How to Renegotiate or Recommit to Your Goals

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:02

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

Augusto Pinaud 0:15

I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And we are your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is Episode 60. How to renegotiate or recommit to your goals. And we’re recording this on May 17 2021. Each week, Augusto and I read and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And so welcome. Welcome to those of you who are watching us live. And those of you who are listening after the fact Hello, hello. And so this week’s theme we have a theme we usually start the show with. And so today we’re talking about how to renegotiate or recommit to goals. And so gousto what are the things that you think about when it comes to what we consider renegotiation or recommitment to goals in the sense of renegotiation? I tend to think about it Allah getting things done, or the GTD methodology where we might renegotiate a commitment in that sense. When we talk about recommitting to a goal it seems like it’s kind of a bigger thing, like something that we are trying to achieve. And where we’ve somehow faltered, we’ve stumbled, and we want to write the ship and get back toward reaching that goal. What are some of the things that you do to renegotiate commitments and recommit to goals? Well,

Augusto Pinaud 1:28

let’s begin with was renegotiate those commitments or those goals. And I agree with your definition for me. renegotiating means I have told you, I was going to do something by x date and time and it’s not going to happen. For whatever reason, now I need to go talk to you, and find any agreement to that. And renegotiate as the Word says, and, and I that’s something that let’s say I’m pretty decent, I I don’t like broken agreements. And I do a really decent job into defining those agreements in the front end and try to keep those agreements at when they are going to be out. So and that’s one of the reasons I tend to do these in writing, because both the agreement as well as renegotiation so that way, we are all in the same page, and we are not suffering from I thought you said I thought you understand race, and those kind of things, even even with with my kids, I do that in writing. So my son, at the beginning of the pandemic was his birth, then he wanted to go to the Statue of Liberty, and that there is some agreement, there is a note on my iPhone, who has all the things we were going to do on that trip. And it was renegotiated because for COVID and COVID. And even that has come a couple of times reminding me Hey, we haven’t done this, I then need to come and reminded Yes, we leave the date open because this happened. So that’s for renegotiation for recommit, then I have there are two different things for me. One is, I have a product I call the impact journal, where I advise people to recommend to their goals daily, why? The reason of that is simple. When you recommend to your goals daily is like you’re resetting the compass on which direction you’re going, when you go to these calls, you write them down every morning, what happened is, you do two things, one you clarify them to and more important you put your brain to work into find how you can reach to that point faster and better. So that’s the first thing. The second kind of recommending is, Hey, I set up a goal that is not going to happen. I set up that I was going to have this first draft of this book, okay, by the first of May, and it’s not going to happen until the first of you. And that’s an actual goal that has been recommended. For me. I have a book, that first draft, it’s I’m reviewing that first draft and I have done already two times and I still not happy. So I’m two weeks behind. And my co author on this, it’s aware that I’m two weeks behind and the why he’s not happy about it. But that’s a different discussion. Okay, it’s not a broken one. It’s a renegotiate one, we can go and you can go and work with it. I’m not happy version or he can wait until I get a happier version of this.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:44

Yeah, I think I think you touched on some really important points. I mean, for me, I think that when it comes to renegotiating commitments, doing it as soon as possible is imperative for me, I try to get that person, some kind of communication and this is when you know, I feel mostly good about that renegotiation, I never feel good about commitments that are not going to make it on time. But there are just certain extenuating circumstances where that happens. And so you’re gonna have to renegotiate the things that I find more difficult are renegotiating commitments with myself. And and those commitments end up being really difficult to renegotiate because I see all of the various things that I want to be able to accomplish. And then I have to make the hard call of saying this is going to have to be punted into a later category, whether that be someday or a later time horizon, because I have other commitments that I’ve agreed to to others in order to do so in that sense, the renegotiation for yourself has to be some kind of as it sounds like renegotiation, you have to you have to work with yourself in order to be able to determine Is this a priority right now? Or must I move it into some later horizon? Or does it need to be removed completely? That is, the name of the game has changed. And I no longer should be doing this thing. Many times my renegotiated commitments are Oh, that’s right. This is not work I should be doing, I should be delegating this to other people. Because I’m a I’m a task order. I am notorious for taking on all of the work and then hoarding that work because I want to do it all. I just actually enjoy the work. And so I end up not delegating. And so that renegotiation with me most often than not is Oh, yeah, I need to actually pass this along to someone else to handle. And that will free up time for me to be able to work on what really are the things that I should be doing in my leadership role. When it comes to goals, I have a regular practice of reviewing my goals. And that gives me an opportunity and natural point in time to renegotiate them. I actually just went through that process. In the last few weeks, where I’ve been recommitting to certain goals that I had kind of lost track of because you know, all kinds of things going on with a pandemic and changing, just changing moods about what can be done and what can’t be done. It has been really difficult to say, coordinate with family and friends in terms of what’s going to actually happen because some people are vaccinated, some people are unvaccinated yet and trying to get vaccinated. And so all of those things happening, really moved the timelines on things. And so you know, there are just certain circumstances that underlie a forward movement on things. And so we have to be dynamic when it comes to these, but having a natural point in time, so for those of you who are, who are maybe unaware, I start my personal year on November 1, and since it’s my birth month, I start my year when I was born, and brought into the planet, so so that means that come, you know, November, December, January, March, April may come May, that’s six months. So it’s my half year mark. And so I’m gonna do my my semi annual review at that point. And that’s just a natural point for me to be able to do that kind of recommitting to larger goals for the year. And so I suggest just having these natural points where you can renegotiate with yourself in terms of commitments, that being on a weekly or monthly basis, and then recommitting to goals and having maybe quarterly or semi annual moments where you look at the things that you have. And I use something called the major projects queue. And the major projects queue are a limited number, not more than three goals in all of my life domains or life categories, what I call life categories, you might think of them akin to areas of focus and accountability, I think about those items and say, okay, not more than three in any one of those categories. And those are the things that I’m working on toward the end of this year. And so if I complete one, I can add one on to that queue. But if I have not completed one that I don’t get to add them to the queue. And that is motivating enough for me at least to keep working toward larger goals. And it also tells me what I should be working on at any given quarter or half year. And that’s been really helpful for me in terms of that. So I hope that that helps in terms of renegotiating I think it’s useful as a Cousteau said to communicate original commitments in in some kind of written format. That way people are aware, and you can kind of look back and determine many times, I will say, Oh, you know, so and so we’re supposed to do that thing. And then they will say, what did you tell me? And then I will say yes. And then I could scroll back in my email chain, or in my chat chain and say, Oh, there you go. I told you that at this point, or I can scroll back in the chain and say, I can’t find it. I must have, you know, set it in some amorphous way. I delegated it incorrectly. Or it just disappeared and we you know, like we didn’t do it or I didn’t I forgot, you know, there. Everybody’s human. So at that point, you can be like, well, seems like I didn’t, but now I am. So now I’m delegating it. Can you handle this? And now confirm it in writing.

Augusto Pinaud 10:02

Right and I and then that is a result of the writing the writing is nothing other than we are on the same page because has happened to, to me and has happened, you know that this is the agreement that that I thought and this is the agreement that the other person thought and now, yeah, I fail if that happened in and that person reports to me. And the other thing that happened is when you send that in writing agreement now, people come and say, Wait, I don’t think I’m understand that what that verbal people have a harder time coming back and saying, I’m not sure I understand. So that also helps in the efficiency, you know, I said that are two parts to be productive, you know, one part is to really find things, but the other one is to reduce friction, okay, and if you understand that people have a hard time on these things, and you can reduce that friction, that helps significantly and have any writing, you can come back and start understanding also how to communicate with people and how your own communication need to grow and evolve depending on the different persons.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 11:14

Absolutely. So I look forward to hearing from all of you about how you are renegotiating and recommitting in your lives. So let us know how those are going. And otherwise, let’s kick into our stories of the week this week. And so gousto What is our first story of the week? Oh,

Augusto Pinaud 11:32

the first story matter, on oil. Okay, fine. It’s the next day for news, smart tech home Alliance. And it was around what, December 2019, before the pandemic, Apple, Google and Amazon and others, big mains tried to organize into create a new standard for the smart home, software and etc. And it’s called the hit Smart Home tech Alliance matter. I’m excited about it. Because even though I’m an apple user, when we did the smart home in our house, we did it with Miss A, because the difference was significant. And I wanted to test it and I wanted to play with it. And I didn’t thought that make any sense that the ball that work with mallam, a was half the price of the ones who work with Apple, that was a no go for me, it didn’t make any sense. But it will be exciting that the next generation or maybe the generation after that will work regardless what device that will also allow multiple households to have different devices and really tested technology, you know, in our house, everything anytime my son for that reason, okay, after you start having some now everything needs to be compatible with that thing in order to get in. But if I can, I would love to have a Google boys thing that I can call and test and but that is connected to everything. So I don’t need to have three devices in each room. That doesn’t seem so appealing to me. So I’m excited about it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:15

Yeah, so so so that people have an awareness, the ZigBee. Alliance, which was the former name of now, the connectivity standards Alliance, the CSA, they have now broaden their scope to be able to bring the project connected home over IP very, very, you know, pithy name. Hence, Chip, they called it project ship, because it’s connected home over IP, though, I guess it would be cheap. But whatever ship has now become matter to in essence, help people understand that they are working toward an application layer for this kind of situation where you’re going to have multiple devices built by different manufacturers, if you can have a Samsung product over here, and an Amazon product over here and a Google product over there, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to communicate in your home. And this is going to provide that level of standards. What I see here is the beauty of automation, really coming to the fore and giving us that real rich ecosystem where I can say to mme a or two big G, something, and it will be able to control devices, no matter who the manufacturer of that hardware is. And I just look forward to all of the big tech playing nice. And also providing security updates consistently for all of those devices, so that they don’t get hacked into one too much. All right,

Augusto Pinaud 14:40

almost guarantee this second one,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:43

they’ve got to provide some level of support for some number of years, lest their they ruin their own reputation and brands. Because, you know, over time, we’re all going to get hacked in some way, shape, or form. And the more data and the more data that keeps getting leaked, the more likely those brands are going to lose out so it’s in their best self interest to be able to do that. Alright, onward to some Samsung, continuing the Samsung news about turning their your phones into smart home devices. So this is their, their recycling program. Right?

Augusto Pinaud 15:12

Right, the upcycle program. Yes. And we announced it in March here in April, sorry, here in the show. And now we have an article of actually how you can do it at the time, we announced that there was no clear exactly which devices now we know, that are basically 2018. And up, they need Android nine. So we’re talking about Galaxy S nodes, and C Series, again, 2018 or later. But it’s still it’s really exciting news that this is coming that this will be working and will be available for these devices, even if I will love to see in much older technology than 2018. I think it’s a step in the right direction.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:01

Yeah, but it just requires the later software. And so they’re just not going to be able to do it. But yeah, that’s that’s pretty good. I mean, it brings a whole host of potentially dead devices back on to the market, which I’m really looking forward to. So you have to install the the free SmartThings app. And that will in essence give you the gateway to turning on the upcycling at home program. Very, very cool. All right, moving right along to some Google pay news.

Augusto Pinaud 16:28

Oh, Google pay is adding international mobile money transfers. And that’s, that’s a challenge for everybody who needs to deal with that there are not that many vehicles, it they are not easy necessarily to do, especially for small amounts is kind of the what we have sell or Bama here in the state. But when you try to send data abroad, it is cumbersome. It’s not easy. It’s not everybody can do it. So I’m excited to know that Google is starting to really look into this, I was not a user of Google pay, and recently installed it for, for some work reasons. And hey, I was surprised with some of the things they have. So the fact that we are going to they’re trying to work with Western Union and wise so they can get they are going to start in India and Singapore. And the idea is to expand that. You and again, this is designed for small transfers, actually, they have a limit of $500 per transaction. Similar by the way to what sell half sell has $500 until you do certain number of transactions with that person. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:46

I’m excited is all about this is all about fraud detection, and making sure that they’re capable of handling the amount of money moving and those kinds of things. And of course, you know, this is the this is the territory of PayPal and others in that market. And they’re trying to, you know, gain some foothold here. We’ve talked about in the past Google pay is in the process of of partnering with, I think, Citibank to develop a bank account directly inside of the Google pay app. I think that’s brilliant, little late to the game, Google. But you know, I’ll I love Google, but come on Google, your Google your alphabet, you could have done this 10 years ago. So I’m looking forward to seeing that them put a foothold in this rebuild out their infrastructure here, you know, they went from Google Wallet to Google to Android Pay to Google page. And now g pay slash Google pay. And they are iterating pretty well, they’re putting in some mint slash personal capital type features into the application doing this, you know, person to person transferring, I don’t know why they took away the web dashboard. So now you can’t do that using the paid google.com browser. But you know, I presume part of this is just, you know, security issues. And we’ll see going forward, how they how they manage some of these pieces, but it’s a good development on the whole.

Augusto Pinaud 19:03

No, it is good. And he could be reading dressed in because when you go outside of the United States, the reality is the majority of the phones are Android. So if they can make this happen, they can turn themselves into the currency management in many, many, many countries. India and Singapore have been two of them.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:22

Yeah, now they just need to add a cryptocurrency wallet. Anyway, moving on to do a little bit of Google Chrome news.

Augusto Pinaud 19:30

Okay, Google Chrome on the iOS finally got an update to version 90. And with that, they go widgets, they go three widgets. One is a game of dinosaur sorry, I don’t play the game. I don’t. I didn’t even install it to test it. But these quick actions, search and the dyno game said you jump with Chrome dyno in from your home screen.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:55

Yeah, so if you’ve ever gone offline, you will. You’ll see the chrome dialog it’ll, it’ll appear if you go offline. And you can actually just play the game with your with your spacebar. So so that’s where the game came from. They’ve just turned it into a widget now because people use it as kind of like a stress reliever, you know, it’s like a widget spinner fidget, spinner, whatever they call them. You know, it’s kind of that kind of thing where it’s just a mindless game where you’re jumping over cacti, so, or you’re ducking under birds and jumping over cacti. And so they’ve added that component just to that fun.

Augusto Pinaud 20:29

So, but that’s, but that’s good. I mean, finally, we have the update in other things, you know, you can search navigating cognito incognito mode, everything from that widget on the beginning of three is clean, you can do many of those things already on iOS. But if you leave on that Google, if that is work, as I do work in my life is on Google, not on safari. So that may be really good.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:55

Yeah, I think this is just everything that they can do to put Google goodness into iOS, I think is good for me. So you know, the the iPad, and the any iOS device in my world, even the Mac devices, you know, they’re all just vessels for me to access my cloud infrastructure. So I don’t really care about the apple software, so to speak. And a lot of people depend upon it. And a lot of people love it. I know you do. That’s fine. I just want great hardware so that I can access Google. And so it’s, it’s a really great feature when chrome being my browser of choice gives me greater features on the platform. And yeah, the more of these more, the more Google and Apple and the rest of them Samsung, Microsoft otherwise are playing well together, I laud all of those epor efforts. Alright, a little bit more Google News.

Augusto Pinaud 21:49

So there is a lot of Google’s news. Even though there was a lot of news this week, I was excited about it. The week the last we have, we have been from a dry, you know, we have little news this week was really active. But the Google Assistant can now broadcast to your smartphone. Again, I don’t have a big G to test it. But according to the article, you could install it into iOS and broadcast using your big G and it will even go on the I in your iPad in your case or the iPhones. You know, I love madam a announcement, okay. And that’s how I call my kids, you know, and things and at home, it’s all true announcements I use that features, I shout less as a parent. But, but I think it’s cool. Now that my kids are starting to grow up, we have the first smartphone in the house that do not belong to an adult. So it will be really cool to start having those features to

Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:54

now this is really helpful where a Google household and so we have lots of Google devices around. And it’s just really helpful that say, I turn off my phone from being on the network, because I happen to be, you know, on the roof deck, or I’m just walking around the block with the dog and still want to receive the broadcast message that will now happen, that wouldn’t have happened before, I wouldn’t have heard the message. If somebody else in the house thought I was home and was trying to broadcast the message to me, that will now happen. And that’s really just a great extension of the feature, I can see how it could be abused. So we will have to overcome some of those pieces. But the broadcast message doesn’t seem to me to be too invasive. in that sentence, it is only a one way type of message, you can reply to a broadcast message. So there is a function, you can press the screen or audibly tell the google assistant to go ahead and reply. But it isn’t as invasive. So it would only be audibly saying the message out loud to you in that sense. So I like it because I have my pixel buds to in walking around the block with the dog, I get the notification that there’s a broadcast message. And then I can go ahead and respond or not until I go back to the house.

Augusto Pinaud 24:03

No, no. And I think for example, I have I hope that Amazon comes with something like that I have Amazon on my parents exactly for good reason if they need to, they can broadcast to one of the things and one of their codes. And it will be really nice to get in when I’m not here when I’m not on the network. So I hope that comes everywhere.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:29

All right, next up continuing on Chromebooks. Now we go over the Chromebook

Augusto Pinaud 24:35

Chromebooks. Apparently, you can use Google handwriting recognition on Chromebooks with no network. And there has been for years the understanding that in order to get that you need to have that connected to the web. So the artificial intelligence work and recognize all these well, Google has work to do don’t need that. anymore, you can be offline. And the handwriting recognition will work and do hold the job. Now that is imbedded or to get into software. And that’s really, really exciting.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:13

This is this is the same direction that they took with natural language processing as it came to spoken word in the keyboard. So in G board, or actually in the android operating itself, you used to have to be connected to the internet for it to receive your audio, it would process it, and then it would download the written text, they got it, they got the library that basically helped manage the natural language processing small enough to just basically live on your phone. And it puts as little updates on occasion. But otherwise, when you speak now into Android, it’s doing all of that processing locally, really, really quickly. And now here we see handwriting recognition reached that level where they download that database of machine learning code once and then they updated incrementally as it gets better. But you basically have the blob of code on your machine. So you could do it faster. More expediently in and without connectivity, which is what you would want. I mean, why would you want to have to be connected to be able to handwrite into a device so smart off

Augusto Pinaud 26:14

smart? Fantastic.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:17

All right, more Chromebook new. Okay, we

Augusto Pinaud 26:19

are going to jump up and down with this news, Google announced that they’re going to be new docking stations design. For Chromebooks. Yeah, you can go on Amazon and buy them. But then firmware update or done update, and then things get broken. And this is the first time that Google comes and said, Nope, we are going to build some and then we are going to make sure that their firmware gets updated alongside with Chrome OS update. So that is really really, really exciting. Hybrid in announcing, you know, their their lineup that is going to work, it’s not available yet. They are coming out on August 2021. But they are on my list of things to to acquire, I think it’s going to be fantastic for the Chromebook in my life to have that instead of the connections that I that I have done, I have a small Lenovo duet, the problem the duet works incredibly well for what I need. That is playing and testing. But it it has limitations. Okay, it’s a cheap Chromebook. So when you tried to put the ethernet cable and connect the microphone for the podcast and connect the power, okay, it took me a while to find an adapter. And that did not messed up the whole the power management of the machine. So having that will solve problems for me and a bunch of other people and have now a really possibility to connect stuff. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:56

I’m excited. Chromebooks typically come with very few ports on them. And so there are some higher end ones that come with many more ports. But they typically come with only a few ports. So now you can plug one USBC into these docking stations and get the panoply of power plus every other kind of access port that you’re going to need or access adapter that you’re going to need to be able to connect many devices. And I can see myself even getting one of these, you know, having external monitor, be able to just plug in, you know, Chromebook and now turning a laptop into a full desktop environment. In those in those ways I’ve been, I’ve been eyeing the Samsung Galaxy Pro. And so, you know, I really do think that it could be powerful enough for that purpose of having a hyper doc plugging in, and then it just becomes the desktop machine once you plug it in. And so I’m really looking forward to seeing the reviews on the hyper docking stations, as well as targets targets has also announced that they’re going to be doing this as well. So we’ll be seeing not just one work with Chromebook certified set of docking stations, but multiple manufacturers attacking this and so competition can only be good here. So Alright, we have reached the halfway point in the show. And so we’re gonna take a break. Now for a word from our sponsor this week, co working space by personal productivity club and when we get back, we are going to be talking about some new and other news and then we’ll do new tools of the week. We have a new segment from Dr. Frank Buck, and then our story of the week so we will see you after the break. Well working in person may be normal for you. It’s unlikely your co workers are as interested in being productive as you are, or working remotely or from home can be isolating and there’s something powerful about being with productive people even virtually that helps you be more engaged. If a flavor of these sounds familiar, co working space by personal productivity club is for you. Co working space is a virtual work community designed to help members be more effective and efficient in their work and personal lives. At its core,

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:45

Hello, everybody. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And I’m joined here with a goose tip. Now Welcome back to the second half of our show Anything But Idle. And so let’s get into our part B of the headlines. Okay, so what is our first article productivity article this week,

Augusto Pinaud 31:02

New York Times lounge lounge or wrote or published an article on how to power up your to do list and it’s talking about, you know, hey, getting your to do list and you’ve seen it depending if you have an iOS or you have a Google phone, use the basic to do list that comes with your phone in case of iOS, its reminders in the case of Google’s Google task, and how to use it integrated in the case of the Google with your calendar with your Gmail, and do some basic management into those two applications, how to share some of the tasks, how to do some of those basic things. So you can really carry that to do list in your pocket and use it given for their productivity. World and some of our users, that is way too basic. But it is a great auto call to share with the non productive people in your life, because now the New York Times is bringing this up that it may have, in their perspective, more validity. At least that will happen in my life.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:12

Yeah, and I think that they actually both, we underestimate the power of both Apple and Google’s baked in reminders, tools. And in the case of Google Android, remember that you not only have Google tasks, but you also have Google Keep, which also can manage some level of reminders, both with location based triggers, and time based triggers as well as sharing of tasks. So I know that it’s two different tools, but they are both baked into the into the Google world and both give you together a really strong capability. Plus, then you get all the automation functions that are connected in that capacity. And so on the apple side, I mean, really, Apple shortcuts and Apple reminders, talk about two really powerful partners. And with Google, Google really gives you access to the Google Assistant and Google routines to be able to do some more powerful stuff there, you would mean to really access something more powerful in terms of a connection, you know, some kind of workflow automation tool in order to really do what Apple shortcuts does natively on the operating system. But you do have tools that can do it, utilizing what in essence is baked into the operating system, you know, coded right in so I thought the article is really good in giving that kind of basic overview, and all right, onward to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 33:33

Next article is called workflow tweak that skyrocket your productivity, and that’s about communication and how to improve communication and, and the different ways to communication. You know, one of these articles remind me often something that I take for granted, you know, I was born in a different country, I have done business with people from outside the United States as well as the United States for so long that some of those barriers, I don’t think about it, they are ingrained already. But not everybody has that experience from the pandemic has bring now dealing with nationalities dealing with, you know, different personalities different, you know, I was laughing at a client who are with a client, not not at the person per se, but they were making a meeting in LatinAmerican soup. But they told me at nine they come at 1045. And they were you know, when I jump they text me and I jump into the meeting and they were surprised that I was mad and I said, Sorry, what they said well that they may be at nine or maybe at nine on the country you are dealing that means is never going to happen. Okay? But those are the subtleties that you need to learn that those are the subtleties that as we were talking earlier about agreements, you know, those are the things that make it really, really important. You know what, what people do, there are cultures that are a lot more confront if there are cultures, that by the culture, if you are the higher in that organization, and you said something, nobody will argue with you, even if what you’re saying is the most absurd thing in the world, but you need to understand those things. So that way you can do better communication that at the end of the day will bring better work.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:31

I think I don’t think many people who are watching are under estimating the power of communication and their productivity. But I also feel like it’s always good to refresh our memory, in terms of the things that actually help in communicating. And of course, it’s active listening. And the article mentions active listening. And of course, communicating in ways that fit culture. And culture is not just on the country level, not just nation states. But within an organization. You know, cultures are two organizations, as habits are two individuals. And we need to remember that if we can work within the culture in a way that we’re we’re communicating in a way that really helps us be more productive, that can be the defining point of, of our career there. And so just commending communication in those subtle ways, I think is a really good refresher for us all, something that we should all be continually reminded of. And so onward to the seven sins of memory, which is the name of this article on on NES labs. But it also is the name of a book the seven sins of memory by Daniel Schachter, who is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. And so what did you think about this article? Augusto?

Augusto Pinaud 36:45

This was a lot there was a lot of meat on this article, it was a really deep article really interesting. I like the sense of omission and commission, I want I love how he went in this eight months or seven models of, of all this, you know, and he talks about it, the on the sense of memory, and was really interesting, because as I was looking at returning to them, I could see specific instances in which I have been present or guilty of all of them. So it was a really good reminder to pay attention to to those things and because you forget,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:29

yeah, so so the seven sins are transients, or how our mind forgets things over time, absent mindedness, forgetting, you know, something very, you know, temporal like, Where did I put my keys or something like that? blocking, which is the tip of the tongue thing? Oh, it’s just on the tip of my tongue misattribution. In essence, claiming something that you have done by virtue of mistake or Miss Miss Miss attributing somebody to a quotation, for example, oh, you know, Plato said that, but really, he didn’t suggestibility our ability to be able to have and be persuaded to believe things that aren’t true, of course, biases, we have lots of them, and then persistence. And in this particular case, what they mean is sometimes quoting from the article, it says sometimes we we’d rather forget, but our brain is not letting go of the memory. So in essence, this ability for us to hold recall, even when we don’t want to, and this happens when we say ruminate, or we are have anxiety about something because we want to let go of something, but we can’t. And so those are the seven sins of memory. And the really, I think, good part of this article is actually then what the author calls the seven penances of memory. And so Professor Schachter then goes into these, these items that we can do in order to overcome what in essence are the seven sins, we can, and I’m quoting here from the article summarizing the professor’s work, but it says, obtain information quickly after an event when it is fresh in people’s minds, using a prioritized task list. Take notes from events, including meeting minutes, record important events and milestones daily use, use neutrally worded questions when soliciting information, understand the basis or perspective of the person providing the information. And then finally, seven, understand and recognize the symptoms of PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder. And so these are some really good, I think, memory components. I don’t think they’re all of them. But I thought they were they were useful in us, really understanding that memory is fallible, and one of the core features of humanity is that we can forget, you know, like the idea of forgiving and forgetting is mostly about forgetting. And that has actually helped create human civilizations. I don’t know if I was noting this on this show or otherwise, but I’m rereading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harare, who’s a noted anthropologist. And, you know, the idea here is that so many things have affected Human in humanity in a way that has helped us really come to where we are at the proverbial top of the of the food chain. And one of those things is our component of being able to forget. And if we didn’t, and couldn’t forget things, we wouldn’t be able to survive as humans, it’s so remarkable that that little feature built into our biology allows us to be able to operate in a way because if you could, if you could never forget, then you could, you would always think that what you thought first was, was true. So imagine a child thinking, you know that a wall is something different than what a wall is, we would, we would ultimately never be able to get rid of that thought. And that we can is a remarkable thing that memory is malleable. So anyway, I thought it was a good article, I thought it was really interesting. And I think it’s good for us all, think about how we can, you know, use mnemonics, for example, to become better at accurate memory. But I think externalizing as much as we can, allows us to be able to have better concreteness as to what is reality and what’s not. That’s also a good thing. All right, on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 41:04

Our next protocol talks about depressant is your friend, and he was talking about your thoughts, you know, pushed you out to the future. And it’s, it’s interesting, because the article said something that was really familiar to me, unlike the author described before he tried meditation and other things, you know, I used to joke, and suddenly not kind of in a good way, that the problem was my mind is that my mind was a committee. Okay, there were 10 people sitting on the brain discussing what to do, but none of them were doing any action, it was just a scratch. Okay. And that was actually one of the reasons I begin many years ago reading about personal productivity, because I could get into this long discussions, okay, but never anything happened. And it was learning, you know, that to the first thing was learning to try to come back and bring them to the present action, and much later on, was getting into more mindfulness and meditation, and really getting the committee to keep their opinions to themselves. More in the present. And it is really interesting, because we think, and we associated with that discussion, in our mind, and didn’t know is that that discussion is distracting you to really do what you need to do, and really help you to move forward. And everything else. So it was a great article.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:39

I think I think that there is a lot of Buddhism in the article. And it makes sense to me. And I have always adhered to the, to the principle that if you live in the present, you’re as much as possible, you are removing the anxiety and worry of, you know, all of the things that had happened, and all the things that could happen in the future. And the more that you live here, and now like right this moment, the better off your life will be. And that isn’t to say that we shouldn’t do planning, we shouldn’t have reflections on the past to be able to learn. But those end up being the 20%. And the 80% ultimately ends up being us living in the moment, which means we’re capable of doing the work that will make our future lives better. And when we do the work that makes our future lives better, we then enjoy the moment because our past self was smart enough to not think about only the past or only the future, but enough of it to make our present better. And I just that whole notion for me has always been very, you know, in the forefront of how I think about my own productivity, and it allows me to be less anxious, and it allows me to be more productive. And so those things are all good things. All right, onward to an Asana article,

Augusto Pinaud 43:59

managing distributed teams and how to lead cross cultural empathy. You know, and we were talking earlier about about that, and the article mentioned, you know, start with your own application. Yeah. What do you know about that cross cultural thing and again, working remotely, it’s going to stay in may be hybrid, it may be many things, but some of them are not going to slow down are going to increase organizations has been able to discover there are certain advantages of this. So, we have really make a lid But that also means we are going to be working in different time zones when global holidays in different culture and you know, into different understanding of the of the same thing. You know, and, and how you react with certain people will work differently when when you’re working with others. So it’s going to require us to try find that common ground, one of the things that the article talk is about, share a meeting agenda and capture action items. And over the years, I have discovered that if you send me a meeting without an agenda, what happened is, I come with what I call the plan B. Okay, and what I call the plan B is what I’m going to do in your meeting that you send me no agenda, okay, aka, my own agenda to that meeting. Okay, if and that on a remote world is even worse, okay, because you with enough technology knowledge, nobody will know, they are not paying attention to me. So the meanings need to start there? What is the agenda? Okay. And the second part is, we need to capture those action items. You know, as we said, in writing, what are those agreements? You know, I come to enough meetings in which there was no agenda, we meet for an hour or two, okay? And then out of the meeting, okay, and what is the next action items for everybody and the middle is gone, people went left, and nobody’s clear. And then we get to the next week or the meeting, follow up meeting four days later. And he’s like, okay, people what you did, and everybody’s like, nothing that I need to do since I miss here. So that is really, really, really important. I mean, the article talks about, you know, normal cultural norms and all that. But none of that really will matter. If you miss this first item, doesn’t matter which country you’re talking. If you don’t have that made an agenda, sorry, people feel you’re going to make them waste their time, and you have more and more of the risk that they come with their own agenda. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:51

yeah, I think you’re absolutely right on the meeting agenda. Second to that is just my soapbox about time zones. I do not hate anyone. But I really, really dislike time zones. And so we should get rid of time zones, we should all just be on a universal time and be done with it. We can do it because airline industry does it. They’re all on this on a Universal Time timeline. And so they live all in the same time. Where as the rest of us have chosen this really crazy notion that somehow we’re all in these different time zones, there are some time zones that are half hour difference, versus an hour difference. Like what kind of planet are we on that we’re all working in these different weird times. So I think get rid of the time zones. And and then of course, you know, I think the the other point here is understanding that there are global holidays, where you know, like right now is going on. And if you don’t know that it’s going on, then if you’re working on a globally distributed team, and they’re celebrating a holiday, and you know, you’re being kind of culturally insensitive to that by not by virtue of maybe hosting a meeting at that time when people are going to be out of the office. And so we just have to be more mindful of that if you are working in a globally distributed team. And, and so that’s kind of one of those things that I think is important. If you’re not, if you’re just working all within your own culture in your own timezone, then man, I am jealous. Because it makes it easier, right. But at the same time, it also is quite fascinating to me, I’ve learned so much by working with people around the world, in different parts of the country. And you just get this, I think, richer experience. And that’s very subjective. But I feel like it’s a richer experience in my life by having worked with diverse people with diverse backgrounds, and their experiences end up being novelty to me. And that’s, I don’t know, I just find it a way that I can expand my own abilities, my own ability to communicate better with people cross culturally, and otherwise, even when I am here in the United States, I, I spent many, many years in the Washington DC area, for example, and I come across so many people from other places in the world. And it’s just kind of a fun thing to be able to relate in ways that may not be just about those things that are primarily American things, right. You can you can you can find things that are both unique, but also similar between cultures. And I think that’s always a fun thing as well. So extending the olive branch in this way to, to work in a globally distributed team, in the sense i think is, is not just about the work that needs to be done, but also enriching yourself and making yourself a more competent, you know, professional in the world. Because if you’re capable of better working with that, you know, many different people, then you’re more likely to be productive with those people. And I think that makes you a valuable employee. Alright, final article in the headlines.

Augusto Pinaud 49:51

Well, the articles title will being at work and this should have stopped the title in there but because then they said how to transform The worst part of your day. And I need to say before I go to the good of the article, if your work is the worst part of your day, you need a new job tomorrow now, okay, don’t wait. Hi. I mean, that happened. Okay. But when that happened, you need to change, you need to get out you need to go to a new organization, new industry, whatever it is. So grant over a talk about the five factors of well being at work and they talk about career well being, okay, you like what you do? social wellbeing? Can you have meaningful friends, in your working life? financial well being okay, you manage your money, well, finance, physical well being, you have energy to get things done, and community well being you like where you leave? It is interesting, you know, how the article goes into these five things as the factors for wellbeing at work. And especially for a person who has been working remotely or or what he smell Mother incoterm. See, I was in the future, I have been working hybrid for so long. But, but it’s true on the on the career well being is true, and all those factors if you don’t have them, okay, it’s terrible, do not boss to coach and I have said for many years, it’s better to have one of the most challenging things is to lose a good boss. Because when you have a good boss, and now you get the next one, and the next one is not as good, it’s so challenging, and so cost costly for the enterprise, because you have people now leaving, you have a bunch of things that hey, doesn’t work. So it was a great article. Again, I disagree with the title, but but I think it’s important to understand those five factors, and where are you against them, and, and to review in consistently, you know, review consistently that that you have, that career will be in that social, that financial, that physical, and that community well being. So you know, at least where you are.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:21

Yeah, so this is actually based on the book called well being at work by Jim Clifton and Jim harder, that is the Gallup CEO, and the chief workplace scientist, respectively. And so I really need to read the book in order to be able to better understand what these five elements of well being are in their context, and concern presume, presuming that they have data to back up these statements. So I’m looking forward to reading the book and learning more about it. But the way in which the article presents itself, there’s a embedded YouTube video as well, you might want to watch just a two minute video. But the way in which it was presented really didn’t make sense to me, and seemed limited. And so I’m a little skeptical of it. But I’m willing to put in the effort to read the book and see whether or not with the mini article that’s kind of here, whether or not it just didn’t represent the holistic view of what they’re talking about a little bit, you know, was kind of just misaligned in terms of how they presented it versus what the book has to offer. So I’m looking forward to the book, and and digging into this concept of well being at work. And the subtitle of the book, how to build resilient and thriving teams speaks to me, that’s something that obviously, I want, and certainly our distributed work environment. And so I’m looking forward to reading that. All right, we have reached the end of our headlines for this week. And that, of course, brings us along to our new tools of the week. So each week, Augusta and I scoured the interwebs, for all of the personal productivity stories that you hear us talking about, we select a few of them and narrow them down. So we could fit that in this timeframe. But we also come across many personal productivity tools and services each week. And so in this segment, new tools of the week, we try to bring you each tool we think you might like. And so this week, we have two tools. And so let me go ahead and get those tools up on screen because for some reason, they are not up on my screen. And let’s start with this one. And the first one is the Ergo desk. I swear I’m going to get this on my screen in a moment. There we go. And so this is the the next or go or go desk. And in essence, these are smart desks that allow you to be able to use it standing or seated and the power of the desk is really quite phenomenal. This has a bit of machine learning built into the desks. And so it gives you the capability of going ahead and sitting and standing. It has a remote control. It has touchscreen controls on the panel so that you can go ahead and do it. It actually Does posture correction. So it’s analyzing as you’re standing at the desk. I’m trying to find the the actual products here to show you on the site. But the idea here is that you have the desk and it’s, it’s monitoring you as you are on the desk. And so it can like feel when you’re applying pressure on the desk. And you can see here that it has this little camera here as well underneath the desk as well. And there’s lots of different things you can do with the desk, but then it actually has the capability of determining Are you slouching, are you doing things that you shouldn’t be and then it goes ahead and adjusts the height to be able to to help correct you. And to give you also prompts to be able to do that it has voice control with built in Google Assistant, it does all kinds of things on the screen, you can do goal tracking, I mean, it’s a really powerful built in assistant for ergonomics, and having Google Assistant built in alongside the features of a high end sit stand desk. So wireless charging, built in speakers, it has all of these reports that it can provide in terms of of usage. And then you can go ahead and customize the desk with different tabletops different features and so on and so forth, including wireless charger built into the to the top, you can put it on casters, lots of really really cool stuff. And so if you’re in the market for a sit and stand, automated desk and motorized desk, this is something that you might want to look at as one to choose. So what is your

Augusto Pinaud 56:31

seat since you pick a desk, I pick a desk, the website of her desk is the most awful website you are going to find on the web. I have said that multiple times but the desk are incredible I I struggle with my home office at the beginning for many years how to make it work. I like to work in the couch, I like to recline I like to I’d like anything but the traditional desk position. And this desk, you can configure odd pieces. So I have on mine, one set of computers that you’re looking at me right now from the camera and I have another set on the left all in the poll and you can add shells, you can add stuff. And all the pieces are compatible. So as things change, or you decide to change or you want to add more you can you know go and get more pieces to make her desk they are I’ve been using them for a really really long time. And I the quality is incredible. And the product is fantastic.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:33

Wonderful. So the air desk and it comes with all these modular pieces that you can purchase. In essence, you can use it for other things, it looks like you can use it for projector and

Augusto Pinaud 57:42

other things. You can do projectors, you can do servers, you can do Dexter, you can do anything. And it really can compact all if you want to.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:50

Fantastic. Wonderful. All right, so that is new tools of the week. And that brings us along to our new segment. And so in this segment, we try to rotate our various contributors to the show. And this week, we are launching a new segment called Why don’t they teach this in school. And this is going to be Dr. Frank Buck. You all have had a you know, have the experience of having Dr. Buck on the show and hearing him. But Dr. Frank Buck, he makes organization easy. So you can increase productivity, decrease stress and enjoy life global gurus has ranked Frank number one in the world in the time management category for three years running. And so with that, take it away, Dr. Buck,

Frank Buck, EdD 58:35

we all have those sentences or entire paragraphs that we use over and over and over again, instead of rekeying or copying and pasting from one place to another. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to hit a couple of keys and have all the work done for us. That’s what this video is about. Hi, my name is Frank Buck. And this is the place to be if you want to get organized and make it look easy. Text Blaze is the text expander that I use and even the free version is pretty powerful. Let’s show you how it works with forward slash si G and on the right you see when it changes it into an entire signature line. It’s that easy. Every one of the little snippets is going to start with that forward leaning slash followed by a couple of characters of your choice. So how do you get it go to bi T dot L y slash Frank Buck Tex blaze it’s all in lowercase. Again bi t del y slash Frank Buck text Blaze. Now there’s a free account but my link is going to give you a month text blaze pro for free. I think you’re going to like what you see. After it’s installed. You’ll see in the menu bar, the little icon for it. When you click on that icon, you’ll see what we have now a button where you can add a new snippet right from there or you can go to the dashboard. So here I am in the dashboard. Here are all my snippets down the left hand side, I can click the plus sign to add a new one. In this example, this is going to be an email from a parent who’s asking the question, and the answer to that question is so well covered in the handbook. So let’s say that I’m a band director that I’m using text blades, the parents asked this question, and I don’t want to spend 30 minutes typing out an answer that was answered in the handbook. But I also don’t just want to hit reply and say, Hey, lady, read the handbook. So watch what I do. I’m gonna hit slash

Unknown 1:00:33

ah.

Frank Buck, EdD 1:00:35

And look, what Tex blaze has done is typed out this very pleasant email that talks about the handbook and how things are covered in the handbook, so forth and so on, encourages the parent and the student to get together and see if they can find the answer in there. And if they can’t find the answer to let you know, there are a lot of things that you can do with takes place. If you need a date, time stamp, I’ve got like one of those BLT and our slash DTS, that we just put the current date and time also, let’s try that out. And so slash DT s did it for me. Let’s do another one. Let’s do slash he asked. And he gave me my entire email signature, lots of things that you can do, you’ll enjoy takes place.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:01:30

All right, thank you, Dr. Buck, with his demo of text Blaze. And so we will keep introducing new contributors bringing different segments to the show. And so this was our first try out. Why don’t they teach you this in school? And so looking forward to seeing more contributors do more segments for Anything But Idle. All right into and forward toward our story of the week? This week? We’re talking about Google making two fa, which is two factor authentication a default for all users? What do you think about that a gousto?

Augusto Pinaud 1:02:07

You know, I think it’s fantastic, even even if Google don’t want to call it two factor authentication. But I think it’s fantastic. And I think it’s, it needs to be provided. You know, as you said, earlier today in the show, we have so much online and so much that can be accessed that it is important to know. And it is important to have that that second eye eye is really encouraging the number of companies that when they see they don’t have the to form authentication. Now Dropbox is one of those then send you an email Google Deuce does to is they do connect even with your login and your password. And you don’t have that to form and send you an email, say, hey, you log in from this device that is not in the normal devices that I think is really, really important. But to for authentication should be the default security for everything right now. It’s, it’s what it should be.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:03:07

And we have so that everyone has kind of a base level understanding two factor authentication really means that my first factor is username and password, I enter in my username and password. That’s my primary factor for authentication. And so that’s a public key and a private key public key is known to the website and potentially to the world, because maybe is your email address. But that private key is my password, and should not be known to anyone but me and the site when I go go and log in. But of course, there have been many, many hackings. And, in essence databases that have poured our email addresses and personal information onto the dark web. And so it’s very easy for people to be able to find the email address and password and try that. But a second factor means that you’d have to have my phone physically also with you in order to be able to access my account what Google’s doing here. And this is a little bit misunderstood with two step verification, verification, what they call two factor authentication and their world two step verification or to SV. And then you also see it as two fa, the idea here is that they’re using a second factor. And in this particular case, they’re saying if the person is already set up with all of the infrastructure that is there logged into their phone that allows them to be able to receive the Google prompt. And so their phone is being used as that second factor is basically a security key. And they have a login that looks suspicious, we’re going to actually default turned on to SV, so that they’re going to get a prompt on their phone that says, Hey, are you trying to log in from this other location that you normally don’t log into? And also, you will sometimes see it displayed and say, Hey, can you press this number that’s displayed on your screen. So they’ll show you three different numbers on your screen, and they will present a single number on the device you’re trying to log into. And that number is the one that you’ll have to punch into the screen and that helps reduce it The capability of a hacker to be able to guess these two numbers that are a choice among six in an on your screen. So two step two step verification verification is only being turned on by those people who are already set up to be able to have it on not, they’re not going to blanketly turn it on for everybody, because there gonna be people who are not capable of, of doing it. So not locking you out of your account, there was a lot of new stories out that were like completely bogus, they’re turning it on for those people who can have it turned on safely, not to get you locked out. And that way, they can lock out the hackers the bad. I’d like to call them cyber criminals, because it gives hacker a bad name because there are good hackers out there ethical hackers and other folks who are doing good code, but cyber criminals will be locked out by virtue of us defaulting into two step verification, this is phenomenal. This is fantastic. I as Augusto said, I hope that everyone goes to this. And eventually, you know, everyone should have to factor in terms of services online. And we should, as consumers be looking for it and turning it on, you know, proactively, you can go to Tw o factor off.org. That is to factor as an authentication, so a ut h.org. And it will present with you a website, it will redirect you to the site, that hostess that tells you a list of sites that actually have two factor authentication, you can learn how to enable it all kinds of really good things. But if you go to two, factor auth.org, you will learn about two factor authentication and get it set up on your various devices. So I highly recommend it. And you have many different applications that you can use, it’s usually free. I mean, all of the authentication applications are pretty much free. Google has their own, Microsoft has their own, you can just install those tools and use them. And they’re very, very convenient. So I think it’s great that Google is making two factor authentication or two step verification default for for users. So with that, that brings us to the end of our stories this week.

Augusto Pinaud 1:07:11

Yeah, well, we have a couple of announcements. One is Francis, wait, it’s doing an event on the 20th. Sorry, my screen is now too small, or may 28. At 7pm. Eastern Time is self assessment, the way to better task management and there is a link and basically, do you have improvement, your task management’s. If you’re already a productivity nerd, some people return to the stuff they originally learn. But there is a better way to do an in depth assessment of your current system, not the components. But the whole thing all at once. That’s why I’m having this seminar for this webinar Tuesday, Thursday, May the 28th at 7pm. The second announcement is personal productivity club was sponsoring this show today on May 19. At 6pm it’s having an event that is free it’s curated calm, a relaxed jogging class, yoga class for all ages and ability with Matthew Glen and you can join personal productivity club for free and attend to this event. And next week on May 25 at 6pm. Also in personal productivity club, Dr. Frank Buck and myself are going to be talking about bass task based collaboration in remember the milk and to do so we’re looking forward also, tomorrow you will find more news that we will not be able to cover in the show a bunch of them actually this week excited about it. And and more. So thank you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:08:49

Fantastic. Thank you Cousteau as always for helping me put on Anything But Idle.

Augusto Pinaud 1:08:57

It’s my pleasure, always.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:08:59

And with that we’ve covered the productivity news for this week. If we missed a story, it’s not in the list of extra stories that are on the show notes page when it comes out. Feel free to let us know at Anything But Idle we have a contact page there if you go to Anything But idle.com you can let us know from there or you can tweet or DMS on Twitter at Anything But Idle we’ve got our DMS open so you can always direct message us there and we can figure out how to add it to the show notes. If you have a question or comment about anything we’ve discussed during the show Feel free to leave a comment as well on Anything But idle.com it’s Anything But idle.com forward slash 060. For this episode, all the episode number episodes are numbered. So each episode number takes you directly to that episode page. So Anything But Idle comm forward slash 060. We’ll take take you to this episode. And then of course the respective numbers for the other episodes. While you’re on Anything But Idle. You’ll find our show notes and those include links to all the stories tools of the week, our segments from the contributors links back to those folks and any extra stories we didn’t cover. It also includes text transcripts both the readable one, you click on that Read More link, it’ll expand it and you’ll be able to read it while you’re watching or listening along directly from the page. You can also download it as a PDF so they can take it onto a tablet or whatnot, make notes and listen and follow along as well. And so feel free to, you know, rate and review us in the favorite podcast app. If you’re listening after the fact if you’re watching the live stream, feel free to subscribe to the to the YouTube channel that will of course, give you notifications when new episodes come out or when we go live by clicking that notification bell and making sure you turn on the notifications. And so with that, we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Thank you all who attended live Thank you for listening after the fact and here’s your productive life.