Microsoft Makes a Big Update to OneNote on iOS

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello, 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 0:12
I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:15
And we’re your hosts for Anything But Idle. This is episode 120. Microsoft makes a big update to OneNote on iOS. And we’re recording this on June 26 2023. Each week, Augusto and I cover the productivity news headlines of the week. So you know what’s going on in the world of personal productivity and its related technology. And so with that Augusto. Let’s get into the headlines, what was our first headline of the week?

Augusto Pinaud 0:41
Oh, the first one headline is from publishers paper and his trim forming your home office designing a productive and inspiring workplace. And then I talk a little bit about furniture, lighting. And ironically, as we were fighting with lighting on a pre show organization and storage, solutions, personalization and branding, technology integration, and no, it is very interesting for me, because as the hybrid environment has come more and more and more, this ability to customize your environment is changing, you know, offices are now many offices are now using the concept of hotel and so you are not really decorating or customizing your environment because you are coming to a place where you are not going to be able to stay. But now you start having that option at home, in my case has always been a bag I I’ve been remote now for so long that you know like Hotelling, it was a bag and the bag had everything and the bag was important thing on that tool. But it is important to keep that for productivity and to really make you effective on what you’re doing. Working with better tool and better means that works best for you, it really gives you a competitive edge over the rest of the world.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 2:19
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more on on all those points. And I, I also, as someone who for many years spent as a road warrior, I think that it’s important that your travel bag also contains some level of personalization that is good for you. You know, that might include like just having like a little digital frame, I’ve actually been thinking about that for myself, like buying one of those little you know, eight inch digital frames, that has kind of pre loaded or you know, synchronizes with your phone or whatever, with photos of your family. So you show up at the hotel, or if you’re hot desking or Hotelling at your office, you can kind of set up the little screen and it’s going to, it’s going to feel a little bit more like a place that you should, should be, you know, like, I think that these these Hotelling and hot desking environments and corporate environments can feel sterile and clinical and, and feel like you know, it’s not, it’s not where you’re supposed to be you feel kind of out of place in that sense. So anything that can make the environment more appealing to you. I would also say that, you know, to your point about home office and working from home, the ability to be able to make sure the colors in the space match your needs. Color Psychology is a huge component of our everyday lives. And making sure that the room is not a color that’s going to cause you more anxiety or just be caustic to your overall productivity is really important. It’s just you know, the cannon or to have paint and some time and you can you know, you can solve that problem. So just certainly keep color in mind when when it comes to that. Okay, onward to our next article from the economic times on kaizen.

Augusto Pinaud 3:51
Kaizen and how to overcome laziness and casein. It’s basically the definition of continuous but a small incremental changes and basically what the article refers to is how you can use this the first is recognize Okay, well, I may have some issues with my habits and then how to start identifying but don’t expect Okay, fine. I’m going to change them now overnight star as the article says, little things what are the little things that you can start implementing to change that? Those habits, tiny habits and atomic habits are two great books to talk about that where they really spend a lot of time working into the psychology of these habits, the good and the bad ones and how to little by little improve them, so you can really have solid ones.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:55
Yeah, I think that the the important piece here is that they’re talking about taking time and to reflect on your behavior routines and thought patterns, checking to see where they’re talking about this as laziness. I don’t I don’t think that any of you listening are lazy. So these are just areas of improvement so to speak. But the idea here is that, yeah, you know, the idea here is that if you feel like you are not living up to a standard of excellence for yourself, which is different than perfection, right, so when we talk about perfectionism, perfectionism is a is a an unachievable state of being, that that, ultimately causes you to procrastinate, to feel overwhelmed, to feel all of those various negative responses to that feeling. But the idea here is that if you can, if you can manifest a sense of what is happening in your world, you’re gonna get a much better idea of what can be broken down into small achievable, wins, and then use Kaizen for that process. Right? So what is that one little bit that I can do? I know a lot of people use the 1% rule, you know, if I’m, if I’m 1%, better every day, then in 365 days, I’m 365%. Better. That’s a, that’s a, just bad math, but it’s. But the point is understood, right? small, incremental changes, beget compound results over time. And that’s a really good, good thing for us to be considering over time. Now, the the, the piece that’s missing here from this article that everybody has to kind of take to heart is that you really do need to create a syllabus of a kind, right? Like it just like any good course or program that you’re going to go through, you have to create a plan. And you have to kind of map that out for yourself. Because the easier it is, at those small little levels, the easier it’s going to be for you to be able to adopt them, right. Because if you think you’re going to do, you know, some kind of continuous growth and be deciding today, what you’re going to do tomorrow, for that little incremental growth, you’re gonna get decision fatigue, and you’re not going to be able to make that change. So just remember to plan this out for yourself. Maybe it’s planning it out a month at a time or a few weeks at a time. But certainly don’t try to decide how am I going to be better tomorrow, and then write a list of what you’re going to do tomorrow. And then and so on, and so forth. Because it’s just going to, it’s just going to break you down, and you’re ultimately not going to be able to make much forward movement. All right, on to our next productivity article from leadership freak.

Augusto Pinaud 7:28
You know, the next article, quote, market rallies, and, you know, the Stoics and meditations for 24. It says, If you fear, overwhelm, do less. And now it’s a good article, good read an article and remind me of something I said in productivity, often, when your level of stress because of overwhelm, it’s high, that is the moment that you do more review, not less, because that’s the moment that you cannot make decisions that will make your waste time. So every step that you make, need to be right. And the only way to accomplish that is review, review, review and review again. And I think, for me, that’s the essence of this is not about do less better, or as they say on the article do less better, it is really about understanding. If you feel overwhelmed, the first thing you need to do is to stop and identify what’s going to take you out of that, okay, because just trying to do to do to do more to do faster, most likely is not going to do it. So it’s not only do less, as the article says do better. And in my experience that’s done through review, make sure Hey, make the list reviewed again, check it twice as a song set. Okay, and make sure that the steps that you are making are going to take you there.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 9:04
Yeah, I think that part of the kind of backdrop of all of this is that overwhelm is a is a is a feeling. And when we think about overwhelm, overwhelm is because we have literally overwhelmed our conscious mind, you know, it has too many things and it’s being overwhelmed by those things. Many times it’s anxiety or some other kind of welling up of that, those feelings. And so in order to reduce that, you literally have to do literally have to feel less, or at least distract your mind less so that you’re capable of opening up the floodgates again to actual action, actual forward movement. It’s kind of like you’ve, you’ve you’ve tossed a bunch of if you’ve ever you know like talks about flooding an engine right you if you flood an engine you basically put too much into the engine all at once, and so the the pistons can’t fire and properly create energy and So this whole concept of doing less than doing less better is a necessity, it’s absolutely necessary for you to be able to do that some, for some of you, it just means taking a moment, right, like just letting your body rest and relax into the fact that you have had this level of anxiety, and then going forward and making action. But it may also mean sitting down and saying, okay, these things can’t happen, I need these projects to set aside. And I need to just do this one thing. And I think you and I have had this conversation many times, because do about the fact that you have to slow down to speed up. And I think this is one of those cases where whenever there’s overwhelm you, you actually have to recognize that you’re doing less when you’re overwhelmed. Right, so the idea of doing less just means that you’re actually doing more focused work in one particular area, and you will then start to make your way forward. So on to our next article.

Augusto Pinaud 10:57
Our next article, titled was this overwhelming, it is financial stress, a tread for productivity. And, you know, in a new survey, done by plan is saying that, you know, that the rising of the interest rate, the volatility of the market, you know, 92% of employer employees are stress about their financial situation. And honestly, I think that’s right. And we, as a society tend to forget that the good times had another side of that, that are the tough time. And yes, we come from a pandemic, and these things cause stress, and then we came to now this race, in volatility, and all the stuff are this affect your productivity? Well, it will depend, it will depend what is the level that is overwhelming, this has nothing to do with having or not having the income or the financial stress? In my experience, it is, there is a big part that is real, obviously, but there is a big part that is psychological. And I always tell people this, remember when you were a college student, okay, as a college student $20 was significant, or at least for me, were significant, okay. And as I begin going into my professional life, that number grow, from 40, to 60, to 82, whatever. So, you need to remember that because you may be stressing out about a number, that is your current reality, but it doesn’t mean, you may still have, in your mind, the stories that you will tell you at college, about the $20, when you are now worried about a $2,000 problem. So make sure that the story you’re telling, when you are getting financially stressed and is threatened, your productivity is actually updated, and you are not working on those. And that was something that happened to me. Years ago, I was getting the stress out of somebody who was coaching me, asked me What do you mean, what is the problem, and then we went on all my things. And most of those problems, most of those stress, were really at the level of college level, or the level of college income. And at the level I was is not that they were not others, but they were completely different. So it is important, as you see these kinds of things affect your productivity, to understand what is the story you are telling yourself, and what is the stress is real or it is self induced.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:54
And also note that this is an article coming out of Australia. So this is a country with a nationalized health care system. So if you are if you are hearing this in the States, or in a country that doesn’t have a public health care system, like Australia does, so they have Medicare and private hospitals in that sense. So you you if there’s free health care, in that sense, my paid by taxpayer so you know, when people say free health care or whatever. So to say that the the debt that they’re talking about is 48% of the reported folks had more debt than they could manage. And 35% said they had no savings or only enough to keep them afloat for two months. The reality is, is that if you take that to a United States perspective, I imagine that number is far worse. And so the the exacerbation of financial stress on productivity cannot be, you know, kind of under understated. It’s something that does affect your employees, and it may be affecting you. And I think to Chris’s point, this is a good time to kind of reframe how you see your finances to do that kind of, you know, back Could the napkin work and say, Okay, what can be done, because brushing this under the carpet is not going to solve the problem. And we always make better decisions, when we make it from a place of abundance from a place of strength and clarity, as opposed to when we’re distressed, we’ve lost a job, you know, we someone’s gotten sick. And now there’s a big bill, you know, all of those kinds of things that happen, we want to make those those choices about work and family and life generally, from a position of strength. So make those decisions now and set yourself on a proper footing. All right, onward to our next article, this week, it goes down,

Augusto Pinaud 15:36
let’s go to go for this section is workstation, some forms, balancing work and vacation for an ultimate career performance. And you know, it’s talking about is becoming more challenging to balance work and personal life, you know, we’re connected, most people feel that they need to be connected. And again, we keep a lot of these old things, as I was reading the article, it made me chuckle a couple of times, because some of the things that they are having in there are things that I have understood for many years, I, you know, the first thing I understood many years ago is I go on one, two weeks vacation, and get on one, because the issue for me is fine, you go the two weeks vacation, you have fun, but then you come that Monday after an even if you book time to recover and ramp up speed, the amount of work that gets to you, it ruined my two weeks vacation. That’s my experience. So I quit on that idea a long time ago, I prefer to have a small burst, I prefer to take a turn to send a Friday here on their Monday on a Friday here on there, whatever it is, and then do something that is enough for me to recharge, and it is not but it’s not enough to feel buried when I come back. So this and this is that concept, okay, being able to pack your office and say, we are going to go somewhere out of the X days we are going to spend there we are going to be working X number of days, you know, for the Fourth of July, we are doing something like that we’re going somewhere and out of the days, we’re going to be there most of the days I’m going to be working is just going to be working with watching the ocean instead of the house. So that concept really, for most people is enough to recharge to have that to feel that you get some of that balance between your personal and your professional life, and at the same time is enough to allow you to keep that performance. So the last thing I want to add that it’s not mentioned here in the article or but, you know, they talk about planning and time management. And one of the things that I teach when I do coaching is how long? What is the minimum recharging time unit that you need? For some people that’s an hour for some people that 30 minutes for some people is to the unit that you need is irrelevant. What is relevant is where is that? And when can you take that? If it’s a half an hour, and you feel you’re completely overwhelmed? Can you take a unit of that? And how fast can you rearrange your schedule to do it? And some people will tell you Well, I cannot that’s the reason I get overwhelmed and the reality is yes, you can you just need to be able to understand one what are those activities and create a list when you are in the heat of that overwhelm. You can think okay, it’s forget about it, you need to thought before and you need to have them one to 10 this is the best thing I can do. This is the worst thing I can do. But hey, sometimes it’s the one you can do. So that way you can really keep yourself on at optimal performance speed.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:24
Yeah, and I think that a lot of this has to do with whether or not you have kids, you know where the kids are in terms of their school year and many other things when it comes to the workstation concept. You know, I like a good staycation. I like the idea of you know, for the rest of the world I’m gone but for me I’m just home and I’m capable of just taking care of myself in that in that way. So I really do like a good staycation I wish that I took them but, but the but the workstation concept you know obviously this has been More and more prevalent because of the COVID 19 pandemic. And folks, you know, taking this time away and getting away and kind of working from wherever they are, and having the flexibility to do so. But the, you know, the core concepts that they talked about in the article, if this appeals to you, this kind of harkens back to the idea of Tim Ferriss mini retirements, which is to design a life where you don’t defer your entire retirement life to the end of your life, when you know, you can you could do some of these things. And I think the workstation concept gives you that kind of flexibility in order to do so there’s, there’s some good points in the article, and I highly recommend anybody who where this piques their interest to go ahead and check it out to kind of start thinking through what what that might mean for you. But for me, I think that this is definitely something that interests me, it’s something that I want to start exploring more and, and seeing, you know, what I can do about it, because my work is and starting to become much more flexible, even more flexible than it has been in the past for me to be able to work basically from anywhere. And as long as I have an intranet in a quiet space, you know, so I can’t go work in an airport lounge. But But the idea here is to is to be able to basically build yourself, these opportunities to be able to do things that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t work when you’re away. It just means that you have the flexibility of being in those places and toggling between those two. So with that we’re going to take a quick break for word from our sponsor, and then when we return back, we will head into our Technology News for the week.

Sponsor Voice Over 21:37
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:48
Welcome back everybody to Anything But Idle. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith With Augusta pinout. We are going to get into our technology articles for the week. Augusto, what’s our first article this week?

Augusto Pinaud 22:59
Oh, Chromebook is launching a new Chromebook, a new brand, the Chromebook X. And he’s trying to make that a new high standard. And it was talking to you offline about something that happened that I wasn’t aware of from my perspective, I have maybe not thorough enough but thought for a while. Chromebook is not more adopted, you know kids, known Chromebook. That’s what they breathe in, in many schools day in and day out. And it was now that my daughter is going to high school that we needed to buy a new computer and I asked her, you want a Chromebook. And I and I was looking for something equivalent to that Chromebook X, a high end Chromebook for her. And she looked at me and say, I don’t want a Chromebook. If that’s what you want to give me. That’s what I will deal with. But I prefer a Mac. And I, we had a conversation with Sid and asked why. And the cheap hardware that she used for three years, four years. And Kate was enough for her to say, Well, the problem is the Chromebook is fine, no operating system escape, but the computer there are cheap and unlike them. And you know, look at the difference between this and the iPad. Look at the difference between this and the MacBook. That’s what I want. And I couldn’t blame her. And I had not realized until that moment that that all that cheap Harward. What it does is ruin the experience for the potential user exactly the opposite of what Google is trying to do, you know, Google Docs and Sheets and all that they’re very, very powerful and very easy to be the standard. But if the experience is going to be that poor with a hard work, it’s going to stay being a software issue. She’s going to be late. Even on Chroma on Google Applications anyways as she goes to high school, but she don’t want to leave in a chrome harworth. Why? Because of that. So that all that story is to say that this is something very exciting. What I don’t know, if is a little bit too late. Why? Because when you go to Chromebooks, Chromebooks has been premium and plus options for a long time, you know, the Samsung, they consider that the premium they can do multitasking, advanced workloads, the plus, you know, our fastest move, etc. But that’s not what most people is getting access to. What most people is getting access to is $110 device. So is the chrome x going to be enough to divert people from that, or, sadly, is now something that it’s going to be very hard to change?

Raymond Sidney-Smith 25:58
That’s, that’s a question to be determined. I mean, you know, once upon a time, if you had a Hyundai, it wasn’t a great car today, they’ve completely redefined what a day is. And people love Honda’s. So you know, brands can change, and they can go through iterations that produce a better, more premium build. I think that what chromax Chromebook X does, the brand itself is a standard. So just so that everybody’s aware, Google’s not putting out another pixel book, you know, they put up the pixel tablet. And that’s really the end of that story. But Chromebook X is a set of hardware standards, that that then allows Chrome OS to be able to turn on features, because it knows it has the ability to do so. And so Google is going to basically say if these manufacturers use these hardware specs, then when you install Chrome OS on that device, and you boot it up, for the first time, when you open up your new Chromebook from these manufacturers, you’re gonna get additional features, features that wouldn’t otherwise be available in the $110, you know, Chromebook, but now that you’re in that 300 400 $500, you know, range, that you’re now going to get a more premium experience. Now, from my perspective, I think that the you’re right that Google could and should make for a much, much higher and Chrome OS run devices. I think that many of our tablets that are Android run should just be Chrome OS. And, and, and since it since androids already kicked into it, you just get a better experience, you get a desktop environment, and you get the Android experience inside of the criminalist experience. So I’d love to see Chromebook X, build upon that success. I really, I mean, you know, the probably the highest end one right now is the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook two, which is a very, very nice, you know, Chromebook, I’m presuming it is in that plus or premium Chromebook space already. I know it is. I’m not sure which one, but it’s going to probably get the Chromebook x whatever the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook three is, will probably get that level of it. So will the Acer spin seven Thirteen’s and similar ones like that? I’m, I’m really curious to see where and what Google wants to provide here in terms of the the additional features. So so far, you know, we’re hearing about additional sensors, we’ll have a better video camera, you’re gonna get some more video features, and live captioning of video calls, those kinds of things. But I would really love to see what other advanced features Google can provide on the Chromebook x side to make it worthwhile for even schools to spend a little bit more money on a Chromebook X model device, as opposed to the really cheap ones. Because you what you’re saying is true. You know, if kids grew up with a Chromebook, but they think about them as basically garbage, you know that the school was forced to, you know, use because it was the cheapest machine. That’s not a good brand for the future. Right? So they need to be able to give people an opportunity to enjoy and appreciate using it. All right, onward to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 29:13
Our next story, it’s all yours is the pixel Google Pixel tablet that is officially available with the dog. All yours.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:28
It’s so so Google has really officially released the Google Pixel tablet. It is a is a tablet plus a smart display. And so you have these bases. And the base is a magnetized surface. So that your your pixel tablet, which is Android based, I believe, it’s I don’t think it’s future based. I think it’s Android based, but it does have a tensor chip in it, which is pretty remarkable. And so you have this idea of you have like pogo pins on the back and you go ahead And you, in essence, can snap the display onto the base, and kinda looks like a really big nest hub, right next to Home Hub, or whatever they’re called nest hubs. And, and so it’s supposed to turn into a display when it’s not being utilized as a tablet. This is pretty interesting to me, except that all of the reviews I’ve heard so far from the very few people who have had their hands on them yet, is that the pixel tablet is far more tablet than it is display. So you’re getting a tablet experience, which makes sense. But it is, but it is not really doing the smart display very well. So I’m not sure why or how. But that is, that is where we’re at right now. I am, I am interested. But I’m just not motivated to get one of these purely because that whole form factor just doesn’t appeal to me, I just don’t have the need for a tablet that’s fixed in a location. And, and in this kind of just I don’t see the form factor working for me, I don’t see the I don’t see the reasoning for it. But but that’s that’s kind of where we’re at. I’m very curious whether or not like, what I would love to see is like if you had multiple bases around the house, and you could order the office or whatever, and you can like dock it to any base and just utilize it wherever it was, I believe that you can dock it to multiple bases, and they’re kind of hot swappable, but the it just I don’t know, it just seems like a weird device and weird concept. I’m looking forward to seeing more reviews on this, though, I think that that’s going to be really interesting. The the, I’m curious about how the stylus works, and how well the stylus works with the device. And, and you know, just an Android, and it’s an Android tablet, right? It’s an Android tablet that you can have fixed in a space, you can pull it off, you can use it, you can put it back on that space, I think that the primary thing that people have to remember is that you’re probably not going to get a first rate smart display, you’re going to get a pretty decent Android tablet experience. And so you know, this is going to be an Android tablet with with a little bit of smart display. And maybe if that fits your needs, then go for it. On to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 32:25
I’m going to go to our next door because this is a product that I have yet tried to understand. And I have failed miserably. So our next story is Google domains are getting sunset, and everything is moved out to Squarespace. So if you have a.com, or added something, hold it or hosted by Google, they are sold to Squarespace. And now you may need to work into that. And that includes, you know, around 10 million domains, according to this article that are part of Google workspace subscriptions are going to be challenging and interesting what is coming for the users, especially for those who are not technology savvy, that’s my understanding is that the customer service for Squarespace is pretty decent. So they should be able to help you move on and be good.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 33:31
Yeah, so this is a bit of a shock. But I think that it makes sense if Google is attempting to double down on focus, right, and they want to really serve a specific set of lines, service lines and product lines. Google Domains has always been ancillary to their, to their world. And it’s, you know, 10 million domains sounds like a lot, but it’s really actually not that many. But it does include all of the domains that were purchased at the same time or when people were signing up through Google workspace. So this is a huge shift for a lot of people. And so I just think that if you’re being pushed off to another registrar, like Squarespace, I would go out there and look for my own registrar and move my domain to a registrar that I was comfortable with that I knew. And so that would be my only recommendation to everybody is is that Squarespace is is a web development platform. You know, it’s there to be able to help you put out a website, an E commerce site, that kind of thing. It’s not a domain registrar in the in the specific sense. And, and so I would I would definitely not want my domain in Squarespace. And I’d want to move it elsewhere and and go go from there. And certainly if you were in Google workspace, and you had your domain registered through Google domains, and then all of a sudden was dragged over to Squarespace which is an ancillary company to your entire working world. I would also pull it to a registrar that was going to give you purpose driven just that capability, right. So going to a domain registrar that you you know, and trust. It’s sad, in a lot of ways, because it was an, it was an easy thing to do to direct people who, you know, needed that and weren’t going to be satisfied by my company or somebody else. And so I would just direct them directly to Google domains. And it was an easy, it was an easy referral, and I figured it was it was going to be safe and certain that they were going to get through the process easily. And they were. And now that’s not going to be the case, because I can only imagine that Squarespace is not the same an easy service that Google Domains was, even with great customer support, it’s it, you know, registering a domain should be a lickety split, you know, knock out of the park, easy process. And it’s not going to be with Squarespace, because they’re going to try and resell, you know, a website and other things, you know, they’ve got to make more money on on the domains than the 10 or 15 bucks, they’re charging you for domain so, so we will see what happens. Okay, on to our next story.

Augusto Pinaud 36:10
The next story is iPad, os 17, some of the features that are going to make your iPad Pro even more a computer replacement, and iPad, iOS 16. So current version announced the door or lounge, what they call the stage manager on work on certain models. But stage manager basically allows you to you have an M Power Mac to connect to an external monitor and work with it. And they are now making that even more powerful, you can put even more windows and, and all that, like you do on your Mac on your PC. So we’re getting closer. But the two exciting things for me is the external webcam support, and the external microphone support. Right now we are recording this show to the MacBook because I cannot connect this microphone to it. If that change, then that mic potentially will disappear out of my world. And I will be excited to only have iPads in my office. So I don’t know if it’s going to be iOS 17 or iPad os 18. But he’s getting closer and closer for a person who has been in the iPad ecosystem for a while. This is getting very, very exciting. The other thing is the improvements on Notes app on our story today, it’s about OneNote. And we have cover Evernote here. But Apple has really make an emphasis in improving the Notes app and to make it more and more powerful and handwritten and the PDF and the indexing. So they again, for iOS 17, they are making a big, big, big push. So the next

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:08
really sure. This is really, really big for people. So something that I frequently have folks frustrated by is whether you’re when you’re on the iPad, being able to just quickly sign a document and send it back to someone. And just be aware now that notes is the app that I’m going to send you to, you know, you know, outside of markup, which is a little bit clunky to be able to do with a PDF, whatever, that using notes to just open up, import a PDF and then be able to sign it, save it and then send it off to someone this is going to be the new way that you probably do that, including filling in the form fields and everything else like that. So this is really really powerful. I’m really I’m really excited to see iPad OS get this kind of enhancement. Alright, onto our next.

Augusto Pinaud 38:55
Oh, our next story is the only the Omni roadmap the Omni is that company who make Omni focus OmniGraffle lumea ladder Omni plan. And every year at the time that the WWDC happened, they wait and then they come and talk about what is their plan. Very exciting to see not only they’re embracing as always the Mac and the iPad, but they are really trying to or they’re going to try to really embrace the vision OS for the vision Pro and they are going to try to bring you know their products. And you know, as they said on the article, imagine using OmniGraffle without the constraint of a physical screen. And yes, that is going to be pretty pretty awesome. I think. So you can read the article and but More things to come interesting from them. The next the next one is a non productivity one, Amazon activated a Disney Experience in most echo devices, you can activate it, I had a fee, but then now you can interact instead of with mme A, you can interact with Pixar movies, Star Wars, characters, and more. And then you can say, hey, this may, and that voice will come up, and we’ll respond to you and do certain features is around $6 per year. So it’s not really necessarily that expensive. And I think if you have the kids Plus plan, it’s included, it’s obviously not designed for us adults is designed for the kids. Anyways, that sounds if you want to have something different on your Amazon Alexa, that may be something to do. And last one is how to find and replace outdated Windows drivers. You know, your drivers in Windows 10, and 11 may be outdated that affect the performance of your machine. So make use of has an article where you can check, you go to Device Manager, check where they are, and see if you can keep your drivers updated. So you can have a better and more productive experience on your Windows machine.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:34
Yeah, and, like they give you several different ways in order to do that. But the primary way is just the Windows key plus x, which is the new Windows 11. This is on Windows 11, specifically, but Windows x gives you that new drawer that pops up and you can just click on Device Manager. And from there, you can actually check each of your device drivers to see if they do and need an update. So that’s that’s the built in way in which you can do that. And then the article walks you through several other ways in which you can do this from software are a couple other ways that you can do this through software, as well as using the command prompt to make these kinds of updates. Just remember that when you do these updates, you’re improving across the board security, adding features and stability of the device itself. So when when you let these things languish, you’re you’re opening yourself up to more potential, you know, security risks, but also the system just bogs down the system gets slower, the system is not getting the appropriate improvements. And there may actually be features that you like that you’re not going to get. Because you’re you’re not installing the right one. So with that we’ve covered our technology, productivity technology headlines, we’re going to now move into new tools of the week. And so of these two and I come across many different tools and resources throughout the week as we put together all of the articles that we cover during Anything But Idle. And so in new tools of the week, we each bring you a tool we think you might like and so this week, we’re going to talk about two different tools. And for me, I’m going to talk about a tool called Sona. Sona is a an FDA approved a sound app. This is really phenomenal in a lot of ways. So its primary feature that it talks about on the website is sleep. But for me, I saw it first because of this notion that it could help with anxiety that it could help reduce anxiety. So it does both of those things, it can both helps you fall asleep faster, have better sleep, and sleep for longer periods of time. But it also has the capabilities of helping you reduce anxiety by listening to the music. Now, the interesting thing about this is that you don’t necessarily have to wear headphones in order to be able to access the benefits of the of the technology, obviously, you’re going to have a better response if you are, okay, so this is really getting your body into what’s considered or your brain into a particular wave state, right. So the wavelengths that your brain is activated at is where you can actually start to have these kinds of calming or relaxing features, you can actually do it the opposite way you can actually increase anxiety increase, you know, awareness of things by driving different wavelengths of your mind. Anyway, you don’t need headphones, but I would still suggest them you’re going to have better results. And you just basically listen to Sona for at least they say at least 10 minutes for it to basically activate the appropriate response in your in your mind. And and you kind of go from there. Now it’s a premium app just like brain.fm or any of the others. You do have to pay for the app again. I think they have like a 14 day free trial or something like that. But this is you know, neuroscience based, FDA approved. It’s very, very interesting to see I highly record meant that you can go to sonar dot care, you can click on the link in the show notes. And they’re on their research page, you can see how they’ve built out the the information for what’s underlying the technology in this music. And it’s just, it’s fascinating. And it’s very similar. If you don’t know what bring dafont.fm is, or you haven’t heard us talk about brain FM, go to brain.fm and read about their particular technology as well, because they do something a little bit different. But it’s same underlying core concepts, right, we were working with brain wavelength, you know, therapy. And this really helps to change our brain states. And it’s, it’s kind of a strange concept, right? Because you’re playing music in order to change the way in which your mind is working. But it works. And this is how our brains, you know, kind of interpret different stimuli. So it’s very, very interesting to see how this works. So give it a try. Okay, so

Augusto Pinaud 45:52
we do some testing. Before we go to my total week, I want to add to this, one of the things they say it’s an FDA approved, and it it will, it will help you to go to the alpha, the federal levels, depending on what you find. So it will help you not only relax, but allow your body to get in the frequency in which he’d have the ability to start healing itself. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:18
yeah, and I mean, I’ve, I’ve used it, and it works. I mean, it’s really phenomenal. I’m obviously I’m one person, they’ve done actual studies, but like my personal experience has been that it has worked similar to bring down FM, and it may just be, you know, highly suggestible, whatever you know, to mean, you, to some extent you believe it’s going to work so that therefore, it does that kind of concept, but but, you know, I’ve, I’ve worn it, and I and I have, I have experienced the the kind of efficacy of the tool, and so I can’t, I can’t speak but good things about it. So

Augusto Pinaud 46:53
I says certified silver method instructor, I can tell that’s one of the things that we teach how to get to alpha to exactly that relax, and center yourself and all that and then how to get to deeper than that. So you can I start the self healing process. It’s been scientific, proven, and study for many, many decades now. So our MC thing is green light and green light, it is a financial technology company is not a bank, they are backing, the banking services happened by the Community Federal Savings Bank, that is a member of the FDIC, but green light, what allows you to do is basically show kids how to bank and invest. So I tell my story, I in my home, as I grew up, talking about banking, investment, and money was a taboo, okay, to this day, if you want to hang up with my parents quick, you, you mentioned money, and they will hang up, okay, and that continue working. But I don’t want or I did not want as a parent, as a dad, as a parent, that my kids have that experience, it took me a lot of effort and time and money, and wasted money. And in order to re educate myself on how to do it better. And what I wanted was to give them the advantage. on Episode 119, we talk about the iOS 17 is going to start enable parents to give recurring money as payment on allowance. That is great, it’s a great step. What I like about green light, is that they have that but I can decide how to teach them, hey, this percentage need to go to savings, this percentage need to go to charity, this percentage need to go to investments. And even inside of that, they can create different categories. So my 10 year old has been year and a half saving every penny he got so he could buy a tablet. Okay, great. That’s exactly what I want to teach him and being able to go and see there and he was going to save for a phone. And then we told him that after he gets a certain grade that he will get a phone. So he looked at me and say great, and that means I can change my savings goal. And now start saving for an Apple Watch. Great, we are creating a monster but at least he had a better concept. You know, they understand what he’s saving. They have a debit card that it’s connected to that and I can or we can deposit extra money if we decide to but it gives them complete control in big air quotes about their money and their investments. And they can even do things like Robin Hood do another of those, you know they can go and buy partial pieces of a stock so my kids has been able to save their money and buy some pieces of a stock and see how their stock goes up or goes down and being familiar with the car. concepts. So as they grow up is not foreign for them, it is something that it will be on their mind. So that’s my App of the Week.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 50:11
Fantastic. I had heard of what is it Henry or something like that, you know that that other application that that’s kind of an alternative to greenlight. But I think that, you know, having these tools available to kids to be able to learn how to manage finances is so personal finances, especially. So we’re at such a young age and just understanding that we live in an economic world. And if we don’t have a sense of rationalism, or just, you know, rational thought that is about how we manage money, then we manage it from emotions, and managing from emotions is probably not the best place.

Augusto Pinaud 50:46
I know. And so, you have heard the story, you know, when last year we went to this May, and we give money to the kids, okay, fine. Every parent did that. That’s normal, okay. But they already had the green light, and he was already saving for his tablet. And he came and asked me, okay, if I don’t spend the money in dismay, can I put it into my tablet fun? Okay, and then at that time, he was nine years old. Okay. I way more older than that. And as I said, I don’t know if I have that maturity, I have shared that publicly with many people, okay. And he went to this me with money in his pocket, okay, or in his car, and everything that he saw in the different stores and stuff, it really compared to the goal, say, really? Do I really want this toy? Or do I want to put that money against the tablet. And he, to my surprise, he did notice spend money in Disney, he saved all his money for what he wanted, what he really wants. And honestly, I wish I had that understanding at 20, not at 10, or 20. And I didn’t. So I think it’s a tool, a very, very tool that has had fantastic impact and influence in our family.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:10
Fantastic. All right, onward to our featured story of the week, which is that Microsoft has announced this pretty big update to OneNote. But on iOS.

Augusto Pinaud 52:26
Yeah, that’s very interesting. To me, they announced this, you are going to be able to create notes from the Home tab, you’re going to be able to organize them. And it is right now running on the insider running version. So this is a combination of a story of the weekend and a rumor in the sense that it’s not yet available for most people, you need to have Apple testify to be able to access and you need to be on the insider version that said, Microsoft is pushing OneNote heavily into the iPhone users. And we are seeing something that I’ve been seeing lately on many applications that the features come in first on the iPhone than other platforms. I don’t know why or the iOS than other platforms. And I don’t know why. But OneNote is making this big push and making the application or the categorization of the notes, the names the tags, way powerful, are way more powerful than what they were.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 53:30
Yeah, I I’m curious to see what this home tab really is all about. As many folks know, Evernote brought a home screen right so that now there’s Evernote home inside of Evernote. It is it is a flexible space with widgets, that allows you to basically put additional, you know, surface within Evernote to structure a dashboard, right. And so this whole concept of the Home tab, giving you new features to in essence, categorize your notes by notes by date or name doesn’t sound like the same thing as the concept within Evernote. So this is going to be very, very different than than Evernotes home. But one notes home is sounding like it’s it’s a way for you to be able to quickly create new notes. And so I’m just curious to see how it’ll operate. You know, I’ll certainly have it on an iOS device and playing with it as soon as that comes out in, you know, general availability and GA. And so that’ll be really interesting to see how they manifest this Home tab. So you can see your recent notes and so on and so forth. And whether or not they intend to kind of follow Evernotes suit and start to give more ways in which you can see your notes, follow widgets or something else like that because that could I think be really, really powerful for it to be able to do so. And like you I’m really impressed that Microsoft is pushing the Have their products on iOS in a way that is thoughtful and, you know, not this kind of backhanded way in which they used to do all this stuff, you know, where they would just kind of sort of give, you know, updates very much, you know, very haphazardly across the system. I think they’re really working to make sure that iOS and Android both support Microsoft apps. Well, and and I think that’s going to be a good thing for it across the board. I’ll be curious to see whether or not they bring some of these OneNote on iOS features over to Android faster or slower. Right, you know, just depends on how one can hope that is faster. Yeah, absolutely. All right. That brings us along to the end of our show, we have a couple of announcements and rumors.

Augusto Pinaud 55:48
So the announcement is the Apple release 16 point 5.1 for iOS and iPad OS Mac Ventura, 13.4, watch os 9.5 point two, especially the releases for iPad OS, MacOS and iOS. If you can do it as soon as possible. There is security updates in there. And there are two rules. One is AI has read or is going to replace John Lennon as The Beatles, they apparently, were able to get a AI to do the voice of Jay of John Lennon so that way, he come and sing for a last single of the Beatles. And now and then, at least that was what Paul McCartney announcement or announced. And then the last one is there is a story An article in there, where it says that you’re not a I can add 4.4 trillion in value to the global economy, according to this study comes out a call from the New York Times. That’s a big number. And that could be very, very interesting.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 57:04
Yeah, I’ll be I’ll be curious to kind of see what I haven’t yet dug into the McKinsey report here. But I really am interested to see how they sourced the numbers. And whether or not this is like, you know, one, one thing is to is to decrease costs, right, which is like squeezing the the worker more same time there is increasing the pie, and giving us more opportunity for economic growth. I really wish that it were the latter not the former. But I believe that it’s probably a quite a bit of both. And so I’m going to I’m going to, I’m going to read the report with with pretty, you know, interests with great interest to see how this, how they perceive the long term impact of generative AI. And note that generative AI is one one artificial intelligence concept among many, many others, right. And so we are we are in the age of AI. Even if we don’t necessarily see it today, we see a lot of artificial intelligence working on in the background. And so I’m very, very interested to read the, the the report, and kind of keep keep a keep a watch on all of that. And with that Augusto we’ve covered the productivity and related technology news for this week. Thank you for everything that you do to make the show happen every week. My pleasure. With that everybody on anythingbutidle.com, you’ll find our show notes that will include links to our stories, new tools of the week, the extra stories, anything else we didn’t cover, and it also contains text transcripts. So there’s a text transcript on the page, which has, you know, click on read more, it’ll expand and you can read it right there. Or you can go ahead and click the download button and download link. And we’ll go ahead and download a PDF for you to read offline. If there’s something that you wanted to tell us about, you can always leave a comment directly on the page. So anythingbutidle.com forward slash 120 would be the the show notes for this episode, or the episode page for this for this episode. And you can also join us inside of personal productivity Club, where we have a group dedicated to Anything But Idle. So if you go to anything, but idle.com forward slash community, you can go ahead and sign up and join us in the group it’s free. And then you can go ahead and interact with us in that space. If this is your first time watching, go ahead and subscribe or follow us in your favorite podcast app. And of course, feel free to tell your friends let them know about Anything But Idle. But either way with that we wish you the most productive week and I will see you all next time on Anything But Idle. Here’s your productive life.