ProductivityCast

The ProductivityCast team was having a conversation about our generational perspectives on technology and how they affect views about personal productivity. So, we decided to turn on the recording and share with you that conversation. What are your thoughts about how generations think differently about technology vis-a-vis productivity?

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/096 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 Generational Perspectives on Technology from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Generational Perspectives on Technology

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Generational Perspectives on Technology

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

Raw Text Transcript | Generational Perspectives on Technology

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 0:24 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.

In this week's show, we discuss how our mobile productivity usage was and has mobile productivity changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and how that may apply to your own personal productivity systems.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/095 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 how has your mobile productivity changed 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 | How Has Your Mobile Productivity Changed in the Current Circumstance?

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

Coronavirus productivity data: How the pandemic is changing the way we use digital devices, apps, and tools

Raw Text Transcript | How Has Your Mobile Productivity Changed in the Current Circumstance?

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 0:19 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:21I'm Francis Wade.

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

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:27Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of productivity cast. Today, what we're going to be doing is talking about how mobile really has changed how you've been affected how mobile has changed in and around the current circumstance of the Coronavirus and the covid 19 pandemic, really. And what we'd like to do is talk about early on in the pandemic, as well as our current status. And to talk a little bit about how mobile is a part of your system, kind of going into the future, how you're going to make it a part or not make it a part of your system, and how we're really approaching those pieces in our own productivity systems. And then I'd like to close us out with thinking about how kind of philosophically maybe mobile technology, whether that be the OEMs as well as the providers of all of the various software technologies can adapt to the changing nature of work as we make our way through and out of the pandemic on the other side of this. And there's so many things happening and changing in that world. I'm just curious about everybody's thoughts there. So let's start off with where we began in terms of before the the novel coronavirus, SARS co v2 really came about how were How do you feel like you were using technology? And how do you feel like most people around you were using mobile technology,

Augusto Pinaud 1:45it is interesting to see the use of mobile productivity. And not only it's easy to discuss how this has evolved over time, but more interesting how it is almost really clear that three stages into since we are starting this pandemic in March, you know the pre the pre pandemics. So before we were all sent into our new offices and at home and not being able to get out an old dad, the earliest stages of the pandemic where there was this component of uncertainty, but now we were at home, but we have all these mobile technology that we were not using, and where we are now, you know, seven months after this, and how people is getting back to really reevaluate, you know, before all the pandemic we have discussed. And many people have discussed about how the technology and the use of this mobile technology had evolve. But when we got into the real deal, the pandemic thing, people discover that most of the things they were doing before it stopped working I I had the opportunity to work, great deal people who their issue was that they simply change everything. And they were trying to use the same ideas on the same team techniques that they were using before. So and now they have come to a new way to do the things and to use this technology and to use these mobile technology that really fits their new workflow and the new way they work and the new things are doing. So that's that's a change that in most cases, or at least in most cases of the people, I have the opportunity to talk and discuss this topic, they have been able to see a clear distinction on this stages.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:54Funny enough for me, I don't feel like my use of mobile technology has fluctuated all that much. And it's probably a consequence of the fact that I don't like typing on screens, and that I have a much greater productive output on a full size keyboard. And so I've really avoided using mobile technologies for any amount of heavy lifting. And so I have relegated or you know, specified mobile technologies, whether that be tablets or my phone for the the work that I want it to do, and only that work. And so expanding upon that work has been a slow kind of progress. I've been doing more and more work on those smaller form factors, but it has been very metered. And I've thought a lot about how I'm using it. So I have an external keyboard for the iPad that I have. I have an external keyboard for the, for my phone, and I don't particularly like using the phone and, and keyboard for many things at all, I just don't. And so like before the pandemic, that was kind of how I approached it in the first place, I'm, I'll probably correct myself and say that I've, I've probably used the iPad more since kind of the first lockdown. And that's just as an factor of wanting a little bit more mobility with regard to like getting things done in different places, they're not things that I couldn't have just done with a laptop. So it's it's more just kind of variety is kind of a pull for variety, if I'm thinking thinking this through. But the main goal for me is to actually be seated at a full size keyboard with all of my assets, resources, that is processing power in front of me. And so the minor times when I'm, I feel the the urge to go someplace else and do a little bit of work for change of pace is, is probably very miniscule, comparative to the amount of work that I do when I sit at the desk, and I have all of my devices in front of me. And those mobile technologies are our single purpose. And they support what I'm doing on a primary or primary and secondary machine,

Francis Wade 6:40I think I'm exactly the same way, I use their one or two apps that I have to use on mobile, because like Instagram, for example. Because they don't really exist on desktop in the same way. A couple others. But I'm exactly the same way my workflow has not changed much because of the pandemic. I've been working from home since 1993. And I put a lot of thought into what my office should look like. And it's always been an at home office. So when the pandemic hit, nothing really changed my day to day other than I spent less time away from the office. So for me, it was a bit of the opposite. But the single use single use ideal is one I've shared before on prior podcasts. And my tablet is is just for comm songs, consumption, it's in my living room, it kind of lives there. My phone is just for convenience, used to be when I was on the road, and no, it's when I want to do something in an unusual spot, like I'm laying in my hammock hammock in my outside, then I only use my phone to check email or look at Facebook. But 95% of what counts 90% of what counts happens at my desktop. And it's a function of the speed, the screen size, the keyboard, the the ease of having everything in front of me and also the ability to close distractions, because now I have my own office, my own rooms. So it's geared for particular kinds of results that are almost impossible to get in other places or with other devices. So it's where I've made it easy to get the job done other places, I could kind of get it done. But boy, it's you know, just that little keyboard on my phone getting anything decent written or trying to move between multiple screens or multiple apps. Ooh, boy, it's very, very hard. So I think I am more or less in alignment with what you said.

Art Gelwicks 8:55Alright, I'm gonna play the counterpoint to all this. Let's take a look at it. For the past five years, I've been working in a primarily client, office location based mode, which is literally live out of a bag, pack everything up in the morning, go to the site, do the work, come home. Very little was left there. Matter of fact, every day when I would leave, you could look at my desk and say, Does somebody actually even work here? Because I think the only thing I would leave behind is maybe a coffee cup. So when we think about mobile, and we think about the pandemic, and we think about all these different changes. To me, the past part, I think the three of you are talking about it exactly the way most people think about mobile, which is it's a secondary convenience channel to the information that you normally utilize from your established workspace. So if it's a web based application, maybe there's an app on your phone that you can erase interact with the same set of data. So you can A quick look up,...

Mind maps are ancient theory, but they’re not ancient history! Since the concept of mind mapping was popularized by Dr. Tony Buzan’s work in the 1970s, they have become a staple in academy and productivity circles in the past 20 years especially. Learn how the ProductivityCast team uses mind maps in their personal productivity systems, and how you might want to use them, too!

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/094 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 How mind mapping fits your productivity system 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 | How mind mapping fits your productivity system

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

Tony Buzan books on mind mapping

FreeMind

Active Words 4

SimpleMind

Mindjet Mindmanager

Mindnode

Mind42

Workflowy

TheBrain

Raw Text Transcript | How mind mapping fits your productivity system

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 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

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

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25

Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we're going to talk about mind mapping. And if you don't know what a mind map is, then you've come to the right episode, because we're going to talk about what mind mapping is, and how it fits into each of our productivity systems, if at all, and how it might fit into your personal productivity system as a tool in your toolkit. And so what I wanted us to do was to first talk about what a mind map is, and to kind of kick the tires on the definition of a mind map, which is very malleable. And then talking about how we might use or do use mind maps, and then ultimately, some of the mind mapping software that we all use in the context of our systems. So let's start first with a mind map. And I'll just start with the sense that a mind map is a third century invention, if you want to call it that. But the concept of a mind map is very early dated in our history, and is in essence, a visual diagram. It has a hierarchy, where nodes, individual thoughts, if you want to call it that are connected to other thoughts. And they are hierarchical, because you have a parent thought, child and sibling thoughts or nodes that are connected to one another visually beyond that there's very wide latitude in terms of defining a mind map, who wants to tackle what a mind map is. And this comes from a conversation I had recently

Francis Wade 1:55

where I found that I was doing them wrong, I'm informed by a practice that I picked up that was incorrect. But a mind map is intended to be intended to be a nonlinear brainstorm on paper, where you're you have a central node or a central question is how I know learned it. And you answer the question in this nonlinear kind of way, where your your mind is allowed to put anything anywhere on the people. There's no order and no necessary connection between the way you're basically downloading your thoughts. And as you download your thoughts onto paper, more thoughts popping that are connected to the things that you're writing, or they're unconnected, what you just keep adding, adding, adding, adding. So it's a little bit like that brainstorming session in which you spend the first part of it just collecting ideas on an uncensored kind of way. And I found that I was I was I had fallen into a trap of doing it in a structured way, which defeats the purpose of the brainstorming and the creative element of it the nonlinear, kind of allowing your mind just to run free and to allow it to collect on paper. So my my definition

Art Gelwicks 3:10

for me mind mapping, and I've done mind mapping for years, I consider mind mapping the visualization of ideas, being able to provide those direct interconnects between ideas, to really facilitate the process of coming up with new ones and making sure things don't get missed. It is very visually heavy. So I define it as exactly as its name says it is a map of what's rattling around in your mind at that time. And we have to think about it that way. Because everybody who if you ask them what a mind map is, they either have no concept whatsoever, or the one I've got more commonly is they have this incredibly detailed, visually colorful design of conceptual and theoretical models around ideas and oh, it's just they're beautiful, but boy, are they impractical. To me, it's a happy medium, it is literally just a map to the thoughts around a particular topic. and allowing that map to lead itself wherever that topic needs to go. Which I think is probably the more important part

Augusto Pinaud 4:28

mine mind map is it's an interesting tool and has always been a tool for me in the sense that it break the linear thinking and allows you to make sure you don't get stuck into loops thinking you know one of the problem sometimes when people are thinking is they go 1456678 and then go back 678678678 and they they go to stock mine man allows you to go on a spending that, but also helps you to break those loops. So that way you can do better things. That way you can get things actually accomplished. So it is a, it is a tool that I use often. And as proved to be really effective for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:23

I'll disagree with Francis on just a minor note here, which is that while he thinks he was doing mind mapping wrong, I believe there's no wrong way to do mind mapping. And so the challenge is to actually relinquish this notion that there is a right way. And think about it in the perspective that there are skills associated with various types of mind mapping tools. So the type of Mind Map you're creating will dictate the, the skills you use, but the reality is, is that if you want to use mind mapping for brainstorming, go for it, if you want to do mind mapping for note taking Go for it. Mind Mapping was in at least modernity popularized by Dr. Tony Buzan. And he had a television show on the BBC back in the in the early 70s. I believe it was and he has written many books and published before his his passing a couple of years ago, Mind Mapping today has traditionally been used as a creative tool, because of Dr. museums, making the term Mind Map popular and the the tool popular as a as a creative tool. But reality is, is that it's a you know, if you want to call it a spider diagram, if you want to call it a visual diagram, or what have you. It is a it is a form of capturing thoughts and rearranging thoughts potentially, if you are using something that can rearrange thoughts, I guess pencil and an eraser would allow you to rearrange thoughts as well. But they allow you to connect thoughts to one another. And this this whole notion of a mind map is interesting when you're thinking about it from a personal productivity perspective, because it can be used in so many different arenas. I know individuals who use mind mapping software as their complete GTD system. I know people who use mind mapping software as a function for brainstorming, as Francis was talking about. I know folks who use mind mapping for note taking in in courses and lectures, and workshops and seminars. And that's how they take notes. So there was just so much flexibility and interest in the function of a mind map that my number one, I think tip is don't limit yourself in terms of what and how you can use a mind map. And once we get into some of these techniques, one of the things I do is link mind maps to mind maps. So my software allows me to say Oh, you know what, this node is actually a whole other Mind Map. And so therefore, you have this relational database, this database that connects one mind map to another, which are independent thoughts, but are connected by some central construct. Let's talk about how mind maps fit into your own systems. And I'm going to start with you, Francis, because what you said, was really interesting in the sense that you perceive that you were doing this wrong. And so how does mind mapping out today fit in your system? And what do you do with that brainstorming? Once you've done it? And that free form? How do you do it? Do you do a paper and pen? Are you doing it in software? And what does that process look like? For you?

Francis Wade 8:36

I think I think your your qualification was point on and well taken there. The reason I made the comment about doing it wrong was because there was something I was leaving out when I was doing my mind mapping. So the most most of my mind mapping is done on paper, and it's to prepare for a presentation or a speech. So I'm I'm I'm trying to prepare him get my ideas together for some kind of,...

Today on ProductivityCast we discussed some of our favorite non-digital productivity gear.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/093 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 non-digital productivity gear 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 | Non-Digital Productivity Gear

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

Dymo LetraTag LT-100H Portable Label MakerPilot FriXion Ball Clicker Erasable Gel Pens, Fine Point, Blue InkRocketbook BeaconsTargus Podium CoolpadLARQ water bottleLevenger Pocket BriefcaseCross Tech3+ stylusSqueeze BallDecaf CoffeeWhiteboard

Raw Text Transcript | Non-Digital Productivity Gear

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 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

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

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners today to this episode. Today, what we wanted to do is we wanted to get a little bit non techie with some non digital technology, I suppose. But what we're going to do today is an episode on non digital productivity gear that we all use in our everyday lives in our in our productivity systems, that help us be more productive, and hopefully will help you be more productive in knowing about them. Even if you don't use the exact products we use, we you can find the things that we are talking about, and they might help you be more productive. And so what we're going to do is go around Round Robin, and each of us will describe what the tool is and why we use it and how we use it in our own systems. And that brings me to our first item, I'm going to go with art galax art, what was your first choice of your gear?

Art Gelwicks 1:22Well, these aren't in any particular order. But the first thing I'll pull out here is my favorite little Dymo, letter tag, portable label maker. I mean, we've all seen one of those label makers before with the keyboard on the top, type it in. And it makes that lovely little mechanical sound as it spits the label out the side. Well, I'm just looking around my office right now, I've got cabinets labeled, I've got folders labeled, I've got drawers labeled, it's amazing how important it is just to know what something is without having to open it and route around in it. And it helps get past that hole out of sight out of mind issue that you can run into so often. So that's that's probably my first thing. I don't know that it's necessarily the best label maker. There's tons of them out there. And technically, it's digital. But to me, it's very straightforward. And it's very simple. And it just does the one job that it's supposed to do. And it does it very well.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:19So what do you find that you use it the most for?

Art Gelwicks 2:23I would have to say it's it is primarily for my file folders. And for labeling drawers and cables, it is just that consistent thing where I want to be able to have something clear and easy to read from a distance. Plus, I want that consistency of visual. I'm a little bit of a design geek when it comes to that type of thing. So when I look at, for example, manila folders, I like that consistency of being able to go through and just have all the tabs uniform. So it's very easy to flip through and identify things. So there aren't, there aren't specific things. The one thing I do use it for though, which I don't know that everybody necessarily does. I use it for labeling cables, and power supplies. Because if you look in a box, for example, we usually wind up with like seven or eight different power supplies, they all look the same, but they have different voltages and things like that. And I'll admit, it's getting a little hard for me to read that fine print. So I'll take the most important information on there such as which computer it's supposed to go to or what its output voltages and label and just put it back on the back of the power supply so I can get to it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:29I've been using a brother p touch 1100 q l for many, many years. And it's just one of those workhorses that takes a lickin and keeps on ticking. And so I've had it for so long, and it just keeps working. And so it has the cartridges you put into it. And you can type all kinds of things into it and save it and then print on demand. And yeah, I've I've actually looked into the brother, I forget which model that one is. But it you plug it into your computer, and you can print directly from the machine, various labels, but I've just really never gotten over the tactile control you have with the buttons on the P touch 1100 qL. So,

Art Gelwicks 4:11yeah, that and that's I think that's the interesting part about those kinds of label makers. I've tried for years to use, like inkjet labels and laser printer labels and the setup and the work, you can do some neat stuff, don't get me wrong, but the setup and the effort just takes so much time away from actually accomplishing what you're trying to do. The label makers are just just that they're just straightforward. Like do the job they get back in the drawer until the next time they do the job. I looked at some of the desktop ones where they do the single label on demand. And I'm like, okay, that's fine, but I don't generate that many labels. What I do I generate a bunch, but otherwise it's just going to be sitting there tying up desk space, and it's not really getting me any benefit at that point. I want something I can use And put away when I'm done with it. So I will stick with this until it dies. And then I will probably buy another one that looks exactly like it.

Augusto Pinaud 5:08Mine is also Dymo Letratag. So even more basic model than, than the one you have is the most basic one of the lateral tag. And he was actually what I got when when I begin doing my first getting things done swap. So we're talking about 2002 I think 2003 when when I got mine and it died, okay, it only lasts so long. And I went and replace it for the same one because of the I had the card that juice and I love the fact that in that one, you can even replace and use paper or you can use plastic. So I have a couple of different things for for different purpose. If I want waterproof, then I have one that he's made of plastic so that way I can label that. And it is really interesting how good it is to to have that I have never even considered going into a Desktop space where anything is wrong when I need it. I just can't pull it out and print what I need and continue with my life is a really, really a fantastic tool.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:14Elisa, what's your first pick of your non digital productivity gear?

Augusto Pinaud 6:18You know, the first one I'm going to pick is a 11 year pocket briefcase. I take notes. And not every note even that I take a lot of notes on my iPad Mini. Not every meeting is good to bring the iPad Mini there is still a lot of people who feels that if you have the device on the table, you're not paying attention to which index cards are your best ally. I don't have notebooks because I don't want to carry notebooks because it's not every meeting that I need to to use it but i have i bought years ago this love in your pocket briefcase on basically, it's a fancy way to carry the index card. But he works really, really well for these kind of things. I can have a main card, and then it has a couple of buckets that you can put clean one and the ones you just use for process. And it has been a fantastic tool for over the years.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:18So how much can it really carry? Like how much stuff can you shove into it?

Augusto Pinaud 7:25Well, right now I have one I have right now 12 clean index cards. And I can probably go until 36 index cards.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:41Okay, not bad.

Art Gelwicks 7:42Yeah, it's interesting. If I think back in the day, they used to talk about the levenger pocket notebook in combination with an old thing called the hipster PDA, where you would actually build out your own personal organizer using index cards in a binder clip. But if you wanted to do it more on the high end, you would couple it with one of the levenger pocket briefcases to give you a nicer place to actually capture the notes on the index cards and then transfer them over into the analog PDA. It's been around a little while.

Augusto Pinaud 8:14It's been around for a really long time. Yeah. And they are. Again, I don't know how old How old is this thing. But it's been it's been with me for a long time.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:25Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you. All right. So I picked the for my first item. It's still a little bit techie,...

Augusto recently had an epiphany about turning an older Microsoft Surface he had laying around, that wasn’t quite working (Augusto, you can clarify for listeners), into a Chromebook. And, we thought it would be a fun, techie episode for us to discuss how to do so. Also, we discuss how choosing the right technology upgrade or retirement strategies can help sustain and renew the only known celestial body in this vast universe that supports human life. (We’ll give some ideas at the end of this cast.)

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/092 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 Turn your Old Laptop into a Chromebook from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Turn your Old Laptop into a Chromebook

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Turn your Old Laptop into a Chromebook

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

Raw Text Transcript | Turn your Old Laptop into a Chromebook

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.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26

Welcome gentlemen and to our listeners today to this episode of productivity cast, where we will be discussing a wonderful world of replacing technology. In essence, Augusto recently had I'll call it an epiphany, about turning an older Microsoft Surface he had laying around that wasn't quite working, and Augusto is going to clarify for you all what actually happened. And then he turned that into a Chrome OS, device, a Chromebook, in essence, and so we thought it would be fun, you know, a little techie episode for us to talk about how he did so. And then after that, we're going to really discuss the broader discussion of how do we spend time and resources regarding upgrading replacing technology, and so on, so forth. So I'm gonna turn it over to you, Augusto, in terms of how did you give new life to your old Microsoft Surface?

Augusto Pinaud 1:21

Well, you know, part of part of what I do is helping small business owners and coaching businesses, sometimes understanding what they need technology wise, you know, years ago, people will go and jump and get a new machine and faster machine. And in many cases, that was justified, that was how software was, but now that software has evolved and a lot of it happened on a browser happened online, really, we have discovered that we don't need necessarily that much more power as we used to. So the problem was the solutions you used to have on the past was get unbuilt line is a Linux machine. And that is fine and dandy. Except that requires you to be a little bit more geeky, even that now the UI on many of those Linux distros are a lot more friendly, still require a certain level of geekiness to go and adjust that and unsolvable the problem. So I happen to have a dead Microsoft Surface. The hard drive is that this says Surface Pro two. And the hard drive was it belonged to a client of mine. And after we discovered what it was, it was dead, and Microsoft don't fix them because it's all glued together in a way that basically they broke more than what they survive. Microsoft basically tells you good luck. So client leave the machine with me as a dead machine. And it was instead of in the trash on one of the shelves, because that's what happened, I was actually looking for a tablet that I could use to record this another podcast. So I did not need to carry the MacBook with me. That's how these ideas start. So the Microsoft Surface had a micro SD slot hidden on the back. So what I went was I stopped in an electronic store and buy a superfast micro SD, put it in the back and use that as the main hard drives. After I did that. Then I went to a website called Cloud ready ready.com. And they have a free distro of a version of Chrome OS, chromium. So I installed that and basically that create a full Chrome OS machine. After I have done that I have used that same thing into a couple of my clients, allowing them to get back to live a lot of all technology that they have laying around. The reality is that is most of your business leaves on the cloud. And you don't use any specific platform software, you can leave in this machine's forever from I have been recruiting now for three or four months to podcast and other things with this Chrome OS machine on a machine that technically is that so it has been a really fun project and a great reminder to myself as well as my clients. What we can do to reuse technology really, if you see this machine, except that you see the Microsoft logo on the front. There is no other thing that will make you think that he said reuse machine or even though the hard drive inside is that

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:50

so for folks who are interested if you have a machine hanging around that is maybe lagging or slow or maybe even In a good news case where it's not operable, you may be able to bring it back to life. And so a gousto, I think you're going to have some links in the show notes for folks to check out the various tutorials and whatnot that you use to be able to make that happen.

Augusto Pinaud 5:14

Yes, and the process is pretty simple. And cloud ready is free, at least for one machine, if you want their support, they have programs for supports that you can get, but mostly, is free for everybody. So it's, it's really, really an awesome, awesome platform.

Art Gelwicks 5:30

How have you found the battery life on the Surface tablet after installing chrome and King, you compare that to what it was before you did?

Augusto Pinaud 5:40

Well, this was not my machine, this was a client. So sadly, I cannot report on the before I can tell this machine is pretty old. I can check what what is the year but I found the battery life really bad. And then I you know, big Sam comparing that with my own machine with my own iPad. And I was really well this is you know, that the life of this of the batteries really, really poorly until I discover or remember that this is a machine from around 2013, where three and four hours of battery, it was the norm, it was cool. Hey, four hours of battery. It's pretty cool. The problem now is we are getting to the point where we have 10 and 12. And four hours of battery seems like last nothing. But it does right now be no machine from 2013, solid four hours of battery on on the on the distribution that I have. So it works really really well.

Francis Wade 6:41

Other question, can it work on an iPad and or iPad?

Augusto Pinaud 6:45

On an old iPad? Not because the iPad will not allow you to install over the iOS? Okay, but he will work on a window on an old windows he will work in an old Mac too.

Art Gelwicks 6:58

Yeah, the iPads are different chipset so it wouldn't support it anyway, there are

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:02

myths out there in the wild about people being able to install Chrome OS on iPads. But it requires a heck of a lot of work to be able to get it get it on there.

Art Gelwicks 7:13

I'll be honest, and this is just brutally honest. Why would you want to? I mean, really, just because you can doesn't mean you should

Augusto Pinaud 7:22

I completely agree with that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:23

I think it's I think it's about being able to breathe life into the form factor of a, an existing laptop or desktop that that would really work well, I think actually, there are probably some Linux distros that would work better on an iPad experience. Because you know, the iPad is a tablet experience, you may be able to actually be would probably be savvy or to use some of the instructions that get Android onto an iPad, because it has all the functions for being able to take advantage of the sensors, and the touchscreen. But I just think it's I think it's just a really brilliant notion to be able to breathe life back into your computer that you may feel is failing or old. And for those who may not know, this, Chrome OS is, in essence, a you know, it's a type of it has a Linux kernel. So you know, in essence, you can actually activate project Cristini within the Chrome OS environment and have a full Linux desktop. So you can you can still have a Linux, you know, experience with Chrome OS, which is really quite brilliant news, go into the advanced settings and turn on the the Linux option. And you'll be able to boot right into the Linux environment, which means you can have all of the desktop software that Linux has available to it, which is pretty amazing. So this really takes us to the larger discussion around when do you upgrade and or when do you replace? And in a gastos case, he was reviving a a tool that was already broken....

What is the reason for having a career that you enjoy (or “love”)? And, what can you do action-wise to change the trajectory of your career satisfaction/life fulfillment? That’s what the ProductivityCast team tackles on this cast! Enjoy!

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/091 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 should you do what you love as a career 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

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Should You Do What You Love as a Career?

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

Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow: Discovering Your Right Livelihood by Marsha Sinetar

How Company Culture Shapes Employee Motivation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=202nbcLwxsg

Dr. MLK's 'Street Sweeper' Speech at Philadelphia School October 26, 1967

On job crafting, Managing Yourself: Turn the Job You Have into the Job You Want

You can use data to boost your career. Here’s how. | Neil Irwin | Big Think

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, PhD

Mindset - Productivity Book Group

Do What You Love -- And Watch Your Productivity Suffer

4 Concrete Steps to Take to Love Your Job Again (Backed By Science)

Reasons to Do What You Love for a Living

5 strategies to move toward a career you love

How to love your job even when you hate your job

Don't "follow your passion"

Managing Yourself: Turn the Job You Have into the Job You Want

Source/Credit: The Reasons We Work

Source/Credit: Ikigai – Japanese concept to enhance work, life & sense of worth

Raw Text Transcript | Should You Do What You Love as a Career?

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.

Francis Wade 0:20I'm Francis Wade.

Augusto Pinaud 0:22 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. In this cast, what we're going to be doing today is having a little bit of a debate, as we do every week. But today, we're gonna be kind of debating the the notion of, should you do what you love as a career, and, and having a bit of a discussion around this notion of, you know, career satisfaction, career fulfillment, and productivity, there is a there is a, an overlap there, if you have like the Venn diagram of career satisfaction and productivity and, and that space there, we're going to really dive into that sliver. For us. This topic was developed by Francis. So Francis, what made you think of this topic, and what what brought it to mind,

Francis Wade 1:16something I read that pointed out that people who do what they love, especially in the nonprofit sector, can often result in burnout or end up in burnout. And it's because they, they love what they do so much that they end up tipping their work life balance, or work life integration in a way that's not fruitful. So they put up with 60 70 hour 80 hour work weeks pursuing a passion or a cause, or, you know, altruistic motive, you know, you could be trying to save the whales. And because you're so committed to saving the whales, you then end up working 80 hours. So your body doesn't care whether you're saving the whales, or selling real estate, or doing doing multi level marketing or your body doesn't care, when you're putting in the 80 hours of work. It feels the brunt anyway. And it talks about the need for people who are nonprofit, and who are altruistic to also seek this kind of balance. But it made me think, in general, when I was a, like a center, entering the professional world, or sort of establishing myself in the 90s, I remember a book that's entitled, do what you love, and the money will follow. If it wasn't a book, it was an article. And this was highly debated, you know that there was a kind of a almost quasi religious belief that if you could just find what you love, and then put all of your eggs in the basket, then the universe would magically come to your rescue and provide you with bottom line profits. And that that that also is one of the Genesis, I think, why we're having this compensation, because there is that thought out there. And there are many sides to this coin. So that's, that's, that's, I guess, what, what the core of the matter is, is it true? Should it be pursued? Is it different for different people? Or is there just a practical hard market reality here? And it's nothing to do with the Whoo,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:20I definitely have a copy of that book sitting on my shelf right here in view. 1980 1989. So, yeah, so let's let's start off with what is the reason for having a career that you enjoy? In in parlance today, we're calling it love, but we can call it fulfillment or satisfaction or what have you. But what is the what is the reason for doing that? And again, I'm, I want to really stay in the lens of personal productivity here for purposes of being productive, that is time to task, project energy, those types of management's of oneself. What's the What's the reason? What's the goal? If you want to be more productive to love what you do? What's the argument there?

Augusto Pinaud 4:09When do you look at what you do or don't do? And you're looking at from the lens specific of the productivity, it comes to be really, really important? What do you do? The reason of, I believe, is if you don't enjoy what you do, it is really hard to be productive. You know, if you get kind of when I work with productivity with my coaching clients, okay? And you look at the stuff that they procrastinate the stuff that is on their list for years. Some of them you wonder, okay, why this has been there for years. The reason is, I'm afraid I don't enjoy it. I know. There are many reasons on that and all of them are the comes to this is something that I'm not passionate or afraid to it. So if you get a career where you have zero passion, okay? Can you do it? Yeah, can you be good at it? Yes? Can you be your best at it? No, it's not, I don't believe is possible. I believe that component, that passion component, it's really, really a key to attain a high level of productivity. And to attain a balance happy life on that.

Francis Wade 5:37If you love what you do, you're more likely to be really, really good at it. At some point, you're more likely to invest the hard hours and the learning and the self training and the evaluations, you're more likely to develop yourself. And in that direction, I think that's as an endpoint everyone would agree. And there's actually a study that I just put up in the show notes, it shows multiple levels of motivation. And the most motivated person is the one who does what they do, because they love it only because they love it, and not because of the outputs, or because of the potential or because of the money or because of the peer pressure, or because of the inertia. So those, the lists that I just gave are the other reasons why people do their jobs. And they're all lesser than, than the actual love of the work itself, which is the highest highest in this particular article, some research done from the 1980s. But, but and here's the big, but what we learned back in the day, 1989, as he said, puts the cart before the horse, according to people like Ken Newport. And I think it's true from my observation also, which is that even though that's the end point, and even though we could agree that that's the ideal, the harder question is, how do you get from here to there. And that's where that that that that I think, is really interesting and counter intuitive. And that's where we've learned that the message of the 1989 book doesn't bear out in practice,

Augusto Pinaud 7:09I there is some old saying that says, the most dangerous guy on the field is the guy who is having fun, and I wish to tell you who said that, and but I have believed that, you know, and I have seen it in practice, you know, many, many years ago, when I was, you know, in the, in the sales in the active sales for electronic world, as a sales manager, you could see who were the guys having fun in the field, and the level of success, and it was really correlation. And I over the years, keep that on the front of the mind. Because I have seen clients and friends and business partners, those that are having fun, okay tend to be more productive tend to be, you know, more passionate about what they do tend to be much better about the work they are doing, tend to be stellar about the results they're getting. I don't know, I don't think you know, that Field of Dreams, or the book, you know, building on day will come, it works. But what I can tell you is the people I have seen, build it without that passion, eventually walk away. that built the business build the career. Either way,...

Welcome to Productivity App-apalooza, Second Edition! Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art use and experiment with hundreds of apps per year in our productive lives. So, a few times per year, we review software and services that we use and recommend to others. We hope you enjoy, and let us know the apps you’re using that are helping you be more productive!

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/090 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 Productivity App-apalooza, Second Edition! 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 | Productivity App-apalooza, Second Edition!

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

Round 1

Augusto - Firefox Focus (browser)

Art - Edge (browser)

Ray - Rocketbook Everlast

Francis - Twine

Round 2

Art - LastPass

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

Augusto - GoodNotes 5

Ray - Pushbullet

Francis - Opus Creator

Round 3

Augusto - Graphic (iPad)

Francis - OBS Studio

Art - Privacy.com

Ray - Trello

Raw Text Transcript | Productivity App-apalooza, Second Edition!

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 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade.

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

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24And welcome gentlemen and welcome to our listeners today. For this episode, what we are going to be doing is our second App-apalooza. And what that means is that we are going to have three rounds. And in those three rounds, each of us is going to pick a tool and explicate why the tool is awesome, how we use it, all of those good things, why you might want to use it. And so let's get right into it. Let's start round one ding ding ding. And let's start with you will gousto What is your first app and Why do you use it? The first

Augusto Pinaud 1:01that I will talk today is an application called Firefox focus in the world of browsers and not exactly a lack of browsers these days, Firefox focus to recent player in the game that bring you put you automatically on privacy mode. That is cool. But second doesn't allow you to open tabs or anything. Basically, you have a window to work for. So there are moments that my level of attention is not the best, and that I'm distracted and that I'm aware that I'm distracted. So are those times it is really, really useful for me to work on Firefox because allow me to stay on that browser. Allow me don't allow me to have the 27 tops at the end of the conversation. I am forced to basically figured out how I'm going to do on one plus add the privacy and other aspects that is really, really cool. So it works well on the iOS. So it is something that I tend to give, you know, a lot of use to be honest with you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:19And it's available on iOS and Android.

Art Gelwicks 2:21Alright, so if a goose is going to go down the Firefox path, I'm going to go down the Microsoft Edge path, edges there. Unfortunately, it has a bad reputation from older versions, but they've rebuilt edge using the chromium engine. So it's basically chrome with a Microsoft skin. I have found that on mobile and on the desktop, I like it as much as chrome if not a little bit more at times. It's fast. It supports extensions. It will sync between mobile and desktop and as it browser alternative to our classic chrome solution. I think it's something that's a very viable use. If you look at some of the capabilities, there's a nice pop up function at the bottom of the browser on mobile, that gives you access to all of the different controls and features that you would normally have to dig through chrome to get to. So that's my recommendation, if you want to look at an alternative browser, and you're, you know, trying things like Firefox and brave throw edge into the mix too. And give it a good try. I think you might be surprised at how much you like it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:33Yeah, it's like they took all of the Google guts out of the chromium project that goes into Google Chrome, and they put in all of the Microsoft guts. And I think that's actually really helpful for people who are in the Microsoft ecosystem. You know, you're still using a chromium based browser. You've got all the extensions available to you. You've got a lot of really embedded Microsoft you know, company opponents, and I think it'll only get better. And it Now, of course, reduces the number of browsers, major browsers in the market. Because, you know, Chrome, and edge. And all of the derivatives are basically chromium. And then you have the Mozilla Firefox, which produces the focus browser that Lucy was talking about, but also Firefox, General and a couple other different Firefox installations. implementations. So we are having a kind of major reduction in the market, where you have Google Chrome, Firefox and and Safari being the really the only three major browsers if you want to think about it in in the largest sense. So there has been a bit of a consolidation in the market, but very interesting to watch.

Art Gelwicks 4:47Some people get worked up about that, and I always flip them around to it's literally like car platforms. You go and you look at the major car platforms and you wind up with three different models from three different Four sub brands, all built on the same chassis. Well, that's exactly what this is, as a developer, if there's a common chassis between these browsers, it's much easier for me to actually build content and build materials, because I know they're all going to interpret it the same way. as an end user, I can choose the browser that has the look and feel that I want and the functionality and know it's going to render everything the same way. So I don't think it's a bad thing. I think this is one of the areas where that lower level of standardization is much more useful than what you lose in having, you know, not having 18 different things to pick from.

Augusto Pinaud 5:41It is really also really interesting to think that Microsoft when died the route and I'm building on top of chromium two, especially after all the issues that for many, many years they had was internet exploder. I don't know how marketing wise It was a good call but I'm keeping the same scheme of colors and all that it brings as art was mentioned at the beginning the impression that is this just a chain of change of a scheme or it is really something that they have done on the background and I have seen even for people who supposed to understand the technicalities behind the idea of I don't know this is a still you know, it still looks still look like the same Microsoft Internet exploder even that he's not so but that said it is it is interesting for me how Microsoft when when the way of put the Kremen engine in in the bag instead of try to recreate something.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:49Alright, let's let's move right along to Francis Francis. What's your first round

Francis Wade 6:55choice I've gone a lot into what what now has a name is called rapid, rapid game prototyping for learning something like that. But the idea is that you're you, you very quickly put together games for learning. And the instead of trying to put together something like a New World of Warcraft, it's, you know, massive undertaking that takes several years. Instead, you spend a few hours. And it could be as simple as a quiz or, or involve a software like twine. So that's the app I'm talking about is twine. And it allows you to develop branch scenarios in zero time. And it used to be a nice development tool because you could develop in twine and then move on to other programs to use the I guess they the branch logic, so you could develop the app, develop the story or the storyline, in twine and then go to a different software and then actually develop a final product. That was the workflow Up to a couple of years ago, where they changed twines that it actually has a an output of its own, which is great, you don't have to know jump to a whole nother software. And it allows you to very, very quickly, not quite as fast as writing prose, you know, which like writing a story or a novel. That's not quite as fast as that because when you're coming up with a branch story, you need to account for different endings and either keep several threads going on at the same time. But twine does a remarkable job of allowing you to do that very, very quickly. I don't think there is anything else on the market like it, it's free, it's open source, and it just does an awesome job.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:47Fantastic. It's one of those that I have played with, and I find it to be very interesting to see how you can create these very interest

The State of Project Collaboration Software in 2020: Slack, Teams, G Chat, and now P2

Automattic, the company that manages the open source software, WordPress.org, recently launched P2, its version of project collaboration software for the Remote Work Age. Timely, considering the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it also provides commentary on the state of project management today. My reading of the tea leaves is that there are still challenges organizations--from small businesses to large enterprises--are facing in finding the right principles and tools to manage and collaborate effectively on projects and programs both internally and externally. Today, we’re going to discuss the state of project collaboration software in 2020...from Microsoft Teams to Slack and Google Chat to Asana and Trello...and now, P2.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/088for 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 State of Project Collaboration Software in 2020: Slack, Teams, G Chat, and now P2 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 State of Project Collaboration Software in 2020

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

Raw Text Transcript | The State of Project Collaboration Software in 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).

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.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26

Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we have a fun topic, automatic, the company that manages the open source software wordpress.org, which powers if you didn't know about a third of the internet's websites just recently launched p to its version of project collaboration software for the remote work age, timely considering the state of the covid 19 pandemic, but it also provides commentary on the state of project management today. my reading of the tea leaves is that there are still challenges organizations from Small businesses to large enterprises are facing and finding the right principles and tools to manage and collaborate effectively on projects and programs, both internally and externally. So today, I thought what we would do is we discuss the state of project collaboration software in 2020, from Microsoft Teams to slack and Google Chat, to Asana and Trello. And now p two, we have all of these products on the market. And there's a bit of muddy water when we try to understand what they are and how they fit into the schema of both project management proper, but also then our own personal productivity. And so what I thought we would do first is to kind of define the various parts of project management software in the marketplace today. Then have a discussion around what the important characteristics of pm software are and the parts that make project collaboration work, plus, of course, our personal productivity work. And then finally, we can do maybe a light campaign. And contrast of the project collaboration software is on the market today. And that includes automatics p two now that it has entered the fray. So let's start with defining project collaboration software in the context of project management today,

Francis Wade 2:18

I think the software that I longed for is the one that would connect me with other people that I am working with in a seamless fashion. So I've been in my mind hankering after conquering hankering after just a perfect environment that would allow all of us to be able to see the same thing at the same time updated, share the contents of it, have it be somewhat private and separate from the real world or the rest of the world. A kind of a walled off garden that would allow us to focus and get things done without distraction and and also a lot of Zippy fast communication. That Maybe might be, um, speedier than other channels. I've hoped for something like this forever. And I've never found it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:08

Since we're focusing on project collaboration software today, there's an understanding of the various other types of software that are out there. And so in project management, we think of the various aspects of taking a project from the beginning phases of planning through to the outcome, which is deliverables that are that are being produced on the other side. And so there's planning involved and there is project planning software. So we can think about like Microsoft Project, Gantt charting software, like Tom's planner, and so and so forth. We then kind of move forward into the project collaboration space, which is what we're going to be talking about today, which are software that allows you to be able to communicate while maintaining a connection or an integration With the project tasks, as well as milestones of the project itself, and that really comes into then project tracking software. So we have project tracking software that helps teams basically keep all of their tasks that are related to one another, including, you know, budget and expense reporting and resource allocation all together. And, and then there's project budgeting software as well, which really allows you to be able to handle all of the financial aspects of project management, there is a kind of a higher level, which I hear it being called portfolio management software, and that really is on the enterprise level, where management needs a tool, usually somehow related to their RP or otherwise to really manage on that macro level, goals of the organization and all of the resources that really drive down towards the Other software that it's managing. So there's this hierarchy, as well as integration between all of these software to make a cohesive platform for people to really be productive in amongst the various pieces of the puzzle, moving things forward. And so what I'm really interested in is, why is project collaboration software important in the context of making progress in our organization? How do you answer that question? When people ask it,

Art Gelwicks 5:34

I think you hit the key concept that you have to take into consideration here, which is the spectrum of need of collaboration as compared to project management itself, isolating the collaboration part out of it, because there's a lot of applications that do the project task management portion very well and have added on Collaboration Trello is a good example of that. There are other tools that focus primarily on the collaboration side and have started to add on the project management piece. teams, for example. So thinking about the balance between the two, what's, how do you find the one that's going to be right? For me, the really important thing is you have to look at the projects that you are doing. And identify where is the weakness, you're not going to deploy a tool that necessarily just only caters to the strength of your teams. If you have teams that work together really well. They just have a hard time getting their work organized. deploying a tool that focuses on that, working together really well doesn't really move the needle for you. You've got to be able to offset those weaknesses in your team without creating new ones. For is right there isn't one out there that does both sides of this fence equally well. I mean, there are always pluses and minuses to both of them. Everybody's trying to do the same basic things. They make the argument that, oh, if we put all this stuff in one place, we can kill email. That's one of the things you hear a lot with these things that they're email killers. But you can also simplify finding your files and keep your tasks on task and all all the lovely marketing hype. But it still boils down to one core thing and we're talking about the collaboration piece. Projects are successful when everybody is doing what they're supposed to be doing and knows what that is. And if we're able to use tools like Trello, or like a team's to hit that mark, then the actual features are more gravy than anything else in my book.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:55

All I have to do is say here here to the the ridiculousness of people attempting to kill email. First of all, just to soapbox for a moment, email is a strata of the internet, it is not something that you can kill off isn't it is an open protocol that is a part of the internet. So, so so that's a foolhardy perspective to begin with. Second, it's an absolutely brilliant piece of technology when used correctly. And so three means we need to learn how to use email correctly, and not use it for things it's not meant to do. And then we'll all be better off. I think the abuse of email is what you know,...

Frequently we hear the term “amateur” bandied about as an insult. But, there’s a long and rich history to what amateur really means. And, being productive, in my humble opinion, requires you to be an amateur and professional, simply in the right amounts and contexts. What does amateur mean? What does professional mean? And, how can their differences help level-up your personal productivity? That’s the topic of today’s cast here on ProductivityCast.

Automating Your Office: Improving Your Workplace Productivity With Office Automation

In this week’s ProductivityCast, we discuss:

What is office automation? How does it differ from home automation? What office automation do you currently have/use? What office automation would you use if technology/cost/other barriers to entry were not there? Where should you start with office automation?

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/087 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 Automating Your Office : Improving Your Workplace Productivity With Office Automation 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 | Automating Your Office

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

Four fundamentals of workplace automation

Raw Text Transcript | Automating Your Office

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 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

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

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:28

Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to our listeners to a another episode of this productivity cast, where we will be discussing office automation. And what I thought we would do today is we would discuss the contrast between what is office automation and what is home automation and explaining that for everybody, and then getting into the context of what automation we use in our own office environments or the environments that we work in because that could be home as well. People have home offices, and people work from home. And those offices also can take advantage of automation. And then talking about what technology we would use if all technology was available to us and cost and other barriers to entry were reduced. What would we use in our office to help us be more productive in our workplaces? And and then we'll, we'll close out the episode with what are the first steps we would consider offering to our listeners to you listeners to start in the office automation space? So let's get started first with what is office automation and how does it contrast in your minds with home automation?

Augusto Pinaud 1:42

From my perspective, home automation, it's a lot more about comfort, okay, it's about security and comfort you go you know, get the lights Get, get automated, something's when you now come to the office. It's more related about efficiency on productivity. One of the First examples we can talk about, about automation in the office was the death of the paper fax, okay, and I need even that most people will not consider that automation. That's the first step. So the earliest steps of the office automation, the moment we stop having to worry about replacing, you know, getting a fax in the middle of the thing, and now discovered, oh, we run out of paper, it's called a birth a human being who send us that, to get that when now you can get the numbers digital and get that fax in the same way via email or directly in the email. You know, that's the difference between, in my opinion between home automation and office automation, it's office automation is more about how can we make the work more efficient, more productive, and even in some cases, how can we stop depending on humans for a certain task, you know, as much as You know, when you look on a small business offices, okay, how much can we use technology to not hire that person that we may or may not need or the fluctuation of their business at that particular point? can or cannot afford? And how can we use technology and automation to help that?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:20

I think that office automation is about helping make the business more profitable. And increasing productivity is, you know, one of those mean a big ticket big majority reasons and, and vehicles to that end. And the way in which I see office automation, really mostly different from home automation, is that there is so much more software involved in office automation than there than there probably isn't home automation, just because we spend most of our days working in an office environment or just working generally in our lives. And that information needs to be moved around. And now today since most people work on a computer, whether that be at a desk or on their phone, we are, are constantly being bombarded with new types of productivity software. And those software can be connected together. And we've talked a little bit about this before, with, you know, Zapier and other other integration tools. But I'd like to get a little bit more into that today, as well. And I'm sure we'll talk about it exclusively as you know, kind of workflow integration and workflow automation on the software side, in a later episode, but the real piece here is is how do you connect the physical electronics together for day to day productivity, along with the software that's available to us today? And I'm, I'm uniquely interested in seeing taking a step back. You know, my my audience is small business owners and I spend a lot of time In small businesses, helping them and so I see how many times a small business owner is using a lot of home automation, or least consumer based electronics and consumer based software in their businesses, because it's less expensive. There aren't enterprise licenses. And so I'm seeing a lot of that being used in the automation space. And we'll talk a little bit about that later today. But the that's really the part that I see is office automation is how we connect all of these various parts, these disparate parts to be able to help us get gains where we otherwise wouldn't think about getting gains. But we're doing these things routinely.

Francis Wade 5:43

I think the rationale is completely different than home automation. In other words, the Why is different. I think as automation needs to produce some, some results that accrues to the bottom line and there are well established Process Improvement reengineering, process management techniques that I've been around since the 90s. that tell you how to do that. And office automation for me is, comes from that, that kind of line of thinking, where there's an investment and then there's a payoff. And if there's no payoff, then it's not worth making the investment. And also, if something can't scale, then if your business is going to scale, then you need to look very carefully at whether or not that nice Gizmo is is actually adding value or not. So I think in home of home automation, that the need for comfort and to be the first on the block and to to have something that diversionary or entertaining, entertaining, is more possible. But in business, I think that the more black and white in terms of will I will I make an investment that produces Have a bang for the buck.

Art Gelwicks 7:01

Yeah, I think within the space of business automation, you have to remember two key areas. One, there is a big difference between physical automation and information automation, especially in the business space, that line seems to be a little bit more clearly defined. But secondarily, the influence you have over office automation is often just limited and defined by the role that you have. In many cases, things like facilities are responsible for printers, they're responsible for other controls. They're responsible for conference room setups and cameras. You don't have either control or influence over that. So you're really kind of limited in my automation is the things that I cannot influence and the things that influence me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:50

I came across a really interesting paradigm mine McKinsey, the big global Consulting Group, and they talk about kind of the four four fundamentals of workplace automation, you know, office automation. And they they talk about it from the perspective that there is automation of activities, and then read of it redefinition of jobs and processes, right? The idea of business processes being redefined based on that automation, the impact on occupation in general. So, like, if you have high wage occupations, those are obviously going to be, you know, changed by, you know, impacted by the by automation. And then finally, how that how that impacts creativity and meaning both for the workplace but also for the industry, the economy at large as well. And so, that's like, on the very, I think, kind of like you know, from the ground level up to the macro level in terms of how we consider automation and for like for you art where You are in an environment where you're not controlling the space. And I am in an environment where I do get to control most of my space. And then going into environments where, you know,...