had their hands on them yet, is that the pixel tablet is far more tablet than it is display. So you’re getting a tablet experience, which makes sense. But it is, but it is not really doing the smart display very well. So I’m not sure why or how. But that is, that is where we’re at right now. I am, I am interested. But I’m just not motivated to get one of these purely because that whole form factor just doesn’t appeal to me, I just don’t have the need for a tablet that’s fixed in a location. And, and in this kind of just I don’t see the form factor working for me, I don’t see the I don’t see the reasoning for it. But but that’s that’s kind of where we’re at. I’m very curious whether or not like, what I would love to see is like if you had multiple bases around the house, and you could order the office or whatever, and you can like dock it to any base and just utilize it wherever it was, I believe that you can dock it to multiple bases, and they’re kind of hot swappable, but the it just I don’t know, it just seems like a weird device and weird concept. I’m looking forward to seeing more reviews on this, though, I think that that’s going to be really interesting. The the, I’m curious about how the stylus works, and how well the stylus works with the device. And, and you know, just an Android, and it’s an Android tablet, right? It’s an Android tablet that you can have fixed in a space, you can pull it off, you can use it, you can put it back on that space, I think that the primary thing that people have to remember is that you’re probably not going to get a first rate smart display, you’re going to get a pretty decent Android tablet experience. And so you know, this is going to be an Android tablet with with a little bit of smart display. And maybe if that fits your needs, then go for it. On to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 32:25
I’m going to go to our next door because this is a product that I have yet tried to understand. And I have failed miserably. So our next story is Google domains are getting sunset, and everything is moved out to Squarespace. So if you have a.com, or added something, hold it or hosted by Google, they are sold to Squarespace. And now you may need to work into that. And that includes, you know, around 10 million domains, according to this article that are part of Google workspace subscriptions are going to be challenging and interesting what is coming for the users, especially for those who are not technology savvy, that’s my understanding is that the customer service for Squarespace is pretty decent. So they should be able to help you move on and be good.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:31
Yeah, so this is a bit of a shock. But I think that it makes sense if Google is attempting to double down on focus, right, and they want to really serve a specific set of lines, service lines and product lines. Google Domains has always been ancillary to their, to their world. And it’s, you know, 10 million domains sounds like a lot, but it’s really actually not that many. But it does include all of the domains that were purchased at the same time or when people were signing up through Google workspace. So this is a huge shift for a lot of people. And so I just think that if you’re being pushed off to another registrar, like Squarespace, I would go out there and look for my own registrar and move my domain to a registrar that I was comfortable with that I knew. And so that would be my only recommendation to everybody is is that Squarespace is is a web development platform. You know, it’s there to be able to help you put out a website, an E commerce site, that kind of thing. It’s not a domain registrar in the in the specific sense. And, and so I would I would definitely not want my domain in Squarespace. And I’d want to move it elsewhere and and go go from there. And certainly if you were in Google workspace, and you had your domain registered through Google domains, and then all of a sudden was dragged over to Squarespace which is an ancillary company to your entire working world. I would also pull it to a registrar that was going to give you purpose driven just that capability, right. So going to a domain registrar that you you know, and trust. It’s sad, in a lot of ways, because it was an, it was an easy thing to do to direct people who, you know, needed that and weren’t going to be satisfied by my company or somebody else. And so I would just direct them directly to Google domains. And it was an easy, it was an easy referral, and I figured it was it was going to be safe and certain that they were going to get through the process easily. And they were. And now that’s not going to be the case, because I can only imagine that Squarespace is not the same an easy service that Google Domains was, even with great customer support, it’s it, you know, registering a domain should be a lickety split, you know, knock out of the park, easy process. And it’s not going to be with Squarespace, because they’re going to try and resell, you know, a website and other things, you know, they’ve got to make more money on on the domains than the 10 or 15 bucks, they’re charging you for domain so, so we will see what happens. Okay, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 36:10
The next story is iPad, os 17, some of the features that are going to make your iPad Pro even more a computer replacement, and iPad, iOS 16. So current version announced the door or lounge, what they call the stage manager on work on certain models. But stage manager basically allows you to you have an M Power Mac to connect to an external monitor and work with it. And they are now making that even more powerful, you can put even more windows and, and all that, like you do on your Mac on your PC. So we’re getting closer. But the two exciting things for me is the external webcam support, and the external microphone support. Right now we are recording this show to the MacBook because I cannot connect this microphone to it. If that change, then that mic potentially will disappear out of my world. And I will be excited to only have iPads in my office. So I don’t know if it’s going to be iOS 17 or iPad os 18. But he’s getting closer and closer for a person who has been in the iPad ecosystem for a while. This is getting very, very exciting. The other thing is the improvements on Notes app on our story today, it’s about OneNote. And we have cover Evernote here. But Apple has really make an emphasis in improving the Notes app and to make it more and more powerful and handwritten and the PDF and the indexing. So they again, for iOS 17, they are making a big, big, big push. So the next

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:08
really sure. This is really, really big for people. So something that I frequently have folks frustrated by is whether you’re when you’re on the iPad, being able to just quickly sign a document and send it back to someone. And just be aware now that notes is the app that I’m going to send you to, you know, you know, outside of markup, which is a little bit clunky to be able to do with a PDF, whatever, that using notes to just open up, import a PDF and then be able to sign it, save it and then send it off to someone this is going to be the new way that you probably do that, including filling in the form fields and everything else like that. So this is really really powerful. I’m really I’m really excited to see iPad OS get this kind of enhancement. Alright, onto our next.

Augusto Pinaud 38:55
Oh, our next story is the only the Omni roadmap the Omni is that company who make Omni focus OmniGraffle lumea ladder Omni plan. And every year at the time that the WWDC happened, they wait and then they come and talk about what is their plan. Very exciting to see not only they’re embracing as always the Mac and the iPad, but they are really trying to or they’re going to try to really embrace the vision OS for the vision Pro and they are going to try to bring you know their products. And you know, as they said on the article, imagine using OmniGraffle without the constraint of a physical screen. And yes, that is going to be pretty pretty awesome. I think. So you can read the article and but More things to come interesting from them. The next the next one is a non productivity one, Amazon activated a Disney Experience in most echo devices, you can activate it, I had a fee, but then now you can interact instead of with mme A, you can interact with Pixar movies, Star Wars, characters, and more. And then you can say, hey, this may, and that voice will come up, and we’ll respond to you and do certain features is around $6 per year. So it’s not really necessarily that expensive. And I think if you have the kids Plus plan, it’s included, it’s obviously not designed for us adults is designed for the kids. Anyways, that sounds if you want to have something different on your Amazon Alexa, that may be something to do. And last one is how to find and replace outdated Windows drivers. You know, your drivers in Windows 10, and 11 may be outdated that affect the performance of your machine. So make use of has an article where you can check, you go to Device Manager, check where they are, and see if you can keep your drivers updated. So you can have a better and more productive experience on your Windows machine.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:34
Yeah, and, like they give you several different ways in order to do that. But the primary way is just the Windows key plus x, which is the new Windows 11. This is on Windows 11, specifically, but Windows x gives you that new drawer that pops up and you can just click on Device Manager. And from there, you can actually check each of your device drivers to see if they do and need an update. So that’s that’s the built in way in which you can do that. And then the article walks you through several other ways in which you can do this from software are a couple other ways that you can do this through software, as well as using the command prompt to make these kinds of updates. Just remember that when you do these updates, you’re improving across the board security, adding features and stability of the device itself. So when when you let these things languish, you’re you’re opening yourself up to more potential, you know, security risks, but also the system just bogs down the system gets slower, the system is not getting the appropriate improvements. And there may actually be features that you like that you’re not going to get. Because you’re you’re not installing the right one. So with that we’ve covered our technology, productivity technology headlines, we’re going to now move into new tools of the week. And so of these two and I come across many different tools and resources throughout the week as we put together all of the articles that we cover during Anything But Idle. And so in new tools of the week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like and so this week, we’re going to talk about two different tools. And for me, I’m going to talk about a tool called Sona. Sona is a an FDA approved a sound app. This is really phenomenal in a lot of ways. So its primary feature that it talks about on the website is sleep. But for me, I saw it first because of this notion that it could help with anxiety that it could help reduce anxiety. So it does both of those things, it can both helps you fall asleep faster, have better sleep, and sleep for longer periods of time. But it also has the capabilities of helping you reduce anxiety by listening to the music. Now, the interesting thing about this is that you don’t necessarily have to wear headphones in order to be able to access the benefits of the of the technology, obviously, you’re going to have a better response if you are, okay, so this is really getting your body into what’s considered or your brain into a particular wave state, right. So the wavelengths that your brain is activated at is where you can actually start to have these kinds of calming or relaxing features, you can actually do it the opposite way you can actually increase anxiety increase, you know, awareness of things by driving different wavelengths of your mind. Anyway, you don’t need headphones, but I would still suggest them you’re going to have better results. And you just basically listen to Sona for at least they say at least 10 minutes for it to basically activate the appropriate response in your in your mind. And and you kind of go from there. Now it’s a premium app just like brain.fm or any of the others. You do have to pay for the app again. I think they have like a 14 day free trial or something like that. But this is you know, neuroscience based, FDA approved. It’s very, very interesting to see I highly record meant that you can go to sonar dot care, you can click on the link in the show notes. And they’re on their research page, you can see how they’ve built out the the information for what’s underlying the technology in this music. And it’s just, it’s fascinating. And it’s very similar. If you don’t know what bring dafont.fm is, or you haven’t heard us talk about brain FM, go to brain.fm and read about their particular technology as well, because they do something a little bit different. But it’s same underlying core concepts, right, we were working with brain wavelength, you know, therapy. And this really helps to change our brain states. And it’s, it’s kind of a strange concept, right? Because you’re playing music in order to change the way in which your mind is working. But it works. And this is how our brains, you know, kind of interpret different stimuli. So it’s very, very interesting to see how this works. So give it a try. Okay, so

Augusto Pinaud 45:52
we do some testing. Before we go to my total week, I want to add to this, one of the things they say it’s an FDA approved, and it it will, it will help you to go to the alpha, the federal levels, depending on what you find. So it will help you not only relax, but allow your body to get in the frequency in which he’d have the ability to start healing itself. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:18
yeah, and I mean, I’ve, I’ve used it, and it works. I mean, it’s really phenomenal. I’m obviously I’m one person, they’ve done actual studies, but like my personal experience has been that it has worked similar to bring down FM, and it may just be, you know, highly suggestible, whatever you know, to mean, you, to some extent you believe it’s going to work so that therefore, it does that kind of concept, but but, you know, I’ve, I’ve worn it, and I and I have, I have experienced the the kind of efficacy of the tool, and so I can’t, I can’t speak but good things about it. So

Augusto Pinaud 46:53
I says certified silver method instructor, I can tell that’s one of the things that we teach how to get to alpha to exactly that relax, and center yourself and all that and then how to get to deeper than that. So you can I start the self healing process. It’s been scientific, proven, and study for many, many decades now. So our MC thing is green light and green light, it is a financial technology company is not a bank, they are backing, the banking services happened by the Community Federal Savings Bank, that is a member of the FDIC, but green light, what allows you to do is basically show kids how to bank and invest. So I tell my story, I in my home, as I grew up, talking about banking, investment, and money was a taboo, okay, to this day, if you want to hang up with my parents quick, you, you mentioned money, and they will hang up, okay, and that continue working. But I don’t want or I did not want as a parent, as a dad, as a parent, that my kids have that experience, it took me a lot of effort and time and money, and wasted money. And in order to re educate myself on how to do it better. And what I wanted was to give them the advantage. on Episode 119, we talk about the iOS 17 is going to start enable parents to give recurring money as payment on allowance. That is great, it’s a great step. What I like about green light, is that they have that but I can decide how to teach them, hey, this percentage need to go to savings, this percentage need to go to charity, this percentage need to go to investments. And even inside of that, they can create different categories. So my 10 year old has been year and a half saving every penny he got so he could buy a tablet. Okay, great. That’s exactly what I want to teach him and being able to go and see there and he was going to save for a phone. And then we told him that after he gets a certain grade that he will get a phone. So he looked at me and say great, and that means I can change my savings goal. And now start saving for an Apple Watch. Great, we are creating a monster but at least he had a better concept. You know, they understand what he’s saving. They have a debit card that it’s connected to that and I can or we can deposit extra money if we decide to but it gives them complete control in big air quotes about their money and their investments. And they can even do things like Robin Hood do another of those, you know they can go and buy partial pieces of a stock so my kids has been able to save their money and buy some pieces of a stock and see how their stock goes up or goes down and being familiar with the car. concepts. So as they grow up is not foreign for them, it is something that it will be on their mind. So that’s my App of the Week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 50:11
Fantastic. I had heard of what is it Henry or something like that, you know that that other application that that’s kind of an alternative to greenlight. But I think that, you know, having these tools available to kids to be able to learn how to manage finances is so personal finances, especially. So we’re at such a young age and just understanding that we live in an economic world. And if we don’t have a sense of rationalism, or just, you know, rational thought that is about how we manage money, then we manage it from emotions, and managing from emotions is probably not the best place.

Augusto Pinaud 50:46
I know. And so, you have heard the story, you know, when last year we went to this May, and we give money to the kids, okay, fine. Every parent did that. That’s normal, okay. But they already had the green light, and he was already saving for his tablet. And he came and asked me, okay, if I don’t spend the money in dismay, can I put it into my tablet fun? Okay, and then at that time, he was nine years old. Okay. I way more older than that. And as I said, I don’t know if I have that maturity, I have shared that publicly with many people, okay. And he went to this me with money in his pocket, okay, or in his car, and everything that he saw in the different stores and stuff, it really compared to the goal, say, really? Do I really want this toy? Or do I want to put that money against the tablet. And he, to my surprise, he did notice spend money in Disney, he saved all his money for what he wanted, what he really wants. And honestly, I wish I had that understanding at 20, not at 10, or 20. And I didn’t. So I think it’s a tool, a very, very tool that has had fantastic impact and influence in our family.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:10
Fantastic. All right, onward to our featured story of the week, which is that Microsoft has announced this pretty big update to OneNote. But on iOS.

Augusto Pinaud 52:26
Yeah, that’s very interesting. To me, they announced this, you are going to be able to create notes from the Home tab, you’re going to be able to organize them. And it is right now running on the insider running version. So this is a combination of a story of the weekend and a rumor in the sense that it’s not yet available for most people, you need to have Apple testify to be able to access and you need to be on the insider version that said, Microsoft is pushing OneNote heavily into the iPhone users. And we are seeing something that I’ve been seeing lately on many applications that the features come in first on the iPhone than other platforms. I don’t know why or the iOS than other platforms. And I don’t know why. But OneNote is making this big push and making the application or the categorization of the notes, the names the tags, way powerful, are way more powerful than what they were.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:30
Yeah, I I’m curious to see what this home tab really is all about. As many folks know, Evernote brought a home screen right so that now there’s Evernote home inside of Evernote. It is it is a flexible space with widgets, that allows you to basically put additional, you know, surface within Evernote to structure a dashboard, right. And so this whole concept of the Home tab, giving you new features to in essence, categorize your notes by notes by date or name doesn’t sound like the same thing as the concept within Evernote. So this is going to be very, very different than than Evernotes home. But one notes home is sounding like it’s it’s a way for you to be able to quickly create new notes. And so I’m just curious to see how it’ll operate. You know, I’ll certainly have it on an iOS device and playing with it as soon as that comes out in, you know, general availability and GA. And so that’ll be really interesting to see how they manifest this Home tab. So you can see your recent notes and so on and so forth. And whether or not they intend to kind of follow Evernotes suit and start to give more ways in which you can see your notes, follow widgets or something else like that because that could I think be really, really powerful for it to be able to do so. And like you I’m really impressed that Microsoft is pushing the Have their products on iOS in a way that is thoughtful and, you know, not this kind of backhanded way in which they used to do all this stuff, you know, where they would just kind of sort of give, you know, updates very much, you know, very haphazardly across the system. I think they’re really working to make sure that iOS and Android both support Microsoft apps. Well, and and I think that’s going to be a good thing for it across the board. I’ll be curious to see whether or not they bring some of these OneNote on iOS features over to Android faster or slower. Right, you know, just depends on how one can hope that is faster. Yeah, absolutely. All right. That brings us along to the end of our show, we have a couple of announcements and rumors.

Augusto Pinaud 55:48
So the announcement is the Apple release 16 point 5.1 for iOS and iPad OS Mac Ventura, 13.4, watch os 9.5 point two, especially the releases for iPad OS, MacOS and iOS. If you can do it as soon as possible. There is security updates in there. And there are two rules. One is AI has read or is going to replace John Lennon as The Beatles, they apparently, were able to get a AI to do the voice of Jay of John Lennon so that way, he come and sing for a last single of the Beatles. And now and then, at least that was what Paul McCartney announcement or announced. And then the last one is there is a story An article in there, where it says that you’re not a I can add 4.4 trillion in value to the global economy, according to this study comes out a call from the New York Times. That’s a big number. And that could be very, very interesting.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:04
Yeah, I’ll be I’ll be curious to kind of see what I haven’t yet dug into the McKinsey report here. But I really am interested to see how they sourced the numbers. And whether or not this is like, you know, one, one thing is to is to decrease costs, right, which is like squeezing the the worker more same time there is increasing the pie, and giving us more opportunity for economic growth. I really wish that it were the latter not the former. But I believe that it’s probably a quite a bit of both. And so I’m going to I’m going to, I’m going to read the report with with pretty, you know, interests with great interest to see how this, how they perceive the long term impact of generative AI. And note that generative AI is one one artificial intelligence concept among many, many others, right. And so we are we are in the age of AI. Even if we don’t necessarily see it today, we see a lot of artificial intelligence working on in the background. And so I’m very, very interested to read the, the the report, and kind of keep keep a keep a watch on all of that. And with that Augusto we’ve covered the productivity and related technology news for this week. Thank you for everything that you do to make the show happen every week. My pleasure. With that everybody on anythingbutidle.com, you’ll find our show notes that will include links to our stories, new tools of the week, the extra stories, anything else we didn’t cover, and it also contains text transcripts. So there’s a text transcript on the page, which has, you know, click on read more, it’ll expand and you can read it right there. Or you can go ahead and click the download button and download link. And we’ll go ahead and download a PDF for you to read offline. If there’s something that you wanted to tell us about, you can always leave a comment directly on the page. So anythingbutidle.com forward slash 120 would be the the show notes for this episode, or the episode page for this for this episode. And you can also join us inside of personal productivity Club, where we have a group dedicated to Anything But Idle. So if you go to anything, but idle.com forward slash community, you can go ahead and sign up and join us in the group it’s free. And then you can go ahead and interact with us in that space. If this is your first time watching, go ahead and subscribe or follow us in your favorite podcast app. And of course, feel free to tell your friends let them know about Anything But Idle. But either way with that we wish you the most productive week and I will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s your productive life.

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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.

Paul Graham on Whether Remote Work Works and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week.

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

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Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

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Headlines, Part A

Headlines, Part B

New Tools of the Week

Featured Story of the Week

Announcements

Notes

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:04
Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:17
And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:19
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 119. Paul Graham, on whether remote work works. We are recording this on June 19 2020. So those of you who celebrate here in the States happy Juneteenth happy Freedom Day. Of course, each week Augusto and I cover the productivity and technology headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and its related technologies. And so with that, Augusto take it away. What’s our first headline this week,

Augusto Pinaud 0:50
today, we’re going to start talking about boring to do list. And if you did not get bored by that, then the rest of the title is not if you study like Leonardo da Vinci. And nautical goes into a person looking into the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, another famous notebooks and he even make a list on the bottom saying things like well calculate the measurements of Milan and the suburbs. Find a book that treats of Milan and his churches and which one to be bad at the stationers on the way to produce here. Or, for example, oops, I lost the article, or, for example, as these people about, they told me to teach me this. And one of the things that the article was saying is what is the content of those, and we have talked about how important it is that, you know, when the task, the to do list, instead of bringing you in, repels you, you know, B because it’s boring, B because the task is not clear. B because, you know, it is overwhelming. What do you put, you know, you put solve parents state? Oh, well, this sounds beautiful, except that that’s not going to happen as a task. You know, it’s too overwhelming. So what are you doing with your task? What are you doing? With the things you do? What are you how can you make them better? I mean, again, this is a way find a verb, that it is going to be fun. And one of the things interesting, there was the verb, and, you know, in those lists, so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:40
yeah, they also talked about drawing, you know, it’s fun to make a little doodle maybe, you know, having having things that are visually appealing to you can be really helpful. I think that’s one of the reasons why many people enjoy and appropriate into their own systems, the bullet journal method concept of using signifiers, because those are just really fun. You know, they’re, they’re fun to draw, it’s it’s iconography, and it’s an symbol, you know, recognition. So you’re being engaged in multiple ways, from your brain perspective. And the idea here is to really like think through how you’re capturing things and making them engage you from an enthusiasm, perspective, right? Engaging your your motivational factors, what’s going to be what’s going to be interesting to you about that thing that you are making resident within your task list. And I think that’s, that’s something that we can all do better at all the time. You know, it’s something that we can always refine, and it also is fun, you know, like, I always think about who can I involve in the task to make it more enjoyable for me, right, and I’m just, I grew up in a big family. So maybe that’s why but I love doing things with people. Even though I sometimes feel like I don’t want to generally I want to do things with other people. And so it’s nice to be able to look at my task list and think, Okay, well, can I do this with other folks, right? Whether that be in co working space inside personal productivity club, or, you know, we’re they’re not doing it with me, but they’re at least doing it and in a in a collaborative space. Or it might just be like, oh, you know what, I have to do this thing. And I know, I know that my friend also has to do this thing. Let’s go do it together. And that makes it just a little bit more interesting and intriguing. So I like the ways in which we can just turn our lists into more collaborative, more, creating more accountability and making them more interesting to us generally. So very cool there. Alright, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 4:29
Oh, before we go to the next article, one thing that I have been doing now, you mentioned that the drawing that I’ve been doing consistently for a while now is the tax or the context, depending how your software call it. I now use a lot of emojis on there, you know, so the errands is a little car. We may continue having the word Aaron but has a little car and some of the major areas of focus have emoji in the name so even that it’s It’s not drawing per se, it is still give, you know, the variety and the colors and the iconography and the iconography and everything else. So let’s go to the next one is declare the back log of bankruptcy. And yeah, the articles talks about a couple of recent games were released, you know, the Legends of Zelda, and the Jedi survivor, and he’s talking about how these games went from things that you could go and start and finish. And this person is saying on the or the time they published the article, he wrote the article, he’s saying, my 95 hour play true of this game. And I’m saying how is reading on the forums, how people feeling overwhelmed, because they’re playing this game, they’re all these all these other games, all these other opportunities coming out, and that one, that thing that he did was delete the backlog. But games may not be your thing. But then is books is YouTube’s is videos is tic TOCs is something, most people have something and pay attention to what they are and how this backlog is affecting you. If you can have the backlog in a separate place, Allah someday, maybe great, but if you feel that this backlog now is putting a weight on your shoulders, then it’s time to reevaluate what’s happening with it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:31
Yeah, I I’m, I’m right there with you, I think that there’s probably even a more aggressive perspective that some can take, I’m not recommending it necessarily to everyone. But there do and there does come a time, when you may just declare bankruptcy across a lot of different things that can be for mental health purposes, you may decide to say, cancel a week of meetings, right, and just reschedule them, especially if they’re not important meetings, redistribute them over the next five weeks, and and take the time you need in order to you know, reconstitute your mental emotional health, it may be email, bankruptcy, right? Where you just are like, okay, all of this email is, you know, just overwhelming, I need to, you know, delete all of it, and send an email to the most important people in your world and say, Listen, I’ve archived all of my email, if it was important enough, you know, be forwarded to me go to your Sent folder, and just read forwarded to me, and that way, I can catch up on what is most important and imperative to be moved forward. Or you go to your, your supervisor or boss or, or whomever and say, Hey, I, you know, I’ve got this overflowing inbox, I can’t, I can’t manage it, what were the things that you needed me to deal with, take those down, capture those into your capture tool, and deal with those and then get rid of all the other email and know that at least the important people are taken care of, and the important tasks are being dealt with. I like this idea of backlog that bankruptcy, I have an overwhelming I literally have hit the max in my YouTube account on the watch later list, right. And that’s because it’s not an inbox to me, right. It’s not an it’s not an in to me, I just kind of collect things there. And there are things that I like and appreciate. And on some of the applications, YouTube doesn’t have a very good way of removing a video once you’ve watched it off of that list. And I wish there was a better way to do that. But either way, you know, I just I don’t curate that list at all. And so I have created watch lists, watch later, to watch later. Three, I just keep filling the list. And, and that’s fine. And I’m very comfortable with just selecting all and at some point just deleting it all and being done with it. You know, that’s not it’s not for me, I don’t get an ick factor. Right. There’s no scars or barnacle problem that I have with that. So also recognize that maybe you don’t need to claim bankruptcy on some lists. But there are some places where you may need to do that. Think of Amazon wish lists or other kinds of areas where you have these, these, you know, just an overwhelming number of items listed. That could also be some projects lists, right some some context based projects, list, some context based actions lists, where you may decide those things are just no longer serving you and therefore you can just go ahead and delete them. And if it’s important enough, it’ll come back to you. You know, like, it’s that kind of kind of boomerang philosophy. All right. Onward to our next article, Agusta

Augusto Pinaud 9:21
are mixed article for Forbes. gicquel says the article says is title. Can you be productive working only 45% of the day. And you know what I didn’t. I’m gonna try not to be into a big soapbox in here. But for many people, you know, those meetings, those teams, those administrative work is their job. You know, it is completely inaccurate that can you be productive working only 45% of the day when you consider that the 55% that you are not calling me productive is because I am in meetings and doing this stuff that are related with my role. So I really had an issue with was the article because of that, because it is telling people, well, you are being effective, ineffective for doing the work that you’re supposed to do, or that is on your calendar and assumes that people can make a different decision. And in many cases, no, they cannot make an undefined decision you as a coach, I work with clients who have significant amount of control over the calendars, but most of my clients are exactly the other chi. Okay, the kind of people who comes to me, because their calendar do not belong to them. And they go and work six or seven hours a day. And at the end of all those meetings, they now have a ton metric of work. So according to the standard is articles written, these people know, they’re not effective 45% of the day, they were effective zero. And that is not fair. And that’s all that I’m going to say about this article.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:10
Well, I have I have more to say on your on your soapbox about this, which is that I fully agree with you, I think that this is a problem for middle management and upper management, not the employees themselves. You know, they’re not the ones who are being forced into all of these meetings, if somebody has that kind of problem, then it’s usually a culture problem, not an individual problem, you know, everyone probably feels the same way about being stuck in meeting after meeting after meeting, that’s usually a pervasive feeling, not necessarily an individual who feels that unless they’re in an executive role, and their job is literally to be in all of those meetings, right? You know, so it’s just one of those things where they may be ex officio, you know, in every committee within the organization, every department within the organization, and therefore, they need to be in attendance at those things as as requisite. The other part that I have a conflict with this about is the idea of low value tasks, this comes back to kind of shallow work and deep work, there needs to be a better distinguishing value to tasks. Now, they call things low value tasks, and distractions. This, this is probably closer to where I feel about things. But value is a subjective, you know, you know, item, right? It’s all subjective. So you need to figure out what is high value to you, versus what is low value to you. And many times a quick action can beget really large amounts of value. And so we have to be very thoughtful about telling people not to do low value tasks without explaining that a low value task does not mean that it is just something that is brief and quick and capable of being done in say, less than two minutes, right, in two minutes, I can get, I can get on the phone with someone and close a deal for a million dollars, right. Or I could call an order pizza, right? Like some of those things are low, one of those things is perhaps a low value task, unless you really love pizza like I do. And then it’s a really high value task. So it’s a subjective, it’s just so very subjective. It’s very difficult to tell people to do some value task. And therefore it’s going to be a cut and dry kind of situation, I think we need to get away from from talking about shallow and deep work or low value work in high value work. And understanding that there’s some work that is maintenance, some level that may be administrative, or other kinds of tasks, that may not be what someone considers high value or low value, but that we should respect the tasks that we’ve committed to and do them or decide not to do them by some other metric, right. And that may be a conversation with your supervisor or conversation with your team, or you turn taking your own internal litmus and determining that that thing is not value valuable to you. And that it won’t be get some kind of, of high value return. Outside of that, no one from the outside should really be dictating what tasks, you decide, you should be deciding what those tasks are, obviously, things that are distractions, and otherwise, can can also be dealt with, in some way, shape, or form. But that whole idea of low value, high value tasks or shallow work or deep work, I just continue continually have a problem with it because it provides a judgment from an external perspective. And that really requires a lot more understanding on an internal perspective. And I think that, you know, like, just get out of my Get out of my task list. Let me control my world. And the more we give agency to people, I think the better they are in being able to manage a productive workday. And the more that we impress upon them like meetings and telling them that their tasks are low value, the less likely they’re going to be able to be productive. All right, onward to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 14:40
Next article grown from leadership freak blog, and is your expectations don’t just influenced your destiny, they determined and it talks about how those influence external as well as internal, really influence where you’re going. And so I was reading this Article made me think about many, many years back where I had good say, a lack of knowledge about gratitude, that gratitude was not something that was built in me, that was something that was learned later in, in life. And it was very interesting when my life begin to get influenced by gratitude. It’s not that good things were not in my life is just that I was completely ignorant of their presence, because all my focus was on other things. But as the shift and the glasses and the lenses shift, it was very interesting how that influence really determined the changes, and, and my expectations now influenced that and have been continue to influence that event, I will say, to many people, in my particular experience, it’s been an exponential experience, not a linear experience, the more I have looked into this, the faster this change, and, you know, this new options has come into my life.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:20
Yeah, I think that what what he’s talking about here is really about the fact that we can, we can think the worst of people or we can think the best of people, we can think the worst of situations, we can think the best of situations. And those really end up determining our outcomes in so many ways. We get to curate our reality in this in this fashion. And he’s just saying, hey, you know, if you want to set your expectations low, you know, if you’re right, yeah, you you, you will go toward where you gaze. And so if you’re looking at the ground, that’s the fastest way to get there. And so if you want to be able to have good relationships, believe that people are trustworthy, he talks about, if you want to be able to think that hard work begets opportunity, then you’re going to you’re going to have those kinds of tough days, but they’re going to make you work harder, because you know that there’s something good on the other side, you know, there’s light at the end of the tunnel kind of thing. It’s just a matter of of having a proper outlook on life. And those expectations, I think really set a tone. Alright, they set a tone and attitude. It’s kind of like, you know, you and I have talked about this at at length, about the idea of a growth mindset. And how much you know, when someone has a growth mindset, the expectations are set very differently. And that even when you have a fixed mindset related to something, you can you can potentially grow beyond it if you if you challenge yourself about that fixed mindset. And this is, you know, this is the work of Dr. Carol Dweck and her teams. And I just I really, I really believe in that idea that your, your expectations as well as your attitude, in the sense of the mindset concept, really do play such a powerful part in the way in which you create your own personal culture, your own personal responsibility, and ultimately, how you create your own free life. Right, what is a liberal life? And and I think that’s really important to take to heart in a lot of ways. All right, so we’ve reached the top of our productivity articles for this week. We’re going to take a word from our sponsor this week, and then we’ll be back with our technology news, our tools of the week, our featured story and anything else that we have to cover in this week. So we will see you after the break. As soon as I find the video for the break. All right, we’ll see we’ll see after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 18:32
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:43
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith and I’m joined here with Augusto Pinaud for the second half of our show talking about our technology articles now so Augusto what is our first tech article this week?

Augusto Pinaud 19:57
The first article gone from the verge last So, two weeks ago, we talked about the new fire Max, the Amazon, new tablet, 11 inch. And they did a fair review. You know, it said, hey, it may be the most refined Amazon tablet yet, but it’s still plagued with some of the same issues is a slow hard work, as we mentioned it is. So for the people who are thinking, Oh, I’m going to get this because it’s cheaper? Well, yes, it is. But also don’t expect the performance of other much more expensive hardware. So it’s a well written article, a point, you know, some of the good some of the bad. You know, one of the things that he was curious was how they say, hey, it hasn’t suprisingly decent stylus. So it has a stylus included and all that. Just take in mind, if this is the machine that you want, understand there is limits in this machine is not the high end, it is to introduce you to this world, but it may not be the high end you are looking for.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:09
I thought that I thought the review was extremely balanced and informative. None of it shocked me. Right? It’s, it’s a Kindle Fire, you know what I mean? Like you can add the word max to it all you want. That’s just for me a size, right? It is literally, you know, lower end affordable hardware, to be able to get you a product that can do the job, it’s just not going to be as powerful as certainly not as powerful as an iPad. That’s what it is. So I totally get that. All right from the Amazon Fire Max 11, onward to the apple 15 inch MacBook Air.

Augusto Pinaud 21:48
Well, there is another review, this one comes from nine to five Mac and they are talking about their hands on experience with the 15 inch. And we mentioned when we talk about the Apple event, how much this Mac was, in my opinion was based on what they sell directly to the PC market. And, you know, it’s a very interesting article, they’re talking about the difference they do, again, a very fair comparison between that and the Pro and the way, I think it was a very well written article, if you are considering that 15 inch, or you want to get some information into what this machine is and how it compared with the other hardware that there is, this will be a very good option.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:38
Yeah, I found the entire article to be just really compelling to me as someone who wants a new MacBook Air. And so I think the price point is is right, it provides you with basically an identical to a 13 inch m two MacBook Air, the price points a little higher, because you have a larger screen. But otherwise, you basically have the same device. And so larger screen, some more GPU cores, and and then the the USB port, the dual USB C port power adapter. So you’re getting, you’re getting basically the same configuration, you can obviously upgrade the configuration a little bit more to get some other cores, and some more memory and storage. But it’s seemingly a really nice device, the the weight comparison is not that much right, you’re going from like 2.7 pounds, which it clocks at 1.24 kilograms, goes up to 3.3 pounds, or one and a half kilograms. So you’re talking about a marginal increase in in weight, and you get the extra screen real estate. And I know you and I differ in terms of wanting the screen real estate or not. But I definitely want it and I love the idea that I can get that additional pixel, you know, screen coverage, you know, great pixel density, right, you’re going to get that same pixel density as any other MacBook, MacBook Air. And it’s going to it’s going to work well right you know, it’s good hardware, so just going to have good hardware so you can put Windows on it, you can put you can keep Mac OS on it, you can throw Linux on it, you can do whatever you want on this on this device, and it’s gonna run pretty well. And it’s gonna last a while. So I was really impressed with it. And this pretty much sells me on the 15 inch MacBook Air. I think that’s the next MacBook that I will probably be buying. So

Augusto Pinaud 24:33
yeah, I still like you know, it’s smaller screens. That’s not a my favorite machine is the iPad Mini. And I have multiple and that’s still the machine that I navigate to. I’m really waiting for Apple to release the new one I like those little screen and you know more than the little screen is the fact that I like the screen on portrait You know, I love really portrait mode. And not every good keyword allows you to, to do that on the laptop form per se, it is landscape. If you can find me a laptop with iOS who can do that, maybe I will consider that. Anyway, let’s go back to iOS 17. And now, you will be able to edit those green bubbles. So you have been able to edit the blue green bubbles when you send a text, but now when you send to those Android friends of yours, you will be able to do that, that says we’re sharing.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:42
So to clarify here, this is the messages that you send to other people that are green bubbles, and correct persons who sent it to you bubble. So so this is the outbound message that we’re trying

Augusto Pinaud 25:53
to keep the friendship with the person who received the message, it will not work well, if you correct every message that you receive, and some people will.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:03
But the other correction there is that because we’re on the Android side, we’re not seeing that corrected text only the people on inside of iMessage are still seeing that correct attack. Yes, that’s that’s my understanding. So so that is

Augusto Pinaud 26:16
correct. What I don’t know Jen doesn’t see the correction. Yeah, I don’t know jet. If you are going to see on an Apple device, the correction and then our Android people are going to receive more multiple texts as you correct them. That is not clear, I have not yet play with iOS 17. So I don’t know what is going to happen, really is that you

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:40
will still see the original that as the Android user, you will just see the original, at some point in the future, the best way to fix that problem is to send a second text, that would be a lot of extra texts I can only imagine. But that would be the only way without them supporting some some version of RCS and connecting, you know, keep iMessage intact. I mean, really, if we think about how Apple has created iMessage, it’s like a bandaid upon a bandaid upon a band aid. It’s, you know, it’s baling wire and duct tape held together, that really wouldn’t be that big of a deal for them to see the Android device and to connect to RCS and somehow interpret the RCS for the Android user. I know that would be a lot of server horsepower that would be required. Why do we still call things in horsepower, poor horses. But anyway, the idea here, though, would be that we would, we would have some type of interpretation between the RCS protocol and the iMessage, you know, bonds or whatever else, you know, Apple has working in the background, to handle those pieces, it could be done, you know, Apple could do it. And that would probably solve some of this, I just don’t think that Apple wants to be forced into doing it by Google. And so they’re going to continue to, you know, kind of buck the trend here and do as best as they can to make Android users you know, outsiders without being an stating it outright. Right. So I I totally, fully understand where Apple is coming from here, I really don’t have that much of a problem with it, except to say that at some point in the future, they will need to acquiesce to some kind of interoperability, whether it be the RCS protocol or something else. Right, you know, obviously, Google isn’t going to adapt to Apple’s private proprietary protocol. So Apple is going to need to go the opposite way. And and that means everyone will have to have to have some kind of unified protocol, that being the case, I like this as a step in the right direction, right for at least those folks who are inside the Apple ecosystem, they can edit those texts and make those you know, text edits as necessary. So

Augusto Pinaud 28:42
and to make my the worst on on that war discussion fight. Now with the Add of stickers, and basically the ability that Apple is going to give you to create any sticker that is going to be a nightmare on those charts. And I don’t use the stickers, but I see, you know, for the people who I have in WhatsApp and some of the groups that I’m on WhatsApp is the stickers the sticker the sticker sticker, I am particularly not looking forward to that part. But let’s see what happened. In our next article anchor with with soundcore Liberty four and see it’s $100 hetson. They said they have the ability to block 95.5% of the noise, but they’re also claiming a 60 hour battery. That’s a full day. I don’t know if that’s I don’t know what is the article sadly and there is not yet out there will be out at the end of the month. I don’t know what that means on a full day, but 60 hours may be very close to a full day of work.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:53
worth of work. Sorry. 60 hours is a full week’s worth of work.

Augusto Pinaud 29:58
I don’t know but I don’t think I don’t think it will, it will last 60 hours of use, I think will be 60 hours and extend by that, then we’ll make you around 20 hours of work,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:08
I meant that you had to put them in the case, and then it would recharge and give you another set of hours, and so on and so forth. So maybe you’re right during lunch, got pulled back out that kind of thing that because so I have the I’ve, these are, these are Anker, soundcore, Liberty air tos, and I’ve had them for quite some time, and I really liked them. And so this, this would be an appropriate upgrade for me to the next version that I’m ready for. And so I would be curious to see how these don’t have any noise cancellation built into them. They’re there. They’re just, you know, isolating sound by by the physical, you know, earbuds. But I would love to have, you know, noise cancellation built into the, into the soundcore liberty. And just like with my Google Pixel buds pro, you know, they provide a remarkable amount of sound conditioning. And that means that the ambient sound around me is just filtered out in a way that just makes it less caustic to me over the course of a day. And so I’d love to see these in action. I like the style. The the visuals of the new case are quite beautiful. I mean, I really like it, it’s kind of it’s like a cup the shell at a diagonal and like a 45.

Augusto Pinaud 31:21
Yeah, like did I want to enter, it looks very nice. Yeah, it looks

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:25
sleek. And the idea that it can, it can reduce 98.5% of background noise. I’m presuming that’s obviously anything that bleeds through the seal of what’s sitting in your ear, you’re going to hear, but 98.5% is pretty good on in terms of of active noise cancellation, this doesn’t say active noise cancellation just just says noise cancellation. So I’m not quite sure if there’s a difference. But I’m guessing it’s it’s something based on just partially sitting in your ear, plus some other kind of microphone based sound conditioning. So it says the earbuds themselves hold 10 power 10 hours of juice on a single charge, and then the docking case, good luck, then in the charging case, and that gives you the extra 60. So that does give me what I thought it was right. So there’ll be a week’s worth of, of, of usage, you know, well, I mean, six days worth of usage, not seven, but you would have a full work weeks worth of of of usage, where you can wear them literally for 10 hours a day, juice them up, and then recharge for the next day and not have to charge again until Sunday. That’s pretty decent, you know, and that’s incredible. Yeah, and for a person like me who has multiple headsets, that’s not going to be a problem at all. So, you know, like, I’m going to have plenty of power for several weeks. And I liked that idea that I’m going to wear them not for 10 hours a day, I’m going to wear them probably for two to three hours a day, switch into other headsets, then switch into other headsets and I’m wearing these when I’m recording, you know, I’ve in broadcast in ear headsets for recording podcasts. So um, and while I’m in meetings, I typically have these in also. So I’m switching between different headsets. So this is going to actually last a really long time for me, because I’m not wearing them consistently the entire time throughout the day. So that’s a really good, that’s a really good deal for 100 bucks to get a really nice, you know, device like this, it’s supposed to be launching at the end of June. So we’re seeing that, you know, MSRP at $100. And presumably, they say that it’ll, it’ll probably cut down to around 80 bucks with some promotions, when it when it comes out at the end of June, maybe through July. So that’s a that’s a, that’s a really good deal. So really, really excited to see these come out. All right, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 33:41
The next article is how to use and how to you from Chrome boxes, how to use the new data extraction, as Mark Canvas in Google Sheet and, you know, Google Sheet is been working into, you know, get extraction out of cheats, and excels and documents and allows you to extract some of the information, you know, some of the the information from the files and all that very, what seems to be very easily and you know, very powerful. So,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:15
right, so some folks will not see this yet, because you don’t have access to it yet. But once you do have access to it. Sorry, that was me. Change the things over here in the broadcast studio. The the the idea here is that you rolling out in terms of Google workspace, so some folks will see it and have the Smart Canvas features, some will not. But the idea here is that if you have a document, so say you’re in Google Sheets, and you are in any particular cell, you can go ahead and type the at symbol and you will see a drop down menu or a drop up menu because mine always comes up to the top when I’m like near the bottom of the of the screen. And you can go ahead and insert all kinds of things. So I can go ahead and embed Add what is in essence a smart chip for, say, an another Excel or another Google Sheets workbook, that smart chip. Now, I can click on the the data option over in Google workbook. And it will now give me the option to go ahead and extract, I can right click that is on the smart chip and extend, then click extract and it will pull data from that existing document, Slides, Sheets, Docs, whatever, and pull it into the existing workbook, which means that if you have like, a huge email list that you want to be able to transfer over, or if you want to be able to create a mail merge, or if you want to be able to just look at the data in a way, and then Smart Filter with other data in this in the same space, Smart Canvas is giving you those capabilities here in a very fluid way. So this is going to speed up time to understanding information, business data, having that kind of BI at your fingertips, that business intelligence at your fingertips is going to be really, really powerful. I’m looking forward to I don’t yet have access to it, I typically do get access to these things pretty early. But I don’t have access yet to data extraction. But I’m looking forward to it, I think that it’ll be really, really great. You can create Gantt charts and all kinds of fun views, just utilizing it. And so if you all haven’t seen this also, if you’re in Google workspace, and you have the latest version of Google Sheets, if you have a full dataset sitting in front of you, you can now start to just click on any column and identify that column as what as a as a filtered column. And this, the whole system will do and kind of a a lightweight filtering of that particular field. And you can start to actually do that filter. And it’s like a temporary filter. And then you can just turn it off and set it back away. And it looks like I just got data extraction. Like it wasn’t, I didn’t see it earlier. And now I see data extraction. I’m like, Oh, my gosh, I have data extraction. It just turned on for me. Maybe it turned on earlier today, and I just didn’t notice. But yeah, so I just got I just got it. So that’s really, really cool and fun. Anyway, so. So yeah, so you’ll see it rollout just like I just saw it rollout. But you can, you’ll see data extraction, show up in your account, you’ll just basically be able to right click on on any field are clicking on the column, and you will see that data extraction option in the drop down menu, when you click on on the top of a column or right click on a smart chip. So just That’s how it’s all going to work. So stay tuned, because you know, you may not have access to it yet, but it’s coming. Alright, onto our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 37:43
Oh, our next articles aren’t going to be all yours is basically an article from all the futures coming to the big cell phone, that one that is, you know, the June 2023 feature drop. And apparently, you know, they’re going to improve car detection, they’re going to come with a bunch of new things for the Google Pixel. But since I don’t have Google Pixel, it’s all yours.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:09
Yeah, so as you said, the we’re gonna get. So if you have a pixel three or higher, you’re gonna get the updates for better car crash detection. And so it’ll automatically call emergency services and share that location with them. So that you’ll be able to get that kind of help. This is, of course, just a safety feature and really great. The limitations in terms of the existing Pixel phones, we’re talking about the pixel seven pro itself, well, is that it could never do a video when you’re in macro mode. Now, you’ll be able to take videos in macro mode. And I’ve had a very small handful of opportunities where that was something that really bothered me, because I couldn’t do it. And now they’re giving us that capability to match parody with the latest iPhones. The other thing that I really like is that so you, you set up your camera, and you set up the timer, and you want to be able to take a picture at a distance, you know, you and your family together, you could use your pixel watch, and then you have the the ability to, you know, press the shutter button from your watch. So you can you can do that from a distance. So you have remote access to your to your phone’s camera from your wrist. But if you don’t have a pixel watch, then you set the timer and you run really quickly up to where your family is. And then you hope that you made it within the three or 10 Second timeframe. Well pixel has solved that using I’m presuming that they’ve taken do remember flutter flutter was a Chrome extension I believe it was and flutter allows you to create or not create but it had hand gestures where you could control video from your webcam. So you could start a video you could stop it. You could pause it you can fast forward and rewind all from hand gestures and Google bought them. And I believe that they probably have used a lot of what they Learn from flutter in this new tool. So now you set up your your phone, you set up the timer, and now with a palm, you hold up a palm to the camera to the phone, the camera will then start the timer based on that palm gesture. So you’ll hold up your palm, it will recognize the palm and then it will start the timer and countdown to the photograph. So just a really helpful piece here for being able to take those kinds of group photographs. Or if you’re dressed up all fancy, and you want to take a selfie, you can go ahead and do that. And I think that’s really great. Those are coming to the pixel six and seven, series phones. There’s some stuff about emojis and cinematic wallpaper, but I really ignored those. So you’re gonna have to read the article, if you’re interested in that, I just don’t care. And then the the the other thing is that the the Pixel phones have a recorder built in, aptly called the Google recorder. And in this particular case, the phone will now not just give you the ability to so it already does this, like it does multiple speaker recording and transcription live using that tensor chip. So that’s the Google branded chip that that’s the SOC that they have built onto those devices. Fantastic with this machine learning and AI capabilities. Well, they take that to the next level now, because not only are they doing that multi speaker transcription, but now you’re capable of exporting that transcript to Google Docs automatically. So to date, I’d have to go to recorder.google.com, I’d have to open up that recording, and I can see the transcript, I can download the audio and the text of it. Now you can just share it directly to a Google Doc and it creates an automatic Google Doc. And there’s also now some capabilities I heard about like labeling the speakers and a video clip. And searching for those speakers, I don’t know much about that I have to play with it when it when it happens. The biggest thing to come out of all of these feature drops for June is on pixel watch. Now, when you’re sleeping, it will now activate the SPO two sensor. So you’re actually going to get that that those readings when you were sleeping, which is which is great, I’d love to have that activated at all times. But pixel watch will also be getting the high and low heart rate notifications. So if for some reason it sees that your heart rate has somehow plummeted for some reason, or elevates beyond what it considers safe, it will go ahead and prompt a notification so that you can determine what’s going on, it’s going to also going to be better at determining when you take a break during a workout. So say you’re running or biking, and you stop and huff and puff just to catch your breath, it will go ahead and know that you’ve done that, and it will go ahead and stop, stop that calculation and then restart it once you start running again. And so that’s that’s really all there is to it. Some good I mean some of these are really nice refinements Obviously there’s going to be a bunch of bug fixes and a bunch of of improvements in that sense. But I’m really looking forward to seeing that recorder technology picked up I’d love to see the SPF two data from from my sleep just become because I’m a you know, quantified self and enjoy seeing all of that kind of bio data being collected about me and displayed. So we’ll see what happens there. All right, onward to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 43:12
I mean show that that is although things that you’re mentioning are just coming to to the Google to the Google pills pixel I don’t know when we start taking pictures, but at least was 2021 I think iOS 15 him Okay, let’s go to the next news

Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:30
video as macro video was always taking it was always taking photographs so it would just wouldn’t do it in video.

Augusto Pinaud 43:37
Yes. Anyways, the Lenovo smart paper it’s now available in the UK and the Netherlands. That is the E Ink 10.3 brand smart paper brand from Lenovo apparently and um I’m assuming is an issue with copyrights and branding and etc. But apparently you can only buy right now in the UK and the Netherlands they’re only shipping UK and Netherlands so you cannot buy it. Any other any other one. So so that’s that’s our next article then it is Google meet on the go mode. And now Google meet when you are connected, I’m going to guess on a tablet or the phone. It will recognize if you are moving and then it will shut off the camera so you are paying attention to what you are doing. And people is not seeing all this random new from weird angles because you forgot to turn out the camera. That is a very good thing. That is a very interesting move from Google.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:49
Yeah, so so you don’t see them and they don’t see you when it goes into on the go mode. And it’s automatic and you can obviously override that setting if you want to, but I think it makes a lot of sense, you know if it detects you moving and in such a orientation that it makes sense for it not to display you or other people on screen, it not only is going to save battery, but it also is going to potentially save embarrassment for for some of the circumstances where people just don’t pay attention to what they’re doing sometimes. And then you’re like, Hey, want to turn off your camera. Because I don’t want to see whatever it is that you’re doing. And so this can be a really useful tool, I think, for a lot of folks. And I hope that zoom and Microsoft Teams and otherwise brings out some of these additional features as well, you know, Zoom has a feature already, if you swipe, I believe it’s if you swipe left from the main screen, you go into that driving mode. And that driving mode, of course, is just audio only, it shuts off everybody’s cameras, and you have to press the button in order to be heard. So it’s kind of like a It’s kind of like a walkie talkie almost, you know, but it would be nice if it just automatically did that when say I put the phone in my pocket, or you know, whether my breast pocket or my pants pocket and started walking, it should know that and then automatically go into, you know, some kind of mode, that that identifies that I’m not, I no longer need the camera on because it’s sitting in my pocket kind of thing. So that’s gonna be really useful. All right, on to

Augusto Pinaud 46:18
our last article in this section is how to use an old Kindle Paperwhite, turn it into a weather board to display the weather. And then it shows you how they use that with a browser. But, you know, I have a couple of them. And you know that over the years, and they’re not being really used. So that will be an interesting use to use this as you know, information centers for a couple of things. So that was very interesting to see. Just, you know, an article for a fun thing to do.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:59
Yeah, I’m, I’m very curious, I have a, I have several Kindles, but not an existing Paperwhite that I can utilize for this purpose. So I’m a little sad, because I actually still use this particular paper white. So I’m not going to do this. But I can very much see myself once this one ages out doing something like that. I mean, it just would be really, really fun to just kind of like, put it on the wall and just have it available or like, even install it on my desk somehow. So I can kind of see the weather. You know, I could buy one of those prefabbed weather devices. And I have thought about doing that. But I would like I kind of like the idea that if I have it around, if I have it sitting around, I’m going to use it for that purpose. Right. All right. So that takes us to the end of our tech articles this week, and on to our new tools of the week. So as you all know, of Gousto and I scoured the interwebs for all of the stories that we collect for you together each week. In addition to that, we come across a whole bunch of tools. And so we collect those tools together. And in new tools of the week, we’d like to share with you one of those tools that we think you might like. And so this week, I am going to bring up on screen a Gousto. Can you see my screen? No, not yet. All right, let’s see if this works. And we’ll go from there. Let’s see here. I think I need to do this. So so this is a is in the Chrome Web Store. This tool is called H 264 phi. And HT to H 264. Or phi is a tool that allows you to go ahead and convert all YouTube videos to H 264. And so what does that mean? It means that when you normally are watching a video on YouTube, YouTube typically shows it in what’s called V eight or v nine format, which means that your, your hardware like where acceleration is not kicked in, because that’s not supported under those formats, which means that your devices may start heating up the fans may come on, it’s going to be delivering more data than you need it to be delivering. And so the H dot 264 format stream format is just a lighter weight format video, you’re not going to see any difference in the video itself. But if you have any sense of your videos like sometimes stuttering or they’re buffering for long periods of time, or if you have any kind of audio drop out, it’s usually not the first thing that happens is usually video that happens that drops out or has some kind of pixelation or any of those kinds of things happening. H 264 Or five will fix that. So not totally like if you have really terrible Wi Fi or bandwidth on your internet connection and you’re obviously that’s a built in problem that needs to be fixed. But h 264, or fi will solve a lot of those problems for you. If you are having that stuttering and you have good internet, it’s just that the V eight v nine format is just causing all the all the problems. And so you can turn this on and it just sits in the background. You don’t have to futz with anything. It just does it for you. Every time you open up YouTube, it just automatically draws the stream from H dot 264. And you are good to go. And yeah, I mean, like, I had some issues with some devices. And now there are the h 264, or five is installed on all of my Chrome instances. And I rarely rarely have any problem watching a YouTube video now it just plays and I love it for that. Okay, so what is your new tool this week?

Augusto Pinaud 50:46
No, then the tool this week is Pleexy. Pleexy basically, it’s a tool that tries to help you manage tasks across multiple sources. So if you use for example, Google task and to do it under SP and Trello. Plexi helps you to manage all that and put it into one place. I love it, I think is incredibly powerful, incredibly powerful for what I do that, you know, fit that shoe. And one of the things they add now is you can even automate more things with Google tags with Flexi. So that’s the new that’s announcement. So and if you want to read more the article, it brings more into some of the features some of the things you want to do. But if you are one of those persons who use multiple and you want to integrate, you know, with Asana with Evernote with OneNote, with Monday, now you can integrate Google Tasks, which all of them

Raymond Sidney-Smith 51:51
fantastic, I will definitely be looking at that. Because I love to see ways to integrate Google Tasks into all kinds of things. Because I do I do like to have that context in my calendar of something that has to happen at a date and time and being able to place that right directly on the calendar through Google Tasks. And so that is very helpful. But being able to draw that from Flexi into my other tools would be would be really great. All right, on to our featured story of the week. This is all about Paul Graham, who is the co founder of Y Combinator talking about whether or not remote work works, and and he seems to think what Augusto

Augusto Pinaud 52:28
he thinks to feel that it worked. But we were full, and now leaders are changing their mind. And you know, I love Paul Graham and I respectfully disagree mostly was this article mostly was what he said, Because, yes, we all know their industries and specifics that are need to go back to their office, there is jobs that require that office, but I believe most jobs don’t require that. It’s, you know, it gives us an opportunity to really pull talent from anywhere and have talent accessible. And I think, you know, quoting Henry Ford, maybe inappropriately, if you ask the people what they need, they will want a faster horse. And I think this is what is happening in here. Yes, I understand. The United States is having a commercial real estate crisis. Because if people don’t come back to their offices, what are they going to do with all that space? I understand people at home impact small businesses impact restaurants impact the economy in very real ways. That said, also impact in the well being of the people in the happiness on the people in the quality life of people, as I understand for business. That seems like a secondary thing. The reality is a happy worker works better. A happy person works better. So all that even that may not be considered as important, you know, in certain corporations is key.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:19
Yeah, so one, I’ll narrow this down to the conversation being these are technology founders and technology executives who are saying this, and of course, Paul Graham is focused on that community. So in in some way, I can potentially agree with him, because I can see how there is a detriment to some organizations that lack good management that don’t have the ability to be able to run a remote work first environment. There are also folks who are junior in their experience. So they are new to the Due to the working environment, and it is, quote unquote, easier to help them on board, it’s easier to mentor them when they are in person. But those are, those are edge cases, I think, to having good management, and folks who embrace technologies in ways that can allow them to be able to foster and foster an environment culture that is remote work first. And then, and then, you know, empowering people to be in that environment and learn and grow and work collaboratively well together. So, as you said before, not every work environment is designed for remote work, you know, many environments are going to be hybrid in some way, shape, or form. In the future, I do not agree that most businesses are going to go back to mostly in person, I think there’s going to be just a healthy mix. And I think that in the technology space, the answer is probably yes, that most are going to go back to in person with some hybrid, you know, or, you know, you have to be in the office for three days, like like Google requires, you’re going to have some level of that. But the reason for that is very different in the technology sector than I think it is in many other spaces. There, there’s just that that whatever, there was just kind of like these ebbs and tides, where they are very pro worker and very anti worker. And, and those kinds of pendulum swings are happening. Now, what, what I, what I don’t understand about Paul Graham and the others who have spoken out against the idea of remote work is that we have many examples of, of really great technology companies that do use a distributed workforce, and are very successful at doing so. So and, and high tech, right. So we’re not talking about, you know, they just like produce software on the side kind of thing. You know, these are folks who are running large scale operations and doing a great job notwithstanding. So we know that it can work. We know that takes great, and or at least good management with the right facilitated culture. So I just, you know, again, is it right for you? Is it right for your organization? Maybe not, but I wouldn’t wipe out all hybrid work, I wouldn’t wipe out all distributed or remote work completely, just because it doesn’t work for a few large tech companies, or a few darling tech startups that are being venture backed by these folks. I do. I do appreciate what you talked about a Gousto. Regarding real estate, and the economic impact on small businesses who are supported by, you know, the concentration of an urban center, you know, having a downtown area that is that is basically not being utilized by, you know, 5060 70% of the commercial space that’s there. Of course, we have adjustments in those regards, right, you know, you know, you move with the cheese, Allah, Dr. Spencer Johnson, you need to make sure that if your business is no longer supposed to be doing what it’s doing in the place that it’s doing it, you move, you adapt the business, maybe you try different service lines, different product lines, so we have to have some kind of adaptation in these markets, some cities are just going to rebound and be fine, some are not. And we have to be conscious of that some are neighborhood by neighborhood, right. Like I’ve seen some neighborhoods come back completely. You know, I’m here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the downtown area is, is thriving again. It has a fairly strong cultural district and the cultural district has has continued to bring people downtown and, and being a vibrant space of many of the businesses have also commercial, you know, enterprise businesses have also brought people back in on some level, you know, whether 112 or three days of the week, and then the rest of the time remote. So we’re seeing different versions of a of a hybrid or distributed, you know, remote, you know, model. And and I think that we haven’t yet figured it out, I think we’re going to be in the state for quite some time. Right? It’s not going to be like they turn it off and everybody goes back to work. It’s going to be we’re going to test models, we’re going to see different people trying different things. And ultimately, everyone has to make a decision what’s going to be right for their business, their space, their place, their time. So I think that’s kind of where we are with it all. All right, got an announcement, and then we’re gonna close out the show.

Augusto Pinaud 59:25
Yeah, we have a couple of announcements. One is Apple announced that on iOS 17, they will start allowing, you know your kids to receive their allowance directly on their iOS devices. And the second announcement is that Microsoft is no longer going to support Windows eight and soon will Google Drive follow that so there are support for Windows eight and 8.1 will end up soon but even if you are using Windows eight today is A good time to upgrade as Microsoft will not longer support they will make your device vulnerable.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:10
Absolutely. All right. And with that, that brings us to the end of our show. Thank you Augusto for all the work you do to put the show together every week. If you would like you can join us in our community. If you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community. There you will be taken to personal productivity club and join the Anything But Idle community where you can comment on stories you can engage with us there. It’s just where we gather. And that’s where we do our stuff. So feel free to join us there comment on anything, if we missed a show a story, feel free to comment on it. If you want to share a tool of the week, you can go ahead and do that there as well. For all of you who are listening to the podcast and want to check out the show notes, you can go to anything but idle.com forward slash 119. Each episode is numbered and that episode number is also it’s redirecting slugs, so you can use that redirecting link that is and it’ll redirect you to the to the show notes for that particular episode. So you can go over there you can find all the states links to the stories, you can find our new tools of the week, you can find the extra stories and anything else there including the text transcripts that we produce. So we produce a readable one just click on that more. Read More link it will open up and it’s right there on the page. You can read the transcript of what we’re saying right now. And then you can also download it as a PDF and listen to it offline and have the PDF available to you there. Feel free to let friends and family know about Anything But Idle spread the good word. But otherwise, we will see you all next time here on Anything But Idle. Here’s to productive life.

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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.

Apple Announcements from WWDC and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week.

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

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Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

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Headlines Part A

Headlines Part B

Tools of the Week

FEATURED STORY OF THE WEEK

Announcements

Notes

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:03
Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:14
And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:16
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 118 Apple’s announcements from WWDC 2023. And we’re recording this on June 12 2023. Each week of Augusto and I cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in relativity. And it’s really just related technologies. Augusto, let’s get into the headlines. What is our first headline of the week?

Augusto Pinaud 0:43
First headline of the week is from Chris Gila view. And it is if you’re not getting better, you’re not getting worst. And, you know, it’s always said, Sorry,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:54
it says you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse.

Augusto Pinaud 0:59
And, you know, that’s, that’s in a certain way a reality and is a good thing to do a check of what you’re getting better what you’re getting worst. And if it’s okay, that you’re getting worse than that was, one of the things I love about the article is creasing Lee, I’m getting better at this, I’m getting better at this, I’m not getting better at this is how my business has changed. I don’t need to take care of that. And it was a good article to look at, what are we getting better, and what we are not getting better than we want, or we’re interested in to get better. So good. It was a very good read.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:39
Yeah, it’s one of those articles where you know, it is it is there’s a there’s a truth to it, but you don’t want it to be true. You know, you want you want to know that you’ve done something, and that it’s indelible. And so that skill or that particular body of knowledge, it’s just all there. But if you’re not using it, it’s kind of like a language, use it or lose it, if you’re not using that language, then you’re ultimately going to start having those things fade away. And that just goes with skills, and with all kinds of other things. And so it’s just good to get to know that we need to use our abilities on a regular basis to keep them sharp, onto our next article,

Augusto Pinaud 2:16
or next article comes from better humans and is there is a good way to make a to do list and there is a better way. And he said you know, not all to do lists are created the same. And, you know, he talks about embrace from the static list embrace, you know, the 8020 rule, the Pareto principle, you know, make sure that you are prioritizing, you know, instead as a somehow or to the rescue, because that’s where the matrix was. Can you know less is more intuition is keen, they do not do list and embrace change. And it was again, a very nice article, I have been talking for years about the do not do lists do not do list. And the first time I read about it, I read it from Michael Hyatt, and I thought it was brilliant. And I have a list and I review it often normally in my weekly review and pay attention. I have done any of this. And sometimes the answer is yes or no, it means I need to pay more attention, but also flexibility. You know, when I work with clients, they come with a 77 Items list. Okay? Well, we’re going to fail before the end of the day. So how about you work in a different way you work in a two or three, hey, if you get a three items list, and you need to do and repeat the process of finalizing three times a day, guess what, you’re going to feel successful three times a day. But if you get a 70 Items list and you accomplish the same nine items, it’s going to feel like a failure. So the other thing is that I was not on the article, but it’s something that I recommend is differentiate and be very clear, what are the must and what are the nice to have because it is a difference okay, this needs to happen and is a real need to happen. That is very different than it will be very nice if I get this to happen. And we tend to not establish that distinction that get us in trouble.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:28
Absolutely. On to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 4:32
So our next article come from psychology today’s how to address productivity paranoia. You know, measuring productivity helps managers identify struggle employees, you know, remote work, the challenges that that has bring, and, you know, the paranoia of this productivity that persist between the leaders and employees and the face to face interaction, and all that and I was laughing about this So as a client, we were in a meeting and on the meeting, it was said this will take two weeks. Okay. And at the end of the meeting, an email came from one of the persons who was on the meeting, say, so, can we have it at the end of the week? No, it will take two weeks. Okay. And but that is typical on many corporate environments, you know, where people is on the meeting, even agreed verbally in the meeting? And then a Dan, you know, was, let’s make it more productive? Let’s Well, you know, miracles take a little bit longer normally, that urgent things. So, and we have been trying to measure, you know, in the last three years, how we are more productive, more productive, more productive. And I have never thought about the idea of color, the productivity paranoia, but it is it is going a certain way, and what did you want to be productive for hours, you just want to check more boxes, or how we’re going to measure that actually,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:01
I know, this is harsh to say, but productivity paranoia, to me just sounds like poor management. And so the the idea of us, you know, labeling something as paranoia is, again, pathologizing, something that I don’t need need, that doesn’t need to be pathologized. Right, you know, like paranoia, being a symptom of some kind of mental disorder is, I don’t know, it just doesn’t rub me the right way. So what I feel like is that, yes, leaders do have anxiety about their employees and their their staff being productive when they cannot see them. That is not the right metric. And so they should look for the real data that shows that your employees and your staff are doing the right things. So, you know, the goal here is to look at, look at the right data to get the right result, and therefore, train yourself out of poor management. Right. And this is, again, it’s like, as you said, are we checking boxes, are we looking for results, are we looking for impact, and if we can continue to keep looking at the impact of our individual employees and as a team as a whole, we’ll also always know that we can rank order people as being most productive to least productive, and there’s always going to be a least productive person on the team, no matter how productive your team is. So that relativistic perspective doesn’t really help us understand the deficits of the team, and being able to understand how to shore up those pieces. Now, this particular article seems to be pushing for the idea that people should be hybrid workers, and that they should give some level of in person and remote work. In some measure, I don’t necessarily know that that’s true or works for every environment. You know, it doesn’t work in my company at all, we are distributed 100%. Heck, WordPress, runs on top of is run by a company called automatic they are 100% distributed team, and WordPress runs, you know, what 60% of the world’s websites. So the CMS itself is being developed in this distributed way with this distributed team. And they’re, they’re doing all the things right in that way to manage a company of that size. You know, so I don’t, I don’t buy it, that we need to have a hybrid work environment for every company. But that being the case, I think this is an argument for us, recognizing that if we are having any level of anxiety or fear related to our employees, or our staff being productive, it’s a conversation that we need to have with them, and determine what may be happening in their world, right? Like this is like, you know, compassion, not 101, if the COVID 19 pandemic should have taught us anything, it is to have a level of grace and compassion with regard to our people. And when we do that, it’s not that we can’t be tough, but we have to be tough on the problems not on the people. I mean, this comes from kind of the Harvard Negotiation, project and, and conflict resolution and otherwise, but this really works in this environment, because it’s just good management, if we can go ahead and we can say, Okay, this is why this person is not being productive, we can focus on solving that problem, I really feel that leaders are and managers are charged with making sure that we can get rid of the obstacles in the way of our people getting and being productive. So if we can do that, then we don’t have to be tough on them. We can be tough on the problem. And we can solve a lot more problems than blaming remote work are blaming a lack of face to face interactions or, you know, pathologizing anxiety and fear because of poor management skills in a new era, right? This is new for us, many of us, right, you know, managing in a modern remote environment is new for many supervisors and many managers and leaders. That’s okay. But we need to learn how to manage in that new paradigm. And we’re seeing a lot of mixing right some companies are going fully back to in person, some are are in hybrid, some are still Remote, some are aggressively staying remote. That’s all good, right, we’ll see how those companies fare in the long run. But we should understand that good management is just being dynamic in the face of these particular changing landscapes. All right on to our next article,

Augusto Pinaud 10:18
or our next article from life hacker is a start each week with this digital declaring methods. So well, you know, physical clutter is bad, you should do the digital and say, you know, go on declutter unit spend 15 minutes and clear, you know, your dekstop, your computer, your devices and all that, and I I agree on the practice. And I even recommend people look at the different devices and do something different every week. So, I have been saying for years, our Friday, you know, the second Friday of the month, the third Friday of the month, it depends on everybody’s work dynamic, but one of those normally worked well. And then take a couple of hours that Friday afternoon and flip your to do list, you know, and do the lowest priority of that, and you are going to end up that Friday, feeling king of the world because those things obviously are at the bottom of the list, because there have zero importance. But on your mind, there is no difference between that and the really important ones. Same thing with your RSS feed, pick a day can be the Sunday, that’s my day. So in the morning, I go and clean or tried to claim the RSS depending on the week that possible or not possible. And other weeks I cleaned and the deck stops and the files and the downloads. So don’t need to be everything every week, don’t make it heavy. But it helps to create a certain routine where you go and clean all your digital holes. You know, once every quarter, I go and I have a folder of ebooks and PDF and stuff. And I go and reorganize it and put it in the way I like it. Because a lot of times I get the PDF, you know, put it on the Kindle, put it on the iPad, and then dump the original file in there but didn’t put it in the name the way I like the way I will find it later there is the author and the title. So once a quarter, I go and do that work, have fixed those files. So everything is organized in the way I like.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:29
Yeah, I think that this is a good practice, I would obviously do this very differently myself. And I do because I do this all during my weekly review. So I have a way in which I am going through all of the various pieces of my world and organizing those things like throughout the week, I take a bunch of screenshots and I send them to either Evernote to my inbox for processing into my task management system, I capture screenshots and share them with colleagues and otherwise. So I’m doing a lot of that stuff links, you know, I’m sharing with people. And at the end of the week, I actually review all of those because I don’t need them cluttering my Google Photos, as I have to get rid of them because they all get backed up. And I do want them backed up in my system, just in case I want them. But that’s my opportunity to be able to kind of go through and if for some reason I missed something, it’s kind of a second pass at those items. So it’s not an inbox for me identified. But it is a way for me to shore up the rear guard and making sure that I haven’t lost something in this particular decluttering perspective, digital decluttering perspective, it’s a part of my resume plus, you know, back to the book work clean by Dan charnas, I really believe in the concept of having, you know, your yourself set up like a chef does, you know, in their kitchen, having all of the pieces cleaned and prepared and all of your ingredients ready to go. And this is what gives you that capability of doing that. And I confess, I once had that problem with, you know, the many, many tabs open problem. And now I have a system whereby I’m capturing all of those tabs and placing them into my inbox. So at the end of the week, you know, I do accumulate, it’s like barnacles on a ship, I just accumulate all of these tabs throughout the week. And so now I have them in my inbox. And I can go ahead and process them clean so that I can have that level of management. And you’d be surprised the number of people who complain about their browser being slow. And then I do a screen share. And I see that they have dozens and dozens of Chrome tabs open again, as I do, but I have a fairly robust machine in front of me that can have that many tabs open. And I use a tab extension that goes ahead and shuts down the the tabs down behind the scenes and actually if you’re using any chromium based browser, which includes Chrome, Microsoft, what’s Microsoft Edge, brave Vivaldi, you name it all of those various chromium based browsers actually can are now doing that in the background. They’re kind of shutting down the tabs and they’re not in use. So So save some some resources there. But my point is, is that I see lots of people with lots and lots of tabs open, and a bunch of detritus on their desktops, and, you know, downloads folders that are just voluminous, right? They’re just filling and filling and filling. And I made sure that I added that into my weekly, you know, checklist for my weekly review. And now I’m reviewing those items at the end of the week, so that those downloaded items are going where they they belong, they don’t belong in my downloads folder, they belong deleted, or they belong somewhere else where I can access and review them later. And so that’s a really, really good point. I also like to check my Sent folder in my email, it’s kind of tangential, but just remembering to look in these various places where we can kind of look and see, hey, did I miss something, do I send an email and someone didn’t respond to me, this is a good time to follow up with them and get get things going. One little trick there is, if I send an email I’m checking on Friday, I will reschedule that email, I’ll hit forward on it and schedule it out for Monday morning. So I’m not sending it on on a Friday afternoon to somebody who’s who’s going to obviously be getting ready for the weekend, I’m going to send it to them fresh at the top of their week. So they can go ahead and tackle that at you know, eight 9am whenever they get into the office on Monday morning. So keep that in mind that you want to you want to play to the strengths of the people in which you want responses from and doing this kind of digital decluttering can also set you up for a more productive next week. So great article in that perspective. Onto our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 16:29
Oh, this is what do we have a forum for article so we are gone now going to the break. And a word from our sponsors that this week is personal productivity

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:42
club. All right, cool. So virtual co working?

Sponsor Voice Over 16:44
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:55
Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle. We are going to head into our technology headlines for this week of Gousto. What is our first headline this week,

Augusto Pinaud 18:05
our first one is Google can search for books in your local library. And the article quotes Chloe ivyrose, who shows how she was looking for a book called electro the knife then, you know all the information, what you found, you know, release date, everything, including the option to see if it’s stuck on libraries, you know, at the bottom, you can put your zip code if you’re in the United States and check if the libraries are going to have. And that’s very cool. You know, one of the things I love about the libraries here, and we have discussed it here in the show, I have only one but I know you have multiple libraries on different places and rent the book that way.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:52
Yeah, so. So your mileage may vary on this one. So not everyone is going to see this functionality. So just be mindful of the fact that you’re not going to see it on the desktop, you’re only probably going to see this on mobile for most of you. Some of you might see it on desktop. And that’s just an experiment. Google is constantly experimenting with these things. So just be mindful that it’s available in some places, it’s not available and others. Some people claim that it’s always been there, some people claim that it’s never been there. So just be mindful of the fact that this is kind of hit or miss for you all. But on mobile, I believe you should be able to access this feature by by looking in the Google Play bookstore. When you’re in the Google Play bookstore, you should be able to search for a book and then see that ability to type in your zip code and do that. Now. If you do not and cannot find it for some reason, all you need to do is just go to WorldCat. So if you go to World cat.org That is the World Wide library catalog. And then you just basically type in your zip code and you can search any book anywhere, anytime. Now if you want or To get really sophisticated, you can use the library extension, the library extension is called fun enough library extension, just find it in the Web Store for the web extensions store for your particular browser. But library extension is amazing. It connects you both to your local library catalog, and it searches it right there in the page. So like, if you’re on Goodreads, if you’re on Amazon, if you’re on any of the various book sites, it will go ahead and search those sites. And then it will go ahead and automatically search your suggested library. So I have five or six different libraries that I have library cards from. And, and so it will search all of those including like a hoopla, and you know, your your ebook library and audio book libraries, portions, so it goes and searches all of those. So library extension is just like a must have for me in any browser as soon as I install it. So just good to keep in mind as you are kind of making your way through the the libraries in your maybe if you’re moved or whatever, you know, you can, you can quickly and easily get access to them through the library extension. Alright, on to more Google News.

Augusto Pinaud 21:10
Oh, the next one is Google works. Space gains passkey support. And I’m going to let you go into the whole explanation of that one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:20
Yes. So a few weeks ago, we talked about the fact that Google had a had finally allowed Paschi support, meaning that it’s using your account embedded on any device that allows for passkey. Pass keys is just basically a device based login. So you just authenticate on the device. And you’ll then be logged into your Google account, wherever that might be. So say my phone, my phone acts as a past key. And so when I go to log into my Google account, it’ll literally just prompt me to do something on my phone. And by virtue of of doing that thing on my phone, it authenticates that it’s me trying to log in, because I physically have my phone in my hand, it knows it’s me, and not some hacker or some criminal. And it’ll let me in, that was not available within Google workspace. So only consumer Google users had access to past keys until this most most recent week and Google workspace now so if you have Google workspace for business, if you have Google workspace for enterprise for education, passkey support is now available there and you can go ahead and turn that on by going to my accounts.my account.google.com and going under that privacy and security section and turning on past keys onward to Gousto

Augusto Pinaud 22:34
are our next one remarkable the era tablet revise the PDF experience and the robust highlighting system and this is very cold, you know, they do a full it’s thinking you know, they’re setting a new view on the PDF keyboard navigations more precise searching and even smart highlighting and it is very cool because with the new announcements that the iPad did are the iOS 17 When it comes out at the end of November, October November, when it comes out. It’s Apple’s making a big effort into making your PDF experience much better. So it’s very good to see that companies like remarkable are also stepping up into the experience for PDFs

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:22
fantastic and so that was my ring light that just broke. So if I go off camera again at Gousto it’s because my ring light fell again. So just we’re gonna keep on going the show The show must go on

Augusto Pinaud 23:36
this show must go on.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:39
From the remarkable story on two alternatives for the magic keyboard and Apple Pencil. Last week

Augusto Pinaud 23:45
I talked about a cheaper version of the Apple Pencil and then I found this article on what nine to five called budget iPad accessories and alternatives. I wanted to share this for for people who wants the accessories but one, you know, a different version or more affordable version than what Apple sells. So that’s what this basically article is propose. Our next article after that is apple. We will discuss more about the vision Pro and what the Apple announced but they announced that they bought the same AR company that is behind the Mario Kart right. Los Angeles historical my rat that also do contracts with military and you know they they really have been working into this AR world. So seems like Apple is going all in today’s session. We will discuss way more when we get to the feature story of the week. And for the users of WhatsApp finally You may be able to fix your typos no need anymore to put the star and the word properly spell, they finally invented the edit button. We are very happy about that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:16
Now Now if Twitter would just I mean, unless Twitter is going to implode, I hope Twitter figures that that edit functionality out better than it currently has implemented it as well. And certainly not within the Twitter blue perspective, because that’s just an ungodly amount of money for using a social network. Okay, onward to creating a simple wardrobe catalog on your iPhone.

Augusto Pinaud 25:41
No, this this article was very interesting is another way to use you know how to create a simple catalog for what you have for the clothes that you have. A lot of people struggle with this. And you know, one of the things that is very interesting is at the time they struggle, that’s the morning, that’s when most people tend to be dressed up. And not everybody is a morning, people there is people who are night owls. And for those people, these kind of articles, these kind of techniques to inventory things and make the decision even before you wake up, it’s really make a significance and make an improvement. And you can then sort them into the formal going out cashflow workout, whatever it is, in my case, I pick whatever is on the morning, the night before and I have done it. I don’t know since one. But the reason is that I’ve denied I still think in in the morning I am running I that’s not a decision, I want to to make. I don’t have enough clothes to even a simple wardrobe catalog apparently. But for the people who have it, this will be a good option.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:56
Yeah, there are like Closet Organization apps that are out there and wardrobe apps that are specific to this tool that this this tool need. But I personally don’t have that need, i just i don’t i i Take out the next thing in the closet and I put it on. So I don’t particularly think about this, I’ve organized my closet in such a way that the algorithm is that, you know, as the next pair of pants and the next shirt are in line, that’s the next combination of things that are going to be worn together. And it everything is pretty much interchangeable. It’s very rare that I have to like skip a pair of pants because the dress shirt is just really so often color that it would be weird, I’d look like it was Christmas because I have a red shirt and a green pair of pants kind of thing, which happens a lot because I do wear a lot of red and green. And so and so I just I’m mindful of of basic things. But I’ve organized and purchased items for my closet so that everything is pretty much interchangeable, I have taken to doing something a little bit different, which is I do take a photograph every day of what I am wearing, so that I am aware of what I wore. So if I go back to the same group of people, you know, it could be that I meet with a group once a month. And I don’t want to wear the same thing every time. But it’s very possible because of my little closet algorithm that that will happen. So I do take a photograph of myself in the morning. And it’s not vanity. It’s literally just what am I wearing today. So I can go back if I need to look back at that at that moment. And I save all of that in Evernote. And so I just have a wardrobe notebook. And it just catalogs what I’ve worn. And there are occasions when I think you know what, I really liked that outfit. And then I will go back and scroll through those items and see which one of those those images, details, something that I appreciated. And I’ll usually annotate that. So I’ll write it in the note or annotate that in the in the in the title of the of the note in my wardrobe notebook. And then that way, it tells me kind of the like, oh, I wore this to this dinner or I wore this to this gala, I liked that outfit, I might want to wear that again. And so I can go ahead and do that I don’t even tag in the wardrobe, because it’s all date organized. So I could just scroll through the dates and see them in a chronological order. So I think it’s good for us to kind of keep that in mind that you know, the the way in which we look doesn’t have to be everything. But certainly it’s a component of how we present in the world. And we want to make sure that we look good to some extent. And there goes the arrows. The ring light again. But yeah, all right, I want to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 29:34
So our last story for this segment is another goal from BGR have the name escaping me by gate genius review page. Anyways, he’s saying Christmas he’s talking about how the new Motorola racer plus has driven him on a foldable phone iPhone and he’s cheering, you know, it would be very nice to have an iPhone that goes into this and remind me when I saw the Microsoft Surface foldable phone, because that’s what I want, I don’t want something that goes to half of the phone, I want something that goes double of the phone. So basically, I can go from having a phone to having an iPad Mini. That’s what I want. No, I don’t need more smaller, I need more more size but foldable so I can carry with me easier.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:31
I’ll have to say that I looked at the razor Plus Ultra, I think is it’s called not available in United States currently, that I’m aware of. But it is it harkens back to remember when the Motorola Moto rail razors were the were the the thing that de rigueur of the day, and oh my gosh, it just brought back all of those memories. And it’s also really nice looking phone, this is this is a phone that I would buy. And I would have as you know, I have two phones one for work one for personal. And and while I use my personal one a lot for work, I do like having that individual phone that I can kind of shut off. And and know that it’s turned off during that timeframe. It also gives me context switching, because phone calls don’t come through my personal phone for work, they only come through that work one. And so it just helps me have that bifurcation when I when I needed to. I think the razor plus would be really nice. You know, it kind of it reminds me the Samsung Z fold, right? The Z fold is that no, that is the flip the Z the Z flip the flip. And and so it kind of gives me that that feeling to it. I’d be worried about not having pure Android on the device, I think that I would probably go with the Z flip just for the for that purpose. But it looks like a beautiful phone. And if it came to the United States, I would definitely want to play with it to kind of see what it’s all about. And to give it some give it some love in that sense. So I’m curious if anybody out there who’s not in the in the states who might have that app, that phone to kind of let us know what what that’s all about. And kind of go from that

Augusto Pinaud 32:04
one. The other one that racer and the start tech startup was my fave. I regret eventually to the razor, but I hold as long as I could. I love that one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:17
All right. So with that we have covered our productivity technology articles for this week. And that means onward to new tools of the week. Each week, Gustavo and I scour the web for all the various productivity and technology articles that you of course, hear us talking about. But But in that process, we come across many personal development time tasks, project management applications, and services. So in new tools of the week, we bring you each a tool we think you might like. And so my tool this week is a tool called the greatness app. And this is an interesting app to me, because what it is, it’s about building a personalized plan for investing in behaviors that bring you toward your life goals, is all supposedly backed by behavioral science. And so it’s really interesting to me in one particular way. So you can go ahead and go to greatness app.com, you fill out this quiz, and then it presents you with a set of things it thinks you might want to do. Now, the fact that the website has, you know, drinking water, right as the first primary thing, don’t get turned off by that. But it has like physical health, mental health, it has other kinds of goals that you can go ahead and put it in. But the idea here is that it’s it’s it focuses on routine, which is something that I am consistently trying to help people understand that habits are not the the goal here. Great routines are surfacing your routines to awareness. And then and then facilitating habitual behaviors, just basically behavioral interventions within your routine is how you make those kinds of long lasting changes. And so this is one of the few applications that I’ve seen doing it in such a way that I think could be really useful. So that’s the greatness app. I recommend you check it out and see if it’s something that can work for you. I like the little bit of machine learning that they’ve built into it to kind of facilitate a personalized plan for you and then help you achieve those goals throughout your weeks and months. Go. So what’s your tool this week?

Augusto Pinaud 34:21
Well, the tool this week is not only a tool is day one is a journal app. And the reason I bring it back and then we talked about this app before the reason I bring it back is because when Apple announced that they are going to be releasing a journal app for iOS. People was wondering, that was a good idea. Why have not thought about this before? Where can I go and they want I’ve been using it. I don’t know for a very long time. I can tell you that according to this. I have right into this more than 3271 Time Okay, so it’s been used. But he’s It is a fantastic application. And I don’t know, I don’t know what Apple is going to release or not. But if you don’t want to wait until iOS is out until the app is out, etc, that is a great app to check on. Maybe use.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:23
Right? So there’s an iOS version, there’s a Mac version, and there is an android version of the of the day one application, basic is free, that gives you one journal, one device, and one photo per entry. But then you can upgrade to the premium, which is about $3, just shy of $3 per month, or $35 per year. So it’s very nominal in terms of cost. And for all of the times I have heard you have Cousteau, talk about the value and the kind of the, the way in which you can customize and flexibly journal within day one. It sounds like a really, really great app. And so I have I have used many different apps over the over time. But I’ve I’ve consistently here heard you talk about how wonderful day one is. And so it’s a good reminder for everybody that there are solid apps out there like day one that have been around doing their thing, you know, consistently updating and doing the good work that is out there in the world. All right. With that we are on to our featured story this week. Let’s talk about WWDC 2023

Augusto Pinaud 36:26
Well, let’s notice star was the elephant less a star with a Mac. And you know, it was very interesting, because they announced the MacBook Air 15 inch that I know you will look into replaced the laptop I thought about you. They put an m two they did very well. But what was very interesting for me is how targeted that machine was, or at least on the marketing and announcements to the PC user. That was not a machine directed marketed to Apple users. It was really towards a PC market. That’s fine, he was completely fine. But that was very, very interesting for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:13
Yeah, the MacBook Air 15 inch, the m two just sounds like the perfect Mac for me, you know, an MBA is the type of of tool that I can use in lots of different environments, it fits kind of my Chromebook need, right? The only lacking in this new MacBook Air, which we can argue to the cows come home is the lack of a touchscreen, you know, and it lacking that touchscreen is really, really a drawback. But it’s something it’s a device that I will probably get. It’s something that I can I can just slip in a bag and go. And it’s a large enough screen that I know that you like a smaller screen size than then 15 inches. But you know I’m sitting with talking to you right now on a 15 inch screen and I have a foldable monitor that travels with me that’s another 15.6 inches. So I love having that really nice widescreen. And to just have the idea of taking my MacBook Air having a 15 inch screen on it and taking my portable monitor plugging into the USBC and having, you know, basically 30 inches wide on in terms of view that just really appeals to me, just for the way in which I like to work right I like to be able to have those things, I’d love to have it stacked, I’d love to be able to take that monitor and put it on top of one another. But that will work so well in a cafe.

Augusto Pinaud 38:35
That doesn’t work well in a cafe even though I have seen pictures of people bringing their dekstop machine to the cafe. So you can do that and we can take pictures of you and make fun of you forever.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:46
I have witnessed someone carry a an iMac into the cafe, sit at a desk and work on it. And I thought to myself, why why would you why would you take you to like I would just be worried about you know, destroying the thing dropping it, you know, being knocked down those kinds of things in a public environment like that. But anyway, all right from the MacBook Air 15 inches from

Augusto Pinaud 39:10
the Metal Gear then they announced their new micro studio and they announced a monster I understand this is so they can show and they can brag what they can do. And is the m two ultra chips. Basically it’s a two m two chip put together so you can accomplish, you know, something outstanding, I’m going to assume because it’s I don’t I don’t unless you do video editing you know, they announced a MacBook Pro that now you can put it vertical horizontally. So they really went all in in to show that since they decide to do their own silica. They can really push very, very far from where the market is.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:57
Well, this is this is the MTL First chip is three times faster than the previous Mac Studio. I mean, like, this is a beast. And so if you’re processing a high level of video or doing huge amounts of of, basically, LLM processing, large language model processing, if you’re doing that kind of heavy duty database, you know, intensive work, this is the kind of chip you want to be able to utilize. Of course, it comes with a hefty price tag, you know, just starting at four grand USD. So, you know, if you want that ultra chip, you’re going to be starting out the gate at a pretty high price point, if you just want the m two Max chip, that’s roughly about 2000. But you want to get to the Ultra, and it starts at 4000 USD. But again, it’s this is a very, very powerful tool that’s capable of just displaying very rich visuals, and being able to process data very, very quickly. So for you know, there, there probably not that many people out there who need this, but for those folks who do, this is a great tool for it.

Augusto Pinaud 41:03
So then they let’s move to iOS 17 iPad, os 17, they announce, you know, Journal series improved, you know, they even said, now you will be able to stop docking people and using the appropriate word, okay, and they announce for the phone, the standby mode. So basically, you put on the charger and horizontal and they will show like a clock of the 1980s. And since God they’re going to allow you to modify that. upload some phones and stuff. That’s when they announced their standard, sorry, the journal app. The one thing that was very exciting for me was the sharing of the earth x and the earth X has been a great example the industry how much Google and Apple and others have been working together into just creating a product that is very nice, but also sharing together, you know, the security that comes with that technology. So it doesn’t cause trouble but really helps the fact that now I can share those are texts with people we have a couple in the house. And they are sent to my phone. So when when we are my wife and I together and the things that was up, then she started getting notifications you often earthtech following you Well, yes, we know it will be very nice to share with her so she don’t get those or for her to take those those things and don’t get the notification and don’t need to text me where is the thing because I can find it. So I’m very excited about that. Then they announce Mac OS, the new one. It was not Rancho Cucamonga. It’s been the joke for the last two or three years. But of course they did Sonoma. And the jokes were also came in for Sonoma. So apparently if you install a certain operating system, you will be able to accomplish on your Mac to have Sonoma and Gomorrah. So that was a joke and I don’t think Apple intended but we are going to be listening to that for many years to come. They announced watch os 10 TV OS and then they went into the show of the night that was the apple vision Pro. It’s not a cheap toy. It’s a $3,400 toy. But I was very excited about it. One because it remind me that the technology that it has is incredible. Okay, let’s say you put this on now you have an unlimited set of screens. That is incredible. Second, the Apple when to the business market, not the gaming market and the VR and headsets they have there they are in the business they’re very cool. But they have not really hit very very hard hitting the business market that may be very interesting you have a bunch of screens here in my office. And really if I need to upgrade all this gear, I will be very close to that number. So it makes sense to me to get rid of everything sell it and see so you start you watch Anything But Idle in the video and not only the audio, if when this product see you see different that’s because now we’re using the algorithm for this one. And it may happen but the other thing that is interesting is since like Apple found now a recipe that they start with the iPad, follow with the Apple Watch and now they’re bringing division Pro to this we remember those products the first iPad didn’t have a lot was expensive, expensive Earth and and it was by the third iPad regeneration, when that thing really was a very interesting, powerful thing before that, it was not. So if you look into the Apple Watch, it is the same thing. The first and second version of the Apple Watch, were not as powerful they were testing that was during that process that they discover, oh, the health part is what it’s getting people more interested. And then they push on that direction, making the third generation really now mass adopted or very close to, you know, or at least a mass level device. So they seem to be taking the same approach they seem to be taking, let’s test, let’s figure it out. Let’s go into business. Let’s give this to business people, I don’t travel anymore, or at least my travels are legible these days. But I’m thinking when the iPad came out many years back, that was so important for me, as a person who was a heavy traveler, this thing is no a no brainer for me if you travel any, because not only not now you can sit forget about how much space you have on that set, you will have all the screens, large screens, privacy, you don’t need to worry or put this the protector so the neighbor is seen what you seen or not seen. So I honestly think that there are two important things with this device. One is Apple, it’s really going to develop a new line of products. Okay, this, what we have seen from the business perspective. Yeah, I can put them on watch a movie, I can put them. But it’s nothing close to really be a tool where I can say, look, I will replace my iPad with this. Until now. Now I have a thing that I can think I can replace multiple iPads, as you said, when I’m here in my office, yeah, the monitors are all the stack. Also, when I’m out and about, that doesn’t happen. So if I can take now and say, I’m going to the cafe, and instead of bringing, you know, your multiple stack monitors or your dekstop, as we said at the beginning, I can take that thing, and have now two massive monitors to work sitting on the couch. I’m interested in hearing more about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:38
Yeah, I’m going to reserve judgment until I see what they do with this device. I am, I’m interested in it as a consumption device, I think this is going to be something that I can sit down and watch, you know, a pretty large sized IMAX type movie and potentially even doing it in 3d, if you can, you know, if you could put prescription kind of, you know, filters in between, presumably you can also put in a 3d kind of rendering, you know, you know, where they have the different colors in each of the eyes. So you can you can see in 3d, I would love to be able to see that kind of large scale entertainment, right like think this this new avatar movie, being able to watch avatar to, you know, in that kind of IMAX experience. And you know, you put your earbuds in and you just have this immersive experience. I had that already with the with the Google Daydream VR headset, and I’m really sad that you will got rid deprecated and got rid of that program. Beyond that, what you’re talking about a Gousto in terms of of having a productivity tool that you are putting on your face, and and operating. It’s still science fiction, to me, I’m not gonna lie, I still don’t see this as being practical. For the vast majority of people, this isn’t practical. But for you and I, I can see us both wearing our VR headsets, and working very comfortably in that environment. On occasion, right, this is not going to be this is not going to be an everyday wear kind of thing. But there’s going to be opportunities where this would be really, really helpful to be able to do that kind of work. I can see in hosting our conferences, I can see in a lot of different environments where that might be very, very useful and practical. But it’s a limited set right now. They need to make this, you know, device at this price point so that it stays in developer’s hands and can can be built and so on so forth. I get that. The Apple vision Pro is currently as you said 3500 USD, and it’s going to not launch until early 2024. So developers not even gonna get their hands on this until early 2024. And at which point they’re going to start looking at how they can ideate right now their ideating how they’re going to be able to utilize this you know, they’re going to probably get the SDKs and start playing around and seeing how this tool can be utilized and what functions, what sensors are in and how this how this can really be workable with its limitations. Again, as you said, think about the first Apple Watch, think about the first air pods. Think about the comparison between them and today lightened day, you know, night and day. So he’s very good at that. Yes, yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, they’re not, they’re not inventing anything, they’re taking what exists in terms of have a vision for what a product can a product category can be. And they’re thinking about what services they can have people use on their platform, and Apple users are very loyal, right. So they’re going to be able to get that headset, and they’re going to be able to run an app ecosystem, Apple, TV, Apple, everything that they do in terms of Apple services within that, that that environment, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m going to hold as I said, I’m gonna hold reservation, or I’m gonna keep reservation to all of this, I’m gonna hold opinion about it until I see probably the the first consumer version, right, this is this is a developer version, I’m going to wait till the consumer version comes out, and they’ve solved the battery power issue, they solve some of these, some of these vision problem issues, you know, because a lot of people who put on VR or even AR glasses, will sometimes get nauseated from wearing them. There are all kinds of issues related to putting something that shielding your entire face. And so we’ll we’ll see how that how that makes us way forward. But Apple is one of the richest companies in the world, they have more cash than many, many, many, many countries in the world, just sitting on piles and piles of cash, they have the ability to invest in this technology and see it forward, I would like to actually see them make more inroads in artificial intelligence, to be quite honest, I’d like to see them doing more in that space. I know they have and they’ve got some some of that going on. But they are not like Google or Microsoft, or open AI and kind of proffering themselves as as doing AI. And I’d be interested to see what they’re doing thoughtfully in that space. Because I think it would be really useful for the industry to see a privacy focused company, at least in in, in all regards, we’ve seen Apple take a very strong stance in terms of privacy. And so taking this kind of approach with AI would be interesting. And utilizing that in this VR environment. In this kind of vision pro product, I think those two combined together, it’d be great to like have an assistant inside of your vision Pro, right. And now kind of all as Jarvis, you can now have this kind of ongoing fluid, you know, Apple Assistant, I’m not saying her name, but you know, the madam s so that you’re able to go ahead and have this kind of fluid conversation, because right now, you know, Madam s is not the brightest bulb, you know, it’s okay. It does the does the job most of the time. But it could be better, you know, I definitely use Amazon and Google to greater effect as voice assistants. And it would be great to have that facilitated in a much more thoughtful perspective, with the visuals associated with it, right, have audio and visual says, I feel like that’s the thing that is the combination of all those pieces, and it needs to fluidly work across all of your Apple devices. That’s where I think the key is, is because the the vision Pro is not going to be appropriate for everyday wear. And so once I take them off, I need to be able to have that same level of artificial intelligence and seamless experience transfer to my iPad screen transfer to my iPhone screen transferred to my watch OS, my my TV, os screen, and so on and so forth. Very, very thoughtfully.

Augusto Pinaud 53:44
Yeah. And I think that’s something where Apple has a very distant shut, because they control so much of the experience, that it is something that Google or Microsoft will have a much harder time developing not not for any than that. The options on hardware and software vary so much. That is an extra challenge to an already difficult one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:13
Absolutely. All right. We’ve got an announcement and then we’re gonna close out.

Augusto Pinaud 54:16
So we have one announcement on Learn Omnifocus for with Tim stringer turns nine years, a couple of weeks ago, so congratulations, Tim. And if you’re OmniFocus user, this is an incredible place to find about OmniFocus and interviews and everything else.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 54:40
Fantastic. Congratulations again to Tim stringer from learn OmniFocus turning nine years old. And with that, okay, so we’ve covered the productivity and related technology news yet for another week. Thanks again. Augusto for all your help and work. Okay, everybody. Fantastic, okay on anything but idle.com homme, you can find our show notes those contain the links to all the stories tools of the week, extra stories that we don’t cover in the episode. And as well, we include a text transcript, both that you can read on the screen there, just click that little more button, or you can go ahead and download it off as a PDF and read it side by side as you’re listening to the episode. If for some reason you’re missing something from the show notes, we missed a story it’s gonna happen. Go ahead and feel free to join us inside of personal productivity club. If you go to anything but idle.com forward slash community, you will be taken to a sign up page. That is for personal productivity club, it’s free to join, go ahead and join it and then it’ll direct you into the Anything But Idle group. And then you can go ahead and interact with us you can comment on our various episodes, you can post stories that you think might be interesting for us to cover in a future episode, all of that fun stuff. Feel free. If you’re listening to this for the first time. Feel free to subscribe. Sometimes it’s called subscribe or follow inside of your podcast app of choice, but go ahead and subscribe and then you’ll be notified when we get our episodes released each week. And with that, we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life.

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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.

Notion Projects Arrives to Help You Organize Your Projects, and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://anythingbutidle.com for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!

If you’d like to continue discussing any news from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

HEADLINES, PART A

HEADLINES, PART B

New Tools of the Week

FEATURED STORY OF THE WEEK

ANNOUNCEMENTS

NOTES

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

[read more=”Read the raw text transcript” less=”Close the raw text transcript”]

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co-working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. I’m Augusto Pinaud. And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 117 notion projects arise, help you organize your projects. And we’re recording this on June 5th 2023. Each week, of course, you know that Augusto and I read and review all of the various productivity news headlines of the week. And we bring those together here today in Anything But Idle. And so with that, okay, so let’s get into our headline for this week, with our first productivity headline of the week,

Augusto Pinaud 0:42
we’re beginning with an article talking about the unveiling of the long term effects of the long term exposure to screens. And that’s not been a secret, you know, you have eye discomfort, physical discomfort for poor position, you know, sleep issues. You know, there was the fourth and the fifth, the first tree I agree on, I’m aware of them. The fourth was cognitive challenges on reduced productivity. And the fifth was the psychological impact on the isolation. And I understand that I’m very, very grateful, because I am, I could do this and have the camera and that fit my social human connection, that that is a good luck. I don’t, you know, during the pandemic, as other people were suffering on the lack of physical contact and seeing other people, I was not I was fine looking people in the screens. So that I that that psychological impact, and I experienced it with my kids, you know, one of my kid, he was completely fine, okay, he was his father, his father, son, and he could leave in cameras and be happy. And if he will have been allowed to not go back to school, you will have a stay remote. My daughter, instead, she means that and she really got their facts from from that. But where I disagree with the article is the cognitive challenges and reduced productivity, sorry, leave surrounded by screens. And I consider myself reasonably productive. Not only that, I work as a consultant as a coach with people who are surrounded by screens. And I don’t think that part is necessarily true, I think

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:35
it has to do with the way in which people set up their systems, like you’re working with people to help them manage their focus effectively. And I think that a lot of people who have multiple screens and multiple devices on which they’re working, they’re challenged because of the fact that they don’t have things correctly set up. And it’s, it’s being set up for their workflow, so that they can focus on the things that they need to at any given time, and also be triggered to change context at the right time. So what I take from this article regarding cognitive challenges and reduced productivity is that if you’re a manager, or if you yourself are self directed, you need to make sure that if you have a prolonged amount of screen exposure, that you just spend a lot of time with your devices, and you need to be able to set it up. I think of these on plots, you know, from from the book for clean, by Dan Charles, right. The idea here is that you have your you have your station setup, so that it is like a cockpit, right you are you are designed to be able to focus on the right measurements and the right dials and the right visual landscape at any given time. And when you do that, you’re then able to function in the cockpit, you’re capable of directing the plane where it needs to go. If you don’t, then you get a crash. And that’s going to kill a lot of people. So how about we not do that? Right? So that’s what I think is really the genesis kind of the gem of the article in that sense. But I agree with you, if you have things set up correctly, then it’s not the fact that you have prolonged exposure to the screens. It’s the fact that you don’t have things probably properly set up. All right, onward to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 4:12
Image article is how to take better brakes for work, according to research. And it’s an article from the Harvard Business Review. And you know, every time I read about the brakes and stuff, and I mean, without going to the unreasonable, I think many times what people need is not necessarily the break, but the change. It is how do you adjust from going to perspective or focus a to activity B to activity c? So don’t get burned out? Can I ask you were mentioned in the cockpit you make me laugh because yes, my office looks like a cockpit I get it and when I work with clients is that is how are you going to change So that way, you don’t spend seven hours looking at the same screen, but you can change not only what you’re doing, how you’re doing, what are the different movement, the different positions that you can have. And when you do that, you know, you can then work into much more smaller breaks, because you don’t get to those points where, okay, now I need to take two hours so I can recover, because you are getting small breaks or small increments of recharging during the day.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:33
I have this vague sense that burnout wasn’t real for a while. And, and it’s not that burnout doesn’t exist, it’s so I do believe that burnout does exist now. But I have this sense that we have the ability to, you know, keep burnout at bay, very effectively, if we do the right kinds of mitigations. And these behavioral interventions are not, they’re not grand, right. It’s like, you know, self efficacy is a way to, you know, challenge burnout and to overcome burnout, obviously, taking reps true rest, Getting proper sleep, which is different than rest, right, rest is purposefully not doing something. And that’s not procrastination, either. Right is purposeful, you know, relaxation. The other side is sleep, you need proper sleep, that’s different than rest, but exerting energy giving, giving yourself time to do those things. Again, we talked about these philosophies on plastic, your visual clutter on your desk, and of course, compete with your visibility to make decisions and to have that clarity of space and time. So all of these various little things, they add up. And they really can help you buffer yourself from burnout and otherwise. And so I really liked the idea of taking breaks. And making those breaks productive, productive doesn’t mean that you’re doing things toward the work end, right? It just means that you’re purposefully utilizing that time, you’re being mindful with your time. And that is the thing that makes it productive. So I really like that concept. Okay, onward.

Augusto Pinaud 6:59
Before it before we go, because it was tied up to the next one. You know, one of the things that I tell people is change when you’re doing certain activities, if you can grab the laptop, and then walk to somewhere else, check your email, because anyways, you only have 10 minutes to do that. Move that so that way you change all that render. So you said that reduced the time, you know, the the change of background, a change of scenery, the change of desk and chair. And change of activity helps you to prolong that working time. Before you get to that burnout point.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:34
I absolutely.

Augusto Pinaud 7:37
know our next one is technological change in here in hybrid working on the benefits of the psychological safety in the work place. And it is interesting, because Jordan Harlow talks, his occupational psychology consultant, and he talks about how people feel more secure or confident in the video in the virtual video environment than what they ever felt in the conference rooms. And this is the first time at least I hear that. And it, it really brought a lot of thought to me and how, you know, all right, we said at the beginning of the pandemic, part of the problem was a pandemic. So we’re going to see to know very quickly who are the poor managers, that’s proved to be completely right. What I didn’t consider at that time, is that also was going to provide people the ability to feel safer into those environments into those digital environments. So that was very, very interesting.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:48
Yeah, so So for folks who may not be aware, psychological safety is a kind of a psychological concept that allows us to basically have that space in order to make mistakes, right in order to expand ourselves and take risk. And that’s a space where creativity happens, it’s a space where problem solving happens, it’s a place where we can reach out and make new relationships and network in an organization. And when we don’t have those things, and that’s in any group setting, not just an organization, but here we’re talking about the workplace. But that is actually really important place for people to be able to go you know, just taking risks means doing a project, or taking on a task or an assignment of in that sense. So the idea of psychological safety is really important in productivity. And we don’t talk about it enough because that a lot of folks want don’t really understand the concept. And, and that is better. managers don’t understand that concept. But if you can create psychological safety, that is the ability for someone to be candid with you to be appropriate with you, you know, to have boundaries with you, and to know how to kind of expand and contract on those things. Particularly you’ll have a better workforce. And what this is basically saying is that You know, hybrid working gives you, you know, quite a number of those benefits because of the different working modalities, right, I may not feel comfortable telling you that someone else is doing something wrong or inappropriate, or just making a mistake. And, and saying that to you in a live environment in person environment, but I may make, I might be I might be more comfortable with doing so in a, an asynchronous chat based environment, right. Or I might be more comfortable doing that in a video environment as opposed to in a physical environment. So these things that create this kind of psychological safety is really important to the to the organizations, and the teams, and your family’s overall productivity. So I like this article for that very reason. And I think it makes a lot of sense to me. So all right, onward.

Augusto Pinaud 10:49
The next article came from Darius, for action is things in life that I underestimate, for way too long. It was a really awesome article. You know, he said, he mentioned five things, you know, where I grew up, and where I live now, you know, the power of my mind, and he mentioned something that really hit me closely. I remember getting so swamped by my emotions, whenever something bad in quotes happened to me, and I say bad in quotes, because never something bad happened. But that’s a thing that happened, you know, when two people and we the mistakes that you make, he mentioned, you know, the time that you have, and the wind bad. And he mentioned he moved to, from the Netherlands to Spain, the perfect weather. And then he find out all the people in Spain complaining when it was too hard on their condition on expenses. And you know, that that part remind me when we moved to California, and we used to joke that 74 was to call and 75 was too hard, there was nothing we can do about that. But those things are very important to, to appreciate. Because the more you’ve put your reticular system to look at those things, even though they sound little things that you’re grateful, you know, the fact that I have an offense, the fact that, hey, he was not hot today, those things, allows you to also see the other good things that are happening in your life, and appreciate all those things, too. And the thing

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:31
that stood out for me in this for this article was the concept of making mistakes. And let he says here, let your mistakes be teachers, I really liked that phrase. And it’s so important because you’re going to make mistakes, and or you’re going to watch other people make mistakes. And so it doesn’t necessarily need to be your mistakes that you learn from. But definitely letting your mistakes be your teachers is a fundamental thing that I think everyone who wants to be more productive, needs to pay attention to. Don’t seek perfection, right? Seek progress, and progress is begotten through watching those mistakes, or seeing other people make mistakes and trying to avoid them in the best possible ways. And I think that’s really just a very sound piece of advice that kind of was a little nugget that I found in the article. And it really resonated with me. Okay, onto onto our next article for the week.

Augusto Pinaud 13:27
Our last article for dissection is for a friend, Charlie weekly, and is how to tame a gazillion of ideas. And the article comes and mentioned the new momentum program that he just released or is going to be released the action item catcher figure, and he had the worksheet that is a free download. So if you are looking into how to manage all those ideas that you are having, and you don’t know what to do with them, because you don’t want to put them in the system, or in your system, you want to prefer to have them on some separate place. This is a great article to get ideas and to get even a tool how to deal with all that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:11
Yes, it’s a simple download. And it’s a simple tool, but you would be surprised about how powerful having a centralized location to put your tasks can be, you know, the thing that I’m challenged by is, you know, is this an inbox? Or is this a task list? So you do have to figure out what you’re doing in that sense, right? And being a GED or as you Risto you know, I tend to have those things separated into two buckets, right, you know, very different from an in tray. And so this whole concept of an item catcher speaks to me that you have some kind of inbox and then you’re placing your actions, your next actions, whatever you want to call them your to dues here onto this task list that he provides them to easy, click it, click on it, and it downloads a PDF and you can go ahead and check it out. Also Somewhere in personal productivity club, I must have made mention or given folks access to the the major projects queue. So if anybody has questions about the major projects, too, if you have a lot on your plate, it’s really helpful to be able to have some way to offload it from your mind in a way that helps to structure it. And so I created this concept and this kind of tool, so to speak a minister you can manifest it however you want, called a major projects queue. And it’s akin to what really, you know, Charlie’s talking about here. If you have a lot of projects, and you want to be able to make them happen, you must focus. And so the major project skew allows you to create conditions by which you will focus on one or very few projects at any given time, make progress on those and then have some condition precedent, whereby then you will trigger the next projects to be born, or the next projects to be moved forward. And that gives your, your the monkey on your shoulder an opportunity to go take a nap, so that you can really focus on the work ahead of you. So definitely, if you haven’t seen or read materials on that, let me know and I can always get it over to you. All right, and with that, we have reached the top of our productivity articles. For this week, we are going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor, which is co working space by personal productivity club. And then we will come back to a healthy section of technology articles. We’ll also cover our new tools of the week. And we will get into some other stories of our featured story of the week and then some other announcements. So with that, we’ll see you you’re

Sponsor Voice Over 16:34
well working in person maybe normal for you, it’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating. And there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core, we provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie, visit anything but idle.com forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiast. So you can find people who use methods and tools you do to, again, head over to anything but idle.com forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:43
everybody to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. And so, uh Gousto and I are going to now kick into our technology articles of the week. And so with that to do so let’s take it away to our first tech article this week.

Augusto Pinaud 17:57
So our first article is the new Microsoft Mac admins community from Microsoft, it’s not that they there has not been Microsoft Mac communities before they have. But this is the first time that Microsoft is putting their foot forward creating, you know, these chat official chat for companies who are using Apple devices. On the enterprise, you know, it is the Mac’s are more and more you can see them more and more in business, the iPhones are on the iPads are present. So it’s good to see Microsoft given really support to the IT pros with these two things are now being able to go to the official source. Now you need to conquer people to go there. But but that’s a step in the right direction.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:50
Well, you would imagine that a lot of these IT folks are already in other IT admin groups in the Microsoft community. And so they’re already in that system. And so this is just giving them an opportunity to talk about the mackage stuff in that space. I think this is really great. You know, because if I’m, if I’m the CTO or CIO or whatever it is, you know, it supervisor for a larger enterprise. And I have a bunch of Mac’s inside my organization. Now I have a place to go to, to have that kind of dialogue with others who are administering Nexus when I’m sure those are all kind of sideline compensations in other fora. And now, it gives you a direct specific forum to be able to have that base. Like I love it. I love it. Get on Microsoft. I mean, that’s it for Microsoft, I don’t say that very often. You know, good on them for recognizing the need, even if it’s a little bit late.

Augusto Pinaud 19:41
No subsidies is said often in this show. But hey, our next one is Amazon is sending out emails with showing people how to use the feature of Send to Kindle from Microsoft Word so allowing you with a Kindle scribe to send the PDF and being able to work and annotate and, and send it back. And, again, I have not got my hands into one of these. But I love the fact that they are doing this, and I’m talking about Amazon because the more they get this concept to the main stream, the better and the stronger this concept is going to be.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:25
Yeah, so so just so folks are aware, this is when you’re inside of the Microsoft Word app, there is now an add on that gives them the functionality to send a Word document to your Kindle. And specifically on the Kindle scribe, you’re then capable of going ahead and annotating right directly on the document, including, of course, reading it, if you if you’re utilizing any other Kindle e reader, you can highlight and annotate in the old manual way, you know, typing on the screen, and so forth. So this is great for a wide variety of reasons. I don’t use Microsoft Word as much as I do Google Docs and otherwise, so I hope they bring this feature functionality to Google Docs. And that would just, I mean, in essence, it’s just basically doing the same thing, just exporting the Google Doc as a Word document and sending it along to the Kindle. So it’s a very simple concept, you can do this today, just by going into your Kindle account and getting the email address associated with your Kindle device and emailing it to that device itself. So you can you can kind of work around this. Now note that when you go ahead, and there’s two options in there, you can send it to include it like a Kindle book, or you can send it to be like a printed document. And as the article here notes, it says, The difference is that the like a printed document will let you write on the documents with your Kindle scribe. Okay, so if you if you do it, like a Kindle book, then it seems like you’re not able to do that. I haven’t tested this. So I’m just reading what the article says here. And so I’m really excited about this, I think that I want to see it says here that it’s also coming to potentially Microsoft Word for from from web. So that’ll be interesting to see when it does that. Because then obviously, that means they could do it in the browser, which means they could do that in Google Docs as well. So hopefully, we see some, some movement on that sense. And in that way, as well. So I just I like the ecosystems to talk to each other. I like these integrations. And even if I may not use them myself, I know so many people use Microsoft Word. And I know that it’s going to make people more productive. By being able to tie these two things together, what would be lovely is that they were able to then, you know, be fully integrated, right? So that you could take things in, annotate them, get them out, and they’d be back in that Word document in some way, shape, or form. Just the same way you would use a Microsoft Surface Pro or something like that, and right on the screen and have that handwritten annotation be interpreted by both prop both platforms effectively, but we’ll see. Okay, onward to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 23:10
Oh, I mentioned article, you may need to go more into details, you know, but Google messages the magic compose betta brings some I an RSS chat. But it talks about limitations, but I am really not as familiar as what’s happening there to really know.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:33
Sure. So most folks can see this happening in Gmail right now. So if you’re inside Gmail, and you start typing, Google will basically provide you with some great text, as you’re typing, to allow you to finish a sentence, or, you know, providing the next words or few words that you that it thinks you should be writing. That’s the artificial intelligence happening in the background. So it’s basically machine learning, right? So remove AI from this is called machine learning, right? So this machine learning is going ahead and understanding what’s your what’s your typing, and then attempts to go ahead and complete the sentences. You can do this today in Gmail, you can see what it’s all about. This same magic compose feature is now coming to Google messages, which is the which is the Google product for sending SMS and MMS messages on Android. So now you’re capable of starting to type within the Google Messages app once the beta rolls out to you. And you will then be able to see those machine learning based compose messages appear. And then all you have to do is just tap at the end of the screen, or, you know, on the keyboard is tab, you know, when you’re in Gmail, but on the screen, you’re just gonna hit tap, tap forward, and it’ll do that. Now today. Google messages and all the other messaging apps are doing a little bit of this already. Right. If you see a question, it maybe will have yes, no, or maybe you know, kind of as options to be able to choose because it understands the question, it will have things like you Guess Yep, as as an option, it’ll give you some some other words that it thinks that you will want to use. Those are just chips that are being displayed on the screen as options. With matching propose, it’s directly within the field where you’re typing so many times, it’s absolutely correct, very good at being able to select these things. And it’s because we tend to say the same things over and over again to people all the time, right. So this is very, very useful, I think it will be very useful, I don’t think it makes it makes it any less authentic, because it has to understand what you’re typing before it tries to complete the sentence. So it’s just guessing what you’re typing based on what you already were already typed. This is going to be, I think, very, very productive for a lot of folks, especially since, you know, I hate to say it, but many times, you know, I’m sitting at a light, you know, while I’m driving, and I want to quickly respond to a message or things of that nature. And magic compose will then let me safely be able to just tap at the end, see that the message has been properly typed. Because many times, you know, I’ll say something out loud and have a dictate. And it’s completely the opposite. I don’t know what’s wrong with Google lately. But it inserts the opposite of what I said many times, and I say, please, you know, don’t kill the dog, it would be like, yes, please kill the dog. Like, what did you interpret, don’t kill with kill, like, there’s a whole word in there, you just didn’t listen to. So these are the kinds of things where if you see magic imposed, you know, extrapolate based on what you’re going to want to say. It’s a really easy, you know, tool to be able to use, yes, there are going to be some limitations, like with anything. But this is mostly because of privacy and security reasons at the present moment. But I think it will become more robust as we make our way along. And I’m glad to see it happening. On to our next story. If you still

Augusto Pinaud 26:47
know, you can finally share your screen in WhatsApp on Android. And I think this is awesome. I been doing it on Apple for a while where you can share your screen. And I did say it is an incredible tool for tech support. You know I am I have two elderly parents I have in laws, who, you know, require that tech support. I have clients and there is nothing easier than when they come and code and say how do I do X on the phone or the tablet, or the iPad and you share the screen they share the screen and you’re told to click here, click here, click here go. And I think being WhatsApp, probably the most common app on Android phones and on phones. I think it’s very, very awesome that that feature is coming.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:41
Absolutely. Yeah, I’m really I’m really pleased to see the whatsapp on Android comm obviously, this is a this is a great feature for any number of reasons. And I like the idea of being able to have just a backup option, right. So you could do this in in Google meet. Currently, you can do this obviously in zoom and many other applications. But a lot of people have WhatsApp. And while you know I’ve been I’ve been diligently trying to get all of my people in the world over to telegram. There’s still a lot of people who are on WhatsApp. And so it’s just helpful to be able to have that additional option. Right now with telegram I’m utilizing loom recording those those loom videos or just screen recording it through the native functionality within the Google Pixel, which is the Android operating system built in screen recorder and then grabbing that and either if it’s short enough, I’ll just paste it directly into the telegram chat and upload it. But if the if it’s if it’s too large that I’m going to upload that to loom Give, give loom access to create. So just a quick, easy link. And I can paste that in there as well. If it’s if it’s too much for loom, then I will actually put it into Vimeo and then and then go ahead because I have a paid Vimeo account. So I’ll go ahead and upload it to Vimeo and then share it. So all of those things are, you know, like layers of stuff to be able to make that happen. That’s for asynchronous communication. So you know, this gives us the synchronous capability now as well like in meat or zoom or teams or otherwise. So it’s a great business great to have a backup option. Okay, onward to the lurgy deck review.

Augusto Pinaud 29:19
So I did a review on the 399 logic duck. I laugh when the writer of the article divergent talks about how he discovered was the pandemic how he have not have any kind of clear system organization for cables in his laptops. I discovered that many years back but I decided not to do anything about it. Anyways, Doc, basically will bring a beautiful, it’s a beautiful, heavy but beautiful and it has, you know a bunch of USB C USB, a port as well as DisplayPort, HDMI, the power. So you can connect everything basically to the back of this port and just take the machine I do something similar, not that many ports, of course with the keyboard on the iPad, and I use the magic keyboard and it has an additional USBC port where hub is connected that is connected to everything. So it’s one cable in one cable out. But it allows me to have access to everything and it works pretty good.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:35
Yeah, I’m actually really interested in something like this, because there are so many cords and cables that I have managed within the system. So of my desk, and so most of those are managed under and in a cable management system underneath the desk of mines have, you know, automated up and automated sit stand desks. So it’s motorized. And so all of that is there, but I do have a standing, reprimand because I’m looking at it at the moment. It’s a standing desk, that is a we call a treadmill, treadmill, and I kind of have this desk attachment on it. And I feel like this would be a an option that might work if I set up more of that treadmill desk for working and doing more meetings in that sense. But I feel like this could be a really nice little management tool. And again, having that built in, you know, like speaker system and everything else like that, so that you’re capable of just being hands free and having a conversation on the move, just to me seems very appealing. The price tag of 319 doesn’t. Three 319 USD doesn’t seem overly outrageous for all the things that it’s doing. And it seems like it has a pretty good power capability 100 100 watt power supply. And so I like that as well. It doesn’t have Thunderbolt Ethernet, or a 3.5 millimeter audio port. So that is a limitation, I would really like the Ethernet port in there. But presumably the computer that I would put up there would have an Ethernet port or I can add one and or use some kind of adapter to be able to turn Ethernet into either USBC or something else like that

Augusto Pinaud 32:19
many USBC you will be able to put an adapter USBC to Ethernet without any issues.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:25
Right, right. I mean, not ideal again. But it’s it’s something that you can work around. And so I really liked that. And yeah, and honestly, you know, you could probably expand this with another hub. So even though it has fewer ports than other laptop Doc’s out there, you could, in the circumstance I’m thinking about, we just kind of limited right, I don’t need it to do that much on that particular desk, it’s going to be fine. But if you wanted to use this for many more connections, this is going to have a more limited set. And but I would imagine you could probably plug in a USBC hub into it and kind of daisy chain or you know more ports arguments that kind of giving that some consideration as well. All right onto our next.

Augusto Pinaud 33:10
Our next one is apparently Google Keep, or Google has decided to make some changes in Google Keep so Google Keep reminders will not show on your calendar anymore. And at least Michael Perego of Cronenberg said was very, very unhappy about it. And I understand that if you use Google Keep on the reminders, and now you lose that EC productivity thing. I I will be on Happy to.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:40
Yeah, so So what’s actually happening is that those reminders are actually being transferred to tasks, which is basically the system inside of the Google Tasks ecosystem. And so in essence, Google is just taking Google reminders and binding it to Google Tasks. And so at the present moment, it’s going to be removed from Google Calendars view. Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to come back in the future. I don’t know that that’s the case. That will, but I also have the sense that Google Keep and the Google Calendar team are going to continue to work together to be able to make this all work, right. They want to make it more productive people, not less. And part of the first step here is to be able to not have five different types of ways that you can keep track and maintain tasks. And right now that’s the case. In Google, you have reminders, both in Google Assistant, which are now being bound to Google Tasks as well. You have calendar tasks, you have reminders, you had goals. And then of course, you have the Google Google Calendar events themselves that you were capable of creating. So you know, having these having all of these various disparate items all over the place, bringing them together into one On one element that you can manage central in a centralized space is just make sense, right? So I’m trying to look at this from the most positive perspective, which is how do we get all these things into into one ecosystem into one place? Now, I would have rather than just keep everything in Google keeper, right, make, make the individual keep notes, kind of the tasks embedded within them. And that becomes the thing, especially since Google Tasks itself has a mobile application, but it doesn’t have a desktop experience, right? It’s embedded within the calendar embedded within Gmail, you can see them in there. But you can’t really see that as an element inside the system, is why we actually use a tool called G board, for tasks forums, our tasks board, in order to be able to to zoom the the tasks from the ecosystem and giving you a desktop experience for them. That being the case, I think that, you know, here we are was just a step forward, right, it may feel a little bit like a step backwards to the present moment. But I think ultimately, what Google wants to do is to get all the users into one centralized place where those tasks can be spoken to, through the the assistant that can be tracked and maintained from within the calendar interface, even if it’s not directly in the calendar, and also be able to track and maintain those things within Google, Google’s Gmail product, where you get an email, you can add it to add a task to it and make it a task. And therefore it becomes resident within Google Tasks, I hope they can bind. They can bind the spaces, chat tasks, right, because now you have the spaces tasks. And those are separate also, from Google Tasks, I hope they can bind those spaces, tasks into your, into your Google Tasks system as well, and kind of give you some way to manage all of these things in one centralized perspective. So this is, this is an ongoing problem for all of us. And I’m hoping that Google is is thinking about this thoughtfully, and are they’re, they’re being advised by Laura Mae Martin, who’s Google’s productivity advisor, and others to basically get all these things to kind of work together in one seamless way and bringing back location based. So right now, you can still, I’m not sure whether they’ve deprecated, or you can still do this, and someone can let me know. But Google Keep you can, you can location, bind, a, a note, right. So when you come in proximity to something, it will remind you about that thing, you still can do it. So. So that’s great. And I want to make sure that as they make their way forward with tasks, that they that they keep that functionality, because it’s so powerful, right? You know, if I, if I want to remember to do something, when I get to someplace, I create a note, and I say, do this thing when I get to that place, right. And I don’t have to have it already in my system, like you do with Remember The Milk or some other tools, I can just literally type in any location and sourcing it from Google Maps. And so it knows that when I get to Oklahoma, I land there, it’s going to pop up a little note and say, Hey, you said you were going to do this thing, or these series of things when you got to this location. And it’s incredibly helpful when you’re just stressed out, and you’re trying to get from one place to the next. And you want to make sure that you’re prepared when you get there. So I do this for most of my presentations, right? It prompts me to have my, my speaking checklist, you know, pop up so the wine get to a speaking venue, I am there and prepared. Because all the things will then just be in that list to quickly go down and say, Okay, I need to do these five things before I go on stage. And then it gives me those those items to be able to do it. So again, this is I guess this is this is a step in kind of backwards for the author. But I think it’s going to lead to in the next few months, as Google rolls out more improvements to tasks. This will be a few steps forward, ultimately. Okay, next story.

Augusto Pinaud 38:37
Mitchell door is well, the next artist, it’s a review on the final Pro for the iPad. What is important about this article is not that the article talks about the limitation, it’s not that there is the fact that Apple brought final Pro to the iPad, their final final cut. That’s what I meant, sorry, you know, since 2015, Apple is been kind of shy, okay, saying, hey, the iPad can replace your machine, the iPad can replace their machine, but they are they’re being very shy into really releasing the beast and putting final pro into the iPad. Now it’s showing you even with the software limitations, the power for the regular user that your iPad had. Why? Because it’s finally showing that you can really do video professional video editing on a device like the iPad. So even if it’s a version one, even if it’s not perfect as the article mention, and it has the things this is a fantastic step in the right direction and he’s showing us what Apple is discovering and is that creative They are preferring these kind of machines over other machines. So the iPad, it’s in a way, the entry level now for those designers, that’s what I’ve been found in with clients is that the first machine they use and then they go to the very powerful one.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:19
Okay, on to our next story,

Augusto Pinaud 40:21
or next article, it’s a new bodyguards is not a new company, the apex ceramic screen protector is. And what is interesting about this is bodyguards is claiming that is virtually unbreakable. It’s an $80 product, okay, but it comes with a guarantee, okay, or a free limited lifetime replacement of the product. If you break it, I didn’t read the, the lifetime guarantee. But you know, replacing the screen in in a phone, it’s anywhere from 350 to $400. I’ve been using a brand called Tech armor for many years that do the ballistic. But this seems to be even more harder or more resistant than the ballistics. So putting that and putting a lifetime guarantee behind your product. It may be an interesting thing for those people who are replacing, you know, the ballistic glass consistently, and aka kids is what I’m thinking about.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:37
Okay, onward to our next story about

Augusto Pinaud 41:41
Lenovo, a big new tablet is beautiful, and prove that Chrome iOS is Google better desktop OS is showing, you know, the new Lenovo machine. And again, it’s coming well for sale the laptop, you know, and he’s saying how he finished working in his Chromebook has been instead of on the tablet, and I need to remind me, you know, well, yes, no computer is perfect. And that is a reason you don’t want your computer to die. Because you don’t want to replace it doesn’t matter how many you have doesn’t matter. When you find one that does everything you do, you don’t want to replace it. And this is a case in this. But it’s showing, you know how Lenovo, it’s going, you know, with a cantilever keyboard, you know, and following some of the things that Apple has done? Well, you know, that cantilever design keyboard, I have been praised in it since it was released, because it allows you to do angles that you were never able to do in a laptop and make it very, very, very nice to work.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:53
Yeah, I have to agree with the article author here, you know, for a desktop environment, you’re not going to be able to get once you go past a particular size screen, I don’t think Android is the appropriate one for productivity at large at a larger size. And perhaps if you are using a very limited set of applications, and all of those applications are available in that device schema, right you know the size and and proportionality and everything else like that, you probably won’t have a problem. But once you get into high levels of productivity, and very technical forms of productivity, Chrome OS is just going to be better than Android in that form factor. Android is really great in a mobile phone form factor that is that retains a size pretty small, right? So we’re talking phone up to a small tablet. Once you turn it into landscape mode and start wanting to really power through stuff, I can see where it starts to degrade plus criminalist gives you Android applications in it, right so you can access the Google Play Store. And it augments Chrome OS in a really thoughtful and good way. And then of course you have the ability to install crostini, which is the Linux capabilities within it. So you can have a Linux desktop environment right there in the Chrome OS when you need it. You can technically install Windows on the crumble SOP really needed to as well. So, you know, it gives you a lot of functionality within Chrome OS. But I think Android doesn’t give you that doesn’t mean that Android doesn’t have a I mean, I really love my Android OS on like Google Pixel. Right. What I like it so much if it were on a more affordable phone that was you know, a lower Android version probably not right. It would have probably a lot of bloatware. You know, and it would probably not be as fast and fluid and not as nice of an experience. So, you know, we just have to keep mindful of those kinds of things that if we have larger Android tablets that are that are beginning going to be utilized for productivity of it’s got a lot of bloatware on it from from lower end producers. That’s just not going to be a good look for Android. So we have to kind of as a, as a ecosystem, really decide on how that’s going to work. And Chrome OS has been really solid about giving you a very nice experience that’s not, you know, chock full of garbage. And it really makes for a nice experience for everybody. So I feel bad for the Lenovo tablet screen because it seems like a really nice device from from all the looks of it. But I think being limited to Android is not the best thing. on working. Next story.

Augusto Pinaud 45:31
Next article is the new Barnes and Noble Nook GlowLight. It’s starting to show and the glow light for its middle range one, you know, it’s trying to go and get now it’s at a better resolution, 300 PPI glare free and more memory instead of eight as as entry level had 32. And then it has a night mode that what I’m going to guess based on what I read is that it removed the blue light out of the device. So you can read in bed much longer, but still keep the light or illumination on the on the reading on the tech.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:12
actually excited to go to Barnes and Noble, I have a gift certificate gift card that I have for my family for the holidays. And I’m actually looking forward to actually looking at it when I go down that provides a bullet for plus, but I am interested in looking at it just to see the feel and and playing around with a little bit because it seems like a really nice solid device and a good kind of level up from the prior low light line. So all right onto the honor magic vs.

Augusto Pinaud 46:41
The honor magic vs. It is a foldable device similar to the Samsung C fold. And it is the first real

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:53
one of a football

Augusto Pinaud 46:55
either picks a fall, but it’s true the bigs are full too. And but it’s it’s coming in a different price point is coming to not the high end, that Samsung and the pixels come in, but actually into the low end, you know, or lower end because it’s not exactly that cheap. But yeah. But it is another competition we are coming, you know, and I think we are going to see more and more of this foldable devices. And hopefully that means it’s, you know, we are going to see at least a small size tablet, you know, going into this phone, that you can now expand and have the equivalent of an iPad Mini with you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:45
Yeah, so the first thing to note is that if you’re outside of the United States, this is not going to be sold in the United States. Right. So it’ll be it’ll be retailing at 1399. I’m sorry, 1599 euros, which is a route around 17 $1,800 USD. And so of course, this is, you know, this is a mildly less expensive version of the Samsung Galaxy fold. Four. But you know, notwithstanding, and this is also stepping outside of China with the magic vs. And so that’s really are trying to like figure out whether or not they can challenge Samsung, in that greater Asian Asia Pacific region, in some way, shape, or form. So this will be this will be interesting to watch. Because if it is successful, then potentially, it will be it will be broadened to more and more countries and then potentially to the US. Now again, because it’s honor, we’ll see what happens with regard to regulation and the desire for folks to have a Chinese made phone here in the United States. You know, because it’s a Chinese company and not branded, you know, Google or otherwise, you know, whatever. So we’ll see how that plays out. But I’m actually very interested to keep watch on this particular phone. Because the the fold itself is actually an interesting design. I actually had the opportunity to play with one technically yesterday. And so I was actually using one yesterday and the pixel fold is a very, very nice device. I was not expecting the feel of the device, the the thinness of the device itself, how it how it plays in the hand. In this particular case, it was in a cave, so I took it out of the case. And I felt like this was the kind of film where even with my Google Pixel seven parental it, it was it was still a nice feel it felt like a normal phone and then I had the opportunity to open it up into that larger tablet experience. I did data, I really didn’t hate it. So I think that’s a, that’s a step in the right direction and having more challenges in the market means that the price of price points on all of these folds will come down. And I want to see that as well. So that becomes more accessible to people. So that’s my, my 234, and five cents on the subject. Alright, if you so we are done now with our technology headlines for the week, which brings us along to new tools of the week. So new tools of the week is a segment where Gousto and I talk about the various personal development time tasks, project management and productivity, collaboration tools and services that we come across, we choose one each, and then we try to let you know what we think you might like about them. And so my tool this week is going to be a tool called wave box. So I have been looking for, in essence, as I talked about last week, we had mindstream, which was used as a Gmail client for Mac OS. And so that’s great on the Mac OS. It’s not my primary computer. So I need to be able to have something that works across all of my various devices. And I feel like wave box is it, it is a browser, and you’ll note probably got to talk about several of these types of browsers station, and many others that have kind of come out and really haven’t wowed me. Wait boxes are the first one to really do that. It gives you a browser, but it gives you these application environments so that you’re capable of managing multiple, what they call profiles. And so these profiles allow you to be able to hold multiple accounts inside of these, these spaces, these workspaces and inside the workspaces, you can then have multiple profiles, or multiple accounts, and also some extensions. So right now I have polo, I have a sauna, I have multiple Gmail accounts, I have Google Calendar, I have Google Drive, all of those basically embedded within the the wave box environment. Now it’s a browser. So it allows me to be able to seamlessly open up links, and so forth, and view them and interact with them, and then close them up when I’m done. I don’t want it to be my default browser at all. It is built on Chromium. So it is it is basically like a Chrome browser. And you can install extensions, like I use bit Warden for my password management. So bit wardens in there. And I use one password with some clients. So I have that installed there as well. And so all of those kind of kicked into the browser experience, which is perfect. But at the same time, I’m capable of really managing all of those pieces, you can open up each of the wave box, you know, applications as they’re in their own windows, so you can kind of manage them separately, I can have telegram running using the PWA. So it just gives me this really nice hole for all of those things. The other piece to it is that it’s Mac OS, Linux and Windows. So it works completely cross platform on all those devices. And I’m, I’m really impressed. The pricing on it is also very, very good. You can use the free version of it. And just continue using that that gives you only two Gmail accounts. So you’re limited to the two Gmail accounts and one Chrome extension. But you can use those across multiple computers. Once you get up to the pro account, it’s 33 per month paid annually. So I’m going to do and so that is being basically 100 bucks a year, so $100 USD, and then you get the access to everything right, you can unlimited containers, unlimited apps, unlimited profiles, unlimited workspaces, and all the Chrome extensions you can jam into, into the browser, right. So this is this is really great. What I what I also liked about it is that it has a ton of features, right, you can really tailor the look and feel of each of the workspaces as well as your profiles. So that when you go into that context, you can visually immediately see what context you’re in. And so I’m, I’m looking forward to seeing this grow. Of course, it’s running chromium, so it’s running another browser. So you don’t really want chock full of a lot of extensions, because then that’s going to kind of slow down your device. And especially if you have them running on multiple devices across multiple different systems, that’s going to be problematic for you. But I’ve been really impressed with it, I have to say this is this is going to this is going to be something that I will probably continue to use for a while and it has unified search. So I’m capable of searching across all of these things on the Pro Plan. So this is a really, really nice tool. And I’m I’m I’m hoping that it continues to grow continues to develop. It seems like the development team is putting out new and better things every day. There is a team’s option for those folks who do want to, you know, buy a license for a company wide kind of plan. And then you get some additional pieces, you know, they encrypt all of the pieces. You can share workspaces, you can share templates, and you can of course manage those profiles once they build that functionality out into the system. And of course, it has a consolidated, consolidated billing. So you can, you can pay for your team, and mass. So that’s wave box at wave box.io. And we’ll have obviously a link to that in the show notes. But Gousto, what is your new tool this week,

Augusto Pinaud 55:14
my new tool of the week is a replacement to the Apple Pencil, it’s called a nova plus a seven. And, you know, I’m a big backup things of things that I use all the time, because over the years, you know, it has happened that I need them and then and the Apple Pencil is something that I use a lot, but I understand Apple pencils, significantly 600 bucks or okay to buy. So, I found this pencil, it’s called the Nova plus. And I drop it, okay, it is a black pencil, they come black or white. But it has all the things that the Apple Pencil two has a charge on the top of the iPad, it has palm rejection, you know, the magnetic decided to function, you know, you can change the tip. And the tip is even a little bit thinner than my apple one. And I’m going to say I love the fact that is black. Because what happened is if I get to meetings, and people use iPads, mine is the only one black. That has been honest back that plus that this thing has given me but the price is 25 bucks or 2499. So the price is very, very reasonable to have that backup on your desk that you may need.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:45
All right, that is the new tools of the week segment. And onward to our featured story this week, which is that notion has put out a new, I don’t want to call it a product, but a new set of features. They’re calling notion projects. What do you think about it the good

Augusto Pinaud 57:01
stuff, you know, I know art Gelwicks. Loft? On notion I have not really play long enough with notion to see. But what I think they are giving me sort of what I understood is really a way to use the tools that they already had for this. And I think that’s good. There is a lot of small teams into Nazmi. into into notion because of the ECS of share things that now we’ll have a more instructor possibilities to do some project management and to do some charts and to be able to understand how things move. So I think it’s very, very positive.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:48
Yeah. So on the website, they note a couple of things here, they say that it’s infinitely configurable, so you can work the way you want. So

Augusto Pinaud 57:56
terrified of those concepts. Yeah, I know,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:59
I know. Because he wants to have one particular set of ways in which you show things in your in your system. But I understand what they’re saying is that you can set them up. And you can limit the number of ways in which you get views. But in essence, you can have projects by status, you can have Timeline view, Kanban view and many others, so that you can do them. And they’ve tried to put in all of these various, they’re calling them AI features, but you know, automations in the system to then be able to get you moving, right. So you can automatically fill in tasks by identifying a project, and then saying, I want this project to fill in x, y, and Zed you know items. And so to fill in, fill in those pieces, you can create automated workflows so that it can update the status of, of projects, or be able to check things off and provide a report and then make some database entries and then outline a document, you can create these kinds of up automations allegedly that are coming soon. You can obviously do all kinds of filtering and sorting, which I think is really, really powerful. And then of course, they have all these other kinds of details that are great. I like the idea of having dependencies, right. So just like in a Gantt charting perspective, having the ability to condition precedent, so that you say, okay, until this thing happens, then hold this thing down so that it doesn’t it doesn’t come into view or otherwise or pushes it forward or or pulls it backward knowing based on the current actions that are being done. If I do something sooner, that thing becomes a live action sooner. That’s the kind of stuff that really gets me excited. And because everybody’s talking about artificial intelligence, they can’t not talk about AI here until they talk about how AI can use generative capabilities within the notion system. I would be very skeptical of that. But you could probably ask art Gelwicks More about that he would have more to say on how the autofill feature within notion works. The AI autofill fill feature It gives you that ability to generate, you know, content within your tasks. I would again, I would probably be very skeptical of that. But you know, that’s my nature. Yeah, so I like I like the idea here, it has something that they’re calling automated sprints. These Sprint’s look to me like quick steps in Outlook, but for projects, and so the ability to have multiple actions taken by virtue of up in the project management system, so you can look at the various legs of a project. And it seems like some of those things are a workflow automated in the system. So I liked that idea of having, you know, like I said it to me, it feels like quick steps from Outlook in, in a project management form. And so I liked that I liked that flavor of things. So we’ll see it has lots of integrations into GitHub, Slack and other tools, which is great figma JIRA amplitude, it seems like they’re building more and more as they go. I have not had a chance to play with this. But I can, I can see how this can be useful to a lot of people. Because what do you what do you think? Is the is the right team that would want to utilize this?

Augusto Pinaud 1:01:10
You know, I think I think this is, this is perfectly aim for startups where they need a tool that they can add and modify and make things as they go. I don’t know if it’s a proper project management tool, unless you have really people heavy into the understanding of project management. That was my concern. Because when you said you can do everything, that’s normally a red flag for me, not because you can or cannot do everything. But because most people don’t understand the basics off, then they get themselves in trouble.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:01:55
I got it, I guess. All right. On to our analysis, you’ve got two announcements, and then we’ll close out.

Augusto Pinaud 1:02:01
So well, one, we have to announcements. One is Google Chat. GPT rebuild, a rival just announced on the search. And you can read more Apple announced the July Friday Night Baseball is scheduled for Apple TV plus. And you know, I really loved that I am not a big baseball guy, but my family is. And it’s very nice. Well, we’re going to do it. And they know what what games are coming. And finally, we have the Apple event today, there was a bunch of announcements there replay is including, obviously the secret ber thing that we knew that we’re going to be announcing. But if you want to look, those announcements and those news, they are there for you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:02:52
Wonderful. And I will note that I have had access to the search labs within Google search for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been utilizing it and it feels very fluid to me, I think they’ve done a really great job, I actually really liked the fact that they have, they give you a choice in and when it presents the AI components versus when it doesn’t. And so that’s been actually really lovely. I’ve liked the way in which he’s done it, it’s not always been correct. I think it will get better over time. So you know, I’ve asked it to do things, like summarizing an article in the search, and it doesn’t quite summarize the article, it provides me a summary of things. And then it references other articles about the article I provided to it. So there’s a little bit of, you know, dullness to the to the system in that sense. But I think it will get smarter, as you see more and more of it being utilized it utilized. And I do like the fact that in, in some cases, and I don’t know how to make it not do this. But I like the idea of it just being there. And it not always presenting itself. But that giving me the option to be able to launch it. And when you do a search generally, like you wanted to find a word, you can you can obviously just type the word define. And then you know, and then type that word into the Google search. It will go ahead and do that search. It will generate it, it’ll show you the rest of those SERPs, right, rest of the surface search engine results page. But above it, it will show you the the generative AI item there and it gives you these chips at the bottom. And it says hey, you want to ask a follow up question. So you can continue to dialogue with the AI if you want to. But it also presents other chips that are other questions that you can potentially ask it. So I typed in here define stochastic right? And so it goes ahead and gives me the definition of stochastic but then below it it says hey, you want to ask a follow up so that I can either narrow the search or broaden the search as I need want to. But then it says hey, what’s the difference between random and stochastic Right? Or what’s the difference between stochastic and probabilistic and So it continues to give me these other options, mind you, right to the right, it’s showing me cards that tell me where the sources came from, for this particular search, which I think is really smart, from Google’s perspective, to be showing us these kinds of things, that GPT is not doing that, right. It’s experimental. And it’s just, you know, vomiting stuff into your into existence and existence, telling you where it’s coming from and outsourcing it. Bing and Google have decided to give you this kind of sourcing, it’s very, very important and powerful. And to a great extent, it gives me a little bit more solace, maybe a little bit more calmness, that these things are going to be generative in a an accurate way, as opposed to an inaccurate way. But again, I’m gonna stay skeptical in that sense. All right. With that we have reached the end of our stories for this week, I do. So thank you so much for all the work you do to make Anything But Idle happen. With that on anything, but idle.com, you’ll find our show notes, they’ll have links to all the stories or tools of the week, and extra stories that we didn’t get a chance to cover. And it also includes text transcripts, one that’s readable right there on the page, and one that you can Download as PDF, and listen and read and flying as you listen to the podcast. If you review the notes, and there’s a story that we missed, feel free to leave a comment on anything but idle.com forward slash 117, which is the episode number for this page, the URL to the episode for this episode, the URL for this episode. You can also tweet at us at Anything But Idle, you can use our contact form on the website, the absolute best place that you can engage with us is by going to anything but idle.com forward slash community that will go ahead and take you to our community, our group that lives inside of personal productivity club, and so it’s free, you can join and then you can interact with us around the episode. And so with that, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the show. See you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to productive life.

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 116. AI comes to Windows, and we’re recording this on May 30 2023. I hope everybody had a wonderful Memorial Day holiday those of you who celebrated Carol states, of course, each week, Augusto. And I cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and it’s related technologies. With that, let’s get into our headline, what’s our first headline this week.

Augusto Pinaud 0:45
So our first headline of the week, it says seven positive effects of taking time off for mental health. And he’s come from psychology today. And I’ll talk to you know, improve mental well being productivity, physical health, work life balance. But more than the seven positive effects, it is important to remember that we are not machines, and that we need to take this breaks, and we need to take this time off, or we need to take these health days. And as a productivity coach and consultant, one of the things that I heard often is I don’t have the time to take a day or two days a weekend. And I understand it. So if you don’t have those times, then you need to figure it out. Maybe look at this less list of seven things and figure out how do you do a smaller increments of this, you know, as somebody teach me, early in my career, I was complaining about no no have enough time to write? And he said, Well, describe me your writing routine? Well, my routine required two or three hours of work out, of course, I never have that window. Personally Well, how about your right in 15 minutes increments? Impossible. And that was my first reaction, I think is the same thing in this cases, you know, we think taking the time of need to be this long day, weekend, longer period of time. But the reality is it not it can be that small fragment of time. But regardless, you can take those 24 hours, or you can only take eight minutes. It is very, very important. And it has very important effects.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:40
I really liked the idea of a mental health day and I will probably start thinking about it. You know, I’ve of course heard it over the years people people saying they were taking them. But from a greater productivity perspective, having that time off. And not being predicated on a federal holiday or being predicated on a weekend would kind of be more useful to me like saying, I’m going to take off a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and take that just like you would for a recovery day from the gym, kind of taking that recovery day for mental health and wellness perspective. So I really liked that concept. All right, on to our next story Augusto.

Augusto Pinaud 3:23
Our productivity hacks holding you back, they sort of praised this or pricing true about effectiveness. That’s the title of the article come from business leader magazine. And it was a very nice article, you know, and come with certain things. You know, that may sound basic, but you do understand what the writer called is sewn of job genius. So what is that time that you work the best? And I know she said something very interesting, say, you know, optimizing your calendar. And so you know, email tells you what other thing you should be working on your to do, tells you what you think you should be working on. And that reality lives in the middle. And that middle is your calendar. And the calendar really is what shows you where are you with that and where are you going to go, you know, and aside of that talks about hey, taking time to reflect and planning and I have said over the years many times the more busier you are, the more time you need for this reflection and planning time because the less time you have to stop to pick the wrong thing to do the wrong activity. It also talks about setting systems and I agree, I disagree. On the way she put it in the you know setting system not a series of hacks and I believe the hacks are very important but setting the system it is important and finally say In this I love, it’s just a set of expectations with others creating a user manual to me. And that’s something that I have never put on those terms, but that have done for many, many years and set the expectations from people very, very clear. This is what you can expect, this is what you can connect me, these are the hours that I will not respond to you, and be upfront with all those things. So people know what to expect, and what are they going to get from you?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:34
Yeah, so I think I also disagree with the terminology of calling anything hacks, you know, I don’t think that really makes much of a difference to what she’s really talking about here. It’s a good, you know, it’s a good title, you know, to kind of get you to click on the article. But the techniques themselves I think, are useful. I think the I think the the ultimate goal here is to be able to create a cohesive personal productivity system, that is one that fits you a design that works for you, right, like, your system is your system, it’s personal. So what works for me is not going to necessarily work for you, it may inform and help you understand what might work for you, but it’s not the one that you should adopt, you know, full sail. So the goal here is to be able to figure out the, the mechanisms that you can use the tools, strategies, techniques, that combined become something useful for you. And I think many times we forget that piece of it. I have a user manual myself. So I really appreciate that concept. And so you know, I have a whole manual and I have a an estate manual, basically, should I not be able to manage my own home, you know, and life, these are the things that need to be managed, you know, without me being able to make those decisions. And I liked the the five page playbook she created. It’s kind of a GTD system that she has informed through her own her own productivity system. And this works for her right, it wouldn’t work for me. So as I was reading through it, I was like, no, no, no, scratch that. No, no, yes, maybe yes, yes, no. And so it was really nice, though, to see somebody else really itemize and, and just kind of, you know, explicate her entire system in in a very succinct, clear way. And I think we should all do that in some way, shape, or form, because it really helps us galvanize what things we actually use and what we don’t use. And I think that’s very, very helpful. Yeah,

Augusto Pinaud 7:43
and for I have discussed in cross platform, I have discussing ProductivityCast, what I call my technology card, and the technology cards at the end of the day, part of that manual is very subcomponent of this of this manual, where I discuss and cover for me, this is for nobody else. What is the technology in my world? And what are the plays? They do? Why do I use them? How do I use them so that way when I need to think or want to upgrade or look for cool things, like every week, because of the show, okay, that may make the list. It’s a very easy now comparison, I can pull that list and say where this is going to fit and move on.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:28
All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 8:30
Well, our next story is from hacks spirit, and it’s 15 routine changes that will make a huge impact on your productivity, you know, wake up earlier, and I love wake up earlier, I have I have two kids, I have a wife of a dog. And I love that time before anybody, it’s up that I can. And I do different things depending on the day, I have learned that not everybody wake up early, and it’s fine. What I discovered for me is I need to wake up every day at the same hour, it doesn’t matter if it’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday, what may change is the activity that I do Sundays, for example, I tend to read more those hours than then get productive, but it is important to understand what works for you create a to do list, you know, prioritize your task. And obviously, the two of you two of us, you know are big into getting things done and that’s the system that we use for that embrace the power of saying no, eliminate distractions and you know, 10 More, Go and read the article, but to remember, as you read the article, some of the things may sound very cool. Some of the things will be like and some of the things will be a no and it’s fine. Okay, doesn’t matter. What all these things are just ideas, ideas that you should or can consider to make your system better. And some of them are going to work incredibly well. And some of them are going to be awful. And it’s fine. What is important is that you are you identify what is what you are looking to do, you know, when I begin working, or waking up early, I wrote about it. And I used to say that I belong to our club, okay, that was the guy people who get the work, you know, have dinner, and then I started reworking again at 11:30pm or midnight and working to three in the morning, and I did that for years, then suddenly, one day discover, well, what if I go to bed at eight or nine or, and then wake up at four. And I discovered that because I was fresh, I was way more effective, but it was trial and error. Okay, at that time, if you will have told me, Well, you will do better in the morning, I will have use colorful words until you’re insane. Okay, now, I wake up every day that earlier and I enjoy that silence.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:15
Yeah, I think it’s a good article. You know, again, it’s, it’s providing you with a bunch of little, you know, interventions that you can utilize some techniques that you can utilize as well. I think all of those things are useful and helpful as you make your way along. Alright, so, with that, we have reached the end of our personal productivity articles. For this episode, we’re going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, then we’ll be back for our productivity technology articles this week.

Sponsor Voice Over 11:43
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:54
Welcome back, everybody to Anything But Idle, the productivity news podcast. Okay, so let’s move our way on to the technology articles this week. What’s our next headline?

Augusto Pinaud 13:05
This next article you found that was on Google inbox? I don’t follow that, that you’re the one who follow that. But its title. I wish Google search and assistant accept makes bilingual input from voice queries. And I understand I that article hit close to home I speak English I speak Spanish and trying to read Portuguese and it is painful. It doesn’t matter if it’s Google, or is Milan a? Or is the madam s? Why why they can you cannot dictate the one I’m going to say that do it better is mme a, when you do it, you can go and set up an Spanglish version that kind of understand you on both languages. But then, but why? Why this is not possible. Get it? I understand the articles talking about Japanese and English, maybe that’s additional complexity, I don’t know. But it will be so cool to be able to dictate and tell to these people in the language that is coming to your mind, instead of trying to say on a hold on this thing will not understand that let me translate what I want to say and then lose the momentum.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:17
No, I purposefully found this article for you. Augusto I have nothing else to say about it. I think that it’s just important for I think, you know, the powers that be and anyone who is in that in that space to recognize that that multilingualism while it’s not as a part of the American culture, right, you know, other than some other countries where most people speak multiple languages, the United States, most people speak one language is still a huge problem for us all and it actually limits us in our ability to be you know, you know, great, you know, in some way, shape or form as a country. If we can’t if we can’t speak to people in the culture and language in which we’re trying to operate. So

Augusto Pinaud 15:01
yeah, for my friends in Europe who has big more than one language, you know, English and the local language and maybe another one, it is a massive pain because now you need to define, okay? Should I configure this system in this language or this other language, and I can do this, then most of my day is speaking English. But there is a moment where you’re mentally tired, okay? And the pronunciation, let’s say degrades, okay? To be really kind with myself, it will be very nice to in that moment helped gel to that to the system what you want in the language that you want. Anyways, Google’s rolling out a new side panel for customize Chrome. So you will get now a panel and you will be able to get more prettier customization a little bit better customizations. Hopefully, for the users of Chrome and the customizations, I don’t, I don’t use much of it. I like the color, I use two or three of them. And I like the fact that if I look at them on the top of the bar on the color, I know exactly when which company I am working on. But other than that, I don’t customize it that much.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:16
Yeah, so So for folks who are kind of unaware of what happens when you currently go to customize the new tab of space, you are, you are basically popped into a pop up window, right, so there’s a window that kind of comes up in front of you. And you can edit your background, various shortcuts, you know, the shortcuts that are displayed on that new tab, you can identify which cards you want to show. And then of course, of course, color and theme. That’s also available when you click on the profile image in the Chrome toolbar. And so you click on that and click on the little pencil icon, it will just display another, you know, customization profile customization option. But that new customize this page button, which is the little tiny pencil icon that appears in the new tab window in that bottom right hand corner, you’re able to then go ahead and in the newest version will basically give you a side panel for those customization options. So it’s literally just a change in how the new tab, customization options will display. That’s it. So there’s not anything changing necessarily. It’s just the way in which they’re going to display those items, which I think is probably a little bit cleaner than the way in which the pop up window currently appears. All right, onto our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 17:37
Oh, our next two stories are all about Amazon. The first one is and it would love to hear about this, you know, Amazon Kindle Scribe is getting limited handwriting and text conversion. And I said this when Amazon announced this device, Amazon is one of the few companies who have the patience to lose profit on a line long enough to really introduce features that then others can run and make millions. But they are proven this they are making this device come into the mainstream people getting the idea. And it is interesting because the more this device, you know, it’s getting into the noise, okay, and people is getting into people’s ears. What I have heard is not people getting the scribe, but he’s people wondering about handwriting is people wondering if they will be able to do this or that if they buy a device with handwriting capabilities, and take notes and all this. So that said it is very interesting that you Amazon again, in Amazon fashion, they continue improving. Now you can take notes and pages, you can collect more things. So have you had the chance to play with this? I know you have a scribe so I’m curious,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:08
I have not had a chance I’ve not seen the update come across my scribe yet. But I’m really looking forward to it. The limitation is that you do need to do this outside of the notebook, right. So you have to actually, you know, click on the Share menu, and then and then there’s will be an option to convert to text and quicksand. Or there’s an option to convert your text and email. So it’s not like you’re in the notebook and you’re automatically able to go ahead and do that or all good notes where you can circle the text and automatically turn it into text, right? That’s not going to be necessarily maybe the the Scribe is just not powerful enough to basically do that while it’s still inside of that notebook environment with everything loaded up, I don’t know. But it would be much more fluid. Obviously, if you can select the text that you’ve written and automatically turn that into text. I presume that’s going to be there there for you. Is your iteration on that feature. But so far, I think that’s, that’s a, it’s a great movement forward. And I think I’ve probably said here on Anything But Idle that I don’t want that option in the past. And then in the past couple of weeks, I realized that I do want that option. So I stand corrected from the fact that I think that it actually wouldn’t be really helpful. Because after you do write a lengthy set of notes, in handwriting, you do actually want to sometimes sometimes not always, but sometimes want to turn that into text. And, and I’ve taken that text now and run it through OCR engines, and it just isn’t doing the job well enough, because I’ve had to export it out of it, and you know, all of that machination, that kind of, you know, degrades the the ability for OCR to work, so be really nice to be right there in the tool, and an on the scribe tablet. So looking forward to seeing this develop. All right onto our next item, which is

Augusto Pinaud 21:00
Amazon launches, defier, Max is at $230 tablet. And they are trying to make basically a larger, they are trying to compete now with the iPad size, the note eight, the Samsung Galaxy Tab eight, okay, that 11 inch size, that it is, it is a fantastic size I so it’s very compelling. If it’s not because I should learn from the podcast that I do, and we had this discussion not about this device, but about the device in cross platform with with art Gelwicks. The reality is I should buy this device just to have it in the desk. But I The problem is, is going to be on the power. And I’m going to be very frustrated. And I think that’s where Amazon is making a mistake, in my opinion, they are trying to compare this device with the iPad, they’re trying to compare this device with the galaxy, tab eight. And it is not it is going to be an underpowered device comparing to those. And it is not going to provide you the same experience. And I think they were doing much better on the primary strategy of this or device, even if you are the keyboard and all that. But it’s not going to compare, it’s not going to try to compete with other those machines that are simply faster, they have a better processor, etc. So that’s the only thing on which I think they’re wrong. That said, I think the price point, it’s right. And for many very basic users is going to be a fantastic machine. For many all parents, it is fantastic. Now you give them the Amazon TV, you give them the Kindle books on a size that they can carry. And they can also do email and a couple of basic things. So it has a perfect place. It just, I’m not sure about the marketing, and try to compare it with the iPad, not for any other reason that is on their power.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:13
Yeah, I think I think what they’re trying to do is saying that this is the cost effective version of the iPad, you know, setting people up for understanding that this is a lower powered version. And that’s what makes it more affordable. I mean, even with the keyboard, the keyboard folio, kind of the attached Pogo pin keyboard is still comes out to only 329, something like that $330 USD. That’s a remarkable, you know, good, remarkably good price for a tablet of the 11 inch size with a keyboard and stylus. And a lot of people are going to buy this, right. So you know, there’s going to be a lot of folks who buy this. And that’s what makes it an iPad challenger, I don’t think any of its specs, put it anywhere near an iPad, but it’s going to challenge the iPad in terms of of sales. And, you know, this is coming out just on the heels of the pixel tablet that Google just announced at IO. So we have the pixel tablet, this is nowhere near the iPad or the Samsung Galaxy tabs. You know these are these are not meant to compete with them on on a spec perspective, it’s meant to compete with them on a products sold perspective right there, you’re gonna see a lot of people purchase these biomax elevens purely because they’re inexpensive, and they can put them into the hands the kids or into grandma or grandpa and and they’re gonna get they’re gonna get a decent device, right, it’s going to do everything they need it to do. Maybe it’s not going to do it as well. It’s not going to have as many fancy features, you’re not going to get centerstage like on the iPad or anything else like that. But you’re gonna you’re gonna get a decent tablet, and it’s going to do the job. It’s gonna last a year or two, and then you’ll rinse repeat and buy another one. And that’s kind of what people have been doing with these with these pieces of technology. All right, on to Our next story

Augusto Pinaud 25:01
to do is is adding start time and duration. They announce in Reddit that they are starting to work in these two features that, according to them is one of the two features that people have asked and ask and ask for them. I didn’t know about Duration field, I was only focused user for many, many years and duration was never, I feel that I care for start time, I get it. But duration, I don’t know. But anyways, it apparently according to do is, is the two or two of the most requested features. So they’re coming if you’re asked to do is user, they are coming soon to you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:46
Yeah, I find it remarkable only because my task manager of choice has always had it. So the fact that it never had it, and they refuse to kind of add the features after the fact. You know, it was purposeful. I mean, they chose not to put those those items in. And now that they are, that’s good good on them. But I’ve always had an actually always completed the Duration field. Remarkably, I don’t always use the start field for things unless they are of a project nature. And that’s only because my saved searches don’t really apply most of the time for a start date. But I think that it’s good to have I mean, like, you know, there are certain circumstances where you want to be able to understand that a task is not going to last just, you know, I’m gonna sit down and do the task and check it off, it may last over the course of several days, that you might be doing little bits of that thing until it’s done. And this gives you that ability to kind of to not only track that over days, but also to understand that I’m going to spend six days, five minutes each, so that’s going to be 30 minutes, and it tells me the duration of the time over those over that course of days. Or, for me I like to time budget. So during my weekly review, I’m actually going through and that Duration field is being utilized. Because I can see in the course of a week, how much time I’ve allotted for the coming week. And if I look at my calendar, and it shows me that I have five free hours in a week, you know, to work week, but I have 16 hours of work? Well, I need to reconcile that before the week begins. Right. And and sometimes I do sometimes I don’t because I presume that you know, there’s going to be a meeting that that falls off here, there’s going to be an event that I’m not going to go to here, and then I’ll ultimately have that time. But that’s that’s, that’s a that’s finessing the system. And you need to know your own system really well over the course of time in order to be able to make those kinds of judgment calls. It’s it’s kind of a very advanced kind of GTD thing to say, oh, yeah, well, I’m gonna I’m going to leave this overbooked knowing that there’s going to be some attrition in my calendar, which I know that I only budgeted my calendar 60%. So I know this 40% left, but I always still try to make sure that in that timeframe, I have enough time to do the tasks that I have listed. So you sometimes will know there’s a little bit of wiggle room, and you might have a stretch goal of getting a little bit more done than you decided to do. But knowing that duration really does help me in a lot of ways. So I, I particularly find it useful that to do this is adding that, and it’s another, you know, just adding it to the list of things that create parity with other Task Managers, that makes me think, well, if I needed to go to Todoist, now I could write and that’s a really nice feeling.

Augusto Pinaud 28:27
So our next one, or unless new from the side is a new company called a space stop. And basically they create a laptop, who use AR VR glasses, and can give you until 100 inches of virtual display. I understand this should be maybe more on the Announcements, remorse area, okay, because all the announcements coming or rumors that are for next week on Apple launching something like that, but I put it in here because this will be an interesting change. And if we start seeing this, this will be very interesting, you know, as I look at my office, I would love to you know, remove everything out of that just put the glasses that anyways I’m wearing all the time I now see you know 100 inches of screen and that will be beautiful. So, if the company is already selling some of them is use their own operating system. You can use Word and some of the classic things but taken mine right now at least is their own operating system. But as we see these things, if they really catch up in the market, we may see more and more you know, the the VR glasses companies are trying to get with video games and all that to this concept of you know, put your glasses and play the video game this way. So this is just a company who has taken to work For

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:01
Yeah, I see the evolution as as interesting. It’s novel, I think the the approach that they took, which is to create their own laptop, as opposed to focusing explicitly on the headset is, is definitely an interesting kind of step in a direction. I don’t know if that’s going to be market viable. But I will say that, I think that the next phase for us is some kind of augmented reality where our screens do become versatile, right, we won’t just have a screen that’s attached to our laptops, maybe we do have a pair of glasses that we can put on Allah, Google Glass or something like that, where it’s not fully obstructing our vision, but just augmenting it by by placing the screen in front of us. Google already has a bunch of work going into their health technology that are, you know, basically little lenses, you know, contact lenses that you put in and some glucose monitor. But I can see that technology really fast forwarding into applying and adding augmented reality, you know, technology into it. So it’s just a matter of time. You know, for those folks who don’t wear glasses, it would be it will be a weird change, to have to put glasses on in order to be able to work and that kind of thing. But we’re gonna see a lot of different versions of this coming forward. I mean, we’re going to have to see whether is it a projector that they’re going to put in your laptop and project onto the onto a wall? Is it going to be augmented reality from through a pair of glasses? Or is it going to be something else? And I think we will start to see many different form factors kind of playing here. And I think ultimately having the choice is good. Because we’ll we’ll we’ll be able to see what people use, what works for people, what doesn’t work for people, and kind of go from there. All right, moving right along from our technology stories this week into new tools of the week, a good one, I come across plenty of personal development, time tasks, project management, and productivity, collaboration tools, and services every week. So in new tools of the week, we bring you each one that we think you might like. And so for the first item is a tool called mind stream. And mine stream is interesting because it runs on the Mac. And I’ve been playing around with it, because the the idea behind the mind stream app is that is a native MacOS Gmail client. And as most of you know, I run my entire company and my personal life inside of Google workspace. And so all of those things are in there. And so the idea of having a Gmail client that’s separate from the browser that can work as fast as Gmail is very difficult. So what the folks that live stream did is that they are using the Gmail API. So you basically get everything that Gmail provides. That includes search, you have no idea how difficult it is to do Gmail search correctly, but they are doing it because they’re using the Gmail API, you can use everything that you normally do in Gmail search, including advanced operators, you can do all you can see all your inbox categories. So if you’re using primary inbox, or if you’re using priority inbox, and the social promotions, updates and forums, categories, you’ll see all of those labels, you can you can basically use everything that you use in Gmail, and it provides us like overlay, which gives you the ability to have multiple accounts and profiles. So you can say I want to have a personal profile or work profile. And these three email accounts are associated with personal these two accounts are associated with work. And they’re all organized inside of that space. And you can also then do a unified inbox. So you can see all of those email inboxes interlaced into one screen. So you can process your inbox to zero very, very quickly and easily if you’re a GTD or like I am and Cousteau. So that’s really nice. I also like the email feature, click Compose feature. So they have all of those email composing features built right into it. It’s really nice, it’s seamless. Again, it’s fast. And, you know, I just I found it to be really nice. I you know, it’s not something that I will probably use all the time, just because I’m predominately on my Windows machines and my Chromebooks these days, but when I open up the Mac, it’s nice to have a Gmail client specifically dedicated to the computer so that you can open it up and just get started. Right, it’s just really nice to do all of that. Plus it’s, it’s Mac OS specific, right? So everything that you do on the Mac, you know, from focus mode to system notification management and being able to dock it and just keep it there and your dock all of those things are there and just very, very seamless. There is a 14 day free trial and then after that, I think it’s 50 bucks a year. So it’s pretty nominal. I think they give you like a first year discount. So you got you know, like $30 for the first year $50 each year after, but you know you can try it with That 14 day free trial and see if it’s something that you like, and if it’s something that would work for you. But like I said, I’ve been very impressed with it. And I’m not usually impressed with Gmail clients. But this one has been pretty phenomenal. And they’re doing a great job. I hope they bring a Gmail client to Windows. But I know that I know that Rakesh and their Mac focus, so I won’t I won’t push on them like, like we do with what’s the name of the other? What’s the Mac? Focus? Yes, like we do with the Omni focus folks who eventually bent and did put out a Windows version I think

Augusto Pinaud 35:36
they finally for

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:39
Yeah, what’s your tool this week.

Augusto Pinaud 35:41
So I have two tools. They come both from a company called muffed M O Ft. Told us. And the two I have is one is a wall Stan. And basically, it’s a kind of an origami thing that you can put on the wall and then put your iPad on your phone in there, I have one here in the office, I have one in the side of my bed. So I can put things in there. It’s a very, very nice device. And the other one is called the flip laptop. And basically is a stick with a magnet on the bottom where you can put then a sticker on the back of your case, the iPad or the laptop, and then you can put the phone or if you have the MagSafe in my case, on the top, you know or in the side so that way you can put the phone next to the iPad, I use both things i It’s they are very, very useful. The links are going to be in the show notes. And but if you like to have a place to put your phone, a place to put your tablet when you want to do work against your desk if you’re working in so well. Those two are incredible, incredible tools.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:02
Fantastic and with that, that takes us along to our featured story of the week, which is that AI is coming to Windows, specifically windows 11, I believe. But what did you learn about Microsoft, and the launch of copilot?

Augusto Pinaud 37:18
So it’s been interesting because I with all these AI personal assistant or the owl assistants as my dad, my dad calls me can you explain to me all this owl assistants on to what? They all assistants, I have no clue what you’re talking about? Well, I’m reading the copilot, OWL the Google what is it? How do you mean the AI personal skill, that thing that took me a while to figure out the translation anyways. We are trying right now to make our own flavor of each one of those and you have charged up T and you have Microsoft coming to them Google there is a rumor that Apple will come to theirs. And I don’t think jet. A lot of people understand how beneficial these things are. And eventually they will get there. And we will see it’s going to be in a certain way similar to the browser’s war. Okay, where you start seeing these browsers coming in and you’re going to find what is the AI that fits really your needs your style, because the AI is only as good as the questions you are asking. And the reality is, as you will Microsoft and Google and Apple and others will do their only way or their own way to make these questions, gives you a result give you something coming back. So it is going to take time. But I am very curious. I’m not a big Microsoft product. I get it. I think I will trust more AI from Google than from Microsoft. But that’s me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:15
Yeah, so I think this is probably very exciting for Microsoft to be able to put this out. So this this basically is two things in one one is that if you have seen Cortana lately, please put it in the last and bound. She’s been missing for some time. And that’s been on purpose. Right? Microsoft has been slowly but surely deprecating parts of Cortana. And what is now called copilot in this particular iteration. There are many different co pilots in the Microsoft world. And this copilot is baked into Windows 11. It’ll start to preview in June. And the idea is is that you’ll have basically a kick out side panel. That is a chat focused on A you know, AI assistant, and similar to Cortana, it will, it will be conversational, it will be able to do things for you. And it will also probably be generative, meaning that it will be based somewhat on the open AI chat, GPT model, whatever the latest model is that at that time right now, we’re GPT, four. So it’ll probably be at that, at that level, when it launches in June, a less opening, it puts out a later model that. So the concept is, is that instead of interacting and engaging with the Start menu, or the windows, you know, button, or using keyboard shortcuts to navigate to certain things, you are now going to basically open the side panel or have the side panel open on a consistent basis, and start asking it to do things. And this is a little bit different than saying, I want to open up a Word, Microsoft Word and write a document, what you’re going to do is you’re going to ask open AI, that is you’re going to ask a co pilot, which is running on top of chat GPT, you want to ask the the co pilot to basically come up with a work product, right? And you’re going to give it the parameters, and then it’s going to decide on potentially what applications you need in order to be able to do that. So is it going to open up a search? Is it going to open up teams? Is it going to open up Word, Excel, PowerPoint, you name it and bring those things to the surface, you’re now interacting via conversation with regard to the assistant versus opening up applications. And we’re using the assistant necessarily, inside of that tool, one by one, this is going to be a huge kind of brain change for a lot of us, right? Because we’re used to going into a software, doing a thing going into the next software and doing a thing. And this copilot should, over time be able to do many things simultaneously or in very close succession to be able to facilitate workflow automation in a way that we haven’t seen before. I’m really looking forward to this being available on all operating systems. And always, especially for newer generations where this will become the primary vehicle by which they operate. Will I always operate via AI, being that I grew up with a keyboard and mouse and then kind of graduated to a touchscreen, maybe not. But for younger people who will have only known the ability to have a conversation with a computer, and it being the thing that taps the buttons and makes the the ones and zeros, the bits flip, you know, then it just becomes a new way for it to be able to organize and be more productive, I think it’s going to be very powerful. I think it’s gonna be very interesting. Of course, getting us to this far is a parlor trick, right? You know, this is not something that we haven’t already had. This is just putting a clean interface, a new interface on top of technology that I believe we’ve already had the capability of doing that is Microsoft, Apple, Google and the other major technology companies, what will be very interesting to me is in the next four to five years, whether or not they can go, you know, this is say this is maybe 70 to 80% of the way toward, you know, I hate using the term artificial intelligence. But in this particular case, some forms of machine learning, natural language processing. And otherwise, we bundle those things together. Now we need to see whether or not we are getting to a point where we can get across that threshold to some true intellect, right? Something that can actually go beyond where we are with regard to these these tools ability to communicate with each other. And to create something that is truly artificially intelligent. Right now, it’s just really artificial feature. It’s like a flip phone. That’s really, really fast, right? We’re dealing with with flip phone technology right now in the AI space. And what we would really like to get to is the smartphone level of all of this. And I think even then, it’s not a replacement for a human. You know, it’s potentially a replacement for particular roles in companies. So there are going to be jobs that are lost in this process. But there potentially will also be jobs that are created. And I think that the important part is that we figure out how to utilize this for our own productivity purposes. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how copilot works. But it works just as well as as the pom and the embedded AI within Google workspace and seeing how those things kind of facilitate one in the cloud and one here on the desktop operating system. All right, do we have any other items Gousto that we want to let our audience know about?

Augusto Pinaud 44:45
Number one announcements. We have a couple you know Microsoft bill 2023 Is there there is a link if you want to see a short you know under 10 minutes Kenan resigned of the of the keynote also on the also announcement Microsoft and released a Windows Backup app. And to my knowledge, this is the first time that they do something like that, you know, they are seem to be trying to make their windows integrate closer to what Mike has been doing for for a long time. And, and for what I understood is, you know, in Microsoft way I’d similar to what it was or what it is time machine, where the will do the backups and you will be able to restore. Finally, next week, next Monday, the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference returns, we may not talk next show, because we’ll be on Monday unless we decide to move it to Tuesday. But we will otherwise we’d cover in the week after all the things about the show. So this, this humble fan will be very ready to see. And, you know, in the rumors, this is the first time you know, there has been tons of rumors about Apple announcing some possibility of VR or AR glasses. And they seem to have invented or invited sorry, XR media outlets to the conference and to the keynote. So that just put more fuel to that room or that that device is coming. And that makes for all the news of this week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:29
Fantastic. All right. Well, thank you Augusto, as always for being here on Anything But Idle and helping out to make the show happen. With that we’ve covered the productivity and technology news this week. If there is something that we missed, feel free to head over to anything but idle.com forward slash community that will take you to personal productivity club to join our private or whatever community dedicated to the Anything But Idle listeners can go ahead and let us know there, of course in the show notes that’s on the website, so anything but idle.com. Forward slash 116 will be this episode’s notes. Each episode number is related to the forward slash for the domain. So anything but idle.com. Forward slash 116 is for this episode 115 is for the last episode, that kind of thing. There you’ll find the show notes, those have links to all the stories or tools of the week, extra stories, rumors, and as well. It also has on that page, a text transcript that you can read and download in PDF. And of course, if you have any questions, feel free to just come on over to anything but idle.com forward slash community and post a question there in the feed. We’ll be happy to go ahead and let you know. You can always join us here, typically Mondays at 6pm. Eastern US Eastern for the live stream where you can interact with us live. Of course we’re coming to you the day after because of the Federal holiday. But typically we’re recording these on Mondays at 6pm. Eastern with that. I hope you enjoy the rest of your week. Have a productive week and we’ll see you all next time on Anything But Idle here’s to your productive life.

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Download a PDF of raw, text transcript of the interview here.

Google May Delete Your Inactive Google Account, and the Productivity and Technology News of the Week.

Each week, Ray Sidney-Smith ( https://twominuterule.com) and Augusto Pinaud ( https://productivityvoice.com/) review and provide commentary on the week’s news in the world of personal productivity and related technologies.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://anythingbutidle.com for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

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Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

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HEADLINES, PART A

HEADLINES, PART B

Tools of the Week

FEATURED STORY OF THE WEEK

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:02
Hello, personal productivity enthusiast and community Welcome to Anything But Idle. The Productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by co working space by personal productivity club. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And I’m Augusto Pinaud and we’re hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 115. Google may delete your inactive Google account. And we’re recording this on May 22 2023. Each week, we cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and related technology. With that a Gousto. Let’s get on to our headlines for this week, our productivity headline, our first productivity headline of the week is,

Augusto Pinaud 0:39
is the number one workplace distractions that kills productivity, according to Microsoft, and will very interesting because it’s not a secret that teams are assume or any of this one so far, I was not expecting that the research from Microsoft will have make public that easily shooting themselves. But it is true. You know, one of the things is we went from on to that every mode that we are getting in most companies and a lot of that quick interruption that by the way, I will remind people we used to complain about it heavily of people looking into under like, hello, okay, now, we aren’t complaining about the amount of meetings. And yes, we need a balance or middle. I don’t know how that works. But it was very interesting to see that the numbers that Microsoft had, and how many people get close to those eight hours of meetings. And that’s something I have seen in clients meetings, to meetings to meetings, and sometimes two and three meetings in the same a slog and how do you do it? You know, how do you do two meetings at the same time? And for most people, the answer is they do neither. You know, and it is a problem, because not only now these people is here, but they’re not present on neither meetings. And instead of being more effective, what we see is big impact in productivity, a big impact and expensive impact in the sessions, because people thought they were in the meeting making decisions, but they were not really paying the level of attention needed for the decision that was required.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:42
Yeah, I think you said it all. I think it’s the only thing that I would remark on is that I give Microsoft a great deal of credit in doing this research and realizing that their own software is a part of the culprit. Yeah, you know, and and publishing it notwithstanding, you know, being being legitimate research and showing that so good on them. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 3:04
Our next one comes from idea pod. And he says if someone displayed these 12 traits, they are a master in time management. And there’s a couple of things. It’s a great article, and comes with 12 traits. And I agree with most of them. The only thing that I will start the article for is the advice I give to people and is understand why do you want to be that master of time management? Because one of the things I have seen over the years is what people really want to be is a master on checking boxes. And knowing they the first thing they have is they know how to prioritize well. What are you prioritizing? And, and knowing how to prioritize doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re really looking forward, you’re really, really looking to where you are going to be. So that’s the only thing I like I you know, I will we’ll have love for the article. You know, the other thing that 12 theories say Now, prior eyes having a sense of time, they’re highly organized. That one that was if I have known people who I admire in the world of productivity that there anything but organize, they just in their inner mass, they somehow are incredibly productive. So I don’t know what you thought about the article.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:38
I disagreed with number five, of course, that they that these folks are incredibly disciplined. You know, like, some people are incredibly disciplined. Most people just have a system and they’ve built a system and they and they follow the well worn paths of their routines. And so yes, there’s a willpower issue here where it’s that some of these folks do have a higher reservoir or well of willpower and or they have a greater mo rotational mission and so therefore they, they stick to those things. So I’m always I’m always concerned when we, when we use discipline as a failing in time management or personal productivity, it’s the same thing as with, you know, we talked about the moral failings of, of poor people or of any other minority class, it’s a danger in the personal productivity space because it doesn’t create a psychological safety for us to be able to expand and develop those skills. So just anyone listening, you know, just be mindful of, of the of the word discipline over the other more appropriate healthy terms for being able to create systems and to create the latticework the routine that allows you to be able to fall into the right things, right. It’s just like, not buying junk food in the house is not discipline, right? It’s that you don’t have it available to you that when you have your, you know, you’re not your best self, you’re not going to go ahead and pick up the potato chips as opposed to an apple, right? That’s just creating the right pathways for us to make good choices. Alright, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 5:58
Oh, our next article. It’s from Scott, John, I read a lot the Scott Young and the title is some thoughts on becoming self actualized. And I begin laughing because it’s so well I read her email me sit on a couple of example of people who abruptly change their life and they start exercising, building better habits. And suddenly success came in. And he even talked about his experience around 15 When this happened, and the reason I laugh is because people think this is an overnight change. And what most people miss is how long these people have been peeling the onion, you know, rarely, unless there is a really impact thing on the life on people. Most of these changes are never overnight, we notice it overnight. But for many of these people, it’s the work of yours of yours, of tweaking things and fixing things. That said, self actualization is a real thing. And I believe many of the people who read the books and study and look how to make themselves better, and how to find where and how they get where they are, and how where and how they need to adjust. So they can go where they want to go. And that for me, is selfish.

So the other thing, interestingly, here is a word of advice that is not in that in in the article. But be aware that when you decide to self actualize yourself, you will find a lot of people very close to you very dear to you. Who because of fear or because the lack of self actualization of themselves or fear of they will try to discourage you, you know, to do that. And it is very hard, because those are normally the people who you care for that you’re looking for that support. So that’s very important. When you read these things. Sometimes they said, the best thing you can do to self actualize is Don’t tell anybody. And maybe that is the reason as Scott said on the article that we discovered these people that overnight change.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:28
You know, one of the things that I find to be most useful about the article is kind of dovetailing very nicely from the prior article, which is that your environment and the the things that you bring around yourself the basically allows for a pathway for you to be able to have success in that space, including and self actualization. For those of you who don’t know, self actualization is really that highest point of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Now, Maslow did not design the pyramid, the pyramid is a construct after him, he didn’t really consider this a, you know, a foundation with layers that built upon themselves, he really considered to consider it a continuum, whereby we would throughout the course of our days, weeks, months, years and lives, basically find ourselves in different points toward self actualization. So self actualization is once we’ve built up all of the appropriate needs, right base level needs, whether that be food, shelter, excretion, sex, and otherwise, we then keep making our way up closer toward getting and feeling a sense of belonging and relationships and so on, so forth, till we reach that that kind of zenith, in the in the pyramid of self actualization. We don’t live there, by the way, we just touch it at points in our lives. And so that’s the only thing that I would probably be concerned about with people is thinking that they need to live in self actualization. It’s not where we live. We live by basically traversing those various stages of self actualization throughout the day. I mean, you eat every day you sleep every day. You do all of these things every day. So we go up and down. On or back and forth between that those levels or those that continuum, kind of the pendulum swinging self actualization are just moments or glimmers of that. And if you create the right systems, the right environment, you can fall closer and better into those spaces. And so I feel most self actualized when I’m sitting in reading, right, and so, or when I’m meditating, those are points where I feel very close to that feeling of self actualization. So that might be different for everybody, or it is different for everybody. So you need to find out what that feels like for you, and lean into that. And then don’t get so caught up on reaching self actualization, more than striving every day to enjoy the journey, right? Because if you enjoy the journey along to it, then the moments when you do reach, it won’t be as grandiose and therefore there won’t be this, you know, it’s kind of like a drug addiction, right? You hit that little Zenith. And then all you do is look for that next dopamine hit of being in that space. And that ultimately sets you up for less eudaimonia, right? Less happiness, less feelings of contentment, and really, that’s what you’re going for with self actualization, you’re going for contentment, you’re not going for some ecstatic, joyful moments you’re looking for the ability to feel that level of calm and serenity, amongst the things that you’re doing in your life. All right, on to our next article. Agusta perfect.

Augusto Pinaud 11:18
Our next article is from pick the brain. And I talked about sorry, move digital detox, and why did you need it. And he’s interesting, because nobody, or at least, I don’t remember when the fastest speed of digitalization and that is the appearance of the Blackberry, that was the first device that at least I will recognize that is start kneading on when that’s when we start talking about the toxin and addiction about the smartphone, I don’t remember, the three days of the BlackBerry people being or having those conversations about addictions, the first time I heard addiction, it was tied up, at least on my brain was a Blackberry. But the reality is that having these devices being connected all the time, really cause issues, because we remove that space to think and I believe firmly believed that everybody needed everybody need to disconnect for a little bit of these devices. And, and I’m not saying not have devices, I’m saying, find devices that are not connected or set up your devices. So you disconnect through to certain kinds of inputs, I read on my devices, but I have a device, Kindle, okay, where I can go offline, and read and focus because one of the things is that dopamine rush. And the problem is, as we get the rush, and the rush and the rush, we start losing sensibility. And when we lose sensibility, what we want is more of that. So we want more distractions, more notifications, that are the end of the day, from my perspective, in the world of productivity will make you less and less and less effective.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:24
Yeah, I, you know, the article provides me with two perspectives here. One is that we can cherry pick, cherry pick statistics and make an argument for anything. I agree with you with the idea of being able to step away from technology and to find a place where we find balance with that technology, right, there was just an appropriateness of kind of in the the Episcopal world right, they talked about the right relationship, right and and so I very much believe in being in right relationship with your technology. And I think that there’s, there’s an important internal set of, of awareness that you need to figure out as to whether or not doing all of this is worthwhile for you, and how much you need to step away from that technology. Especially if you start to see things so you know, the the idea behind an addiction, right? If you think about addiction, addiction is something that starts to compete with your everyday functions, right, your everyday what we call activities of daily living, right, getting up getting dressed, engaging with the world, eating those kinds of things. And then of course, your social relationships, your work, if it’s impeding those things, then of course, you need to be able to be mindful of that fact and and step back beyond the kind of disordered or addiction space. For us in general life. We are attached to the internet all day long, and by virtue of our phones and all the various technology that we’re really forced to use in work and school and otherwise. So I don’t particularly find the statistics that we spend so much time on and connected to the internet, all that you know, like can In saying it’s not compelling to me that that means we’re in a bad space, what I do find to be compelling is that we have a lot of mental health crisis going on. And especially in young people. And I don’t know whether there’s a spurious relationship between the connection to technology, or just the fact that they are overwhelmed by the number and amount of caustic individuals, right, people who are unhealthy expressing themselves, in a medium where they have access to that, right and yesteryear, they would not have been, and would not have been connected to that many people, they would have known just a few people in their village, and maybe they would have had a pen pal, you know. And now you’re connected to hundreds and 1000s, and millions of other people. And that flood of information, I think, can be potentially deleterious to the overall mental health of young people, as far as adults are concerned, I think that, you know, we, that have been around and connected to technology since the palm days, and the Crackberry days, we are still just incredibly excited. I think most of us who are in that age band are just incredibly excited to have access to the technology, then there’s still a little bit of that, I mean, I have that I have that youthful excitement about having new technology and playing with new technology. And I think a lot of you who are listening and watching also have that sense of it. So I don’t know how much of that is negative or positive? But that’s something that you have to kind of check, right? Is that negative or positive in your life? And and also, how do the people around you feel about it? Right? Like, do they feel like you’re always with your face on the phone instead of making eye contact and having a conversation at dinner? Or are you in meetings, not engaging as much as you are interacting with your digital technology, as opposed to providing feedback and eye contact and all those things. So like, you can get some general feedback and provide yourself with everything you need that is not necessarily a digital detox, and in the way in, which is explained here in the article. All right. And so with that, we have reached the end of our personal productivity articles. For this week, we’re going to take a break now to hear a word from our sponsor, and then we will be back with the technology headlines, our new tools of the week and all that fun stuff after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 17:15
Well, working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating, and there’s something powerful about being with productive people, even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core. We provide goal tracking and host focused action sessions throughout the week for accountability and camaraderie, visit anything but idle.com forward slash co working to learn more CO working space lives inside personal productivity club, a digital community for personal productivity enthusiast so you can find people who use methods and tools you do to again, head over to anything but idle.com forward slash co working to see how co working space can help you be more productive. And now back to our show.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:26
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. A guest you and I are now going to head into our technology headlines this week. Augusto, What is our first technology headline this week?

Augusto Pinaud 18:37
The first we have its podcast where you were interview me and my Evernote with Raymond Sidney-Smith. And we just wanted to mention it for our listeners. If you are an Evernote user, this was a great interview that you can go and listen to there is not going to be a lot of spoilers but go and listen.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:01
Yes, onward to the next stories.

Augusto Pinaud 19:04
So our next story it’s an article for Business Insider and he’s there forever labor shortage may have been maybe on the productivity but it is interesting because is one of those articles that it’s a lot of read how we are not going to solve we need better perks and I always wonder when these articles come and this self professed crisis calm is really just an adjustment on on the market and is finally leveling up with where it should be.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:45
I see it as a as a net positive. I think that this is going to be a an adjustment as you said, but the reality is is that baby boomers have been in the market and those of you who are baby boomers if you want to stay in the market By all means do so not saying. But a lot of them were forced to continue working throughout the pandemic. And there were a number of different reasons for that. And some of them had been waiting for the markets to rebound. And some of them had been waiting for other kinds of things to click into gear. And to be, quite honestly, to be quite honest, you know, the, the baby boomers working later and later into their age has, has really suppressed the ability for millennials and younger, not necessarily Gen X. And maybe maybe there’s an argument that Gen X was was affected also, but really millennials and younger have been a have been basically suppressed in the market because they have been not been able to elevate into the positions that baby boomers were able to elevate much earlier in life. And so while baby boomers might say, Oh, well Millennials feel entitled and and that they are not, you know, taking responsibility for things and so on so forth those kinds of trope, those all absolutely and unabashedly false, you know, I’m not a millennial in any likeness of it. And so I, I still see a lot of millennials in my own world, and they are, they are people who have dealt with a lot of strife during their generations of coming into the world, into the, into the workforce. And so I feel incredibly, you know, like, compassionate for millennials. And, and I feel like this could be a really good opportunity for millennials. And then of course, Gen Z, Gen II and and younger to start to get a foothold in the market where they can actually make a living and, and negotiate higher salaries as well better wage rates. This can all start to actually normalize the market, I think this could actually be pretty good. So anyway, my

Augusto Pinaud 21:44
next toys are set of toys, R Amazon lounge, a bunch of four products by products of new Alexis, so they went from budget to speakers, that looks very nice. The Echo, Papa now has three instead of the round as it was the last acre, they you can direct them better they show, they came this this product surprised me they came with a $50 a Cobots. The last Cobots they had was around 120 price it similar to the Apple ones. And now they went to play that Amazon game, let’s make them significantly cheap. So people try. So they also came with an echo one for the car, if you want to use the Amazon, Alexa and all that in the vehicle, so interesting devices, interesting things, and coming again, on that price point of Amazon, you know, that is very, very affordable, and they just want to make sure you are part of their ecosystem.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:58
Yep, I thought I really liked the the echo pop, I think it’s a well designed, beautiful, you know, device that I think people will like to have in their space. And they they have a green that I really like. So that helps. But I think the gray and the black versions are great. And there’s a purple version as well. But I think it’s you know, it’s a budget price. And it’s really nice that if you’re in the Amazon ecosystem, that you have something that you can feel comfortable having out in your space. And so I think that looks pretty good. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 23:31
Our next story is a new artificial intelligence research that allows you to click and drag images and manipulate them and kind of scary, very interesting, very fun, but kind of scared nonetheless.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:48
Yeah, absolutely, I you know, the whole concept that you can now not trust any image to be what it truly is, you know, that’s that’s going to that’s going to be something that we have to contend with on a regular basis. The the technology is based on something called Dragon. And the idea is, is that you have this ability to manipulate tools. Now, we’ve had this before, I mean, we’ve had the visibility, anyone who has good Photoshop, Photoshop, or other kinds of similar skills have been able to do this for quite some time. But we’re now just seeing this more available, you know, and put into the hands of everyday people, which means that it’s going to make its way into the hands of more sophisticated criminals, people who are trying to sow dissent, that kind of thing. So you know, there’s, it’s a tool like a hammer is a hammer, you can you can build a house, or you can break a window with it right? So we need to be mindful of the fact that this is just new technology. And as much as it can make us more productive is where I’m excited. Right? You know, there are there are lots of photos of me that the company uses and that all and I just wish that they were just a little A different, you know, maybe I’m not smiling enough in the photograph, or I’ve got like wonky eyes, because the flash hit me at the wrong space and time. And now maybe this work, you know this, this new technology will be able to go ahead and similar to Photoshop, so Warp Tool, go ahead and fix those things so that I don’t feel as uncomfortable with it. Now I’d love for this AI to work its way into video, right so that it can clean up video throughout the course it will be here. Yeah, I mean, it’s only it’s only practical that it works, it will take a lot of processing power, because it’s got to go image by image, right frame by frame through the video and make those same changes. But why the heck not? When that happens. That’s a huge productivity savings, right. And it can solve for so many different things, very similar to the way that some of these AI, audio tools, you know, that clean up the audio and help filter the audio and fix it and post, it can be also really useful. I think the next step for me is not just a static image, but for film or video to be able to be edited in the same way. All right, onward to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 26:04
For the next one, he sold your shoe. So it’s all about Google one VPN, and how now it allows you to know your network, your IP, and what information you are actually using that for an advance your story makes sense for a non advanced user, I’m not sure how useful that will be.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:29
Yeah, so in the past, if you were in an environment where you felt like you needed to tell another tool, what your IP address is, so that you could like whitelist it, for example, you know, this happens inside of a WordPress website, when you have security turned on. This can happen inside of certain tools where you have to basically whitelist yourself so that it knows to let you log in from certain locations if you’re using VPN by Google one. So if you’re a Google one subscriber, meaning that you’re using at least the I think it’s the two terabyte plan for Google Drive or above, you get Google one. And that has a whole bunch of benefits. I mean, from like travel benefits, you get discounts on hotels, you get access to some, some support some higher level support from Google, you also get access to the VPN and some other things. Well, the the VPN itself, now just, I just, it’s a thoughtful additional piece of information, right? It shows you now in the interface, when you open it up, that your your VPN is turned on. And this is your IP address. And this is your network ID just a very, very simple way to see that information. So that when you are in that circumstance, very probably rare circumstance for some people, very common occurrence for others like myself, because I use a security plugin for all of my websites. So I need to go in and make sure that I put in my IP address and all of those places, I just want to know it really quickly and easily. That’s going to be different when I turn on the VPN. And so I need to go ahead and make sure that I have access to it. And now I don’t have to go to what’s my IP and Google to find out it’s right there in the VPN. And it makes it much simpler. So it’s a nice enhancement, I think it’s really great that it gives us that that ability to to quickly have that in the in the dashboard, right there and GPA VPN by Google one.

Augusto Pinaud 28:18
This is something that I need somebody to test for me, Windows 11, users can now link their iPhones and use iMessage from the PC. That’s something that I have always loved that I can grab my iPad, my Mac or my phone and have the same iMessage it will be very interesting to put it in MPC, the PCs that I have will not I will not test it. But I will be very interesting to hear what is the feeling from people to be able to do this now.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:53
Right? So this is pretty basic. I mean, it’s very, very basic at the present moment, it allows you to be able to send those messages over a Bluetooth connection to the phone link app. And so it’s it’s actually quite smart that it’s doing this because otherwise it probably wouldn’t be able to do so. And so it is a fairly seamless experience. I’ve found it to be somewhat annoying to have so many notifications going off in so many different places. And so yeah, I think that it’s it’s good that Microsoft has has put out this olive branch and created this connection through phone link. I really hope that over time, Microsoft phone link will allow you to do the same things that Samsung has done built into phone link which is allowing you to stream an app so you know if you have a Samsung Galaxy device, you can actually pull up Instagram and use Instagram on your desktop. You know connected to your phone. Right now you’re you’re not capable of doing those things. Even though I have a Google Pixel seven XL. I can’t do that. Alright, all I can do is really transmit messages. Now it does help because it will allow me to, to communicate across any messaging app that’s being utilized on the device, which is actually really, really helpful. So kind of the same thing applies on the iPhone level, this is just now by iMessage, you can use phone calls to send and receive, you know, make and receive phone calls. And then you get your notifications from the application from the Alert Center. So it’s a step in the right direction, certainly not enough functionality for me to be able to put my phone down and fully stay on the desktop at the same time. And that’s really what I’m looking for both on the iOS devices in my life, as well as my my Android devices, I want to be able to set them down and to use a full keyboard when I’m at a full keyboard, not withstanding what’s going on on the phone. And so great first step, looking forward to seeing it develop further

Augusto Pinaud 30:53
where this goes. So the next news we have is Verizon heat resets on their 5g, now they have new plans, new stream lines. So if you are a Verizon users go and check, you know, they went back to you can now do a limit that you know, $10 arc, either don’t you know, Disney plus family music. So they, they’re really trying to attract and he’s obviously coming in a great moment, we are expecting announcements of new phones, even though the phones may not be out until October, we know that between now. And October Verizon AT and T and T Mobile will push very hard for upgrades and everything else. So like the next article, oops, go ahead. Sorry, the next article was also from the Virgin is how to hardwire your home without an Ethernet on the walls. And it was a very interesting article, I have seen the use of the old cable coaxial cables to do it, but I wasn’t fully aware of how much the technology has evolved into using your power lines to extend it. That was I was not fully aware how much the technology had improved. So it sent me in a little rabbit trail with you, but but it is a great option. As the article say, for some people, the best option continue being the mesh, the mesh is not a solution for the hardwire, will never give you the stability of the hardwire, but it’s a solution for many people.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:44
Absolutely. So I can speak from my own experience, I did not have the coax option. So I have several bedrooms on my second level that that have coax, but the office that I decided to use the one of the bedrooms that has become the office that I wanted to use does not have a coax access point. And so I decided to use actually the power line version of it. Because I don’t have ethernet, it’s an older older unit. And so I didn’t have the Ethernet in this particular house. And so I’m using the, the TP Link, powerline based ones, and it’s working really well, you know, I’m getting I’m getting pretty rock solid speeds on the on the machines that are connected via Ethernet. And it’s a much more solid, you know, connection. And, and so it’s worth trying, right, but you know, like, you can order it, try it, see if it gives you good speeds if it doesn’t return it. And, and of course, I think that the Moca adapters are definitely better. But it also depends on the age of those of those cable lines, right of those optical lines, right. So if they’ve degraded over time, if they’re like 20 years old and 30 years old, those optical lines are potentially going to give you some some, some trouble. They may still be faster, though, than the power line based ones, especially if you have a lot of interference, right. So we have we have a lot of interference on those copper lines sometimes, or there’s just not enough power running across those lines, depending upon how the house is wired. So you just have to be conscious of that. For me, I haven’t had any issues I you know, my my, my power lines are pretty well connected to that main, you know, thoroughfare, so to speak. And so I’m getting I’m getting great speeds. And it didn’t have to have me have the electrician, rerun Ethernet cord up here. I tried, I definitely tried, but the way in which they would have had to have, you know, worked around it, they would have had to open up all kinds of walls. And I just really didn’t feel like dealing with that. So this was a great, inexpensive option for being able to bring, you know, broadband wired broadband into the office without a problem. So I highly recommend it for folks. If you you know, I was I was going to invest in a mesh system, and I probably still will but For the main computers that I want accessing, especially when I’m here on live video, I want that level of connectivity, I don’t want to deal with, you know, a video meeting that drops out because Wi Fi for some reason decided to get wonky, because my neighbor decided to turn on their, you know, am radio, you know, all of that kind of radio attention, attenuation can cause problems, you know, being wired really solves for that problem. Alright, and with that, that brings us to the end of our technology headlines for this week and onto our new tools of the week. So Augusto and I come across many personal development time tasks, project management and productivity, collaboration tools and services each week, some we use some standout from the pack. And so in this segment, new tools of the week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like and so this week, I am going to bring you cron, Cron is a new calendar application. And of course connects to other applications out there. But the idea is to just have a more beautiful and feature rich calendaring experience. And so it has applications for Mac, iOS, and Windows. So it covers you across those three, it does not have an Android application that I’m aware of. And it is a premium calendar tool. So you do have to pay for it as opposed to like your free Google Calendar. You know, we’re free Outlook calendar, that outlook is not free anymore. But you don’t mean like the the free calendar application on your Microsoft System, the free calendar application on your Apple system, it is it is not going to be that. But I have to say, you know, I’ve played with cron off, on and off again, just kind of like seeing whether or not it’s something that I like, and when I am using it, I really like it, you know, now do I like it enough to pay for it? I haven’t yet right? Like I’ve paid for it here in there in order to utilize it. But I just haven’t found myself going to that point where I’m like, Okay, I’m going to be on cron all the time. And it probably is because of the nature of my work where I’m dealing with clients who are not using this tool. And so therefore, just for the best compatibility and staying inside the ecosystem, and using the tools that my clients are using, I’ve stayed away from it. But if you’d like a really beautiful application that works rock solid, and has a lot of nice natural language features, like just how you can say to your google assistant, or to your apple assistant, or otherwise, you know, hey, blank, you know, add a calendar event and then speak out the calendar event, you can do that in cron, you could just open up the almost like the the spotlight feature on the Mac OS or Alfred is open up that that one line, type in the meeting name, and it will automatically go ahead and create the event in the time and date and space that you want it to. So there’s a lot of those just really refined features within cron that I really like. So something for you to check out, look at, see if it’s something that you might want to utilize. Okay, so what is your new tool this week?

Augusto Pinaud 37:58
Well, then my neutral other week is called Shadow PC. And it’s basically a virtual PC, it costs around $33 or start around $33 a month. But as a person whose main machine is an iPad, I virtual machines are nice. And I don’t necessarily want to have a Windows machine in my desk, I just want to connect to one once in a while. So these kind of things are great solutions, you know, we have I have covered in the past here in the show, jump that is one that allows you to connect to remote machines. But this service will basically give you a full virtual machine, you will go somewhere most likely an Amazon server connect and have the full experience that they will help you maintain with a PC where you can install stuff and test stuff or work. So if you are in need of that you really don’t want to buy another hardware. This is a good option.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:06
Yeah, it’s a fantastic tool. I think that you know when you need to do something like this where you need to like stream, a Windows application of some kind or those kinds of like gnarly situations. This can really be a lifesaver. It’s kind of like parallels or you know, wine on the Mac OS system where you can basically bring the Windows environment onto the system. But you’ve got to install Windows there, this you’re just pulling it up and utilizing it in a cloud environment, which really keeps the impact on your overall operating system pretty low. Fantastic. Fantastic. All right. What else do we have today? Do we have some news?

Augusto Pinaud 39:46
Oh, do bring us to our news of the week and his Google plans to delete all those accounts that has been inactive for the last couple of years and this is no Don’t hurt of Apple has a similar plan. But it is something that a lot of people was not aware of. And it’s been caused some, some noise on the internet even you will find another article that we will add to the show notes where Ted Ryan, from MIT Technology Review talks about their useful life isn’t some permanence as you think. And it’s talking about parents who pass and they keep the access to the emails on their Google accounts. And well now, because of lack of use, that information may be deleted, and how you are backing them up how we have discussion here in the show, backing up your calendar, you know, things happen when you have it online. But what happened with your email was your calendar was your picture. So it is important to remember that all these digital things is not as permanent as we think. Yeah, so

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:01
a couple clarifications, as you said, it is for any account that has been unused or not signed into for at least two years. So it has to be at least 24 months. And they are starting with accounts that literally have not been used at all, in since its inception, right. So someone created an account, and it’s just been sitting there fallow, without any activity. This is, of course, I think, just good from an environmental impact perspective, you know, like those servers are running and keeping those accounts live and active for no reason. I’m sure there’s cost to Google. So this is a great cost savings measure. And maybe they will raise prices on Google workspace again. You know, like all of those kinds of things that I think are good for for us in that sense. I use this opportunity to remind everybody about the Google Font inactivity account manager, so you can set up for all of your Google accounts, a Google inactivity, account manager, this is an individual, right, so someone that you trust, who will be able to gain access to your Google account, after a set amount of time where you have not been active with it anymore. So say that you become mentally or physically incapacitated, right, you have a trip and fall and you lose capacity in some way, shape or form. You’re no longer mentally or physically able to access your account. Maybe you forgot you even had the account, right? That inactivity account manager after that requisite time now gains access to your account automatically, they’re sent an email and said, hey, this person hasn’t logged into this account. And so you have been automatically given access to it. Google consistently reminds you about this, by the way, so it doesn’t just like you don’t just set it up and then forget about it. They will every I forget what it is every six months, once a year, they basically notify you and say, Hey, by the way, do you still want this inactivity account manager to have access to your account in case you don’t access your account in X number of months. And that’s really, really useful. So set that up, make sure that you have an inactivity account manager, just go to my accounts.google.com. And you’ll find that there in the settings, then this doesn’t really become a problem for you. Right? Because Because if something were to happen, you would that would be the first line of defense, your activity account manager would be like, Hey, Ray, I see that you haven’t logged into your account for six months. So maybe you should go ahead and login and figure it out? Or are you dead? Right? Like what’s going on? You know, why didn’t you log into your account? So

Augusto Pinaud 43:25
hopefully, you pick somebody who will know, in less than six months about that, that, but anyways, the show notes will have the link on more details about the inactive account manager, what happened? How do you detect and all that you were explaining? So from the Google support page,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 43:43
right, absolutely. And just so you know, any activity on the account is really anything you do in terms of accessing the accounts, that includes watching a YouTube video, it could be sending an email, even just opening up an email, you know, using Google Drive any of the Google services doing Google search, right, any of those things are going to trigger the account to know that it’s still active, so it’s really not going to be a problem with any of those issues. You know, I think this is going to impact a very, very small number of unused accounts. And of course, people who ultimately, you know, pass away and are no longer utilizing those accounts and don’t have an activity account manager. So very limited use I know it hit hit the kind of the headlines to a lot of people, but I think this is a wake up call for us all, as you said a Gousto. Right, our digital lives are not as permanent as we think they are, according to that article, and really just reality, as well as the fact that, you know, we shouldn’t have accounts that we’re not using anyway, get rid of that, you know, cruft and, and streamline your life. If you are not using an account, that’s it’s a pretty easy process now to do. You can forward your emails to a centralized account, and just let everybody know, hey, I’m no longer using this account. And, you know, simplify, simplify here, I think is a good message to remind everybody about. Alright, do we have any announcements?

Augusto Pinaud 44:56
We got a couple. So one is the end We have Drobo. Drobo was a company who specialized in putting hard drives on boxes. So you could create NASS in home and it’s out of business. And it’s very sad. I never owned one. But I but I there technology on similar technology, so it was very sad to see Drobo go. The other announcement we have is one password. We mentioned about one password and the past key support. And it’s now have a date June 6, it will lounge. So that is in complement of our last episode when we talk about the one password and the past keys. And to finalize, we have a couple of rumor news one, yes, sorry.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:57
Before we move on, no, I just wanted to let anyone know if they are using passage by one password. I’d really love to know what your experiences with it. So passage is the functionality that adds pass keys to your app, or to your website. So if you publish an app, if you’re a developer who publishes an app, or if you are a website publisher, and you are utilizing past keys on the website, I would just I just really love to like, let us know, you know, shoot us a tweet, send us a message, you know, through the through anything but idle.com forward slash contact, let us know how you’re utilizing it. Because I’m really interested to seeing whether or not this password list login experience will be something that is easy for people to implement, because I think it can be really, really useful for a lot of people. So anyway, I just I wanted to ask that of our listeners. If you if you have that experience.

Augusto Pinaud 46:44
Yeah, please let us know. So I’m under rumors. Well, we’re two things. One is if you feel fed up about your windows 11 machine, nagging or Windows 10, nagging you to upgrade. Well, the bad news is seems like Microsoft is doubled down. So, so sorry for you. But on an exciting news seems like Amazon is going to be releasing a new Kindle Oasis in 2023, Kindles Oasis tend to be the high end of the Kindle line. And I’m very curious with this rumor, how they’re going to integrate the scribble that that’s a Kindle that you can handwrite on with the technology of the LIC So are you going to see both things are you going to see there’s not very enough information on the article. But it is going to be I think, very interesting to see what Amazon does with that high end device.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:47
Yeah, absolutely. I have a Kindle scribe. And I really like it. It’s a great device. And there are some limitations to the device that people have noted those that I actually like it having. So it’s just a it forces you to really think as you are writing, which slows you down. And I think that the more we are given too easy a pass at what we are writing down, the less engaged we are with the content. And so a lot of people say Oh, well, you know, students with laptops, they learn less, or they retain less, because they’re typing, as opposed to when they’re writing on physical paper. And I think what it is, is that they are not focused on the content that they are typing, right. And the more you focus on the content that you’re typing, the more the challenge, the more difficult it is, then then, of course, the greater you will, you will remember that stuff. So it’s not really a matter of the technology, it happens to be how much that person is trained on using the technology well, for you know, just from a brain science perspective. So I really would like to see what the Kindle Oasis is going to do. That’s going to be different from the scribe, and we’ll see what happens. So all good things there. But interesting news. And so with that we’ve covered the productivity and technology news this week. Thank you, Augusto, for everything. And I’ll see you next week. Okay, everybody on anything but idle.com, you’ll find our show notes with links to all the stories are tools of the week, all the extra stories that we didn’t cover and a text transcript to read and download if you’d like. It’s available as text on the page. But you can also download the PDF and read it offline while you’re listening. Also, if we miss something, feel free to let us know you can do that via Twitter, you can DM us at Anything But Idle you can use our contact form at anything but idle.com forward slash contact but the best thing to do is to join our community we have a community at anything but idle.com forward slash community that’s there on the screen anything but idle.com forward slash community. You will join personal productivity club that’s free and then once you’re inside at the anything but idle.com/community community group you can comment on the episode of the week you can engage with the other listeners and and have a great time all right everybody I thank you all for joining us we will see you next time on Anything But Idle here’s your productive life.

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