ProductivityCast

We received this comment below on the podcast (Episode 100), and so we're answering his question on dealing with distractions in open offices, to kick of the new year.

Hey guys, thanks for the content! I’d like to hear your ideas about handling extended busy times. I’ve been practicing GTD (poorly, but trying) for 4 or 5 years and firmly believe in the system. I’m a manager in what is, unfortunately, effectively an open office. I don’t currently have the ability to schedule my time which makes it extremely difficult to work on the important things without getting interrupted. In the next few months I’ll be moving to a separate office in the same building which will then give me the opportunity [to] put a schedule in place. In the meantime, and for others caught in the same sort of situation (think customer service for example) it would be great to get some tips on what might work in these types of situations. Cheers!Brent

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/106 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 Dealing with Distractions in Open Offices from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Dealing With Distractions in Open Offices

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes

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

Ray—

Scheduling calls for most interruptive conversationsActive noise cancelling (ANC) headphonesLuxafor lightsSound barrier panels (Ray’s preferred panels: Versare SoundSorb VersiPanel)

Raw Text Transcript | Dealing With Distractions in Open Offices

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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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17A quick note, before we get started with our episode today, for those of you listening, who are interested in engaging with others, listening to ProductivityCast, please find our digital community at WWW dot personal productivity dot club, sign up, and we'll approve you into the community, then find the ProductivityCast channel and join that you can come on and episodes, ask questions and engage with the ProductivityCast. Team and community. It's easy to sign up and it's free. Again, that's www dot personal productivity dot club. Thanks so much. And now on with the show ProductivityCast Episode 106 Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:55 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:56I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:58 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:59Welcome, gentlemen. And Happy New Year, Happy New Year to listeners. This is our first episode of 2021. And hopefully this year will be a better year than 20, in the sense that after hopefully, you know, people start to get vaccinated in larger swamps and everything else like that, we'll be getting back to our normal lifestyles. And I'm looking forward to, you know, seeing people in real life again, very soon. And what we wanted to do today, is we got a listener question. And we thought, Well, why the heck not answer that listener question as a good kickoff to our new year. And so what we're gonna do is cover kind of the points of the big ticket, hiccup points that this particular listener had, and this is from Brent. And I'm just going to read the pertinent points of his comment. And so he says, that he has been practicing, getting things done for about four or five years, and he firmly believes in the system, he's a manager and works in an open office environment. He says, quote, I don't currently have the ability to schedule my time, which makes it extremely difficult to work on the things without getting interrupted. And so with that in mind, he's looking to hear what we're understanding. And Brent, you can always comment on this episode. And let us know if we got it right. But we're hearing is his strategies for dealing with distractions in open office environments, and really how to get the most important things done with that distracted environment with those interruptions happening. And of course, we do live in an interrupted in an interruption driven world. And we need to be able to have practices to be able to overcome those. And so with that, let's kick into the conversation and start off with dealing with distractions in an open office environment. And what are the practicalities there? What are the things that we can do to be able to help Brent and others who are in that situation, the

Augusto Pinaud 2:59distractions happens, and there is nothing that we can do. And it's something we have learned over the last year is that the distractions evolve and change. And when you think you control a set of distractions, and new ones will come, but this is still a game of breadcrumbs. And you need to understand as as in crais, distractions increase, what you need to do is better breadcrumbs for you. So years past, many years ago, I used to have a notepad, and there was a line and that notepad and basically I leave what was the last thing I was working on before I was distracted before I was interrupted before that phone caller that walk in into my office. And later that changed for an index card. And now it's just a tag into my system where if I get a phone call, if I get I picked the call and said give me a second and then write down I'm working on so that way as soon as that call. It's over regardless how long or how short it was, I can go back to that then and catch up or continue the trade and where he was even if that phone call means I now need to go and do something else or get distracted or get engaged into a different activity whatever that time, usually is that clue that I give to my to my own self is good enough, I can grab and come back to that activity.

Francis Wade 4:30So what Augusto suggested handles the I would say the individual side of the problem, but ultimately this is a social problem, right? The management of the organization has set the workplace up in a particular way that hinders the hinders bread's productivity. And ultimately, you know, he can do a bunch of things on his own. I've seen people wear headphones and put up signs and construct Plexiglas petitions, you know, all kinds of put on hats, all kinds of tricks and but these are ultimately social social barriers, there to tell people that I'm not to be interrupted. But that only takes you so far. Because if your management believes that you need to be available to be interrupted, as if you're an emergency doctor, from the minute you start work at 801, to the minute you leave you, you end at five o'clock, their belief is that you are infinitely interruptible, then ultimately, there's nothing that he can do with the headphones, they'll just tell him to get rid of the headphones. So this strikes me as a social problem. Primarily, it's a it's a, it's in the relationship between management and workers and the decisions that have either been made or not made. And ultimately, those will overcome any individual tactic that he could come up with. It's strikes me.

Art Gelwicks 5:58Yeah, see, now I'm going to disagree with you there on that, because I don't think it's entirely a social problem, I think what we're failing to take into consideration is that there are many roles out there, you just talked about one of them with the emergency room doctor, but even something less life valuable than that. Maybe I'm just working in a call center, maybe I'm working at a retail desk, that are designed to be interrupt driven, because they are customer facing, and they're client facing and when that client or customer wants help and needs help and needs contact, boom, it has to be done, then it's not an option to push them off and say, yeah, I'll get back to you in a little while. Those types of environments, it's extremely difficult to deal with what I consider what I consider secondary work, things that are not client or customer facing, but are still mandated to be done. And a common example, because I deal with call centers all the time is training. When when management has mandated that people working in a call center or working in that type of environment need to take training, the first question should be okay, when are you going to give me time to do that, because that's not something that can be done in five minutes segments around customer needs and customer interactions. It is a social challenge, but it's more of a managerial challenge, because they do have to recognize the fact that there is some work that cannot be done in five minute blocks. But even more, so that'll get referred to well, the customer still needs to be handled first. So as the person who's having to handle or deal with those incoming interruptions, I think it's really more important for us to try to help them identify ways to deal with that rapid START STOP of work. It's a it's a constant thing. I mean, the example I give to people of what it's like working in t

What a year 2020 has been! This week, the ProductivityCast team reminisces on four of our eight favorite episode topics this year (and all eight are embedded below for your listening pleasure), then we discuss thoughts on interests for next year. Happy, Productive New Year!

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/105 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 the year in review, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | A Year in Review & Preview

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

Top 3 listened-to episodes of the year

Episode 094 - How Mind Mapping Fits Your Productivity SystemEpisode 070 - On Getting Things Done with David AllenEpisode 066 - Working from Home in the Age of COVID-19

Art's Top 2

Episode 063 - Email (23:38 - 24:32)Episode 089 - Amateur vs Pro (14:09 - 15:12)

Augusto's Top 2

Episode 066 - Working from Home (47:16 - 47:49)Episode 070 - On GTD with David Allen (16:55 - 17:57)

Francis's Top 2

Episode 091 - Do what you love as a career (23:01 - 25:05)Episode 079 - Detecting and managing burnout (self-awareness that pre-empts burnout) (30:09 - 31:20)

Ray's Top 2

Episode 071 - Personal Outsourcing (12:13 - 13:35)Episode 087 - Automating Your Office (7:50 - 8:47)

Raw Text Transcript | A Year in Review & Preview

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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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:22 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:23I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:25 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to our listeners to this final episode of 2020 for ProductivityCast. I can't believe it, but we have reached the end of 2020. Quite honestly, I think a lot of us are relieved that 2020 is over and looking forward to at least a better back three quarters of 2021 once we have a set of vaccines in order, and folks are starting to get back to a bit of normal life. And so with that, what I wanted to do today was for us to go through and talk about our most listened to episodes of the year, and then get into our favorite episodes of the year. Each of us has selected two episodes, we'll play the snippet, and then have a little discussion around why we chose it, whether it still stands, and then go round robin, for our picks. So let's let's discuss our top three listen to episodes of the year. And so if you are brand, new to ProductivityCast, this will be really good place to start in terms of listening to some episodes that have been most listened to in the year. And those end up being Episode 66 that is working from home in the age of COVID-19. Episode 70, we did an interview with David Allen, the progenitor of getting things done so on getting things done with David Allen, Episode 70. Then our number one, our top episode of of 2020 drumroll is Episode 94. How mind mapping fits your productivity system. And it kind of blows every all the other episodes out of the water. It just turns out that a lot of people were really interested in the mind mapping episode. And so yeah, check those three episodes out if you have not. And feel free to let us know your feedback. Like always, you can find our episodes through that three digit episode number. So 066070094. If you just type in ProductivityCast dotnet forward slash and that three digit number, it'll take you to the episode, you can go ahead and listen to it, download it or whatnot.

Art Gelwicks 2:34I think the mind mapping episode, while it's a little bit surprising is not actually all that surprising to me. Because mind mapping is one of those things that I know a lot of people struggle getting their head wrapped around as to what do you do with it? How do you make it work? It's it's intriguing when you see mind maps, that something is visually focused is what they are could be an input, significant productivity tool. But I still think a lot of people struggle with it. I know even I do. And I do mind maps all the time. But I making that translation from what we have traditionally thought about for note taking and planning into a much more organic visual focus can be difficult. So I'm not totally shocked that people wanted to learn more about that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:23Yeah, I'm really curious whether or not it's a bunch of students that were doing maybe research on different types of note taking techniques, or those kinds of things where mind mapping tends to surface, you know, brainstorming techniques, or or note taking techniques that mind mapping tends to come up in those conversations. And so maybe more students found it since they were doing more work online in 2020, than ever before. Yeah, I'm really curious why that ends up being such a big topic. And it's something that, you know, I've been doing for a long time, but I think maybe you're right art, you know, people sometimes have difficulty getting getting around the idea of mind mapping, you know, kind of kind of, quote unquote, how to do it correctly. And so maybe that is why it was so popular.

Art Gelwicks 4:11And just a second thought to that it could also be people are struggling to find new ways to tackle the problems that they feel a little overwhelmed with right now. They're taking notes, they're writing things down, they're using their normal tools, and it just doesn't seem to be cutting it. So they could be looking for a different direction. I be curious. I'd be curious to hear anybody who's who went out and listen to that show, to let us know why you listen to it. That'd be great to hear.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:39Definitely. Okay, so those are our top three listen to episodes this year. And I'm really excited to get into our favorite episodes of the year. And so let's go around the table and play the different snippets. First up, I'm going to have arts first choice, which was episode 63, which was about email,

Art Gelwicks 5:03it's just it boggles my mind. And I hear this all the time in collaboration spaces people like, Oh, yeah, email such a terrible thing. Email is such a terrible thing, no, emails, fine, you just suck at it. That's really what it comes down to. You have this inability, you being general, this inability to understand that when you send an email, you have no reasonable expectation that a response will come in short order, they will respond when they get it. That's why I go bonkers over this idea of read receipts, I'm going to send it Read Receipt. And that way, I'm going to know when they read it, and I should be able to know, all that is is a confirmation that they opened it, it's still an unreasonable expectation that they are going to respond as soon as they read it. If you want that immediate response. Guess what? We've got a technology for it. It's called chat. That's all chat is his email without the addresses.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:57All right. All right. Why did you choose that snippet, and you still stand by that statement?

Art Gelwicks 6:02Okay, apparently, that day, I was slightly over caffeinated, just to be clear, because anybody who listens to the show regularly knows that I do not get keyed up like that. So just just saying, there's an irony to that. I still stand by that. And I still believe that email is a very effective tool, it can be used extremely well, and it has a place. It is not the evil thing that so many people have made it out to be. That said, I think I would probably push further into the chat side of the conversation. The more I work with email recently, I have found email is actually being used less effectively than it was even before. Because people are now starting to use it as entire conversations. And that's just not what it's meant for. That's not what it's designed to do. And that it's not what it's good at. So I still stand by that. I don't know that I would quite jump up and down on the soapbox as much. But yeah, I'd probably jump a couple times.

Augusto Pinaud 7:11I agree on that there is not a conversation tool. But he's what he's been turned for many, many years into the de facto conversation tools. And interestingly enough, even with the text and the video conference, and all that, it is, sadly, what people understand as the conversation tool is what understand, okay, I need 20 people to give input, let's send an email. And yeah, I agree. And I agree with your comment on the return that return received reader receive same as a text message doesn't mean anything I may have read it. That doesn't mean I have the bandwidth to give you the proper answer right there. All that you know, is that you open or that I receive it at all.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:56And I do like that I like to see the I like to see that someone has read it or even opened it....

The Pomodoro Technique

This week on ProductivityCast, we discuss the ever-popular personal productivity technique called the Pomodoro Technique, a time management process developed by Francesco Cirillo. We did a little deeper at the Pomodoro Technique and how it might help you (and even your remote schooling kids!) be more productive.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/104 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 The Pomodoro Technique from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | The Pomodoro Technique

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

Pomodoro Technique

A Formula for Perfect Productivity: Work for 52 Minutes, Break for 17 - The Atlantic

The 60-30-10 rule of time management

Deep Work: The Complete Guide (Including a Step-by-Step Checklist)

Ten Minute Rule for Increased Productivity - The Muse

Unschedule - Anti-Procrastination Productivity System from Neil Fiore - The Now Habit

The 10 Best Pomodoro Timer Apps in 2018

Use PomoDone with Todoist – Todoist Help

FocusBooster

Pomodoro timer for your productivity tool: Trello, Asana, Todoist, Evernote - PomoDoneApp

Esington Glass

Luxafor Timer (you can customize your work-break durations)

Cuckoo (team timer)

Raw Text Transcript | The Pomodoro Technique

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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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:22I'm Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:23I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:24And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode. Today, we are going to be talking about a tried and true productivity methodology known as the Pomodoro Technique. It was, let's say invented, developed by Francisco cirio, an Italian student at the time, and he wanted a way to be able to conquer procrastination. And so he developed this concept of the Pomodoro Technique. Today, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about what the Pomodoro Technique is, if you have never experienced it, before come across it, we're going to then talk about our own experiences with regard to how we use it or don't use it in our systems, and why and even those of us who may be trying it out soon. And then we're going to close out with ways in which you can modify the Pomodoro Technique, because there are ways in which you can adjust and shift it in in different ways. And maybe some tools that are available to all of us for being able to do that. Let's talk first about what the Pomodoro Technique is, who wants to explain the Pomodoro technique for listeners.

Augusto Pinaud 1:23So the Pomodoro Technique, the pommard, let's begin by the word pomodoro. And the Pomodoro comes with the pomodori. That is tomato in in Italian and what the story said, I don't know if that is accurate or not. But that's what the story said is that franciscus Rila, was trying to beat procrastination. And the tool he had at hand was a kitchen timer in the form of a pomodoro. And that's what gives the technique the name. And what he did was tried to change into 25 minutes of concentrated work. And then five minute break after that, and for all that he was using that pomodoro. So and what he was trying to accomplish is count how many, you know, pomodoro he could accomplish and then after for pomodoro, then you take a longer break, you know, 2020 or 20 or 30 minutes, so and what he was trying to accomplish with this was not get more deeper, more. But to beat that procrastination, being able to say, okay, during the next 25 minutes, I'm going to accomplish x and have that physical reminder of that pomodoro ticking in for have in front of him and knowing that at the end of those 25 minutes, he was going to be able to take a five minute break.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:48So that's the Pomodoro Technique in a nutshell. And all you need really is a clock or timer. You don't need one of those tomato timers like Francisco had, but you just need a timer of some kind to be able to track that time. Now. I'm just curious from all of us here. What are our experiences with the Pomodoro Technique? And or why don't we use it in our own worlds. And I'll start off with saying that I actually don't use the Pomodoro Technique all that often. And this episode and just kind of coming up to it. I thought about ways in which I could use it. I don't particularly procrastinate in the way in which I think surreal was attempting to. Well, he developed the system in order for its intended purpose to conquer procrastination, I don't see myself as that type of person. So I just don't do it. The goal is to be able to keep yourself motivated in concentrated work. And for me, I just don't see the technique working all that well for the type of concentrated work that I do. But I've been recently having to do projects where the type of work that he's talking about, which is not studying, but focusing on getting a particular amount of work done. That may work in my world today. And I'm willing to give it a try. So I'm going to I'm going to do a little experiment after this episode is over and just spend two weeks where I actually do use a pomodoro timer and see where my my world is. But I'm curious from the rest of you what your experience has been with the Pomodoro Technique. When did you first learn about it? Did you try to invest in it? And what were your experiences with them?

Francis Wade 4:23I loved it when I tried it the first time. And it really, really worked. And it worked for a while that the 25 minutes not withstanding I could change that to I think 45 minutes or something that suited my my particular workflow 25 was just too short. But the the, the, the concentration and the, the sort of the sprint, the it strikes me as the equivalent of of product developer platform development when they change from their waterfall methods or to using agile and Scrum and that kind of thing. They The idea of going from long sort of vague targets and time slots per day to going to very focused efforts led, followed by a little siesta, you know, a little break. The general principle definitely works in my experience, the specific prescription of 25 minutes and the timer, I don't use, but I definitely use the idea of sprinting, and relaxing afterwards and then sprinting again. So the working really hard on the recovering the what the Pomodoro Technique has given me is the awareness that those are two very different modes that I need to manage. And when I allow them to bleed into each other, or I'm not aware of when I'm working too long, or I'm resting too long, then I lose the the rhythm and the momentum that I do I need to do to have to get my best work done. So I've learned that the principle I think is correct that the specific application is, it's a place to start,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:06I guess. So Francis, from, from your perspective, how did you determine your ideal length of time when it comes to the Pomodoro? As opposed to the break? And then how did you determine the length of break?

Francis Wade 6:20I think in the beginning, the beginning I did the 20 515 was way too short, I think I experimented and thought that maybe I should go for more like 45 and 10, or 50, and 10. And I that worked for a while as well. And then I have built in bricks during the day. So if you look at if you looked at any given day, that I have time blocked, I have I have recurring bricks every single day. And it's a it's a nod in the direction of the Pomodoro Technique, because I'm essentially saying that I need to have regular breaks throughout the day. And if I don't schedule them, they won't happen. So I don't do it based on task, I know do it based on basically the whole day, the 10 hours of the day that I schedule. So I'm using the same technique, but I'm not doing it per task, I'm doing it more like per bucket of activity. And then that changes every day. So I don't I'm not I'm not strict about doing 50 and 10 any longer, I'll do whatever it needs, that needs two hours and half an hour that I do that

Augusto Pinaud 7:25I tried the Pomodoro Technique many, many years ago. But what the problem is, for me the kind of work that I'm doing at the time. So I have talked we have talked and discussed previously, in this podcast about the manager and the maker scheduled, you know, that was based on a Paul Graham article. And the problem for me goes there. If I am on a manager schedule, the Pomodoro technique works pretty well. Mostly because the manager schedule is based on time is that time blocking that Francis's is going I need to be here for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, I have five minute break. And that is structure works relatively well with the P

Using Your Task Management Profile to Focus Changes

Everyone is walking around with self-taught skills in task management. As such, skill levels vary greatly but everyone would like to know where their areas of weakness might lie. In this episode the ProductivityCast team looks at the ways to build a task management profile and how one might interpret a self-assessment.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/103 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 using your task management profile to focus changes from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Using Your Task Management Profile to Focus Changes

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

MyTimeDesign ProfileHow Next-Action Thinking Changes Over Time (Episode 025) - ProductivityCastHolmes-Rahe Stress InventoryLife Events Inventory

Raw Text Transcript | Using Your Task Management Profile to Focus Changes

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

Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:20I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:21I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:23 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24And I'm marquel. wicks. Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to everyone listening here to productivity cast. Today, we are going to be talking about something that's a little bit unique, something that's interesting that I think you'll all find fascinating, which is a task management profile that Francis has put together. And to kind of explain a little bit about what we're going to talk about today. Francis, can you give us a little bit of background in terms of what you've devised.

Francis Wade 0:49I used to be a triathlete. And people who are brand new to triathlon think that trap on is a matter of being a good swimmer, being a good runner and being a good cyclist. And as you progress in the sport, you realize there's a few other dimensions that you also need to be good at, such as lifting weights, nutrition, and rest. So there's at least six disciplines that you need to be really, really good at to be decent triathlete that somebody who doesn't get injured and is able to complete races and starts to be competitive at a particular level. And most of triathlon training is based on individual sports and triathletes Think of how good am I at a given sport? And how can I get better at nice my weakest sport, and I don't need to focus so much on my strongest sport. So they tend to think in terms of separate disciplines? Well, I took the idea, the basic idea of becoming better at a discipline, the idea of breaking down one event into disciplines and took it over into task management, and said, okay, task management is also based on disciplines. And within each discipline, there are particular best practices. And within each best practice, there are levels of accomplishment ranging from people who do things unconsciously. And you could even you could apply that conscious unconscious diagram, where you start off being incompetent, and unconscious, all the way up to being conscious and competent. You may you could apply that to this example. But the idea is that someone starts off just doing and at some point, they become an expert, or someone who is at a world class level. And once I divided task management, so to speak, into different disciplines. I said, Okay, how can you focus on one at a time, because you probably can't improve more than a couple at a time anyway. Because we're just not able to improve that fast in so many different areas. If you knew the different areas, maybe you could focus your efforts and get better faster. And also be somewhat immune from the shiny, shiny object syndrome, where you get distracted by some tip that you've picked up on Reddit, and you're off to the races, perhaps trying to improve something that actually would make no difference overall. So the basic idea started in terms of how can you get better faster? I wanted to talk about two things. One is, how do you figure out your profile very, very quickly, because I wanted us to get over the hump of how do you find out what your profile is. And as an aside, I wanted to, I think I'll put up the simpler version of this chat that I have here, the one that only has the first seven fundamentals, so capturing through listing, but not the others.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:45So we'll post that in the show notes.

Art Gelwicks 3:47Okay, so here's, here's where I go with this. So if you want to talk about every about getting better, faster. The first aside from listening to a Daft Punk song to do that, you need to first I would think, know what you're trying to get better get better at, what are the measuring criteria, that you're going to those areas that you're going to focus? And then what are the thresholds? You describe this as being a triathlete I for some reason I keep picturing this in my son who used to run track ran hurdles for quite a while. And each one of these is a hurdle to get to that end goal. So you have to understand what are the not only the measures? I mean, if he's running 400 yards, that's the measure. But what are the hurdles in the way of getting to that end measure? And each of these different categorization areas, has their own hurdles, they're not all the same. Some people can blew right through them, other people can really struggle with them. So I'd say the first thing is, what are the lanes that we're evaluating? Are you implying that they're the same for everyone or are they different for everyone? Or is there some commonality?

Francis Wade 4:59Right, that's great question. it the way you were, you'd say that a car, every fuel combustion engine, German car, the Stewart from the electrics and any other exotic cars, every car has a fuel system, electrical system, and air system if they have the same basic components, although they may work differently. And in task management, we all have the same component, so to speak the same seven components that are in the diagram in the show notes, essentially capturing, emptying, tasking, acting, those storing, scheduling and listing. And we all perform them, regardless of a Well, once we get into our teens, we're all performing them to some degree. So they all need to work together in order for us to manage our task from the moment of creation, to the moment when the task is complete, and to manage multiple tasks. So where sort of stock so to speak, in this task management world of our own creation, in which we're trying to get stuff done. So yes, it's a bit like seven disciplines, which are all we're all trying to manage at the same time. But without a heck of a lot of awareness, because we're primarily self taught.

Art Gelwicks 6:18So if we take those seven disciplines, then and I'm just going to pull one that you mentioned off the top of my head, the capturing one, let's start with that. One is the example. How, how do I determine what quote level? My capturing skill is at right now? Because I have a perception. But if I sit here, and I look around at all the different ways I capture information, depending on the criteria, I could either be really good at it or terrible at it. I'm not sure what the what's the measure?

Francis Wade 6:49We actually have talked about this on our shows, how does someone know how how well they're doing in anything. So the most expensive ways to have somebody assess you and tell you, which is sort of the doctor patient model, where you're not able to measure your you can't do any, most people can't do an EKG of themselves. So you need someone outside of you to tell you how good you are. So let's call that the first option, option one, an expert does an evaluation. So in terms of capturing it would mean someone is actually watching you do your capturing and then telling you how well you're doing. Most of us can't afford that particular option. So we go to a second one. The second one could be someone says, Well, here's what capturing is, at a very basic level. How well do you think you're doing? Let's call that an initial analysis where you just sort of hear the idea for the first time. And you kind of decide, okay, I think I'm at this level. So someone who reads for example, GTD here's a description, and then makes a determination as to whether or not they need to focus on that area or not. The book doesn't tell you to do that. But that's basically what everyone does. If you figured out you're already doing really well, you say okay, and you put a mental check beside the list in your head, and then you move on to the other areas of the book. Another thing you could do, which I have explored, the ones I'm about to describe, is to put together a quiz....

This week, we bring you our third Productivity App-apalooza! We’ll review three apps each that we know and use, and think you might find value in knowing about and using too! We’ll go in three rounds of the ProductivityCast team.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/102 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 this Productivity App-apalooza #3 from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Productivity App-apalooza! #3

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Productivity App-apalooza! #3

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

Round 1

Art - Do it now: RPG to do listAugusto - AnchorFrancis - Files to SD Card (Android)Files (Google) (Android)Ray - Mind42 (Web only) + FreeMind (Win/macOS/Linux)

Round 2

Art - Habitica: Gamify your tasksRay runs the GTD Party on HabiticaAugusto - Infuse 6Plex / SyncLounge for PlexFrancis - MailTrack (Google Chrome extension)Ray - SendRecurring.com

Round 3

Art - Epic To Do ListSuperBetter (book/iOS/Android) by Jane McGonagal PhDAugusto - FE File ExplorerFrancis - Remo.coZoom / SococoRay - File Juggler (Windows) / Hazel (macOS)

Raw Text Transcript | Productivity App-apalooza! #3

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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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:22 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:23I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:24 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to our listeners to this episode, and we are going to do another exciting episode, we have come to coin as appa Palooza, so this is our third time, where we're going to be doing four rounds, and discussing apps that we use in our everyday productivity systems and enjoy using and we we recommend them to others, and so why not share them with you. So as I said, we're going to go in three rounds, we'll have three rounds. And each of us will give our tool and kind of give you a little bit of explanation behind what it is and why we use it. So let's kick it off. Let's let's get started with this party and go with you art art I have you at first, what is your first app?

Art Gelwicks 1:13Well, I've got a bit of a theme to this app a Palooza since we're in a situation where people are trying to kind of deal with the mental aspects of having a lot of stuff to do, and unfortunately having time to do that. So the theme on mine are gamification, tat or the gamification of tasks. So the first one that I'm talking about is an app called do it now. Now, these are all on Google Play. These are all on Android, I'm sure you can find equivalent ones on iOS, but do it now is an old school style role playing game, but it's done with your task. So if you think about it, from the perspective of something like a Dungeons and Dragons, or that type of a game, what you're doing is you're creating a character into it now of yourself your own stats, the challenges, you create your characteristics, like memory, perception, strength, and you apply those criteria to the things that you need to do, whether they're individual tasks or recurring tasks. I like it because it's a fairly modern style of interface, and you build experience as you move forward. And you can chart those metrics as you move forward to achieve specific goals. So it's a nice way, it's a little bit complex. But it's a nice way to get into this idea of gamifying, the things that you have to do and setting those point goals to help yourself move forward.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:33Because so what's your first app in round one,

Augusto Pinaud 2:36my first app is anchor, and it is an app to record podcast podcast, like this one. It's been an interesting evolution, especially for a person who leaves iPad, only the recording and editing of the past podcast, even the power of the machine has been there for a while has taken longer to really get to reality. And anchor is the first application that allows us to really do that and to really record edit, even save templates. And it is a really easy, powerful way to start doing podcasts on on any device, iOS. iOS, is what I use, but I'm the reason I bring it here, obviously. But it is a really, really nice and powerful blood.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:24Now I happen to use anchor for one of my podcasts just because I needed to make sure that I was using the tool that you know a lot of my small business clients are using and talking about. And so I decided well, let me just use it for that purpose. Even though I'm I'm much more a fan of other podcast hosting services. But I've got to be honest, you know, the the anchor platform is is really quite useful and helpful are what's your experience been with anchor?

Art Gelwicks 3:52Oh, I love it. I've been using anchor since the beginning on my own podcast. From an implementation standpoint it there are some little inconsistencies in the interface between the devices. But to have an application and a platform that you can literally build or record, edit and publish your entire podcast off of your mobile device is pretty slick. I've sat down and I've recorded multiple episodes from inside my car, I've been able to jump around and do the different things I needed to do. And then sit down and say, okay, publish this all right from my phone, I can do it from my desktop also. So yeah, I love it. I use it. I use anchor for all my podcasting.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:28The only only issue that I have come across is that the anchor messages like if someone records the messages and and sends it to you, I had no notification of that because it was only in the app. And so just make sure that you do have the mobile application installed, because then you'll install the app several months later and realize that someone you know some persons have ftu audio messages that you had no idea existed. So just little things like that. You know, and if anger is lifted You know, please give people the ability to see name record their show so that they can have their control over their domain. And yeah, so next up, I have Francis Francis, what's your first app.

Francis Wade 5:12So it's called files to SD card. And it's on Android. And what it does is with a click of a button, you can transfer files from your internal device to your SD card. So it allows you to go through the directory, pick directories, or files, or basically whatever you want. And then with a with a tap habit all get transferred over and for folks who are having WhatsApp users. And if you belong to lots of WhatsApp groups, this is a most just because WhatsApp is doesn't allow you to save directly to the SD card, you have to save to the device, which means that if you are running out of space like I am, then you everyday you have to be moving files or and this is a way to do it in bulk takes about a couple of minutes to run each day, and allows you to keep going. I mean, this game will probably end because I imagined that there are other other programs that have files that I can't transfer. But at least for now, it's allowing me to extend the life of my smartphone.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:11One corollary to this is using the files app on Android. So you know, files to SD card isn't is an Android focused application. And the same thing kind of is being done by files. So there's an application called files, it's an Android app. And when you install it, it walks through your system. Again, it scans your system for things that you can get rid of like detritus, like junk, temporary files, you know, cache files, that kind of thing, but also these large media files that are sitting on your system, whether it be PDFs, mp3, you know, other video files as well. And it'll just give you a list of those so that you can purge them. And and many times, you know, those WhatsApp files are no longer useful. If you're sharing personal content, then why do you care about the GIF that your friends send you? You know, you could just get rid of it. So that's a kind of a secondary piece if people are really trying to save space on the device, and it's doing it semi automatically, because it'll just like prompt you at times and say, Hey, I scanned it, and I can save you x hundreds of megabytes worth of data. And then you could just go through and say okay, like in my case, you know, I found about a gigabyte, or two or 10 worth of excess podcast episodes that had just been sitting on my system from a prior podcast application. And I didn't need that stuff tape, you know, sitting on my system, so it was able to purge those pretty easily. So just check out the files app on Android.

Francis Wade 7:42There's one that comes native, that's called files. But that's not what you're talking about. Right?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:47It is indeed.

...

This was a strange year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a bit of cheer...and by cheer, we mean holiday presents! So, we’re starting a tradition here on ProductivityCast--a holiday gift guide show each year, discussing the gifts we think the productivity enthusiast in your life will enjoy (and perhaps that’s you!). Enjoy our Holiday Gift Guide 2020!

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/101 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 our holiday gift guide 2020 selections from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Holiday Gift Guide 2020

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

Round One

AG: Four Port USB KVM Switch- NotionAP: Side Phone MountFW: Broward Library OverdriveRS: Google Nest Home Hub Max 

Round Two

AG: Sling Shoulder BackpackAP: Zugu Case for Apple Pencil - Ringke Pen SleeveFW: Heart rate monitorRS: Down Dog - Great Yoga Anywhere (and there is a suite of apps that include yoga (with yoga nidra for sleep), HIIT, barre, 7 minute yoga, and prenatal yoga) + Calm

Bonus Gifts

AG: Leather Work ApronAP: Apple AirPodsFW: Blood pressure monitorRS: The Home Edit Life: The No-Guilt Guide to Owning What You Want and Organizing Everything by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin

Raw Text Transcript | Holiday Gift Guide 2020

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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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:25 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode, I'm really excited because we are coming near the end of the year. And that means holiday gifts, we get a chance to talk to you about really holiday gifts that you might want to ask your loved ones, your caring individuals in your home to purchase for you. Or these might be gifts that might be useful to another personal productivity enthusiast in your life. And so what we're going to do today is we're going to cover some gifts that we think particularly enthusiasts would enjoy knowing about and receiving as a gift. And so with that, let's do a round robin episode, where each of us talks about one gift at a time. And some of us probably know about the gifts, some of us probably have questions about the gifts you chose. And and we'll just kind of go from there. So with that, art, I'm going to pick on you first, what is your first holiday gift choice? Well,

Art Gelwicks 1:27my first one is, it's kind of mundane, but it's really useful if you're in an environment where you're working with multiple computers. And those of us we're working from home now often find ourselves in that case, I personally have multiple devices that I need to interact with. So what I'm highlighting is what's called a four port, USB KVM, which is keyboard video mouse switch. And what it is, it's a little box that has four cables coming off of it each with an HDMI port, and a USB cable that plugs into your computers. And off of that box, there is also a regular HDMI cable that goes to your external monitor. And there's a USB port that you can or USB ports that you plug your external keyboard and your external mouse in. And what it all comes down to is a little box that sits on your desk with four buttons on it. And just by hitting one of those buttons, you switch to that computer. And the external monitor switches to that device, the keyboard switches that device and the mouse switches to that device. I've been through a lot of these over the years with varying degrees of success. Sometimes the monitors will work well. But the keyboards and the mice won't switch over all kinds of crazy things. This one I'm highlighting for in the show notes is the only one I found so far that has worked consistently from day one. It's smart enough to switch to a device when you turn that device on without actually having to hit the button. And the fact that has a nice long remote switch box. So you can take all the cables and everything and tuck it into your cable management system and have this little switch box sitting on your desk and just push a button and switch computers. It's really, really useful when you think about just trying to be productive on multiple devices.

Francis Wade 3:21What's cable management system, I need one of those.

Art Gelwicks 3:25For me, it's the real dark area underneath my desk that happens to be behind the cabinets. that's usually where the large dust bunnies live, and come out and visit me every so often. So other people are a bit more organized about it. Actually, it's kind of funny, you mentioned that because if you look on sites like Reddit, and you do a search for cable management, there are entire subreddits just about pictures of beautifully organized cables, like in server areas and behind desks. And it makes me very jealous. But I know my cables will never get that way. So

Augusto Pinaud 3:58but you know that he's done. He's like, like when you see the planners, you see this color and these people who have these artistic abilities, especially on the paper planners, and I look at them and I say, Wow, the mind never will look like that doesn't matter. If you tell me you're never going to do anything other than organize that planner. It's never going to

Art Gelwicks 4:19Yeah, it's it's the Sistine Chapel. I mean, it's a beautiful thing, you admire it, but you're not laying on your back to paint it anytime soon.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:25And so for those of you who are unaware, KVM stands for keyboard video mouse. And I'm curious from your experience art, what are some of the reasons why you would recommend a KVM switch to a productivity enthusiast or someone who is buying this for productivity enthusiast? And really in the in the sense of I'm trying to get to the question, which is more like around different situations where this might work. I mean, like obviously the work from home situation. I'm not sure how many people are going to have multiple computers. But when you do, what are the what are kind of the peripherals, so to speak, that really helped to make this better? Like, do you have a specific keyboard, a specific mouse a specific monitor that you feel like works really well in this environment with that KVM switch?

Art Gelwicks 5:17Actually, it's, I'm glad you brought that up, because for me, it's more, it's much more than the key, the keyboard video and mouse component, the mouse is a big thing, because you only have to have one mouse on your desk, the keyboard, I have an external backlit keyboard that I've been using for years. And it's not so much that I like it, it's the fact that again, I only have to have one on my desk. So limited space necessitates switching things around. But because this works with the USB hub that I have, I'm able to have my webcam, jump from device to device, I'm able to have my headset, jump from device to device, even my boom mic, I can switch from device to device, just by pushing one button on the switch. And everything flips over. The only only hiccup I've had with it is sometimes it won't necessarily recognize the first when I hit the button to switch devices. And to fix it, all I have to do is switch to a different device and switch back and then everything wakes up. It's usually the computer that doesn't recognize the USB change more than it is anything else. But I could absolutely see if you had your personal computer, a work computer and a Chromebook, for example. And you wanted to use one nice monitor, keyboard and mouse, this is a perfect way to do that. Because you could stack those devices up on a rack next to you. You don't even have to have them open. And it's like you have three separate desktop units, even though they're still truly laptops.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:46Yeah, I really like KVM switches, and I have been a fan of them for years. So this is a great choice. For someone who really wants to level up their productivity like I do, I really am a big fan of having multiple devices so that I'm able to open up a set of like a project on one screen and then move over to another one and be working on that and the to not impeding on each other. And I don't I don't know why. But my brain just works really well when it's compartmentalised on its own device, and its own kind of situation just sitting there waiting for me. So I really like that. And sometimes I also like having my task manager, my calendar, and my notes all on a separate device. So I can see those things out of the corner of my eye while I'm working on a main screen. But it's also helpful to kind of have it if you have it on a, you know, a primary device....

We've reached 100 episodes! And, in honor of that, we hosted a live show and discussed our favorite of the first 99 episodes. Thanks to everyone who attended live and joined in the conversation, and here's to the next 100 episodes. Here's to your productive life, everyone.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/100 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 this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | ProductivityCast Live, 100th Episode

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | ProductivityCast Live, 100th Episode

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdvOjYrck_0

Raw Text Transcript | ProductivityCast Live, 100th Episode

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 0:01Hello, and welcome everybody to productivity cast to Episode 100, our live episode. So, for those of you who are listening to the podcast, welcome back to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:23I'm a good scooping up.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26You're muted Francis.

Francis Wade 0:30I'm Francis Glade.

Art Gelwicks 0:32And Hi, Mark ellex.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:34Oh, Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to everybody who is watching us live. And so just a couple housekeeping items. Since we are doing this episode live, those of you who are listening after the fact, you can go ahead and of course, you know, listen, those of you who are watching live, you can comment. So wherever you are watching across the many different platforms. Go ahead and comment and we'll see that comment here in the dashboard, and we'll be able to respond to them. So if you have a question or a comment, feel free to, you know, share those, and we can go ahead and place them on screen as well as discuss those items. What I wanted to do today, in and in honor of our 100th episode, I can't believe we have gotten through this many episodes together. And I'm very excited for us to have gotten to this milestone, both at 50,000 downloads in under 100 episodes. And now here at our hundredth episode and running, what I want to do is just cover a little bit about what has been kind of our most popular content on on so far. So some of you may not have listened to all 100 episodes, as I have in preparation for today. And then when when all of us kind of started in the process of joining ProductivityCast. And doing this, we each have come across in our past 100 episodes, some of our favorite episodes. And so I wanted us to kind of go round robin and discuss maybe some of the more favorite aspects of some of the episodes throughout that. And then we'll close out with some of our thoughts for what we might cover in future productivity casts. And maybe get some of your thoughts as well, because I'm sure that you all have some suggestions maybe that you would like to hear from us discuss in that category. So with that out of the way, let's talk about the first thing, which is what has been our Julie best raise, noting that you're muted is the catchphrase of 2020. You're absolutely right, Julie.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:38It is, it is the thing that I feel like I say the most to people in every zoom meeting and every other kind of video chat meeting as well. But I thought this was really fascinating. And what I wanted to do was kind of cover the most viewed episodes of all of our world, we distribute ProductivityCast not just through the podcast, but also through YouTube and a number of different other channels. Because of that, and and what I what I found was that the ProductivityCast itself ranks in the top 10 in global ranking according to listen notes. So on my first and foremost thought is just thank you to all of you who listen and watch the episodes on YouTube. And otherwise, I mean, you guys really have made this such a wonderful community and a wonderful aspect of our week. You know, a gousto Francis and art, we we get together every Monday morning and record. And it's the first experience I have of every week sitting down with these gentlemen and talking about personal productivity, something that we're all passionate about and passionate about helping you all be more productive, and spreading the word that people can have more successful and just stress free lives. Through implementing the strategies that we talked about, that are not all ours, you know that we're really standing on the shoulders of giants, and sometimes standing on the shoulders of just everyday people who have had great experiences, and they've shared those experiences. And then we share those with you. And some of the topics that I just thought were really interesting. One is that our topic on indecision is by far our most listened to podcast episode, and followed up by that is the productivity planners episode. So if you have not listened to those two episodes, those by far are our highest listen to episodes in terms of podcast episodes, followed just shortly behind that by personal compound. Now if you combined episodes into topics, I just thought everybody would like to know that GTD is by far the most listened to topic listened to on the ProductivityCast world and that doesn't make that makes quite a bit of sense. Considering the amount I talk about GTD all the time, but we have 13 episodes dedicated to getting things done and the various aspects of it and so it makes a lot of sense that that ends up being a quite a big part of it. evening routine And morning routines are a big topic. So our bullet journal. Now if we turn to YouTube, this is really fascinating to me, because by far on YouTube, the most listened to episode is the one on mind mapping, it continues to skyrocket in terms of numbers. So there's something about YouTube and the people on YouTube that just really love to listen and learn about mind mapping. And, and some mind mapping is the is the biggest one that we have found on YouTube. So I just thought it would be interesting that if you have not listened to any of those episodes, it's full well worth listening to, or, you know, those episodes because they happen to be our most popular ones. So it must have been our best content, right. So with that in mind, let's turn ourselves over to the topics of our favorite topics so far. And I'm going to turn it over to you art, what was your first favorite episode of our past 100. And why?

Art Gelwicks 6:01It's interesting, because when we started this exercise, we realized we were getting to 100. And going back and looking at some of the old episodes, I was trying to figure out which episodes got me the most fired up about the particular topic, and also retains relevancy today. So the one of my top ones is Episode 59. It's where we dove into the idea of Open Office plans and the benefits and the downsides of operating an open office. And initially, I'm like, well, Does that even make sense anymore? Is that even remotely relevant, especially with where we are right now? And then I realized that, yes, it is totally, completely 100% relevant, because so many of these open office layouts now, we can't use, they aren't set up in a way that work with this new world that we're operating in. And we have to start thinking about, how does, how does this change, where we are trying to get work done. And now we're going to go back to an environment that is completely altered from the way we left it. So digging into this idea of open office spaces, to me, is a continuing, ongoing, evolve, evolving conversation that we need to have. Not only is the people who work in the environments, but the people who make the recommendations. And we have to start pursuing this even in more detail now. So this is one of those episodes that I love to go back and listen to because we haven't had an answer for it yet. And I don't think we're going to anytime soon.

Augusto Pinaud 7:48It is interesting, because that episode, the set of conditions that exist before that, that are assumptions we have when we record that episode, I'm not sure they even exist anymore. So we will need to go from back to the drawing board and reconfigure things that even at this particular point, we don't know.

Art Gelwicks 8:12Right, I that's one of the things that jumped out at me. When we recorded it at that time, the client work I was doing, I was sitting at basically a communal table with five other people 10 monitors across five people, or 12 monitors across six people, just a tight, close knit environment. And the way the office plan was laid out, you were in a spot and literally, you could just reach over and touch the person next to you, you were that close. That's not going to be the case. And that's a completely different ballgame. And if we think about people who are now working remotely, and then going back to that those designs have to be reset. And if we're used to working certain ways in those environments, being able to lean over the person next year and talk to them about something that's not going to be the case anymore. So our productivity will naturally have to change as the geography of where we're working changes as well.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:13Yeah,...

On this week’s ProductivityCast, we discuss the merits and demerits of all-in-one productivity tools, the likes of Outlook and its competitors on the market. Can they be good for your personal productivity system? Do they work at scale in an organization? Listen and let us know your thoughts.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/099 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 All-in-One Productivity Systems—Good or Bad? from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | All-in-One Productivity Systems—Good or Bad?

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | All-in-One Productivity Systems—Good or Bad?

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

Outlook

Mailbird

Thunderbird

HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes)

TimeMatters (and BillingMatters)

17hats

Freshworks suite

Station

Shift

Bella

Zapier

IFTTT

iMacros

TextExpander

Alfred

ActiveWords 4

ClipMenu

Jobs To Be Done theory

Raw Text Transcript | All-in-One Productivity Systems—Good or Bad?

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

Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Voiceover Artist And that's it for this ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things productivity, with your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

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

On this week’s ProductivityCast, we discuss the merits and demerits of Staying Productive with good cybersecurity practices. This is part 2 of 2. Listen and let us know your thoughts.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/098

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 Staying Productive with good cybersecurity - Part Two from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Staying Productive with good cybersecurity - Part Two

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Staying Productive with good cybersecurity - Part Two

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

Raw Text Transcript | Staying Productive with good cybersecurity - Part Two

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

Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Voiceover Artist And that's it for this ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things productivity, with your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

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

On this week’s ProductivityCast, we discuss the merits and demerits of Staying Productive with good cybersecurity practices. This is part 1 of 2. Listen and let us know your thoughts.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/097 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 Staying Productive with good cybersecurity - Part one from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Staying Productive with good cybersecurity - Part one

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Staying Productive with good cybersecurity - Part one

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

HaveIBeenPwned

Firefox Monitor

Google Chrome Passwords

Shodan Monitor

Spyse (business)

VPNs - why, what and how / DOH

Password managers + security keys + authenticator apps

LastPass, 1Password, Dashlane, Bitwarden, Enpass, KeePass, Keeper

Firewalla / firewalls in your routers

Privacy.com

Two Factor Auth (2FA) 

Fair Ad Blocker plugin

Raw Text Transcript | Staying Productive with good cybersecurity - Part one

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

Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Voiceover Artist And that's it for this ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things productivity, with your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

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