What Have You Been Reading Lately?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:03

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

Augusto Pinaud 0:14

And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:15

And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. Today’s episode is number 62. How to basically what have you been reading lately, and we are going to be talking about the we’re recording this on May 31 2020. So happy Memorial Day to those of you who are out there. And today we’re going to be talking about the concept of what if you’ve been reading lately, but then we’re going to actually go into some discussion on how Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are going to make you more productive. And so of course, each week we read and review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And so just to kick it off, we’d like to have a little theme, a little pre show, beginning show discussion. And I thought we would talk about what we have been reading lately since it is I believe it’s I forget what the month is, but there was like a month associated with today and I want you to look it up because I can’t remember. But there was a theme to why I chose this is like national, something about reading month. And so Agusta What have you been reading? And oh, it’s national get caught reading month. That’s what it was. Okay, so you are a heavy reader as I am. What have you been reading lately?

Augusto Pinaud 1:33

Well, I need I need a lot more to a lot more time to catch up than a month. But hey, who’s counting? The book that I’m starting to read right now is called your next five move, mastered the art of business strategy by Patrick bet, David I was recommended by a friend of mine. And I tend to get some of those recommendations and make the list and someday maybe I will be lucky him caught up in it. Otherwise, it may never happen. Anyways, that’s that’s a book I am. I am reading right now. And the book that came before that one was a book call was a book in Spanish that somebody recommended to me but the translation is something like the Buddha in the office is how he translate. And it was a really, really interesting book. And before that one, I read a book by NASA, Mahesh the and I’m sure I’m butchering her last name. She was one of the personal assistants for the latest Steve Jobs. And she wrote a book called pause, breathe and choose become the CEO of your well being really, really fantastic book. So those are the last three books that I have read.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:54

Or me I have read recently, I’m actually still reading the home edit and the home edit life both by CLIA share and Joanna Taplin, the owners of the home edit, and people know them from Instagram, as well as from their Netflix television series. And so we are actually reading those books for we’re actually we’re reading one of those books, the home edit for Productivity Book Group. And so we’re going to be meeting and a few weeks to talk about that book. And so I’ve just been reading my way through that. So that’s been a lot of fun. And prior to that, I have been reading a biography of john D. Rockefeller senior. And so that’s been really interesting to learn about what is in, in essence, the wealthiest, you know, Cuban, I’m presuming in the United States or potentially, in the world ever. And so I think in in 2020 2021 terms, he had like $436 billion or $400 billion in wealth. By the time I just at his peak. And this is in a, you know, aside from his son, john D. Rockefeller, Jr, who most of you know, is the person who developed Rockefeller Center. And so, Rockefeller senior is the one who funded University of Chicago and Rockefeller University in New York City, and was just this, you know, amazing oil steel magnate, but also then one of the greatest philanthropists, philanthropists, you know, of all time. And so, yeah, it’s just really fascinating book about someone of his, of his stature. And yeah, and then I just finished reading a book called clean by James Hamblin, MD. he’s a he’s a doctor, but he’s also a writer at the Atlantic. And he wrote all about really like, the concept of cleanliness and what we think of as being clean and just a very fascinating book and I’m, I’m always fascinated by these, you know, health books that go into maybe a contrarian view, but really a deep dive into what we tend to think of as being normative and finding some bit of usefulness in all That. So yeah, so that’s what I’ve been reading lately. And with that, let us get into our stories of the week. And so this week, we’re going to do our big tech, small tech, first portion of the show, we’ll do a break and come back after the break and do our other productivity articles. So Augusto, let’s kick it off with our first part of the headlines. What’s our first story this week?

Augusto Pinaud 5:22

Well, Apple Music adding the ruthless trimming to their entire catalogue at no cost to people and spatial audio support with Dolby Atmos. And that was news came before they at the same time of the Google week, I’ll show that there was a reason we didn’t present it. But it was interesting. And of course, as soon as that happened, Amazon announced that their music in HD, they call it differently. They call it HD streaming, at no extra cost. So basically, we all got, you know, all our music updated. And I come back to the question, as always that same question I have with the TV, you know, we go to 4k 6k 8k grade do our eyes can see the difference. There is some of us that cannot. And sadly, in the music theory, some of us

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:16

really for true audio files, this will make very little difference. And I actually saw there was a test out there that would actually determine whether or not you would even notice the difference. There was a test out there somewhere if I if I find a link to it, I’ll put it in the show notes. But the idea here is that you know, HD streaming or lossless streaming, on the Apple Music side, most of those are not even going to be able to be heard because Bluetooth does not support that kind of HD or lossless streaming anyway. So you’d have to be wired into the device with a, you know, wire connected headset. And so this is for real true audio files for the rest of us, we’re not going to really see much of a difference. And but but I mean, I think it’s still good. I think we’re at a place where those people in luxury and premium markets who have the bandwidth to be able to listen to higher fidelity music can now do so which is all good. All right. Next up.

Augusto Pinaud 7:11

Next is one password from the one password blog. And it comes with big changes. And one of the things is the adding of the biometric. And you know, they have been asked to add Touch ID Windows Hello support. And they finally did it. If your one password is luck, you will be able, but they did it really well because they quote unquote said no matter your favorite Touch ID Windows Hello, or biometrics and Linux, now you can enjoy it. So they really went all in, they all find out under announced their dark mode and to form authentication help, as well as a new way to see when you update your information. When you save your information. Both. They have a new graphic interface. But the big, big big deal is biometric is now into one password. Regardless if you are on a Mac or an iOS or a Linux machine.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:10

And this is in the browser. Yes, Fantastic. Fantastic. I’m looking forward to seeing how the new save experience because seeing all of the fields, there is going to be a really nice experience in one password.

Augusto Pinaud 8:22

Yeah, this makes my one password that is my favorite already. Much, much powerful.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:28

Fantastic. All right. Next up some Microsoft news.

Augusto Pinaud 8:31

Well, the rumor said that in June 2022, Microsoft will truly, truly truly, truly, finally kill of the Internet Explorer humanities. There is a joke between people who work on different files documents, you know, this is the final final, final, final, final, final final. And this is how this news read. So here’s the final final final, we are going to kill it in June 2022. So and this does

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:58

not include long term service channels. So those people who are an LTS C, they will continue to get Internet Explorer, you know, 11 continuing on their platforms, and those are for you know, high critical functioning things and healthcare and finance and whatever else. But it’s so crazy how something like a browser can just continue to keep living on in this way. It’s a it’s a zombie. And it just keeps you know, living in this in this very weird way. But for most of us 2022 will will mark the end of Internet Explorer and quite honestly, it’s a good thing. I mean, really, you know, it’s going really yeah, I mean the security holes in it and all the other kinds of problems with IE in terms of modern internet architecture. Really good that we have the end of IE. It was great. But it’s time has passed Internet

Augusto Pinaud 9:49

Explorer is this Swiss cheese of the security world you know there is no holds he’s just intended.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:55

Yep. All right, some zoom news.

Augusto Pinaud 9:58

Oh nice. Should have joined This show using my new my new toy. So the new iPad Pro has this feature was analysis feature called centrestage. Basically your iPad come with ultra wide lens, and it follows you on zoom at it. So you can use zoom. And they said if you move you’re going to be in the center of the camera and just tell if you come new people come into the screen, it will adjust and and it’s really, really fun. I works right now zoom works also into FaceTime calls. But it’s really fun to see the people and how the lens recognize that people adjust. But the news is some will have it and also they make change on the gallery view. Now you can have up to 48 videos in the gallery view. For people like me, that’s way too much we will not be able to recognize anybody. But for some people, that’s awesome.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:59

All right, continuing the apple news, some apple news about its updates for people with disabilities.

Augusto Pinaud 11:07

This is actually awesome came from the newsroom on May 19. And Bob begin to preview some software updates designed for people with disabilities. One of them is you can now go to assign time, eyes a one on one sign language for shopping and support decisions. And I think I can now describe how awesome these news are. But also your watch now will have Assistive Touch. So you will be able people who has limited mobility, it’s going to be able to use the Apple Watch. And the Assistive Touch to assist the users with you know with limited to be able to touch display the controls using the bolt the built in motion sensors Ay, ay, ay, dear, dear dear friend of mine who can move his arm and I cannot see the excitement on these kind of things coming to him and, and being able to do more things and to be able to use the eye tracking support for the iPad now that we have the center stage, and more. So read the articles you can if you have people in your life who have this is built and can get the benefit help them get him.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:27

Well the one that that stood out most to me was the background sounds. So this is for people who are typically neuro diverse. And so you know, people who are who are on that, you know, particular in that particular category of neuro diversity. And so this background sounds feature allows for masking unwanted environmental noise. And it can play different types of sounds like balance bright or dark, no noise, as well as ocean rain or stream sounds continuously in the background. And even when noise from the system plays, whether that be audio or system sounds it then, you know, adjust those. So one plays above the other. I just think that could be really useful for those of us who are not in that space, but still want some background noise to kind of limit our distraction. So I see some really good pieces here that can help, you know, neurotypical folks as well as neuro diverse folks and very, very cool to see them adding these features into the system. Alright, moving right along to some ereader news.

Augusto Pinaud 13:25

So Kobo lounge, ellipse, it’s a 10.3 e reader with a pen. So now you will be able to mark up files, take notes, this is still 400 bucks, it’s not cheap. I still believe you will get more, you know, with the iPad, but it’s still I love how these devices are coming this note taking devices readers are coming to the market and lipsett comes obviously to work with the remarkable two organs that would remarkable to in that same range of devices to device really, I look at it and at least the information on the web. So it is really really fascinating what they did. And it’s a $400 device, but the pre orders are open will start shipping on June 24 at least for the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Japan and Europe. So everybody except in America, basically, but in Africa, but I think it’s fantastic to start seeing more and more devices. Like this word in the center is a limited device to take your notes to bring your notes and all that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:42

Well this is really exciting to me. So first and foremost, the Cobos have a feature that I don’t think things like remarkable to have, which is overdrive access. So now you’re able to borrow books from the library and use the device to read articles you save on apps like pocket And you can now mark up, annotate those documents, PDFs or otherwise, it’s a 10.3 inch display. It’s a nice ereader. And all of those things, it comes in at $400.03 9999. But you get the Kobo stylus, you get the cover. And if you match that up with the remarkable to the remarkable two is 399. But you have to pay $49 for the marker at its starting price, right? Because there are like levels of the marker. And then if you want to case on top of that, you’re gonna spend more money and yada yada yada, and you don’t have access to that I know love, you don’t have access to the the library system like overdrive. So this is, I mean, for the first time I think about this kind of tablet is being actually really useful for me, I’ve been an ardent Kindle, fan and user for many years, and I, you know, I will probably still stay there. But it does appeal to me the idea of being able to read and annotate live on the screen while I’m reading because I am a heavy annotator of the books that I do read. So this is actually really interesting to me in that sense, you know, if you want to spend $400, for the remarkable two tablet Plus, you know, 49 plus for the marker plus another $70 for the folio. That’s the starting prices, you’re still out, you know, 500 plus dollars, versus the Kobo, where you get all of that kind of kicked in to one, you know, with overdrive access, and some really great capabilities there. So,

Augusto Pinaud 16:35

right.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:35

Excited.

Augusto Pinaud 16:37

No, I’m excited, too. I think it was fantastic. And as I said, again, I’m going to bring it up, if you get an iPad Mini, you can turn off the colors of using the the accessibility features. And then No, it’s not a nice screen is still less than 400 bucks, you will get the pencil, you will get annotations and all of that. So that’s that’s another possibility, too. So our next news is the Google dogs now support placing images above and behind text. How is this to on top 2021 to be announced? Do I need to ask that question or

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:17

95? No, I think this is great. I think that it has been something that has been missing for a long time, you can now place images above text, and you can actually place images behind text. And just think about all of the desktop desktop layout opportunities that now are capable for those who are Google only. And now things like a book cover can be produced very easily in just the document itself without you needing to be able to have a bunch of bespoke software, you can do that directly in the document itself, where before you had to do all the layout and then bring it into the document and hope it laid out exactly perfectly, and blah, blah, blah, now you just have it all built into the system. I’m very, I’m very pleased with adding this new feature set into it. Alright, we’ve got some Microsoft news now.

Augusto Pinaud 18:09

So our Microsoft Teams is going to be now available for personal use, and you are going to be able to you sit all day for friends and family. So I don’t know, I’m not a big fan of Microsoft Teams, I use it for certain things, but it’s not my platform of choice. I understand that I probably use Google meet over soon, because he’s what I have in the company. But so maybe my probably a platform that I will prefer to use for these kind of things more event than than teams. But again, if you leave on that, Microsoft world and environment, this is an exciting news.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:52

Yeah, and so what one on one or one to one personal video calls are free. There’s no limitations on duration or anything like that. And while we’re in the covid 19 pandemic, they have waive the fees. So you can host larger events, it says up to 300 people on Microsoft Teams, so you’re getting pretty good parity between the features. Zoom obviously has greater limitations in that sense. And we’re seeing more and more companies kind of sunsetting their COVID-19 free for all that they’ve been giving for some time. And now we’re going to we’re going to get you know, more and more paid options for these things. But Microsoft Teams being new is trying to get Microsoft Teams out there in the world. So giving it away for free gives people an opportunity to try it out. I think the experience could be better. And so until the experience is better on Microsoft Teams, certainly the size and weight of the application while you’re trying to utilize it is still a little too heavy for most computers. And so if they can get the size down, I mean think about how lightweight zoom is to install on a machine and they need to get the Code down to that kind of level. And then I think we will see more people adopt Microsoft Teams, especially if they use Microsoft Teams at work, they’re going to be more comfortable with using it at home. At the same time, I think people tend to want to use a different set of applications for their work meetings from their home meetings. So you probably will see some people, you know, staying away from Microsoft Teams in that space. And I think otherwise, it’s good to have options. And I’m glad that we have this additional option in our tool belt. And so with that, we’ve reached our halfway point in terms of our our headlines. This week, we’re going to take a break and then after the break, we’re going to come back with our productivity article section, we’re going to need two new tools. And then we’re going to cover our featured story this week, and so on with our ad from co working space, but personal productivity club, we’ll see after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 20:48

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 21:58

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. And I’m joined with a gousto pinout for the second half of our show. And so gousto Let’s kick into our productivity articles, headlines, what is what are the headlines that we have? Our first step is an article that’s basically back from 2017. But it was it just recently came across my radar. And it’s Harvard Business Review. So I thought this is really good for us to actually bring back to the show.

Augusto Pinaud 22:24

Yeah, I think I think it was a fantastic you will to bring the abuse, you’re the beast, here you are the more need of quiet time. And it came particularly in a good time. Because as I’ve been joking, that joking or not joking that during before the pandemic or during the pandemic, I start collecting tokens and then decide all this token starts forming into work that needs to get done. So I’ve been getting busier and busier. And I love this I love you know, they interview the article, and even examples of the people who is looking and why are these deep silence, you know, we tend to think on music with them to think and one of the things that got my attention was the the research work from Duke medical school that talks about that even the two minutes after you use that relaxation, music tend to be more powerful than the room than the music person. That was really interesting for me, I’m on have the chance to test it before, before this into play more into that into that silence for for the last couple of days. So it’s been really interesting to play into the silence.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:39

Yeah, I’m all about it. It gives four different suggestions. In essence, putting some time between meetings, finding some quiet time, finding silent time in nature, it talks about taking two to three hour jaunt in nature, you don’t need to take that amount of time just getting away and seeing greenery is actually very positive and helpful. And of course, nature sounds they call it forest bathing is a Japanese cultural, you know practice and forest bathing is very, very powerful and useful for being able to do this kind of quiet or you know, rejuvenative activity. They also talk about going on a media fast, not so sure. You know, I could do a day, but I could probably do several hours easily on a media fast and and then taking the plunge and doing a meditation retreat. And I highly recommend meditation retreats, they can be very useful for being able to learn, you know, mindfulness practices and meditation techniques, and really being able to do some of this silent work that is really necessary when we’re when we’re quiet in that sense. Our brains are highly active. And that’s what allows us to be able to come up with innovative ideas and really do this kind of other thinking that we don’t really think of as thinking so next up 10 signs of a toxic workplace

Augusto Pinaud 25:03

Here’s a good article in I see so many environments into this toxic was level, different levels of toxic toxic algae, you know between one and 10. But the 10 day they mentioned our poor communication, worker cliches and exclusion, employees, gossips and rumors, inadequate leadership on motivated staff, slow professional growth, unreasonable demands passion, burnout, bad industrial repetition, a reputation sorry, and the God feeling and I will have less than Firstly, got really that’s your first one to go by, in my honest opinion. But how do you protect from that is the second, you know, is a question how you can get really protect and what happened when you are there? You know, one of the good things is talking about mental health has been taboo for many years. And we’re finally seeing some breakthrough into that and being part or keeping yourself into this toxic environment. Really, it harms your health. So you need to identify what it is. And if you are there and you feel you cannot get out, what are you going to do to minimize or reduce the impact of that working space into your life?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:27

Yeah, the the article actually links to a monster.com article, monster being the career site. And it has a section in that article called How to detoxify your workplace. And it gives you three options, confront the toxic person, one to one, confront with a team, and then plan your exit and figuring out you know, this toxic environment, the toxicity is just too high. How do you really get yourself out of out of the environment? So I thought the link to article on monster.com was actually more useful than the article itself, because it gives these really clear, you know, kind of heuristics for being able to understand how to get through this particular capacity. This, you know, situation. So, all right, next up a leadership freak blog post.

Augusto Pinaud 27:12

Yep. And oops. Our next is the secret to the title is that the secret to manage command technology, the secret to managing your schedule, he said about your calendar. And as we said, on the first article, the BCR, the required time, you need those times. And yeah, we seen that badge of honor of the triple booking, double booking in icra, my clients consistently, you know, where they are double booking, and some of them are finally coming to realize that is not healthy, that there is no health into having your calendar, triple book, and

Unknown 27:55

on it, and not

Augusto Pinaud 28:01

having their calendar, you know, those craziest schedules really doesn’t reflect that they have any kind of management skills, what they reflect is that they have a crazy life and that they need, really how they’re going to manage their calendar better. So they kind of start putting boundaries so that you can really start working, you cannot manage time, maybe call time management, you cannot manage time. But the calendar is one of the tools where you can start putting boundaries and you can move forward.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:32

Yeah, I think he gives some good points here. I think using arrogance as a as the like, you’re arrogant, if you’ve if you’re having these problems is probably the wrong stick. I think a carrot would be embracing humility, which is kind of his next step here, in in terms of expecting less of yourself in terms of how much you can do at any one particular amount of time gives you the opportunity to add more to your calendar and schedule, should you get to the end of that list. And then it ends up being right matching the amount of work you can get done to the amount of time you have. And ultimately over time, what I found is that if I always put less on my calendar and add a little bit, then I could just add a little bit and then on on the whole, I’m going to get the same amount done. But if I tend to always feel like I’m not getting everything done that I plan to get done, then you need to shrink the number of things you put on the list at any Am I back? You’re back. All right. Wonderful. And so the idea here is to I’m supposed to be on a on a wired network if for some reason it is picking up on my on my wireless network for some reason. I don’t know what’s going on there. But hopefully, we’re good and we’ll continue on going forward either way. My point was was that We have a tendency to put too much on our plate. And when we, when we always feel like we’re not getting enough done, what we need to do is scale back and get that little bit done, we can always add more. And what people tend to do is they try to add more and try and fit everything they can get done in a period. And then when they fail, they beat themselves up about it. And then that becomes a, you know, a really vicious and I think abusive relationship with yourself. So why don’t you just choose to do less, do that less, and add a little bit more, and then add a little bit more and then add a little bit more. I think I think that’s the right way to go through this, or at least one effective way of going through this particular scenario. All right. Next up.

Augusto Pinaud 30:51

So I disagree monthly with our next article came from Forbes study shows people working from home or having sex dating, taking naps, and doing side hustle company time. Number one, people were doing that before, okay. This has nothing to do with working from home and some of the things they all people is doing online shopping COMM And people were doing online shopping again before working from home. So if they go the article was to put that people do personal things during work time. I may agree, but I think has no relationship with working from home.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:34

So I’m going to pair this with the the other article, which is the wework CEO coming out and saying, you know, people who are disengaged from work are the people who are wanting to stay working from home, you know, really think about where the money flows, and why he’s made the decision to say something like this. He also when you get into the article, the headline is a little bit different than the article. But both of these things are absolutely kind of their maligning in two different ways. One is that people working from home, doing things that should be considered normal human activities, sex dating, taking naps, and doing side businesses. That is just a normal culture today that some, you know, contributor to Forbes thinks that he is in touch with the world and seems to be out of touch with it. No offense, but he seems to be out of touch with the world if he doesn’t think that people weren’t doing that when they were working at the office. That’s just what they were doing it from a work from home environment. We work situation is a little bit more nefarious, not nefarious, but I mean, the we work CEOs job is to bring people into workspaces. So his interest is, is there and this is Sandeep mathrani, who replaced the former CEO and founder Adam Newman back in 2020. And what he’s basically saying is that people want to go into work two or three days out of the weak, these are the people who are, quote, unquote, overly engaged. And again, these are terms that I feel like are somewhat misrepresentative, maybe even derogatory and statement, like, why would you say someone is overly engaged in their work? That sounds to me like they’re busy bodies, or they’re people who are, who are power grabbers are those kinds of things, when in reality, we either have people who are highly engaged, engaged or disengaged, you know, the reality is, is that the the amount people want to go into an office or not, probably has very little to do with engagement, and has very much to do with their own personal life circumstances. And yeah, I didn’t find I didn’t find a lot of value in their perspectives other than this, which is that there is clearly a block, who does not want employees to have agency over where they work. And for those people who do want to have that agency and want to be able to work from anywhere, then they are up against that block. And that’s something that we all have to take take into account.

Augusto Pinaud 34:03

Yep, I’m, I’m going to move to the next article, because I want to keep this show clean, not explicit. So the next article is an interview with one of the directors of literature and latte literature and latte produced two pieces of software. One is a Scrivener that I love to his passion and the other one is scuttle. And its capital obviously is as they call it, an infinite Canvas for your thoughts and allows you to connect ideas to create. It’s really, I think, in platform It is incredible. And if you have never use it, you know now that he’s coming into the obsidian and where we are going to keep all this information in a more graphical way. Those couple maybe one of those places that you may want to look and see if it’s something that fit your workstyle. If you have never played with it, it is really

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:06

awesome. Yeah, I had no idea this existed, I’m so glad you brought this to my attention. This is really great. There used to be, I think it was called cork board. But there used to be an application that was developed. And it was the same, it was an infinite Canvas, and you could put notes on it. And you could just keep doing that. And this reminds me of some mind mapping software that allow you to be able to do this kind of thing. But scapple looks like it’s a little bit more robust and a little bit more expansive in its capabilities there. And very exciting to see. And so yeah, if you if you didn’t, if you didn’t know about scapple, I highly recommend reading the interview, because Julia Pierce, the director of scapple really goes into depth in terms of the background behind it, and really what it is and how it, you know, can help you if you’re looking for this kind of space where you can think, say think out loud is maybe the one way to say it. But seeing thinking visually out loud in this space and then organizing those thoughts. So very, very cool. In that sense. All right. Well, we have reached that time where we do new tools of the week. And so every week, Augusto and I scour the interwebs for all the various personal productivity and technology topics that we cover here the the articles and the articles, the news articles and the the productivity articles that we bring every week. And so a new tools of the week, we come across these various tools, products, services, otherwise that we bring you and we hope you might like one of them. And so this week, we have two tools, one from each of us. And the first one is one that I just thought was kind of not in the literature space. But in the culture space. Since we were talking about what we were reading, I wanted to kind of bring to the fore the reality that we have so much to offer in the space of culture that doesn’t necessarily have to be reading. And so my tool is Google cultural Art Institute. And for those of you who are aware of it, you know the value of it, but for those of you who don’t, Google’s Cultural Institute is an a mobile application on both iOS and Android. And it gives you access to 2000, museums, art galleries, and other cultural institutions through the app. And so what you can do is you download the application, and then you can go into the Google arts and culture space into the Cultural Institute, culture Institute. And you can navigate the artwork through navigating the halls of these various institutes. And so you can zoom into the artwork, I mean, into fine, fine detail like, like, if you were putting your nose up to the artwork, the images are that detailed. And so you can see all of this artwork without having to go anywhere. You can do 360 degree tours, it gives you some really great ability to be able to do you know, 360 tours, you can take selfies, you can take these art selfies, which allow you to basically, you know, use the famous artwork and put yourself into them, like some really interesting things. They have pre built tours that you can look at just some really, really interesting stuff here. You can, you can do augmented reality, you can you can, you know, see what museums are nearby. There’s a whole lot here in the Google arts and culture app, and just lots of stuff there. So I highly recommend it. It’s a lot of fun. If you have kids, or if you’re just looking to get out and feel a little bit claustrophobic and you want to spend some time, this is a great way to do that, you know, maybe using a larger mobile device, like a tablet, to be able to peruse and do that kind of thing. If you have a headset that allows you to use the 360 degree technology and all that other fun stuff. I highly recommend it as well. So Google Cultural Institute, and you can get to it from the link in the show notes because it’s a little bit of a long link there. Already Cousteau. What is your? Well this week?

Augusto Pinaud 39:09

Well, it’s called dark noise. And I also went into the reading you know, I I have two kids. I have a dog. So reading is not always quiet. Sometimes. There is no dark dark noise.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:24

Oh, okay. Sorry. There Lincoln a yes. Oh, there you go. Okay, I will fix that in a moment. Everybody.

Augusto Pinaud 39:42

Perfect. And I love to read but no, no time. I have the the appropriate conditions. Okay, kids, my kids watch TV. They’re loud. And so I use this app called dark noise. It has many many options that you can do white noise you can redefine it you can do you know coffee shop, that doesn’t work. But you can do the between you can do many things a mountain and a fantastic application, I use a my app, when you can favorite the noises that you like. So you can only see, you know your favorites. But I have discovered that is a great reading compliment, especially when I’m distracted. So I put the white noise, and then I can read and enjoy my reading.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 40:29

Fantastic. Very cool. So dark noise dot app. rt gousto. On to our story of the week. Today, we’re going to be talking about how Google Docs, Sheets and Slides can help you be more productive. And so tell us what’s going on over Google?

Augusto Pinaud 40:49

Well, you finally can or you can now Okay, they are the article says to quickly present Google Docs, Sheets and a slide on ongoing meeting calls. And the sharing as always work. Okay, any works, I believe there is nothing better than sharing our Google sheets or Google Docs. Okay, the sharing is incredible. But sometimes happen in the meetings that you want to present. And that is not as smooth. So finally, now you will be able to do that from the Google meet directly and presenting the document added to the meeting. So they can go or even create the document and the meaning create the meaning directly from the document. So it is interesting to look into what Google has done in the last 12 months with Google workspace. You know, we didn’t, I didn’t understand that maybe I didn’t have that the inside knowledge. So what was coming when they rename and rebrand and all that. But we are now starting to see on the consumer end or what really are how robust. They are trying really to make Google Sheets Google page on an integrated really into into one platform in a really, really powerful way. So I am really excited to see what else will come out of this to really be a contender to to Microsoft.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:24

I think they I think they are and they’re just some of these features are just they seem so subtle, but they are just huge hidden drivers of productivity. And so just the idea of having that new present button in Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides, being able to press on a button in and if you have a meeting, immediately share that document. And now people are drawn into the document, or you’re capable of inviting them to a meeting where the document becomes the centerpiece of what you’re discussing. It allows them to go ahead and do real time collaboration, and real time editing all of that stuff right directly inside of the document you’re working on. Whether that be Docs, Sheets, or slides. This is some very, very sophisticated technology. And I’m glad to see them bring it together instead of having to go out and sharing screens and oh, gosh, which which of my, you know, monitors Do I need to share and all of those kinds of kerfuffles that happen as you’re trying to present effectively and cleanly. This just kind of helps it all go very, very smoothly. And especially when you’re presenting so you have the CEO when you’re trying to present material to the CEO, that can sometimes be a little bit harebrained. And the idea here is that now you have a an inbuilt feature for being able to show, say slides or other things. And he or she can now dive into the document and provide feedback in real time while the presentations going saves everybody time and energy for all kinds of projects. So I’m really excited about what Google workspace has been doing and bringing this features to the Google consumer market products as well. That is the public facing consumer facing Google Docs, Google Sheets slides Google Drive at otherwise, I see a lot of opportunity there. And you know, somebody who helps and deals with Google workspace implementations with small business all the time. I’m always excited to see more and more of what Google space Google workspace is doing for people in that sense. So all good there any announcements? Because yes,

Augusto Pinaud 44:20

on June nine, I will be joining Jeff Segal in the personal productivity club for an event called What can I gain? And we are looking this question from the health and fitness as well as a productivity perspective, we are going to be doing a one guided meditation with a with a word on one journaling exercise. So if you want you can join personal productivity club is free to join and you can just sign up for the event. The event is free and come and join us.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:53

Fantastic. I’m looking forward to the event. I’m looking forward to seeing everybody arriving and joining us for It always good to get some, I just really fundamentally believe that our biology is so tightly bound up in our ability to be productive. And so we have in personal productivity club, been trying to organize a few health related health focused events. And I think having Jeff Segal, who’s been here on the show before, do this event, I think is going to be really great. So looking forward to that. Augusto. All right, that brings us to the close of this show. We’ve covered all the personal productivity and technology news the that we can fit into this week. But of course, we have additional extra stories in our show notes, so any stories we couldn’t cover are there. But of course, thank you, Augusto Pinaud, for joining me this every week on Anything But Idle.

Augusto Pinaud 45:43

Thank you very much. See you guys next week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 45:45

If there is a story that we did miss, and that’s not in the extra story section, feel free to go on to Anything But idle.com forward slash 062, which is the episode number for this particular episode, but it will take you to the episode page. Use will of course take you over to the page, you’ll be able to comment or question directly on the page. You can also tweet or dm us on Twitter at Anything But Idle. And feel free to head over there to tweet at us or comment on the show while you’re on Anything But idle.com forward slash 062, which is the episode page again, you’ll find our show notes. They’ll have links to all the stories we covered tools, the new tools of the week, those extra stories that we didn’t cover, and it also has text transcripts both in reading format. So you just click on that Read More link and it’ll expand it so you can read while you’re listening or watching along. Or you can go ahead and download from the link below that that download link will download a PDF for you to be able to take offline. And so if this is your first time watching, feel free to subscribe and click the thumbs up icon that helps us to let other folks know to join the show as well and it helps expand our personal productivity community. So thank you for doing that. If you’re listening to the podcast afterward, you can go ahead and subscribe if you already don’t follow or subscribe either one will automatically add you to add us to your podcast app of choice and be notified when new shows come up. So feel free to do that. And thank you all for joining us for this Anything But Idle. With that we’ll see you all next time on Anything But Idle here’s to your productive life.