Managing your Photos and Elon Musk on Starlink

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:01

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 0:13

And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:15

And we’re hosts for Anything But Idle. Today’s episode is number 68. Elan musk on starlink at Mobile World Congress, managing your photos and more productivity and technology news this week. We’re recording this on July 5 2020. And so those of you who are celebrating Independence Day today or yesterday, Happy Independence Day or Fourth of July for those of us who colloquially call it the day in which we celebrate. But yeah, each week, we review and discuss the productivity technology news headlines of the week. And to do that, we usually kick it off with a theme of some kind. And so what I thought we would do this week is talk about managing your photos. And today, I mean, everybody has a pretty decent camera in their pocket, and everybody has a cell phone, and or most people have cell phones today. And that means that we take a voluminous amount of photographs. And like everything in our lives, kind of akin to how GTD talks about consistent management of these areas of our world, right consistent capture consistent clarifying, consistent organizing, we have to sort of think about consistently managing all these different areas of our world. And I think photos is one of them, where these were memories like precious memories that that potentially could be lost, or just, you know, mismanaged in ways that allow you not to find it. And I’m really curious about ways in which you think of these. So people should think about photo management and managing their photos more effectively, or even just in a productivity sense.

Augusto Pinaud 1:48

So let’s clarify that that’s my retirement plan, sort all the digital photos, we’re going to we have take our life. by one day retire that one thing that I may tackle our photo Digital Photo Library, it’s a it’s an accounting stage to say the best. I’m not a good photographer. Even with the technology to the camera, I mean, I remember many years ago, my wife got a SLR that was semi automatic. And she was taking all these great pictures. And she said, Come on camera is semi automatic, you can mess that up. Guess what I could. That said, we manage on the simple way that is we dumped them all in Apple photos and let Apple photos figure it out what they decided to figure out. But we have never really got that set. I’m going to say that once in a while. Facebook come with a picture as a reminder, and give me the alert of something that will make me smile. So it may do it happen before retirement. But it’s something that I have never really spent any serious time into organizing into any useful ways. So our cameras. And as I say, I agree, I think that I think the first time I read that was from the work of Andy yakko, when he said you know the best can these are photographer, professional photographer, you know, access with, predicts cool equipment. And he was asked to show what is the best camera that he will recommend to people. And he said the one you always have with you, there will be your phone. So for most people, that’s the best camera they can get. And it’s turning mostly into the best camera people buy. You know, when you look at Samsung upgrades and iPhone upgrades. Year after year, they spent a significant amount talking about the improvements of the camera of the photography in the devices even before they go into any other feature.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:09

Yeah, and it’s funny because I always ignore those I don’t particularly care about the strength of the cameras on the phones that I buy, because they’re always just good enough for me, you know, as long as they remind me of the event, then I don’t particularly care if it’s the most pristine photo I don’t need. I don’t need to be able to go in and zoom into like, you know, a pimple on my grandmother’s face 50 years ago, I don’t really care. You know, I want to just be reminded of the memories. And so I would start off with a couple of things. One is backup your photos, no matter what service you’re utilizing, managing your photos starts with a backup. And that means getting photos off of all the various devices. If you have tablets, you’ve got a couple old cell phones hanging around you got a couple of smartphones hanging around, those might have old photos on them and they all need to be pulled off and put into some centralized place. Now of course So I’ve chosen Google Photos as my primary place for all of my photos. Some of you might have chosen I photos and using the, the, the iCloud environment in order to back those up to those that is not a backup. That is redundancy and centralization in the cloud. So what you need to do is really need to figure out where else do you want to do that. Now I’ve chosen to utilize next cloud, which is a self hosted program that allows me to be able to backup my photographs to this environment. Now it doesn’t have any of the fancy features like Google Photos, or, or Facebook or otherwise, where it would use machine learning to identify faces and show you past images and those kinds of things. So just be mindful of that, but I don’t need it for that, I need it so that things don’t get lost. One other option that a lot of people have don’t realize it is that if you have an Amazon Prime account, then you actually have unlimited storage, as a part of your Amazon account by Amazon Prime account. So they give you amazon prime photo storage, you can upload lots and lots of photos, I think, unlimited to the system, I could be wrong, they might have changed the program by now. But I have been backing up as a third backup, I guess there’s a second backup all of my photographs to Amazon’s cloud photo storage for time immemorial. And that’s all just automated. And, and that gives me the safety of knowing that I have at least these photographs in more than one place. Because it’s not like you’re protecting physical matter, you’re protecting, you know, ones and zeros. They’re there bits and bytes. And there were a lot of them, and they can corrupt over time. So you want to make sure that you have them in different places. And that gives you greater certainty that they will stick around. And so you know, and I unfortunately, was in a circumstance where I lost a lot of childhood photographs. And so you know, I know what it’s like to lose those memories and can’t read, you can’t get the negatives back once they’ve, you know, they’re they’re, you know, done, you know, when they’re burned up and garbage. So just make sure that you are backing those up. Second is thinking through what tools you are actually utilizing for purposes of managing your photos, what do you want to actually do like for me, I love the fact that I have nest hubs in the house, they act as photo frames, as well as assistance from big G, right. So I’m capable of now utilizing the photographs managed by by Google Photos, to be able to now have different albums show up throughout my work day on those albums on those photo frames. And then if I wanted to, I could get some digital photo frames, put them up on the wall and have that same synchronization with my photos account. So thinking about where you want to be able to do those things. Plus, I can share those photographs with family and friends, and all kinds of other things. I use Google Photos also in a lot of work environments, where I’m taking pictures of things and sending them to clients. And I want them to be able to think through their marketing plans and marketing strategies. So I’m sending them these screenshots and other things. And I can now centralize those into an album and then share those photographs individually. So think through what you want your photos to be able to do on a regular basis. And then start thinking about which tools you’re going to use in order to make them more effective for you. So those are just my like thoughts about managing photos, anything else. Agusta before we hop into the news of the week.

Augusto Pinaud 8:23

No, I was going to say like you I have backup in a local hard drive that has a Western Digital, I think it’s called dual. And it has basically two hard drives. So there are two hard drives. There’s one hard drive where I’m backing up and that is backed up immediately there. And on top of that, they are also all the time backed up in Dropbox. So I agree 100% with what you said just sharing a different way to have those backup backup done.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:58

Absolutely. Great. All right. Let’s get into the news this week. What’s our first headline Augusto?

Augusto Pinaud 9:03

So our first headline is Lenovo announced five new Android tablets among them. The Jaga 13 Java top 13 Java top 11 Java top 11 Plus, Java top m seven that is third generation of that one and the Java top m eight. And it was really interesting, especially the Java top 13 it’s it has a stent included that you can hang the tablet is a really odd looking tablet in the sense that look doesn’t look like a robe like most tablets tend to look that said Lenovo has been known for do this with tablets, especially with the yoga that form it’s not new for them to stand. I think it’s new for them. But it’s it’s it was one of the big announcements of Mm W,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:01

the Mobile World Congress. Yep. And Yep. And I think this is this is actually just been, I think it was really great on Lenovo departure announced that many new Android tablets all at once, that’s a lot of hardware to be putting out in front of folks, that P 11. Plus looks really interesting, not necessarily on the professional level for me, but anyone who needs a pretty strong, you know, device and they want a nice Android based tablet, it’s, it looks like a great option. And yeah, and if you have kids, those those M series look like they are built for kids. And so that that would be pretty interesting to see how they operate. You know, I’ve bought the fire, Kindle Fire, children’s edition kids edition versions, because they come with the guarantee, you know, the break that whatever the guarantee is that gives you can toss it across the room. And Amazon will replace it with the bumper on the screen protector. And it’s got the kids edition on by default, which you can turn off by the way. And so, so those those fire tablets are nice, but they’re not high quality, you know, experiences, something like the M seven and M eight looks like they are much much higher quality specs, and would be really interesting for kids who are a little bit older, you know, we’re looking for a device that’s going to going to be nice for them to be able to maybe do some school work on that kind of thing. So very interesting piece there. All right, next up some news about Mac and Windows.

Augusto Pinaud 11:21

Yeah. So last week, we talked about Windows 11 coming out, and and there have been a lot of news about the requirements for these and how many harward is coming out. And Paul Wilson announced that they will bring windows 11 to their piece of software. So that means for a lot of Mac’s right now, as we understand on the article, for every Mac that can install the latest version of parallels, they will be able to run Windows 11 that I think is a great deal. You know I for reasons of work, I am required to play with those kinds of things. And firewall is always a good ally, because then I can test it, I can install, I can even have one version of 10, one version of 11. I even have a worse one of seven for when the client call and said, Oh, I’m stuck in here. I don’t use Windows. Enough. Sounds good. So I don’t I can load that machine and do the upgrades and then solve the problem.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:25

Yeah, I think I think it’s great that that parallels is coming is that Windows 11 is coming on to parallels and good for them to support. For those of you who are not aware wine is also an option. I don’t know if they’re going to support Windows 11. But I presume they will. But wine is a an emulator as well for Windows software. And I think it’s free for the Mac.

Augusto Pinaud 12:46

I never had excellent. That was parallels. My experience was consistent. That was wine was not that’s a recent I keep paying for their license.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:57

Yeah, I had I had one particular use of it like way, way back in the day. And it worked fine for it. I was trying to do and I went on with my one of my life. But it looks like wine is currently out in version six. The latest version came out and a couple of weeks ago, like it is still running. And it supports 32 and 64 bit, you know, system. So it looks like it’s doing its job. I can only imagine that well, it will eventually support Windows 11 at some point. So just know that there are options out there parallels supporting windows 11 is good, though. All right. onward to the next story. What’s next,

Augusto Pinaud 13:38

at&t joins T Mobile into switching all endurance points for Android phones to Google messages for RCS and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago about the RCS when we cover the different apps and we cover about Google medium Google Chat and, and Google Android messages. So at&t now has come to move everything that they have for Android, RSS to Android message app. And now that makes T Mobile at&t and we’re still waiting for rice. And that has been so far the only carrier that has not committed to switching their customers to Android message by default.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:24

Yeah, this is just great. I mean, of course, you know, it really leaves two major players, right, Verizon needs to get on board, like wake up to the, you know, times. And then of course, Apple Apple doesn’t have RCS, they have their own proprietary system. And it’s very, I think, unlikely that Apple will want to open this up. But then again, you can now have a FaceTime link in iOS 15 that allows you to FaceTime from any device. So maybe they feel there’s a little bit of writing on the wall that maybe we’re not aware of in terms of numbers, but the reality Is that, you know, that’s a chink in the dike that I think is really good for consumers. And I think that if Verizon and Apple can get on board, then we now have the capability of actually having communication platform, a communications platform on our phones that are safe and secure for us to be able to actually communicate with each other. And that’s just a remarkable movement for really all of mankind. I mean, I, you know, don’t want to kind of, you know, minimize the the, the idea here, and I certainly don’t want to make this sound like hyperbole, but this is actually really, really important that I can securely messaged with you, wherever I am in the world, is is really important. SMS is not secure, although what Google is doing here is actually porting Android messages for both RCS and SMS, which would include MMS as well. But RCS would be then a secure method for being able to transmit messages, which is like, think about the authoritarian regimes around the world, you know, and those kinds of things, those citizens who are utilizing Android messages would then have a secure way to be able to communicate with each other, which is just remarkable, you know, and that’s built into their phone, not having to install some, you know, third party application, that could not be the application, right, you know, you can go into the Android store, or the Google Play Store, you can go into all the other places, and you could actually install the wrong application. It looks like WhatsApp, but it’s really not. It’s some, you know, authoritarian governments takeover of the of the App Store inside of their borders. There’s all kinds of tricky things that people do. And this is this is a really good move. So crossing my fingers that both Verizon and Apple get on board and do this for humanity, and not just for their own interests. So all right, onward.

Augusto Pinaud 16:46

Well, our last news is galaxy also announced they have a virtual event, that virtual event was interesting. He was short, it was 30 minutes. But it’s showing more and more how Samsung has decided to follow Apple idea of have a consistent ecosystem, regardless of who are the players, hey, buy Samsung products, and they will talk to each other in a similar way, or an assumption way, how a Mac product will talk their iPads, with their phones, with their computers, and so far, same with the watches. And that is really exciting for me to see. Because I have said for many for many years now that that is one of the secrets of the productivity that I can grab any device here in my office, and looks, fails and drive exactly as the other one. And that allows me to be really productive. That allows me to have multiple devices around me that I can do the same thing regardless which device I am Samson, trying to replicate this and making partnership with Samsung, being sorry, with Google making partnership with Microsoft, to really get this consistent. I think it’s for the PC World. game changer. And I hope not only they succeed, but that they really can push this as an example for the other producers of Microsoft products. And same with cool.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:23

Yeah, so I we kind of touched on this earlier, which is that Lenovo announced these five new tablets, Android tablets at Mobile World Congress, which happened this past week in Barcelona, for the first time since the pandemic, they had canceled last year’s. So 2020 didn’t happen. They normally have 100,000 people who come to this event, it’s a huge opportunity and trade show space for the you know, telecommunication space for the mobile mobile space. And this year, they had a bunch of, you know, safety precautions and whatnot, and really only had 30,000, you know, less than a third of what they would normally have there. And so to have Samsung really put forward a strong, you know, event right in the middle of FWC 2021 is really phenomenal. They focused on three different things in the show that I really kind of latched on to, they focused on what they called the open Galaxie system. It’s just kind of an oxymoron. But the the idea here is, as you noted, they’ve made these specific and strategic partnerships with Microsoft to be able to integrate with Windows and with Google in order to integrate with watch with their with their watches with where formerly were less. And then they focused on where they on the wearables, and how one UI was being brought to the galaxy line of watches. I’m really looking forward to seeing the first watch they do put out the first smartwatch they do put out with this new partnership with Google. I think it will probably be my next watch. I’m really a big fan of the galaxy. I think it’s the three that they that they most recently put out. It’s a nice watch. It looks good. And it’s something that I probably would wear, and but I’m ready. I’m like, so ready for an upgrade for a new watch. But I’m just waiting now because I want to see what this looks like. And I think this will be the right choice for me, it comes with LTE, or whichever watch, you know, I want I want it to come with LTE. So I can take phone calls, still do mapping, go for a run, not lose connectivity, that kind of thing. Maybe I’ll actually be able to run without my phone for once, because I still wear an armband and run with my phone. Because I needed tethered to my, to my watch in order to do its work. And that’s a bit of a pain. And and you know, it’ll be a cold day. And you know what, before I buy an Apple Watch, no offense, it just, it’s not gonna work very well, with with my Android system, it’s just No, no way. So and I don’t like the square, I don’t want square things on me. So I’m just not a square person. And so but I’m really looking forward to it. And then they close this out, you know, kind of going toward a little bit toward the enterprise space where they really focus on security and the the ability for Samsung to really be, you know, this highly private and secure space. And it goes back to your point that these are really the things that Apple has tried to do to make themselves look bespoke to their audience to their luxury audience. And it seems like a playbook that works. And so Samsung’s playing their hand at it. And, you know, Tim row and his team at Samsung, I give them great credit because they’re doing a really great job. And so Tim rose, the CEO of Samsung. And so I give, I give ro and his team, a really great, you know, nod to the work that they’re doing. And especially, you know, here at Mobile World Congress and doing this, you know, throughout the pandemic, they’ve been doing a really strong job of, of making all those things kind of come together and, and making it work for people. I think that’s the biggest part is like really helping people connect in this time when it’s really difficult. And so with that we’ve reached our halfway point. And so we will turn it over to our sponsor this week. co working space by personal productivity club. When we get back we will continue the news of the week.

Sponsor Voice Over 22:11

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:21

All right, welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle on Ray Sidney-Smith joined here, of course, always by the inimitable Augusto Pinaud. We are going to continue on with our productivity articles this week. And so we’ve done the headlines, we’ve got some articles to run through, we will do our tools of the week, the new tools of the week, and then we will close out with our featured story. So let’s get into our productivity articles articles this week. What did we find this week?

Augusto Pinaud 23:46

first article, we’re going to talk about Wall Street Journal remote work if the new signing bonus and was a really interesting article, you know, we have talked about the signing bonus, you know, okay, you come here and I give you this amount of money for you to come. And it is interesting how people don’t want to not everybody wants to come back to the office and how the people and we discussed this at the beginning of the pandemic and we’re saying there is the people who has always wanted to be remote that for whatever reason they couldn’t because a corporation say no, we cannot do it work cannot be done whatever was the reason that now have proved that can be done. There is the group of people who don’t care one way or the other. And there is a group of people who cannot see us till the moment those are not the ones who need to decide about, okay, they’re ready to go to the office and they’re waiting for them to give them the green lights. They can run back. But there is a significant amount of people who have now come to the conclusion that they don’t want to come back. They don’t want to do those commutes they don’t want to do Sold out and expenses and the health implications of all this because going to the office every day means you eat more outside, that is more expense, there is a lot of things. So it is interesting how corporations are starting to look into talent into, especially in those corporations that are starting to talk well do you need to come back do you need to come back do you need to come back. And versus those corporations who said, that’s fine, you can be anywhere as far as you do your job. And now let me offer you that as a signing bonus to poach talent. So it’s, it’s really, really interesting the dynamics that are happening with all these, we don’t want to come back, we want more remote work, or a better hybrid position.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:48

Yeah, but the thing that comes to mind when I see articles like this is, of course, companies are going to do what they need to do to find talent and to entice them to come to their to their companies. I think it’s laudable for any HR director to make sure that they are hiring managers to go out there and make sure that they are putting out the right things to get the right talent, the thing that kind of shocks me is that there isn’t actually a dialog in this article about something, I think that’s really important, which is that when I’m working at home, you need to be able to either provide a stipend for the physical space in which I’m working, you need to be able to provide infrastructure, you know, you’re going to be providing me with a desk quipment Are you paying for intranet access, for me to work from home, like all of those things are are things that the company if it doesn’t have an office anymore, and it’s just basically getting rid of it and going to a distributed model, that’s one thing. And that, I think, requires you to then start paying your employees for them to be working in a distributed model, because they are now bearing the cost of your real estate of your infrastructure to do your work. They’re not a 1099, where they are supposed to be paying for their own things. But at the same time, if you’re saying you can work remotely as a, as an enticement is like this, your flexible schedule is a benefit, it’s part of your benefits package, it kind of conflates the notion to me that somehow you should be paying for my, you should be, you know, basically, you know, reimbursing me for the costs of taking up my physical space for your work. And so there’s a little bit of, I don’t know how that’s gonna really work out, you know, like, is this gonna become an NLRB? You know, lawsuit at some point, you know, like this, there’s a, there’s a disconnect there that I’m not sure about, but I think, you know, it’s one that has to be worked out, obviously, if I were in and looking for a job, and a company told me that it was remote, optional, you know, we’re, you know, like, I have flexibility to work remotely and go into the office, that would be something that would be enticing to me. So it’s not like it wouldn’t be enticing. But I am concerned about what that means in terms of, of a true benefits package. And I’m not, I’m not a, you know, benefits expert. So, I can’t really tell but that that definitely came up to me because I was like, Wait a second, you know, like, if my employees are working in a distributed model, I pay for those cell phones, I pay for their, because that’s my, that’s on my dime, you know what I mean? Like, that’s my company, you know, property, you know, so it’s like, all of those things that come into mind. And so I think I think about that when I when I think about this, so we’ll see what happens as we go through. But we’re going to continue to see more and more remote work coming up. And I think we need to be mindful that as we are making these choices, you know, it seems like a pandemic is coming to a close in the United States, but it is not ending anytime soon. And we have some time to go through this. And, and so I’m hoping that we don’t have a terrible resurgence in the fall. I hope that we don’t go through more lockdowns, at least here in the States. But you know, around the world, it is a very different circumstance, you know, look at Australia right now. They’re having, you know, lock downs and parts of the country. And in we’re having resurgence of the Delta, the second Delta variant, or whatever you would call a Delta variant to, you know, it’s, you know, proliferating, it’s going to become the dominant strain here in the States. It’s supposedly more virulent, but less deadly. I guess a good thing, I don’t know. You know, like, it’s, it’s kind of a crazy thought experiment. But the but the idea here is that we’re gonna wear this for a while. And so companies do need to grapple with, you know, what’s going to be most safe for their employees, while still retaining and attracting those employees. And by retaining, I don’t mean, not putting them in danger to die, but literally just keeping them working for them because they have other choices. So all right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 29:40

Our next article comes from better humans and medical Micheel talks about how I conquer my snooze button and change my life. I wasn’t expecting much about this article, and maybe it’s I don’t struggle with with that as much. But it was there was something The article that I really, really enjoy, said three years ago, I realize that the choice of wakeup hit a snooze or thoroughfare alarm was the first choice I made on my day. And that choice was setting me up for either success or failure. And I really like that couple of lines on the article. Because as much as later she going to things that I agree and I have on my do not do list, you know, I do not negotiate with me in the morning, I said, My wakeup time in the night, not in the morning. And at some point, much early in my life, I struggle with this, put an alarm and don’t wake up or hit the snooze so many times. I never thought about it as this is the first choice I’m making on the day. And I can make a better choice. So that way, my day, start with a success and celebrate it as a success. I did not heed this news today, and I got up bed or the first thing. So that was really, really interesting. I, I have not thought about that she talks then about setting an alarm for bedtime. That is something that I do I have an alarm, I wake up every day at the same time, Saturday or Sunday doesn’t matter. And I have an alarm to go to bed every day. At the same time. Even if I don’t the watch will, will tell me you know, spend time and if I decide not to go, I’m making the choice again, of whatever is going to be the time for the lawn. also talk about find your perfect type make it hard to Ridge, mine is close to the bed. That’s not a problem. But I have I always said that the watch was one of the things the Apple Watch for that alarm thing, because I like the fact that it makes the noise and vibrate here. And I don’t need to you know, I just need to open my eyes and hear it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:59

Yeah, I think that she makes some really great points, I kind of come at it from a different perspective, which is that I’ve set up my waking routine to remove choices. I’m I’m trying to fight this decision fatigue throughout the day. And so, you know, being the owner of a business, I have to make hundreds of decisions every day for the company. And that requires me to try as best as possible to remove any other decisions in my world that are extraneous. And waking up is just not one of the decisions I need to make. Because I’ve made it once I’ve decided to get up at a particular time every day. And when I when the alarm goes off, I wake up and I’m off to the races, you know, like so I kind of think of it from from that other side, which is like, make a decision once right? Like you place your recognition of what needs to get done into position, and then just go do it right. And so I totally get where she’s coming from I get the perspective. But I’ve just kind of I, in my own head, I see it as No, I’ve decided that I’m whenever you know, the alarm goes off, then I get up. And that’s the that is the rule. And it’s just kind of sacred. It’s just what it is right? Like there’s no there’s no decision that needs to be made there. Because it’s always been made. Right. And I may be exhausted in May, I may decide to do other things differently once I do get up. But the getting up part is not is just not a question. Right? I just I just do it. And so yeah, I think she gives really great advice, though, for any people who are struggling. I think that you know, the going to bed part, like her discussion about getting to bed on time is way more important than the getting up part because most of the time, you’re not getting up because you’re exhausted. And this is a sleep epidemic, really in a global epidemic. We have these little tiny computers in our pockets. They’re sitting on our side tables, in our in our, in our bedrooms, and they are causing us to you know, stay up later, be more distracted or distractible. And it keeps us you know, like these bright, you know, boxes in our face. And, and so we have to do what we can do to be able to sleep better. And I think one of the best things we can do is actually getting to sleep so that we have enough sleep to get up in time. So I thought was a good article. Good, good, good, good to think about. And the thing that stuck out most for me was that I actually didn’t know this. And I try to stay up on these things. But there was a dot pub, the Domain Dot pub for publication and better humans is using b dot pub. And so I was like, What How did I not know that there was a you know, I don’t know whether it’s tripolis publicity or publication but a dot pub is a really good gtld generic top level domain. Some Like, what domains Should I register for? Cuz, you know, all right, I’m

Augusto Pinaud 34:53

gonna give you a couple of ideas happy to share with you.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:55

I know, I know. I don’t need any more domains. Holy. All right on to leave about I wrote an article

Augusto Pinaud 35:03

wrote an article that talks about the practice of truly enjoying time off. And he was talking how he took the month of June. And what are some of those strategies? You know, I know most people can’t do what Leah Dahl study took December off until June Jim. Yeah. Um, or they don’t want to. Okay, as I was reading the article, there was a couple of 3d things on that article, but I I wasn’t, I am not yet where I want to have that month of, okay. I like what I do.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:43

But then No, but I don’t think he’s saying I don’t think he’s saying that he doesn’t like what he does. So so I

Augusto Pinaud 35:48

don’t know. No, no, no, he never said that. On the article. He never said, okay, but I, but I like other things that he said, Okay, what I’ve been learning is to set the boundaries. And that’s something that I learned years ago, and I’m decent, you know, choose what you’re doing, you know, slow down, be in the moment, practice full appreciation, you know, lead out of the energy, distress and frustration, and allow yourself to play. And that’s something that I do terribly into injecting those things into my day, you know, my day is mostly split in two really early and really late. And that middle part has a lot of those components must have the time. So I may need to take a month of occasion where I don’t take meetings 12 to four, that would be

Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:42

well, I have considered this. I mean, you know that you and I have had this conversation about my desire to kind of, you know, as Europeans do, most Europeans take off about two months of the year. And it is, it’s culturally just a part of being European. And here in the States, we have a work ethic that for some reason doesn’t have that. And I think it’s, it’s bad for our economy, I think it’s bad for most Americans to be overworking, you lose creativity, you don’t, you lose innovation, and you don’t get as much productivity out of people when they are actually working. And so, you know, it’s kind of like with a pandemic, you know, remote work and flexible work schedules, a distributed work model actually increases productivity. And, and so I think the reality factor is, is that, once we get that into the culture, I think it will be more useful to us all, when we see it on the other side, like, for example, you know, if I didn’t have hobbies, if I didn’t have rejuvenative activities, I would not have the ideas during those times of working in multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary activities, that then spark ideas that then I bring back to my real work. And I say, you know, what, why can’t we do this thing over here, here, like, let’s make this happen in that space. And so I really believe in the concept, of course, what I’ve had to do is, you know, I tried to take off blocks of time, usually two weeks at a time, and then extending weekends, during the summer months, I haven’t done that in the past two years. And I really want to do that going forward. But in essence, you can fully take off two months of every year, just by say, during the summer months, I’m going to do a Florida four day, you know, weekend, or three day weekends for the summer months, and then maybe in the spring, and in the fall or winter, then I’m going to take off two weeks at a time in one of those two or three categories. And then you build up to basically in essence, what ends up being two months of time but it’s not as harsh of an impact on your being away from the office. And that’s kind of what I want to figure out how to do

Augusto Pinaud 38:47

that. And that’s that’s I prefer that. I was reading an article recently takes up talks about that after a date your vacation and start going down that I don’t know for ready for me is for Okay, I can take for the other third day, I’m done. I’m ready to go back to my to my messy life. So that is a recent I don’t I will, I don’t expect to do a month or two. But I do a lot of those three to four days. weekends, where I may go and drive I like driving is distressing for me. So I can drive for a day or two is day two, three days on one place and drive back now. That gives me that longer. That’s probably the longest I will go because I will get bored. So it’s, it’s not necessarily that great for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:36

Yeah, and I need I need like, I need like five days to decompress. And then I feel like I’m on vacation. So I think it’s you know, everybody’s different. And you need to figure that out. I think that’s a really good note to for everybody to take hold to which is like algorithmically, how much time do you need to kind of disconnect from work before you start to actually read, refresh, write, recharge, and then give yourself enough time to do that, and then ramp yourself back up into a work mode. And what I’d like to do is I like to actually be back before anybody knows I’m back, so that I’m able to have a few days where I adjust back to my normal schedule, and catch up on things behind the scenes before then I’m back to seeing clients and doing all those things. So people might know on back, but I’m not taking appointments, I’m not doing those things until I’m fully ready to take people back into the world and get into all of the, you know, the the, you know, normal scheduling and normal work of my world. So, all right, onward to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 40:39

So our next article is an article that talks about past present and future use better time perspective to live better, and they talk about the one 990 percent pass focus 9% future focus and 90% pressing focus. It was an interesting article, I don’t know how easy is to, to apply that I agree the 1% back for journaling, I’m completely in the future. I need that. And I know that was a good article. I don’t know what is your take on the article?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:17

Yeah, I’m probably I’m probably in the in the 5%. Maybe a little bit more than that, in terms of reflection, I spend, I think a little bit more time in that space. I, I feel like I look at going back to the photos component, like I actually liked looking at photos of, you know, family events and things of that nature. So I do actually spend quite a bit of time in that space. I also, I don’t know if that’s necessarily Past, present or future. But, you know, I see, I’ve family, and I’ve young nieces and nephews. And so looking at photos of them, you know, I’m looking at those photos of them after the fact. I mean, I don’t know if that’s really reflection, present, since I wasn’t there, you know, I’m looking at photographs of them. So but that is me looking at, at other photographs of, you know, other things going on in my world. So you know, I’m always you know, just looking at photographs, I don’t feel that takes or detracts from my ability to get things done. So it’s not particularly an issue for me, in terms of my future planning, I definitely spend a good 10 to 20% of my time planning. And that’s because that’s my natural mode. Like, if you just let me be I would plan all the time, it would become 100% of my time. I love that state. So I know that I have to curtail that. And so I plan more than most people. But I also, you know, correspondent corresponding with that, I make sure that I am more productive in the 80 to 75% space of present focused work, because I know that I like to plan more than others, right. So I’m going to hopefully make better right first steps than others, because I like that planning piece of it. not always the case, you know, maybe 10% of that planning is superfluous. But it actually reduces my anxiety and allows me to be able to focus on the things that are important to me. So I spend more time in that space. So again, this goes back to the notion Know thyself, and if you are capable of determining how much time that is, okay, if well, if you’re gonna choose 1% of your week, well, what’s 1% of 168 hours, that’s how much time you’re going to spend each week in that, you know, past space. You know, if you’re gonna spend 5% of your time planning, then how much of that time are you doing? And then if you’re gonna spend the next whatever, you know, I don’t know what that number is now. So 9695 94% you know, in 94%, then that’s time that you then have to break apart into sleep, eat, you know, other kinds of necessities and then the balance then becomes really focused work and, and action work, right? Like what are you doing today to be able to get that work that work done? So?

Augusto Pinaud 44:05

Yeah, I like you I spend a lot more on the on the past focus. And because i like i like that planning time. I like that thinking time I like that strategy time. So it I tend to do a lot of great what all this means and how will this need to be apply now and that that time past future jump, it takes a chunk on my time. I don’t know if I will pass there all the time planning like you but but I for sure, spend a significant amount of time doing that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:37

Alright, last article before we go into new tools. Our last

Augusto Pinaud 44:40

article on the ladders is the genius of subtracting habits to make your life better and this was a now I’m now confused.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:57

Yeah, so so the the author of the article was talking about the idea of sometimes it’s not about adding new habits, but taking habits away, that are not serving their purposes. The, I guess, I agree with the article. And a lot of ways, I think that what we have to remember is that whenever we are, quote, unquote, taking away a habit, what we’re really doing is replacing it with something. And so I never really talked about the addition or subtraction of doing things. You know, for example, you’ve advocated the idea of the not to do list, which I, which I think is a really good thing to pay attention to, like, when you’re doing this thing you should like, look at the list and say, I’m not going to do that thing, right? That’s a good mechanism. But that’s not for necessarily habits in the sense of like, Okay, if I’m a smoker, and I’m trying not to smoke, you need to replace the habit of smoking with something else that is going to calm your nerves, because you’re basically trying to satisfy a craving, or some other you know, thing that’s going on whether it’s mood related or otherwise, it’s likely mood related, you’re trying to maybe calm anxiety, so you smoke or you’re trying to get a little buzz, or whatever it is, you’re doing something. So now you have to replace it with something healthy and positive, to replace that other thing that you were doing. So that’s the only real piece that I would do that I would add here is that this is all about adding something positive to your world. Kind of to the point of, you know, you had Jeff Segal for that event, what can I gain? and having that question that asks, What are you getting out of the circumstances, you know, as opposed to what are you losing? Or what are you deleting from your world? It’s like, what are you actually adding to your world? How can you put a positive spin on this, so that it becomes something that’s motivating and progressive, as opposed to deleting and demonetizing. So I just really feel like we should always keep to the positive in these cases, because it really does and is more motivating in that sense. Alright, so that takes us along to our what brings us to the end of our stories this week. And that brings us on to our new tools this week. And so of course, each week against you. And I just scour the interwebs for all of the various stories, both the news articles, but also the productivity articles that we cover each week. And so in new tools of the week, August when I pick two tools, they may be tools that we just have known and loved and used for some time, or they may be new tools to us as well. We want to share those with you in the show. And so first up is my new tool, which is a tool called reflect and reflect is really interesting. What it is is it’s kind of like a Spaced Repetition based tool but it connects to your Evernote account. So reflect allows you to connect your Evernote or in China, which is the engine tool in shanghvi Vinci. So if you’re using Evernote in China, you would use that application but in every everywhere else is Evernote. And so Evernote, you can connect your Evernote notes, and it goes ahead and captures all of those pieces. And it kind of turns it into these flashcards that can show you these pieces and use a spaced repetition in order to do that. So you can clip parts of your your notes from from books, you can capture notes from lectures, you can capture just ideas that you’re having. And it will then show it back to you in a time sequence so that you can recall it better. And so yeah, I just really like it. It’s a great tool, and it connects to Evernote, which is my extended mind. So everything’s already in Evernote. So it’s just a natural extension to be able to say, Oh, you know what, I want to remember these quotations from this book. So display them to me on a regular basis so that I can remember them. And as they keep displaying them to me, they then help me remember. So that’s my tool of the week reflect app.io about your gousto

Augusto Pinaud 48:51

so I pick one that comes through the topic of the week of the camera and it’s called filmbox filmbox will allows you to get an all negative okay of the camera. Yes, you for those of us who remember going to the store and wait two weeks to see the pictures and your dad’s shouting at you for stop. I can only take one picture, getting it to be a good one. Okay, I get my kids will never get that experience. Okay, we can throw out 1000 of them and then delete them or not but but that was my my childhood home. It’s full of those film things, you know, from the different trips and all that. So it allows you to take the picture directly into the film, and it’s tracked a digital version of it. So it is a great way to track those pictures, turn them into digital version of it directly on your phone or your iPad. So I just wanted to share that application in case you have or your parents have some of those pictures.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 49:56

Yeah, and actually to your point, the whole reason I chose reflect on was because of that point, which is that you can actually put photographs of things you want to remember and reflect can actually bring those things back, you know, to your memories, you know, like it can, it can take images as well, which is great because it’s connected to Evernote. So anything you can put in Evernote is basically something that they can send back to you to look at so so just know that you do have that function of being able to put photographs, you can do flashcards, you can do all kinds of things. And that, so thanks for reminding me because it slipped my mind filmbox looks interesting, it kind of it’s a little bit different from Google’s photo scan application, which allows you to take basically scans of physical photos, this is helping you take scans of film negatives, and turn them into digital. So that’s all good stuff. Fair. Wonderful. All right, new tools are out of the way. Which brings us along to our featured story this week. And our feature story this week is all about Elan musk at Mobile World Congress gave a talk if you want to call it that it was really a q&a, he sat down for a fireside chat virtually, with the folks at Mobile World Congress. And he was talking about starlink. And for those of you who are unaware, starlink is a an internet service provider that is satellite base. So these are satellites that are in near Earth orbit. And they allow for places that are in fairly rural areas, but even some, you know, populated spaces, gain access to high speed, you know, consistent strong throughput, broadband internet access. So yeah, so what did you think about Elon Musk’s conversation,

Augusto Pinaud 51:39

the conversation was interesting. The fact that he thinks he will be a half a million dollar in the next year, half a million users in the next year. That’s really interesting. And I think they’re doing well, because the at least the beta test I I was not in an area where you can get into that beta test. But it was 99 bucks, it was $20 more than what I paid for fiber cable, whatever is what I have. So if for 99 bucks, you can improve the consistency of my service. And it’s $20 more to get it out of that. It’s not you know, I, I remember many years ago, the first satellite, I heard about internet coming via satellite, the difference was significant, it was really expensive. So it was not an option. Now, if you can get this for 100 bucks, $20 more than what you’re getting, hey, it will be completely worth it. Now you can have that same service in the vehicles, you can have that same service. Regardless where you go, you can be in a hotel and be connected to your service. I’m sure there is devices that you may need to carry with you. But but having although things will be interesting. So I don’t know, I’m really, really excited. I was impressed that they have launched more than 1700 satellites in the low orbit since 2018. That’s a significant amount of them. And I wasn’t aware that there were that many.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:11

Yeah, well, so so like, you probably can’t be I you could be mobile with your starlink service, it would require you to have that dish mounted on the vehicle. But, but not not to think not to say that I didn’t think about it. For it’s 100 bucks for the service to put a deposit down to get into the system, I’m actually in an area that is actually covered by starlink. So I have considered it, it’s 500 bucks for the router, and then $100 a month $99 for the service per month. It’s the same price globally, and it’s just translated for currency. And then of course, you know, whatever the duties and taxes that are associated with that, that’s a pretty remarkable feat, you know, like, if you want to go off the grid, you know, move out to someplace rural that doesn’t have internet, you know, strong broadband. Now, you can just, you know, you sign up for the service, I liked the part where he said, we wanted to make this easy. So you have two steps, you set up you know, the the dish so that it’s angled toward the sky, and you plug it in, those are the two steps, you can do them in either order, you can you can plug it in, and then put it interacted with the sky, or you can direct those guy and plug it in. You know, that kind of ease of use, I think is really, really important and powerful. You don’t need an installer, you don’t need any sophisticated equipment other than the device they send you in the starlink kit. And this is a service that’s going to be able to fill in the gap between residential and commercial hardline internet service providers and 5g Technologies cellular. And so he was very clear about that. Of course, he’s at Mobile World Congress and he wants to make sure that he is partnering with telcos for the proliferation of the service. And he really focused on the fact that a lot of this is going to be for backhaul and for other regulatory concerns other telecommunications companies and telecommunications providers who can’t go into particular areas because they can’t service the entire area. And so this will give them that option to be able to say, you know, we’re going to partner with starlink. And we’ll bring up we’re gonna wide up everybody, but only the portions that are out there in the, you know, outside of the urban areas, or the areas we cannot get that are remote, those will be starlink. But everybody else is going to be on our infrastructure and is going to be within our space, and now they can get the contract for that government or, you know, jurisdiction or otherwise.

Augusto Pinaud 55:30

But for example, last fall, we took a trip, we rent on Airbnb, and again, that’s, that’s for me suffocation, okay, I work anyways. But the kids had the vacation that that for me was a vacation coming to what we were discussing earlier. Okay, we went five days, a small dish, the dish doesn’t, the pictures I saw are not that big, it’s a small dish like that can come with me part of my suitcase, I will even we open to buy the fancy case. So it doesn’t get squished in the back. Okay, I get there, put my thing in the backyard, plug it in. And now I don’t need to consider a case my LTE going to be fine on my 5g going to be fine on a Wi Fi, they’re going to have be good enough. I don’t need to worry about that. That port work for me.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:20

Yeah, I also see now the opportunity for campgrounds and other places to to gain access to high speed broadband. And provide that to customers who want it. I mean, you know, maybe you want to go out in the wilderness and be disconnected from the world. I don’t want I want all of the amenities of living, you know, wherever I am. And so, but I see this on cruise ships, you know, currently cruise ships have pretty poor internet access. But now they can provide stronger, better access in and from starlink. That can be phenomenal, that would be really great. And yeah, so a couple other notes that I kind of picked up from Ilan, which is that what what Musk is doing here is that he is attempting to put together all of these things that he thinks are good for humanity, and in terms of his kind of portfolio of businesses. And he’s making these things somewhat strategically, but also not, you know, like, he’s, he’s looking at it from the perspective of will this help humanity and, and then, and then choosing these companies that that do these things, you know, like, he doesn’t need to do starlink, you know, like, it’s not, it’s not part of some grand plan, that he needs that in order to be able to do what his real goal is, right? He wants to put people on Mars. And he thinks that, that populating humans on other planets is a mechanism for not just greater human discovery and greater human, you know, development, but also as a mechanism for human survival, right, that at some point, we will need to leave planet earth if we do plan to live longer for the propagation and survival of the species kind of thing. You know, if you if you believe that, and, and he does, and so he wants to get people to Mars, but he doesn’t necessarily need starlink to get us there. You know, he needs those rockets and the reusability of those rockets to bring them into a cheaper format. And he’s doing that with the SpaceX program. So I’m really curious what starlink is really all about, other than the fact that he wants to be able to have internet access wherever he is, you know, like, I don’t really know, you know, I think there’s probably a monetary opportunity there. But as he said, He’s gonna put in, he’s gonna be putting in what do you say $5 billion, you know, so far to get to get to at least a launch space, then then we’re talking another 10 to $20 billion to really keep it going before it really does get to that saturation point and is profitable, kind of those are the numbers he was running around. I just, you know, like, you could spend $20 billion better for yourself. So I’m just I’m curious, there’s there has to be a reason underlying why he did it. And he kind of avoided the question when it was asked, and I’m really curious where starlink plays into his overarching kind of, you know, perspective and all of this. And yeah, so we’ll see. I mean, you know, just like with Tesla, he believes that electrical electric vehicles are better for the planet. And so he’s been pushing toward getting battery technologies and he V’s, you know, pushed forward and he’s done a really, I think, strong job of doing that, but putting out a luxury vehicle that people want and has really pushed forward the the Eevee movement, so, you know, yeah, I thought it was really interesting talk. I thought he was he was Ilan, you know, like he clearly is. He’s not a charismatic individual, but he’s very smart. He’s very, very bright. And, and, and he knows what he wants, and he is well researched in going toward the things that he wants. And so he’s dug in toward that. He just turned 50 I think the day before. World Congress when he attended, so he’s a he’s just 50 years old. So he’s got many years ahead of him in terms of what he can do for, you know, humanity. So interesting character, I suppose, you know, just like any other, you know, multi billionaire, you’re going to have some eccentricities. So, alright, anything else? gousto.

Augusto Pinaud 1:00:22

Nope. I, that brings us to the end of our show for this week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:26

And all wonderful. Well, thank you. So for putting together the show, and making this all happen every week.

Augusto Pinaud 1:00:33

It’s my pleasure as always,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:35

Alright, everybody, let us know we have a section in the show notes. So if you go to Anything But Idle comm forward slash 068 tomorrow morning, for those of you who are watching us live, but normally, if you go to Anything, But idle.com, forward slash 068, which is the episode number, so any of the episode numbers, you will be taken to the show notes, where we have the embedded video and the embedded audio and you can listen all that fun stuff. there in that section, we have other news or extra stories, and so feel free to check those out. Because they’re there, we just don’t cover them during the show live. But if we did miss something, feel free to go to our contact page or go to the comment section on that page. And leave us a comment and let us know about any stories that might have you know, cropped up that you want to talk about. You can also tweet or dm us on Twitter at Anything But Idle. So we have our DMS open on that Twitter profile. So you can go ahead and message us there. If you’re on Anything But Idle. in the show notes, you’ll find links to all the stories tools of the week, our extra stories, as I said that we didn’t cover and we also have a text transcript. So that includes a button that says read more, click on the read more expands that you can read it while you’re listening or watching along. And then of course, we have a download link below that you can click on the PDF download link, and it will download it as a PDF for you to be able to read offline as well. This is your first time watching or listening Feel free to subscribe and or follow the podcast or the YouTube channel that’ll notify you when we go live for future episodes. Or you’ll just get the podcast episodes in the podcast app of your choice. That will come out when we release new episodes. And so thank you for doing that. Feel free to rate a review us on Apple podcasts or Stitcher. I’m hoping at some point in the future Google decides to add a review function into Google podcasts. But until then, it’s Apple podcasts or Stitcher pretty much that allow for ratings and reviews. And those are really helpful for us to grow our personal productivity, listening community and watching community. So thank you for doing that. And so with that, we’ll see you next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s your productive life.