Pet Productivity: Tips for Caring for Pet Companions Productively

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00

Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to anything but idle the productivity news podcast. Today is the show is brought to you by productivity voice. And I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:14

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:15

And we’re your hosts for anything but idle. This is Episode 43 Pet Productivity tips for caring for pet companions productively. And we’re recording this on February 8 2021. Each week we cover and discuss the productivity news and the productivity and technology news each week. And this week we have brought with us Isabel Pinaud. Isabel is a productivity geek, a bookworm and all around weirdo through her business brand. You’re weird. She encourages quirky entrepreneurs to embrace who you are, and then uses the psychology of design to help them create a brand that attracts their ideal client without giving up their personality. In other words, no cookie cutter businesses allowed. She’s also a dog mom, animal lover and owns a brick and mortar pet shop. And so with that, welcome to anything but idle. Isabel.

Isabel Pinaud 1:05

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:07

Pleasure, pleasure. There’s probably something that everyone is noticing about the fact that gusto and Isa Bell share a name. And that’s because they related they are sister and brother. So welcome to the show.

Isabel Pinaud 1:25

I was gonna say that, you know, you finally got me on here. It took 43 episodes,

Augusto Pinaud 1:31

it took Well, we were waiting for the animal and making sure that the person who edited these shows have enough time with your animals in the background. Having a nightmare was done.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:42

Well, I’m It’s a pleasure to have you. And so today we are celebrating. I think it’s national pet something rather, what’s today’s holiday like you so I need to look it up. I am having one of those

Isabel Pinaud 1:57

ideas. That was golden retriever day last week.

Augusto Pinaud 2:00

Last week was a golden retriever. But no, no, he’s not the golden retriever.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:04

Now I have to I have to look it up. I have to look it up. Because it’s it’s important that this is the reason we have this topic. Tomorrow. It’s

Augusto Pinaud 2:11

national pizza day. Well, that’s not what we’re celebrating. But I think pizza should be celebrated 52 weeks a year.

Isabel Pinaud 2:20

I mean, pizza productivity.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:23

Yeah, well, either way we had the Super Bowl just happened this past weekend. And for some reason we chose to do pet productivity this week. I don’t know why. But either way, here we are. And so I wanted to talk about, I guess the topic, just that as it comes to mind, what I what I really want to talk about is how we take care of pets productively, and like, what are the things we do when we have pets that maybe can be done a little bit more efficiently. In essence,

Isabel Pinaud 2:54

there is actually so much to go on in this topic, especially because as pet owners, we tend to want to humanize our pets. And we tend to see them as members of our family, which they are. But we also need to remember that they’re still animals, right. And so we want to give them free rein all over the house all over their schedule. Where in reality, because of the way their brain works, the more structured their day is, the happier they are, and the more well behaved that they will be. So starting off with scheduling the hours that you walk them, scheduling out the times that you feed them scheduling out the hours where you’re training them, right. Ideally, you should be training your dog for at least 15 minutes every day. I doubt most people do that. But that is an ideal, right. But if you schedule it out, it actually has to it actually leads to a well a more well behaved dog. In general cats love structure to so do bunnies and other small pets. Of course with them, you don’t necessarily have the walking them outside aspect. There’s also the recurring tasks and projects like with anything, we have recurring recurring projects, right, we have to pay them every so often they need vaccination. They need vet checks, they need flea medicine, they need dewormers, things like that. And the one thing that we see a lot owning a pet shop is people who go to the pet shop every week, and they go on week one and they buy the flea medicine and then they go next week and they buy the food and then they go next week and they buy the dewormer where you could have done that all in one trip because it’s a monthly thing, right? If you calculate how long it’s going to take for your dog’s food to run out based on how much you should be feeding him every day, then you know when’s the next time you need to go? Which means you know, when’s the next time that you need to buy flea medicine, the de wormer the toys, whatever else You’re missing?

Augusto Pinaud 5:01

Well, from a productivity standpoint of view, I agree with you 100%. From the business aspect, you do not want to teach them that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:11

Well, I will just note that we had a little bit of technical difficulty when we started. So those of you who are joining us just now on Twitter, welcome. And so we were talking about pet productivity, how we can be more productive, and in and with our pet companions. And so it’s about how you’ve been giving us some some tips and thoughts about how we structure our days, and how we really can create some efficiencies with regard to our pets. And I’m always really quite surprised by and I guess it starts out with the fact that I have had both I’ve lived with for four, maybe five toxins at any given time, over the course of a decade. And, and so I got very used to the idea of structure with those, those doxies when I did live with them, and their owner, really taught me a lot about the the nature of what are very smart dogs, they’re very smart breed, and you have to actually structure their days so that they have enough engagement, enough excitement throughout their their days. And that’s always a good, good part of it. And then there’s the flip side to that, which is the idea of making sure that you yourself are staying productive while caring for them. And I’m curious about what things do you do that? Or maybe how do your pets actually help you be productive in kind of a way? Like, what do you do to be able to structure your day in order to be productive with the pets?

Isabel Pinaud 6:40

Okay, so one of the things that they definitely do is they make me get up and out of my desk, because I work from home. And I can just sit here all day, and take zero steps. So I schedule a walk in the middle of the day, which is going to force me to what get up and walk. And I schedule. Also, I do promodoro sessions. So I do 40 tweaked version, I do 45 minutes of work, 15 minutes of break, and I use those 15 minutes to train them. So that instead of again, staying at my desk, and say oh, it’s okay, I don’t need to take that break, I actually get up and do something else. I take advantage of the moments when I’m on calls to give them their mental stimulation treats. So things like the Khan classic licky mats, snuffle mats, depending on what you have. Those are the moments where I’ll get up and I’ll prepare that for them so that they one, don’t interrupt me during the call. And to they also get that mental stimulation. And with that, one of the most important things that I can tell any dog owner is toy rotation. Most dog owners have all of their toys outside, and the dog gets bored. And they start playing with the toys. And that’s when they start getting into messes. Because they’re bored. Because imagine if I gave you the same 20 piece jigsaw puzzle every day and told you, hey, build this. And the next day, I was like, hey, built this. By the day three, you’d be out of like out of your mind crazy. But the tick topical.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:23

Yeah, absolutely. I know, for me,

Augusto Pinaud 8:27

right.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:29

Now I know that for me, one of the things that I really benefit from having a dog is actually the fish too. We used to have a cat but the cat passed away. And so we Yeah, I know, it’s it’s one of those things. I actually loved my cat prior to this cat more. So, so this particular cats passing was sad, but not as sad as the prior one. But we are thinking about getting another cat but you know, with the pandemic, everybody all the various, you know, rescue services are really overtaxed. And so there’s not a lot of inventory. And But anyway, the the dog really does require that everything kind of happens at a particular time throughout the day. And that also means that, you know, going for a little walks at the beginning and end of the day really helps to begin and end my day in this nice structure. It’s a nice way for me to say okay, this is the end of my work day. And even if I come back to my desk after I am done with my work day, I know that I’m I know that now I’m working after hours, and there’s kind of a difference there for me. So it kind of bookends my day in that sense and I like that about it. I also find that the various services that are out there, from Amazon, to to Chile to all of these other services that now allow you to schedule deliveries of things. It really reduces you know that the 32 pound bag of dog food is not something that I feel like I need to keep lugging around from you know the big box store to the house. So just having it delivered to the door on schedule, so the dog is never without food, we always have it, you know, just short enough so that it shows up about a week or two before his food runs out. And voila, you know, it shows up. And there’s just it’s seamless, I empty it out into the, into the bigger container we have for the dog food. And we’re good to go. And including, I have a repeating email set up with our vet to be able to schedule they normally send like a postcard that tells us about his upcoming, you know, veterinary visits, and, and my dog is blind. So he needs a little bit of extra care. He’s getting older, and he’s blind. So you know, that’s one of those things. And so we we have the end he’s doing he’s doing really well, by the way, everybody don’t don’t feel sorry for him. He is he is living a wonderful life. And so he, he, he we just have this automated email that basically sends out to the to our to our veterinarian clinic and says, Hey, you know, can we schedule his next appointment upcoming, and that just, you know, speeds up the process, because we don’t have to think about, you know, what’s the next one that’s coming out those kinds of things. So just know that there are ways in which you can automate the the care of your animals, it could be just putting the calendar event in your calendar to make sure that you are staying on top of those kinds of things. When do they need their dewormer each year, when do they need their various, you know, flea and tick stuff, you just put it all in the calendar. And that way, you don’t have to really worry about it, because it’ll just be on repeat.

Augusto Pinaud 11:31

So now I’m going to bring my my spoon into this as, as a person with kids, because pets are a great thing to fight with your kids daily and teaching them to be responsible with the kids sorry, the fight is what happened and you hope that eventually they will change all that behavior to responsibilities. But you may need to remind them everyday Did you feed the dog, you put the animal the dog and as your kids are getting used to the electronics and having the electronics and all this, you know, in our house, we live in iOS devices. So our kids devices, there is reminders that we can share in the family and there have the reminder, okay, I need to task a feed the dog and give her the medicine the two times that needs to happen for them. But it’s also give them it’s a great opportunity to teach them that they are the responsible because our kids Okay, it’s difficult. They don’t, they don’t understand. Yeah, they like the thing when he was a puppy. And now that thing is gross and, and grow and stinky. And they have a bunch of responsibilities. And all those responsibilities are not as romantic as they thought when you get the puppy Hey, that happened. Okay, we this is not this is dog number five out of, you know, with the kids one way or the other. So. So it is important to to look at that. And not only from the our productivity mindset, how can we automate? How can we make it more effective? How can we make it easier for us? But also, how can we use data opportunity as something to teach the kids their responsibility? You know, one of the things I hear a lot, we spent so well we get this bed, but now it’s you know, and they’re only responsible on that, and I get it when they’re little there is nothing you can do. But as the kids start getting nails, five, six years old, you can start giving him simple responsibility, say pick the toys of the dog at night. Our dog has done his jigsaw puzzle all over the house. So he needs somebody need to go and pick them up. Okay, we don’t rotate them is but but somebody needs to do that. And is your responsibility as the productive person to pass that productivity tips to your kids, to teach them and to sadly be annoying as a parent and remind them every day. So it requires in our case, those tasks are in two places are on a list in reminders that will be on their respective electronic and on my list. So that way I can go and ask do you fit the dog? Did you give the medicine to the dog and mark it on? So that way both systems assure that the dog is getting a good care? Yeah,

Isabel Pinaud 14:26

I completely agree.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:28

Yeah, I love the notion of teaching kids through the power of having pet companions, because it’s so it’s so important for kids one to learn responsibility, but on the other hand, it also reduces overhead. I know my mom always said, I don’t want a dog in the house. I don’t want a dog in the house. And that was the reason why she was going to end up having to take care of the animals. And then of course, we the youngest boy, you know, gave the puppy dog eyes and got my mother to get a dog and lo and behold she was the one who cared for the dog.

Augusto Pinaud 14:57

Yeah, there was no Building her house for that reason,

Isabel Pinaud 15:02

we were never allowed to have dogs because my dad was like, nope. But, but yeah, I completely agree. And also, the opportunity, not just with the daily care tasks, but your kid, depending on the age, of course, but can help, like you said, pick up the toys, they can help with the dogs with the toy rotation, right, they can help wash the leashes or wash the toys or the blankets. And it’s a way to teach them that it’s not just the fun part of the pet, because yes, they’re adorable, and they’re cute, and they want to play, but they’re also living creatures who deserve respect and care. And more than just let me play with you for five minutes. And I’m bored.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:48

Right, right, absolutely. Any final thoughts about productivity and thoughts, we want to share with the audience about how to productively care for our pet companions,

Isabel Pinaud 16:00

I would just say, again, the more structure that you have it and realize that adding to the daily tasks, so increasing the amount of times that you’re brushing your dog’s hair reduces the amount of pet hair in your house, which means less vacuuming. And yes, it sounds like it’s something Oh, I need to brush my dog’s hair every day. But vacuuming takes you an hour, brushing the dog’s hair every day takes you five minutes. So and again, it’s something that you can delegate to your kids. So I’m realizing that those five minutes or two minute tasks really do add up and they take you, they save you a lot of time afterwards. And this

Augusto Pinaud 16:45

segment is going to be edited. So it shows only out the picture where she advised the parents to delegate.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:55

Wonderful, wonderful. Okay, so this closes out our kind of beginning discussion on productivity. And that leads us into our stories of the week. And so let’s get into our stories of the week a gousto. What is our first story this week?

Augusto Pinaud 17:14

Our first story of the week, it’s going to be the A Seuss announcement of the flip cmw 3000. So the novel has been doing a lot of things moving forward with their Nova duet machine that we have covered here in the show before. And asis is coming with this flip cmw 3000 that according to all the specs that we’re reading seems to be price point on everything else, the first real contender for for the duet. So it’s a really, you know, again, for a person who it’s getting to love the power on on the new toys. On the new Chromebooks, it is interesting again, to see how much of this are are coming. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:08

did they give a price point on that? cmw 3002 99? Oh, really so so it’s going to also be up against the duet in terms of pricing. I mean, the pricing for the duet is currently like 240 or something like that on on Amazon. So that’s really good. I’m very impressed with the the Chromebook flip that I had prior. And while it’s not, it’s not this tablet form factor. It was a it was a convertible. I love the idea of having this. So I, I will I will confess over the weekend, I damaged the keyboard to my to my Chromebook duet. And so I’ve just also learned that the keyboard is not replaceable, since they don’t sell the keyboard separately at all. And of course, you can use an external Bluetooth keyboard so it’s not that big of a deal. But if you want to replace it, the chrome Chromebook, this cmw 3000 looks like a pretty good option for being able to do that. The flip cmw 3000 interesting.

Augusto Pinaud 19:13

Oh, yeah. They they really they really build a nice machine on all the specs that has been leaked. They look really really, really interesting.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:26

Cool. All right. Moving on next story this week.

Augusto Pinaud 19:31

So the next comes from Chrome on boxes and these check out you know a couple of gems for the Chromebooks a lot of software you know, the auto shop, the nicely the Battle of the tabs the editor. So if you are using and you are leaving in your Chromebook, you are going to find a bunch of software that you can go and play and really have fun with

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:58

I think so many people forget Get that the Chromebook is extensible by virtue of not just the application ecosystem, and also by the, the extensions within the Chrome browser itself. And so, you know, just lots of opportunity there. Hold on a second. So continue on, I’m out.

Augusto Pinaud 20:21

And the next is finally, you can save read later articles in Chrome in your Chromebook. So, you know, right now is being available as a default in iOS for a really long time. Finally, it’s going to be back in or available for Chrome OS, and for Chrome people. So again, it is going to be beautiful, you will be able to get the flag, you know, Chrome slash slash flags, read later, and get those later on. And for me, I don’t use reclaimer. In particular, I use instapaper. And I love instapaper. But the idea of the reading list, without any doubt is something that in the productivity world is really important. We cannot read every interesting article that we come at the time we found it. So having this read later, or instapaper, or something like that, that you can collect them, so you don’t lose them. It is really, really key for me,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:28

I know that I’ve been using that within Google News and other places for some time on both Android and otherwise. So there’s a lot of opportunity there for you to be able to just quickly tag things that you want to be able to check in with later. And so with that, I also realized that we just have Isabelle hanging here. We haven’t said goodbye to you, Isabel. I’m sorry, I got so caught up in the news of the week. So, Isabel, thank you so much for joining us to talk about pet productivity, and how can folks keep up to date with your work and learn more about you?

Isabel Pinaud 21:59

You’re so welcome. It was my pleasure to be here. You can follow me on Instagram at brand. You’re weird. And thanks again.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:07

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s brand, y o u r w e ir D brand. You’re weird on Instagram. And so thank you for being here, Isabel. Take care.

Isabel Pinaud 22:17

Thank you so much. Bye, bye, bye.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:22

All right. So with that, let’s get continue on with our news this week. What’s gonna continue

Augusto Pinaud 22:27

in the Chromebook world. And now a Chromebook come with a new feature that it’s going to allows you to scan and use a camera for scanning. That Honestly, I was surprised to come to, to, to read the article and discover that this came from Chromebooks on March 2020. And given because I think on Chromebooks as tablets, not as laptops, and when I think on tablets, I tend to compare with Apple and I was like, but I do that since 2000. Just available, it still was the proliferation of tablets, you know, like the duet like the CM 3000, like the pixel slate, you know, it is really interesting to see that this is coming. And you can use the camera and to create PDF for all your needs. So really excited for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:25

Yeah, so as I understand it, it is a it is a screen capturing technology, so that you’re able to take screen grabs.

Augusto Pinaud 23:34

But it will allow you to turn into PDFs on everything. So you will be able to to get an really a scan, anything you want, turn it into a PDF from everything else.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:46

Right. So there’s a there’s a camera scanning functionality built in now, as opposed to you having to install an app separately out there. And you can turn this on by going to Chrome colon forward slash forward slash flags, and then looking for that scanning UI flag that you can turn on to switch it on now because it’s available now. Yep, fantastic.

Augusto Pinaud 24:09

So our our next integration you know how you can use if you are a Google and use Google meet there is thing called caption saver Pro, it’s an extension that you can use now. So it turned voice recognize the voice and can turn the voice into text basically, will magically or out magically get the live captions into your Google Drive account and all that, you know with a disclaimer that if you’re doing that you should warn people that is happening. I think those things are great. You know, we use a similar software to that here in editing but idle so our listeners can get a fast transcription machine transcription of the shows Same with ProductivityCast and others. And it is really great to, to really even if it’s not perfect, you know, I’m never good to be known for something else. But it’s still a fantastic thing to do.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:15

Yeah, and again, this is also wonderful for meetings where you have people who are perhaps don’t have hearing or have some kind of ambient noise problem and they’re not capable of it, or say, the speakers on your your system go out or your headphone guys. And now you’re in a meeting and you still need to get the meeting done. You You lose all of that productivity when people have to constantly repeat themselves, or you have to stop the meeting because of technology failure. By having these live captions going on, the meeting continues on without you losing a beat, if you can continue to read, you might feel a little bit stilted and having to read the words being said, but it’s still helpful. So I like this a lot. And I’m looking forward to checking this out. And right now the caption server Pro, there’s a lifetime subscription to it. It’s $25 USD. And then it’s it’s a lifetime subscription. So I don’t know how much how, how much and how many meetings you can have with that lifetime subscription. But it’s a pretty good deal if you’re if you’re using it quite a bit.

Augusto Pinaud 26:16

Yeah. On on our next news from continue in the video conference services, Microsoft Teams is finally allowing you to schedule meetings inside of teams, I’m not a use of team. And again, coming into the news. So you’re like, Okay, that you needed to use a different method go to their outlook to schedule the meetings. Now, Microsoft has making recent updates allows you to go directly into meetings. And under that, and, and it is interesting, because I was surprised that you could not do it that way. But when you go to Google, unused, you know, we use Google meet in my company, and with Google need, you need to go to the calendar unless the meeting is live. So as much as I think is great, hey, maybe it’s an opportunity for assuming on Google meet and others to integrate, you know, to be able to create directly from there and send directly from the application.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:23

Yeah, I don’t see the I don’t see the use case. But I also don’t see why it shouldn’t be available. I mean, that just seems to be a very easy feature to to add, but you know, I’m appreciative of them adding it and good on them for doing so. Next up more Microsoft news,

Augusto Pinaud 27:40

more Microsoft news. No, Microsoft is really been trying to make a browser edge a real browser, and trying to

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:57

you’re trying to be you’re trying to say it nicely is what

Augusto Pinaud 27:59

I am trying to be as nice as I can with this. And I’m sorry, I’m not a Microsoft dude. And, and, and I’ve been having so many issues with Microsoft Explorer. Over the years, on every other attempt, I was really, really happy that they took chromium when they did the Edge browser. And I’m really I’m glad that they are trying to make edge powerful. I will not want to do install it. But I am glad that they are trying to really make it a powerful thing.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:30

Yeah, and I use I use edge in, in at work for certain items, so that I’m able to keep up to date with how it’s how it’s working, and how it’s adopting and adapting to the world. And collections is the new feature that edge has, you know, achieved. And in this particular case, it’s kind of a bookmarking system so that you’re able to organize these quote unquote, collections of bookmarks in the system. And so collections itself is now in the side browser, you know, you have this kind of, you know, panel that appears. And so, you know, now you are capable of having it just pop up and hover. So you’re capable of seeing it now, in this nicer view, that is not so much taking up all of the real estate on the side of your your world. So it’s it’s a nice update, I think this is a, this is going to be a little bit of a problem for those folks who are used to having the side panel open and some of the collections will kind of shift most likely. But the reality is, is that I think it’s good for people to have the UI tweaked to give them multiple ways in which to see that information. It’s akin to how when you have the Evernote Web Clipper installed, when you do a Google search, there’s an option for you to be able to have that little box inside of the search engine results page that shows you your Evernote features associated with it. I’d really like to be able to see that up in the browser bar and not for it to be in the actual SERP So these are the kinds of tweaks that, you know, we have to constantly look at in terms of how the browser is interacting and engaging with the user. So all right, Microsoft out of the way, now we move on to our fun, little niebo.

Augusto Pinaud 30:18

And we go to nivo nivo. It’s it really niebo has been trying to learn nivo comes from a long family of handwriting software, etc. So script, understand depends on everything. And they’re being trying to really make a difference in the iPad world and the Android world with their application, there are certain things on niebo that are really great, they’re trans conversion, for handwriting to text at some point was the best in the market. So now competitors have been catching up. And then they got you know, behind on other features that their competitors had. That said, it is still a really solid notetaking. And one of the things that is exciting for me, is I’ve been note taking things, the first iPad Pro came the 9.7 Pro with the pencil support. And I love it, because I always struggle with paper. And I love I have a love hate relationship with paper. But the problem is I hate carrying the paper, I love doing the doodling. So that gives me a solution. And at the beginning, you know, it was hard to find good software. So now you have a bunch of them, I particular use goodnotes, five, but niebo, without any doubt is a super solid contender. If for any reason, you want to try something else.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:50

Yeah, I find it to be as flexible as a squid and some of the other notetaking technologies that are out there. And I’ve played around with niebo. And now you there’s a limited free version, but niebo three now has PDF imports. So now it’s even coming up to parity with good notes, and with notability and others. So it’s great to have competition out there. And it’s great to see this ecosystem of tools that really allow you to do much more. And of course, Evernote with the new version of Evernote is bringing back many of those functionalities so that you’re able to do that annotation of PDF, and then you have OneNote, which allows you to be able to mark up those PDFs in the application as well. And so we’re seeing more and more technologies, kind of, you know, getting getting the idea of annotation, right. And they need that competition in order to be able to figure out how users use these technologies and what features actually work and which ones don’t. And I think it’s really good to see the competition working on that.

Augusto Pinaud 32:48

Yeah, and I think and I think that brings us to our next news. And, you know, it’s a review on pocket lint on the remarkable too. And again, as much as I don’t see the advantage of the remarkable to I need to admit is curious is curious, all the resources that I have put behind. For me, the closest them it’s a problem. But I understand that if you don’t care to leave on that closest then it seems for the reviews, and for a while what I have seen how they’re solid, it’s getting more solid, they are really putting time and resources on there. It’s an interesting review, as I have shared here in the show, if you have an iPad, there are ways to get the color filters. So you get that gray screen, so don’t get to the color. So you don’t get that tire. It’s not the same as the screen, obviously. But it is pretty close. So for me, there was no need, I have the iPad to do all these things. I still I understand not everybody wants to leave on the iOS ecosystem. So the remarkable two, it’s been gaining more and more that I’m in a certain way excited because as much as again, I don’t want a closed system, I think is important to have those outside doing well. And if they do well on the ink, I’m sure we are going to start seeing other devices with ink that will be really exciting to have.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:20

Yeah, so that folks are aware. This is the remarkable two tablet. It is an E ink tablet display its high end. And the the editor, the contributing editor who did this, he writes here, kind of a quick verdict. And I think this is really useful for people to get and so he says quoting sometimes a gadget comes along that’s so niche, niche and limited in its purpose that for most people it would be a needless expense. But for those who want to reduce their impact on the planet, but love handwriting notes, plans and journals. The remarkable two is simply divine with a backlit backlight on the display. It’d be almost perfect, although it’s not cheap. So really the only two things he had against it was the lack of battery lighting, which I agree with him. And then of course, its price, you know, coming down at about $400 for its, you know, least expensive price, but also understanding that you also need a case on that thing. And, you know, and the and the different styli, and so on and so forth. But really, you know, it’s got a great feel, you know, the the stylus on on the device, every one I’ve heard, and the remarkable the first remarkable that I tested was fantastic just writing on the surface, of course, it uses so much less space. Now. And the remarkable to it’s such a smaller form factor, and the ability for it to last for a considerable amount of time because you’re using ink ink and instead of OLED or otherwise. And so really, really good stuff there. I guess I agree with you at gousto, that there’s this is for a limited crowd set. But those people who want a device that does a lot that, again, isn’t a closed ecosystem, which is a non starter for me. But you know, the those who are comfortable with that and still want to be able to have a high end form factor for writing digitally, this is this is a, this is a decent option. I think in the market, we have a lot of Chinese manufacturers out there who are doing similar, if not better stuff. But in the US market, at least this is a this is a really good contender. Now.

Augusto Pinaud 36:21

Yes. And I also agree with that comment on the size because for me, even that I have the big iPad at 12.9 inches, my handwriting devices never got thin my handwriting device is the iPad Mini that small footprint is key for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:38

Yeah, I’m still I still find myself writing on all form factors from my phone, and my finger, you know, to the tablet with the Apple Pencil to my other tablets with different stylus. So styli. So I find myself writing on all of those surfaces. And it’s very natural for me to do so. And I still use a rocket book, you know, for taking pen and ink, you know, notes that then get converted into Evernote and elsewhere via the the app. So I find myself in many different modalities going going ahead and annotating PDFs in, say good notes or annotating images in Evernote. And so I find myself in many different applications in many different devices, just do using the right tool for the right kind of work. And so I know that if you’re going to stick to one particular device for something, the remarkable two is probably not going to be that device, it’s not versatile enough for you to be able to use it as your one main machine. So you it would have to be a very specific use case. And I like single purpose devices. As you know, I like the Kindle for it only allowing me to read books. And so I can see having this remarkable to for just those things, I want to get the newspaper every morning. And I want to be able to mark it up and make notes. And that’s it. Or I want to be able to get academic research papers sent to the remarkable to I want to be able to open it up, annotate and go for it. I want to write music on the remarkable too. And I want to be able to like those are the kinds of things where you get this very specialized in and probably professional use for it, then you’re going to be able to use use it for those

Augusto Pinaud 38:16

things. That is correct I even that I have multiple devices, multiple devices have one, one or two main uses they I don’t have any intention, even that technically, I can do almost anything on any of the devices. I like the ability to use one device for a certain things and another device for others.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:38

onward to the iPad.

Augusto Pinaud 38:40

Well, the next one is a silly news. But the better of 14.5 it’s bringing an interesting change. Since the first iPad, the Apple logo has always display on portrait mode. But since the introduction of the iPad Pro on the Smart Keyboard and and this message that iPad has that I agree obviously as the author of the iPad only book I agree with that. Okay, turning the iPad horisontal us as a laptop replacement is a different kind of pocket computer. Now, finally 12.5 will be able to read the accelerometer and fix the apple in the right direction. You know, I just wish that they could do the same on the back. But hey, you know, maybe that will happen someday.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:34

I hope it doesn’t if the if the device can can add that level add boot up. morph the physical back end to your machine that is dangerous for hackers to get a hold of so I’m going to say no on that one. All right. So that’s a little bit of fun. All right, moving along to our next bit.

Augusto Pinaud 39:55

So the next news is sub protocol cosi I have been familiar with them for a really long time and cozy. What they tried to do is to bring all the family all the planning everything to one place. And, and I think I don’t know why we haven’t talked about cozy before it was interesting to bring and probably should have brought on the application part but but I thought it was important to bring us a news with people managing a lot more than their schedule. And as we’re starting to get vaccinated and going back to life and being inside of the house for so long, having the place where you can have the calendar, the family calendars, and give, you know, the to do list for for people, as we were saying earlier in the show, when we talk about the pets, our kids have the responsibilities on the list and a checklist, okay is the same principles that apply for me apply for them, there is a checklist and they need to go and review and check and get it done. And cozy allows you to manage all that into multiple devices, multiple technology and multiple people. So is it is an interesting device, again, available in the apple ecosystem as well as Android. So it may be something interesting, if you’re trying to figure it out how to manage all this, we manage it in a different way inside of the iCloud system. But But cozy is a really good solution for that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:28

Cool. Next up.

Augusto Pinaud 41:30

Well, the next one is something that an article from New York Magazine and talking about the best standing desk, and standing desk are really interesting. And really useful. I have one in the in the corner, not the one I used to record but I have one in my office because there are certain things that work much better standing up than sitting here. Plus, not sitting all day apparently is good for your health or so. So the experts, I don’t know how about that. But but having a stand up desk for a certain task is really good. For example, one moment that I use I I spent a lot of time on calls if I’m not I don’t know that I’m not going to be on camera I that those are the kind of calls that I take a standing up, allow me to move allow me to walk inside of my office and it’s really really good. But in this in particular talks about the Husky it’s an it’s a work table and they make the connection between your mother what was my parents workbench, and the actual desk with a lever and all that. But again, if you use or you’re looking to use a stand up desk, this is a good thing to look.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:55

Yeah, so there are a lot of of standing desks that cost a lot more money than the Husky Husky has a hand crank. And it’s $179 USD at Home Depot right now. And so they’re basically saying if you wanted to a desk force for doing standing work, this can actually do it for you. And it’s going to be a lot less expensive than say a very desk or one of these others that are much more higher price point. And someone who is in the market for a standing desk. I was I was curious about it, because you know, it has four wheels that are that can take you in 360 degrees. And so you’re capable of really moving it around very easily. And it’s a it’s a nice, it’s a nice surface solid wood, you know, good strong construction, because it’s a work table. So you’re not going to have poor construction. So I thought it was really interesting. It’s good. It’s a good review of the product. And we’ll see if we’ll see what I end up deciding on because I’m I am still in the market for that standing desk. All right. Next up is home printers, I thought we would kind of discuss a little bit about the various home printers in the world because being that we’re working from home more and some of us are going to stay home when we’re working. We’re going to need to be able to print documents from home on occasion. And I just grabbed the wire cutter article on the best home printer. And what I thought was really interesting is that HP still stands at the top in terms of best home printers, and the inkjet printer of all things ends up being the best all in one inkjet printer. And I didn’t know if you noticed anything interesting about the lineup in terms of printers that are out there, but the HP color LaserJet Pro comes in as the best laser printer system both HPS so I

Augusto Pinaud 44:39

was I was really surprised on the inkjet part. Having an Indian myself. I was surprised by it. Also, I was surprised that you know i that brother they talk about the brother 2350 And that is a laser printer is as cheap as you can get. And the reviews of the things you know, are are really, really good. So if you’re looking for that budget pick, I have to get some budget. You know they can print it you give them free rein to print they will print as much as I wanted to print when I was a kid and my okay and complain about it. So Dad, it’s a great printer for if you are not in the need for any kind of colors we we print probably on the last year more than what we have print on the 10 prior because of school and homeschooling. So if that printer start giving us issue probably will be, you know, this article will be fantastic for for the upgrade process.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:52

Now I’ll have to say that I had a brother device at every desk in my real estate company back in the day. And the brothers were workhorses. I mean, we put them through the wringer. We printed lots and lots of stuff. And we had I think, an HP probably 1120 or one of the 1100 series that sat in the backs of our, you know, cars for remote printing when we needed to be on site to print. But the the ones that actually sat on our desks were the were the brother devices and yeah, these these cheap models were they just were workhorses. You know, if something broke, I could rip out the parts and you know, swap out cannibalize other other brothers that we had around for them. I’m that kind of person. And so it’s like when we purchased our, our big printer, our our main printer in the office, and they said do you need a support maintenance contract for it. And I said, you’re looking at him. And so I, I fix that cannon so many times by myself without anyone else’s need. But you know, that’s kind of my way. But the the the the goal, though, is that you have the ability to buy this very inexpensive printer that works really well. And if it breaks, it doesn’t, it’s not that much harm to purchase a new one, but also to get replacement parts from brothers pretty easy as well. So you can actually fix these things if they do break.

Augusto Pinaud 47:14

Yeah, I was. That’s that’s one that has been on our radar is just that this HP has decided not to die.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 47:22

Yeah, that’s, that’s remarkable. It’s good. I mean, some of ours lasted many, many years. I mean, you know, so it’s good that you have another one that’s doing really well. All right, rounding out our news for

Augusto Pinaud 47:34

our last news. Our last news is on telegram and telegram blog, you know, with people moving out of WhatsApp into telegram into signal. telegram produce a little app to being able or to allow you in the iOS to export hold of iOS and Android sorry, to allow you to export all your conversations, all your chat into telegram so that way, you did not lose all that years of information, I guess I so it was a it was a neat move for again, for the people who were leaving, and were concerned into leaving information and leaving their information there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 48:20

Yeah, I think I think with the bad press that WhatsApp has been getting with Facebook and other you know, messaging applications, it’s a really good time for telegram to take advantage of that. And so they’ve provided this import facility and I probably have two three friends who use WhatsApp still. And so my goal over the next couple of weeks, hopefully they’re not listening is is to convert them over to telegram or just signal and just port those conversations over to telegram and or just, you know, save them and then get rid of WhatsApp all together. I don’t need it for any particular reason, I don’t have any desire to use it. And if it streamlines my world, that’s going to make me more productive, I really want to have as few of those as possible. Like last week, we talked about beeper, I’m still waiting for them to let me into the system. And as soon as I sign up, you know, the then I don’t care, you know, if I have all of the apps, as you know, centralized into one master application, then I can I can message with any one across any of those tools. That’s a real productivity gain for me not having to bounce back and forth between so many different applications. And so, we are going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor this week, which is productivity voice. And so we will be back after with more headlines. We’re going to talk about beating bedtime procrastination. We’re going to talk about micromanagement, all kinds of fun, other topics. We’re going to do our new tools of the week. And also then our story this week talking about Apple and iCloud and something they have now just recently launched. So we’ll meet you after the break. Here we go. Are you feeling that you need help implement A personal productivity system a goal or a habit like the weekly review? Do you need help making your current system more robust? Do you want a quick checkup of your current systems to ensure they are the best solutions for you? With more than 20 years of experience in technology, personal productivity and GTD productivity voice can help you review, renew, create or fine tune your system and your personal productivity, visit productivity voice.com forward slash anything but idle for a free 30 minute consultation. Let’s achieve more enjoy more and feel more wins in the game of being productive. Head over to productivity voice.com forward slash anything but idle today. And now back to the show. Welcome back everybody to anything but idle Episode 43. I’m here with a good steppin out. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And we are covering the stories of the week. And with that, let’s get into Part B, the second part of the show with the rest of our headlines this week. gousto. What’s the next headline?

Augusto Pinaud 51:05

The next headline is title revenge, bedtime, procrastination is real. And when I read that, I really needed to look at what they’re talking about. So needed to really put into. But as I read on the article, I I wish to admit that I have never done this, okay, but the reality is, I have, unlike I have many people have you know, you get at the end of the day, you get beaten at work, you can return home. Now finally, everybody’s in bed, and you get silence and regardless how tired you are on how early you need to wake up this morning, you said you know what, and I’m going to stay up and I’m going to read and I’m going to enjoy the quietness. And I’m going to do all these things, in some cases in the name of self care, even though he’s not necessarily self care. But it was really interesting because I have never, as much as I may or may have not done that. I have never put a name to what it is not see it as really not necessarily contemplating that the negative effects or the negative results of what I was doing, were going to be more than that the actual benefit I felt I was getting, you know, so. So it was really interesting to stay, you know, as they say stubbornly stay up late for no reason, just because you feel like you didn’t get any time for yourself. Again, I will advise people to look at the article, look at the term determines irrelevant, but the important part is question, how many times have you gone under that, you know, stay late, not not productive, not because you’re trying to catch up because you’re trying to get some time for yourself.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:09

Yeah, and so the the the recommendations for how to stop are actually provided by Laurie Santos, the PhD researcher who’s the Director of comparative cognition lab at Yale. And so she, we’ve talked about her in the past on shows. And so her work is really, really important. And so I recommend you checking it out, because it is a little bit more involved in terms of the recommendations that she provides. But it’s a really good read in terms of understanding that this is not just about compromising on your free time, but it’s actually impacting your cognitive abilities by compromising sleep. And sleep is so important. And we fail to recognize that in society, and so we try to shave away the number of hours we sleep, and we are doing this to ourselves on two ends of it. We’re telling ourselves, we want this free time with ourselves by not prioritizing that, that self care time that self time generally. And then of course, we compromise our sleep, which impacts our immune systems, our our mental health, our emotional health, and our ability to be sharp throughout the day, our working hours then get less productivity. So really good article, very important, I think, and revenge bedtime. Procrastination is real.

Augusto Pinaud 54:26

It’s real so so our next article steidel Stein to reclaim your mind and talks about a new program or a program that Professor Newport is going to be holding again called Life of focus and sad three months program and the interesting thing about this is, you know, what is it here? Well, the idea is the quality of your life in your part is determined by the attention of the direction of your attention and doesn’t matter if you go to here you Go in a different way. You know on that I tend to agree you know what he’s what you do and what you’re paying attention. It’s what is going to make your life and the quality of your life better. So the article go into finding depth into the distraction world in the philosophy of focus. And well, if you’re interested in take that the article even come with three things that you can try to take action to improve this, you know, visualize. Focus work in life will mean for you. And this is something that as a coach, I work a lot with people, because a lot of people in their adult life continue having the definitions that somebody put in them can be, their better half can be their family can be their friends, but never buddy, but not necessarily their own definition. So it’s important to understand what that means for you, then try to visualize, you know, the person what your personal life comes to. And between you. And interestingly, when you think, well, maybe the work life is not on their terms as a personal for sure, Daisy, is still in the same bucket, you know, people come into what it should be, you know, what I call to what I refer to my clients is the book of normal, you know, all of us has what I call the book of normal, and we all need to check their pages once in a while, and you are okay to read a couple of pages of that book of normal, you know, threader into pieces. So make sure that you check the article. And if you’re interested in the course, this is a good time.

Unknown 56:44

Great. Next up.

Augusto Pinaud 56:47

Next one, it’s an article from life hacker, it says you should always pre schedule your emails. And when I read the article, it reminded me many, many years ago, when my email leaves in Outlook, and how much really I love that feature. And I still do it in some emails that I don’t want to go at the time I’m working and all that, I tend to go to Gmail and and schedule them. So they go at a better time, buddy. But I have never considered a schedule. Most of them are all of them instead of that property, replying of email. So it was a really interesting reading for me. So if your email software don’t have the option, as it is on mail dot app, in the iPad, you should find a solution to look at this, and being able to schedule more of.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:43

So yeah, on the on mail dot app on iPad, you wouldn’t be able to do it. But you could install mail Butler on the Mac, and mail Butler will give you that capability of being able to go ahead and schedule email outbound, I use the mobile version as well as outlook for being able to schedule all email. And it’s one of those things after 6pm. And before 8am, all email is is scheduled to go out either at 8am. The next morning or some other time later, I’ll even respond to clients at the times in which so I have particular times throughout my day where I’ve scheduled, basically processing time, so I can reply and turn items into actions and deal with them. But I will usually schedule the emails to respond to them at times when I know that I’m going to be able to have the work done and closest to that time. So there isn’t as much time between my next message and when they’re getting the work product from me. And that’s usually helpful for for being able to know this is the concentrated period of time when I’m available and ready to give you that thing. And so that’s just one of those things that I like to do. I also like to schedule email to staff for when they are going to do the work. And I also like to schedule email to myself as basically snoozed email. So if I need an email that has an attachment in it at 8am, the next morning for a meeting, I will then schedule the email to come back into my inbox at 745. So that I can look at that email. It’s available to me and then I’m able to look at the documents or anything else attached to it and then meet with that client. And now I have those two pieces together. So I like to use that concept of snoozing email and scheduling email for for bringing those pieces together productively. So I like the idea of scheduling all your email. It’s really good.

Augusto Pinaud 59:31

Sorry, our next is an article on small victories and for reasons to celebrate small wins. And again, as a coach, this is really interesting because many, many times we tend to brush the victories, especially the small victories you know, we think on Oh when we get this massive thing, but we are anything that It’s not that massive thing we are not going to celebrate. And it’s been proven. Anyway many ways how celebrating every even those little victories help on the motivation to accomplish the bigger ones. And so pay attention to what are you doing with your small victories and, and in that case, since at least a little bit of do as I said, not as I do, I need to work into this consistently to celebrate those small wins, you know, I go into a meeting every week, and celebrate and it’s the big wins are not a problem the small wins, I need to pay attention and work all week hard to be able to celebrate. So the the reasons that the article gifts to celebration or energy, personal and professional growth, love and happiness. And they are all important to to go you know that the there is no need for you to beat yourself harder than the world. And the most interesting thing is, think about that when you see that small victory. And you’re going to say, oh, but it’s a small, stop for a moment and think what will happen if somebody will come to you with that a small victory. Because the interesting thing is when somebody you care came for you with something really small, do you tend to push them and celebrate them, when he’s your own, you tend to be our smoke three way, way we need to do that. So so it’s really important to to pay attention to this.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:01:48

Yeah, remember that a long term, larger goal, and a big win, so to speak, that that big victory, those things are fewer and far between. and we need to stay motivated to be able to get to those things. And we as productivity enthusiasts, we tend to focus on the actionability of things, meaning that these little tiny things are are the things that get us to larger goals. And we forget that every time we succeed at getting one of those smaller things done, that’s pivotal to getting to that larger goal is an opportunity to celebrate. And that by itself is both motivating. But it’s also exciting. It’s it’s something that gets us engaged in the process again. And that’s really why I feel so good about doing the actions on my lists, because I know that okay, call Susan about x is mundane, but it’s tied to the greater goal. And that greater goal is is now represented, it’s right in front of me, if I can achieve this thing, which I probably avoid otherwise, then I’m going to get to a goal. And that’s great to feel. And we tend to forget that connection between the two. And this article really brings to the fore that reality that we really need to do that. And we expect more of ourselves. Because we’re so focused on productivity all the time, that we forget that we’re actually doing more than the average person. And when we’re doing more than the average person that doesn’t make our contributions to the world, to our community, to our family to ourselves any less important. So remember that these small victories may be small in your immediate view, but they’re actually rather big in the larger context of your world. You know, when you go and exercise, when you go ahead and pick the right choice of meal, you know, to have proper nutrition, when you get that one small, mundane task done. That’s something that’s really helping you move your world forward in the right way. And you should celebrate that I’m fully behind that concept. All right, onto micromanagement onto something positive to others, not so positive.

Augusto Pinaud 1:03:54

Hey, we elevate the mood now let’s talk about this because this article in Fast Company talks about your urge to micromanage it’s actually the result of bad communication. And it was really interesting to see that as an been work on the past under micromanagers. And, you know, grown up in a household where my dad was a micromanager still is. It is when the when the article really resonated close to home. So it is really interesting to look at that and, and to look into a couple of things. You know, one is if you aren’t a micromanager, okay, look good for you one for noticing. But second, look into how can you improve that communication. And the second thing is if you aren’t on the receiving end of that micromanagement. Look how you can get that person To communicate better, and both things are possible on the side of a micromanager as well as the other side and get to get that person more information, you know, so that way, when you can alleviate some of that pain that comes to be on the receiving end of that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05:21

Yeah, I’ll tell you as a noted micromanager, and kind of recovering micromanager, also a noted control freak, the thing that I’m unaware of is the thing that causes me to want more control. And so this article completely spoke to me in the sense that when I have a team that frequently communicates to me about what’s going on, that alleviates all of the stress associated with not knowing what’s going on. And presumably, in my world, if something’s not being done, then they’re also not communicating to me that it’s being done. So the inverse is true, if they communicate with me that things are being done, even if there’s small things moving things forward, then that communication tells me that I don’t need to keep on them. Right, I don’t need to keep checking in with the team to make sure that things are moving forward. And so it may just be, things are still the same as they were yesterday, that’s enough for me to be able to rest my my, you know, alert system that oh, my God, something needs to move forward. And so just being able to implement that in my team and saying, Hey, everybody noted, you know, micromanager control freak here, over communicate with me. And that way, I don’t need to worry about those things go, that will just remove that those problems for me. Now, again, I was aware of it. And so I worked on that issue. Also, we are using technologies now that allow us to be able to see all of the status updates, and the system prompts us to be able to put these status updates in the system, that actually helps me also because I’m able to see that so some of this can be facilitated, facilitated by good policy and good technology combined. But it also requires you to understand that that person who if they’re micromanaging you, it’s because they feel a one they cannot trust and respect you right. And those are two different things. And that’s a problem by itself, I can’t solve that for you in the immediate term. But it could be that they just need more communication, or they’re miscommunicating with you. And if you can increase that and improve the communication, then you may be able to get them off your back a little bit.

Augusto Pinaud 1:07:22

And so our next news is how to respond when team members put themselves down. And and there is a couple of reasons I keep the article one of them is recently there has been jokes among certain people or so and so is pandemic that has been the sentence use, okay, as a lowering that, okay, this person has been, you know, all these been inside of the house working from home old as dynamic has been depleting, you know, the person and then the result of that is these people, these team members putting themselves down, and things like that. So, it’s important to understand why this person is doing and why we do it ourselves, you know, why? why we go and put ourselves down or put others down and take, as a manager, take that into consideration is this a regular behavior is a one time thing and and how to act about it, and how to help people improve, because sometimes it is about the self team, but sometimes is about their aspirations about the level they’re trying to do. You know, I, interestingly, a lot of the people in the productivity world tend to be incredible hardware, as you were saying a little bit early, you know, some of these people are making a lot more than the average getting a lot more done a lot more accomplished. And still, they tend to be the ones nothing accomplished today. Okay. So it’s important to pay attention to that from both respective asset manager as well as, personally, how you’re putting there, you know, I, there is a book from Marshall Goldsmith, where he goes into questions and I, what got you here will not get you there is a book. And interestingly enough, one of the questions that I asked myself consistently is how is my negative self talking? Because this is what it is, you know, this put yourself down is that, and no, it’s not easy, but it’s really, really important to pay attention. Where are you putting that attention? And where are you putting yourself with that negative self talk?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:09:50

Yeah, I fully agree. And the suggestion to inquire why people are doing that I think is also really important. The goal is not to diminish. The person’s perspective or feelings on what they’re saying, I have a rule with clients, which is that they are not allowed to speak ill of themselves while we are meeting. I try to correct them when they do that. And this article actually helps to underpin some of the reasons why people do that. And it’s actually informing how I’ll work with people in the future, which is that I will probably start asking them why it is that they feel that way. And to kind of get at the heart of that, I still think I’ll still use the rule, which is you’re not allowed to speak ill of yourself in my presence. I kind of have that rule, generally with old friends and family. But the the goal then is then with clients really to understand what is going on in their world that makes them think that and challenging that view, gently, you know encouragingly, so that they’re empowered to check themselves, they should be skeptical when we speak ill of ourselves. And again, those of us who are focused on time management and efficiency and effectiveness frequently spend a little too much time being critical of ourselves, and not understanding why we did that. Are you doing that because your parents always did that to you, brother, sister, you know, relative always did that to you, because as a professor, once in college said that to you, that happens, right becomes this indelible, traumatic event. And then you think that about yourself. And the reality is, is it may not be true, but it’s limiting you now. And so you want to be able to overcome some of those pieces. So I just felt like this article is really good at being able to just help us know that we have ways in which we can respond to people, when they do do that. And the negative self speak, the way in which we speak to ourselves negatively can also be challenged, we can do this work with ourselves. Why are you feeling that way about yourself? When you say, oh, gosh, I’m an idiot? Or Oh, gosh, I can’t believe I did that again. Why? Why do you believe that? That’s wrong? Why do you believe that you are what you say you are, and start thinking through what the things are that may have caused you to get there, and maybe working yourself out of that perspective. Or maybe there is something wrong, and you now have the power to fix it. Because you’re recognizing the source of why you constantly say that to yourself. And now you can put into place systems, I always say people aren’t wrong or broken, it is the fact that they don’t have the right systems to support them. This is a systems problem, not a huge problem. You’re not wrong, the system is not there to support you. So how do you create systems to support you?

Augusto Pinaud 1:12:22

Excellent. For for last article in this segment, we brought an article from better news, some article from the UK and how the onboarding, it’s changing in this COVID area, areas COVID era era. And it is interesting, because I’ve been working remotely and with clients and all this for a really long time. But recently working with another client that this has been a reality, now they’re introducing these people from all over. And there was no procedure because the procedure was we bring it to the office, we give you the laptop, well, here’s your phone, and then we send you home. And now that’s not happening, okay, the laptop is getting to a box that is opening by somebody else that it needs to be introduced into it. So they helped him set up all the credentials, and everything else. So it was a really interesting articles. communication is the key. And that is the reason I bring it I wanted to bring to close to to this, you know, communication is the key and, you know, make this audit. And you know, remote audits understand that these people that you just brought on board don’t know anything about the company, they may have get the laptop in a box. And that’s all that they know. So communication, it’s really important. Employee Wellness is going to be a part of that success. You know, I had a client who is using right now a piece of software called practically. So he’s available all day or must have lay into that platform for these people to come in. And it’s not an office, but it’s similar to an office, they can come in in there, they can go work, they can see each other and that way they can have a more traditional feeling of the office, especially for these new people on board.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:14:22

Yeah. And so what you noted was remote audit, but what what the article says is conducting remote office audits. And so we’re not auditing people remotely right looking at they’re looking at their office environments, because their office environments, their working environments are frequently not suited for actually working. And this is one of those things that I’m having conversations with as I onboard new people in my own company, I’m asking them, what is your working environment? Like? Are you working at the dining room table? Are you working on the sofa? Are you working on your bed in the bedroom? Like what is the circumstance and you know that those are things that are important to me to know about them so that I know like if We need to do a conference call, then I can’t, I can’t enforce up, you know, or force them to rearrange their home to suit something like that. But at the same time, just making sure that I’m, I’m aware, like, I always tell people, you know, I’ve got the, I’ve got a blind dog. And because of COVID, I’m working in my home office, and my home office does not have walls. So I need to deal with that fact that he could bark at any time. Because, you know, he hears the mailman, he hears people walking by the mail carrier, that is, he hears somebody walking by the front of the house, and he’s just gonna bark. And that’s just a thing that helps me know, to prep other folks about that. But it also makes me compassionate, when other people are having those issues, you know, the kids are gonna potentially walk by in the background, and you know, all things all kind of manner of things are happening. But in a remote environment, we should be aware of those things about the people we are working with. And as we onboard them, making sure they know like, you know, I’m working with a team right now. And the young kids are constantly in the space with that team member. And it’s fine by me, it you know, we we know, now that that’s happening, and the person is capable of performing and working in that environment. And that works for them. For other people that might be a little bit distracting. And so it’s just kind of trying to make sure that you’re getting them the support, they need to be successful in the position. And I don’t really care what you do with your time, as long as you get the work done. And so the the goal is to be able to help facilitate that. And if I can say, you know what, here goes some, you know, noise cancelling headphones, let’s ship that to you, because you have a lot of noise in that space that you’re working in. And that’s really going to disturb you, that’s a small price to pay for an exorbitant amount of new productivity gain from that person, you’re onboarding. So just keep that in mind as you move forward. And when you’re bringing new team members on in a remote work environment. And that brings us to the end of our stories this week. And with that, we move into new tools of the week. So gousto. And I come across many personal productivity, tools and services each week as we endeavor to bring together all of the productivity news that we share with you. And of course, these new tools we like to share with you. And sometimes they’re new to us, sometimes they’re just new to you. And sometimes, we just come across tools that we’ve been using for a while and we’re like, Hey, everybody should know about this particular thing. And so that is new tools of the week. And so the first new tool of the week is my new tool. And that is a service called rover. And so rover is a service that I actually started using for vacations with the dog and the cat before the cat passed. And I just have fallen in love with it. And so the idea is, is that you have this application, and you’re able to go ahead and book someone to do a whole bunch of different things. So you can have someone come in and take your dog or cat and board them. So you can you know, go ahead and have them take care of your dog there. You can have, this is dog walking only, but it is dog and cat. But anyway, the idea, I guess, because I only have dog checked here. But the idea is, is that they can come and board the dog, you can have someone come in and do how sitting, there’s dropping visits, doggy daycare and dog walking. And so for example, as I said before, I have a blind dog. And so he needs a little bit greater care than the average dog, you know, he needs to be led around and he needs socialization. He needs walking just like any other dog, but he can’t see. So you need to make sure that you are leading him not into like oncoming traffic, or, you know, having him walk into trees, you know, like those things happen when the dog can’t see. And so I have found a wide variety of rover sitters and dog walkers who are really compassionate people. And they check in in the app. And they like message you when they meet with the animal and they take photographs with the dogs and the cats and they send them to you when they you know visit and it’s just really nice. You know, we were on our most recent vacation, which unfortunately was quite a long time ago now because of COVID. You know, we were on the cruise ship. And we were just getting these photographs. You know, when we got into port and got access to the Wi Fi again, we’d see the pictures come in and we’d see the dog with the with the rover sitter. It was just nice to know that the dog was being cared for, even though they were home alone during this time because grandma and grandpa typically take care of the dog. But grandma and grandpa were with us on the vacation. So so we had the rover sitter there to take care of it. It was really, really nice to be able to have that done. And so in in deference to our pet productivity topic, I thought a productivity focused Tool for Dogs and cats would be good here. Good. So what’s your tool? It’s

Augusto Pinaud 1:19:52

all in the same lines to keep with the productivity. Mine is Joey and Joey is service products you can find pets food toys, when you registered, you can do out the chip of the medicines, you can do auto ship or the food and anything else. But also it manage your dog if you enter the vaccinations and all the information, give you recommendations specifically for your dog and your cat breeds. You know, it is a really robust thing, we, Amelia our dog is registering there and they manage their prescription to there and they talk to the veterinarian and we get the stuff aim home was detected that we’ll get out to ship. So it works really, really well. And since it was a pet wellness, you know, I we managed a lot to, to chewy, it’s been good. And and I’m gonna tell story with them, you know, we had a problem with was with our medicines when we moved from Indiana to New Jersey and transfer those prescriptions was what it was because he was in the middle of COVID. You know, it’s a great timing. So the chewy, people really worked with us to make sure that that prescription issue was sold, they were having issues on the bed, they were having issues on their side. But the customer service we got it was really, really good. So we were really happy with with them. And that’s the app for the week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:21:34

Fantastic. All right. So with our new tools of the week, out of the way. That brings us to our story this week, which is Apple iCloud is bringing password synchronization to Windows. How is that possible? Okay, so

Augusto Pinaud 1:21:50

well, you know, interestingly enough the extension as soon as you try to install it in a non windows tells you this is not a Windows machine, it doesn’t work so I could not play with it. Because I don’t have a Windows machine since I think it’s 2000

Unknown 1:22:10

long time ago. So start off

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:22:13

start off. Apple has a product called Apple iCloud for Windows purposes. This is an application that runs on Windows machines and gives you access to iCloud, your iCloud Drive and your your calendar all inside of this application environment. And so that application is required. And then you now have an apple iCloud passwords, extension for Chrome, Google Chrome,

Augusto Pinaud 1:22:42

correct in the Mac. Correct. In the Mac, you have kitchen, and Mac and and the iOS so that way you can store all your passwords in there. The problem is when you leave that platform, then is useless. A lot of iPhone users who leave on an on a on a Windows machine, you know want to have access to their passwords. And finally Apple decided to create an extension, it requires chrome to be able to use the same passwords and now they synchronize. They required to have iCloud for Windows installing that machine. But with the combination of both things now you can get your passwords back and forward. And any password system is better than the positive on your laptop. So that is good. Do I think key chain is the best password? I recommend one password, I recommend LastPass. Those are the two I recommend in that order. I’m a user of one password for I don’t know how many years. And I really liked the product. And I also recommend LastPass. And mostly because they are the same I just use one or the other. But if what you use and what do you trust is on Apple key chain, at least their passwords are going to be there secure and not. You know, in a posted somewhere.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:24:24

Yeah, I’m very nervous about doing anything that’s related to moving key chain items out of key chain and into the browser and then into the desktop system. I’m a LastPass user and very happily in that ecosystem. And I don’t want to mess with anything. You know, there are things that Apple key chain has in its system because I had an iPhone many years ago. And it saved a whole bunch of passwords over the over time that I really only use for applications that are on iOS. They’re not on my Android devices or on my Windows devices and so I just don’t even need them to be there. And quite honestly, I like the segmentation and So I have no desire to have those systems speaking to each other and synchronizing plus Mike Chrome Extension has 1000s of passwords in it for demo accounts. And for other things that I’ve created over time that are all detritus. So if it’s synchronized those all into key chain, it would all of a sudden, via a much larger cheat sheet key chain database than I want it to be. So be mindful that you, you know, check and make sure that you have the right you know, passwords in the right places, and that the system doesn’t potentially overwrite or duplicate passwords, you know, say you had key chain, and it’s old, and you just never used it. And you’ve been using your Google Chrome, you know, password manager or whatever. Now all of a sudden, it’s going to pull all of those in there and potentially muck up the works. So just be mindful not to do this without really clear thought. And, again, I’m on your side, Agusta with this, which is that having a an independent third party tool that is strong, that is the the one password LastPass dashlane. those tools are strong password managers that have a proven track record of being able to manage your passwords securely. I like that much better, because it’s not going to lock you into a specific browser, or a specific ecosystem. You know, any number of things can happen in the apple world. And it’s not that Apple isn’t secure or anything else like that. But people make mistakes, they they trip up, and they get themselves into a problem. And it’s nice to have an independent tool that is securing your passwords. So from my perspective, I think this is great for people who need this, that there’s there there, they feel the need to have a Windows device and Apple mobile devices. And they want to be able to synchronize across the two of them. Or even in the case of having multiple computers. I mean, I know I do I have like I said I have multiple Macs and multiple Windows computers. And you want to be able to bring those together across the the ecosystems without having to use a third party tool. This gives you that capability. I actually liked the idea that there’s an iCloud for windows that you can actually access your iCloud Drive in your Apple calendar, there are other tools so that you’re able to actually bring bridge the gap between those two pieces. So it’s good that they have it and kind of you know, bringing forward what iTunes for Windows was to the the iCloud for Windows environment now. So it’s good that it’s all coming together. And so that is our story this week, we’ve got a couple of announcements. And what are announcements of Cousteau? Oh, Jeff Bezos decided to step down as Amazon CEO. That’s not as much big news as it is. He’s Amazon’s a huge company with multiple companies. He’s he’s basically been stepped away from the operations of Amazon day to day anyway. So him becoming chairman of Amazon gives him all the control with none of the, you know, he’s not the one who’s going to get called to Congress now to to, to testify. So, you know, he gets all of the power and the prestige and you know, he’s still a controlling interest shareholder. So he gets all of that, you know, ability, and he gets to go play and do his stuff with, you know, his his space space projects and other things like Elon Musk is doing, and without the the oversight that he’s currently is getting, by virtue of being CEO of Amazon, so good on that one. What’s our other announcement?

Augusto Pinaud 1:28:13

So another announcement is we are starting to see on social medias, people sharing their vaccines and their information. And boy genius had an article saying, hey, careful with what you’re sharing, because you’re sharing the load number, and all that information can be tracked back to you. So this is a public service announcement, this public service announcement, yes,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:28:39

do not take photographs of the of the vaccination card, or other kinds of personal identifying information on social media, if you are going to do that, make sure you cover the lot number of the vaccine that was given to you and other kinds of identifying information so that you do protect yourself, you know, and and so on, so forth. I mean, it’s kind of like going on social media and saying, Hey, everybody, the whole family is going on vacation next week, guess what, your home is empty for the next week, and you just told the world, you think that thieves, you know, the the burglars and the larcenous aren’t sitting around paying attention to that information on social networks when you publish this publicly? You bet they are. And they have sophisticated software that actually scans for that kind of information. So just be mindful of the fact that it’s wonderful if you get the COVID-19 vaccination, and we want you to, but beyond that, Don’t go Don’t go celebrating by sharing that information publicly in ways that are going to compromise your security and personal data. So good deal there. All right, good. So that brings us to the end of predictors.

Augusto Pinaud 1:29:45

Only two of us

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:29:46

have the productivity news this week. So thank you for joining me and putting together the show each week.

Augusto Pinaud 1:29:53

My pleasure. It’s my pleasure.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:29:55

antastic. Let us know everybody if we missed a story, if we if we did Go ahead and head over to anything but idle.com. And you can click on the Contact page. And you can message us from the contact page. You can also tweet or dm us at anything but idle, we have our tweets, our DMS open, so to speak, so that you can go ahead and do that. If you have question or comment about the show generally, or something we discussed in the show, you can comment directly on the episode page that we are publishing and your you can go to the contact page and submit something there as well. But you can leave a comment that is specific to that to that episode, while you’re on anything but idle. And on any given episode page, you’ll find that we have show notes, those show notes include all the links to the stories that we discussed. So you know, if we got something wrong or anything else like that, you can go in and you know, verify in the article, what was actually said. So those include links to the stories to the tools of the week. And to some of the extra stories, we don’t always get to cover all the stories in our time together. And so we do put those extra stories down in an extra story section on the show notes, we also have a text transcript, we run it through a machine, you know, tool on a piece of software that goes ahead and pumps out a machine generated transcript. And so that’s available both as readable on the page. So if you’re listening, you can actually like scroll through it and see the transcript. Or you can download it as a PDF, and then printed or whatever you want to be able to read along as you listen. If this is your first time watching the show, click that thumbs up icon to let us know that you watched it. That also helps the the the algorithms know that we’re doing something that other people might want to watch. Also click the subscribe button. And that will of course notify you about when we go live in the future. That’s helpful just to get notified so that when we go live weekly, you get a little prompt that we are live. You could also go to anything but idol.com and click on subscribe. And so if you can’t watch the episodes each week with us live here, you can also get the podcast episode The audio version of that downloaded to your podcast app of choice each week. And with that, that brings us to the end of our time together it with that we’ll see you all next time on anything but idle. Here’s to your productive life.