Will Android Work Profiles for Google Workspace Help With Work-Life Balance?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00

Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community. Welcome to Anything But Idle the productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by cooking space by personal productivity club. And I can manage this dashboard. There we go. Hi, I’m Ray Sidney-Smith posts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 89. And it’s for October 25 2021. Will Android work profiles for Google workspace help with work life balance? Each week we review and discuss the productivity and technology news headlines of the week. And with that, let’s get into our articles from the personal productivity blogosphere and audio sphere. Agusta what’s our first story this week.

Augusto Pinaud 0:45

So the first one is from Moline side and he’s how you can use Google Calendar timing site to track your productivity. And same as Microsoft has done there vivo and or Cortana. Now give you a report. Google has bring timing sites to track your productivity. So the article shows you how to, you know go to calendar that Google go to the sidebar and how to activate it. You know, this is a really interesting way, especially if you leave on Google Calendar to track we have discussed here on the show as well as in other shows how important is to have that time tracking to know what you plan but also what is really happening. We have talked about 2555 that you and I do that basically, every 2555 we go what we plan on what actually happened. And it is really something powerful for the productivity and for tracking that productivity. So this is another tool that you can use for that.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:52

Right. And just to clarify, this is for folks who are inside of Google workspace, and so you have to have a Google workspace account. And what time insights does is right there from the the information bar, you will now be able to see a time breakdown that is based on your working hours. And the types of meetings you have how much time you have spent in those things, whether you’re meeting with one person, you know, three people, you know, all of those kinds of things. And then how much time you spend in meetings, knowing whether you have a meeting heavy day, you know, in one particular week or another and giving you some basic information there and who you meet with most often, which can be helpful, because you can say, oh, you know what, if I, you know, put together these few stakeholders, or these few people in meetings, maybe we can have fewer meetings and gang them together. So we can actually have more productive, empty space, you know, whitespace in the calendar to be able to have focus work or flow work. And I think that’s can be that can be really useful. So I know that I’ve been looking at my own time insights and seeing how it differs from my other time management and time tracking tools. And I’m curious to see how others will use it over time. And with that, let’s move on to our next story this week.

Augusto Pinaud 3:03

This next article comes from fourth three ways to boost productivity with autonomous motivation. And the article going to define autonomous motivation that is embedded in the self determination theory, not to be confused with STD is SDT. Because I started, way back, I said, Oh, but it talks about extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, and why the intrinsic motivations are so important for your organization for your internal drive for what you’re really trying to accomplish, and how to enhance that autonomy in the in the work, you know, providing choice, fostering relevance for people allowing for criticism and independent thinking into your people. And how important is that work environment in your organization? You know, as they said, your office unemployed are unique. And now we’re expanding that uniqueness into not only the office, but the work office and when people come and people are coming last day. So it’s important to understand that and to keep that uniqueness.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:19

I think there are some really important components here that they talk about, of course, self determination theory has those three essential human needs underpinning it autonomy, which is where autonomous motivation comes from. So autonomy, not automatic or automation, right? We’re not talking about automatic motivation, but autonomous. And so therefore, self directed relatedness and competence are the other two human needs that they talk about here. And I just wanted to point out that this has a lot of really strong corollary or parallel to the empowerment gameplan that comes from empowerment takes more than a minute by Dr. Ken Blanchard, and Dr. Blanchard really talks about these three components of building an empowered team. And he talks about sharing information with everyone a creating autonomy through boundaries, and then ultimately replacing old hierarchy with self directed teams. And I find that to be such an important and influencing model for how I think about management going forward, both of myself with regard to autonomous motivation, because it improves intrinsic motivation in that sense, but also management of others, and making sure that I am breaking down boundaries of information, sharing, I am capable of giving responsibility to people and autonomy to make those particular enactments of those particular rules and regulations and procedures, and then ultimately, removing hierarchy so that we have more team collaboration, and this more small team, you know, projects based better than saying, Okay, this department now has purview over this particular thing. And now go do that in this old hierarchical perspective. And so if we start to think about this from our own personal productivity, we can actually have greater understanding of what really does motivate us to move forward in particular projects that might be hung up over time. That might be you know, I’m holding us back and in some way, shape or form. So just kind of good to keep in mind in that sense. All right, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 6:21

So our next story is how to trick from life hacker and how to trick your work obsessed brain into taking actual leisure time. And going on know, we know a lot of people, you know, a lot of people who they don’t have such thing as work life balance. But not only that, they feel guilty when they go into leisure time. That’s not my problem. I was at some point in my life, I didn’t know how to take leisure time, I didn’t know how to disconnect from work. And I have discovered over the years that long periods doesn’t work for me. Okay, that’s all I’m going to take two weeks off. I like this small burst in sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes it’s three hours, sometimes I’m gonna take Saturday and Sunday or Friday and Saturday off. But it is important to understand and to convince yourself into take that time. It’s self care. And he’s really, really, really important.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:28

I think it’s important to read what she talks about here from this particular clinical psychologist perspective. And her name is Dr. Perpetual ethnio. And she writes here about a strategy for basically helping to overcome this. And it really parallels well with many of my thoughts. But I’m just going to quote here because then my thought follows on. So she quotes her saying, let’s start with baby steps and hijack it with an aim or a goal that is, rest and leisure time. What will this leisurely activity help you with, maybe it’s intertwined with a goal with your goal of getting healthier, or you’re exploring places so you can improve? So you improve your photography skills, if you really enjoy an activity and happen to enjoy other outcomes alongside that, that’ll make it easier for you to prioritize your leisure time and quote, and I have to say this, this is why I promote the concept of rejuvenation. And so I tend to talk about this from kind of the biological fitnesses In my own kind of lexicon. And so one of those fitnesses is rejuvenation. And the reason why I talk about rejuvenation for personal productivity minded individuals is this exact problem, which is that it’s really tough to turn off being productive, we think of quote unquote, rest, whether that’s sleep or just sitting doing quote, unquote, nothing, the idea of can feel unproductive. And we can avoid that by thinking about rejuvenation, rejuvenative activities are those things that we do to expend energy towards some productive end, that is not for work specifically, right. It’s not for even, you know, personal responsibilities. In essence, it could be a hobby, it could be any of those things, but what I found is that when you have rejuvenative activities, you know, kind of pre planned for your off time, non work time, you tend to also then expend that energy be more productive, and it leads to more rest naturally. And so this is it really fits well with my thinking in terms of this and it’s interesting to see Dr. Neos perspective there. So try it out if you are feeling difficult difficulty turning off in that sense.

Augusto Pinaud 9:35

Yeah, and as she said in that article, you know, Cilicia as a counter stone of your life and years ago and I discovery, as you said the pre plan, if I don’t pre plan, they will not happen. So now I have a checklist, okay of water, those activities in order will provide me the higher recharge versus the lower recharge. And I can go through that list and said okay, I cannot do this, I cannot do this, okay, fine, I can start on the number five, that is whatever the first one is tend to be reading, walking is the last one. So, if I cannot do any other than walking Well, fine, let me do walk in but understand that that is a counter cornerstone in your life, it’s critical for for it.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:24

Alright, on to our next story this week. This is on how to be a productive perfectionist using what this author calls an adaptive approach. And I found this article interesting in some vague way, and I can’t particularly put my finger on it. And so perhaps you have other thoughts here, Augusta. But my two thoughts here, two thoughts here where they talked about setting SMART goals. And that really does help you understand where you’re going to get to from a measurable perspective. So smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. That means that they are that there’s some time associated with it, that you know, there’s a deadline, or there’s some kind of milestone ahead to finish those things. And that helps you track against things. The author also talks about the pretty much the concept of tracking and journaling, so that you’re able to get thoughts out of your head and to reduce overthinking. And then finally, the notion of writing a done list. And this is the, you know, to overcome the idea that you might feel fanatical about keeping track of a task list. And that and that ultimately causing you more stress than not from the unfinished nature of to have task lists. But creating a done list. I’m not particularly a big fan of the concept of the done list in the way that they’re talking about it. But I but I understand the veracity of keeping track of personal successes. And and I think that can be really important, I don’t think you can decouple the to do list from the success list of this kind. But I think that there’s some usefulness to balancing out the view, I think perfectionism is basically an obtuse view of reality. And so since you’re looking at reality, and not seeing yourself cleaning things, you’re basically thinking that you’re getting nothing done, or that you could get so much more done, when in reality, if you just tracked what you accomplished your successes against what is on your to do list and incomplete. And then seeing the items that you’ve completed plus your successes list, which many times are things that don’t get tracked in your task list, right, they can be two minute items, they could be bigger items, but they just end up being not on your task list and you complete them. And you forget that you’ve done all of this stuff. I know that I do it every week. Gousto knows that every day. Yeah, right. And so it’s really helpful to sit down and say, oh, you know what all of these things happened. And I responded well to them. And that helps to buffer some of that perfectionism, it doesn’t completely get rid, get rid of it. But it can start to then create a self of balance that I think could be really useful. So in that sense, the article was helpful just to make sure that you are thinking through the idea that you are, that you have a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of balance, and you’re not thinking about this from the perspective that everything is out of place. And therefore, you are somehow not on the right path, not basically getting all the things done, you need to

Augusto Pinaud 13:19

write and that’s one something that is 2555, the work that I do, it’s so helpful, because I get sometimes at the end of the day and said, Okay, I haven’t done anything, I haven’t accomplished anything. And I can go back to the list and say, Okay, this is all that I plan on this is all what I report that I actually accomplish. And yes, many times it’s like, oh, yeah, none of these are were on the list. They happen they were done. But none of them you know, client cold, and those kinds of things happen, but they were never tracked. So this I agree for you on on the to do list. But one thing I want to add about that that was what it made me thought was nothing so that Don list, but just pay attention, how you’re writing that to do list, because especially for perfectionist how you are writing that list. It’s critical, you know, don’t try to say Finish project No, no go into the parts into the specifics. So, yeah,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:22

I will want to note that you mentioned the 2555 and I’m trying to scroll through, and my system is giving me a little bit of problem but we discussed the 2555 productivity accountability technique in Episode 108. So if you go to productivity cast dotnet forward slash 108, you’ll be taken to the 2555 productivity accountability technique episode. Really well worth thinking through whether this is something that would help you have an accountability partner in that sense. Okay, on to our next story Augusto.

Augusto Pinaud 14:59

Our next story The secret of being more productive. And on the suit was an interesting read, especially. Because, you know, he talks about life on your terms and define what productivity is, you know, David Allen on his books or stocks said, you know, tense, muscle is a slow one. And, and he made the analogy to productivity. And I think it happened the same thing. In your life, when your life is filled, are full of things that you can relate, you don’t feel good? Well, it’s hard to be productive, you know, and I don’t remember who used to say, you know, the most dangerous person in the any field is a guy who is having fun. And I remember that as a salesperson, okay, I something that for many, many years, I enjoy so much. And the long hours and all that, for me was part of having the funds same as a productivity I, for the perspective of certain people, I work a lot of hours, if you asked me how many hours I work, and just when I need to do the finances, and it can work, coaching the clients talking to the clients creating the writing, that doesn’t feel work to me. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 16:27

yeah, so this art this author had a near death experience. And based on this near death experience, she then talked about the concept that you know, you should be doing things that kind of almost a con Marie of your productivity world, right? What are the things that really spark joy bring you joy, and can you restructure your life to do that? Her answer is yes. Quoting here, she says life should be lived in a way that sets your soul on fire and quote, so if you believe in having a soul and and you believe in that concept of you know, joy, you know, having having things spark joy in the in the, you know, Marie Kondo perspective, or the Konmari method, you can you can think through, okay, well, what is it going to be that’s going to make you more productive? Okay, it’s the things that are going to really excite you. And, and so, you know, it’s the, who’s the who’s the gentleman who His name is escaping me now, but, you know, he had the whole concept of the, you know, like, either it’s either hell yes, or hell no, or something to that effect. But you know, yes. But, but that’s the whole idea.

Augusto Pinaud 17:29

Fever this CD, baby.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:30

Oh, yes, Derek. Derek Severs. So you know, so it’s, it’s that concept, it’s like you really want to do it, or don’t do it at all. And that is just a focusing, right? It’s a focusing technique, and she’s just giving one flavor of how you can do that. And I think you know, whatever works if you’re if you’re really in that particular place, where you want to be able to find great passion for doing something great motivation for doing it otherwise, then you know use use death do you use a use mortality as a as a metric

Augusto Pinaud 18:00

bring two examples are not better example. But two people who went to that experience who restructure their life completely Tim stringer for learn only focus, he did that, you know, when he got sick, he really re envision his life and everything and also Federico VTG of maxtow macstories. Same thing he when, you know, when he turned into an iPad, only user because of that, because his sickness so guess, um, he both are healthy and strong, and wish them well. But those are a great example that you can turn around, you know what you have into something new, but you don’t need to wait to have those kinds of experience.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:47

And rounding out our productivity blogosphere this week.

Augusto Pinaud 18:52

I love this article, how to journal your goals and 11 kills into write about so the article was really interesting talks Hey, setting create a what they call a goal setting journal and then the talks about different journals destroy the five seconds a self journal, hey, just get a recycle. But what to write Hey, free, right to be honest, just jot down bullet point version expand one idea at a time and, but more importantly, it gives you 11 Journal ideas to write about, hey, write about your daily plans about your relationship. Write about career professional development, about money management, financial planning, your budget list, habits to build problem solving, brain dumping, best things that happen today, visualizing the future progress log. And I love this you know, when I create the impact journal, that was part of the idea of the impact journal He needs to recalibrate yourself in the morning and the night of where you are going to go. And what I have discovered, my clients have discover is sometimes when they’re exhausted, and they are home, and they open the urinal, and they don’t want to do it, and they do do the exercise of remind ourselves reinvigorate those goals, they tend to do something else, they tend to jump in and push a little bit more. So doesn’t matter if you do it on that product, you do it in any other product, you do it or any of the things that the article recommend. Look into that look into keep that list of things that I can journal about. So that way you continue pushing yourself forward.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 20:47

Great, and my only clarification here is that it says 11 Gold journal ideas there’s there are 10 or 10. Otherwise, enjoy, enjoy the article in all the senses that you talked about. And so with that, those are our productivity articles this week. And that brings us to our halfway point, which means we’re going to take a word, take a break now for a word from our sponsor co working space by personal productivity club. When we get back we will do our tech articles. Roundup, we will do our we have a segment, which is why don’t they teach that in school with Dr. Frank Buck. We’ll cover our productivity resources of the week. And then we’ll close out with our featured stories, and a few announcements but we’ll see after the break.

Sponsor Voice Over 21:29

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Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:39

Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith joined with acoustic pinout. And now on to our tech articles for the week. What’s our first tech article this week Gousto.

Augusto Pinaud 22:50

The Add sign on Google dogs and Android police called on Holly at many. But really, it is really nice seeing how Google dogs had evolved. And I will continue complaining that they are in the eye could be much better. Or at least don’t force me to use the app. And let me use the browser one of the two. But they have not compromised on either. So that complaint aside. That’s really improve and we use it to prepare the show we use for a couple of things. And now you can go to the ad and put the type that and it will allows you to access people into the company when you aren’t accompany settings or templates or files or list or images media that you have. So if you are in a Google workplace, you can really play with the Smart Canvas integration that really take this to to a different level is it’s really nice to see how Google and I have said this in the show. It’s catching up to Microsoft, that is the standard on the big on the big corporations and getting there to show that they can be even more powerful than

Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:14

that. I think this is this is a great new addition for those folks who are in Google workspace, G Suite basic and I believe G Suite education. Let’s see here. No G Suite G Suite business. So Google workspace, basically, Google workspace basic and Google workspace business I’m presuming they mean standard there. They’re still not updating their language related to the various new Google workspace plans. But in essence, Google workspace users both on the individual and business levels are going to start getting the app everything basically the the Smart Canvas integrations first, if you will have rapid release turned on and then scheduled release domains will start on November 1. So that will come out next Monday. So we’re going to see this capability coming to your basically your document in In that sense, and it’s just going to cut down a lot of jumping back and forth about no times you have to go to one place, and then come back to another, find a link for something, and so on and so forth. I’ve always enjoyed, you know, when you highlight text, and you just, you know, Ctrl or Command K, and it drops down and gives you all of your documents internally, you can, you can find quickly things that are hyperlinked, it’s basically doing a quick search for you, it cuts down so much time, this is going to additionally create those shaving off the seconds and minutes of finding things and being able to insert them directly into your documents. I think this is going to be really, really powerful, more powerful than I think people understand. And you know, at the present moment, but once you start to see how useful it is, you’re going to think, how could you not have this, you know, always and so I’m really, I’m really pleased to see this in the wild now.

Augusto Pinaud 25:47

Same here. Right, next up. So our next one is Google meat is rolling out new audio and video locks for the house. And, again, I have complained about how advance some features feels next to Google meat. And I use Google meats a lot. But when you’re going to a certain level, you know not being able to mute people or everybody and not allow them to not unmute themselves. It’s really something in which zoom has had an advantage for months now, if not years. So Google meet. Finally, it’s allowing to not only block out your block book video, so that way, similar to what you can have ensued, you as a host can control the meetings. A good to say, finally,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 26:37

yeah, and I think this is really right in line with replacing webinar software for these kinds of environments, where you don’t want people joining to be on camera, or audio you want as the host to be presenting to people and for them to be quiet, and be able to chat and be able to consume your your desktop screen. And that and that that would be it. I think, again, the next step is not just video locking, but basically turning off screen sharing, very similar to the way zoom works and zoom, you can go into the security settings and say, No one can share, no one can unmute themselves, and no one can turn on their video so that everybody stays off. And that way, if your recording, no one accidentally shows up on camera, you know, with their, you know, husband or wife or spouse partner in the background and their underwear, right? You know, because if you’re, if you’re recording for the company, and these things happen, you want to make sure that you can control for those environments. And when people can just join a meeting and be on camera immediately, that can cause some problems in those kinds of environments. So this is that next step in that direction. And I think that’ll it’ll one be a cost savings for so many companies that are trying to have they’ve got the webinar tool for this, but they’ve got the, you know, meeting tool for that. It’s just it’s you know, it’s all kinds of, you know, Bandy, banding together, the pieces of the of the pie. And in reality, Google meat can do all of these things. It’s just a matter of surfacing the functionality for users. So I’m glad to see this happening. All right, next up.

Augusto Pinaud 28:03

So the next one is all all for you. They are Google is re Introducing Google Home, I don’t have Google Home, so I don’t. But I understand. I live on an on an Amazon environment. So instead of a Google environment, and I understand what they’re doing upgrading and all that, but probably you will have a better insight than what I have.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 28:25

Yeah, so So in essence, what Google did was they had their made by Google event recently, and they talked about matter. And this actually matters, no pun intended to all folks who are within the Google Apple and Amazon ecosystem. In essence, what for that matter, ZigBee. And all the other various protocols matter is, is a consortium protocol that allows for interoperability among those places. Google in essence, is now rebranding Google Home to be a platform for all of its home smart automation. Do you know plot devices, and as well as software, and so on, so forth. So it’s kind of just pooling all of that together into one space. And now matter is going to be that underpinning for it all. So even if you have an Apple device, in essence, matter should allow for Google Home, the platform to be able to extend itself into those particular areas to be able to help developers create transition components and, and interoperability in that sense. So this is really, I mean, what it should have been from the beginning, all of the organizations should have gotten together and said, Let’s do this to start with, because now many people have, you know, like, if you go to Lowe’s, they have their own platform that they created on ZigBee. And then you go to Home Depot, and they’ve embraced a company that has their own set of platforms, and so your smart shades and your television systems and they’re all communicating in different ways. You’ve got light bulbs made by, you know, 1000 different Chinese manufacturers that are, you know, just pumping out these cheap texts. With with great success, I mean, it makes a lot of sense, you can get a $10 light bulb, that’s a smart home bulb, or a light switch, but they all can’t talk to each other. And matter as a as a platform. I think it’s just a really, really fundamentally positive movement for the entire industry. And I think this will be really good for Google. So weird that they that they chose to do this Google Home rebrand at this moment in time. But I think it’s ultimately a positive for Google, to basically say, Yes, Google Home is a platform and not just specific devices. And then we’ll see what they end up, you know, calling all of these other pieces, but now we know why they they went from calling them Google homes, to nest hub. And you know, all of the nest branding, basically replacing those pieces, because they wanted to use that name and some other purpose. So that’s really, really

Augusto Pinaud 30:49

exciting. So I absolutely hope we continue moving that so our next news, some bad, some people is jumping up and down. Maybe one of those. Now you can read come call me Saul, g, in your Kindle app, and e readers. And what this just basically means is you can read comics in the Kindle, you know, I we have talked in the show when we have talked about eating in color, and even in black and white, you know, how cool will be to have it on the Kindle and it was not available now. It is it’s not automatic, you need to go to your Comixology setting page and activated the need to go to your Kindle device, and then lo them. But you can now read Star Wars comics in the device on the iPad. And that is really exciting.

Unknown 31:46

Wonderful.

Augusto Pinaud 31:50

The next one is from Chrome unboxing, and is the Google Calendar X productivity experiment. And he’s talking about the first look on the Google Calendar. Chromebook. Now he’s going to give you the month calendar over the corner of the device, when you click on the time it will show you the whole calendar. And if you have not seen it, it is interesting. It’s useful, you know, to be able to click and get the calendar, especially if you leave on a Chromebook.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:19

Yeah, and I think again, this is going back to the point of FOMO is becoming more and more useful as a productivity tool as a daily driver. And for those people who are in a business environment, they need quick access to their calendar and having to open up, you know, the Google Calendar and look, you know, like all of those pieces, it should just be faster to get to a calendar view. And so this not only helps you understand the meaning of just days, like figuring out, okay, what’s next Tuesday’s date, you know, things of that nature, this really helps us get to that point faster. And also being able to jump to those dates within Google Calendar, I’m hoping as a part of the feature set here as well, so that we’re able to quickly maybe right click on a date and add a calendar event, things of that nature that really does increase productivity generally. And I think that can be just really, really very nice. And so it’s good to see these experiments going on, I hope that we see more flexibility and functionality within the that little taskbar area akin to what we see currently in the Windows world, we have all of these functions in Windows, we should be seeing these functions in something like chromo criminal s, and we have we have many of these functions, you know, in the Mac ecosystem as well. The one thing that I always find to be kind of weird is that when I click on the on the on a Mac, calendar, you can have the various date time day of the week, time and seconds showing when you click on it, you don’t actually see a calendar view. And I really wish that Mac would get that preference. But not withstanding, I think this is a good step in that direction.

Augusto Pinaud 33:54

Yeah. On our next one is Microsoft Outlook extension is now available for Google Chrome. So they release it initially for their browser. And you could basically click and you will see your inbox at glance, you will be able to interact with Outlook. And finally, they move it forward. That makes sense again, edge as well as Chrome leaf on the same base, the same engine. So it’s cool to see Microsoft playing simpatico and having it on both platforms.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:26

Yeah, I’m absolutely going to play with this and see how it works and how clients can utilize this in their own world. But just the ability to have greater and faster access to your inbox from being in the browser, which is basically the operating system most people are working within most days, right like user ends up being your canvas for work and being able to just quickly see a new email notification and being able to see those items in your inbox to know whether or not to deal with it can be really, really useful for some people who have to be responsive with email versus those of us who tried to like turn off all of our notifications. and only check email on a regular schedule, right? That’s one way of managing it. But then there are others who who must be highly responsive and email and have to quickly respond to those things throughout the day. And for those folks, I think this is going to be really useful for them. Alright, so that brings us to the end of our technology articles and on to our contributor segment. And so we have various contributors who contribute different little segments throughout the month. And this week, we have Dr. Frank Buck with his why don’t they teach you this in school segment, and today, he’s going to be talking to us. And on to Dr. Frank Buck.

Frank Buck, EdD 35:42

Why don’t they teach that in school? Hi, this is Frank Buck, and I’ve been writing for a long time. I have another book coming out at the end of the year. And I’ll tell you a little secret. Before you ever see that book. Quite a few people have pre fretted including a professional proofreader. They found spelling errors, syntax, errors and sentences. It just simply didn’t make sense. And that’s what someone who’s been writing for a lifetime. What about that seventh grader? Before she turns in her paper, there are no professional proofreaders out there to help her. Well, I’m going to share with you a couple of tools that I use. Whenever I’m writing this week’s newspaper column, this week’s blog post an important email, or the current chapter of a book. Ernest Hemingway was noted for his style of short and powerful sentences. It was something that he learned as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star, Hemingway app.com can help that young person right with the same pirate style. Let me show you how. The website teaches you how it works. It shows example of things that it says are hard to read or sentences that it says are very hard to read. If you’re using a complex word, suggest a simpler one. It points out adverbs and helps you to minimize those. And it marks passive voice, Hemingway app flags at all. And to illustrate, I’m going to highlight and delete this sample text. And I’ll replace it with the script that I’m using right now with you. Notice how Hemingway app flags the things that it says are hard to read, very hard to read. There’s a passive voice right there. It says that this is a fifth grade level reading. And 434 words it gives you the word count, it gives you the grade level. Instead of turning in my paper and getting it back a week from now filled with red marks. What if I could get some feedback immediately? What if the teacher didn’t have to spend so much time with a red pen? Why don’t we teach that in school? Am I the only person who can proofread his own writing my eyes see what my brain meant? Not what I actually wrote. But if someone else reads it aloud to me, I catch everything. So the second tool that I have for you today’s little Chrome extension called read aloud, go to the Chrome Web Store and search for read aloud, click on it and click to install it on your computer. Now when you want to hear some text, just simply highlight right click, and you’re going to see read aloud, right here, click it, and it’ll read however much text you selected right back to you. Why don’t they teach that in school? And if these ideas sound good, I have a blog post that goes into more detail and gives you one more tool for that seventh grader, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR junior executive or senior citizen. This has been Frank Buck asking the question, why don’t they teach that in school?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 39:03

Thanks so much, Dr. Buck. And with that beyond the why don’t they teach you that in school segment onto our productivity resource of the week. And so each week, Augusto and I share with you a productivity resource. It could be a tool, an app, a service that we have come across in our various and personal personal productivity journeys. So Augusto, I’ll go up first, I guess with my tool this week, and it is a also an education focused tool. I didn’t plan for it to be that way, but it just turned out that way to be onkey. So onkey is a really interesting program. What it does is it uses a a mnemonic tool, which a method called or a mnemonic that is it’s a memory method, which is spaced repetition, and while the website is Spartan and doesn’t look all that fantastic. The tool is actually really really useful. What it does is it use spaced repetition. There are apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS was Android and the web browser, and you basically can load up study cards. And it can include any type of content, you can pretty much put images and audio and video, you can even use latex, you could just put whatever you want in there. And there are many templates that actually come with onkey. So even if you are, you know, not looking to like put all of the French verbs into the system manually there, there’s there’s a French verbs, you know, template, you can throw in there with all of the study cards for you to do that. And as you study the various Anki cards, it remembers whether or not you get it right. And when you get it wrong, then it shows it back to you in a particular time sequence. And that’s the space repetition part. And so you can continue to keep optimizing your learning process through Anki. And I just, I found it to be really useful for so many different things. And it’s open source, so you can download it and use it freely. And they’re all the applications, like I said, and for all the platforms. So I’ve just really like chunky for just studying all kinds of different things. So if you have to memorize things, and or you just would like to remember things like quotations or learning the language, and studying the various conjugations of verbs or memorizing a speech for for a class or, or anything like that, it’s just a really, really good tool for that anyway, because so what’s your tool this week,

Augusto Pinaud 41:22

so you see, I went from the eating route, and application, I have a plentiful, and it’s called plentiful mindful eating. And, you know, as my eating journey has changed, and my health journey has changed, I now look for these places where I can plan where, you know, it’s like, the more I plan to better eat, it’s as simple as that. And I need all the help in the world, because otherwise, I eat really, really poorly. So this app allows you to not only give you a bunch of this case, being in recipes, but also allows you to help you with the habits help you with the planning, teach you Hey, focus on your health, this is what it’s going to help, you know, help you to create the shopping list, you know, also, you can filter the recipes really, really quick. So if you have issues with food, that’s what I have, and you want to make better choices. This is one of the options that you can download on the app, you will be able to cook you will be able to read you. It’s fun. So that’s something that I recommend.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 42:43

Fantastic, wonderful, plentiful, mindful eating vegan recipes and meal planner. All right, so with productivity resources of the week out of the way, that brings us to our featured story of the week, Augusto, what is our featured story this week, Google will

Augusto Pinaud 42:59

make easier to separate work and personal life on Android. And basically what they’re going to be able to do is allows you to do profiles. So you will be able to have inside of your device, you know, our profile for work and our profile for personal you know, there is the link to another article from Monica chin talking about why you should have that personal laptop, that work laptop, especially when work is given. You know, remember, we’re good track, okay, that’s, that’s their job, they want the data, they want to know that you’re productive. So they will track all that data on their laptop. So if you want to keep that personal, use your own, but on the phone, I think is really interesting. And after I read the article make me think on what Apple announced on iOS 15 with the profile so you can now do you know, I have now wondered this podcast in St. Pete somebody called me saying, Hey, I’m recording a podcast right now. That’s a recent I’m not responding and give them a an answer automatically. But also, you can create basically different profiles, you can choose with applications on different things. So you can say, Hey, um, personal time now. So I don’t want any work calls to pass through or I don’t want any emails, notifications, and these kinds of things. And it seems like Google is doing something really similar to that. And it’s going to be interesting. I hope they do it better.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:34

Yeah, I’m really excited about this. This, unfortunately, is not coming fast enough. This is coming to Google workspace in 2022. So we’re a little bit ahead of the curve here. But I did iOS. What’s that?

Augusto Pinaud 44:46

I said if you buy an iOS, you can get it today.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:49

You’re not going to get Android work profiles. Unfortunately, you’re gonna get iOS profiles. And so those of us who are on the on the Android ecosystem, this makes it really difficult although I’m really excited about the fact We’re seeing more and more, you know, information coming along of Windows 11, Android app, coming to the windows, you know, environment. So you can run things like Instagram on your desktop. And so, you know, Android is getting some really powerful features here for those of us who are on the Android Windows side of things. And so anyway, that the the goal though here for Android work profiles is for you to be able to make that separation, like you talked about. And I actually found the argument from Monica chin more relatable to me. And it’s just because I have I have too many devices. So I felt like I. So I actually liked that idea. Although I don’t see myself doing it, I really don’t see myself being in a place where I would say, Okay, well, this iPad is only going to be for personal. And I’m not going to use it for work at all. I like the form factor for certain types of things, both for work and personal. And I don’t see myself buying multiple iPads just to be able to separate those items. I can understand context of what I’m doing, where I’m doing it, even though I have multiple devices for different things. I just bleed, I bleed work and personal together. All GTD, right I work off of context lists. So but but

Augusto Pinaud 46:14

there is a distinction important for you you are you don’t have a corporate, you are the corporate okay, you don’t you don’t care about your corporation tracking you because you are the corporation. And I think that’s something that is important to mark on that article from Monica chin, it she’s talking about device from corporate, and that makes a difference. Because I agree with you, I have multiple devices. But on when I have when I work with clients, and I need to get one of their devices, or I need to do certain things under Devices. Nothing of my personal life goes in there even on clients that I get access to their system to use even my own machines, they go into the MacBook in their own profile. So that way, it’s all there who can be we wipe out right now and nothing of my personal have ever bleed in there. So I think that’s, that’s an important distinction between what you do and the article that said, I have my iPad Mini is my personal device. That’s the device that I read. That’s the device that I think cannot access work. Yes. And that is some purpose. That is, as I said, I am my own corporation. Okay, so the it already knows that I’m terrible at that. So, but having that device to be center to be personal and not work. It’s really help. In the mindset, it is the same thing. I’ve been talking for years about using one browser for work, one browser to play, do I have work on the iPad Mini? Yes. To that it’s the norm. No, the norm is I grabbed my big iPad and work. But also, when I grabbed the iPad Mini, I can disconnect from work. So what we were saying at the beginning of the show, you know, it’s a way to trick me into taking actual leisure time. If I take the iPad Mini, I’m not expected that I’m going to work. If I carry my iPad Pro, you can bet that I’m at least having tension to work doesn’t matter if I sit on the backyard or the living room with the iPad Mini that change.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 48:38

Yeah, so I would I agree with you. And I fully understand where you’re coming from and where Monica chin is coming from with regard to this. I will also note though, that, again, pushing forward what Android work profiles is really doing is akin to how Chrome Profiles currently works. And so, so for those of you who don’t know, you can now create more than one profile in your Chrome browser. For that matter. Matter. You can you can extend that to any of the Chromium projects now. But the idea here now is that I have a Chrome browser for personal so I don’t need multiple browsers, because I’m basically launching another version of Chrome in my existing user account. So I’m not changing accounts on the operating system. I’m just really switching chrome browser profiles. And by doing so, it’s segregated. It’s a walled garden. And so I can log into my, say, if I’m working with a client, where I need to be logged into many of their accounts all at once, I will log into their various accounts in a new Chrome profile. And then when I’m done, I delete the profile. So all traces of them and me on using their tools goes away when that profile gets deleted. And I feel like that’s what Android work profiles is doing. It’s basically creating this this sandbox in which the work profile is operating and segregated from the rest of the applications and other pieces there. Presumably also the telephony may have a little bit of bleed over both into the work and personal applications. And I’ll be curious how they deal with those, those sensor and other telemetry based items. But for the most part, the work profiles are a segregation of what is happening with those apps in that space. And so I’m curious whether or not this will be useful to people like me, right. As you said, you know, I’m, I’m, I track a lot of data about myself for myself to be more productive, for billable hours for all kinds of other things. But the for the for and in the corporate environment, you do want to have some level of separation between those items, especially in the Bring Your Own Device to work scenarios and in the work from home scenarios that we are we’re in right now. And I’ll be curious to see whether or not that extends to Android tablets, because we’re seeing more and more Android tablets, like the Xiaomi pad, and others that are really nice devices, good, good quality hardware, and they’re running Android. And now you can potentially bring that level of segregation to the the kind of the tablet space for yourself as well. Again, I don’t know how we mediate between the Chromebooks and Chrome Profiles and the Android work profiles once you’re on a Chromebook, but we’ll need to kind of navigate those waters once this does come out. But we have a little bit of time to start learning about what’s going on there. And I think it behooves us all to do that, so that we can have this better compartmentalization of our work and our personal lives. And so with that, that really closes our thoughts in terms of our featured story this week. And that brings us on to announcements. Do we have any announcements at Gousto?

Augusto Pinaud 51:38

We do. We have actually one announcement this week, after a long week of announcements last week, but the announcement this week is

Raymond Sidney-Smith 51:51

brain pickings,

Augusto Pinaud 51:52

clean, yes. It’s been rebranded as marginal Liam, after 15 years of brain picking congratulations, they are now going to become their marginal alien. And while they’re changing that, and they’re going open about donating about being part of their new plan to turn into, hey, you can do a donation and you can be part of an active part of making this a reality.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:23

Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations to it. Her name is escaping me now. Oh, what’s what’s her name? It Why is it? Why is her name escaping me? Of all things. Her name is escaping me at this present moment. Yes, Maria Popova. So congratulations to Popova. And I mean, it’s a it’s a one woman show. So I’m not sure if she has other help in an on.

Augusto Pinaud 52:54

She mentioned that she mentioned on the article that this is her her job that she don’t have assistants that what this reading is hers, and all that. So it’s something that she has been maintaining 15 years on herself, and now she’s trying to make it grow. Yeah.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:09

Yeah. So very remarkable. And congratulations to her and the margin. Allien is like so marginalia is, are the notes taken in the margins of books. And, and so the margin Allien is the name she chose for this and I find it to be quite, you know, quite lovely. So with that, we have some other news that will be chucked into the show notes. So if you look in the extra new sections of the show notes, you’ll be able to find that, but with that we’ve covered the productivity news this week. And thanks to you, Augusto Pinaud, for putting together the show each and every week. My pleasure. All right, everybody, if you head over to anything but idle.com forward slash 089. For those of you who are watching live, that’ll be after we publish the podcast episode. But at once you are listening to this in after the fact you will find at anything but idle.com forward slash 089. Our show notes which includes includes links to all the stories tools of the week, our productivity resources of the week, our extra stories that we didn’t and couldn’t cover during the episode because of time constraints and text transcripts both want to read click on the Read More link, it’ll expand it so you can read it right there on the page. And there’s a download link below that, you click on that and that will go ahead and give you a PDF that downloads to your note local system for being able to read offline. If there is something we missed, after looking at the show notes and the extra stories, feel free to use our contact page at anything but idle.com You can also tweet and or DM us using Twitter at Anything But Idle is our hashtag feel free to question or comment us there. You can also do that on the website. As we noted, you can also leave a comment directly on anything but idle.com forward slash 089 in the comment section right below the story and we’ll find that and be able to respond back to you there. This is your first time watching the live stream feel free to click the subscribe button and you’ll get notified when we go live weekly and Of course, click the thumbs up button if you are watching on YouTube that really helps us to grow our personal productivity listening and watching community. And the same thing with the podcast. If you’re listening to the podcast, feel free to consider or please consider adding us to your podcast by subscribing. You can also leave a rating a review in Apple podcasts or Stitcher or if you use a particular app that allows you to rate and review us that really does help us with compliments to make us feel happy about what we’re doing. But also, it helps us to grow the personal productivity listening community. And that does really help us grow by telling the algorithm that we’re doing things that people enjoy. And so thank you for doing that. And so with that, we will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s to your productive life. Take care everybody